Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(108)

“The same legal codes that worked so well for us during the trial?” he asked. “Legal codes are all well and good, but there’s a certain clarity to just lopping off a head. I don’t know about you, but I take that trial as a personal affront. That weasel of a priest won, which means I lost. And I don’t like losing.”

“I can’t just go around killing people!”

“You can’t?”

“I’m the Minister of Finance, not the headsman.”

“You’re the Emperor’s daughter. There’s five hundred Aedolians whose only job is to fight for you.”

“Their job is to protect me.”

“Tell them they can protect you by sticking Uinian full of steel.”

She shook her head. He was missing the whole point. “The Malkeenians are not despots.”

He laughed at that, a long merry laugh. “Of course you are. You’re just particularly good despots. You’re enlightened. You try to do what’s good for the people. All that sort of thing.”

“Exactly.”

“But you’re still despots. Or tyrants. Do you prefer tyrants? The point is, no one chose you to rule over Annur.”

“I don’t rule over Annur,” she protested, but the man waved her objection aside.

“You’re the princess and a minister, your father’s daughter and your brother’s sister, and right now the only Malkeenian on the continent, let alone in the city.”

“And yet the Council of Ministers chose you to be regent,” she replied, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice.

“And I’m deferring to you. That should tell you just how much power you have.” He dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward in his chair, nailing her to the spot with his eyes, fully engaged for the first time in the conversation. “You’re a remarkable woman, Adare. I’ve had the displeasure, as kenarang, to spend time with some of the men who like to think they hold Annur together, and I can tell you you’re smarter than the lot of them combined. You see situations clearly and quickly and you’re not afraid to speak your mind.” She colored at the unexpected praise, but he wasn’t finished. “The question is, are you able to act?

“I’ve known a dozen men with good enough military minds to rise to my rank. They understood strategy. They could see their way out of impossible tactical positions. They knew the importance of the boring stuff: logistics, transport, and all the rest. Their weakness was their inability to act. There comes a time in every battle when the necessary course of action is clear, at least to someone who understands battle in the first place. What thwarts most men is the nagging doubts. What if I’m seeing it wrong? What if there’s something I haven’t considered? Maybe I should wait another minute, another hour.”

He smiled, a hard predatory smile. “I fight against men like this all the time, and I kill them.”

“Kill Uinian?” she said, trying to feel the full implications of the idea. The whole situation was overwhelming, not just the problem of Uinian, but il Tornja’s praise and criticism as well. No one had ever spoken to her like this, not even her father, who trusted enough in her judgment to raise her to the rank of Finance Minister. That post was more than she had expected from her life, and yet il Tornja, for all his criticism, spoke to her as though she had the potential for something more, something great.

“Why not? He murdered your father, he flaunted your family, and he looks ready to make a major play for imperial power.”

Adare considered this man who sat across from her. When they first met, she had thought him ostentatious and vain, a pompous fool who cared more for his wardrobe than for important affairs of state. She had been wrong; she could admit that to herself now. What was harder to admit was the fact that she wanted to impress him. It was a ridiculous thought, a girlish thought. But why not? she demanded of herself angrily. Here was a man who had risen to the highest military office, upon whose command hung the lives of hundreds of thousands, and who spoke to her not as a simpering girl or a sheltered princess, but as an equal. As she looked at him, she caught a glimpse of a pairing that might be—the princess who was a minister, the kenarang who became a regent—but she forced it down. The man eyed her calmly from across the table, his eyes deep as wells.

“Why are you helping me?” she asked.

“I’m helping the empire.”

“That, too,” she acknowledged, “but you’re also helping me.”