ROC ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Prologue IGNAHTA SEMPRIA Such pretty country, to be soaked in blood. South of the city of Desland, the valley of the river Velt flattened out into a rolling carpet of fields, gridded by neat hedgerows and punctuated by tiny orderly hamlets, each with its tall-spired church tipped by a golden double circle. The river itself traced out a series of lazy curves, as though exhausted by its frantic descent from the highlands, and it flashed like molten silver in the warm autumn sun. Here and there, lone hills rose from the endless flat farmland like islands jutting out of the sea, crowned with gnarled, ancient trees, the last remaining strongholds of the great forests that had covered this land before the arrival of men. Atop one of those hills, at the edge of one of those primeval woods, a man sat cross-legged on a boulder and stared down at the plain below. He was a young man, barely out of boyhood, with nut-brown hair and a wispy mustache. Dressed in leathers and homespun, he could have been mistaken for a native, the son of a peasant farmer come to trap or gather wood in the old forest. In fact, he was a very long way from home, and he had no interest in firewood or game. His name was Wren. In his saddlebags, carefully folded and secured inside a lockbox, he carried a velvet mask sewn with a layer of glittering, clicking obsidian. It marked him as a servant of an order out of legend, one that was supposedly a hundred years dead: the Priests of the Black, fell agents of the Elysian Church, its spies and inquisitors. Even within the hidden fraternity who carried out the will of the Black Priests, Wren was of a special breed. He had spoken the true name of a demon, and would play host to the creature until the end of his days. When his death came, he would be condemned to eternal torment for daring to traffic with the supernatural. He had accepted this burden, and the certainty of this ultimate fate, to serve the Church and save others from suffering similar punishment. He was one of the Ignahta Sempria , the Penitent Damned. * * * Wren stared down at the plain, across the miles, to a place where many campfires had lately burned like fireflies. At that distance, most men would have seen nothing but the fields and the rivers, but Wren's demon was with him. He could feel it in his eyes, a tight feeling like someone twisting knotted cords around his skull, and it sharpened his vision to excruciating precision. Tiny men in blue milled and marched and formed ranks, teams of horses were harnessed to cannon, and cavalrymen checked their saddles and mounted. An army, preparing for battle. The brush beside him rustled. With his demon's strength wholly poured into his eyes, Wren's hearing was no better than a normal man's, and only the discipline of long training kept him from starting at the sound. Instead he let out a long breath and forced himself to relax, letting his demon return to its resting state. Between blinks, the clarity of his vision faded, though it still would have put any hawk to shame. Sound rushed back in, every tiny rustle and animal noise of the forest now as obvious as a fanfare. He could hear the heartbeats of the two men who now stood beside him, and their breathing was as loud as the rasp of a bellows. "The Vordanai are breaking camp," he said. He spoke in Murnskai, the native tongue of those raised in the fortress-temple of Elysium. "But not to retreat. Vhalnich will offer battle to di Pfalen." "Bold," said the man on his left. He was much older than Wren, well into middle age, with a bald dome of skull sticking up from a ring of black and gray. His name, the only one that Wren had ever heard anyone use, was the Liar. Like Wren, he was dressed in simple peasant garb, but his hands might have invited comment: his nails were each at least an inch long, and painted with gleaming white resin. "Di Pfalen has the numbers," Wren said. "He has broken his force into three columns to attempt to cut off Vhalnich's escape." The Liar snorted. "I might not be so confident in his place, given Vhalnich's reputation." Wren shrugged. The Liar liked to pass himself off as an expert in military matters, as in everything else, but the basic situation was simple enough. The revolution that had broken out after the death of King Farus VIII had shocked the civilized world, placing a sacred monarch in thrall to a mere elected parliament. With due encouragement from Elysium, the great powers of the west--Borel, Murnsk, and the Free Cities League--had gone to war to restore the rightful order. But declaration of war was one thing, and action another. Seafaring Borel preferred the slow weapons of blockade and economic warfare, while vast, backward Imperial Murnsk could take months to assemble her armies. The League, on the other hand, was not a nation but a bickering, fractious collection of semi-independent polities. Vheed, Norel, and the more distant cities had sent only token contingents or empty promises to the supposedly common cause. Only Hamvelt and its close allies had leapt at the chance to defeat their longtime rival. So it was here, to familiar plains between Essyle and Desland, where the ever-shifting border between Vordan and the League ran, that the Vordanai had sent their newly minted hero. Janus bet Vhalnich. Conqueror of Khandar, vanquisher of the Last Duke, savior of Vordan. Heretic. Sorcerer. "We will observe the result," the Liar said. "If Vhalnich falls, or is taken, our task is simplified. If not . . ." The third man grunted. He stood with his arms crossed over his massive chest, more than a head taller than either of his companions. His craggy face was made ferocious by a thick, unkempt black beard like wild thornbush, and his small dark eyes glared out ferociously from deep, sunken sockets. While he was dressed like the other two, no one would ever take him for a simple laborer. Quite aside from his enormous frame, the air of menace he projected was unmistakable. His name was Twist. Wren had rarely heard him speak more than a single word at a time, and often he was not even that voluble. "Either way," Wren said, "we'll need to get closer." They were still a solid day's ride from the place that would soon become a battlefield. The Liar nodded. "We will seek another vantage. Ready the horses." Wren got to his feet, legs aching from too long spent absolutely still, and suppressed a frown. The Penitent Damned had no formal hierarchy among themselves, no ranks or chain of command apart from their shared obedience to the Pontifex of the Black. On the rare occasions when they did not work alone, their orders made it explicit who was to lead. The Liar was an agent of many years' standing, and this was Wren's first mission outside Murnsk, so it made sense that the older man was in charge. But Wren occasionally suspected the Liar of harboring a taste for idleness and worldly pleasures that was inappropriate for his position, and it led him to treat Wren like a servant instead of an equal. It was something to raise with the pontifex on their return. They had six horses, enough to carry their gear and provide remounts if they needed a burst of speed. Wren went through the familiar ritual of preparing saddles and tack, loading the camp supplies, and fixing each animal with his supernatural senses for a few moments, listening to their breathing and heartbeats. Satisfied that nothing was amiss, he led them one by one to the edge of the woods. Last in line was Twist's mount, a huge, stocky gelding matched to the big man's weight. Twist took the reins from him with another grunt and heaved himself gracelessly into the saddle, provoking a snort of complaint from the animal. The Liar mounted more skillfully, a testament to half a lifetime spent in the saddle in the service of the order. Wren paused in front of his favorite mare, staring out to the north. "Wren?" the Liar said. "Is something wrong?" Wren closed his eyes and let the demon rush to his ears. The sounds that had been barely a shiver in the air a moment ago were now loud and distinct, low crump s and rumbles like distant thunder. In between, he could even hear the faint skirl of drums. "Wren?" the Liar repeated, words booming in Wren's ears like the voice of God. Wren opened his eyes and let the demon slither away inside his skull. "It's begun," he said. Part One Chapter One WINTER "Keep it up! They're giving way!" Winter Ihernglass shouted. The air was thick with acrid smoke, slashed by the brief brilliant flares of muzzle flashes. Musketry roared around Winter like a continuous crackling peal of thunder, and she had no way of knowing whether her soldiers could hear her. Her world had contracted to this small section of the line, where a dozen young women of the Girls' Own stood behind the shot-torn hedgerow, each going through the drill of loading her musket: ramming the ball home, priming the pan, and bringing the weapon back up to firing position. The Hamveltai were unseen in the murk, visible only by the flash of their own muskets. But they were weakening--Winter could feel it--the return fire becoming more scattered and sporadic. Just a minute more . She walked along the line, shouting herself hoarse and slashing the air with her sword, while the constant din of the muskets rattled the teeth in her skull. Ahead, she saw one of the casualty teams, made up of girls too young or too small to carry a musket. They worked in threes and fours, running up to the hedge whenever a soldier went down and dragging her back a few paces to assess the injury. As Winter watched, the team ahead of her abandoned a woman who'd taken a ball high in the chest and leaked a wide swath of blood into the muddy earth, and went back to retrieve a plump, matronly woman who'd fallen on her side, clutching a shattered hand. As they got her to her feet, one of the smaller girls suddenly doubled over, clutching at her gut with both hands. One of her companions looked her over, shook her head, and left her where she fell. Brass Balls of the Beast. It was a scene Winter had witnessed before, but she couldn't get over how quickly girls who'd been selling flowers in Vordan not three months earlier had adapted to the brutal necessities of the battlefield. She thrust away a pang of guilt. There wasn't time for that. No time for anything but survival. Winter hurried past the casualty team, stepping quickly around the dying girl, and continued down the line looking for Bobby. The young woman, who'd been a corporal in Winter's company on Janus' Khandarai campaign, now sported white lieutenant's stripes on her shoulder. A knot of women were gathered behind a dense spot in the hedge, loading awkwardly while crouched and then standing to loose another shot into the thickening bank of smoke. "Bobby!" Winter said, grabbing her arm and pulling her close enough to hear over the din. "Go to Jane, tell her to move in!" Bobby's pale skin was already grimed with powder residue. Like Winter, she was one of the few in the Girls' Own to have an honest-to-goodness regulation uniform; unlike Winter's, hers was no longer tailored to conceal the truth of her gender from prying eyes. When Janus had created the all-female Fifth Volunteer Battalion from the ragtag group of volunteers Winter and Jane had led into battle at Midvale, Bobby had elected to discard her disguise. She had been the one who'd taken the nickname "Girls' Own"--a play on the name old royal regiments, the King's Own, and the Boy's Own Guide series of books for children--and turned it from mockery into a badge of honor. Next to Winter and Jane, she was probably the most respected officer in the battalion. She was also--cursed, enchanted, Winter didn't know what to call it--by the Khandarai naath that had saved her life. Winter knew that the scars of her wounds had healed, not in puckered skin, but as smooth, glittering stuff like living marble. Bobby saluted to acknowledge the order, handed her musket to the nearest soldier, and hurried off to the right, bent double to keep her head from sticking above the hedge. For all the good that will do. A hedgerow might deflect a musket ball, but mostly it was good for hiding behind, and that only mattered against aimed fire. Nobody was aiming now; if not for their muzzle flashes and the accompanying noise, Winter wouldn't have been able to say whether the enemy was still there. She turned back in the other direction, keeping her eyes open for any signs of wavering or incipient panic, and was pleased to find her soldiers still firmly committed to their bloody work. The Hamveltai were laying down a hot, heavy fire, but for the moment the Girls' Own seemed to be standing up to the pressure. As she moved toward the left, she could hear the deeper growl of artillery underneath the musketry. The hedge led to a small hamlet in that direction, no more than a dozen buildings, which was defended by a battalion of volunteers and half a battery of guns. Something was on fire--she could see the glow, even through the smoke--but the noise indicated the men there were still fighting hard. On the right side of the line, the hedge took a dogleg forward a hundred yards before ending at a wide dirt path. Jane was waiting on the far side of that angle with another four companies, hunkered down and silent up until now, waiting to execute the trap. Winter didn't want her troops going toe-to-toe with a battalion of regulars longer than they had to. Reaching the center of her line, Winter pressed herself against the hedge between a pair of soldiers and listened. A couple of minutes for Bobby to run to Jane, a couple of minutes to get ready . . . A chorus of hoarse battle cries, identifiably feminine even through the rattle and bang musketry, rolled out of the smoke on the right. All along the line, Winter's soldiers echoed the cheer, which was followed in quick succession by a blaze of new firing. More flashes stabbed through the smoke, at right angles to the Hamveltai position, as Jane led her troops in a charge with fixed bayonets that took the enemy line end-on. As Winter had guessed, that convinced them that their position was untenable, and before another minute had passed there was no more shooting to her front. Along the hedgerow, the women of the Girls' Own were cheering themselves hoarse. "Make sure those muskets are loaded!" Winter shouted, over the celebration. "They'll be back." * * * "You should have seen the looks on their faces," Jane said. "Bastards were so surprised they didn't even have a chance to shoot back." "Nicely done," Winter said. Though rumors of the infamous female regiment had no doubt spread through the enemy camps by now, the League soldiers were always startled when they came to actual face-to-face contact with the Girls' Own. Winter was happy to use their hesitation to her advantage, if it meant keeping her troops alive. "Any prisoners?" "A few dozen," Jane said. "Plenty of wounded out there, but we didn't take any that couldn't walk." They were squatting in the muddy dirt, a few yards back from the hedge. With the lull in the fighting, some of the Girls' Own were helping the casualty teams, carrying the wounded to a temporary station in the rear and dragging corpses clear of the firing line. Winter had cautioned them not to go too far. It was too easy to get caught up helping a wounded comrade and forget that the battle wasn't over yet. To the left, artillery still growled, but the musketry had died away, indicating that the attack on the hamlet had tapered off while the League cannoneers continued the argument with their Vordanai counterparts at long range. The smoke was beginning to drift apart, torn into scraps by the late-morning breeze. Looking at the sun, Winter thought it was still at least an hour before noon; she already felt as if they'd been there for days. