She nodded, feeling a rush of uncertainty. Had she overstepped?
“Incredible. Best not let the lords-general catch wind of this, or you’ll find yourself pressed into the service before you can blink.” He laughed, as if he’d meant it for a joke.
She froze, left behind for a few steps before he turned back with a frown.
“Sarine …?”
A lifetime of hiding her gifts welled up in her belly, threatening to leave her retching on the side of the path.
At once concern shone on his face. “I misspoke,” he said. “You are safe here—no one is going to force you into the army or anywhere else. Your talents are your own.” He reached out a hand for hers, an earnest look in his eyes.
“Planning to introduce us to your secret companion, Lord Revellion?” an airy voice said from behind.
They turned together to find three women, each dressed in the mirror opposite of her simple fare: wide trains of silk in bright colors, golds and reds and blues. Young women all, each of them several years her junior, but with the countenance of noble-born ladies through and through. The two ladies flanking the one in the center she did not recognize, but their leader she knew the same way she had known Lord Revellion, through sketches from afar. Anne-Laure Cherrain, daughter of the Duc-Governor.
“Anne-Laure,” Revellion said with an air of formality as he stepped back, offering a bow.
She realized a moment too late that a similar gesture would be expected of her, and made a curtsy that was met by a sniff from the Duc’s daughter.
“A binder,” one of the others whispered, loud enough for all to hear. “She’s got binder’s marques.”
“So she does,” Lady Cherrain said, lips pursed as she looked her over, up and down. Only then did she notice Lady Cherrain too bore the King’s sigil tattooed on the backs of her hands, the same blue-and-gold pattern of three flowers entwined that had been inked into her own skin.
“She is my guest, my lady,” Revellion said, caution in his tone.
“She is my guest, Donatien. Or do I need remind you whose family resides in the palace?” Lady Cherrain walked a few paces around where Lord Revellion stood beside her on the path, weighing them both. “My father’s seneschal passed word that your estate had withdrawn a considerable sum a fortnight past. Passing strange with your father away in the southern colonies, I thought.”
Revellion frowned. “Records of the King’s writ are—”
Lady Cherrain waved a tattooed hand dismissively. “Yes, yes. The priests did not betray your trust. But in these times a wise governor keeps an ear out for signs of the unusual. Never let it be said my father’s daughter does not follow in his footsteps.”
A cold look passed between them, the young noblewomen hanging at Lady Cherrain’s side seeming to drip with excitement at the promise of somewhat more.
“Well,” Lady Cherrain said, “let us be on our way, ladies. A pleasure to have met you, Madame Sarine.”
She made another belated curtsy as the noblewomen strode away into the garden. Lord Revellion only stared after them with a stoic look that failed to hide the sparks kindling behind his eyes.
“She was lovely,” Sarine offered after Lady Cherrain’s retinue was well out of earshot, making her voice sweet as a sugared plum.
“Courtly intrigue,” Revellion said. “Never mind that we’re at war and half the city is starving or near enough to the brink.” He gestured toward Lady Cherrain’s back. “Oh no, it is of vital importance that we posture and pretend at knowing each other’s secrets.”
“As well ask a sailor not to curse or a baker not to sample his own wares,” she said, watching the Duc’s daughter sashay down the garden path.
He raised an eyebrow appreciatively. “You’ve read Morain?”
Who? “No. I meant only that—”
“A thing’s essential nature,” Revellion said. “Part of the Ethics. ‘As well ask the sun not to set, the players not to dance upon the stage.’”
“I meant the opposite, actually. That she’s learned to play a part, so that’s what she does. I expect nobles will be hosting fêtes and playing parlor games while the city burns around them.”
A moment passed before she realized how frankly she’d spoken. “Beg your pardon, my lord, of course.”
“No,” he said. “No, that’s precisely it. You shouldn’t have to apologize for speaking the truth. I find your company refreshing. All my life I’ve been raised to do just as you said: host fêtes and play parlor games. With you I can speak freely. Never ask my pardon for a thing.”
