Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  “The Nanerat,” he said in a rush. “They are your children.”

  An anguished wail filled the tent.

  “What is it?” Corenna asked. “What has befallen them?”

  “Save them,” Ilek’Inari gasped. The apprentice’s eyes seemed to lose focus, the brown within darkening almost to a shade of black. “The Goddess, she has gone mad, she has turned on her own. She seeks to kill us. The spirits. We are marked for death!”

  “Where are the Nanerat?” Arak’Jur demanded. “Where can we find them?”

  The fire burst in a wave of scorching heat, and shapes appeared in the smoke. A snake, perched on the arm of a man. A lizard, trailing beside a woman. A stag, following the pointed finger of a crone.

  “What do they mean?” Corenna said over the roar of the fire.

  “That’s valak’ar.” Arak’Jur pointed to the snake, as sure as he had been of any shaman’s vision since he had become guardian. Even etched in smoke, he feared no other sight more. “The lizard is anahret, the stag is astahg.”

  “Three great beasts?” Corenna asked.

  Ilek’Inari snapped toward them, quick as a viper.

  “A dozen,” Ilek’Inari said, and his voice had changed—a sharp, biting heat where before it had been pleading calm. “A hundred, if I have to send them. You will not ascend, whelpling of the wild. I will find you, and smother you, as the falcon hunts the sparrow.”

  Arak’Jur rose to his feet. This was no mountain spirit. Ilek’Inari’s eyes had gone fully black.

  The fire dimmed. Ilek’Inari blinked. In a rush, the smoke cleared from the tent.

  “Arak’Jur,” Ilek’Inari said. “Corenna. It’s good to see you.”

  Arak’Jur took a step back. Awe rattled his senses, but Ilek’Inari’s eyes had returned to normal, the tent at once no different from any other in the village.

  “Honored apprentice,” Corenna said. “What was the nature of that sending? It spoke of the Nanerat in danger, of great beasts in terrible numbers.”

  “The corrupted spirits,” Ilek’Inari said. “They seized hold of me, for a moment.”

  Arak’Jur’s heart pounded in his chest; he recognized the same in Ilek’Inari.

  “A terrible burden,” he said, and Ilek’Inari nodded, wearing a solemn look.

  “What must we do?” Corenna asked. “The Nanerat will be coming from the north. Should we prepare to travel again, to meet them?”

  “I’ve seen where to find them,” Ilek’Inari said. “But you shouldn’t join this hunt, honored sister.”

  Arak’Jur frowned. Corenna recoiled as if he’d struck her.

  “No,” Corenna said. “I’ve fought, as fierce and strong as any guardian. And Arak’Jur is wounded, days away from a full recovery. I see no reason I can’t—”

  “You’re carrying his child,” Ilek’Inari said.

  The tent seemed to empty of air, along with his breath.

  3

  ERRIS

  Training Grounds

  South of New Sarresant

  Fire!”

  Musket shot belched smoke from their guns, a wall of white fog rising into the morning air, sealed off by the haze of Shelter conjured in front of their line an instant after the last gun fired.

  “Reload!”

  The command carried from officer to officer, sergeant to sergeant. Erris’s vessel paced behind their line, watching soldiers pouring powder from their cartridges, filtered back to her senses through the golden threads of Need.

  “Drop bindings!”

  The command came from the colonel at the head of their column, crisp and precise. Fifteen seconds, on the tick, and the Shelter vanished, once more revealing the targets arrayed across the yard.

  “Fire!”

  Another wave of thunder, redoubling the smoke and cinders on the air. More shouted commands finished the exercise, stowing every fired gun with the same precision, leaving a thousand pairs of eyes stealing glances toward her vessel, hanging on her next pronouncement.

  She let silence linger, holding them in formation without saying a word.

  Finally she relented.

  “Superb work, Colonel,” she said.

  “Thank you, sir,” the regiment-colonel said, beaming though he made every effort to hide it behind a veneer of a soldier’s pride. The 86th was one of the new regiments, formed in the months since the battle, given veteran officers plucked from units destroyed in the fighting. She’d expected to need two seasons at least to have the new units ready, but already the New Sarresant Army was leaner, sharper, a honed edge ready to be put to use against its enemies.

