by Angela Boord
When I get the swordbelt off, Mikelo is back with a hammer.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
Again, that short nod.
“Put your hands out,” he says.
I kneel and lay them on the floor. He swings down as hard as he can—once, twice, three times—and the blows ring so loud, it feels as if he’s splitting my head. The manacles give way with a sharp crack.
I gasp and draw my hands out, twisting and turning them, rubbing my left wrist, before I sit to pull on the boots. When I look up at Mikelo, I notice the thin purple bruise around his neck for the first time.
“What is that?” I ask in surprise.
“They didn’t take my belt,” he says. “It was the only way I could think to get them to open the door.”
“Hanging yourself?”
“What would you have done?”
I bite my lip.
“Let’s just go. Get out of here.”
I rise and put my right hand on his shoulder. He flinches, but I don’t think it’s because of the metal.
“You don’t have to come. If you don’t want to. I—I thank you. For what you did.”
“No,” he says. “I have a responsibility to my House that overrides blood. And I will rid it of men like my uncle and my cousins.”
“But, Mikelo—you’d be Head of House.”
“I will,” he says with some conviction. “If Driese isn’t already with child.”
“Let’s hope she is, then.” I lever myself to my feet. “I’d spare you that fate, Mikelo.”
He looks up at me, startled, and I put my hand out—my right hand—to draw him to his feet.
It occurs to me, as we run from the prison that was once my childhood playground, that I’m the Head of House Aliente now.
I’m all that’s left.
I know I must look like an old painting of Ekyra as I run. Clad in my blood-stiff, once-blue silk dress, the guard’s swordbelt clanking at my side, his too-big black boots on my feet, I am the epitome of ill fortune.
I hope Geoffre will see it that way too.
We keep to the trees as we run to the wall. Both of us are running on sheer determination, but I always feel better after the waiting is over and the battle is about to begin. It’s as if something takes over inside me, and I labor gladly, like a horse racing for its master.
Mikelo looks less good, but there’s a glitter in his eyes. I don’t like it, but it keeps him going.
The blunt wedge of trees narrows until it disappears entirely. We stop at its edge, near the side yard. Men toil back and forth, hauling rubble and earth to shore up the wall. At the wall itself—which looks like a shattered bone, sheared off and jagged—men shout to each other and trowels scrape as they scramble to repair the biggest holes. The muzzles of three cannons jut out through the wall.
Does a man escape with his lover to a fortress he expects to be soon under siege?
None of this makes sense. And if there is one thing I can’t yet puzzle out, it’s Tonia di Sere’s role in all of this.
Did she simply not know, or was she in league with Cassis all along?
“What shall we do now, Kyrra?” Mikelo asks. His words come out as mere edges to his hard breathing, and he presses a hand to his side as if his ribs hurt.
“I need clothes. To blend in.” I take the guard’s knife out of its sheath and walk forward in a crouch to the edge of the trees.
The next time a smallish man walks by with a barrow, I step out of the brush and bring the hilt of the knife down heavy on the back of his head.
He falls to the ground in a limp heap.
“Mikelo,” I hiss, and Mikelo lurches up to join me. Together we haul the man’s body back to the trees and strip him of his clothes.
Getting my clothes off takes longer. I need help with all the pins and hooks and laces of gown and stays, front and back. Mikelo stares at me in horror and I have to laugh.
“You’ve seen far worse things today than my naked body, Mikelo.”
He blushes, fiercely, then bends his head to fumble with the pins and laces. My gown comes off in pieces, then my skirts. My stays go next. I shrug out of them and yank off my shift.
It’s cold. I’m instantly shivering, and I hold a hand out to Mikelo. “Shirt,” I say, trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
He’s staring at me.
I give him a lopsided grin. “I really am a woman, you know.”
“I always wondered what your arm looked like,” he says as if I haven’t spoken,
I look down at it. It’s the same, the silver melting into the lightly freckled skin of my shoulder. Except now you can see the dent, long and deep.
Maybe it makes sense that only Arsenault could have done me this damage. And only Arsenault will be able to repair it.
