Rule

by Rowenna Miller

  I laid the mat of magic on the side of the Royalist ship, holding it firm against the resistant wood. Not below the surface—I wanted any shots to wreak havoc on the decks and, I admitted, wound sailors and marines, not sink the ship with shots below the waterline. The ship had a sea osprey carved into her bow—I wondered, briefly, if that was her name. The Nightingale against a fearsome raptor—I didn’t like those odds. I would have to weigh them in our favor. I pressed the magic against the sea-hardened oak of the ship’s hull. The oak fought back like a living thing, stubborn and strong.

  Even when I had time at my disposal instead of the life and death unfolding before me, working curses into wood was difficult. I pressed on the upper part of the hull again, feeling its strength rebelling against me, and revised my tactic. I sensed, beneath the magic, the grain of the wood, straight and true but stable. I didn’t understand wood as I did fabric; that was my trouble. But as I felt it, sensed it, I discovered something—that though it lacked the openness of fabric’s weave, it had a set pattern within the grain. It wasn’t as easy as burrowing a charm into sailcloth, but sliding the curse into the grain of the wood worked better than pressing it.

  I slid lines of dark curse into the grain of the hull, haphazard and resolutely unscientific. As I pulled back and looked at my work, it looked very much like the time Kristos had spilled ink on our kitchen table, the black winnowing its way into each point of weakness in the grain, spreading in unpredictable veins. Now all I could do was hope that the curse magic in the hull would draw the shot as deftly as the rigging had.

  Almost without warning, we turned like a dancer in a reel and loosed a broadside on our foe. Annette had them aiming high, as I had assumed, for damage and death, not for breaching the hull and sinking her. The shots raked across the deck, and I turned away as I saw the wreckage wrought in an instant, a tangle of shattered wood and foot-long splinters and flesh and blood.

  Within moments, it seemed, Annette was ordering the boarding party to ready, and the other two ships in our pod flanked the Royalist vessel. She had pennants of surrender out before the boarding party could even assemble on her decks, and I thought I saw a bit of disappointment in the faces of some of our newest marine recruits, though the older men were visibly relieved.

  One older tar leaned against my platform as the negotiations began between Annette and the dour Royalist captain. “The Sea Hawk,” he said, jabbing his thumb toward the name, painted in swirling scarlet on the captain’s personal banner. “And to think I’ve sailed on a Lioness and a Spearhead but beat a Sea Hawk with a Nightingale.” He grinned, showing me a few missing teeth.

  I smiled back. “You don’t mind that you didn’t get to see much action?”

  “A battle won without sweat or blood is still a battle won.” He shrugged. “Just saves the blood for another time, eh?” He squinted. “You have something to do with that?”

  “Maybe,” I hedged.

  He grunted and turned his attention back toward the ships’ captains. The crux of the negotiation came down to whether the sailors and officers of the Sea Hawk would be free to go or be taken prisoner. Annette forged ahead with terms taking all of them prisoner, but I knew she would retreat to only holding the Royalist officers.

  With the captain and his lieutenants secured in our brig, and the Sea Hawk outfitted with a complement of our own sailors and marines to ensure the loyalty of its temporary crew, we continued our patrol up the coast.

  31

  THE SEA HAWK YIELDED CRATES OF POWDER, BOTH MUSKET AND cannon shot, and an impressive stockpile of hard biscuit and dried beef, as well as a fine complement of Equatorial rums and the captain’s private stash of Galatine vintages. After that, however, we didn’t have any more luck intercepting other Royalist vessels before it was time to return to shore and meet with the northbound army.

  “Still a successful foray,” Annette said as we watched the sun set over the hazy shore of Galitha’s coastline. “And who knows—the other porpoises might have caught even more fish.”

  “What next, then?” I wondered out loud.

  “I’ve got the coordinates of where Sianh expects us to meet up with them.”

  “Yes, I figured that,” I said. “What about you?”

