“Call me an ass, Jer, but I didn’t know your sympathies lay with us.” He glanced at me, worried.
“I wrote enough letters,” he said. “When I didn’t get any in return, I figured something was happening to prevent them getting to you, or your responses getting to me.”
“Never got a single letter,” Theodor confirmed.
“And then Greg overheard our geography professor talking to our mathematics tutor about our early graduation—we didn’t intend to graduate early. Father was going to put us in for commission to take charge of units on the eastern border.”
“Putting you out of harm’s way,” Theodor said. “Which makes some sense, Jer, don’t fault him too much for—”
“Could give us the choice! Over half our class is talking about refusing commission. There’s been meetings, we share the pamphlets—is that Kristos Balstrade?” he asked suddenly, hushed, pointing.
This time I did laugh as Kristos flushed and gave the king’s son half a wave. Kristos, a celebrity among schoolboys—it wasn’t so absurd, rationally, that the predominant writer of the Red Cap movement and then of the Reformist army would be widely known, but he was my brother, not some folk hero.
Except, I allowed, he was.
“Refusing commission would be a grave choice,” Theodor said.
“They can’t make us sit through political theory and ethics and philosophy courses and then ask us to ignore everything we learned in favor of perpetuating an unjust war,” Jeremy retorted, as though giving a recitation on a thesis in one of his classes.
“I could have written that,” Kristos said with a lopsided grin. “And you’re right. When can we expect this crop of cadets to arrive?”
“That’s just the thing. They won’t let us leave. Rock’s Ford is practically locked down, a base of operations in the south. We’re on house arrest at the school, for all intents and purposes.”
“I don’t want to know how you got out,” Theodor said, holding up a hand. “If I ever end up in the same room with Mother, I don’t want any complicity in whatever cockamamie scheme you and Gregory came up with—you did pull this off together, I assume.”
Jeremy just grinned, but his smile quickly faded. “There are troops mustering in Rock’s Ford now. They’re ready to move south and, as they say, end this thing. Before winter.”
Theodor sobered. “Very well. You and Sianh and Kristos and I are going to sit down and go over everything—everything—you know about the Royalist army in Rock’s Ford. And then we make plans to move north and take Rock’s Ford before they can move south on us.”
29
SIANH TRACED THE ROUTE ON A SPLOTCHED AND SCARRED MAP. Ink stained his calloused fingertips, and he smudged a bit near Rock’s Ford on the map, where his index finger came to rest. The officers of all the Reformist regiments listened, intent on our next plans. Which of them would march north, which would stay here. Where we would move next. What we would do if we failed.
“They’ve left themselves open here, from this southwesterly direction.” Sianh’s thumb and little finger straddled the map to indicate two points on either side of Rock’s Ford.
“Left themselves open?” Kristos asked, brow tightening.
“I should clarify. They’ve not left themselves open. There is a weak point we can probably exploit. If young master Jeremy is correct.”
“Young master Jeremy had better never hear you call him that,” Theodor joked. “How are we going to move past the fortifications at Falcon’s Crest—here?”
“It is my estimation that a small force holds Falcon’s Crest given the most recent reports.” I backed away from the map as Sianh began to lay specific plans, troop numbers, ration arrangements, marching orders. The officers waited to hear more details. My breath shook; after months of preparation—flying, hurried, uncertain preparation—we were finally at the brink of action.
“We will move overland by that route,” Sianh concluded. “Meanwhile, Annette will continue with the plans we already made to intercept and capture Royalist ships. We will rendezvous near the mouth of the Rock River to claim what supplies she may have earned us.”
“My thought exactly,” Annette agreed.
“And—quite sorry for your luck, Kristos, but in your case, you will have to prepare for staying put and holding Hazelwhite.” Sianh inclined his head with an apologetic nod.
Kristos grinned. “At least I won’t be all alone—Sophie’s staying, right?”
I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I followed Annette’s fingers tracing the map, and met her eyes. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I might be of some use on board ship.”
