history, at least in his audacity. The battles themselves he expected to
he simple enough. The Khaiem had no experience in tactics and no armies
to protect them. Balasar would he remembered for two things only: the
unimaginable wealth he was about to pour into Galt and the ceremony that
would come with the dawn. The plot that stripped the andat from the world.
As the dark hours passed, the thought pricked at him. He had put
everything in place. The poet, the books that concerned
FreedomFrom-Bondage, the army, the arms. There was nothing he would ever
do that would match this season. Succeed or fail, this was the highwater
mark of his life. He imagined himself an old man, sitting at a street
cafe in Kirinton. He wondered what those years would be like, reaching
from here to the grave. He wondered what it would he like to have his
greatness behind him. He told himself that he would retire. "There would
he enough wealth to acquire anything he wanted. A reasonable estate of
his own, a wife, children; that seemed enough. If he could not regain
this season, he could at least not humiliate himself by trying. He
thought of the war leaders who haunted the corridors and wineshops of
Acton reliving triumphs the world had forgotten. He would not he one of
those. He would he the great General who had done his work and then
stepped hack to let the world he had made safe follow its path.
At heart, he was not a conqueror. Only a man who saw what needed doing,
and then did it.
Or else he would fail and he and every Galtic man and woman would be a
corpse or a refugee.
I Ic twisted in his sheets. The stars shone where the clouds were thin
enough to permit it. Framed in the opened shutters, they glittered. The
stars wouldn't care what happened here. And yet by the next time their
light silvered these stones, the fate of the world would have turned one
way or the other.
Once, he came near to sleep. His eyes grew heavy, his mind began to
wander into the half-sense of dreams. And then, irrationally, he became
certain that he had mixed one of the orders. The memory, at first vague
but clearer as he struggled to capture it, of sealing a packet with red
that should have been green swam through his mind. He thought he might
have noted at the time that it would need changing. And yet he hadn't
done it. The wrong orders would go out. A legion would start to the
North while the others moved cast. They would lose time finding the
error, correcting it. Or the poet would fail, and some stray company of
armsmen would find its way to Nantani and reveal him to the Khaiem. Half
a thousand stories plagued him, each less likely than the last. His
sense of dread grew.
At last, half in distress and half in disgust, he rose, pulled on a
heavy cotton shirt and light trousers, and walked barefoot from his room
toward the library. He would have to open them all, check them, reseal
them, and keep a careful tally so that the crazed monkey that had taken
possession of his mind could be calmed. He wondered, as he passed
through hallways lit only by his single candle, whether Uther Redcape
had ever rechecked his own plans in the dead night like an old, fearful
merchant rattling his own shutters to be sure they were latched. Perhaps
these indignities were part of what any man suffered when the weight of
so many lives was on his back.
The guards outside his library door stood at attention as he passed
them, whatever gossip or complaint they had been using to pass the dark
hours of the night forgotten at the first sight of him. Balasar nodded
to them gravely before passing through the door. With the stub of his
bedside candle, he lit the lanterns in the library until the soft glow
filled the air. The orders lay where he had left them. With a sigh, he
took out the bricks of colored wax and his private seal. 'T'hen he began
the long, tedious task of cracking each seal, reviewing his commands,
and putting the packets back in order again. The candle stub had fizzled
to nothing and the lanterns' oil visibly dropped before he was finished.
The memory had been a lie. Everything had been in place. Balasar stood,
stretched, and went to the window. When he opened the shutters, the cool
breeze felt fresh as a bath. Birds were singing, though there was no
light yet in the east. The full moon was near to setting. The dawn was
coming. "There would be no sleep for him. Not now.
A soft scratch came at the door, and after Balasar called his
permission, Eustin entered. There were dark pouches under the man's
eyes, but that was the only sign that he had managed no better with his
sleep. His uniform was crisp and freshly laundered, the marks of rank on
his back and breast, his hair was tied back and fastened with a thick
silver ceremonial bead, and there was an energy in all his movements
that Balasar understood. Eustin was dressed to witness the change of the
world. Balasar was suddenly aware of his rough clothes and bare feet.
"What news?" Balasar said.
"He's been up all through the night, sir. Meditating, reading,
preparing. Truth is I don't know that half of what he's done is needed,
but he's been doing it all the same."
"Almost none of it's strictly called for," Balasar said. "But if it
makes him feel better, let him."
"Yes, sir. I've called for his breakfast. He says that he'll want to
wait a half a hand for his food to go down, and then it's time. Says
that dawn's a symbolic moment, and that it'll help."
"I suppose I'll be getting prepared, then," Balasar said. "If this isn't
a full-dress occasion, I don't know what is."
"I've sent men to wait for the signal. We should know by nightfall."
Balasar nodded. All along the highest hills from Nantani to Aren,
bonfires were set. If all worked as they hoped, there would be a signal
from the agents he had placed in the city, and they would be lit, each
in turn. A thin line of fire would reach from the Khaiem to his own door.
"Have a mug of kafe and some bread sent to my rooms," Balasar said.
"I'll meet you before the ceremony."
"Not more than that, sir? The bacon's good here...."
"After," Balasar said. "I'll eat a decent meal after."
The room given them by the Warden had been in its time a warehouse, a
meeting hall, and a temple, the last being the most recent. Tapestries
of the Four Gods the Warden worshipped had been taken down, rolled up,
and stacked in the corner like carpet. The smooth stone walls were
marked with symbols, some familiar to Balasar, others obscure. The
eastern wall was covered with the flowing script of the fallen Empire,
like a page from a book of poetry. A single pillow rested in the center
of the room, and beside it a stack of books, two with covers of ruined