Lin seemed to balance her attention between him and Yuli. No time to think, if he wanted to prevent Yuli from taking another volley of shards. Tigai charged, howling as he loosed a final shot toward Lin’s glass-covered torso. It served to put her off-balance, and he connected, laying a hand on Lin’s forearm. In an eyeblink he tethered them both to the strands, sending them somewhere far to the south, past the point of any stars with any connection to dry land.
Water splashed around him, a light spray where he impacted the surface and a powerful gulp where the ocean swallowed the glass-armored magi at his side.
For a moment the surface of the water was clear, the brief interruption of their arrival forgotten as waves rose and fell around him. A soft breeze blew over the crests, and he treaded water to stay where he was, at the center of a horizon filled end to end with ocean, as far as he could see.
The water broke as Lin Qishan swam to the surface, her familiar features having replaced her now-discarded glass.
“You fucking madman,” she said. “Where have you taken us?”
“Where does it bloody well look like?” he said. “We’re in the middle of the ocean, and you know if you try a damned thing here, I’ll leave you to drown.”
She stayed in place, all the chaos of the fighting left behind in quiet paddling to keep her head above the surface.
“What do you want, Yanjin Tigai?” she asked.
“Answers,” he said. The water was calm enough they could speak, though his words were chopped, alternating between treading water and gasping for air. “Make me believe you know exactly where Mei, Remarin, and Dao are being held. Make me understand why any of this has happened. Do it and maybe I’ll take you with me when I go back.”
“I’m only a mercenary,” she said between waves lapping around them.
“Not good enough,” he said. “If you don’t know where they are, then you’re useless to me.” He closed his eyes, preparing a tether to take him back to Kye-Min.
“Wait,” she said.
He opened his eyes.
“I know where your master-at-arms is,” she said. “He might have the girl with him; I can’t be sure.”
Remarin. Tigai’s heart skipped at the prospect, and if Mei was there, too …
“Go on,” he said.
“He’s being held at the Tower of the Heron, in Kye-Min,” Lin Qishan said. “Bavda Khon believes Remarin is Master Fei Zan, of the Great and Noble House of the Fox.”
“Who? And … who?”
“Is he?” she asked. “But then, you likely wouldn’t know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Take us back to the city,” she said. “I swear I will explain in full.”
“Like fucking hells,” he said, spitting a gulp of water before it could wash down his throat.
“If you don’t believe me,” Lin said, “then I’m doomed no matter what I say.”
More than a little truth to that. He watched as she kept her head above the water, her usual calm confidence fraying. She believed he would leave her; it was the only leverage he could hope for.
“Tell me exactly what I’m up against,” he said.
“Please,” she said. A surge of water almost swallowed her head, and she fought back to the surface. “This isn’t … take us back to the city. I swear on my House, I will be your prisoner.”
He shook his head, or tried to, between the rise and fall of the spray. She was right. In her place, he would have told any lie he could think of to get back to freedom. It made it impossible to believe her—even the prospect of Remarin being alive, and in Kye-Min no less … all too convenient, for the sake of her release.
“I know you put no stock in honor,” Lin said. She gasped for another breath, this time with real panic in her movements. If she was going to try an attack, it would come soon. “But please believe me: My honor means more to me than my life. Take us back, and I am yours.”
He wouldn’t get any more here. Without a sign that he might trust her, she had no incentive to say anything more. It fell to him, then. Either trust, or leave her to die. For all he hated her—and he did, for her smugness as much as the nightmare she had put him through in service to the Dragons—he loved Remarin, Mei, and Dao more. If she betrayed him, he wouldn’t be any closer to finding them than he was now.
He held out a hand through the waves, and she took it in a firm grasp.
The strands took them back to Kye-Min, to his second anchor, with Captain Ugirin’s line.
Once more they were surrounded by soldiers. This time the spearmen had uprooted from their lines, marching in a flurry around where he and Lin Qishan now stood at the base of the hill.
