Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  Pain throbbed through her vessel’s shattered leg. Marquand would have to carry her, and better to do it with the help of her vessel’s own adrenaline. She let the Need tether go, and felt her senses snap back to the briny air among her tents.

  The rest of them were on their feet when her senses cleared, the attachés and advisors from the Old Sarresant Army standing at attention, while Vassail, Royens, and the rest of her attendants eyed the entryway with a mix of deference and unease.

  “A use of your Need bindings, I presume?” the Dauphin said. He hovered inside the tent, flanked by purple-tabarded Aegis guards, his silks and fur-lined cloak making him look like something out of a painting, no matter that she technically outranked him.

  “Yes,” she said, resisting the urge to add an honorific. “Though I’m afraid I’ll have to leave it to others to brief you on the battle.”

  The Dauphin gave a nod of respect as she left him to his people.

  “Your Majesty,” Vassail said. “What news from Marquand?”

  “Hotly engaged, and retreating, as ordered. Twenty will make it out with Lord Tigai. The rest are dispersed among the front lines, or dead.”

  “So few left with him?” Royens said. She nodded; it wouldn’t do to question Marquand’s orders. He knew binders and their uses as well as any soldier in any army.

  “I need theories,” she said, “and speculation. The cause of the rout. What it might mean for the next weeks of this campaign. How many survivors we can expect to regroup, once they traverse the foothills.”

  “Fifteen thousand,” Vassail said. “Three divisions were well enough to the north when the fighting began. They’ll escape clean, though none are close to full strength. The rest are lost.”

  “There were forty thousand soldiers in that army, General,” she said. “You expect sixty percent casualties?”

  “You saw the disposition of the battle, Your Majesty. We should plan for a total loss of the front lines, to death or capture. Any survivors would be welcome, of course, but we must assume the worst.”

  “I concur,” Royens said. “And I propose we lay the groundwork for these divisions to be incorporated into our command structure. At the very least we need them outfitted with Need vessels before any further action.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “But first, the cause.”

  Uncomfortable looks passed between Royens and Vassail, and each glanced separately toward the opposite side of the central table.

  “Poor leadership, Your Majesty,” Royens said. “And weaker discipline. The sight of the Gandsmen having entered the war on Thellan’s side must have broken morale. An order to retreat sparked a panic.”

  His words had carried farther than he’d meant them to; that or something else had brought Gau-Michel and his retinue to a sudden pause.

  “Did I hear that aright, Marshal?” the Dauphin said from across the table.

  Royens turned to face them, but she spoke first on his behalf.

  “I’m sure you did, Your Highness,” Erris said. “I’m not in the habit of censoring my advisors’ honest assessments for fear their words might offend me.”

  Now the tent filled with silence.

  General Holliard made a half step in her direction. “Your words go further than I’m certain you intend, Your Majesty,” she said.

  “No,” the Dauphin said. “No, d’Arrent is quite right. I hadn’t yet been told of Gand’s involvement.” He said it with a glare for the attendants standing around him. “Are you quite certain the Queen has committed her soldiers to the fighting? I don’t presume to instruct you in military matters, but are you certain it is not a ruse, a trick to dress Thellan companies in Gand uniforms for precisely this effect?”

  “If it’s a ruse, it’s one that involves enough soldiers not to make a difference,” she said. “Forty thousand more soldiers is forty thousand more soldiers, no matter what sort of coats they wear.”

  “Gods,” the Dauphin said, staring down at the maps between them. “We’d been afraid of this … but my spies … Gods save us.”

  She exchanged looks with Vassail and Royens. “Perhaps a briefing is in order, Your Highness,” she said. “But for my sake. What is the political situation here?”

  “We knew the Thellan treated with the Gandsmen,” the Dauphin said. “We thought perhaps, in a season or two, if the matter was yet undecided, Gand might have regained sufficient strength to consider rejoining the fight.”

  “And it seems they’ve made their considerations ahead of schedule.”

  The Dauphin nodded.

