Most were respectfully silent, but Hoartrap laughed and laughed as Ji-hyeon wheeled away, her silent soldiers parting for her as she stepped back out into the road. Scant protection as her armor granted her in battle, it gave her even less from the night wind, and she pulled her cape tight as she stalked back to her most recent conquest. Fennec followed after, giving her measured advice for a change instead of chiding her for this, that, and the other thing. He claimed to have no idea why they had sought her out, other than the too-convenient explanation that they, along with so many others, had believed the rumors and thought their old leader returned from the grave. That might explain why Maroto had fainted at her appearance in the doorway of the tavern, given Fennec’s description of the barbarian as a sensitive soul. When they arrived in her chambers, they were agreed on the most important matter, if very little else—Hoartrap the Touch could not be trusted.
Fennec left her without even making a pass, which was another welcome development, and with a happy groan Ji-hyeon unsheathed her sweaty feet from the high boots. The Duke of Myura’s bedroom had a drysink as long as an inn’s bartop, and with just as many bottles cluttering it, and before allowing herself to rest Ji-hyeon called in a pair of handmaids to help her bathe. If she’d been a good little princess and married Prince Byeong-gu like her first father had wanted, she would have had a dozen maids by now, and a castle far more luxurious than Myura to call home. Instead, she had a pair of wide-eyed camp followers tending to her with stained rags and a warm bucket of soapy water in a drafty stone pile on the ass end of the Crimson Empire.
Once she was as sweet as she was liable to get without a proper tub, she sent the boy and girl away and lay back on the enormous bed to take a much-needed sabbatical from the waking world. This proved harder than she’d expected. The arrival of two more of the original Villains seemed far too convenient to be chance, and so the only question was whether her father had sent them independently of Fennec, or if the old fox was lying about what he knew. Neither possibility strained credulity. Although Chevaleresse Singh had initially declined Ji-hyeon’s invitation to become a Villain in the new Cobalt Company, how long would it be until the Raniputri knight arrived at an opportune moment? Pretty soon all of the Five Villains would be riding alongside her, at which point it would scarcely matter if the woman leading them had blue hair or the right helmet. They could just stick a tame raccoon dog on a horse and call it General Fatface for all the difference it would make—people would still assume it was the reincarnation of Zosia.
After tossing and turning for a while in the moonlit tower room, she forced her mind away from the imponderable worries and onto the much nicer subject of sex. Gods, spirits, and devils, how she missed Keun-ju. Not only for that, of course not, but in trying to distract herself with pleasant memories she just reminded herself of how many months it had been since she had kissed her Virtue Guard. It was not so long ago that she would have ranked Choi as her favorite guard, followed by the funny and charming Brother Mikal, with the stiffly formal Virtue Guard coming in dead last… but then she had grown up.
She couldn’t really talk to Choi, not about her heart, and though she used to find Brother Mikal a wonderful listener, she had come to discover that Fennec would use any secret to his advantage. If only Keun-ju had not abandoned her she could have had someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone to laugh with. Among other things one can do with her mouth.
It was lonely being the Arch-Villain.
CHAPTER
3
The walleyed anathema stared at Domingo from across the sumptuously laden folding table erected in his tent, the monk’s exposed, pale gums and stained wooden teeth enough to put a billy goat off his breakfast. During that winter campaign, what, twenty-three years past, Cold Cobalt’s peasant army had cornered the Fifteenth on a peninsula jutting out into the toxic swamps at the border of Emeritus and they’d had to dig in and wait for reinforcements to come break the siege. Domingo had been obliged to take two weeks of meals in a fetid miasma. Black flies had swarmed the whole camp and delivered an especially virulent pox that caused gangrene to spread through the regiment like crotchrot through a Geminidean brothel, and attempts at digging latrines on that miserable spit of marsh only resulted in bubbling pools of slime that reeked worse than their intended cargo. He didn’t have many fond memories of that noisome ordeal, but it had toughened his stomach from such relatively minor distractions as a hideous witchborn monk, so he tucked into his venison with little more than a passing wish that the anathema would drop dead. Preferably after suffering unimaginable agonies.