  “Form your lines and report to the Ninth Division command tents,” she said. “They’ll have a part for you in—”

  Stabbing pain roiled through her senses.

  She let Need go, snapping back into her skin before the golden light shattered, cursing and thumping her desk.

  “Sir?” Field Marshal Royens asked. He stood with two of his aides, and his counterpart, Field-Marshal de Tourvalle, ringing the large table in front of her desk in the chambers of her offices at high command.

  “It’s happened again,” she said quietly.

  The rest of the table joined her in silence. Need was the glue that held the army in place, binding every outlying division to her personal command, here in New Sarresant. But by now even the lowliest regiment commander had at least heard rumors of Need failing, since the battle. Her connections to her vessels held, but only for a time, shattering and leaving her in a daze if she held the tethers too long.

  “Perhaps the rest of our training exercises can wait,” de Tourvalle said. “The rest of my corps has orders to wait for your signal. A day or two of rest would not be remiss.”

  “No,” she said. “We need to drill them on maneuver, with or without Need. I’ll try again in half an hour. Continue your planning until then.”

  Her corps commanders and their aides made deferential bows, returning their attention to the papers in front of them. Gods but it was all she could do not to slam her desk with Body, to break it in half and send the pieces scattered into the hallway. All her preparation, all her restructuring of command, and it hinged on a binding as fickle as the southern winds. It wasn’t like Body, Life, Death, or any of the others. When those stores ran dry, the bindings wouldn’t form; simple as if she hadn’t been able to see the energies at all. Need was different. She could sense the golden lights, draw on them, snap them into place, and share her vessels’ senses, for a time. But in the weeks since the battle, the Need bindings shattered if she held them too long, leaving her retching and weak. Gods save them all if it happened during a battle, when all were counting on her to coordinate their efforts. And Gods save them if the enemy general’s Need had no such weakness. She’d destroyed his forces here in the New World, but he would be coming again, and all her drilling would count for nothing if he held the threads of Need while she was sicking up in a basin at high command.

  “Lord Voren here to see you, sir,” her new aide, a young captain named Essily, said, peering through the double doors at the far side of her rooms.

  “Send him in,” she said. She’d sooner have ordered Jiri saddled for a long ride to clear her head. The aches of Need still lingered at her temples, as they too often did whenever she dared to wield its threads in recent weeks. She’d tried to pace herself, using the connections only for final drills, key orders, and confirming scouts’ reports, but she had a bloody army to train.

  Voren’s manservant entered first: Omera, a black-skinned man who swept the room with his one-eyed gaze before nodding behind him, as though an ambush might have been planned in her chambers if he hadn’t been there to spot it. Voren followed close behind, his general’s uniform traded out for the fashions of the day: a slim blue coat over top of white frills and a yellow sash, calf-length boots and hose, though his gray mustaches and spectacles were the same as ever. Tuyard came behind in the same attire, never mind that he still served as High Admiral.
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  “Lord Voren,” she said, rising from her desk despite Voren’s gesture to stay seated.

  “High Commander,” Voren said. “Please, don’t trouble yourself on my account. Gentlemen.” He offered slight bows to her two corps commanders. “Could we perhaps have the room?”

  She nodded, and Royens, de Tourvalle, and their aides bowed to her, gathering some of their papers before withdrawing.

  “How goes recruitment?” Voren said, taking one of the chairs opposite her desk. Tuyard occupied the other, while Voren’s manservant stood near the back of the room. “It’s said you have them drilling sunup to sundown, and not without results, as I hear it.”

  “Half my soldiers were working looms or mining coal two seasons ago,” she said. “They need drilling, and time to learn maneuver. But that isn’t why you’re here. Need hasn’t improved. I can use it, in short bursts. Good enough to deliver orders, not to survey a battlefield or stay in command.”

  Voren and Tuyard eyed each other, and Voren spoke. “Would you say the army is ready to march, High Commander?”