“You surprise me, my lord. I never imagined I would hear these sorts of thoughts from the star courtier of Rasailles.”
“Perhaps more of us will surprise you. Call it your first sight of the true face of Sarresant nobility.”
She shook her head, ignoring the irony in his remark. “Not exactly my first,” she said, rubbing her hands together, feeling the scars.
Revellion frowned. “Oh, Sarine, you must think me an ass.”
“My lord?”
“I only now remembered your last visit to Rasailles ended with you clapped in irons. I should have thought it might upset you, that it might—”
“You’re not an ass, my lord,” she interrupted. “Only a nobleman.”
He gave her a pained look.
She reached out and took his hand, offering him a warm smile, letting him lead onward along the pathway through the gardens.
24
ERRIS
1st Division Command Tent
Southern Sarresant Territory
Foot-Captain Marquand grimaced. Whether from the fruitlessness of their exertions or an afternoon of enforced sobriety, it was difficult to tell.
“Try again,” he said, furrowing his brow in concentration.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, knowing it was wrong. This was never the way her visions had come. But she’d identified a new type of energy, a binding that felt like Need, or perhaps Hope, and she had to try something.
Beneath the camp she saw the familiar network of leylines, a crosshatch of energy pulsing with colors and forms. Three she recognized: the green pods of Life, the red motes of Body, and the inky clouds of Death. All the others were gray haze, indiscernible from one another and useless if she tried to bind them. There were six known leyline energies: Body, Shelter, Life, Death, Mind, and Entropy. The last two had been discovered in her lifetime, and if she was right, the golden light might be the latest in a chain of discoveries, extending back to the first days of empire, when their people and the peoples of the other great powers had expanded their claims, seeking new sources of power across the seas.
Marquand had reacted with skepticism when she confided to him her discovery of what appeared to be a new leyline energy. Rightly so. Discovering new bindings was a thing done by scholars in academies, not soldiers in the field. Yet here they were, and besides herself Marquand was perhaps the most skilled binder in the army, for all he was equal parts scoundrel and drunkard. Straightaway they’d set to test her discovery, trying every exercise they could recall from their academy days. So far, nothing.
She shook her head, opening her eyes. “It isn’t like the others. Body, Life, Death. I recognize them. I can find them and see the pattern. This is different.”
Marquand grunted. “I’m ‘hoping’ as hard as I can here. You’re sure it seemed to center on the recipient of the effect, and not the leyline itself?”
“Yes. Both times so far it’s been like I tethered the essence straight from the source, not through a leyline. There was no pooling of energy to tap into.”
“Hm.”
They remained quiet, each heavy in thought.
“What are you hoping for?” she asked. “Maybe the object of the emotion is significant.”
“Um …”
“Marquand, if you are hoping for wine, I swear by the Exarch I will drown you in it when we’re through.”
He harrumphed. “Try again then.�
��
“You are an incurable bastard, Foot-Captain,” she said, repressing a laugh. “Try something I might care about. Both times it happened the need was something significant.”
“All right, all right. Go,” he said.
“What is it, then? What are you thinking of?”
“Try without my telling you first; maybe knowing clouds the waters.”
She nodded, and closed her eyes once more. She knew it was here somewhere, the golden light she had embraced before stepping behind the eyes of the late Vicomte-General Carailles, and the unknown soldier of Fantain’s Cross. It was all but unheard-of for a binder to learn a new type of leyline energy beyond the first few months of training. But evidently that was what had happened to her. Except they’d been at this for hours, with nothing—
Wait.
Beneath Marquand there was no new energy pooling, no swirling shapes she could suddenly decipher. That hadn’t changed. But there was a single leyline that seemed to branch from the interconnected grid. Keeping focused, she traced the line upward, following its coils until she found a thin fleck of gold.
Heart racing, she tethered it. And her vision shifted.