  “Shore up and prepare for the naval side of the Battle of Galitha City,” Annette said. “I’m hopeful we won’t have long to wait.” She shifted her weight and spread the tails of her pale blue coat behind her. It was nearly the same color as the court gown my shop had made her for the Midwinter Ball nearly a year ago. It suited her better than the structured gown, though I did, privately, think that it could use a bit of the same silver trim.

  “Once we’ve won the Battle of Galitha City?” I asked, tentatively adding, “Will you be going back to Port Triumph?”

  Annette’s confidence faltered. “I don’t know. When we bought the villa, we never expected that West Serafe would ally with the Royalists—we didn’t even think there was going to be a war like this at all.” She sighed, her delicate shoulders ratcheting toward her ears. “So it may well be that we won’t be able to return at all. Especially not after this.”

  “And Viola?”

  “Is understandably upset about that.” Annette’s smile was lopsided. “Galatine Divine, but I miss her. She would hate this,” she added with a laugh.

  “Which part?”

  “The sailing, that’s never been her favorite. All this lovely sun and salt spray would ruin her paints.” Annette smiled ruefully. “And she certainly didn’t want a war, and wouldn’t want to be in the midst of one.”

  “Do any of us?”

  “Well, of course not, but some of us seem to have taken to it better than others.” She raised an eyebrow. “Your skills have certainly developed.”

  “What was it that Theodor said about desert plants and Taiga lichens—botanists think that they developed certain traits in response to environmental pressure.” I drummed my fingers on the deck.

  “Your Kvys friend would say they were perfectly created for the environment in which they grow,” Annette said. “And I don’t know which of those is true of you, but you fit here. Strangely and impossibly, but you’re very badly needed.”

  “I hope it’s enough. Can something be inadequate and too much, all at once?” I sighed. “I’m afraid, Annette. I can’t take back what I’ve done, what everyone will know is possible.”

  “None of us can go back,” Annette replied. “I can’t go back to being Former Princess Annette, most desirable spinster in Galitha, not after commanding a ship and wearing breeches and causing all sorts of scandal. Galatine Divine, I can’t go back to my family—wherever they are.” She exhaled thinly through her nose, and I saw the pain that estrangement and uncertainty leveled at her.

  “But you don’t want to go back to being Former Princess Annette.” I pressed my lips together. “For everything, I’m not sure who I’m going forward into being.” I shook my head, trying to clear the intrusion of memories, of golden afternoons in the public gardens with Theodor and chilly mornings lighting the stove in my shop, of picnics at horse races with my brother and long talks over strong coffee with my Pellian friends. I couldn’t go back, and the memories themselves began to feel like places on a map that were impossible to reach. Annette reached for my hand, and let me sit in the silence that I needed.

  “Even if we win,” I said, “what does life look like after a civil war?”

  “Sweet hell, none of us know that!” Annette drew her knees toward her chest. “I know I’ll be in it with Viola, and that helps a bit. And you lot, too, of course.”

  “Will we?” There was a fear, deep and bitter and usually buried, but I gave voice to it now. “What if—there are Red Caps whose hatred of the nobility runs deep. The institution, the people themselves. What if winning means…”

  “Some sort of culling? Well, that’s an unpleasant thought.” Annette frowned. “But I think most of the Galatine people agree on that—it’s unpleasant. That shin
y new Council of Country will come up with a solution no one quite likes but everyone accepts, I’m quite confident. I don’t anticipate being allowed to keep our lands or assets or any of that. But I can’t imagine most Galatines would be keen on not letting us keep our heads.”

  “I hope so,” I said. “I came through this with Theodor. That’s the only thing I see clearly, when I look ahead.”

  “Oh, come now.” Annette waved her hand like a vapid old countess at tea. “You’re going to be the famed Galatine Sorceress Sophie Balstrade, Heroine of the Great Revolution, and there will be ballads and epic poems and portraits of you. You’ll be invited to all the best parties.”

  “That’s precisely what I do not want,” I said with a reluctant grin.