  “Even if they have committed forty thousand,” Royens said, “the bulk will be green and raw, fresh conscripts and pressed soldiers without experience in battle. We smashed their veteran forces at New Sarresant, and we can do it again.”

  “What of the East?” she asked. “Sardia and Thellan have an alliance already. Are the Skovan princes a threat?”

  “I don’t …” the Dauphin began, then stopped himself. “They shouldn’t be,” he said instead. “The princedoms have always fought among each other. It’s possible some of them might have been swayed by Thellan promises, but the balance of power has always kept them from acting in concert.”

  “Circumstances have changed,” Erris said. “Paendurion will care nothing for what he has to promise, to bring allies to his side.”

  “Paendurion?” the Dauphin said.

  “The enemy,” she said. “The man behind their Need bindings—the golden eyes. We have to assume he’ll have offered significant concessions to the Skovan. Forty thousand Gandsmen in the south, with fifty more from Thellan. Scouts suggest eighty thousand marching with the Sardians. What would you make of the Skovan princes’ strength? Another thirty?”

  “Twice so many,” the Dauphin said. “Even conservatively.”

  The tent fell quiet for a moment as she studied the maps. They were outnumbered three to two in the south, and worse than four to three in the east. Enough to stall both fronts, but to pursue decisive victory in neither. With defensive ground, and the advantage of Lord Tigai working with Marquand’s binders, they might be able to turn one of the fights while maneuvering away from the second. Given a month to plan, she could devise enough contingencies to feel confident in their odds. As it was, she had days, weeks at best. And they needed decisive action. If what Voren had said was true, time was on Paendurion’s side. She didn’t need to hold territory; she needed to shatter his armies’ confidence in him, and in their alliance. She needed boldness.

  “Gau-Michel, will you dismiss your aides, please?” she said. “And mine—go with them. The Dauphin and I must speak privately.”

  Vassail, Royens, and the rest of her support staff turned to go at once. The Dauphin turned to his advisors first, then locked eyes with her.

  “What is this about, Your Majesty?” the Dauphin said.

  “Our mutual appetite for victory. If you please, Highness.”

  He nodded, a bare fraction, and his people obeyed, save the two Aegis guards in purple, hovering along the rear wall of the tent. He eyed her as though to ask whether she intended for them to leave as well, and to make clear he would refuse, if she asked it.

  “I suspect this will be unpleasant,” the Dauphin said when the others were gone. “But need I remind you, the terms we’ve agreed to have been more than generous, considering this began with your armed invasion of our shores.”

  “I don’t intend to renegotiate the terms of our alliance,” she said. “I intend to win this war, now. By springtime both forces will be fortified, and the campaign will turn to which side’s farms can better feed their soldiers.”

  “Yet you demand a private audience. Why?”

  “Because victory now means sacrifice.”

  He eyed her without speaking, as though she might reveal her plans on her face. And well she might. Whatever training she’d had at Voren’s and Tuyard’s hands, she was still a soldier.

  “Our only chance of breaking this enemy is focusing al
l our strength on one front,” she said. “We commit everything—every binder, every reserve, in an all-out attack. Crush them, then pivot and defeat the other force.”

  The Dauphin looked down at her maps cautiously; it was clear from his face that he hadn’t yet understood the implications of her words. “A bold plan,” he said. “I assume you’d focus on the southern front? Fewer enemies there, and after this disaster, they’ll already be moving north.”

  “No, Highness,” she said. “Your soldiers routing means poor discipline and worse supply lines in the south. And my Gandsmen from the colonies would do better if spared engagement with their Old World counterparts.”

  “But the Sardians haven’t even reached our border,” he said. “It could be weeks, with the winter snows, before their forces are deployed.”

  She nodded, waiting for him to see it on his own.

  “Oh Gods,” the Dauphin said. “You mean to leave the city undefended.”

  “It will be a blow to morale,” she said. “Leaving the enemy to march through your country, to hold your capital and reave their way through your farms. But the better part of our forces are mine, and whatever affinity they feel for Old Sarresant, their hearts are tied to the New. Paendurion will never expect us to abandon the southern front, and that might give us the edge we need to triumph in the east.”

