What kind of mother doesn’t like her own son?

She’d been trying to train herself to have good feelings around him, so they had wonderful food for dinners together, excellent wine, and she drafted red and what sub-red she could: all the things that could provide perfect soil for a new relationship. But she was a stone. It hadn’t worked. Not yet. And when he kissed her on the lips in greeting, she flinched away from his innocent gesture.

She couldn’t reject him, not after all she’d done.

She hadn’t answered, and Andross took her silence as assent. He picked up the kopi he’d brought for her, and sipped it as if nothing had happened. “We were working together, High Mistress. If the Nuqaba were going to comply, I’d given orders that the assassination be called off.”

A lie, almost certainly. Teia hadn’t mentioned any way for her orders to be canceled, and no one there from the Order could have gotten orders in time to stop her regardless, because they didn’t have skimmers. Unless Anjali Gates belonged to Andross?

Damn! Yet another person to put in the file of those who might be Andross’s.

Investigate Anjali Gates.

But Karris couldn’t let him know that she knew the possibility of canceling the answer to be a lie. Orholam’s balls, it was impossible to keep all this straight!

“As it was,” Andross continued, “we were able to establish how hard you are, and how dangerous it is to cross you. Your ultimatum drove a Nuqaba to suicide—which it only would have if she’d already been planning to commit treason. And because she died before she could come out against us, none of the people who would have joined her had done so publicly. Think of it this way: if things are close and the tribes aren’t sure who to side with, if they’d followed her and then we killed her, they would fear you’d hold it against them. So all things being equal, they would then have to join the White King. This way, they still have the possibility of joining us.”

“Why would they fear me if they hadn’t acted yet? I’ve shown myself to be forgiving when possible.”

“Ah, but you see, men never believe others are more good than they are. Bad men see mercy as weakness. Smart men see it as shrewdness. Saintly men might see the truth of it, but sadly there are few saints among those we’re trying to convince to join us.”

“And you’ve guaranteed that,” she said, though she couldn’t argue with that much. She had dossiers on all the tribal chiefs, and she knew all the satraps and Colors herself. No saints among those, and few enough even among the High Luxiats. “Because of what you’ve done, we’ll have people join us who have only the barest loyalty. We may be inviting traitors into our midst.”

“A truth every time one recruits. Would you forego allies altogether?” Andross asked. “I’ve seen you down at the yards, watching the training.”

“What of it?”

“You’ve accelerated the training. How many drafters have died because of that?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled.

“Horse shit.”

“Twelve,” she said.

“Twelve dead, to save some number you’ll never know. That’s our business here, Iron White. Trading blood now for what we pray is less blood later. Stop looking back.”

“Who’s to say the tribes who join us won’t turn when we get to battle?” she asked.

Andross grinned smugly. It was a cold mirror of Gavin’s happy self-satisfaction when he did something clever. Gavin’s delight made you want to join him; Andross’s made you hate him more.

He said, “That’s why I blooded the Parians and Ruthgari early at the Battle of Ox Ford. It’s hard to join up with an army after they’ve killed your sons and brothers, even if it is in your best interests.”

“You’re saying you sent them to die on purpose?”

“I wasn’t hoping they’d be massacred like total incompetents, if that’s what you’re asking. But I sent them to what I knew would be a hard fight, yes. The Parians in particular used to have a reputation to be exactly the people for that. That their losses would be another thing to keep them on our side if things went poorly was part of my thinking, yes. I knew the Nuqaba was crazy, but I didn’t think she was insane. She might not even have been able to bring her people to join the White King. But if she’d tried to join him and instead started her own civil war, that wouldn’t have helped us, either, would it? Not in time.”

“So you had reason to think that Satrapah Azmith would join us?”

“Weak people like Azmith don’t lead rebellions. They fall back to doing what they’re supposed to do. At worst, she would have dragged her feet, and another visit, this time by you or me personally, would have been sufficient to regain Paria once and for all. Of course, the Parians have the same problem that afflicts every fighting force subjected to protracted peace.”

“And what’s that?” Karris wasn’t sure they were done talking about his assassination, but Andross slid from one thing to the next like an eel.

“Do you know the true genius of my second son?”

“What?” What did Dazen have to do with this? Gavin. Oh hell.

Yes, she did know Gavin’s genius quite well, thank you.

“Dazen was brilliant. Smarter than Gavin, but Dazen had his mother’s—” Andross cut off suddenly, overwhelmed with emotion.

He’d really loved her.

And instantly, Karris felt the ice of her hatred for this man shiver, and a crack run right down the middle of it. If he could love Felia, then he could love.

Unless this, too, was a game. Was Andross so vile that he would use his own wife’s death to manipulate Karris?

Andross cleared his throat. “He had this ability, a perishingly rare ability for those who are good at practically everything they do. He knew where he wasn’t the best, and it didn’t bother him. He led his people, and he fought on the front lines, but he put another man in command of his armies. You met the man he chose. And he was not a choice anyone else would have made. At the time, Corvan Danavis was the last living son of a shattered, once-great family.”

Karris had met Corvan, but her own memories of any time before the False Prism’s War were dim and tainted with grief and self-recrimination.

“Corvan was bookish. He’d gone along on some raids with his brothers but had never fought. He was too young. As the youngest of ten brothers, he never dreamed he would lead, nor did they. Then the Danavises got swept into the death orgy that was the Blood Wars. Corvan’s brothers tried to take a shortcut through a swamp to surprise their enemies and were captured and flayed.”