I bend down quickly to retrieve the man’s shirt myself and slip it on over my head. It’s a relief to be in a man’s shirt again. A relief to wrestle on the trousers and belt a swordbelt at my hip, even if it isn’t mine.
I’ve never had a sword of my own, anyway.
When I’m dressed, I feel almost like myself again. The clothes smell of unwashed male and dirt and gunpowder, but the cloak is warm, my feet are protected from rocks and mud, and I have two hilts on which to rest my hands, gloved in warm leather.
“You look like the Huntress,” Mikelo says, watching me with a funny expression, and I suppose I do, in the man’s brown clothes.
“Let’s see if I can sniff out Geoffre, then.” I grin and Mikelo’s expression grows even stranger. What does he See in me now?
“Come on.” I gesture over my shoulder. “Let’s go.”
That breaks the moment. He follows me out of the brush, looking everywhere like a hare hopping into the open. I take a deep breath so I don’t do the same.
I want to look like I belong here. As if this estate is still my own.
I put my hand on the hilt of my sword and try to swagger in these damn too-big boots. We thread our way through the men with their barrows until a man standing atop a pile of blasted rocks calls out, “You there! Grab a shovel!”
Mikelo glances at me and I nod, just enough that he can see. The man hands us each a shovel, and we start hefting rocks into the quarter-full barrow beside the pile. I’m too weak to shovel big piles the way he is, and so is Mikelo. I hope the man doesn’t notice.
“How long you think this break will last?” I ask.
The man glances up at me. “You’re new,” he says as he turns to dump a heap of rocks into the barrow.
“We’re from the prison,” Mikelo says quickly, before I can answer. “We’ve been rotated.”
The man grunts, banging the edge of his shovel down into the rocks until it rings. “Didn’t see you on the way up.”
I wipe the sweat from my brow. “We didn’t come with the bulk of the force. We came up secret.”
“Secret,” he repeats, eyeing me skeptically.
I dart a glance out the hole in the wall. The land falls away beneath us, a tumble of rocks and the tops of trees. There’s an army encamped in the valley, milling around. The black lines of earthworks come about a quarter of the way up the hill. A line of cannons rest atop them, with their muzzles propped up on rock cairns. Cannons with good range. But Geoffre didn’t do that overnight. He must be taking advantage of the remains of his attack on the Aliente. Or he’s been preparing for this battle with Cassis for a long time.
“We’re to take up our positions right away,” I say. “But I wanted to have a look first.”
“Well, you better look quick then.”
I stare up at the wall. In the spots that have held, Cassis has archers up. But this is a sparse force. I look through the hole again.
Geoffre has an army. Tents, earthworks, cannons, horses...though what he thinks he can do with horse on this terrain, I can’t imagine. Perhaps he thinks he can lure Cassis down from his walls and then overwhelm him on the flat. But to do that, he’d have to play dead.
&
nbsp; The sound of a shovel sinking into gravel snatches me out of my thoughts. I turn, just quick enough to see Lobardin striding up from behind the man. The man sees Lobardin too. But Lobardin has his head down.
Mikelo looks at me in alarm.
I back down off the pile. Mikelo follows me. “I think it’s time we took up our positions.”
“Commander!” the man calls out suddenly. “I’ve two of your recruits here!”
Under my breath, I curse whatever gods are listening. Lobardin flings his head up and his eyes go wide. There’s no good way to extricate ourselves from this situation. Free will is supposed to be a man’s right, but there must be gods at work here, shuffling us all like cards.
I cross my hands over my hilts, preparing to draw. But Lobardin hides a blindingly quick grin beneath a military scowl. “It took you long enough to get here, didn’t it?”
The man on the rocks blinks. Obviously, he didn’t believe our story. My hands itch, wanting to be set down. Instead, I withdraw, slowly.
“We ran into some trouble,” I say carefully. “At the prison.”
Mikelo’s gaze slides over to me; he thinks I’m mad. Even Lobardin looks a little surprised.
“I don’t want to hear about any trouble. Just get your asses moving now.”
