Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [42]
“That’s more a rhetorical bludgeon than a question, general,” Jarl said.
“Thank you,” the general said. Momma K suppressed a smile.
“What do you propose?” Jarl asked.
“Gwinvere ruled the Sa’kagé in total secrecy, with puppet Shingas, right?”
Jarl nodded.
“So who’s been the puppet Shinga since Khalidor invaded?”
Jarl winced. “I, uh, haven’t exactly installed one.”
“Not exactly?” Brant arched a bushy gray eyebrow.
“Brant,” Momma K said. “A little gentler.”
Brant adjusted his arm in its sling, wincing. “Look at it from the street, Jarl. For more than a month, they’ve had no leader. Not just a bad leader. None. Gwinvere’s little government has been helping everyone and so far it’s going well, but your Sa’kagé thugs—sorry, people—have been in the same boat as everyone else. So why keep paying dues? Gwinvere was able to be a shadow Shinga, because there was never a threat like this. This is a war. You need an army. Armies need a leader. You need to be that leader, and you can’t do that from the shadows.”
“If I announce who I am, they’ll kill me.”
“They’ll try,” Brant said. “And they’ll succeed unless you can collect a core of competent people who are absolutely loyal to you. People willing to kill and to die for you.”
“These aren’t soldiers from good families who’ve been brought up on loyalty and duty and courage,” Jarl said. “We’re talking about thieves and prostitutes and pick-pockets, people who only think about themselves and their own survival.”
“And that’s what they’ll say,” Momma K said so quietly Jarl barely heard her, “unless you see what they may be, and make them see it.”
“When I was a general, my best soldiers came from the Warrens,” Brant said. “They became the best because they had everything to gain.”
“So what exactly do you propose?” Jarl asked.
“I propose you work yourself out of a job,” Brant said. “Give your crooks a dream of a better life, a better way for their children, and a chance to see themselves as heroes, and you’ll have yourself an army.”
He paused to let it sink in, and soon Jarl’s heart was pounding, his mind racing. It was audacious. It was big. It was a chance to use power for more than just keeping power. He could see the outlines of a plan starting to fit together. His mind was already tapping what people he would place in which positions. Fragments of speeches were glomming together. Oh, it was seductive. Brant wasn’t just telling Jarl to give the crooks a dream; Brant was giving Jarl a dream. He could be a different type of Shinga. He could be noble. Revered. If he were successful, he could probably even become legitimate, be given real titles by whichever noble family he put back in power. Gods, it was seductive!
But it meant revealing himself. Committing himself. Right now, he was a secret. Everyone thought he was just a retired rent boy. Less than a dozen people knew he was the Shinga. If he wanted to, he could just stop communicating with them. If he didn’t try, he couldn’t fail.
“Jarl,” Momma K said, her voice gentle. “Just because it’s a dream doesn’t mean it’s a lie.”
He looked from one to the other of them, wondering how deeply they read him. Momma K probably read him to the core. It was scary. He should have suspected something just by her silence, but he couldn’t be angry with her. She’d had more patience with him than he deserved.
Work myself out of a job. Elene had said she couldn’t imagine Cenaria without the Sa’kagé polluting everything, but Jarl could. It would be a city where birth on the west side didn’t mean hopelessness, exploitation, time in the guilds, poverty, and death. He’d been lucky to get a job working for Momma K. The Warrens offered almost no honest jobs, certainly not for orphans. The Sa’kagé was fed directly from a self-renewing underclass of whores and thieves who abandoned their children as they themselves had been abandoned before. But it could be different, couldn’t it?
Just because it’s a dream doesn’t mean it’s a lie. They were suggesting he inject hope into the Warrens. “Fine,” Jarl said. “On one condition, Brant: if they kill