Chapter 23
“Give us privacy,” the White said.
Ironfist stood in the White’s chambers, atop the Prism’s Tower at the center of the Chromeria. The wheels of her chair were tall enough that she could push on them directly to move around her room, which she insisted on doing, despite the delicacy of her wrists.
“My blanket, please,” she said.
He brought over her blanket—something she’d woven decades ago with her own hands. Like many who make their livelihood with their minds, she had an outsized pride in the few things her hands had crafted. It was perhaps the only thing for which Ironfist could consider her a silly old lady. He tucked the blanket around her legs and was surprised to feel how thin those limbs had become.
“You see?” she said. “You can tell, can’t you, Commander?”
Silly old lady indeed. She’d set him up. Sharper than he was, still. It was a good reminder, both ways. Weak physically, but not mentally. Not in the least.
“Tell what, my lady?”
“Psh,” she said. A little eye roll. “It is a hard place, for those who are not prepared.” I’m dying, she was saying, prepare yourself so that when I do you won’t fall prey to your enemies.
It was both terrifying to imagine a world without Orea Pullawr as the White, and warming to learn that she considered him a friend.
“Tell me again, Commander, about your coming to Garriston, and the preparations for battle there.”
So he did, again. He tried to tell it differently, knowing that she was sifting his words, looking for something. He told her about the movement of troops, about how many men and drafters each side had, about the disposition of the Ruthgari garrison that had been there. She’d been interested in that, the first time. But now those were mere numbers to her. She already had memorized them, and analyzed what they meant about the Ruthgari commitment to Tyrea, and who had been bribed. Now she was looking for something else.
He spoke for two hours. He told her about General Danavis coming alone—unmustached—to the Travertine Palace, and how Ironfist had been expelled from the meeting. He spoke of Gavin moving the wagon that had blocked the gates, making the men help in doing what he could have done by himself, thereby somehow cementing them to his own cause.
She smiled at that, a small, knowing smile. Perhaps the smile of one leader approving of another’s nice play.
He wasn’t sure what she was looking for, though, and pretty certain that he wasn’t supposed to know.
“You don’t gamble, do you, Commander?” she asked.
“No, my lady.” How did she know that? He supposed it wasn’t the kind of thing that would be hard to find out, but that she had, that she cared about it, and that she recalled it was what made the White both alien and a little frightening.
“Always thought that was strange. You seem like the kind who would.”
“I used to,” Ironfist admitted. “I had a bad experience.” He kept his face even. Equanimity was all a man could aspire to. Knowing what you had control over, and what you didn’t. The Nuqaba had no place in his thoughts.
“My husband used to play Nine Kings. He maintained that he was a mediocre player, though he rarely walked away from a table with much less than he brought to it. He had a reputation as an amiable player who served fine liquor and excellent tobacco, though, so he played with all sorts of men from all over the Seven Satrapies. We were married three years—and I was only beginning to really fall in love with him—before he got me to come to one of his parties. It wasn’t the night he would have chosen for me to see.
“A young lord came. Varigari family. From a line of fishermen before they were raised in the Blood Wars. He came in, new and cocksure, and over the course of the night he went through a small fortune. The lords my husband played with that night were wealthy, and decent men, not wolves. They could see what was happening. They told the young Varigari to quit. He refused. He won often enough that he kept hope, and I could see the resignation on their faces: he loses a small fortune, and perhaps it teaches him a lesson, so be it. Dawn came, and he had nothing, and there was this moment where he bet a small castle in order to stay in. I saw this look on his face. It’s etched into my memory. Do you know what he was feeling?”
Ironfist could feel it right now, the memory was so hot and sharp. “Terror, but elation, too. There’s something potent in knowing that you have pushed your life to one of its pivots. It is insanity.”
“I glanced at my husband, unable to believe what I was seeing. Everyone else was looking at the young Varigari. My husband was looking at everyone else. And I realized a few things all at once.” She coughed into her handkerchief, then glanced at it. “Keep worrying I’m going to cough blood one of these times. Not yet, thank Orholam.”
