Chương 291: 61. Severed Ties 2

He'd packaged himself as the man forced to make the hard call. As if it wasn't fear. As if he simply understood the "big picture" better than everyone else. As if he hadn't abandoned the outer line, but was instead heroically preserving the strength of the men who'd died on that wall. It was a very familiar kind of argument. Familiar enough to make me sick. I tapped a knuckle lightly against the map on the table.

"You say you were protecting the whole."

"Yes."

"Then let me ask you this. In that 'whole' of yours, were the men on the third and fourth northeastern towers included?" Chris's brows tightened.

"Naturally."

"Included?" I nodded.

"So them running out of arrows, running out of oil, having their rotation cut off, their resupply delayed—that was part of your 'whole' as well?"

"In war, there must be prioritization—""So you prioritized them into the 'can be lightened first' category." Chris's expression hardened.

"Don't twist my words."

"Then spell it out yourself," I said.

"If you truly counted the outer sections as part of the whole, why, when Jurgen entered the hall and you heard Boris say 'preserve the main force inside the keep first,' did you offer not a single word of objection?" Chris clenched his teeth.

"Because he was right. If the inner line had also been stripped, we wouldn't have been able to coordinate anything at all."

"Wrong," I said quietly.

"If the inner line had been stripped, you wouldn't have slept well. When the outer line was stripped, people died."

"You weren't protecting the whole. You were protecting the circle of things you could see, touch, and sleep soundly beside." His complexion went the color of rotten offal left three days in the sun. It was like someone had ripped half the eldest-son veneer straight off his face. He opened his mouth to retort, but I'd already turned.

"Your turn, second brother." Boris was nothing like Chris. If Chris was the type to cling to status right up until the moment of execution, then Boris was the sort to look for someone else to land on even as he dropped. He started speaking the moment my eyes hit him.

"I admit I said to preserve the main force inside the keep—but that wasn't cowardice, it was judgment!" he snapped.

"You didn't see those days. The Yanxia Empire wasn't pressing one point. They were pressing the entire line—burning, probing, testing everywhere at once. If we'd shoveled every man who could still stand out onto the outer wall, we'd have taken the whole fortress down in one go!"

"I was at least trying to preserve some part of our strength—to leave something that could still fight, still retreat, still cover and respond later!" The longer he talked, the faster he got—like he thought speed could compensate for lack of substance. Unfortunately, reality rarely worked that way. Reality worked more like this: the more you talk, the more holes appear. I looked at him. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"So in your heart, that line—'preserve the main force inside the keep'—was benevolent policy?" Boris faltered.

"At least it wasn't wrong."

"Not wrong?" I smiled faintly.

"Jurgen just testified that you knew the moment you said it, the outer resupply would slow, and the first men to be abandoned would be those outside the wall. Do you deny that?" His breath caught.

"I… I'll admit that was a possible outcome, but—""Not possible. It's something you knew would happen."

"I only—there wasn't a better choice!"

"You had one," I said.

"You could have gone up onto the wall with Jurgen." The room went so still the fire sounded distant. Boris stared at me, color leached out of his face. I kept going.

"You could have led troops onto the outer line yourself."

"You could have gone to the towers and seen for yourself how many arrows were left, how much oil remained, how many watches the men could survive."

"You could have replaced 'preserve the main force inside the keep' with 'I'll take the first shift.'""But you didn't." I took a step forward.

"You stayed inside, and you calculated."

"Calculated which section would cost less to lose. Calculated which men dying outside the wall would weigh less on your conscience than men dying where you had to watch."

"You were not without options."

"You simply chose, from start to finish, the one that ensured you would not be the first to die." His lips shook. For a heartbeat, even the instinct to argue deserted him. Because he knew. I'd hit it squarely. A lot of people aren't ignorant of their own cowardice. They're just very adept at repackaging it as reason, maturity, perspective—even responsibility. Turning their own fear into everyone else's supposed naivety. Impressive. And cheap. I turned last to Rosalind. Of the three, she was the steadiest.

From the beginning, she hadn't slipped once. Even when Marcus and Albert had practically thrown her under the cart, she'd simply stood there, a velvet-wrapped shard of ice. People like her were the most difficult. Because they knew how to make themselves look less like culprits and more like the ones still tidying up the mess. I set my hand down on the two ledgers.

"Rosalind." She looked up at me.

"Earlier, you said ledgers are for maintaining order."

"I did."

"Then explain 'order' to me," I said, flipping one open, my voice so calm it sounded almost like I was reading from some noble etiquette manual.

"The official ledger says seventy percent of the northern arrows have been dispatched. The reserve ledger says only forty percent actually went out."

"The official ledger says fire-oil will be released at night. The reserve ledger records a batch diverted to the inner vaults."

"The official ledger says casualties at the outer towers are still within rotation capacity. The reserve ledger adds, in your handwriting, 'stabilize the main keep first; no need to report fully yet.'""Which part of that 'order' did you not personally write?" Rosalind's expression finally shifted. Not into panic. Into something thinner, colder.

"Because if we'd reported everything as it was, Thornhold would have collapsed internally first," she said.

"Do you know what a fortress fears most? Do you think it's the enemy? No. What it fears most is believing 'we can't hold' before the fighting even ends."

"I altered the ledgers not to kill anyone, but to keep this fortress functioning, at least on the surface."

"On the surface," I repeated her most elegant piece of self-justification.

"Yes. On the surface." Rosalind lifted her chin.

"Sometimes, as long as the surface hasn't broken, the people underneath can keep going." I looked at her and felt an unexpected, almost sincere urge to applaud. Then I really did laugh.

"So what you're saying is, as long as the men on the wall don't know they've already been written off by you, they can die in a more dignified fashion?" Jessi let out a short, vicious bark of laughter. Rosalind's brows finally drew together, just a fraction. I didn't give her time to rearrange her mask.

"What you're doing isn't bookkeeping. It's coffin lining."

"Writing the gap smaller. Writing the dead slower. Writing collapse as 'something we can drag out a bit longer,' and hoping everyone under that layer of paper shuts up and plays along."

"Rosalind, you aren't maintaining order."

"You're putting makeup on a collapse." Her jaw tightened at last. And I knew I'd hit home. Because people like her aren't most afraid of being called ruthless. They're most afraid of someone pointing out, in deadpan detail, that their much-vaunted 'crisis management' is nothing more than powder over rot. That hurts more than calling her cruel. Because it attacks the one thing she takes pride in—her supposed competence. The hall held its breath for several seconds.

Then, predictably, things began to slide toward a very familiar, very ugly place. They'd run out of arguments. And when someone runs out of arguments, they generally have two options. Confess. Or rot. Unfortunately, my dear blood relatives were all very principled people. They went for the latter. Chris broke first. Maybe he couldn't stand watching his carefully constructed world be taken apart plank by plank. His face had gone the color of something rancid, and he let out a cold little laugh.

"Very pretty words, Cedric."

"Stay away for years, then come back acting like some kind of hero."

"You really think you're that far above us?"

"Without the Eisenberg house propping you up, without these women orbiting you, without that dragon of yours clearing the way with fire, what exactly are you?" Ah. There it was. Finally.