“Thank you,” Lin said, offering him a bow, surprisingly with no hint of mocking. “I am in your debt.”
“Forward, Tigers!” Ugirin shouted. “Move! Leftward wheel to the line, go!”
The command bellowed above the chaos of the spearmen and reserve redeploying their line. No sign of any soldiers in red, but the men around him moved as though they had enemies on their heels, those nearest him and Lin Qishan giving them looks of surprise at finding two people unmoving in their way.
“Let’s go,” he said, reaching to grab her by the arm again. “If you meant what you said about being in my service, then we move with these men.”
She went along with him, thank the wind spirits, and doubly thank them she’d worn ordinary clothes beneath her glass armor, rather than the red uniform of the Imperial army. They cut through the ranks together, aiming for the mounted figure bellowing orders at the mouth of the westward street.
“Captain!” he shouted as they approached. “Captain Ugirin!”
The mercenary commander pivoted in his saddle, his eyes brightening as he focused on Tigai.
“My magi,” Captain Ugirin said, grinning. “Have you taken a prisoner? One of theirs?”
“What’s the situation here, Captain?” he asked.
“We’re marching out to meet the enemy,” Ugirin bellowed, making it half an answer, half a rallying cry for troops near enough to hear. “Hashiro’s Golden Sun have lived up to their name. The enemy’s line is breaking, and we have reinforcements coming from the west, with magi at the head. Magi! Isaru Mattai may well be a dog-faced bastard, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t keep his word.”
49
ERRIS
Private Chambers
High Command
Her temples ached, a deep pain no amount of kneading seemed to be able to cure.
“This is bigger than a bloody campaign,” Marquand was saying. “And why did you order the army south in the first place? You knew the enemy commander is more than an ordinary man; we all bloody knew it, even before the battle at Villecours.”
“I can’t do it alone, Marquand,” Erris said. “This decision is outside the purview of my command.”
“It’s a mistake. They’ll see it as weakness, because it bloody well is weakness. I’ve never known you for a coward, d’Arrent.”
“Careful,” she said.
“Why? Should I fear speaking the truth to you now? You believe Voren, or Fei Zan, or whatever the fuck he’s called. You know it’s true.”
“And since when has that ever been enough? Without the priests, the Assembly, the fucking navy at the very least—”
“You know what they’ll say!” he snapped back. “They’ll call you a second Louis-Sallet, and put a knife in your back, sure as he got. You’d do better to take this invitation as an excuse to put them all under guard until our ships are fifty leagues past the horizon. Anything else is cowardice, pure and plain, and I won’t stand here and watch you deliver yourself into their hands.”
“Where do you think you’re going, Colonel?” He was already halfway to the door. “You turn around at once. That’s an order.”
He pushed through, all but slamming it shut as he stormed into her foyer. She had half a mind to follow him, and call him to answer for the insubordination. But he was righ
t. Gods damn him, he was right. She’d called this meeting hoping Marquand would stand behind her, help her convince High Admiral Tuyard, Assemblyman Lerand, and First Prelate Casanne of the rightness of their cause. She didn’t have the words to do it on her own. Gods bind her to the Nameless’s soul, she couldn’t do it alone.
“Sir, is everything well?”
Aide-Captain Essily appeared in her doorway, eyeing her with his usual attentive care. She nodded without looking up from her desk, back to massaging her temples in Marquand’s absence.
“Yes, Captain,” she said. “I could do with some hot tea. Otherwise, send in my guests as soon as they arrive.”
“Of course, sir.”
Maps lay open on her desk, and her attention drifted to studying them. She knew the forested valleys of the southern New Sarresant provinces, the hills and flatlands of the Gand colonies, even the Thellan islands as well as she knew the twisting streets of Southgate or the Harbor. Better, for some stretches of ground. But the maps she’d requisitioned today were new, for all they were the very oldest and best-laid-out among any maps drawn anywhere.