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and returned her mind to the matter at hand. "See if any of the men you took speak Vordanai. I'd love to know what else they've got out there." "You think they'll try it again?" "I think they've got to. They want to push through here to take Janus from behind." It felt odd to her to casually refer to the general of the army--much less a count of Vordan--by his first name, but it had become a universal practice among the troops he commanded, as a demonstration of their affection for their strange commander. "They tried a narrow swing around the hamlet, and ran into us. So what's next?" Jane shrugged. "You're the soldier." Winter grimaced, but it was true, in a sense. While there were times when she still felt like a fraud--it was hard not to, when everyone but a select few thought she was a man--it was hard to deny that she had more military experience than anyone else in the Girls' Own, with the possible exception of her ex-corporals Graff and Folsom. For that matter, she had more combat experience than almost anyone in Janus' Army of the East, which was an awkward conglomeration of old Royal Army troops and scratch battalions of revolutionary volunteers. Jane's experience was of a different sort. They'd been lovers, long ago, at Mrs. Wilmore's Prison for Young Ladies, before Jane had been dragged away into involuntary marriage to a brutal farmer and Winter had escaped to join the army. While Winter had spent three years in Khandar, lying low, Jane had escaped from servitude, freed the rest of the girls from the Prison, and brought them to Vordan City. There they'd fought criminals, tax farmers, and anyone else who got in their way, forming the core of the Leatherbacks and striving to provide a rough justice to the Docks. When Winter and Jane had been reunited in the chaos of the revolution--with a helping hand, Winter guessed, from Janus bet Vhalnich--Jane's girls joined the fight to save the city from Orlanko. Now they made up almost half the Girls' Own, and Jane herself had accepted an officer's rank, but she didn't pretend to know anything much about tactics. Winter scratched a rough line in the earth with the toe of her boot. "If I were them, I'd feel us out to the right. If they've got another couple of battalions, they could throw one against us here and push another one down the road to get behind us." "And if we run for it, they can surround the town," Jane said. She looked to the south, where only the occasional hedge broke the endless, open country. A lone wood-topped hill, miles distant, loomed like a distant gray monolith. "If they get us with horsemen in the open . . ." Winter nodded. Jane might not have had a military education, but she had good instincts. The Girls' Own were brave, dedicated troops, but they didn't have the training to form square and stand off cavalry in the open. The volunteers who made up most of the rest of the force Janus had left to blunt the League advance were the same. They had only one regiment of "Royals"--professional soldiers of the old Royal Army--and a retreat under those circumstances could easily become a rout. "I'll send Bobby to Colonel de Ferre," Winter said. "If he brings up the reserve before they get here, we can give them another nasty surprise. They've got to get sick of banging their heads against this wall eventually." Jane nodded and got to her feet. "I'll get some of the girls out past the smoke to give us a bit of warning." Winter stood a bit more slowly, her legs already aching. Her throat felt suddenly thick, in a way that had nothing to do with having spent the morning shouting at the top of her lungs. "Be careful," she said. Jane smiled, her familiar, mischievous smile, and gave a slapdash salute. Winter fought a sudden impulse to wrap her arms around her. Instead she nodded, stiffly, and watched Jane stride back toward the front line. A passionate embrace between the commander of a battalion and his chief subordinate might have been a bit unorthodox, by old army standards, but Winter wasn't sure it would have made a difference if she'd given in to the temptation. Caution was an old, ingrained habit, though, and she tried to impress the importance of it on Jane. They lived in a weird fog of half-truths and lies--the fact that Captain Ihernglass was sleeping with Lieutenant "Mad Jane" Verity was an open secret, at least among the Girls' Own, who gossiped as badly as the old Colonials had. But only a small cadre among them, Jane's former Leatherback girls, knew the secret of Winter's gender. So far, they'd kept her confidence--Jane's girls were nothing if not loyal--but having that knowledge so widely spread made Winter intensely nervous. Bobby hurried over and snapped a crisp salute. One of her sleeves was red with blood. "Jane said you wanted to see me, sir?" she said. "Are you all right?" A foolish question, Winter thought. Bobby was the one soldier on the field who was virtually guaranteed to live through the day's fighting, thanks to the ongoing legacy of her experience in Khandar. "What?" Bobby caught sight of the blood and shook her head. "Oh, it's nothing. I was helping with the wounded." Winter nodded. "I need you to ride to Colonel de Ferre. Tell him we need reinforcements here, at least a battalion, to extend the line on the right. We haven't got the strength to stretch that far, and if they get around us this whole position could come unstuck." "Yes, sir!" Bobby saluted again and hurried rearward. There was a small aid post there, where the battalion cutters did what they could for the casualties until they could be taken for proper care. Beside it was a string of horses, kept ready for couriers and other emergencies. Winter watched her mount up, then turned back to the front. The corpses of the fallen had been removed from the line, and the injured helped to the rear. Now small parties vaulted the hedgerow, cautiously, and searched among the dissipating smoke for enemy wounded. Any who seemed likely to survive were taken prisoner and sent through the line for treatment. The enemy were Hamveltai regulars, called yellowjackets for their lemon-colored coats, striped with black and worn over black trousers. They wore tall black shakos with gold devices on the front and long red plumes fluttering from the peak, the very image of professional soldiers. The contrast with the Vordanai, whose only uniform was a loose blue jacket worn over whatever each soldier had brought along, could not have been greater. But neat uniforms did not seem to provide any special protection from musket balls. They were treated gently--orders on that subject had come down from Janus himself. The reasoning was not humanitarian, but brutally practical. The League commanders had made noises about treating Vordanai volunteers as partisans or bandits rather than soldiers due honorable captivity if captured, and the best defense against any abuses was for the Vordanai army to gather its own stock of prisoners against whom it could threaten retaliation, if necessary. That went double for the Girls' Own, who had no idea what to expect if they fell into enemy hands. Winter knew there was a quiet trend among her soldiers to carry small daggers in the inner pockets of their uniforms, to be used for self-destruction in the last resort. It wasn't something she encouraged, but she couldn't blame them for wanting the reassurance. A certain amount of looting went along with the gathering of captives. Officially, they were only supposed to scavenge ammunition, food, and other military supplies, but Winter noted quite a few of the search parties returning with insignia, plumes, and other trophies. Another practice to which she felt she had to turn a blind eye. She didn't want her troops turning into ghouls, cutting off fingers to get at the rings, but pride in a hard-fought victory was something to encourage. An outburst of laughter caught her attention. Over on the left, a knot of young women surrounded the stocky figure of Lieutenant Drake Graff, who was attempting to demonstrate the proper way to level a musket. It was hard to be sure under his thick beard, but Winter thought he was blushing. Another woman in a makeshift lieutenant's uniform was looking on, and Winter walked over to stand beside her. "Sir," Cyte said, her salute almost as crisp as Bobby's. Winter nodded her acknowledgment. "How is it?" "We missed the worst on this side," Cyte said. "Anna got nicked by a splinter and bled a fair bit, but she'll be all right. No casualties in our company otherwise." No wonder they're in the mood for laughing, Winter thought, as another round of giggles came from the cluster around Graff. Cyte, following Winter's gaze, heaved a sigh. "They like to tease him," she said. "I've tried to get them to stop, but . . ." Winter shook her head. "Don't bother. You won't be able to." Soldiers would have their fun, regardless of what their officers wanted. "Just make sure it doesn't get out of hand." "What's out of hand?" Cyte said. "Last week a gang of them found out where he was having a bath in the river and jumped in with him. They like to see him blush." Winter had to work to stifle a giggle of her own, picturing the gruff, hard-bitten Graff frantically averting his eyes and muttering through his beard. When Janus had offered her the services of her former corporals to fill out her new regiment, Winter tried to make it clear to them what they were getting into. Folsom had fit right in, his quiet assurance off the battlefield and foulmouthed tirades on it provoking something like awe among his troops. Bobby, of course, had not been a problem. Graff had taken the longest to decide, grumbling about the impropriety of it all before finally agreeing on the grounds that someone had to take care of things. For an old soldier, he was surprisingly straitlaced, a fact that his women had discovered and exploited with gusto. Cyte was another matter altogether. Winter had been surprised to find the University student among her early volunteers. She'd been among the revolutionaries whom the speeches of Danton Aurenne had mobilized, and she and Winter had fought together to free the prisoners of the Vendre. After the victory of the revolution and the ascent of the Deputies-General to power, Winter had expected Cyte to take up a marginally safer life in politics. Instead she'd turned up not long after the declaration of war, with a copy of the Regulations and Drill of the Royal Army of Vordan under one arm and a quiet determination to master the military life that Winter found strangely familiar. Winter had quickly made her a staff lieutenant--recruited as it was mostly from the young women of the South Bank, the Girls' Own was desperately short of people with the basic education to perform an officer's duties. "Someone's coming," Cyte said. She pointed out across the field, where a lone figure was indeed sprinting through the remaining haze of smoke, headed for the hedgerow. Winter recognized Chris, one of Jane's Leatherback leaders, now wearing a sergeant's pips. Chris saw her at the same time, and headed in her direction, coming up hard against the hedge. "Winter!" she said without even an attempt at a salute. Military niceties were not the strong point of Jane's old cadre. "The yellowjackets are back." "Hell," Winter said, looking over her shoulder. No sign yet of Bobby, much less of troops marching to their relief. "How many?" "Looks like two groups," Chris said. "They're lining up just that way, on the other side of that little rise." Two battalions, Winter translated, deploying into line for the attack. "One of them out by the road?" Chris nodded, gulping air. Winter grimaced. "Where's Jane?" Chris pointed, and Winter hurried back along the line. Jane was helping hoist the returning scouts over the hedgerow, and Winter grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her aside. "You've heard?" Jane said. Winter nodded. "Bobby's not back yet. De Ferre must be balking." "Bastard." Jane smacked a fist against her palm. "Want me to go talk some sense into him?" "I'll send Folsom," Winter said. "I need you here." "You want to try and hold them off?" Winter gritted her teeth. If we fall back, the whole line could come unstuck. But to stand and fight, against these odds, would mean serious losses even if the line held. And if it breaks, they might run us all down. "I don't think we have a choice," she said. Jane looked at her, an odd light in her green eyes. "You're in charge here," she said. "What's the plan?" * * * A few minutes later, the four companies Jane had led out of the angle onto the Hamveltai flank were forming up across the dirt road, a double line two hundred yards long. Jane and the other officers were still pushing the formation into shape--like