  “Impossible,” the Dauphin said. “Out of the question. My father’s one dictum in all this has been to hold the city. Sarresant cannot fall.”

  “With respect, Highness, it can. And it must, if we are to have any hope of victory.”

  “You don’t understand. No. I cannot agree to any plan that fails to protect the city.”

  She gritted her teeth, looking up from the maps. He was a weak man, clad in silks and expectations of deference, but any threat to remove him and his father from power would be a bluff. Ten thousand, at least, to take the capital, to say nothing of the sudden reversal of any support they might have expected from the Old Sarresant soldiers already in the field.

  The Dauphin was still staring at the table, worry creasing his face. “You’re sure it’s the only way?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We shatter the Sardian army, then return to reconquer whatever the Thellans take behind our backs.”

  “Then I’ll have to make the case to my father,” he said, his voice pained, but resolute.

  “Where is she?” a voice boomed outside the tent.

  Colonel Marquand. She’d recognize his bluster anywhere. But before she could offer an apology to the Dauphin, Marquand came shoving into the tent, gripping what appeared to be a terrified young woman by the arm.

  The Dauphin’s flowerguards instantly moved to put themselves between him and Marquand, and she was a hairsbreadth from walling him off with Shelter herself, but he ignored them all, rounding on her as soon as he cleared the entryway.

  “What is the meaning of this?” she said.

  “Sir, High Comm—Empress—or, Your Bloody Fucking Majesty. I took one of them prisoner. The Lady Daphène Malmont; one of ours by birth, if you can bloody well believe it. Managed to take her after you ordered us out.”

  He all but shook the poor girl on his arm, brandishing her as though she were a weapon.

  “A prisoner,” she said. “Why are you bringing her here, to me?”

  “She’s one of them, Your Majesty,” Marquand said. “The rout had nothing to do with the soldiers’ morale. It was their work. Her work, that is, Your Majesty, her and a score others of her kind.”

  Erris refocused on the girl. An ashen-faced woman with terror in her eyes, dressed in what appeared to be a Sarresant noblewoman’s finery.

  “I don’t understand, Colonel.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. I promised I’d kill her on the spot if she tried anything here. And binders are immune to the worst of their tricks, as you’ll recall from the battle in New Sarresant.”

  Understanding dawned.

  “You mean …?”

  “Yes, sir, Your Majesty. She’s one of … whatever Reyne d’Agarre was, and the girl, Sarine. Kaas-mages. They’ve got a score or more of them, placed along the Thellan lines. That’s how they broke us. A few routed companies, and the rest broke along with them. A bloody nightmare, and a slaughter, and we’re well and fucked, unless you can figure a way to counter them.”

  72

  SARINE

  Soul of the World

  Gods’ Seat

  The energy pulsing at the center of the now-ruined chamber was quiet. She hadn’t paid especial attention before, but though it looked like a roaring fire, the room was silent, and large enough to carry the sound of every page she turned in echoes between the jagged fractures of its walls.

  The Divide, the page she was looking at said, and she recognized the illustration as an excellent likeness. Towering shadows, higher than the clouds, etched with what looked like her charcoal pens. She could have sketched it herself, with the same strokes and choices in the composition. She’d made a similar drawing not so long ago, from hills overlooking the sea. The script was foreign, but Anati translated it quickly enough she hardly noticed its strangeness. A construct to seal magicks among peoples owing homage to disciples, the caption said, for the prevention of war beyond the scope of testing strength. She thumbed through a few more passages, and found another reference: breached in times of great need, but will not fall until each disciple’s thresholds are satisfied.

  “This was hers, wasn’t it?” she said. Her words echoed through the emptiness. “She made this. The Veil.”

  It could be, Anati thought to her. Her writing is the same as yours.

  She skipped through a few more pages. By now she’d read it all, and understood less than a bare fraction. She flickered her sight to the blue sparks, and saw the outline of the strange human-shaped shadow, standing unmoving, a stone’s throw across the chamber. The journal made mention of two different sorts of creature the shadow might be: Watchers, on one page, and something called Masadi on another. The creature had come and gone all through her studying, and she’d come no closer to understanding it, or to being able to communicate, though she was sure it could read her thoughts and emotions as easily as Anati could. Another mystery, when she needed more unraveling than unanswered questions right now.