“My thanks for the invitation to dine with you, Baron Hjortt,” said Brother Wan, carving his tender meat into tiny mouthfuls and spearing one into his mouth with the tip of his knife. From the rapturous expression on Wan’s face as he chewed, Domingo supposed even the pope’s favorite monsters didn’t eat this well in the Dens. Good that someone would enjoy it, then—the doe was far gamier than Domingo preferred, but they were still a long way out from Cockspar and its kitchens. He supposed he ought to reacclimatize himself to such rough cuisine, for they would only be in the capital for as long as it took to ready the regiment for departure.
“It’s Colonel out here, not Baron. And it won’t do for you to dine anywhere but in the command tent once we have the Fifteenth on the move.” There was a pleasant thought, weeks upon weeks of staring at that rank parody of humanity while he choked down increasingly bland fare. “Might as well get used to one another. Make sure your… subordinates are mindful never to enter without permission, nor address me directly. I know the chain of regimental command is not the leash your kind are used to, but I won’t be able to excuse any oversights once we’re officially in motion.”
“Quite so,” said Brother Wan, perhaps smiling, or perhaps not—it was damnably hard to tell, with the man’s lack of an upper lip. “But the war nuns and monks under my authority have far more military experience than I, so I assure you they will not cause any embarrassment.”
There was a howler if Domingo had ever heard one—three dozen robe-swinging servants of the Chain joined up as a special attaché to the Fifteenth, most of them anathemas to boot, and he shouldn’t be embarrassed? Why not just let this untrained, inexperienced mutant wear his helmet and give the orders? The Fifteenth would be eating crow along with their usual rations, to be saddled with the same elite unit of witchborn clerics they’d spent many a long campaign battling all across the Star, whenever old Shanatu got it in his head that this time his brilliant coup would work.
Well, he must be the only one in the regiment not accustomed to their presence—shortly after he’d proudly passed on his command to Efrain, peace had yet again been brokered, and the Fifteenth, like all Imperial regiments, had begun employing agents of the Chain. They were probably damn useful in a bind, Domingo had to admit—given the havoc they’d caused when they were the enemy, a few powerful war monks and nuns could come in handy now that they were allies…
And then there was the dread weapon Pope Y’Homa had entrusted him with, which rolled along at the back of the caravan in a long covered wagon. For all the Black Pope’s talk of it being worth more than ten thousand soldiers, it looked mundane enough to Domingo, and he knew a sight more than a teenage pontiff about war. And even if it proved as devastating as promised, it sat extremely poorly with Domingo that in order to employ it he apparently had to take Brother Wan along. When he’d been told that only one of her most trusted servants could activate the weapon, he had assumed she meant a war priest, and a pureborn one at that, given Y’Homa’s outspoken revulsion for the anathemas. Instead her liaison turned out to be the monstrous assistant to one of her cardinals—she would have apparently preferred to send the cardinal himself, but attaching such a high-ranking official to a military unit would risk attracting the attention of Queen Indsorith’s spies. So instead of a human fanatic who had the sole key to a weapon capable of murdering the whole Cobalt Company in one swoop, Domingo re
ceived an abominable one. Well, so long as it did what it was supposed to and carried the day with a minimum of casualties for the Fifteenth, he would take all the secret weapons he could get.
Most of them, anyway; devils would be useful in a war, too, but nobody outside the old maniacs of the Cobalt Company seemed keen on using them. Yet. Who the hells knew what the Black Pope would try next, if this debacle ended in Queen Indsorith being supplanted by some papal puppet. That thought was enough to spoil his appetite, even if the ugly little monk wasn’t.
“Sir!” a voice barked from beyond the tent flaps Domingo had tied shut to keep out the wind whistling down from the northwestern extremity of the Kutumbans. “Permission to enter, Colonel?”
“Granted, granted,” Domingo called, pushing his plate back on the table. “Hold a tick, Brother Wan here just needs to untie the door.”
Was that narrowing of the anathema’s beady eyes an invitation to dance? Domingo imagined flipping the table on top of the frail wretch and then jumping up and down on it until the mutant deflated…
“Colonel Hjortt, sir.” Brother Wan admitted Captain Shea, the young woman’s lean features reminding Domingo of the substandard venison congealing on his plate, and her grim expression mirroring the colonel’s assessment of his meal. Her salute was as sharp as her nose, but considering that Efrain had promoted her from the ranks during his short tenure as steward of the Fifteenth, Domingo wasn’t inclined to optimism where her credentials were concerned. Especially with that third button of her uniform ajar, like she was some navy hump swaggering about on shore leave… “Sir?”