most of the volunteer soldiers, the Girls' Own was more used to skirmishing than stand-up fighting. But someone had to block the yellowjackets' advance up the road, and until de Ferre brought up regulars from the reserve, these four companies were all Winter had. Lieutenant James Folsom was tall and heavily muscled, with a long brown mustache and a quiet disposition that became animated only in the heat of battle. He listened carefully to Winter's orders, and shook his head. "I should be here," he said in a quiet voice. "With my company." "I know." The idea of leaving one's soldiers right as they were going into combat would grate on any officer. "But this is important. We can't hold this position if de Ferre doesn't bring up fresh troops. You're Royal Army. That'll carry some weight." And you're a man, she added silently. The tall, intimidating Folsom was more likely to impress an old aristocrat like de Ferre. "What if he won't do it?" "If he stalls, don't wait around for an answer. Come right back here and let me know, and we'll do our best to pull out." That would be quite a trick, with the enemy already on top of them, but Winter tried not to think about it. Folsom nodded dolefully. "I'll be back soon, then." He turned and loped toward the aid station in the rear with long, easy strides. With the line approximately formed, Winter took her place behind the center. On her right, Jane and Abby waited with their respective companies. The two left-hand companies were commanded by Chris and another of Jane's old Leatherback leaders, a short, pale girl named Becca with an alarming fondness for knives. She had one out now, tossing it to whirl dangerously through the air before catching it smoothly in her off hand. The women in the ranks were steady, Winter was pleased to see. They jostled and bumped each other somewhat while they loaded their weapons, but that was inevitable. Here and there, a ranker looked back over her shoulder, making sure the road behind them was open, but Winter didn't think they'd really run. Not right away, at least. Every band of soldiers, however brave, had a breaking point; there was only so much that flesh and blood could stand. She hoped very much that today wasn't the day she found out hers. "Here they come!" someone shouted. With the ground wet, there was no dust cloud to mark the advance, only a yellow line coming over the hill, sunlight flashing here and there on polished steel or silver. A moment later, the sound of the yellowjackets' drums reached them, the steady beat of the march pace. They were already deployed into their line, extending for some distance to either side of the road. Time stretched like taffy. The Hamveltai troops seemed at once impossibly close and enormously distant, as though they were both right on top of Winter and her men and so far away they would never arrive. Each beat of the drum, accompanied by the synchronized tramp of a thousand boots, closed the gap further. When it was close enough, some of the women standing in front of Winter were going to die. Some of the men over there were, too. Winter wondered if they felt the same horrible anticipation-- The range closed to a hundred yards, and the yellowjackets showed no signs of stopping to fire. Winter raised her voice. "Ready!" Muskets came off shoulders, rattling up and down the line. "Level!" Four hundred barrels swung up into line. Winter gave them a heartbeat to steady. "Fire!" The volley crashed out with a roar. At a distance of perhaps eighty yards, it wasn't the most effective shooting--it was easy to over- or undershoot a target at that distance, even without the inherent inaccuracy of a smoothbore musket--but the smoke that puffed out over the Girls' Own was what Winter really wanted. They couldn't afford to let the Hamveltai get a really good look at what was in front of them; if they realized they outnumbered the defenders by better than two to one, they might charge at once, and Winter didn't think her troops would hold in the face of a thousand bayonets. Baiting the yellowjackets into a firefight would buy time. Men dropped, all along the advancing line, and were swallowed by the formation as it closed up. The Hamveltai continued their march while the Girls' Own frantically reloaded, each woman ripping the top off a paper cartridge with her teeth and pouring the premeasured powder down her barrel, then spitting the ball in after. The fastest of them were just firing their second shot when the drums beat a new command, and the yellowjackets halted. Their first two ranks raised their weapons. Winter stared at the line of muskets, standing out like quills on a porcupine, and fought the instinct to curl into the fetal position. She was close enough to hear the officers on the other side scream in Hamveltai. "Envir!" The Hamveltai line lit up like a flash of lightning, swallowed immediately by a roil of smoke. Once again, Winter was surrounded by the whir of balls passing overhead and the pock of impacts on the dirt, accompanied by the wetter-sounding thwack of lead meeting flesh. Women toppled forward, or sagged against their neighbors, or stumbled back out of the line with screams and curses. "Close up!" Winter shouted. She had to gasp for air; she'd been holding her breath. "Close up! Hold the line!" Jane, Abby, and the other lieutenants took up the call, and the sergeants--chosen from volunteers Winter had hoped wouldn't panic under pressure--echoed them. The line contracted, rankers shuffling sideways to fill in gaps, pushing the fallen aside or stepping over them. More muskets banged, with the irregular rhythm of rain drumming on a window, each soldier firing as soon as she was ready. The second Hamveltai volley, when it came, was nearly as neat as the first, and another chorus of screams was added to the familiar sound of battle. It was what Winter had wanted--a firefight, instead of a charge--but it was worse than she'd imagined. The yellowjackets were good troops, well trained, and their volleys were as regular as the tolling of a clock. At every blast, more soldiers fell, the survivors pushing into the gaps, or being hit in their turn and collapsing atop dead or dying comrades. The banging of their own musketry started to sound pathetic by comparison, ragged and useless against the unwavering will of the Hamveltai elites. "Close up!" Jane shouted on the right. "Hold the line!" "Close up, you shit-stinking daughters of fucking goats!" Becca screamed, voice hoarse with excitement or terror. "Hold the fucking line!" "Close u--" Chris said, then cut off. Winter glanced to her left, squinting against the smoke, and saw that a ball had gone right through her throat, producing a spectacular arterial spray. The big woman slapped a hand against the wound, bright red pulsing through her fingers, then crumpled in place. They're going to break. They had to; there was no other way out. Stubborn pride and the unwillingness to show fear in front of their fellow soldiers would keep the rankers in the patently unequal firefight for a while, but it could have only one outcome. The Hamveltai certainly weren't going to give up, not with the return fire visibly slackening. When it had faded enough, they would fix bayonets and charge. We have to fall back. But that would be as bad as a rout. Maybe if we run for the village, some of us will make it. They could barricade a building, hold out for a while. Until de Ferre gets his head out of his ass. Unless, of course, the colonel decided the day was lost and ordered a retreat. Then, cut off and surrounded, they would have no option but to surrender or fight to the death. Winter wasn't sure she was capable of giving either order. She felt paralyzed, watching her soldiers cut down by measured volleys, like the ticks of a funereal clock, unable to do anything to get them out of it-- Someone grabbed her arm, shouted in her ear. It took her a moment to parse the words over the blasts of musketry, and a moment longer to recognize Bobby. "--coming up the road!" she was saying. Winter blinked. She looked over her shoulder and saw a mass of men and horses behind them, working energetically around the low, deadly shapes of cannon. An officer was frantically clearing the teams and caissons out of the way, and artillerymen were already ramming home the first loads. Bobby was still talking, but her words were distant and indistinct to Winter's abused ears. The sense behind them, though, was obvious. "Fall back!" Winter shouted. "Back! Form behind the guns!" Other voices took up the cry. She heard Jane's-- thank God, thank God --and Folsom's bass roar. He must have come back with Bobby. The line had been leaking troops to the rear for some time, walking wounded making their escape, probably including some who weren't actually wounded at all. The shouts of their officers snapped the bonds of pride and duty that held the women of the Girls' Own in place, and they turned away from the firefight as one body, as though a mechanism had been suddenly tripped. Winter had to backpedal frantically to keep from being trampled by the mass of rankers; not screaming or throwing away their weapons, but shoving forward with a silent, earnest determination not to be the last in line. One more volley stabbed out from the Hamveltai line, cutting down the rearmost stragglers and those whose wounds had made them slow to retreat. Winter heard the yellowjackets cheering, and their officers shouting orders. The drums thrilled faster, to the charge pace. She turned away, running along with the rest. In a few moments she was among the guns, passing between the big, many-spoked wheels, and then into the clear space beyond. It took an effort of will to stop running, with the image of all those bayonets following close on her heels fresh in her mind, but Winter was pleased to see that most of her soldiers had managed it. They pulled up short, doubled over and breathing hard, fell to their knees or flopped to the ground. One girl caught Winter's eye, hands clasped in front of her face as she repeated a frantic prayer of thanks, over and over. Behind them, the cannoneers were getting ready. Most of the Girls' Own were past, and only a few limping wounded were still on the road in front of the guns. As these last stragglers lurched past the muzzles of the artillery, the pall of smoke rippled, and the massed ranks of the yellowjackets emerged, still marching in step. A ripple ran through their line at the sight of the guns, but it was too late to stop. They gave a hoarse cheer and broke into a charge. A young lieutenant of artillery brought his hand down, a dismissive, peremptory gesture. Gunners brought their burning brands to the touchholes of their weapons. Winter had time to slam her hands over her ears, and a moment later a blaze of light and a crashing roar seemed to fill the world. * * * Winter could see that Colonel Broanne de Ferre was already sweating into his too-tight collar. "My lord--" he began. "As we are engaged in military service," General Janus bet Vhalnich said, his tone precise, "my social rank is not relevant." Seated behind his portable map table, one long-fingered hand resting on a stack of scouting reports, Janus eyed de Ferre coldly. The rigors of campaigning had thinned the general, Winter thought, and he hadn't had much flesh to lose. His young face was still dominated by those extraordinary eyes, huge and gray, but now they stared out from deep sockets in what was practically a death's head. "Ah," de Ferre said. He looked unhappy--clearly he would have preferred to speak to Janus as a fellow peer, rather than as his military superior. "Yes. Of course, General." "Go on." De Ferre swallowed, trying to regain his lost momentum. He was a stocky man in his middle years, the bulge of his stomach not completely concealed by his exquisitely tailored uniform. The silver eagles on his shoulders that denoted his rank had tiny chips of ruby to give them glittering red eyes. "Lieutenant Archer disobeyed my explicit orders," he said. "His actions might have endangered the survival of my entire force." Janus looked down at the papers on his table for a moment. "This would be when he brought his battery forward to the support of the Fifth Volunteer Battalion?" That was the official designation for the Girls' Own. "Which by all accounts was thereby rescued from capture or annihilation." "Yes, General." De Ferre drew himself up with all the stiffness of an old military man. "The fact that his action happened to be successful is no excuse for insubordination. If I had needed his battery in another position, the battle might have been lost by his rash action." "Bullshit," said Jane, beside Winter. "If Archer hadn't brought those guns up--" "Jane," Winter said, putting a restraining hand on her shoulder. Jane shrugged it off. " Fuck that." She pointed at de Ferre. "My friends are dead because this bastard didn't have the balls for a fight, and now I have to stand here and listen while he blames the people who did help?" De Ferre's round face was growing purple. "I object," he sputtered, "in the strongest terms. Why is this . . . this female even present?" He eyed Jane as though she were some strange specimen of an unknown species. "You are fortunate your gender protects you, madam , because if you were a man an accusation of cowardice would have to be settled with steel." "If you were a man, I might bother to bring a sword," Jane shot back. "As it is, I'd be happy to settle you with my bare hands, if you'd care to join me outside, sir ." "Enough," Janus spit. "Lieutenant Verity is an officer in the Fifth Volunteers, and will be treated as such." He turned to lock eyes with Jane. "She will endeavor to restrain herself." Winter had to give Jane credit. Most people, fixed with the full force of Janus' stare, would have flinched, but she matched him for a long moment before he grunted and looked away. "General," de Ferre began again, "perhaps we could meet in private--" "Colonel de Ferre," Janus snapped. "Please explain why, when you received Captain Ihernglass' message as delivered by Lieutenant Forester, you chose to ignore it?" "As overall commander, it was my responsibility to assess overall threats to my force--" Janus cut him off. "A regiment of Hamveltai regulars turning your right flank did not seem like a