The Old World.
Mountains, the Capallains, stretched along the border between Old Sarresant and the Thellan home country. But how high did they rise, and which passes frosted over in wintertime? She could find men and women who knew the answers, but she needed to know them. She needed to know the ground without thinking. She needed to know where her ships could make a landing, which shoals and narrows to avoid when planning amphibious assaults and harassment up and down the Arinelle. The continent was crisscrossed with hamlets and roads to connect them to the great cities, the legacy of older empires now maintained by modern Kings and Queens. She needed to know them by instinct, as thoroughly as she knew the command structure of her army.
Essily came in a moment later, setting a tray atop a cabinet. He must have already had the kettle over a fire.
“Aide-Captain,” she said before he could go. “Share your thoughts, if you would.”
“Sir?” Essily said.
“What would you say if I told you our enemy was using the Thellan campaign as a distraction—that he meant to ensnare us in a quagmire in the south, while his real aim was to consolidate power in the Old World?”
“Sir, I don’t know enough to make a decision. If you say that’s his aim, then I trust your judgment.”
“And would you still trust my judgment if I said I’d been meeting with the prisoner Voren? That he’s from a nation on the far side of the world, one that will have the capacity to invade us soon?”
“Is … is that true, sir?” Essily asked.
“I believe it is,” she said. “Gods damn us, I believe it is. Our enemy—the man behind the golden light—is gathering strength to face this threat, and he’s made clear to me he means to see us destroyed as part of his ascension. If we don’t stop him, we face ruin—whether from him or from Voren’s people, when they arrive.”
It sounded hollow as she said it, too much to be borne from anyone trusted with command. But such had been her talks with Fei Zan. He’d painted a portrait of an Empire waiting for greatness, a hundred cities each the size of New Sarresant or greater, with endless ranks of soldiers and foreign magics at their head. And Need—Need was the crux of everything. She’d already lost it once; Voren was certain that if Paendurion was allowed to finish his conquests unchecked, she would lose it again, this time without hope of recovery.
“What would it take to stop him?” Essily asked. “You said … the Old World …?”
“That’s right. I’ve known something was wrong about the enemy commander since the height of the Gand campaign. And now I know what it is. But stopping him means boarding all the ships Louis-Sallet de l’Arraignon brought with him across the sea. It means sending the better part of our armies to the battlefields of Old Sarresant, to make a stand there and reinforce the Dauphin. A Thellan campaign in truth, across the peaks of the Capallains, and another across the straits, if Paendurion still holds sway with the Gandsmen. Maybe one to the bloody east, if the Skovan have capitulated.”
“Sir, if you mean to conquer the world, I can think of no one better suited to the task.”
She almost laughed before she realized Essily hadn’t meant it for a joke. Her aide stood straight, his back stiff, only a raised fist shy of saluting her as though she were a living flag.
“You’d obey such an order?” she asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Two words, said crisply, but they struck her with the force of a pistol. Essily was her aide; if she found his loyalty in doubt, it would be dire indeed for her prospects with the rest of the army. But she needed more.
“Why, Captain?” she asked.
This time it was Essily’s turn to be taken aback, though he recovered quickly.
“Sir, you’re our commander,” Essily said. “I’ve watched you root out the old officers—the ones put there by blood instead of merit. You’ve made us into the army I had always dreamed we could be. You’ve kept us safe, and defeated our enemies. I would die for you, sir, and obey any order you gave, as would any man or woman that wears this uniform.”
“Thank you, Aide-Captain,” she said. He bowed this time, serving her a saucer with a steaming cup atop it.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “Will there be anything else?”
“No,” she said, returning her attention to the maps. “Only, see Tuyard, Lerand, and Casanne in as soon as they arrive.”
A small, vain part of her had hoped for a mirror of Essily’s reaction when she repeated her plan to Tuyard, Lerand, and Casanne. Instead she was met with silence, thick enough to cut with the saber she hadn’t yet given up wearing at her side.