  “No,” she said. “But my scouts say the enemy is quiet. Why? Have you heard otherwise?”

  Voren shook his head, but reached inside his coat, withdrawing a rolled parchment bearing a wax seal and laying the tube on her desk.

  “This is a signed order,” he said. “Committing you to march with all haste into the provinces of l’Allcourt, Lorrine, Euillard, and Mantres.”

  She took up the parchment and pried the wax free. “What nonsense is this?” she said, scanning the paper to confirm its contents. Sure enough; for the purposes of restoring order and committed to march forthwith.

  “Just what it seems, I’m afraid. You are ordered to invade the southern Sarresant colonies. A test of the new army, for all it tastes of bile.”

  “You intend us to declare war on our own people?” she said, letting the parchment fall to her desk.

  “Not me, High Commander. You forget—I am no King. Reyne d’Agarre left behind an Assembly elected to represent the people. This is their will, and perhaps the first test of their authority.”

  “I have no intention of reaving through our own countryside,” she said. “My soldiers need time to prepare to face our enemies. This is about … what? A show of force?”

  Voren gave her a hard look. He seemed to have aged another five years in the span of a season, his creased skin sunk into hollows above his jaw.

  “This is about taxes, High Commander,” Voren said. “Not the sort of thing any government will let slip for long. Not if you want your soldiers’ wages paid and your quartermasters’ larders stocked past the spring. Word among the councilors is the southern lords have been slow to accept the revolution, claiming they owe taxes to the Sarresant crown, and not the New Sarresant assemblies. You are tasked with convincing them otherwise.”

  “I’m training soldiers, not tax collectors.”

  “With respect, High Commander, you are preparing this army to face the Gandsmen, or perhaps the Dauphin’s soldiers, should the Old World decide to reclaim its former holdings. A few holdout lords and militias should pose little threat. And our loss of control in the southern colonies may well be the root cause of your Need bindings’ weakening. Without a firm hold on our territory, it stands to reason the gains of our conquests would slip, not least among you and your binders.”

  She’d considered it, of course; she’d gained Need only after a season of victories against the Gandsmen, prior to their new commander taking over before the battle at Villecours. With territory came new bindings, and they’d lost all the reach of the Empire, declaring independence from the crown. But Entropy held, as strong as ever. Why would Need wane, and not the rest?

  “There is an alternative, my lords.” High Admiral Tuyard piped up from beside her desk, reclining against the table’s edge. The High Admiral was lean, in the last years of his prime, with all the bearing of a lord and little of a seaman.

  “Égalité is well and good, as an ideal,” Tuyard continued. “But we joined ourselves to the cause of revolution as an act of preserving the colonies against the whims of a tyrant. Are we any better than the late Prince Louis-Sallet if we march soldiers into the homes of our countrymen, demanding their gold and silver as homage to a council whose authority they don’t recognize?”

  “Guillaume—” Voren began, but Tuyard cut him short.

  “No, Voren, I am aware the timing is poor, but they’ve forced our hand. We here, the three of us, represent the might of the New Sarresant military. At a word we could replace these councils with a legitimate power, retaining our independence while giving the southern lords and ladies a government they can respect.”

  The air seemed thick with silence. Voren studied her, his thick mustaches masking any expression save the burning in his eyes.

  They needed her support.

  The realization struck like musket shot. Even weakened, with less than half the full strength of Need, she carried enough weight with the soldiers that neither Voren nor Tuyard dared to move without her. But if Voren was right, and control over territory was the key to restoring Need, then war was the answer, and she was positioned as well as any to dictate its terms.

  “I’d as soon see this army put to the use for which it was intended,” she said. “Or have we forgotten there is an enemy waiting in the south?”

  “None of us have forgotten the Gandsmen,” Voren said. “But the Assembly needs its coffers filled, and—”

  “… and plunder from a successful conquest would do for that,” she finished for him. “As sure as subjugating holdouts in Lorrine and Euillard.”

  “I say the time is ripe to seize control,” Tuyard said. “We have the strength here to march on the city. All we have to do is take it.”