threat?" De Ferre's eyes flicked from Janus to Winter, passing quickly over the fuming Jane. He cleared his throat. "I did not consider the information reliable, General." "What were we supposed to do?" Jane burst out. "Send you a fucking engraved invitation?" This time, Jane allowed Winter to quiet her. Janus remained focused on de Ferre. "You doubted that Lieutenant Forester's message was the one entrusted to him by Captain Ihernglass?" he asked. "No," de Ferre said. He was sweating. "But you know these volunteer officers. If--if you'll pardon the loose phrase, they're always convinced that the sky is falling. It is the responsibility of the senior officer to commit his reserve judiciously, and not fritter it away whenever some captain thinks the entire enemy army is descending on him." "Some might say that a senior officer ought to place himself so that he can make such observations for himself," Janus said with the deadly calm of someone delivering a killing stroke. "I . . . that is . . ." De Ferre wiped his forehead. "We won the battle, General. My force did everything you asked of it." "Thanks largely to the efforts of Captain Ihernglass." Janus leaned back in his camp chair. "Colonel de Ferre, you are dismissed from command. Gather your baggage and report to the Directory in Vordan, and see if they have any further use for you. I do not." "You can't do that," de Ferre snarled. "I hold a colonel's commission signed by the King of Vordan." "I think you'll find that I can," Janus said. "My appointment as commander of the Army of the East was approved by both the deputies and the queen, and within its sphere my authority is unlimited. But if you think my actions are illegal, by all means make your case to the deputies. Sergeant!" The tent flap opened, letting a gust of warm, smoke-scented air into the close confines of the command tent. A big man in a blue uniform poked his head through and said, "Sir?" "Please escort Colonel de Ferre to his tent and assist him with gathering his baggage. He'll be leaving us in the morning." The sergeant couldn't have failed to hear what was going on in the tent behind him, but he kept his expression wooden and his manner courteous as he turned to de Ferre. "Sir. If you'll come with me?" "This is a mistake, Vhalnich," de Ferre said. "I have many friends--" "Some of whom will be joining you on the road at daybreak," Janus said. "I hope you make for a merry company. Now go with the sergeant, please. I have work to do." De Ferre stood stock-still a moment longer, his face increasingly resembling an overripe tomato. Just when Winter thought he might actually pop and shower them all in gore, he turned on his heel and stalked out with as much dignity as he could muster, with the sergeant escorting him at a respectful distance. Winter knew that the concept of a general was not a popular one in the Royal Army, which had gotten along for centuries without any rank higher than colonel. Which regimental commander gave the orders to a larger force was determined by a complicated formula that took into account both the seniority of the man in question and the age and prestige of his unit. The effect was generally to give command to the oldest and most powerful noble families who led the oldest and most respected regiments. In the frantic weeks after the declaration of war, the Deputies-General had improvised a number of new posts to coordinate the nationwide military effort, and it had been a given that one of them would go to the savior of the city. But while Janus was a count, his family was not among the most powerful, and he had commanded no storied regiment. Winter had heard that the Royal Army colonels were not taking his elevation well. But I never thought I'd get to see one of them given the sack. In the old Royal Army, a colonel served until he died, retired, or became embarrassingly senile; he was certainly never dismissed from his command, which was his by hereditary and financial right. Janus gave a long sigh, and ran one hand through his hair. "Captain Ihernglass, may I speak with you privately?" "Of course, sir. Give me a moment." Winter turned away, her heart hammering, and bent toward Jane. "Go back to the camp. I'll be there shortly." "Are you going to be all right?" Jane said. "I'll be fine. I'm sure it's . . . nothing serious. Go and check on the wounded." Jane nodded, saluted raggedly toward Janus, and slipped out. Augustin, Janus' manservant, ghosted in through the open tent flap, acknowledging Winter with a respectful nod. He was an old man, silver-haired and dignified, but he'd served Janus steadfastly for years, even during the Khandarai campaign. "Tea," Janus said. "And fetch something for the captain to sit on." "Certainly, sir," Augustin said. He bustled about, setting up a second camp chair for Winter and then busying himself at a kettle in the back of the tent. Winter sat, cautiously, and waited for Janus to speak, but the colonel seemed content to wait. After a few minutes, Augustin set two steaming bone-white cups and saucers on the table. "Strong, with a bit of sugar, if I recall correctly," he said to Winter. "The blend is an indifferent one, I'm afraid." Winter smiled. In spite of his complaints about the quality of food, tea, and furnishings, the old man was a wizard when it came to creating comfort for his master and his guests in the meanest surroundings, a valuable skill indeed in an army on the march. Janus pursed his lips and blew across the surface of the tea, then took a cautious sip. "Perfect," he said. "Thank you, Augustin." "Of course, my lord." The manservant bowed low and withdrew. Winter reached for her own cup and took a deep breath, savoring the aroma, before tasting it. It was, as she'd expected, rather good. Janus remained quiet, staring into his cup, and finally Winter felt it was incumbent on her to start the conversation. She cleared her throat, and the general looked up. "I have to ask, sir," she said. "Was that wise?" "What?" For a moment Janus looked as though he'd genuinely forgotten what he'd just done. "Oh, the business with de Ferre. Of course it was. The man is an oaf." "And a count. The rest of the Royals aren't going to be happy." "They're going to be even less happy in the morning." Janus set his cup down. "The performance of the army was, frankly, unacceptable." "We did win the battle, sir. Didn't we?" Janus waved a hand. "Only because Baron di Pfalen is an utter fool. A triple convergence, with no lateral communication, in a polyglot confederation army without a real chain of command?" He snorted. "We could have done nothing at all and watched the whole thing collapse under its own weight. I daresay you could have outgeneraled di Pfalen when you were still clinging to your mother's knees." Winter, who had no memory of her mother, forbore to comment on that. "Someday this army will go up against a real commander," Janus went on. "I know there are a few out there. The Duke of Brookspring, for one, and there must be others. Even a stiff-necked geriatric cabal like Hamveltai High Council can't rid themselves of every man of talent. When that day comes, we need to be ready." "You think we need more training, sir?" "I'm afraid it goes beyond that. Yours was not the only set-to between Royals and volunteers, you know. The Second Infantry actually fired a volley into the Third Volunteers when some fool thought they'd changed sides." Winter winced. "But you have a solution in mind?" "I'm reorganizing the army. The royal regiments are too large, and the volunteers need to learn to work as part of a larger force. We'll break up all the old units and create new ones. Each new regiment will have one volunteer and one royal battalion. Getting to send all these thickheaded colonels packing is a side benefit." "Some of those units are hundreds of years old," Winter said. "They're not--" "Going to be happy. You mentioned that already." Janus smiled, just for a moment. "The colonels won't be, and some of the other noble officers. They're welcome to resign and take their case to the deputies. But I think the men in the ranks will be glad to be rid of them." Winter nodded. There were two distinct classes of officer in the old Royal Army--those who'd bought or inherited their commissions like de Ferre, and those who'd come out of the War College like Captain Marcus d'Ivoire. The former sort held the positions of command, but it was the latter who made the army work. "Who'll command the new regiments?" she said, wondering what sort of new commanding officer she'd be saddled with. "Whoever's most competent, regular or volunteer." He tapped the pile of papers again. "I'm giving you the Second Battalion of the Eighteenth Regiment, under Captain Sevran." "I--you're-- what , sir?" "Your new unit will be designated the Third Regiment of the Line. You'll be bumped up to colonel, obviously." "This is ridiculous," Winter said. "I'm a captain only because we needed someone to take charge of all girls who wanted to join up, and now--" "You don't think you're up to the job?" "Of course not!" Colonels were lords , often counts or their sons, men of power and consequence. You couldn't just become one, at the touch of a magic wand. "Then our opinions differ on the subject. But, as this is an order, your options are either to obey it or to resign." Janus cocked his head. "Do you wish to resign?" Winter pushed down the turmoil in her gut. "I . . . no, sir." "Very good. Do you have any thoughts on who should command the Girls' Own?" There was only one possible choice. "Lieutenant Verity, sir." "Excellent. Please inform the lieutenant that she is hereby promoted to captain, and that she may have a free hand with her own junior officers. Under your supervision, of course." "Sir . . ." Winter took a deep breath. "The Royals. This Captain Sevran. What if they won't obey my orders?" The idea of her, Winter Ihernglass, a girl run away from a home for unwanted children, giving orders to the proud regulars of Her Majesty's Royal Army seemed ridiculous on its face. "I'm not sure . . ." Janus' expression darkened. "If they refuse to obey your orders, then you are within your rights to hang them for insubordination and treason. Senior officers on an active campaign are permitted to make summary judgments on such affairs. I guarantee it will not take many examples to make your point." "You're serious." "Of course. Anyone who will not accept the chain of command is, at the root, failing to acknowledge my authority. I will not tolerate it." "Yes, sir." Winter felt numb. "Understood." "Official orders will be read to the entire camp tomorrow. Please keep this between you and your officers until then." "Yes, sir." "One more thing." Janus fixed her with his bottomless gray gaze. "My reports say that you were in the thick of the fighting today." "I . . . yes, sir. I suppose I was." "That is all well and good for a lieutenant, but you must take greater care in the future. God knows I have few enough officers of your promise, and I cannot afford to have your career ended early by a stray musket ball. And there are . . . other duties, to which you are uniquely suited. Do you understand?" Winter thought she did, even the parts that Janus was reluctant to say out loud. "Other duties" had to refer to Infernivore, the demon she'd taken on herself in Khandar during the battle to secure the Thousand Names. For the most part, it lay quiescent in the darkest pits of her mind, but if she laid a hand on another demon-carrier, she could will it to come forth and devour the other creature. For Janus, that made her a weapon against what he called the true enemy: the Priests of the Black and their Penitent Damned. And we can't have a weapon breaking too soon. If Winter died on the field, Janus would have to find someone else to bear Infernivore, and from what he'd said the success rate for invoking the demon was not high. Failure, in that context, meant an agonizing death; when she thought about the risk she'd run, all unknowing, it still gave her the shivers. "Yes, sir. I understand." "Good." He straightened up and gave her his brief smile again. "Excellent work today, Colonel Ihernglass. Well done." Winter paused, taken aback, then got to her feet and saluted. "Thank you, sir!" * * * As a captain, Winter rated a slightly larger tent than the usual, though it still wasn't tall enough that she could stand up inside. She peeked between the flaps and was not at all surprised to see Jane within, sitting cross-legged on a cushion beside the camp bed. Winter let out a long breath and resigned herself to talking Jane down from the raging fury she'd worked herself up to in Janus' command tent. When she entered, though, Jane didn't explode. She didn't even look up. Her hands rested on her knees, and her eyes were fixed on the floor. Her soft red hair, reaching almost to her shoulders now, hung around her face in dirty tassels. "Jane?" Winter said, slightly alarmed. "Are you all right?" "No," Jane said. Her voice was thick. "What happened?" "I went to look in on . . ." She paused and took a deep breath. "On the injured." "Oh." Winter pulled off her boots and set them beside the door, then padded softly across the cloth-covered earth to Jane's side. She sat down, silently, and snaked one arm around the other woman's shoulders. Jane leaned against her, hunched and miserable. There were clear tracks on her face where tears had cut through the grime and powder residue. "Chris died," Jane said in a whisper. "I know," Winter said. "I was standing right next to her." "Nobody told me. I didn't even notice she wasn't there." Jane swallowed. "She'd been with me from the beginning. From Mrs. Wilmore's. A lot of the girls have." "I know." Winter squeezed Jane's shoulder. "I'm sorry." "I went over to the cutter's station. I thought I could . . . help, maybe. There was this girl, Forti. Short for Fortuna. You probably didn't know her." Winter shook her head. "We found her right after we came to Vordan City. When we were still living in the swamps. She just wandered into camp one day, a skinny little thing in rags, asking for food and cringing every time someone looked at her. Like she expected to be beaten." Jane's hands tightened on her knees, until her knuckles were white. Winter said nothing. "I let her come with us," Jane