Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [177]
“Hold on,” Duke Wesseros said. He looked a lot like his sister Nalia, the last queen. He’d been out of the city checking on lands the Lae’knaught had seized in eastern Cenaria when the coup had occurred. He raised his hands and gradually the nobles quieted. “The hour grows late, and an army waits for us,” Duke Wesseros said. “Stand to the side of the man or the woman you would have rule us.”
“Why don’t you vote with the stones instead, that people may vote for who they truly wish to lead?” Momma K said. Inwardly, she cursed. She should have let one of the other lords suggest it, but Wesseros had brought up voting so quickly that Momma K hadn’t had the chance. All the talk was worth nothing if they didn’t have a blind vote.
“Tomorrow we must stand on the field of battle. I think today we have the courage to stand in a tent,” Terah Graesin said. Clever bitch.
Silence fell again, and then people started moving.
Momma K had been depressingly accurate in her estimations of who would end up where. For the most part, the minor nobles looked like they would prefer to go to Logan but didn’t dare defy their lords, which was why Momma K had wanted the blind vote. Terah had concentrated her bribes on the powerful.
As it was, they had a three-way split. Logan, Terah, and undecided.
“As I suspected,” Duke Wesseros said. He led the undecided camp. “The rhetoric has done nothing. With the assassinations of the Gunders, only three great families are left in our country, and here we stand. It seems to me that there is a golden mean, a middle way. Logan Gyre, Terah Graesin, with the fate of all your countrymen at stake, will you put aside your own selfish ambitions?” The buffoon. The idiot. The pox-ridden windbag. He thought he was being smart. If the duke hadn’t created a third camp, Logan at least would have had a majority. They would still have had a chance.
“What are you talking about?” Terah asked.
Logan already knew. Momma K could see it in his stony face.
“This night, on the eve of a battle that will determine the future of our land, will you split our forces, or will you join them? Logan, Terah, will you marry tonight?”
Terah looked around the room quickly, judging who stood with her. Her support was eroding. She looked at those who stood defiant on Logan’s side, those who stood passive with Duke Wesseros. Then she looked at Logan. It wasn’t the look a woman gives a suitor. It was a probe for weakness.
“For the country I love, yes,” Terah Graesin said.
“Logan?”
“Yes,” Logan said woodenly. Gods help him.
60
They had erected a platform so the entire army could see the wedding. Men had already gathered from their fires, and their officers were beginning to organize them into ranks for the ceremony as the moon rose. Besides the army, several thousand commoners and camp followers had crowded around the platform.
“Logan,” Count Drake said, closing the flap of the little tent where Logan was getting ready, “You can’t do this.”
For a long moment, Logan didn’t answer. When it emerged, his voice was low and stern, “What else can I do?”
“The One God says he will provide an escape from every temptation.”
“I don’t believe in your god, Drake.”
“Truth doesn’t depend on your belief in it.”
Logan shook his head slowly, like a bear emerging emaciated after months of hibernation. “Marrying Terah is no temptation. My father married a beautiful, poisonous woman and I saw what it did to him.”
“A lesson you would do well to heed. The difference being that your mother wasn’t capable of nearly as much destruction.”
Logan’s eyes flashed, the bear slowly raising his head to tower above all others. “If there’s a way out that doesn’t destroy us, you tell me what it is! I don’t want to marry—”
“I didn’t say marriage was the temptation.”
“Then what is?”
“Power,” Count Drake said, thumping his cane.
“Damn it, man! It’s marry her or doom us all. You think I haven’t figured out a way to get the majority of these people to follow me? I have! I could