  “Speaking of things you don’t want.” Annette hopped up. “Viola wanted me to keep these as a surprise, but—well, I think now is a good time.” She dragged me into her cabin, a spare, sleek little room with a bunk and shelves built into the walls. She tugged on a length of canvas, and it fell to the polished floor, revealing four petite portraits.

  “Viola! She didn’t!” I smiled, looking at perfect renderings of Kristos, Theodor, Sianh, and me. We each wore gray and red, though Viola hadn’t known what our uniforms looked like. She had improvised, with Sianh in a gray-and-red imitation of proper Serafan military dress, Kristos in a workman’s set of trousers and a bright red wool cap, Theodor in a dove-gray suit like a sober politician, and me—

  “I don’t live up to this.” I laughed. I looked like an image of one of the Galatine Natures personified, as I’d seen in religious works in the cathedral. She had painted me swathed in pale gray fabric like a cloud, red woven through my dark hair, holding a bright red poppy. “It’s ludicrous, is what it is.”

  “She made sketches as soon as you’d left Port Triumph. She said she wanted to be the first to paint the official portraits of the heroes of the Galatine Civil War,” Annette said. “She didn’t know what that Niko fellow looks like, and she wasn’t quite sure if the nun was an official member of the cabal or not.”

  “Alba is—well, she’s Alba.” I had no doubt that she would one day have an official portrait of her own, hanging in a Kvys convent or basilica somewhere. “And Niko would be properly horrified at being excluded.” I laughed again. “Which suits me fine, his head is too big already. But this. Please don’t show the one of me around to too many people?”

  “Can’t promise that, sorry. It’s going to hang in the National Gallery someday, just you see.”

  “We don’t have a National Gallery.”

  “Well, that’s something for Viola and me to do, once we get this war won.” She grinned. “And by tomorrow we’ll be one step closer.”

  32

  SIANH AND A COMPLEMENT OF SOLDIERS WERE ALREADY WAITING AT the small inlet Annette navigated us toward. As we approached, another trio of our ships hailed us, signaling briefly that they had left several loads of supplies already.

  “Now you can tell Theodor ‘told you so,’” Annette said with a grin as we said goodbye on the deck. The longboat waited to row me to shore, where I could see Sianh’s impatient foot tapping the sand already.

  “I’ll try to refrain,” I said. “This suits you well. Even if I hope we’re all settled on dry land again soon,” I added.

  “Viola hopes so, too,” Annette said with a wry laugh. “I’ll send a message to her, to join me soon whether she likes it or not. She can’t stay shut up in a Pellian countinghouse forever.”

  “Certainly not,” I said. “Good luck.”

  “Fair winds,” Annette replied.

  I joined Sianh on the beach a short row later. “I do not care for being exposed like this, with all these supplies,” he said by way of greeting. “Even if Annette’s Nightingale could protect us in a fight.”

  “You can be confident she could,” I asserted, allowing the feminine pronoun to stand for both.

  Sianh assessed me. “Very well,” he said slowly. “Her leadership has yielded fruit thus far. Three ships captured and many crates of supplies.”

  “Did she send the wine with us?” I asked.

  Sianh raised an eyebrow. “I do not believe that she did. Was it worth mentioning?”

  “Oh, I’m sure it was common swill, not southern Pyraglen or oak-aged Norta or anything special.” I suppressed a smile that told him the truth.

  “Damn her eyes, the little thief!” Sianh laughed. “Ah, well. We could not enjoy it properly on campaign, and more is to the point, she earned it.”

  And Annette and the small navy she had delivered to us had certainly proven their value. Three wagons were already loaded, most with barrels of black powder. Sianh was nervous, if the speed with which he worked was any indication. The remaining crates and barrels were swiftly sorted, counted, and transported up the shore. I perched on one of the wagons, settled between a bolt of very ugly green wool and a barrel of black powder. I felt quite sure the wool was the more hazardous of the two.

  “We have made swifter progress through the midlands than I would have expected,” Sianh said, riding beside me on his favored mount, a cinnamon-bright bay with a lopsided ear. “But Rock’s Ford still lies ahead. I believe the Royalists have determined it not worth holding these southern outposts.”

