Chapter 57: I Chose Not to Calculate in Front of Forty One Men

"If you relieve them today, tomorrow you have forty one enemies who deserved it less than anyone."

Zelina said it with the guardhouse plan in front of her and no appetite at all for being right.

"And if I don’t relieve them, I have forty one men that paper already poisoned."

"That paper poisoned one." She put her finger on the table. "You."

Thirteen years pricing settlements. The clean play was obvious and I knew it by heart: relieve the forty one on an administrative pretext, split them across three garrisons, replace them with Miralys’s people.

Low political cost. Risk eliminated. Two days’ work.

And one point of integrity, or three, because it would be calculated to the bone.

I assembled all forty one in the training yard at six in the morning, in the same place where I’d looked at Bren Olvar’s hand.

No guard behind me. No Lunara beside me, because I asked her and it cost me.

I read them the last line of the paper out loud.

All of it. Nothing cut.

Forty one men in formation hearing that their emperor had a written reason to distrust every one of them.

"That came to me yesterday," I said. "I don’t know if it’s true. You don’t know whether I believe it."

Nobody moved.

"The correct move is to relieve you today. I have it written down. It’s on my desk and my wife prepared it, and she is better at this than I am."

A man in the second rank shifted his weight and went still again.

"I’m not going to use it."

Some of them lifted their heads then.

"Not because I trust you. I know four of you." I let the paper hang from my hand. "It’s because the man who wrote this needs me to relieve you. It’s the only thing I’ve read from him in eighty days that asks me for something."

Yard silence at six in the morning.

"One more thing and I’m done." I held the paper up so they could see it. "The man who wrote this isn’t telling me you’re traitors. He’s telling me I’m the kind of man who will relieve you."

Nobody answered, which is what I expected.

"I’ve spent eighty days proving him right. Not today."

"Anyone who wants to leave today leaves with three months’ pay and no charge. The great gate is open until noon." I folded the paper. "Anyone who stays, stays knowing what I just read. I won’t ask any of you anything afterward. There will be no list."

A sergeant in the front rank asked permission to speak and didn’t wait for it.

"Majesty, do you know where the master is?"

"No."

"Is he alive?"

"I think so. I don’t know."

"And if he turns up with that man?"

That was the expensive question and he asked it in front of forty comrades, which is how expensive questions get asked when you have the stomach.

"Then I’ll have to decide," I said. "And so will you. I’m not going to decide for you today to save myself tomorrow’s work."

They took the full six hours. Nobody left in the first three.

At nine a corporal came to the study door and asked whether the offer was real or whether it was a way of finding out who wanted to go.

"It’s real."

"How do we know that?"

"You don’t." I put the pen down. "That’s what makes it an offer instead of a test."

He went back to the yard and I heard about it afterward, secondhand, the way you hear everything that matters in a palace. He stood on the step and told thirty seven men what I’d said, word for word, and then added a sentence of his own that I’ve thought about since.

He said that a test would have been easier to trust.

Four left.

One of the four stopped in front of me before crossing the arch.

"It isn’t about you, Majesty."

"I know."

"I have three sons and the master placed the eldest." His face went bad. "If I have to choose one day, I’d rather not be here when it comes."

"That’s a good reason."

"It isn’t."

"It is." I made room for him to pass. "Go before you think of a worse one."

Thirty seven stayed in the yard.

Nobody applauded and nobody said anything, because it isn’t that kind of scene. They stood there until the sergeant dismissed them and then went to breakfast like it was any Tuesday.

Before that, while they were still breaking formation, the sergeant who’d asked about Bren came over to tell me something.

"Majesty."

"Sergeant."

"Thirty seven of us stayed and thirty seven of us talked it through at breakfast." He came to attention. "We want to ask for something and I don’t know if it can be asked."

"Ask."

"That if the master turns up, you tell us before anyone else." He swallowed. "Not to pick a side. So the man who sent that paper isn’t the one who tells us."

"Granted."

"Thank you, Majesty."

"Don’t thank me. It’s the least you owe a man who stays knowing what you know."

"Majesty, one more thing."

"Say it."

"The four who left." He glanced at the arch. "Two of them have brothers still in the ranks. If somebody starts a list of who went, those brothers go on it, and I’d rather that list never gets started."

"There’s no list."

"There’s always a list, Majesty. Somebody writes it in a kitchen." He came to attention again. "I’m asking you to say out loud that there isn’t one, in front of the men, before breakfast is over."

I said it in front of the men before breakfast was over.

It took nine seconds and cost nothing and I would not have thought of it on my own, which is the part I keep returning to.

[DING]

[Investment tracking: negative.]

[No action registered.]

[HERO, you didn’t calculate that one.]

[You had the clean play on the desk and you left it there.]

[Integrity: 32% ▲ 35%]

[Three points. I have never seen three points.]

[Carrier load: 72% ▼ 69%]

Zelina was waiting under the arch with her arms folded and the face of somebody who has lost an argument and won’t admit it.

"Four left."

"Four."

"I’d have saved you the four."

"I know."

"And you’d have had thirty seven men who find out one day that you relieved them without telling them why." She unfolded her arms. "It’s fine. I’ve thought about it all morning and it’s fine, and don’t ask me about it again."

"You’re allowed to have been right."

"I was right." She said it without heat. "The move I wrote was correct. It would have worked. And you’d have paid for it in a currency I don’t know how to count, which is the part that annoys me."

"Three points."

"Three points." She looked across the yard. "Vaelion, I’ve been keeping books on you since January. Yesterday I could tell you what every choice of yours cost. This morning I can’t."

"Is that bad?"

"It’s new." She started walking. "Ask me in a week."

At the far end of the yard, Roderic Alden stood by the practice post with his collar open and no boots on, because he’d been coming out at first light like that for three days.

He raised an open hand so I could see the number.

And behind him, coming through the far arch, Bren Olvar walked in on his own feet, alone, unarmed, with a letter in his hand.