“A word,” Theodor said through terse lips, “privately?” I acquiesced, sharing a conspiratorial smile with Annette as I left the kitchen.
“Absolutely not,” Theodor said when we reached our small bedchamber. I opened the window. The last of the summer’s marjoram and rosemary scented the air, punctuating odors of moldering straw and woodsmoke.
“They can probably hear us if you insist on talking that loudly,” I said, nonchalant. “In case you wanted any actual privacy.”
He glowered at me but lowered his voice. “What are you thinking? If I could stop Annette from taking this kind of risk I would, but given that she’s the only thing we’ve got going for a naval commandant, I suppose I can’t.”
“You suppose?” I arched an eyebrow. “She’s not dainty Princess Annette any longer. Like it or not, she never really was dainty Princess Annette—that clever, strong woman has been there all along. For that, she ought to have your gratitude.”
“Fine, my little cousin is now fighting in the topsails. I can almost wrap my head around it.” He sighed. “But, Sophie, the risks of sending you, too?”
“The risks? I’m well aware of the risks. I’m aware of the risks of losing this war, too.”
“And you think your presence on one ship is going to change the course of the war?”
I bristled. “No, I don’t. But it might help, just a little. It might mean the difference between taking supplies and missing a chance. It might mean the difference between escaping with a bit of damage and being sunk. It might mean the difference between one small victory and part of a great loss.”
“But we’ll need you moving northward.” There was pleading in Theodor’s voice, a lost boy in a man’s body.
“We’ll rejoin you before you try to take Rock’s Ford,” I said. “But in skirmishes, in forays before that—I’d be in the way very quickly and quite useless, to boot.”
“What about the wounded?” Theodor asked. “You’ve been able to help them. There will be more, you know.”
“I’m well aware,” I said, more sharply than I had intended. The suffering in Hamish’s surgery—I didn’t want to think of it repeated, multiplied. “I’ll charm more supplies. If I can’t be in two places at once, that’s the next best thing.”
“Damn it, Sophie!” Below us, chairs scraped the stone floor as officers rose to leave. Indistinct conversations drifted up the stairs. Theodor lowered his voice. “I don’t want logic right now. I want to find some way to protect you—and Annette, and everyone else.”
“You can’t!” I drew closer to him, trying to be gentle but fighting an overwhelming urge to shove him. “It’s as though you still think that’s your job, your duty as a noble, to protect all of us somehow. It’s not any longer.”
He steadied himself with a long inhale. “Even if it isn’t my duty as a noble, I would do anything I could to keep you from harm. To keep any of my family, any of my friends, from harm.”
“I know.” I reached for his hand, but he didn’t want to give it.
“But I can’t anymore. I don’t just mean this war—I mean after. Everything I relied on to help those I loved—it’s probably going to be gone, isn’t it? Nobility, if it survives, won’t mean what it did before. I can’t rely on the clout of my name.”
“No,” I said, measuring my words carefully, “it isn’t the sam
e. We’ll all have to adapt.” I slid in front of him, forcing him to meet my eyes. “This is adapting.”
“It hurts,” he said with a humorless smile. “This adapting business, it means watching you risk yourself for me. And I don’t like that.”
“No one says you have to like it.” I slumped, leaning against him. “But I think this is just the beginning of what’s going to change.”
“You’re most certainly right.” He reached out tentatively and stroked my hair. I didn’t like this feeling of distance between us, more painful in a way than when the ocean had separated us weeks before.
“Not everything will change.” I pulled his hands closer, around me, asking him, begging him to envelop me.
“You’ll still love me, even if I’m a landless, titleless nobody?”
I pulled back, shocked. “You loved me even though I’m a common seamstress and always have been.”
“Yes, but—I was someone else, before. I was First Duke of Westland.”
“And that almost stopped me from even speaking with you.” I shook my head. “I was never interested in your title or your money.”
“It’s gone now, anyway. Or will be.”
