An Autumn War by Daniel Abraham Read Free Book Online Page B

courtyard, whirled overhead, and settled back where they had come from. Balasar wove his fingers together on one knee.
    "What do we do if they don't move forward?" Eustin asked quietly.
    "Convince them."
    "And if they can't he convinced?"
    "Convince them anyway," Balasar said.
    Eustin nodded. Balasar appreciated that the man didn't press the issue. Eustin had known him long enough to understand that bloodymindedness was how Balasar moved through the world. From the beginning, he'd been cursed by a small stature, a shorter reach than his brothers or the boys with whom he'd trained. He'd gotten used to working himself harder, training while other boys slept and drank and whored. Where he couldn't make himself bigger or stronger, he instead became fast and smart and uncompromising.
    When he became a man of arms in the service of Galt, he had been the smallest in his cohort. And in time, they had named him general. If the High Council needed to be convinced, then he would by God convince them.
    A polite cough came from the archways behind them, and Balasar turned. A secretary of the Council stood in the shade of the wide colonnade. As Balasar and Eustin rose, he bowed slightly at the waist.
    "General Gice," the secretary said. "The Lord Convocate requests your presence.
    "Good," Balasar said, then turned to Eustin and spoke quickly and low. "Stay here and keep an eye on our friend. If this goes poorly, we may need to make good time out of Acton."
    Eustin nodded, his face as calm and impassive as if Balasar asked him to turn against the High Council half the days of any week. Balasar tugged his vest and sleeves into place, nodded to the secretary, and allowed himself to be led into the shadows of government.
    The path beneath the colonnade led into a maze of hallways as old as Galt itself. The air seemed ancient, thick and dusty and close with the breath of men generations dead. The secretary led Balasar up a stone stairway worn treacherously smooth by a river of footsteps to a wide door of dark and carved wood. Balasar scratched on it, and a booming voice called him in.
    The meeting room was wide and long, with a glassed-in terrace that looked out over the city and shelves lining the walls with books and rolled maps. Low leather couches squatted by an iron fireplace, a low rosewood table between them with dried fruits and glass flutes ready for wine. And standing at the terrace's center looking out over the city, the Lord Convocate, a great gray bear of a man.
    Balasar closed the door behind him and walked over to the man's side. Acton spilled out before them-smoke and grime, broad avenues where steam wagons chuffed their slow way through the city taking on passengers for a half-copper a ride laced with lanes so narrow a man's shoulders could touch the walls on either side. For a moment, Balasar recalled the ruins in the desert, placing the memory over the view hefore him. Reminding himself again of the stakes he played for.
    "I've been riding herd on the Council since you gave your report. They aren't happy," the Lord Convocatc said. "The High Council doesn't look favorably on men of ... what should I call it? Profound initiative? None of them had any idea you'd gone so far. Not even your father. It was impolitic."
    "I'm not a man of politics."
    The Lord Convocate laughed.
    "You've led an army on campaign," he said. "If you didn't understand something of how to manage men, you'd be feeding some Westland tree by now."
    Balasar shrugged. It wasn't what he'd meant to do; it was the monment to come across as controlled, loyal, reliable as stone, and here he was shrugging like a petulant schoolboy. He forced himself to smile.
    "I suppose you're right," he said.
    "But you know they would have refused you."
    "Know is a strong word. Suspected."
    "Feared?"
    "perhaps."
    "Fourteen cities in a single season. It can't be done, Balasar. Uther Redcape couldn't have done it."
    "tither was fighting in Eddensea," Balasar said. "They have walls