I duck my head. “Yessir,” I murmur, and Mikelo echoes it.
Lobardin whirls on his heel and starts walking back the way he just came. When I move to follow him, Mikelo bends down and whispers, “Why are we going with him?”
“If he wanted us,” I whisper back, “he could have taken us right there. It would’ve been a bloodbath, but why should he care?”
“Why should he help us?”
I gnaw on my lip. It’s a bit bruised now. “It’s a feeling I get.”
Mikelo scowls. But how can I explain it? Call it Sight. It was in Lobardin’s eyes when he left, as if he’d woken from a dream.
Lobardin falls back to walk beside us.
“You’re a sight,” he says.
“No thanks to you,” Mikelo replies. His eyes burn hot.
“I laid nary a finger on you while you were in my care,” Lobardin says to Mikelo. “Don’t blame me for crimes I didn’t commit.”
“You acted in concert with agendas which can only be to the detriment of Liera. Had you not aligned yourself with those forces, none of this would have happened.”
Lobardin looks theatrically—lazily—to the left and right. “You blame me for this little war, do you? Have they now become my uncle and my cousin?”
Mikelo lunges. I fling out my right arm to stop him. It hits his ribs and he crunches up with a little cry, then looks up at Lobardin red-faced. “Not this, you idiot,” he gasps. “Not this war. If you’d left us free, we would have been free to act, and now—”
“And now,” Lobardin says, stepping forward, all trace of amusement erased from his face, “you’ve served as a fine distraction while Jon Barra and Kyrra’s precious captain go to do the real dirty work, haven’t you?”
I let my hand drop. “What?” I say.
Lobardin nods in the direction of the wall. “Arsenault’s gone. To Geoffre’s camp.” He looks me up and down. “What did you do to my guards, Kyrra? One of them came running to the wall with his eyebrows singed, shouting that you’d escaped. The other one—where is he?”
“Was Arsenault alone?”
Lobardin’s eyes narrow. “No. Jon went with him. Where’s my other guard, Kyrra?”
I look up at the wall. The bare trees on the other side are speckled with black shapes.
Ravens.
I put my hands on my hilts. “Your other guard’s dead. Give me your gun, Lobardin. I’m going after Arsenault.”
He sighs. “Somehow, I knew you’d be determined to do that. Cassis sent them. There’s nothing you can do.”
I grit my teeth. “I’m not going to stand here. Do I have to draw steel?”
“Damn you, Kyrra, you don’t understand. Cassis sent them. Jon and Cassis had an argument, and Jon told him he was being stupid for keeping Arsenault in the prison when he could be using him instead, and Cassis finally told Jon to get Arsenault out of the prison, but that he didn’t want to see him alive at the end. So, Jon went.”
“And you were privy to all this?”
“Of course not. I was listening at the door. They went down to Geoffre’s camp and they’re not planning on coming back. Arsenault passed me something to give you on the way out.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the silver wolf.
“Your parting gift looks somewhat less this time.”
I’m on him like lightning. I grab his collar with my right hand and yank him down to my level. His eyes are hot. So are mine. “He hasn’t abandoned me. He’s fighting a battle he can’t possibly hope to win. And he’s probably as much a prisoner of Jon as he is anyone else.”
I grab the wolf and then push Lobardin away in disgust, trying to hide the shaking that has suddenly overtaken me. Did I expect Arsenault to storm the fortress, looking for me? Or did he come here knowing he was going to die, thinking to spare me—
Dammit.
“How does Jon expect him to do anything?” Mikelo says, frowning. “He wasn’t in the shape to fight. Not Geoffre.”
Lobardin smooths his shirt and glances between us, somberly. “I don’t think that was Cassis’s point. I think what he means to do is throw Arsenault to the wolves, while he sets upon Geoffre’s flanks.” He looks anxiously over his shoulder, then back at us. “I should be at my post now, awaiting word. But I had to come looking for you, Kyrra, because I knew you’d foul things up.”
“And I’ve a sword at my side now, Lobardin, and if you think you’re going to take me again, you’d better start thinking something else.”