She smiled to defuse his worries, and continued, “First, about the young man: the small fortune he’d lost was not a small fortune to him, and the small castle he’d bet was probably the last thing his family owned. To him this wasn’t a lesson; this was ruin. Second, my husband was no mediocre player. He had the winning hand, and he had the wealth to risk playing it. He was an expert, but an expert who took pains to rarely win, because he’d found something that was more valuable to him than winning small fortunes and becoming known as a great player of Nine Kings. What he was really doing every time he played was taking the measure of those he played with. Finding not just their tells, but how they reacted to the whims of fate and fortune. Was this satrap greedy? Did this Color get so focused on one opponent that she ignored a true threat? Was this one smarter than anyone knew?”
Scary to think of the White paired up with a man as smart as she was.
She said no more.
“And?” Ironfist asked.
“And?” she asked.
“There was a lesson in there somewhere,” Ironfist said.
“Was there?” she said, but her eyes danced. “I’m so old.”
“I know you too well to think your mind is just wandering.”
She smiled. “When the big bets are on the table, Commander, it’s good to know which character in that little drama you are.”
Problem with being surrounded by brilliant people: they expect your mind to be as nimble as theirs. Ironfist had no idea what she was talking about. He’d get there eventually, he always did, but he’d have to mull it over for a while. “If I may, my lady?”
“Please.”
“Did Lord Rathcore ever play against Luxlord Andross Guile?”
She chuckled. “I guess it depends what you mean. Nine Kings? Never. He knew better. You don’t play against those to whom you can only lose. I’ve seen Andross play. He uses his stacks of gold like a bludgeon. There is no gracefully losing a little bit of gold to Andross. It’s win big or lose bigger against him. For my husband to play Andross was to lose a fortune or to lose the whole purpose of his games by exposing how skilled he was.”
“And if I wasn’t asking about Nine Kings?” Ironfist asked. He had been, but she obviously meant to tell him more.
She smiled, and he was glad that he served her. To be the commander of the Blackguard was to stand ready to give your life for those you protected, regardless of your feelings. But for this woman, even frail and with few days left, Ironfist would gladly trade his life. She said, “All I’ll say is this: Andross Guile isn’t the White, and it galls him deeply.”
But the White was chosen by lot. Orholam himself moved his will through that.
But if Andross Guile had thought being the White was a victory within his grasp, maybe that was because it actually had been. Surely to corrupt the election of a White was the work of a heretic—worse, an atheist. Ironfist couldn’t comprehend it.
The further implication—that Lord Rathcore had stymied Andross Guile by instead getting his wife Orea selected—was almost worse. If the White’s election had been tainted by the machinations of men, was it thereby void? How could Orholam tolerate such a thing?
And yet the White was a holy woman, a good woman. Perhaps she hadn’t been involved, or hadn’t known, or hadn’t figured it out until many years later. And then what would you do? Abdicate because there was some blight on your election that no one else had ever noticed and that even you hadn’t known about? Perhaps that would bring greater disrepute on the Chromeria than simply to let it lie.
But it shook Ironfist’s faith. What had Gavin said on the ship? Some jest about being chosen by Orholam—a jest that only made sense as a jest if you didn’t believe Orholam really did choose.
Lord Rathcore had blocked Luxlord Guile from becoming the White, but couldn’t block him from having his son made the Prism.
It almost took Ironfist’s breath away to think of it in such nakedly political terms. He was no na?f. He served these people. He knew that even the greatest had their foibles. He knew they all had vast ambition. But surely, surely some few things must be held holy.
He remembered again holding his mother’s bleeding body, screaming his prayers to Orholam, praying until he thought heart and soul would burst. Praying that Orholam would see him, just for one moment of his life. Hear him, just once. And his mother died.
“Who won? That night. What happened?” he asked.
She was quiet for a moment. “My husband let the young man win. No matter.” The White waved a frail hand, as if to shoo the example away. “Commander,” she said quietly, “I’ve upset you. I’m sorry. Let this be my absolution: as important as it is for you to know what character you are in this little drama, perhaps right now it is more important for you to know which character I am. I am the gambler, Commander, just waiting for Orholam’s eye to rise over the horizon and reveal the truth. I am the gambler, and I’ve bet the family castle, and I’m waiting for the cards to turn.”
“There’s war coming, isn’t there?” Ironfist asked.
She sighed. “Yes, blind though the Spectrum is to it. But I wasn’t talking about the war.”
He walked to the door, stopped. “What happened to that young man?”
“He gambled again later with someone else and lost everything, as gamblers do.”