  “We have an enemy marshaling his strength in the south, and you propose we wade into a quagmire?” she said. “Victory against Gand would bring unity at home, and gold to supply our troops. It solves both problems, neater than any parchment from your Assembly.”

  Tuyard looked to Voren, who had fallen quiet, studying her.

  “You are confident you could win, against the Gandsmen?” Voren asked.

  “Yes,” she said, putting all her resolve into the word. She’d already prepared two invasion plans, one by sea, one feinting with the ships to cover a land route through Lorrine. Springtime promised good weather for a campaign, with winter’s stores left over to make for adequate provisioning. The better part of the enemy’s soldiers had been taken hostage, ransomed home without horses, guns, or powder. She might seize Derrickshire, or the heights at Ansfield Crossing, before the enemy could muster a defense. A child could ride that horse to victory.

  “We have the prize in our hands,” Tuyard said, “and instead we pluck our neighbor’s thornbush? This is—”

  A deep thud cut him short, coming from outside her offices, in the high command chambers proper. Both Voren and Tuyard turned in their seats as a clamor rose, and she saw terror in High Admiral Tuyard’s face.

  By instinct she tethered Body, abundant as it had been beneath the city since the battle, and Life. The High Admiral bolted to his feet, dashing around her desk toward her window, overlooking the street below. Glass shattered as he hurled himself through, leaving Voren and his manservant staring after Tuyard in wordless shock. Shouts of panic rose in the halls outside her rooms, and she kicked her chair back from her desk, springing to her feet.

  The double doors to her chamber shattered from a kick, splintering wood into the room. Before the sound cleared from her ears a man in black streaked inside, moving faster than any save a Body fullbinder could have managed. She drew her saber—and thank the Gods she hadn’t given up wearing it—as he rushed toward her, wielding a pair of curved steel blades.

  Assassin.

  The leylines called to her, offering half a dozen energies, but Body was there by reflex, and she met her attacker with steel in hand. A cutting slice aimed at her head rattled her crossguard
, and she kicked him back when he tried a counter-slash with his other blade. The man sprang forward in a rush, as though a Body-enhanced kick were no more than a lover’s kiss, hacking with a desperate fury. She turned a pair of jabbing strikes, then twisted into him, grunting as she rammed her saber into the side of his shoulder.

  White light flared through her chamber, sending her staggering back. The man charged again, somehow uncut, and whole. Impossible. This time she reached for Death, sending a tether through his form. He met her blade again, with no sign of slowing. Blows rained against her guard, the long reach of her sword enough to create a gap where her table and furniture had been. They’d smashed chairs aside, shattered the table, and sent a dozen books scattered across the floor.

  The man paused, staring at her with desperation in his eyes. He had features halfway between Thellan and Sardian, a hawk nose and a look as though he could scarce believe she hadn’t died at the first cut of his blades.

  “Surrender,” she said. “And I promise you a quick death.”

  The man stared at her, glancing between her and the window.

  She tensed for another attack, and reached for Shelter, readying a shield to bind him in place. Instead he bolted, taking the same route as Tuyard, leaping through the broken shards hanging from her windowsill.

  4

  SARINE

  Sacre-Lin Chapel

  Maw District, New Sarresant

  The chapel doors swung inward, spilling sunlight through the atrium and into the pews. Heavy oak, almost enough to require Body or Red to move, though her uncle kept the steel hinges well oiled and polished. Carved figures of the Goddesses welcomed parishioners on the outer faces of the doors; the Oracle, her eyes glazed over, beckoning all comers forward, and the Veil, shrouded in cloth, looking away from the entrance as though she kept a secret. As a child she’d learned to draw by sketching them both, along with the other reliefs and stained-glass portraits throughout the Sacre-Lin. The thought made her yearn for charcoals and parchment, but today’s proceedings would be no simple sermon. Today her uncle’s chapel paid homage to the city’s new master, and for all the blood it had cost, it warmed her heart to see it: égalité, made real, in the councils and deliberation among even the lowest of its citizens.