Instead of watching Marquand’s red face squinting in concentration, she saw herself standing in front of the table she used as a desk facing the tent’s rear wall. Her stomach roiled and her head spun. It was as though she’d fallen through a mirror. She raised an arm, and Marquand’s thickly muscled frame responded. She made a few sweeping gestures, then ran her fingers along the scruff of Marquand’s unshaven stubble. Goodness, but it itched. And there she stood, seemingly in a daze, her eyes staring straight through Marquand. From the foot-captain’s vantage, her own body seemed so small. She’d never been reckoned a tall woman, or even average height, but it was another thing to see it for herself.
As quickly as the shift had come, her vision snapped back as the reserve ran dry. Once more her senses returned to her body, and Marquand seemed to come to, his face pale, eyes wide.
“It worked. By the Gods, Marquand, it worked.”
“Yes,” he said, coughing. “Nameless take me if I ever let you do that to me again.”
“That bad?”
“I could feel you rattling around in my head. Like a bloody bad dream, and I couldn’t force myself awake.”
“Tell me everything.”
He went on at some length as they tried to piece it all together. There wasn’t much more to it. He’d thought of victory over the Gandsmen and an end to the war, and between one eyeblink and the next she was looking through his eyes, waving his hands about of her accord. Just as quick he’d regained control. Whatever had passed between them, he hadn’t harbored enough Hope to maintain the connection, or perhaps Need wasn’t as strong as it had been when she’d used the light before.
When they’d exhausted his account, he requested leave to fetch a strong drink. She allowed it. Tethering bindings was draining under the best of conditions, and the fitful start and stop of her testing was far from that. She remained behind in the command tent, allowing her aides to deliver the reports they’d held while she and the foot-captain worked, all the less urgent communiqués that nonetheless required her attention. It was enough to make her envy the other binders in the army. Few enough binders were allowed to be promoted above the front lines, effective as they were in combat. Marquis-General Voren had judged her more dangerous to the enemy wielding a general’s knot than a saber. She had every confidence he’d be proven right.
As to their testing with the Need binding, her mind raced with the thrill of success and the possibilities it implied. The effect was nothing short of incredible. The scouting possibilities alone, to say nothing of instantaneous transmission of communication … or commands. She could place herself in direct control of an engagement, guiding each unit of her division, seeing from multiple vantage points as a battle unfolded. It was an insurmountable advantage, provided she could arrange enough Need or Hope to power it. She still wasn’t clear which force was responsible, but in time she would work it out. Say what Marquand would about refusing to repeat this afternoon’s work, he’d do it. Without doubt he saw the potential in their discovery, and he mirrored her excitement, even if he chose to show it by getting fall-down drunk when he was supposed to be on duty.
A rap sounded on the post outside the entrance to her tent.
“Come,” she called.
Aide-Lieutenant Sadrelle stepped through and saluted, wearing a grim expression in place of his usual knowing grin. “Sir. Word from the Fourteenth. They’ve picked up a fresh trail and are moving in pursuit of the enemy cavalry.”
“Excellent news, Aide-Lieutenant.” That was the opening ploy. The Gandsmen dangled the cheese of the entirety of their cavalry, hoping to lure her horsemen to follow them into the open ground past the southern border. But when they caught the 14th, especially with d’Guile in command of six fullbinders, the enemy would find they’d snared a bear instead of a mouse in their little trap.
Still, Sadrelle wouldn’t be wearing such a dour expression if that were the whole of it. She waited for him to continue.
“More news, sir, from Brigade-Colonel Chellac and the Sixteenth. They reached the village of Oreste three days past, on the western flank.”
Her stomach sank. She knew before he said it.
“Sir, it’s another Fantain’s Cross.”
She breathed deep, keeping her voice steady, but cold as steel. “Pass word to Marquis-General Voren. The southern villages must be emptied. This will not happen again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And have Jiri saddled. I mean to see this for myself.”