“Hmmm?” Both Shea and Wan were just standing there, waiting, and Domingo cleared his throat, waved her on. “Report then, out with it.”
“We have…” Shea glanced at Wan, who was watching her with the interest a gecko pays an ant, and amended herself. “That is, the witchborn outriders, who continued on while we broke for camp?” Great devils of the sea, if this captain of his framed everything as a question he’d have worse irritations than his piles to worry about on this campaign. “Well, they saw a campfire in the hills, north of the road? And they…” A ruckus was coming slowly toward the tent now, raised voices and stamping feet, and Shea spilled the rest in a rush. “They’ve taken prisoners, sir. Immaculate scouts, dressed for war.”
Well, that was something! Domingo felt the old shivers at the thought of enemy spies creeping across his camp, but the ripples did not betray his delight by carrying through to the puddinglike surface of his features. Mulling it over and putting his green captain on the defensive at the same time, he said, “Why the devil would there be Immaculate scouts out here, Captain?”
“We are reasonably close to Linkensterne and their wall,” Wan said thoughtfully, as though Domingo hadn’t been the one to detour them up to this blasted northern road upon hearing the pass to Lemi was avalanched under, as though the Baron of Cockspar didn’t know where the nearest foreign city lay in relation to his province’s borders, as though the Immaculates’ theft of Linkensterne didn’t weigh down his bowels nearly as much as the death of his son.
“Yes, well, thank you very much for that brilliant intelligence,” said Domingo. “But next time don’t speak out of turn—I was addressing Shea. Furthermore, Brother Wan, in the future your agents will report back here to me before carrying out any military actions at all, is that clear?”
“As you say, sir,” said Wan. “Only…”
“Only?”
“Only you said my troops were to report to me, and that I would then relate any pertinent information to you. Sir.” There, that was definitely a faint smile on the monster’s face; Domingo could tell by the way his cheeks moved. An awkward pause followed as the colonel began envisioning another violent fantasy, but he pulled himself back before it got too involved.
“I suppose I won’t lecture a Chainite monk on semantics so long as he doesn’t seek to advise me on swordplay. What about you, Captain, care to point out that the moon rises in the east?”
“Yes, sir?” Shea looked back at the canvas flaps that were snapping in the wind now that Wan had left them open. “I mean, no, sir. I mean, the Immaculates’ wall is still under construction, so they may be doing reconnaissance to make sure we’re not rallying to take their wall and reclaim the city before they can finish their fortifications.”
“Not bad,” Domingo nodded. “Not the best theory, but not bad.”
“It’s time to put our theories through the crucible,” observed Wan, as the voices outside reached the tent, followed hotly after by the stomping boots that carried them. Definitely an Immaculate whining out there, and Domingo unhappily rose to his feet to meet the prisoners. That Captain Shea’s company had ridden all the way up here to meet their returning colonel at the Azgarothian border only to let these puffed-up anathemas steal the show by capturing some scouts was unfortunate. What was unforgivable was that apparently not a one of his trained officers or soldiers had told those goons to detain their prisoners elsewhere instead of bringing them to the command tent. Who to horsewhip, though, that was always the question… Looking from the sheepish Captain Shea to the reptilian Brother Wan, Domingo found himself spoiled for choice.
“Baron Domingo Hjortt,” the lead war nun called into the open door of the tent, her sonorous voice at odds with her slight profile. “We have taken captive three Immaculate scouts”—there came an outburst in Immaculate from the dark silhouettes bunched behind the small woman at the word scouts. “One claims to be a nobleman with writs of passage, and so I deemed it best to bring them before you.”
Deemed it best, did she, to ignore protocol? This anathema had cut straight to the front of the horsewhip queue, but first there was the niggling problem that an armed posse under his command seemed to have abducted a foreign dignitary. “Bring them in at once.”
The war nun entered, followed by two Immaculate women and a man, and then another three anathemas, just to make sure the formerly spacious command tent now felt as tight as the Chain’s confessionals. Both Immaculates and witchborn were in a bad way, faces flushed, armor smeared with dirt and blood, but the anathemas still had weapons in their scabbards, while the only metal close at hand for the Immaculates were the chains around their wrists. From the way the two Immaculate women instinctively flanked the younger man, it didn’t take a clairvoyant monster to guess the pretty boy was the supposed nobleman.