said. "Nobody knew how old she was, but she'd filled out once we gave her some proper food. She wanted to come so badly, and I told her she could." "Is she . . ." Winter trailed off. Jane pressed her head into Winter's shoulder. "When I got there, to the cutter's tent, they had her on the table. They had a . . . a saw, the kind of thing you'd use to chop the end off a log, and they were cutting through her arm." One of Jane's hands came up and closed around her own biceps, in unconscious sympathy. "She'd lost the gag they'd given her, and she was screaming, 'No, no, no, no,' over and over, even after they were through. One of the cutters picked up the arm and tossed it on a pile . All those hands . . . and . . ." "God," Winter said softly. "Oh, Jane." "I lost my lunch," Jane said. "Or yesterday's dinner, maybe, since I never got anything to eat today. Right in front of everyone. Then I ran for it, puke still dripping from my shirt." "It's all right," Winter said. "They understand. Watching something like that . . ." "I brought them here! I was supposed to be protecting them, and I brought them here . What the fuck am I doing?" Jane looked up at Winter, her eyes wide and frantic. "We should leave. Take them all and go home, back to the city, or out into the country, anywhere but here ." Winter stared at her. This was a Jane she hadn't seen before, the flip side of the fiery-tempered woman who'd wanted to kill the vicious tax farmer Bloody Cecil on the spot and had been ready to storm the Vendre in the face of cannon-fire. There was something childlike in her expression, a desperate need for reassurance that Winter felt ill-equipped to provide. "Let's start with this," she said. "You didn't bring them here. They brought themselves, of their own free will. You know that. Everybody who came with us knew what could happen." "I could have stopped them." "Captain d'Ivoire wanted to stop you , but you didn't let him." "I . . ." Jane took a deep breath. "I thought it would be over quickly. But this . . ." She shook her head. "Everyone who made it through today just gets to do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. I can't just watch them all die. I can't." Tears were welling in her eyes. Awkwardly, Winter pulled her close, and soon Jane's head rested in her lap. Jane pressed her face against the fabric of Winter's uniform, her back heaving with muffled sobs. They stayed like that a long time, Winter's hand resting on Jane's shoulder as she cried in near silence. Eventually, the sobs subsided, and Jane's breathing became slow and regular. "Jane?" Winter said experimentally. "Mm?" Jane looked up, then frowned at Winter's expression. "What are you looking at?" "Sorry." Winter let the smallest smile appear. "One of my buttons has embossed a royal eagle on your forehead." Jane touched the red spot and smiled weakly. Winter leaned down and kissed the mark, gently. "I'm sorry," Jane said when she pulled back. "I didn't mean to fall apart on you like that. I just . . . I couldn't . . ." "It's all right." Winter ran her fingers through Jane's hair, red and silky, even tangled and dirty as it was. "Listen. Anyone who wants to leave can go, you know that. It'd be my job to stop them, and I'm not going to. But they won't. They're here because they think Vordan needs defending." "I know. I know! I didn't mean it. And I'd never leave you alone here, you know that, too." "Thank God for that." Jane's smile was stronger this time. Winter kissed her again, on the mouth this time, but drew back after a few moments. "You," she said, "taste like puke and gunpowder." Jane sighed, and pulled at a tangle in her hair. "Right. I should get cleaned up." She shook her head. "What did Janus want with you, anyway?" "Nothing important," Winter said. "I'll fill you in in the morning." Chapter Two RAESINIA Claudia twirled her elegant umbrella and looked up at the gray autumn sky. "Well," she said cheerfully, "at least the rain's held off!" Oh yes, Queen Raesinia Orboan thought. It would be a shame if bad weather spoiled the executions. She held her tongue, mindful of the watchful presence of Sothe at her shoulder. Claudia Nettalt sur Tasset was twenty-five, extremely wealthy, and beautiful. Raesinia found her fascinating to listen to, because everything that entered her head via her eyes or ears immediately left it again via her mouth, with no apparent processing in between. Since they'd been herded into the royal box, Claudia had offered her opinions on the number of people who'd gathered (quite a lot), Raesinia's dress (lovely), the color of the sky (gray), and of course the lack of rain. Now she looked around again with wide, guileless eyes. "They're still working on the machine, Emil, look," she said, indicating the center of everyone's attention, where a black-robed scholar and a pair of assistants were indeed still working on a bulky machine. Her son, a boy of seven or eight, was dressed in a dark, sober suit, as appropriate for a noble still in mourning. He slumped with one shoulder against the railing of the box, immersed in a thick, leather-bound book that Raesinia recognized as the bloody adventure story Heart of Khandar . Claudia had introduced him when they first entered, but the Queen of Vordan was apparently a poor alternative to the exploits of Captain Merric and his men battling crocodiles and waterfalls. On Raesinia's other side was a portly gentleman in gray, whom she recalled had something to do with the arms industry. He, thankfully, did not feel obligated to make conversation, and devoted his attention instead to scanning the crowd and occasionally muttering caustically. From the tone of his observations, it appeared that he was extremely satisfied to be placed beside the queen while his rivals were obliged to sit with the commons. The center of Farus' Triumph, with its spectacular fountain and speaker's rostrum, was poorly suited to this kind of public spectacle. Instead a semicircle of bleachers had been constructed at the north end of the great square, in front of the Hotel Ancerre, where the new government had its headquarters. In the center of the arc was a fenced-off box for the queen and her guests, which made Raesinia feel a bit like a cow penned and awaiting slaughter. The very ends of the arc of seats were occupied by the members of the Deputies-General, with the opposing factions pressed as far away from one another as it was physically possible to be. On the left were the Radicals, in the colorful, particolored coats and hats that had for some reason unfathomable to Raesinia become the fashion in their circle. On the right, Conservatives looked like a flock of crows in their black, high-collared coats. The no-man's-land between the feuding parties was taken up by other notables of Vordan, a mix of wealthy men of common stock and aristocrats who'd thrown in their lot with the new order. On the open side of the semicircle, a long line of Patriot Guards in their blue and white sashes stood at attention, keeping back the mass of common folk who filled the rest of the square. The Guard carried halberds, but their vicious ax heads were shrouded in linen hoods as a symbol of goodwill. In the empty space between the crowd and the bleachers, two wooden platforms had been erected. One was for the five members of the Directory of National Defense, flanked by more Patriot Guards. The other, larger platform, where Claudia had directed her attention, bore a solid-looking metal table big enough for a man to lie on. Beside the platform, eight wretched-looking men in gray rags huddled together, surrounded by a double ring of guards. The royal box itself was filled with nobles and prominent citizens who'd been invited to share it with the queen, in thanks for their support. Claudia, for instance, was there because her father, Count Tasset, was one of the minority of noblemen who'd voiced his support for the new government. Most of the nobility had responded to the Directory's patriotic appeals by hunkering down in their country estates, determined to ride out the storm and survive, regardless of how matters ultimately fell out. Sothe had arranged the invitations, of course. Until the Constitution was finalized by the wrangling deputies, Raesinia had no authority to speak of, but that didn't stop the cream of Vordanai society from preemptively trying to win her over. Sothe had been officially promoted from Raesinia's maid to her head of household, a position with vast if somewhat informal powers, and she'd proven surprisingly adept at managing the supplicants and favor-seekers who crowded the queen's door. When Raesinia had asked her about it, she commented that the only difference between working in the court and in the Concordat was that the courtiers didn't use knives. She stood behind Raesinia now, along with a pair of blue-uniformed Grenadier Guards. Of the three organizations that had once protected the king, the Armsmen had been officially subsumed into the Patriot Guard while the Noreldrai Grays had been disbanded in disgrace, leaving only the elite army detachment on duty. The Patriot Guards, of course, were charged with the safety of all the citizens of Vordan, but they answered to the Deputies-General, and specifically to the Directory of National Defense. Which means they answer to Maurisk. At that moment, one of the assistants waved to the men on the Directory platform and gave a thumbs-up. The pair of them scuttled out of sight, leaving only the black-robed scholar at the center of events. He bowed in the direction of the Directory, and one of five men sitting on their platform stood up and stepped forward to a low rostrum. Claudia looked down at Emil, frowned, and flicked him lightly on the side of the head. "Put that book away and pay attention," she said. The boy sighed as he obeyed, scowling at the speaker. Chairman of the Directory of National Defense Johann Maurisk did not cut an imposing figure. He was tall but painfully thin, the hanging folds of his dark coat making him look like a scarecrow, face pale under a gray bicorn hat. He did have a strong voice, though, strong enough to ring out across the square and quiet the murmuring of the crowd. "Citizens of Vordan!" he said. "We are gathered here to bear witness to a great step forward. One more relic of the past, laden with superstition, is swept away by the miraculous products of the modern age!" There was a cheer from the crowd, but not a loud one. Banners fluttered and whipped in the wind, held aloft on poles or in raised hands. Blue and white for the Radicals, black for the Conservatives. The factions in the deputies were mirrored among the common folk, and pockets of color were mixed with blobs of black. Bedsheets and pillowcases dyed with ink flapped as the Conservative supporters cheered for their hero, while the Radicals remained ominously silent. "The genius responsible is Doctor-Professor Sarton," Maurisk went on. "I will let him explain the workings of the device." Emil, who'd sagged with boredom as the de facto ruler of Vordan spoke, raised his head as the scholar beside the metal table straightened up. This was Doctor-Professor George Sarton, whose work the Directory had so enthusiastically embraced. Back before her father's death, when Raesinia had been sneaking out of the palace to organize the student radicals against the Last Duke, Maurisk and Sarton had been members of the inner circle of her conspiracy. He was an awkward, gangly man, with an unfortunate stutter that turned his face red with the effort of forcing out the words. He addressed Maurisk directly, leaving the rest of the assembled dignitaries to stare at the back of his head. "I have made a s . . . s . . . study of the methods of execution used by the kings of Vordan," he said. It sounded like a rehearsed speech. "They have always been cruel and inhumane. A modern s . . . s . . . state may require men to die for their crimes, but it takes no pleasure in cruelty. I wanted to provide a means to end a life with an absolute minimum of pain." Sarton turned to the metal table, running his hands across the steel with evident pleasure. "Hanging," he went on, "requires a great deal of s . . . s . . . skill on the part of the hangman to produce a quick death. Having one man who must fill the role of executioner is against the principles of equality embodied by the Deputies-General. A mechanism is much more s . . . s . . . suitable. "As every man knows, it is the heart that is the seat of the emotions, including pain and suffering. Destruction of the heart, therefore, brings painless and instantaneous death. To achieve this, I have employed the power and precision of modern clockwork. No expertise is necessary. The condemned is positioned here"--he patted the center of the table--"and bound in place, and then it only remains to throw a s . . . s . . . switch." He pressed something on the side of the table. Just left of the center, where a man's heart would be, a foot-long pointed steel piston slid straight up with the speed of a striking cobra and a clank of shivering metal. "The procedure is utterly painless," Sarton said. "The heart is punctured before it has time to react. The limbs may twitch, but the s . . . s . . . soul has departed." He smiled beatifically, and for a moment his stutter vanished. "I call it the Spike." There was a long moment of silence. Then the crowd began to cheer, Radicals and Conservatives alike. Sarton dipped his head politely at Maurisk, and the chairman got to his feet again. "These men," he boomed, gesturing at the huddled prisoners, "have confessed to their crimes! They are Borelgai spies. Paid to work against us, to spy and to sabotage, by a nation of shopkeepers and Sworn Church toadies. For years we have suffered the Borels to live among us, tolerated their poisonous words and let them work their malignant influence. All for a dangled purse of gold!" Raesinia tensed. Maurisk was looking in her direction, and it seemed for a moment he was speaking to her directly. Her father, Farus VIII, had been responsible for much of the "tolerance" that the chairman so disliked. Some of it had indeed been for gold--loans from the great bankers of Borel had kept the Crown afloat--but there was also the little matter of the War of the Princes, which had ended with the death of her older