It was true that these men had the benefit of age and decades of experience to support their ideas, but so too had they been idle in the last several years of peace, preferring to laze about on their large estates, abandoning their wivesand children to toss coin instead at courtesans; to dull their minds with opium.
Kamran, meanwhile, had actually been reading the weekly reports sent in from the divisions.
There were fifty divisions spanning the empire, each comprising ten thousand soldiers, and each commanded by a major general whose job, among others, was to compile weekly briefings based on essential findings from lower battalions and regiments.
These fifty disparate briefings were then issuednotto direct superiors, but to the defense minister, who read the materials and disseminated pertinent information to the king and his five lieutenant generals. Fifty briefings from across the empire, each five pages long.
That made for two hundred and fifty pages a week.
Which meant every month, a thousand pages of essential material was bequeathed to a single unctuous man upon whom the king himself relied for critical intelligence and instruction.
This,thiswas where Kamran lost his patience.
The dissemination of key information through a defense minister was an ancient practice, one that had been established during wartime to spare the highest-ranking officials the critical hours that might otherwise be spent poring over hundreds of pages of material. Once upon a time, it had made sense. But Ardunia had been at peace now for seven years, and still his fellow lieutenants did not read the reports for themselves, relying instead upon a minister who grew only more unqualified by the hour.
Kamran had long ago circumvented this impotent practice, preferring to read the briefings in full through the lens of his own mind and not the minister’s.
Had anyone else in the room bothered to read the sitrep from these different reaches of the empire they might see as Kamran did: that the observations were at once fascinating and worrying, and together drew a bleak picture of Ardunia’s relations with the southern kingdom of Tulan. Sadly, they did not.
Kamran’s jaw clenched.
“Indeed,” the minister was droning on, “it is often to our benefit to maintain a sense of rivalry with another powerful nation, for a common enemy helps keep the citizens of our empire united, reminding the people to be grateful for the safety promised not only by the crown, but by the military—to which their children will devote four years of their lives, and whose movements have been so well calculated in this last century, under the guidance of our merciful king.
“Our prince was divinely blessed to inherit the fruits of a kingdom built tirelessly over many millennia. Indeed the empire he is one day to inherit is now so magnificent it stands as the largest of the known world, having so successfully conquered its many enemies that its millions of citizens may now enjoy a stretch of well-deserved peace.”
By the angels, the man refused to shut his mouth.
“Surely there is proof in this, is there not?” the minister was saying. “Proof not only of Ardunia’s skillful leadership, but in the collective wisdom of its leaders. It is our hope that His Highness, the prince, will see in time that his experiencedelders—who are also his most humble servants—have worked diligently to make thoughtful, considered decisions at every turn, for certainly we can see how—”
“Enough.” Kamran stood up with such force he nearly knocked over his chair.
This was madness.
He could neither continue sitting here in this damned hair shirt, nor could he listen any longer to these insipid excuses.
The minster blinked slowly, his vacant eyes shining like glass beads. “I beg your pardon, Your Highness, bu—”
“Enough,” Kamran said again, angrily. “Enough of your blathering. Enough of your insufferable stupidity. I can no longer listen to another ridiculous word that comes out of your mouth—”
“Your Highness,” Hazan cried, jumping to his feet. He shot Kamran a look of death and dire warning, and Kamran, who was usually in far better control of his faculties, could not summon the presence of mind to care.
“Yes, I see,” Kamran said, looking his minister in the eye. “You’ve made it plain: you think me young and foolish. Yet I am not so young and foolish as to be blind to your ill-concealed passive aggressions, your weak attempts to pacify my genuine concerns. Indeed I know not how many times I will need to remind you, gentlemen”—he looked around the room now—“that I have only a week ago returned from an eighteen-month tour of the empire, in addition to recently accompanying our admiral on a treacherous water journey, during which half our men nearly drowned after we collided with an invisible barrier near the border of Tulan.Upon arrival in Ardunia, traces of magic were found on the hull of our ship—”
Gasps. Whispers.
“—a discovery which should concern everyone in this room. We have been at odds with Tulan for centuries, and sadly, I suspect our incumbent officials have grown comfortable with that which has become commonplace. You seem to grow blind when you turn your gaze south,” the prince said sharply. “No doubt our exchanges with Tulan have become as familiar to you as your own bowel movements—”
There were several protests at that, exclamations of outrage that Kamran ignored, instead raising his voice to be heard above the din.
“—so familiar, in fact, that you no longer see an obvious threat for what it is. Let me refresh your memories, gentlemen!” Kamran pounded the table with his fist, calling to order the moment of chaos. “In the last two years,” he said, “we have captured sixty-five Tulanian spies, who even under extensive duress would not reveal more than limited information about their interests in our empire. With great effort we were able to conclude only that they seek something of value here; something they hope to mine from our land, and recent reports indicate that they are nearing their goal—”
More protests broke out at this, and Hazan, who’d gone scarlet to his hairline, looked as if he might soon strangle the prince for his effrontery.
“I say, gentlemen,” Kamran said, shouting now to be heard. “I say I do much prefer this method of discourse, and I would encourage you to direct your anger at me more regularly, sothat I might respond to you in kind. We are discussingwarare we not? Should we not shed the delicacy with which we approach these hardened subjects? I confess that when you speak to me in circles I find it both detestable”—he raised his voice further—“both detestable and tiresome, and I do wonder whether you hide behind wordplay merely to disguise your own ignorance—”
“Your Highness,” Hazan cried.
Kamran met his minister’s eyes, finally acknowledging the barely restrained wrath of the only man in the room he marginally respected. The prince took a steadying breath, his chest lifting with the effort.