“Baron Domingo Hjortt, is it?” snapped the young Immaculate fellow in stiff but precise Crimson. It seemed he trembled out of rage, not fear. “How dare you, sir, how dare you!”
“I don’t quite know,” Domingo drawled, “but we’ll find out soon enough. And Colonel Hjortt will do fine in this tent, lad.”
“Lad? Lad!” The handsome lad had colored the shade of the seared venison on the table between them. “I am Prince Byeong-gu of Othean”—the twin winces from the boy’s bodyguards implied that his accounting himself thusly was a habit they had vainly tried to curb—“fourth son of Empress Ryuki, Keeper of the Immaculate Isles, and you dare shackle me like one of your hounds! You dare, when I have writs of passage stamped by my mother! You dare, sir!”
If there was one thing worse than a twit like Captain Shea who put everything as a query, it was a blowhard who phrased questions as proclamations. This prince was like some hammy actor overselling the role of spoiled fop.
“With due respect, Your Highness, you have no notion of what I dare, so I’d take a deep breath if I were you,” said Domingo. “Now, if my guests would make themselves comfortable by sitting on the floor, we can clear up what I am confident is all just one big misunderstanding.”
“Sir,” said one of the witchborn in the rear as the prisoners begrudgingly lowered themselves to the ground. “We found this in one of their satchels.”
“Oh? Must be this writ of passage his highness spoke of.” Domingo kept his eyes on the prince as the folded cloth was passed from war monk to nun, from nun to Brother Wan, and from Wan to Captain Shea. T
he little jackass was squirming now, and his bodyguards stiffening. The captain unfolded the pennant on the edge of the table. A blue flag—cobalt, really—with rather obvious heraldry. “Oh. I see. It appears his highness is scouting a long way north from the rest of his company.”
“You dare defile the private belongings of a member of the royal family?” A lot of the bluster had left the boy now, and he looked almost as worried as his two handlers. Almost as worried as he should be. “You have the nerve to imply we—”
“Shut up!” Domingo barked, the bodyguards twitching, the boy flinching. That was good, they were all on edge… maybe so on edge they couldn’t see how rattled Domingo was. If the Immaculates were supporting the Cobalt Company, then the Crimson Empire was in a great deal more trouble than Pope Y’Homa supposed. “We catch you skulking on my lands, with the flag of brigands who are terrorizing the Empire, and you dare talk down to me? I could have you all hanged as spies and your coddling mother couldn’t do a damned thing about it, Headwoman of the Aloof Isles or no!”
“We are not affiliated in any way with the Cobalt Company,” the prince said firmly, meeting Domingo’s glare and making no move to wipe away the spittle that had landed on his bruising cheek. “We are not spies, nor are we scouts. We are returning to the Isles, after a very long and trying journey across the Star. The flag is… evidence we recovered, not a token of our sympathies.”
“Evidence of what?” asked Brother Wan, and Domingo gave him a scowl to stop his deformed heart, or at least impress upon him the importance of letting his colonel do the talking here.
“Evidence of a crime. It is a private matter, of no consequence to Azgaroth, nor the greater Empire.”
“I think I will make a far better judge of that than you,” said Domingo, and when the prince looked down instead of elaborating, he whipped his saber from its scabbard with a steel hiss. The bodyguard on the left nimbly hopped from her knees to a squat, but before she could move farther the flat of a witchborn’s spear had slapped against her throat, freezing her in place. A trickle of blood crept down the face of the blade where it had nicked her, the other bodyguard leaning close to her prince’s ear and murmuring in some unintelligible noblecant. Domingo stepped around the table and approached the prisoners, leading with his steady saber until the tip of the blade hovered an inch from the prince’s left eye. The whispering bodyguard went silent, easing slowly back into a stiff-backed posture, glaring at Domingo with all the hatred a vixen bears the hound who treed her. “I’m asking you as a courtesy, Your Highness—if you don’t tell me of your own accord, I’ll have my Chainwitch here peer into your brain and get the truth in nothing flat.”
A Crown for Cold Silver Page 31