Alone and unencumbered by the command staff of the 1st Division, she and Jiri made the trip in under a day. Under ordinary circumstances she’d never tolerate a commander riding anywhere alone, much less along the front in wartime. But for this, the Nameless could take the regulations. She’d given orders for the rest of the division to carry out her plan, to continue their march southward following on the heels of the 14th. No chance of her missing out on that engagement anyhow; on Jiri’s back, with the aid of Body they could cover five times the ground of the next-swiftest cavalryman in the army. Call this little sojourn another privilege of general officership, or, more accurately, one of its heaviest burdens. To lose soldiers on a battlefield was painful enough. But innocents butchered by the enemy tore at the deepest pits of her stomach. How had this happened? Her men had been spread out to patrol the breadth of the border. The scouts should have seen it, should have given word. But there could be no anger toward her men; she was a general now, the responsibility fell to her. It may well have been that the enemy nurtured some newfound thirst for carnage—and make no mistake, she’d see to it the Gandsmen paid the price for what they’d done—but in her gut she knew the blood was on her hands.
She passed Brigade-Colonel Chellac on the southern road leading away from the ruins of the village, his men making a quick-time march to catch up with the rest of the division before they were engaged. He briefed her on what they’d found. Oreste was a small village, a collection of farms situated close enough to the woods to make it a stopover for fur traders on their way to Villecours, or headed south toward Gand in better times. Chellac had had a notion to supplement his brigade’s stores in advance of what might be an extended campaign across the border. He’d ordered one of his regiments to divert from their westerly patrol and pay a visit to the village. But when they’d arrived they found smoke and ruin.
How long since it happened Chellac wasn’t able to guess. His men reported the ashes cold, the buildings ruined, with none of the leisure or supplies for which they’d come. Oreste was far enough away, and isolated, that it may have been some time since the grisly attack, perhaps even before Fantain’s Cross. They could tell her little else. After such a sobering encounter, Chellac was eager to make a report and move on to rejoin the remainder of the 1st Division. She could not fault them for that. But she had to kno
w.
She let them continue on their march, and rode toward the ruins of the village.
It was much as Chellac’s men reported. Timber frames charred and blackened where they hadn’t collapsed into heaps of rubble. Streaks of soot crossed the dirt, blown by the wind, and no foliage of which to speak. All ash. Jiri carried her forward; together they drank in the grisly sight. Even her mount could sense the wrongness of this place, and Jiri’s nerves were hard iron. Jiri would not flinch at being pushed to charge a fortified line of bayonets and sharpened stakes, and she’d done so more than once. But one could read the emotions of one’s mount. They both knew this place stank of evil.
When they came to the small stone chapel, doors still sealed, a knot of dread formed in her throat. Had Chellac’s men not known the details of Fantain’s Cross? Or had they simply wanted to avoid seeing it firsthand? She afforded herself no such luxury. She hadn’t brought an axe, though looking back on it perhaps she should have thought to. No matter. A fullbinder had other means of breaking through oak.
She tethered Body, as much as she could handle, enough to exhaust her in minutes. It would be enough. The oak doors were thick, heavy wood; they’d resisted the torch, but they did not resist her. Paying no mind to the damage it would cause to her saber’s edge, she hacked through the wood in a rain of Body-enhanced blows. She could find time with a whetstone later. For now she had to see.
She kicked through the wooden paneling, releasing acrid smoke kept bottled up for days, enough to sting her eyes as she forced her way through the chapel doors. Yet where she expected bodies piled and seared as they had been in Fantain’s Cross, she found only empty pews. A powerful relief washed over her, and tears came unbidden, streaking down her cheeks at being spared another horror. The sentiment lasted only a moment. There was no joy here, no reprieve from death and madness. If the Gandsmen hadn’t burned these villagers in the sanctuary of their own chapel, they’d surely brought them to some other terrible end. This village had been torched weeks ago; Chellac’s men were not wrong on that count. No chance any of the villagers had escaped this attack, or word would have reached her sooner.
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