  “I’m ready, Anati,” she said. “I’ve learned everything I’m going to learn from the journal, and it hasn’t given me any better ideas.”

  Don’t. Don’t do it.

  “I need the Veil gone. I know you’re doing your best to keep her contained, but it isn’t enough.”

  There has to be another way.

  She sighed, glancing down at the sketches open on her lap. She’d spent days here, seated atop the few sections of unbroken stone, or in the library, scanning the shelves. The shadow hadn’t given her anything new since the journal. Certainly the thing had to have read her desire to learn how to excise the Veil by now. If anything new was coming, it would have come already.

  “Anati, the cords of light, when I came here—when we touched one, I could feel it cutting, as though it were trying to sever pieces of my mind. Of my memories. The Veil has to be stored there. We can use them to cut her out. If there’s another way, I’m open to trying anything. But this is the best thing I can think of. Help me, if you think it’s wrong.”

  Anati appeared, her four limbs balanced delicately atop a jagged stretch of stone cut into the floor. She seemed to be in mid-stride, lifting each foot carefully before she set it down atop another point.

  “Anati?” she said. “What else is there? Have you still gotten nothing from Zi?”

  My father thinks I am strong enough to do it, Anati thought, making slow progress across the ruined stone.

  Sarine rose to her feet. “What do you mean? He agrees with my plan?”

  Anati stopped suddenly, turning up to look at her. Her eyes were blue, glinting like sapphires, her scales flushed turquoise.

  I like you, Anati thought. I don’t want you to di
e, if I’m too weak.

  “The cords can kill me,” she said, though that seemed clear enough, from having touched one. “It’s your White that protects me, isn’t it?”

  Anati bobbed her head up and down.

  “You’re strong enough,” she said. “I agree with Zi. Anati, you can do this.”

  I am new, Anati thought, at the same time she resumed her slow crawl across the jagged stone.

  “But you know what you would need to do. Protect me, and let the light cut the Veil away. Do you think it can work?”

  I am too new. You need my father. Or one of my brothers. Xeraxet.

  She paused, watching Anati’s careful steps from point to point along the floor. She vaguely remembered what had happened after Zi had died, when the Veil took her to a world of shapes drawn by thousands of points of light. Anati had come forward, and they’d made a bond. If a new bond could be made—if Zi himself could come back to her … but no. Anati was hers. They’d crossed half the world together. If Anati was new, well, so was she. The weight of the world rested on her shoulders, and she still had no more than Zi’s belief that she could handle it. Zi believed in her; he believed in Anati, too. It had to be enough.

  “You can do this,” she said. “I trust you.”

  Anati stopped again, looking up at her from the floor.

  Why are your kind so reckless? Anati thought.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But I need the Veil gone before any more champions ascend.” She glanced around the room, now a charred hulk of ruined stone. “See what she did, even fighting to take control? I can’t risk doing it again, not with her still nestled in my head. That means I need your help. Will you do it?”

  Anati sprang back the way she’d come, skittering across the points at full speed, rushing toward her leg and coiling around her ankle in a double loop.

  Thank you, Anati thought. I will try not to let you die.

  The Veil’s emotions surged in her, a rush of hate that threatened to spoil the warmth emanating from Anati’s touch. She fought it down.

  “I’ll tell the others,” she said.

  Navigating the ruin of the central chamber went quicker, now that she’d spent days walking the crevasses and molten channels cut through the stone. She wasn’t sure why the light at the center drew her when she read the journal, but there was a familiarity there, a connection that evoked knowledge she felt sure she’d need to have. If Axerian had told it true, the power at the center of the chamber was enough to reshape the world itself. Having touched it to bond Yuli, she could well believe it, and it would be hers to use, when the time was right. A terrifying thought, and all the more so for her ignorance. But this was the first step in learning.