brother Prince Dominic and Vordan's humiliating surrender. "No longer," Maurisk said, his voice ringing off the flagstones. "The veil is torn. The enemies who have intrigued against us for years have been stung into action by the great steps forward we have taken, the establishment of the Deputies-General to ensure justice for all Vordanai. We are at war, my friends, and that means we do not need to abide this treachery in order to salve the feelings of merchants in Viadre! We can finally deal with such vile acts in the manner they fully deserve." Cheers rose again, wild and uproarious, mixed with shouts of "Death to traitors!" and "Down with Elysian slaves!" A regular chant emerged, spreading and growing in volume, until it shook the square. "To the Spike! To the Spike!" Emil joined in, enthusiastically, until his mother flicked him on the ear. "Emil! A gentleman does not hoot with a crowd. Applause will be sufficient." He subsided into clapping, and Claudia leaned closer to Raesinia. "He's a fine speaker, don't you think? Very loud. I could hear every word!" "Oh yes," Raesinia muttered. "Very fine." Maurisk gestured to the guards, who grabbed one of the prisoners and hauled him up onto the platform. Sarton's assistants reappeared, and with the guards' assistance they manhandled the man onto the Spike, lying facedown. Leather straps secured his arms, legs, and head, threaded through buckles built into the table, and a wide belt was cinched around his waist to keep him from arching his back. When the prisoner was secured, the guards stepped back. Doctor-Professor Sarton looked to the Directory, and Maurisk gestured sharply downward. The black-robed scholar touched the switch, and the Spike gave a clang . A tiny steel point appeared, protruding from the prisoner's back like a strange metallic growth. The man jerked once, then lay still. Raesinia felt her gorge rise, and swallowed hard. Underneath the Spike's platform, someone must have been working a mechanism to reset the clockwork. The steel piston withdrew, the machine click-click-click ing loudly as it was reset. When the guards untied the straps and lifted the corpse away, there was barely a stain on the steel surface. "How lovely," Claudia said. "So much more civilized than a hanging. I always hate the way they kick and squirm." "Mama, where does the blood go?" Emil said. "I thought it would spurt all over the place." "I imagine there's a special drain," Raesinia said. "A special drain," Claudia said, "of course! What a clever idea." "Yes." Raesinia's voice was flat as she looked at the seven remaining prisoners. "Dr. Sarton has always been very . . . clever." Confessed traitors, Maurisk had called the condemned. Huddled together, dressed in rags, they did not look terribly traitorous. Sothe had told her of the methods Duke Orlanko had employed to extract a confession, when one was required. She wondered if Maurisk had taken a page from the same book. She looked away, the pit of her stomach sour. "Come on," Raesinia said to Sothe. "We're leaving." "Leaving?" Sothe leaned close and lowered her voice to a whisper. "We're here at the invitation of the Directory. Are you sure that's wise?" The tone of Sothe's voice told Raesinia that she was sure that it was not, but Raesinia chose not to hear the rebuke. "We'll tell Maurisk my delicate digestion was upset by the spectacle. That ought to make him happy." Sothe pursed her lips but didn't argue. Raesinia murmured something indistinct and polite-sounding in Claudia's direction, nodded at the fat arms merchant, and pushed her way back through the box. Her guards, after a moment of surprise, trailed behind her. Raesinia hopped down the two steps at the back of the box and onto the cobblestones as another cheer rose from the crowd, indicating that the Spike had claimed another traitorous victim. Maurisk. The thought of him made her want to spit. When they'd worked together, she thought of him as an idealist, full of bold but impractical ideas. Once he'd gotten into the thick of the politics of the Deputies-General, though, he set some kind of speed record for selling out his high-minded ideals in pursuit of power. The complicated dance of parties, forming and re-forming like bits of foam in a bubbling soup pot, had somehow conspired to elevate Raesinia's old companion to the very height of power. The war had done wonders for his authority, of course. The deputies had been content to endlessly debate the proper formula for a constitution when things had been going well. Once word got out that Vordan was at war with three of the great powers--including Imperial Murnsk, seat of the Sworn Church itself--the deputies had been running scared. They'd heaped powers on Maurisk's Directory of National Defense, and what they hadn't given him he'd taken for himself when he found that no one was willing to object. Only Durenne, new Minister of War and the one Radical member of the Directory, acted as a counterweight, and not a very effective one. While the war went on in the north, the east, and the west, Maurisk was busy trawling the capital for enemy spies, devising new methods of execution, and monitoring sure every publisher and pamphleteer published only what was "appropriate and beneficial to a modern state." "Well?" Raesinia said to Sothe as they walked toward the north end of the square where the royal carriage waited. "Well what?" "What do you think?" Raesinia jerked her head over her shoulder, at the spectacle unfolding behind them. Sothe shrugged. "One way of killing a person is much like another." "Maurisk's always hated the Borels. Now he's got people seeing them on every corner." "I wouldn't be so certain he's wrong. The Concordat certainly intercepted quite a few Borelgai spies, and I can't imagine they've relaxed their efforts now that we're at war." "I don't doubt that they're there. I question whether Maurisk's crowd could find them." The Directory had wasted no time building the Patriot Guard into a considerable force, much larger than the old Armsmen, but so far they seemed more interested in prestige than in fighting. Certainly Maurisk had no well-oiled intelligence service to match the peerless machine run by Duke Orlanko, the spymaster who'd so nearly seized the throne. Raesinia sighed. "Maybe we ought to rebuild the Ministry of Information." Sothe raised an eyebrow. "I'm not sure that would go over well." "We'd call it something else, of course. But we need some way of getting information without--" For a moment, the world went white. A sound like a hundred-gun cannonade slammed into Raesinia with physical force, pulling at the lace of her dress before rushing on to shatter the glass in the shop windows ahead of her. The ground shook, a single pulse, as though a giant hammer had come slamming down. Sothe reacted first, knives appearing in her hands as if by magic, stepping between Raesinia and the source of the blast. Her two guards belatedly began to fumble with their muskets, still disoriented from the concussion. Raesinia, her own head ringing like a bell, turned and saw a tower of ugly black smoke rising into the sky. "What--" she managed to say. "This way," Sothe said, disappearing one of her daggers and grabbing Raesinia's arm. She pulled her to the edge of the square, into an alley between two shops, and shoved her up against the wall. The entrance was barely wide enough for one person to squeeze into, and Sothe stood athwart it, daring anyone to try and push past her. The screams began, and the clatter of boots on flagstones as the crowd gathered for the execution rushed to escape whatever had happened. Most of the commoners would flee south; here at the north end of the square, the fleeing mass was more distinguished, deputies and merchants, Conservatives and Radicals alike pushing and shoving in their haste to get away. There were a fair number of Patriot Guards mixed in as well, tossing their halberds aside to speed their flight. "Could something have gone wrong with Sarton's machine?" Raesinia said. "Not unless it was packed full of powder," Sothe said shortly, eyes never leaving the crowd. "That was a bomb." "I thought so." Raesinia shook her head, trying to clear the daze that had swept over her. "I have to get out there." "Don't be ridiculous," Sothe said. "That could be exactly what they're planning on. A bomb to panic the crowd, and another assassin ready to strike in the confusion. An old trick." Raesinia lowered her voice. " You know we don't have to worry about that." " I know that if you get shot in the head in public, and get back up again, people are going to comment ." Sothe's tone was grim. "It'd be either a miracle or sorcery, and in my experience demonic intervention is usually more believable than divine." Four years ago, Princess Raesinia Orboan had been on her deathbed, coughing her lungs to bloody pieces. With the king already suffering from the illness that would eventually kill him, and Prince Dominic dead two years previously at Vansfeldt, the Last Duke had acted to make certain the succession remained under his control. The Priests of the Black, the secret order of the Sworn Church that wielded sorcery in order to suppress knowledge of the supernatural, had guided Raesinia through the ritual of invoking the true name of a demon. The creature had settled deep inside her, binding itself to her body and soul. Its power restored her to perfect health, repairing her flesh almost as soon as it was injured. As best Raesinia could tell, she couldn't be killed. She hadn't aged a day since--something that was becoming increasingly problematic now that she was approaching her twentieth birthday--and she could no longer even sleep. While she was, technically, still alive, she had come to believe that she was no longer human. Only a tiny handful of people knew the truth. Orlanko, of course, who'd once thought to use the knowledge to control her. His allies in the Priests of the Black, and Sothe, who'd once been his top agent. And Janus bet Vhalnich, who had been tasked by king with finding a way to free his daughter from the supernatural trap. The crowd was thinning out. There was no sign of the two Grenadier Guards, and Raesinia hoped they'd only been swept away in the confusion and not trampled underfoot. Screams and shouting continued near the base of the pillar of smoke, which she could now see rose from the where the royal box had been. A ring of Patriot Guards stood around it, halberds unshrouded, looking nervous as other men milled around behind them. "I have to go," Raesinia said. "I have to see what's happening." "Your Majesty," Sothe hissed, "please--" But Raesinia was already squeezing past her, out the mouth of the alley and back into the square. Sothe swore softly and hurried after her as she dodged a few stragglers and reached the ring of guards. Clearly, no instructions had been issued, and the Patriot Guards were not clear on whether they were supposed to be keeping people out or protecting them, but in either case none of them were prepared to bar the queen's way. Raesinia passed through their circle and nearly gagged at the thick stench of powder. Clouds of evil black smoke still billowed upward, but she could tell the explosion had indeed been centered on the royal box, where she'd been standing only minutes earlier. Guards and deputies rushed around in the murk, helping the injured or shouting unintelligible orders. "Help!" The voice was high and terrified, a boy's. Emil. "Someone help !" Raesinia darted forward and caught sight of him amid the billowing smoke. He was limping across the cratered flagstones, desperately tugging a limp body by one arm. Tears streamed from his eyes, cutting channels through a layer of soot. "Please help," he said, voice going faint. "Mama won't get up. I think she's hurt." Emil's right hand was fastened tight around his mother's, and a patter of blood dripped from a gash on his calf. His skin was milk white under the gray soot. Raesinia took one look at Claudia and averted her eyes; the ground beneath her was a slick of red, as though someone had spilled a bucket of paint. "Your Majesty!" Sothe appeared at Raesinia's side, with a trio of Patriot Guards behind her. She's always had a gift for taking charge in desperate situations . "Help the boy!" Raesinia barked. Emil screamed as one of the guards pulled Claudia's limp hand from his grasp, then sagged into a dead faint. The guard caught him, looking uncertain. "Up the street," Sothe said. "There's an aid station forming. He needs bandaging." The guard snapped to obey, and Sothe turned to Raesinia. "Your Majesty. You have to come with me." "I should . . . help." Raesinia stared at the carnage, feeling hypnotized. This was meant for me. If she hadn't decided to leave in a huff, she'd have been standing on the platform when the bomb went off. More people were dead because they had been standing next to her at the wrong time. Like Ben. Like Faro. "Raesinia," Sothe hissed in her ear. "Come on. The guards can handle things now that I've given them a kick in the ass. We should get you somewhere safe." Raesinia looked up at Sothe and felt things snap into focus. "Where's Maurisk?" * * * She kept her eyes on his face, from the moment she stepped into the café the Directory had commandeered as shelter from the disaster. Maurisk had always been better at flaunting his passions than concealing them. His reaction wasn't much--a brief indrawn breath, a narrowing of the eyes--but it was enough. He knew this was coming. He didn't expect to see me alive. "Your Majesty!" The President of the Directory stood up from the table where he and his colleagues had been arguing over an unrolled map of Vordan City. Patriot Guards were everywhere, standing beside the doorway and along the walls, armed with halberds and army muskets. Clearly, the Directory was taking no chances with its own safety. "I can't tell you how comforting it is to see you unharmed," Maurisk went on, with an attempt at a smile. "I had heard reports that you'd left before the . . . event, but things are obviously very confused. We feared the worst." "Her Majesty is fine," Sothe said. "No thanks to the efforts of the Patriot Guard, I might add. But many others are not." "I've sent for help," Maurisk said. "Doctors are on the way from the University. And we've