Tuyard sat apart from the other two, lounging against a cushioned chaise with his boots up for most of her speech, then sitting forward, his eyes as wide as the gold buttons on his deep blue coat. Lerand wore plainer fare, and looked between his fellows with increasingly nervous glances, as though wanting to weigh their reactions before offering anything on his own. Casanne wore a white version of the priests’ brown robes, with sleeves pushed back to expose the blue flower tattoos over her binder’s marks and a hood lowered to reveal a leathered face that gave no other sign of advancing age.
“Well.” Tuyard was the first to speak. “I’d had word tonight’s invitation was extended to my fellows, here. But I can’t say as I expected this.”
Casanne sat rigid on the couch, as straight as she would have been in a wood-backed chair. “Have you confirmed any of this information,” the First Prelate said in slow, precise words, “beyond the prisoner’s account?”
“Yes,” Erris said. “From the mouth of our enemy himself. Paendurion. I’ve met him, twice, through exchanges between our vessels. He used the same terms Fei Zan did: ascension, a promise to destroy us, and me in particular.”
“Forgive me, High Commander,” Casanne said. “But a promise to destroy one’s enemies is hardly a great reveal, especially in wartime.”
“It was the words he used,” Erris said. “His manner, his skill. He’s no man of this age, for all he knows our armies and tactics.”
Casanne pursed her lips, drawing in the wrinkled lines of her face. “Hubris, High Commander, to assume divine intervention when one’s own flaws suffice to explain one’s shortcomings.”
“Who else have you consulted for this?” Tuyard said.
The accusatory tone beneath Tuyard’s words rang louder than perhaps he intended. Still he said it with a renewed air of relaxation, reclining once more in his seat.
“Voren,” she said. “Colonel Marquand. Omera, Voren’s former servant.”
“That’s all? None of the tribesfolk you invited onto our lands?”
She frowned. “No—other than the colonel and Omera, you’re the first three I’ve discussed this with.”
“So you know nothing of the company that entered the city this morning?” Tuyard asked. “Twoscore of these tribesfolk, here on o
ur doorstep? That would make you remarkably ill informed, for a cavalry officer.”
His words stung, though they drew fire rather than blood.
“I command the entirety of our military, High Admiral,” she said. “I am not a cavalry officer.”
The First Prelate rose to her feet.
“High Commander,” Casanne said. “I ask your leave, and for time to consider what you’ve set before us. May we reconvene in the morning?”
Tuyard joined her in rising, as did Lerand, who still had yet to say a word.
She looked between the three of them, now arrayed around her desk in something all too close to a tribunal.
“You understand this matter requires the utmost secrecy,” she said. “None but your closest aides can know.”
“Of course, High Commander,” the First Prelate said. Assemblyman Lerand mumbled something, and both turned to go as though she’d dismissed them. Tuyard followed at their heels, leaving her feeling slapped and stunned where she sat.
Disaster.
Marquand had warned her, and she’d stumbled into the trap, never mind that it was of her own making. No chance any of them kept the revelation quiet; rumors would be flying through every district in the city, and well on their way southward before sunrise.
Her door banged open, and High Admiral Tuyard returned, striding through at twice the pace he’d set for their departure.
“A bold move, High Commander,” Tuyard said. “I assume you have squads of city watch waiting to take Lerand and Casanne before they leave the grounds. But you’ve made an error. Whatever you have planned for me, I assure you, you’ve misjudged my loyalty. Allow me the opportunity, and I will prove as faithful as any man in your service.”
“High Admiral,” she said. “You hardly seemed convinced before, and now—?”
“Please, d’Arrent,” Tuyard said. “I know it seemed as though I was Voren’s man. However you disposed of him, you must give me a chance.”
The plea hung between them. The boldness in Tuyard’s eyes faded as she remained quiet, first to desperation, and then surprise.
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