  “Is that bad?” I asked, confused.

  “It is not bad. But it means they have shored up their men and their attention on Rock’s Ford. It will not be an easy fight.”

  We stopped near a grove of trees, a thin trickle of an ice-cold creek running nearby and the full complement of the northbound Reformist army bivouacked in the open. I found Theodor overseeing the disbursement of firewood.

  “Thank the Divine,” he sighed as he gathered me into a swift embrace. “I had the worst nightmares about you sinking or being captured.”

  “I had a fine adventure instead,” I told him. He raised an eyebrow. “And I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  “I take it Annette’s patrolling worked out in our favor, then.” His shoulders relaxed a bit when I nodded. “There will be frost tonight,” he said. “And the baggage train won’t reach us.”

  “A cold night, then,” I said. “Ah, I miss our moldy bed already.”

  “You joke, but you will miss it,” Sianh said, dismounting and beginning to survey the site and direct the officers where to make their camp. “Welcome to campaign—it is uncomfortable.”

  I took charge of our rations and mess kettle and began to collect some of the drier and older wood I found. Fires bloomed around me, promising some warmth and a hot meal. Split peas, salt-cured pork, and some withered carrots—not bad, I surmised, given that a swift boil would produce an edible soup.

  “Can I help with the fire?” A pockmarked young man offered a spade.

  “Of course, please,” I said. “Unless you’re wanted elsewhere.”

  “Nah.” He dug the blade into the sod, turning it over. “I mean, no, ma’am, I’m not needed. Vicks has got the fire under control and Helms says I’m not allowed near the food.” He tried for a grin and missed.

  “What’s your name? And where are you from?”

  “Harrel,” he said. “Vernon Harrel. I’m from Havensport. I don’t reckon you recall, but you were there, before Midsummer. I saw you at the packinghouse.”

  “Oh!” I said, louder than I intended. He started and grinned, a real smile this time. “Then you were there, with Byran Border and the rest of the Red Caps?”

  “That I was,” he said, producing flint and steel and some tow from his haversack. “And what you said—gave us all some hope we’d come out of this scrape better than before. That there was someone on our side, you know?” He struck steel to flint until sparks fell on the tow. He breathed it into full-fledged flame and tucked it into my firewood. “Were ready to give up on that until the prince came back with your brother and the Serafan—not on fighting, we were going to run ourselves into the ground if we had to. But we’d about given up on winning.”

 
; “Border wrote to me, it was how we knew about the outbreak of the war,” I said. “Have you heard from him? I expected him to join us in Hazelwhite, I suppose, but perhaps he went to the city?”

  Harrel shook his head. “He was captured, in a raid on one of the Pommerly outposts, before you came.”

  “Captured? Perhaps we can discuss prisoner exchanges—”

  “No, ma’am. They don’t—they didn’t keep many prisoners, early on.” He looked away and prodded the wood with his toe, maneuvering a log into a better angle to catch the flames licking at its underside. “That should do it, ma’am.” He ducked his head and hurried back toward his mess mates.

  I stared into the flames, sobered by his news. I hadn’t known Byran Border, not really—only by a brief exchange over salted fish and by his letters. Yet he’d represented something for me, a foundation of common people ready and willing to fight, and ready and willing to work with Theodor, too. Before we’d left West Serafe, before I’d traveled to Galitha City and then Kvyset, Fen and then, finally, Hazelwhite, I had known that there were those willing to fight.

  “Are you planning to cook those peas or are we going to eat them like pistachios?” Theodor said. “I imagine we need a tripod like those lads have.” He cocked his head as though trying to calculate the exact angle of the branches they had used to suspend their kettle.

  “I know we decided that we wouldn’t do a formal officers’ mess sort of thing, or outfit you with servants,” I said, “in the spirit of democracy and equality. But you’re either going to have to get more competent or I’m hiring you a manservant.” I slipped inside his embrace and kissed his cheek.