put the city on alert." Raesinia kept her eyes on Maurisk, saying nothing. His smile flickered, just briefly. "Do you think," she said after a moment, "the president and I could have a moment in private?" Maurisk looked surprised, but he gestured sharply at the other Directory members. The speed with which they hurried out of the room spoke volumes about where the power in the Directory lay. Only Durenne, a tall, gangly man with a beak of a nose and a queue of long black hair, paused long enough to catch Raesinia's eye before leaving. The Patriot Guards followed, but Sothe lingered. "Wait outside," Raesinia told her. "I won't be long." Sothe hesitated briefly, then followed the guards out the front door. Maurisk and Raesinia were left alone in the café, its chairs scattered and overturned by fleeing patrons, its front windows shattered by the blast. Glass crunched under Raesinia's heel as she stepped forward. "I'm not going to ask you if you were responsible for this," she said. "I'm sure you'd deny it, even just between us." "I'm not sure I follow you, Your Majesty," Maurisk said. His tone was polite, but there was acid hatred in his eyes. After the death of the king and the upheaval that had created the Deputies-General, he'd discovered Raesinia's double life as revolutionary conspirator and princess royal. He hated her for that, for using the idealistic fervor of his friends as a weapon to topple the Last Duke. The deaths that haunted Raesinia's conscience seemed to matter less to him than the fact that he'd been a tool of the very monarchy he so despised. Unfortunately for Maurisk, even after the creation of the Deputies-General, the queen was still a potent symbol, and she had the support of the hero-general Janus bet Vhalnich. If he'd been in sole charge, she had no doubt he'd have had her arrested and executed by now, but the deputies and the mob would not allow it. So now he's resorted to more direct measures, no matter who gets killed in the cross fire. She met his gaze and refused to flinch. "What do you want from me?" Maurisk smiled. Not the fake grin he put on for public consumption, but his true smirk. It reminded Raesinia of a lizard. "I think it would be best," he said, "if you retired to the country for a time. Vordan City has obviously been heavily infiltrated by enemy agents. I will of course begin a vigorous campaign to root them out, but in the meantime I regret to say I cannot guarantee your safety. The Crown owns many small estates that would be suitable, and if the Grenadier Guards accompanied you, then I'm sure you would be perfectly secure." "I see." Maurisk spread his hands, as if nothing could be more reasonable. "I only have the state's interests in mind, of course. Your Majesty." Raesinia blew out a long breath. "I'll consider your . . . suggestion." The president's face hardened. "Please do. Every moment that you remain is another opportunity for the enemy to strike." Raesinia turned on her heel and headed for the door, glass cracking and snapping under her shoes. The Patriot Guards had formed a cordon, with only Sothe and the other Directory members allowed within. On the outside were two blue-uniformed Grenadier Guards, who were engaged in a shouting match with the Patriot Guard sergeant. The men quieted as their queen emerged. "Back to the carriage," Raesinia said, with a glance at Sothe. The smoke was clearing, revealing a shallow crater in the once-smooth surface of Farus' Triumph. A broken pipe somewhere gushed water, forming a bloody mud puddle. The guards had taken the injured to a clear space, to await the arrival of the University contingent, and now were dragging the dead into neat rows. Claudia lay among them, stomach torn open to reveal glistening viscera. Raesinia looked away, her gorge rising. She didn't say anything until she and Sothe were alone in the back of the carriage, with the guards taking their customary position on the top. Once Sothe shut the door, cutting off the cries and shouted orders from the outside, Raesinia said, "Maurisk was behind this." Sothe's expression would never show anything as human as surprise, but she raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "You're certain?" Raesinia shook her head and swore. "I would swear he didn't expect me to walk out of here today. If he didn't plant the bomb, he at least knew about it." "Someone in the government must have, at any rate," Sothe said. "An explosion that size would require quite a bit of powder stuffed under the floor of the box. That would be hard to sneak past the guards--" "So the guards are in on it." "At least some of them must be either complicit or suborned, yes. But that by itself doesn't implicate Maurisk." Raesinia scowled. She had to admit her own bias; the dislike between her and her former companion had come to run both ways. Still. The way he looked when I came in was as good as a confession. "The problem," Sothe went on, "is that we have something of a surplus of enemies." "There's an understatement," Raesinia muttered. "Orlanko, for certain. Borelgai spies, the Hamveltai Komerzint, Murnskai fanatics. The older noble families hate me for surrendering royal powers to the Deputies-General, and the Radicals hate me for not abdicating in favor of a republic." "Not to mention," Sothe said, "the Priests of the Black." "You think they wouldn't bother with bombs ," Raesinia said. "Revealing your secret to the public would be just as effective as killing you, as far as Elysium is concerned." Sothe glared. "As I tried to explain earlier." "So either Maurisk is trying to kill me, because he doesn't know he can't, or the Priests of the Black are trying to blow me to bits in front of witnesses so everyone can see what happens." Raesinia cocked her head. "If they did blow me to pieces, do you think the missing bits would grow back, or would you have to gather them up for me?" "Your Majesty--" "Sorry." Raesinia took a deep breath. "Maurisk told me he wants me to leave the city. Hide out on a country estate until the danger's passed." Sothe pursed her lips. "It would make it easier to keep you safe. There are too many unknowns in the city." "No. I will not be run to ground like a frightened rabbit. Besides, if Maurisk is involved and I leave him alone in the city, I might as well hand him the crown and be done with it." "Your Majesty . . ." Raesinia looked at her, surprised. "You don't really think I should leave, do you?" A frown creased Sothe's normally placid expression. She spoke slowly and deliberately. "If you do not, whoever was responsible for this attack will try again, and I am not confident in my ability to protect you." That made Raesinia blink. For Sothe to be less than confident in her ability to do anything was as rare as a summer ice storm. "You've done a fine job so far." "Only luck saved you this time, Your Majesty. You are too public a figure here. Your schedule is known, your routes of travel are known. Against assassins with swords or pistols, I can stand between you and harm, but this . . ." She shook her head. "Sooner or later, they will succeed." "Then we have to track them down before they do." "That's a race I'm not sure we can win," Sothe said. "And if Maurisk is involved, what then? He has the Patriot Guard in his pocket." "If we could find proof, we could take it to the deputies." Raesinia knew that sounded weak, even as she said it. The Deputies-General had come more and more under the thumb of the Directory as the war had grown closer. "Finding solid evidence could take weeks, maybe months. You'd be vulnerable the whole time." Raesinia scowled. It did make sense, from a certain point of view. But it felt too much like abandoning her post. Not to mention letting whoever planted the bomb get away scot-free. Everyone who'd died for wanting to stand near their queen deserved better than that. But Sothe is right. As long as I stay in the city . . . An idea tickled the corner of her mind. As long as the queen stays in the city . . . "You're right," she said slowly. "The queen should go to her country estates, to ensure her safety." Sothe had spent enough time around Raesinia to know that it couldn't be that simple. "And?" "The queen will go to the country," Raesinia said, "and I will stay here." There was another long silence. Sothe stared thoughtfully at Raesinia, who shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny. "It's nothing we haven't done before," Raesinia said. "And if no one knows I'm here, they won't be looking for me." "And if they try anything in the country, they won't get anywhere," Sothe said, considering the problem. "It would also let me 'return' without taking the time for a round-trip. I imagine that would be quite a surprise to Maurisk." "Not a bad card to have up our sleeves," Sothe said. " Provided we can fool them." "You fooled Orlanko for more than a year. I'm sure you can manage it." Sothe's eyes narrowed, and Raesinia felt her heart jump. "You mean for me to go?" "I'm sorry," Raesinia said in a rush. "I can't think of any other way. We might be able to fake a ride to the country, but even if we tell people I'm closeted in mourning, someone will have to keep up the facade." "Not to mention taking care of any spies that come poking around." It was logical, and Sothe knew it, but Raesinia could see the hesitation on her face. "But the last time I left you alone, you walked right into an ambush, and Orlanko nearly had you." That had been the night Ben died, another stupid sacrifice for her sake. Raesinia's chest went tight for a moment, but she fought back the wave of guilt. "I'll be careful. And I still have contacts from the old days--" "No one I trust." Sothe shook her head. "It's too dangerous. You'd have no backup if something went wrong." Raesinia paused. "Do you trust Janus?" "For the moment," Sothe said. "But he's with the Army of the East, off in the League." "Marcus d'Ivoire is here, and Janus trusts him ." "It's an idea," Sothe admitted. "You think he'd agree to help?" "I don't think he'll like it," Raesinia said. "But I am the queen, and I don't plan to give him a choice." * * * "No," said Marcus. "Absolutely not. The whole idea is ridiculous." They sat in the drawing room at Twin Turrets, the manor house that had served as Janus' command post during his defense of Vordan City. Most of it had at one point been converted into a barracks for Janus' personal guard, a company of Mierantai Volunteers, expensive furniture dragged aside and stacked in the halls and polished floorboards scuffed by the passage of many boots. This room still had its original high-backed leather armchairs, set in a half circle in front of the fire, but it was crowded with tables, dressers, and other detritus. Most of the Mierantai had gone with Janus on his campaign, but a few remained with Marcus. Since Raesinia was proposing to place herself under their protection, she was glad to see that they seemed reassuringly professional, even if they often spoke with a gravelly mountain accent so thick she could hardly understand them. Every man carried a rifle as long as he was tall, and wore a dark red uniform cut to the standard army pattern. Marcus had received her courteously, but his expression was grim. Raesinia hadn't spent much time with him since the day he'd fought by her side, escaping from the traitorous Noreldrai Grays. His face was more lined with care than she remembered, and there were hints of gray in his close-cropped beard. He wore crisp army blue, instead of the Armsmen green uniform she remembered, and the silver of a colonel's eagles sparkled on his shoulders. Raesinia sat in one of the big chairs, which made her feel tiny. Sothe stood at her right hand, playing the dutiful servant. Marcus knew that Sothe was more than she seemed--he'd seen her cut down a half dozen Grays--but not the full extent of her service. Most important, Janus had told her that Marcus didn't know about Raesinia's own secret. That made sense--the fewer people who knew, the better--but it complicated the situation. "You've heard what happened this afternoon?" Raesinia said. "I had a report," Marcus said. "I was glad to hear you were safe." "It was closer than I would have liked. Directory President Maurisk has asked me to retire to the country for my own safety." "Which sounds like a fine idea," Marcus said. "Forgive me, Your Majesty, but--" "I cannot leave the city," Raesinia said. "Not now, in the midst of the crisis. And there's the matter of discovering the identity of the bomber." "Surely you can leave that to the Patriot Guard?" There was a hint in Marcus' voice that said he shared Raesinia's low opinion of that force. "At least some of the Patriot Guard must have been compromised, or the bomb could not have been planted. I need to discover how deep the corruption goes." Raesinia looked him in the eye. "I'm asking for your help, Colonel." Marcus shifted uncomfortably when she mentioned his rank, clearly still unaccustomed to it. "You're placing me in a very awkward position, Your Majesty. I have very clear instructions as to my mission here, and getting involved in politics is definitely not a part of it." "You won't need to get involved, unless things go badly wrong," Raesinia said. "That's not very reassuring," Marcus said. "In my experience, things always go badly wrong eventually. It would be impossible to ensure your safety." Raesinia gritted her teeth. She was so, so sick of being treated like a fresh egg, to be wrapped in unspun wool and carried with bated breath. If I'd known being queen was going to be like this, I wouldn't have worked so damned hard to get here. "No one expects you to withstand a siege here," she said. "But Sothe will maintain the illusion that I'm staying in the country, so my presence here should stay secret. That should be safe enough." "We'd never be able to keep the truth from my own guards," Marcus said. "I think we can count on their discretion." Janus' personal troops were from his home county, deep in the mountains. They were clannish, insular and suspicious of outsiders, and devoted to their beloved count. Janus had brought them to the capital specifically because it would be difficult for Concordat agents to infiltrate their ranks. "And all the servants are Mierantai as well?" "Yes." Marcus sighed. "I'm going to have to ask for