“Rock’s Ford.” It dawned on me, slowly, what was at the root of Theodor’s sudden insecurity. “Marching on Rock’s Ford doesn’t mean only a pitched battle against the Royalists. It means going home.”
Theodor averted his eyes and stared at the bright blue sky outside the open window. “It hasn’t been home since I was a child. I spent more time in Galitha City than Rock’s Ford for years.”
“And yet.” I waited.
“And yet it makes it all real, somehow.” He turned toward me. “This is my family,” he said, voice breaking. “This is my father. We’re both willing to turn our home into a battlefield over this. I have to give the order to fire on the house I grew up in, if need be. I have to give the order to fire on my cousins, my neighbors, my father.” His voice caught on the words and he let his head sink slowly into his hands.
“You’re a very brave person to sacrifice all of that for what you believe in.”
“That isn’t how I’ll be remembered if we lose. That isn’t how my father and most of my family see me now. I’m a traitor and a monster. I’m a stain on my noble name and an embarrassment to my title.”
“You are no such thing, and you never have been. Do I have to tell you why I was interested in you to begin with?” I asked, voice low and thick with memory. “It was your inquisitiveness, your gentleness, your humor. Your passion. The fact that you could talk about Kvys lichen for hours, that you were earnestly entranced by the process of Equatorial nut germination.” This drew a smile out of him. “It had nothing to do with names and titles, that’s for damn sure. Frankly, all the money, the formality, the excess—that part always made me uncomfortable.”
“You like this better?” Theodor gestured around our spare, damp room. As if to prove a point, a gust of wind rattled the bubbly panes of glass in the drafty windows.
“In a way. Here, we’re—well, we’re as close as we’ve ever been to equals. And we’re working together, as peers. And we’re—well, we might be risking an untimely death, but I can see my future with you more clearly than ever before.”
Theodor looked up, pain creasing the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know what I see when I look beyond tomorrow, beyond the next battle. I don’t know who I’m going to be anymore. I need to know.” He gripped my hands tightly in his. “What do you see?”
“In terms of titles and politics?” I leaned against him again. “I have no idea. But I see us standing together, our hands dirty with work, whether it’s farming a field or planting rose balsam in the greenhouse. I see us laughing with our friends over dinner, whether it’s in a cottage like this or a grand hall. I see us—” My breath caught, but I realized with a start that I meant it as I continued, “I see us raising children.”
“That is a beautiful future,” he murmured. I thought I saw the soft glint of tears in his eyes, but I wasn’t sure as he pulled me closer. “I can understand why you’d risk everything for it. I would, too.”
He buried his hands in my hair and drew me into the warmth of a deep kiss. I succumbed to the quiet comfort of his embrace, pulling his weight onto me, marveling at the thickening sinews of his arms, the roughness that a day without a shave had brought to his face. So much had changed, but we were changing together so that it was familiar, comfortable.
I drew my legs onto our bed, raising a haze of dust from the moldering straw, and the last of the day’s sunlight pierced it, radiating through the motes in a cloud of sparkle. Like a charm, I thought as Theodor’s kisses intensified and his lips pressed my neck, my collarbone, the half-ticklish spot beneath my ear. I raised my body toward his, the invitation he had waited for. The dust motes swirled around us like golden magic.
30
“ISN’T SHE GRAND?” ANNETTE TWIRLED LIKE A GIRL IN A BALLGOWN as her flagship sailed from the safety of Hazelwhite harbor. “She’s the prettiest of the ships.”
“You chose your flagship for looks alone?” I laughed.
“Hardly!” Annette ran a hand over the weathered wood of the railing. “She’s the swiftest, too, because she’s so pretty.” She saw my confusion. “She’s built well. Her lines are just perfection. And she cuts through the water like a porpoise.” She grinned. “But she’s also lovely to look at. That’s why I rechristened her the Nightingale.”
“What now?”
“Why, we patrol,” Annette said with an impish smile.
Annette’s plan was simple enough—in groups of three ships, our small navy sailed in separate directions, each assigned to a grid on the map. Each pod of porpoises, as Annette dubbed them, would be judicious in which ships they would approach, and were charged to outrun or evade any they thought themselves incapable of taking successfully, with minimal damage.
