33 Why the Hell Are You Alive? #3
“Why?” an advisor down the table asked.
“Because Brawna will kill everything she sees. And there are hundreds of thousands of people in this city. If they stay, they all die. All the children, all the elders, everyone.”
“Hmm.” The man down the table touched his chin. “Nectar production should be moved if we are to stay funded, and the factories will need staff, she’s right.”
“Yes, but I mean everyone, sir.”
He shook his head gravely. “We don’t have the resources for a full scale evacuation. We save those we need—”
“We’ve seen what Brawna will do to families. To children. Tell me, sir, are you planning to leave your children in the city? Or do you have the resources for that?”
The man’s jaw worked from side to side. Instead of answering her, he looked to Bal like the king was a lazy dog owner that needed to tighten his bitch’s leash.
“How long would an evacuation take?” Bal asked.
Tagas and Esme shared a look, and then they both looked to Urias. “Maybe… two and a half weeks if we do it correctly. And it will cost,” he said.
Bal shook his head, and plunged a hand into his hair. He sighed with true resentment in his voice. “Could we expedite it?”
“Not safely, no,” Urias answered with a wince. An apology flashed in his eyes as he finally looked at Esme.
She did not accept it. She didn’t accept any of this.
“Fine, we don’t have the time to be Viryans about it, but we can get people out. If not all, then some, and some is better than none,” Esme said.
“I agree with her,” Maranna piped up, further along the table. “There are far too many civilians in this city not to try and evacuate at least some of them.”
Esme turned sharply, not having expected to find an ally in her, but took the support anyway.
“This isn’t about agreeing,” Bal said. When he lifted his face from his palm, his eyes were sharp.
And then, when they shifted to Esme, they lost all their edge.
“I need time to think on this. If we’re going to be funneling money into anything, it has to be worth it.
But a botched evacuation will save no one. ”
“We have to try. The people will be unguarded against—”
“I would not leave this city unguarded for some corpse to ransack,” Bal snapped, like her words had awakened a fire in him.
“We have let her take from us enough. I don’t plan to run, and I certainly don’t plan to lose.
But that means sacrifice, Esme. For all of us.
” Bal’s eyes burned, and Esme swore a tear shined beneath them before he tore his gaze from hers.
Esme replayed his words in her head. Sacrifice sounded a lot like swallowing. Esme refused to swallow.
“We should round up the foreigners, train them,” Isobel said, moving the conversation on. “They invaded us; they might as well fight for us.”
Esme had half a mind to remind her she’d fed those foreigners to fucking beasts last month, and now she wanted them to join the army?
Still, another part of her realized that they’d actually fought for a place in this country instead of inheriting it from a thief.
It might matter more to them than to the men who’d been born here.
Esme sat there stupidly. Something in her belly was burning, and it wasn’t a knife this time. Bal was supposed to be the kind one, the one who would sacrifice for his people, not ask that they do it for him. But he’d shut her up, just like that.
Esme watched his face as it moved through the motions of listening and responding.
Was this Bal or Balthazar? Had it been Balthazar wearing Bal’s kind voice snapping at her?
How was she supposed to navigate this man in public?
Had this been just one week ago, she could have pulled him aside and chewed him out. Now, he was lord of her very soul.
Dread pressed in on her. She’d made him that.
It was she, from the very first second, that had dragged Bal onto the throne.
It had been she who had declared him the winner.
She’d wrapped his hand around her throat herself.
Why, then, was she surprised when he began to squeeze?
Tighter, tighter, tighter, until she couldn’t breathe.
Esme could feel the specter beaming down at his chosen one.
Omniel would have been proud. Reel her in, get her under you, and keep her there, he would have told Bal.
No.
If Esme could put Bal’s hand on her throat, then she could pry it off, too. She’d feel doomed and pissed and jilted later. She’d hiss at him later. For now, though, she’d do what she’d been doing since he’d set foot in this city: fix things.
She began conniving a scheme. She couldn’t call it a plan. A plan was something reasonable. The thing working itself together in her mind was nothing but a backhanded scheme.
“We’ll need weapons. The smiths will have to be contacted,” Bal said, and someone went off to do that. “We’ll conscript the strong men, too.” And someone went off to go draw up those papers.
Esme didn’t listen.
Instead, she found the fingers on her throat and broke them.