Glen Cook - A Path to Coldness of Heart (Dread Empire 3)

GLEN COOK

NIGHT SHADE BOOKS SAN FRANCISCO

A Path to Coldness of Heart 2012 by Glen Cook This edition of A Path to Coldness of Heart 2012 by Night Shade Books

Cover art 2012 by Raymond Swanland Cover design by Claudia Noble Interior layout and design by Amy Popovich

All rights reserved
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-59780-329-8
Night Shade Books
Please visit us on the web at http://www.nightshadebooks.com

Year 1016 AFE (After the Founding of the Empire of Ilkazar)
The Price of Hubris

T he prisoner clamped his jaw on a shriek. He had moved too suddenly, turning. He did swear softly. He could not work his muscles, could not build the strength to escape if his wounds did not heal. And they would not if he kept trying before the meat was ready.

A clatter rose outside. This austere suite might be his entire world for the remainder of his existence: a reward for having befriended a woman and having saved the life of a man.

It was the middle of the night. Darkness with stars filled the single foot square window high in the east wall, well beyond his reach. He should be sleeping.

He lay in bed, back to the doorway, feigning sleep, when the visitors arrived. Three, from the sounds of it: one large, one small, one delicate. Female, if fragrance did not lie.

He heals slowly, one said. The physician blames his despair.

That voice belonged to Lord Ssu-ma Shih-kai, commander of Shinsans Western Army. It was by Shih-kais grace that the prisoner lived.

A second familiar voice said, The physician should look closer. Hes clever. Hell show you what you expect to see till you relax. Then youll be dead.

The prisoners exact strategy. If only his body would heal!

Shih-kai said, The physician says his wounds pierced his soul. He overreachedand it cost him everything.
Mist, Empress of the Dread Empire, considered before she replied. It cant be easy, living on after making so many bad decisions.
The prisoner, who thought of himself only as the prisoner because of his shame, compelled himself to relax, to breathe slow and deep. But he could not stop tears from leaking.
Thousands had died because of his decisions. A kingdom might be destroyed by civil war. His family would be fugitives already. The childwoman he had loved Who knew? If Sherilee was clever she would insist that she had known him only as someone who visited her friend Kristen, widow of his son and mother of his grandchildren.
He thought about Inger, his wife and queen, seldom. When he did, though, it was with a grand ration of guilt. That love had died.
Inger came to mind when the pain was bad. They met the last time he lay just outside the Dark Gate, she a volunteer nurse helping heroes injured while holding the wolves of the Dread Empire at bay. In his loneliness he had asked her to become his wife.
He had lost another wife, Elana, and another lover, Fiana, before Inger.
Women who loved him did not fare well.
Were I in charge here, said the woman who had been a friend, and a wife to his best friends wifes brother, and I was sure that he would recover, I would brick up the doorway.
Lord Ssu-ma said, I bear the man no love but that is excessive. Hes a cripple. Hell never recover fully. And hes nowhere where he can cause any grief.
The prisoner had no idea where here was. Inside Dread Empire territory, certainly. Though Shinsan had suffered severely lately, not one inch of ground had been abandoned
How were Shinsans wars coming? He had helped facilitate the conclusion of one and had been the loser in another. The Matayangan front must have turned favorable, too. Mist had time to visit.
She observed, O Shing was a cripple.
As you say. Vigilance is required.
The night visitors withdrew, to the prisoners frustration. He had hoped to hear something more heartening.
Despair led to self-flagellation. Then, finally, feigned sleep segued into the real thing.

...

Inger watched her captains bicker over a map. They were getting nowhere. She was too tired to scold them. Too tired to ask what new disasters had them bickering.

Ethnically, three were Nordmen from Kavelins old ruling class. Two were Wessons, freemen, descendants of long-ago immigrants from Itaskia. Inger was Itaskian-born, as was the sixth man, whom she had borrowed from her cousin Dane. Danes little army was wintering fifty miles west of Vorgreberg, too far away to provide quick support. Regions nearer the capital were less friendly. Danes men suffered virulent guerrilla attacks if they moved nearer to Vorgreberg. That forced them to cluster in stronger bands. Those became a strain on local resources, which, in turn, left the locals more sympathetic to the rebels.

Inger refused to let Dane move into the city. She said she did not want to cede the countryside. In truth she did not want her uncontrollable cousin in position to control Kavelin by controlling her.

He would try, given the chance.

Power was his reason for having come to Kavelin. Power was why she had wed Kavelins lonely king.
Inger sipped scalding tea.
She was a tall, handsome woman whose blond hair had begun to streak grey. Time was not the thief of her beauty. Stress, fear, and lack of sleep were the demons responsible.
The hot tea wakened her fully. Silence! Thank you, gentlemen. Using the term loosely. Mr. Cleary, you talk. Everyone else stay quiet.
Cleary was the senior Wesson, a stout, sturdy man of thirty-three who had served King Bragi faithfully and remained loyal now that Bragi had fallen. Inger trusted him. The Nordmen and Nathan Wolf, borrowed from Dane of Greyfells, she trusted not at all. In Wolf s case it was no secret that he was here to watch her because Dane no longer had faith in Josiah Gales.
Maam. Your Majesty. The contention arose because General Liakopulos has gone missing. No one knows where, when, or how. He was polling units out west to see where they stand, now. Our discussion concerned possible hows and whys of his disappearance.
Ingers heart sank. This was bad news indeed, though not a surprise. Liakopulos had had little interest in supporting her. He had been Bragis man. He considered her incapable of, or uninterested in, pursuing Bragis reforms. What are the theories? Mr. Wolf?
He deserted. He didnt want to be here anymore.
And the rest of you disagree?
Two Nordmen, Sir Rengild and Sir Arnhelm, thought the truth more sinister: The Guild General had gone over to the Marena Dimura strongman, Credence Abaca. Sir Arnhelm insisted, Those two were always cozy. Which he found repugnant because, as a class, Nordmen considered Marena Dimura less than human woodland savages. Colonel Abaca and his henchmen had developed massive pretensions during the reign of the lost kinga savage himself who would not distinguish between noble and ignoble.
The third Nordmen, Sir Quirre of Bolt, said nothing. With a slight sneer and shake of the head he expressed contempt for his fellows. He believed in King Bragis vision.
Inger turned to the Wessons. Boyer disagreed completely with Cleary. Neither considered Liakopulos a villain. Cleary was sure the General just did not stop heading west when he saw a chance to leave. Boyer was sure that Liakopulos had been murdered. And rebels didnt do it. It will be Greyfells when the truth comes out. Its a matter of who stands most to gain, Your Majesty.
Spoken like a true money-grubbing merchant, Sir Arnhelm snarled. Everything comes down to a balance sheet.
Yes, it does, Inger said. There was no love for the General here. Liakopulos had kept these men in check, favoring no one, contemptuous of them all because he considered them adventurers and plunderers who cared nothing for Kavelin. Bragi, Queen Fiana, and her husband the Krief, who died when Fiana was a teen, had all stretched reason to breaking to create a nation in which all the peoples had a stake.