And minimal damage was what we needed—not only to our own ships, but to the prizes we captured. If we could take even a few large Galatine vessels, our firepower at sea would increase substantially, and we had a far better chance at pinioning the Royalist navy into the Galitha City harbor when we took the city.
On our fourth morning at sea, Annette called me to the deck. She pointed to a smudge of gray on the horizon.
“I want her,” Annette said, handing me the spyglass. “She’s a perfect little man-o’-war.”
“I will never get used to the gender of naval terms,” I said, peering at the ship through the spyglass. The Royalist man-o’-war was larger than any of the individual ships in our pod, but like a pack of wolves approaching prey, we could work in tandem to take her.
“And what do you need?” Annette snapped the spyglass shut.
“A place out of the way.” I wasn’t quite sure what, exactly, I would do once we engaged. The tactic I had discovered by accident on the Fenian ship might not be the best one to employ here—a chain reaction that ended with sinking our prize wasn’t what we hoped for.
“Then find it. Once we begin moving, we move quickly.” The refined princess was still apparent in the crispness of her movements, the precision of her commands, and her unflinching authority. But she was a confident captain, and watching her transform from my friend Annette to a formidable commander was nothing short of awe inspiring.
I hauled myself onto a raised part of the deck. At the stern, our signalman relayed Annette’s orders to the other two ships in our pod. The Nightingale moved ahead in position, sails unfurled and straining in the wind. Annette was right—the ship did slice through the waves like a sleek little porpoise.
The next few minutes were all confusion for me, though Annette shouted orders in a clear, calm voice and the sailors on board carried them out swiftly. We seemed to close the distance between the Royalist ship and ours in the space of a few breaths, though I knew it took longer.
The Nightingale was already charmed, burgeoning with protection spells, as were the others in our pod, whic
h left one clear avenue I could pursue—cursing the Royalist ship. I scanned her, not knowing how to spot inherent weaknesses in a particular ship despite Annette’s tutelage. But I knew one weakness Annette would surely exploit, and that I could weaken further—the rigging and sails. Without maneuverability, the ship couldn’t turn and outrun us.
I began threading dark magic out of the ether, weaving it into a messy net of black fibers visible only to me. We were close enough, I thought, to try to cast the curse onto the ship’s sails. I forced the net toward the ship, and it stayed under my control as it slipped over the waves, as though borne on the same wind that filled our sails. My breath hitched in excitement—the black net hovered over the Royalist ship, farther away than any charm or curse I had managed to maintain.
I was getting better, I thought grimly as I pressed the curse into the canvas and ropes. I pulled more dark glinting curse and strengthened the spell, working rapidly as we closed the distance. It grew easier to manipulate the magic as we grew closer to the ship, but I knew that also meant my time was almost up.
As if on cue, the Nightingale’s guns opened on the Royalist ship, the reports echoing across the water as the first shots tore through the rigging. I blinked—either the gunner’s calculations were impeccable, or the dark sparkle in the Royalist rigging had drawn the chain shot from our guns the same way the big magnet I kept on the worktable in my shop pulled at pins.
That damage done, I scanned the ship for my next move. Her gunports were still closed—I had a mad idea, and threw dark layers of curse across the ports themselves, gritting my teeth as I forced them into the wood. I didn’t dare curse the guns themselves—not like I had while on board the Fenian ship—but what if a good number of cannons couldn’t be employed because the ports wouldn’t open?
Moments later, the Royalist ship’s cannons showed their charcoal-dark maws. A few ports jammed, but I was swiftly reminded that my abilities weren’t storybook magic. I couldn’t close a door with a wink of my eye and a magic word. What next? I pulled more curse magic into a loosely woven mat. The nearness and sheer quantity of it was beginning to foul my mouth with bile and tease a headache at my temples, like it had long months before, working in curse magic for the first time. I forced myself to continue.
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