instructions." "From Janus? That'll take weeks." "We have . . . alternative channels," Marcus said. "I should have an answer by the day after tomorrow." Raesinia glanced at Sothe, who gave a small nod. "It will take that long to make the preparations, Your Majesty." "All right." Raesinia stood. "Until then, Colonel." Marcus shot to his feet as soon as she did, and answered her nod with a bow. His expression was that of a man who'd been handed a bomb with a hissing fuse. "Of course, Your Majesty." Chapter Three WINTER Winter awoke to the soft sound of shuffling paper, and opened her eyes to find soft morning light filtering through the canvas of her tent. "Sorry," Jane said. "I was looking for a drink." "S'alright." Winter yawned and rolled sideways on her narrow sleeping pallet, which seemed much larger without another person crammed in beside her. Her body still felt warm and shivery from Jane's meticulous attentions, and the slight breeze from the tent flap was chilly. She pulled the thin sheet a bit tighter around herself. "It must be past dawn. Go ahead and light the lamp." The flare of a match brightened the dimness of the tent for a moment, followed by the warmer glow of an oil lamp. Winter's eyes fixed on Jane, gloriously nude against the light, head tipped back as she drained a canteen. When it was empty, she tossed it aside and came back to the pallet, stepping carefully over the pile of papers she'd toppled. Winter lifted the blanket so she could wriggle underneath it, reveling in the warmth of Jane's skin pressing against her own. Jane kissed her, lips still wet. "What is all that?" Jane said, prodding the fallen stack with one finger. "I thought Cyte was supposed to take care of the paperwork for you." Winter sighed. "Official complaints. Have to be signed by the commander to show that she's seen them, then sent back to the archives." "Complaints? From who?" "Take a wild guess." "The Royals." "The Royals" was how everyone in the Girls' Own referred to the former Second Battalion of the Eighteenth Regiment of the Royal Army of Vordan, now the Second Battalion of the Third Regiment of the Line of the Army of the East and Winter's personal headache. Captain Sevran, their commander, had been relatively cooperative, but some of his subordinates were less willing. "Specifically, Lieutenant Novus, the senior staff officer." "Let me guess," Jane said. "He's the scion of a great and noble family." "More or less." Lieutenants in the Royal Army came in two flavors. Some were commoners who'd been recommended for aptitude to the War College and spent several years training there; captains like Marcus d'Ivoire did a tour as a junior officer before returning for further training. Others were granted their commissions on the spot by the Crown, either in recognition of their illustrious family names or in return for significant financial contributions to the royal coffers. The revolution and the war had upset all that, of course, and Janus was upsetting it further, promoting commoners to the unheard-of rank of colonel based on nothing more than his personal judgment. But some people are always willing to pretend nothing has changed. "What is he complaining about?" Jane said. "Today? That the Second Battalion, in spite of its storied history, is placed behind the First in the marching order." "Do the Royals really have a storied history?" "Three hundred years' worth, apparently. Lieutenant Novus wrote about it in some detail. It seems that one of his ancestors was killed leading it to a glorious defeat during the reign of Farus the Fifth." "So because some idiots got themselves slaughtered a hundred years ago, we should eat their dust on the road all day?" Jane snorted. "That sounds like Royal Army thinking, all right. Janus should have sent the lot of them to the rear and let the volunteers do all the fighting." "Janus needs every bayonet he can get his hands on," Winter said. "Assuming they'll fight, which I doubt." Jane shook her head, rubbing her cheek against Winter's shoulder. "Did I tell you we caught another couple of Royals trying to sneak into our camp last night?" "Oh God. Again?" "They don't seem to learn." "You didn't hurt them too badly, I hope." "We may have pushed them around a bit. But we just sent them back where they'd come from." Jane grinned slyly. "Kept their pants and breeches, though. Only seemed fair." "You really ought to file a report with their company commanders," Winter said, though she couldn't keep a broad grin off her own face. "I think my way works better." "Well. A good regimental commander leaves minor matters up to her subordinates." Winter put on her best pompous officer voice. "I'll leave things to your best judgment, Captain Verity." "Is that out of that manual you borrowed from Janus?" "Indeed. A Comprehensive Guide to Regimental Command. I hear it's a standard text at the War College." "What does it have to say about kissing your captains?" "Surprisingly little." Their lips came together. Winter felt Jane's fingers running delicately up the inside of her thigh. "Perhaps," Winter said when Jane pulled away for a moment, "I should submit a monograph to the College. To make sure their text is truly comprehensive." "Sounds like an excellent plan to me." Winter grinned wider. "Then, Captain Verity, I officially request that you assist me with my research." "I don't know," Jane said, with mock seriousness. "I may have to run that up the chain of command." She smothered Winter's mad giggles with another kiss, and for a while, rank was forgotten. * * * The Army of the East snaked along the road, a column of blue that stretched for miles through a country of brown, red, and gold. Autumn had come to the valley of the Velt, and the neat checkerboard of farms and orchards on either side of the road had gone from endless green to a ruddier palette. Here and there, a field of late grain still gleamed yellow in the sun, but most of the harvest was in, and the furrowed land left fallow or planted with winter crops. Breaking up the dark brown of bare earth were the fruit trees, apples, pears, and cherries, whose leaves had turned a riot of red and gold. Neat fenced-in orchards sported row after tidy row, their perfect order mocking the loose discipline of the soldiers marching past. More surprising to Winter were the people, farmers and their families, who stood behind those fences to watch the army troop past as though on parade. Young boys yelled their approval and waved wildly, attracting waves in return from the bemused Vordanai troops. When they passed through villages--always laid out on perfect grids, with neat streets lined by half-timbered houses and the inevitable Sworn Church with its spire at the center--it seemed as though the entire population had turned out to line the route. It was a far cry from the march through Khandar, where the civilian population had fled or hidden as the armies approached. Given what the Redeemers had done to anyone they suspected of disloyalty, Winter couldn't blame the Khandarai, nor could she wonder that they'd expected retribution from the Vordanai when they returned. But this was the Free Cities League, where war had for generations been a gentleman's pursuit, carried out with due attention to the sensibilities of the local inhabitants. "They don't even seem angry with us," Winter said to Cyte as they rode down the length of the trudging infantry column. "This is Deslandai territory," Cyte said. Winter had learned to consult the ex-University student when it came to matters of history or politics, which were usually perfectly opaque to her. "Desland has always been a shaky member of the League. There's a lot more Vordanai language and influence here than farther north, even if they are Elysian." "It didn't stop their troops from fighting against us." "I doubt the Grand Council in Hamvelt gave them a choice," Cyte said. "Hamvelt has been more or less running the League since the War of the Princes." Winter went quiet a moment, guiding her horse over a tricky rut in the road. She'd been able to avoid riding much as a captain, but a colonel needed to be able to get from place to place quickly, and so she'd reluctantly taken to the saddle. The skill had come back to her surprisingly quickly. Riding had been on the syllabus at Mrs. Wilmore's, as an essential skill for a sturdy farmer's wife. Even in her earliest memories, just after her arrival at the institution as a little girl, she felt that she'd been familiar with horses. But rankers didn't ride, and so for three years in the army the closest she'd gotten to a horse was a pat on the nose. All the best mounts had gone to the cavalry, which was desperately short of good horseflesh, so the quartermaster had issued her an aging plodder, a gelding named Edgar who exuded a sense of placid resignation. Winter wouldn't have wanted to push him to a gallop, but he served well enough for walking down a country road. When it came to actual fighting, she would be on her own two feet, colonel or not. Cyte rode her mare with considerably less comfort, looking like someone with better grounding in the theory of horsemanship than the practice. Winter needed staff lieutenants, to deliver orders and handle the endless tide of paperwork, and she'd taken Cyte for the latter and Bobby for the former. She'd also requested Lieutenant John Marsh, Bobby's lover, from the Colonials, and given him a company in the Girls' Own. Ahead, the column had come to a halt. Winter rode past the front ranks of the Royals and nodded to Captain Sevran, ahorse beside the battalion flag and drummers. The Girls' Own stretched ahead in a loose march formation, small groups of young women standing around chatting in the road, and they waved genially at Winter as she passed rather than offering salutes. Quite a few, Winter saw, were carrying the tall plumed Hamveltai shakos. Lieutenant Marsh, riding with the comfortable grace of an expert horseman, met them coming the other way. He was tall, blond, and handsome, with sparkling blue eyes and a ready smile. Winter could see why Bobby had fallen for him, and he'd proven himself unfailingly polite and competent, but she couldn't help maintaining a certain reserve around the man. He knew at least part of her secret--it was hard to hide the strange, marblelike discolorations that were gradually spreading across her skin--but Winter wasn't ready to bring him into her own confidence. "Sir," he said, saluting smartly with his free hand. "What's going on?" Winter said, nodding at the stalled column. "Wagon train merging," Marsh said. "One of the forage parties. It'll be another half an hour before they clear the road." Winter glanced at the sun, which was already well past the overhead and sinking fast toward the horizon. The days were getting rapidly shorter as the year slipped away, something that still surprised her after three years in more equatorial Khandar. "We're not going to get more than another mile today, then," Cyte said, making the same calculation. Marsh nodded. "Bobby and Captain Verity have gone ahead to secure a campsite." "Six miles, maybe?" Winter said, looking back the way they had come. "That's pretty mediocre marching." "Janus isn't pushing us," Cyte said. "Any faster and we'd outrun the wagon train." Unlike on the Khandarai campaign, where the ships of the Vordanai transport fleet had been able to keep the small Colonial army supplied, Janus' Army of the East had to rely on a slow-grinding supply convoys taking the coast road from depots at Essyle. Fortunately, the battle--known as the Battle of Diarach after the tiny village where Janus had made his headquarters--seemed to have taken all the wind out of the sails of the League army. Given a thrashing when they'd expected to deliver one, the divided components of di Pfalen's force had retreated in two different directions. Di Pfalen's own army, with mostly Hamveltai troops, had fallen back to the north toward the great bastion of Antova, while a smaller force of mostly Deslandai troops had moved off to the east toward their home city. Janus had left a small force to watch di Pfalen, and marched the majority of his troops, nearly forty thousand strong, down the road to Desland. So far, however, he'd been content to match the pace of the slow-moving Deslandai army, rather than outrunning his supplies in an effort to cut the enemy off. "Desland hasn't got a modern fortification," Marsh said. "If we get our guns up, we'll pound their walls to splinters in a few hours." Winter nodded. "They'll have to turn and fight before we get there. How many miles left?" "Forty-five, after today," Cyte said. Unsurprisingly, she'd turned out to be an expert with maps. "Maybe a week's march at this pace." "So we'll have a fight sometime before then." Winter shook her head. "Marsh, go and tell Captain Verity to make sure there's a space for drilling in the camp. We'll have time this evening while we wait for the wagons, and I think we'd better polish up." "Yes, sir!" Marsh saluted again, turned his horse with a light touch on the reins, and trotted up the length of the column. By the time the wagons had moved on, the men and women of Winter's regiment had fallen out all over the road and the surrounding fields, and had to be rounded up by their sergeants. Winter was obscurely pleased to see that the Royals were no better in this respect than the Girls' Own, although she had to admit they got themselves together a bit faster. The column got moving again as the sun reached the horizon, and it was well into twilight by the time they arrived at the campsite, marked out by pegs in a broad expanse of empty fields. Winter's tent stood all alone in the center, with a flag planted beside it. Before long, the designated space was a mass of confusion as the long column straggled in and more tents started going up. Bobby was waiting with a pair of younger girls. Winter dismounted, wincing at the soreness in her muscles, and handed over Edgar's reins. The girls saluted--they were noticeably better at it than many of their older compatriots--and led the gelding away. "Sir!" Bobby said. She offered a Winter a folded scrap of paper. "From the general. Marching orders for tomorrow." Excerpted from The Price of Valor by Django Wexler All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
