Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [60]
Kylar felt sicker the more he read. Of course the Sa’kagé would treat with the Ceurans. It was one thing to refuse to collaborate with Khalidorans who wanted to wipe out all of Cenaria, quite another to betray a disliked queen to a reasonable man who wouldn’t interfere with the Sa’kagé’s business. As soon as that supply train arrived, Momma K would see the end. She would try to minimize the bloodshed, but which was better: For thousands to starve in the Warrens, or for a hundred noble heads to roll? The smuggling tunnels would soon fill with sa’ceurai.
“Night Angel,” Lantano Garuwashi said in greeting, rising from his mat.
Checking, Kylar was sure he was still invisible. He looked at the papers in his hand, apparently hanging in midair. He dropped the invisibility. “Good morning, warleader.”
Lantano Garuwashi was one of the rare men who looked more daunting half-naked than he did in full armor. There was no fat on his body, and where most quick swordsmen were built with lean muscles like Kylar, Garuwashi had the upper body of a blacksmith, each muscle sharply defined—and big. He had a smattering of scars on arms and chest and stomach, but not one of them was deep enough to have cut muscle and thereby impede his motion. They were the wounds of a man whose mistakes had been infrequent and small.
He shook his head as if to shake off sleep, but Kylar thought it was more calculated to rattle the bound ends of those sixty-odd locks in his own hair like a bowl full of marbles. Lantano Garuwashi grinned joylessly at Kylar. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said.
Kylar couldn’t believe it, but how else would he sleep so lightly that he woke at the sound of papers being turned fifty feet away? “If you expected me, there’d be fifty sa’ceurai ringing this tent.”
“I knew you were coming as soon as my sentry reported that someone tied his leggings together.”
Kylar’s jaw dropped. “He reported himself?”
Garuwashi smiled, self-satisfied. Kylar wanted to think of him as smug, but it was an infectious kind of smile. “I punished him lightly and rewarded him well—as he expected.”
“Son of a—” Every time Kylar took something for granted, he got hit in the face with it.
~Is there a lesson here?~
Kylar ignored the ka’kari. “So, if you expected me. . . . All this is guttershite.” He dropped the papers on the table. “There’s no supply train.”
Garuwashi’s grin faded. “It’s coming,” he said. “If you don’t believe me, wait two days. You tell me, do you think all those reports could have been written between the time you were playing with my sentry and now? That would be a massive effort, wouldn’t it? And it would be stupid of me to throw it away by telling you I expected you.”
Kylar blinked. “So what’s the game?”
Garuwashi began pulling on his clothes. “Oh, are we being honest with each other?”
“Might be quicker than lying.”
Garuwashi hesitated. “Fair enough. I’m preparing to be a king, Night Angel.”
“A High King?” Kylar asked.
Garuwashi looked puzzled. “You say this like it means something to you.”
Kylar cursed his ineptitude. “A rumor I heard.”
“Why would I wish to be a high king? Cenaria and Ceura are neither large nor distant from each other. Naming under-kings would simply give me rivals.” He waved it away and tied the thin silk robe around his waist. “In a year, I will be king of Ceura. I have a reputation now and most of it serves my purposes. But in our capital Aenu, the effete nobles call me a barbarian. ‘Skilled at war, yes, but can a butcher be king?’ This is how they attack a man who is too excellent. So I have a small interest in capturing this city without killing. We both know that I can take Cenaria. I let you read long enough to see that, yes?”
“So what do you want?” Kylar