“Gods help me, but that is not what I was thinking.” The broken, wounded look returns to his eyes. I set my jaw. I have my hands crossed, fingers wrapped tight around my hilts. Lobardin sighs.
“Just go. Don’t jeopardize what Arsenault is doing. Much as I dislike the man, he’s doing a brave thing, and it may bring us a quick victory rather than a lengthy siege. Driese isn’t here. Just go.”
Trust Lobardin to casually drop a load of truth on your foot.
“What?” says Mikelo.
Lobardin smirks. “Did you really think that Cassis would endanger the mother of his heir by bringing her here?”
“It doesn’t matter what I thought,” I say. Then I look up at Lobardin, struck by what he called her. “The mother of his heir?”
Lobardin’s smirk becomes one of his long smiles as he nods. Then, abruptly, he sobers. “She’s with child. Cassis has sent her somewhere to be safe, but that all depends on whether or not her party can maintain secrecy in the face of Geoffre and Devid’s spies. And whether or not this battle succeeds.”
“He can’t want to unite the Houses,” Mikelo says.
“Of course not. He wants someone who can avenge him, if this doesn’t work.” Lobardin cocks his head at Mikelo. “You shouldn’t wave it around that you’ve escaped,” he says. “That won’t fit into Cassis’s plans at all. How did you manage it, anyway? Did you kill the guards at the prison, too?”
Mikelo stiffens. I step in quickly, wondering just how much Lobardin knows about Mikelo. “They’re tied up in the prison,” I say. “I got Mikelo out.”
“You didn’t kill them?” His voice is curious but bitter, too.
“I was feeling some guilt,” I lie, “even though your guard tried to shoot me. I thought to practice mercy.”
“Mercy.” Lobardin lets the word out with his breath. “I suppose that’s what I’m giving you, isn’t it?”
“Why?” Mikelo says.
Lobardin laughs. “Oh, I didn’t mean you, Mikelo. Cassis would have me swinging from the nearest tree if I let you go. I meant Kyrra. I’ll let Kyrra go if you come with me. It’s too late to save Arsenault, anyway.”
Mikelo backs up, glancing at me. The muscles in his jaw r
ipple as he clenches it. “Very well,” he says, straightening himself. “I’ll go.”
“Fucking martyrs,” I mutter.
I slam my right hand into Lobardin’s face.
He doesn’t see it coming until too late. Blood erupts from his nose and he staggers back. As my hand drops, I lunge to snatch the sword at his side. It rips free of the leather with a hiss.
Arsenault’s sword.
Runes flash in the sunlight, writhing like silver snakes from guard to tip. My right arm sings with them.
“Go!” I shout at Mikelo. “GO!”
Everything becomes a blur. None of the men around us were prepared, and Lobardin is still trying to struggle up out of the dirt. We get a good head start, running for the hole in the wall behind us. Ahead of me, Mikelo dodges a shovel wielded like a sword and knocks another man out of his way with his shoulder. By the time the man gets to me, he’s pulled his dagger, but I take him with my sword. He falls behind me.
And we’re running, hurdling the rubble at the foot of the wall, skidding down the boulder-strewn slope, and from behind us I can hear Lobardin’s voice bellowing, “Get back into your positions! If you chase them, Geoffre will think we’re attacking! Let his gunners take care of them!”
And so, we’re out and we’re running, half-falling, and I’m laughing that battle laugh and Mikelo gulps air beside me.
“Where are we going?” he pants.
“Where do you think?” I say. “We’re going to get Arsenault.”
If I had been commander of Cassis’s small force, I would have opted for the long, slow siege. What is Arsenault going to do that will give Cassis’s far smaller force a chance? What would be deadly enough to make Cassis give up the high ground in the face of Geoffre’s cannons?
Before we’re halfway down the hill, shots crack from behind Geoffre’s earthworks. Not cannons but arquebuses.
Cursing, I throw myself prone on the patchy, thin grass. Mikelo hits the ground beside me a little too heavily, and I look over at him in alarm.
“Tripped,” he whispers. Sweat drips from his forehead, even in this cold.