A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  Brother Wan cleared his throat but made no further comment. Domingo didn’t have the foggiest if the Black Pope had been telling the truth when she’d said the anathema could only glimpse the secrets of those with whom he was intimately familiar, but if Domingo himself was unsure about the limits of a witchborn’s power, then how certain could this princeling be? The stoic little cuss scowled silently up at Domingo, and without breaking the boy’s gaze, the general moved the point of his sword closer and closer…

  “All right, all right!” The prince had his eyes shut tight, and Domingo realized he’d just drawn a drop of blood from the lad’s lid. He flicked his saber up so that its curved back rested casually over his shoulder, his whole body humming at how close he’d come to putting out the runt’s eye. “If the wildborn can read my very thoughts, he can confirm that I am telling the whole truth as the words leave my lips. And once I have told you the sum of my account, you will release us—agreed?”

  “In war, there are certain codes that all true soldiers abide,” said Domingo, leaning back against the table as he considered his prisoners. “The ignorant speak of war as savage, chaotic. In truth, when open war is declared between two peoples, it is a thing of meticulously obeyed law and absolute civility. The Crimson Codices are one such guide, and having read your own Ji-un Park, I know the Immaculates view war in much the same way. Without such rules of conduct, there is no war, only theft, arson, and murder on a grand scale. The Empire does not acknowledge the Cobalt Company as a legal army, and so if you are their agent I am not bound by the usual provisions in how I treat with you. Conversely, if you only represent the Immaculate Isles, Prince Byeong-gu, than I must uphold certain standards with how you are treated in my camp… and most pertinently, if you are not working for the Cobalts I will have no reason to detain you.”

  “Very well,” said the prince, his eyes still as low as his voice. “My Martial Guards and I came to the Crimson Empire last winter, just after the New Year. We were searching for my fiancée, the Princess Ji-hyeon Bong. We believed she was kidnapped by a missionary of the Burnished Chain.”

  Domingo glanced at Brother Wan, but couldn’t get a read on the freak. The Black Pope had mentioned this royal abduction to Domingo in the confessional, but how much had she not told him? If Wan had the trust of not only a cardinal but even the pontiff, how much did this anathema know?

  “She… she was not,” the prince went on, and, returning his full attention to the noble, Domingo thought the lad’s voice was on the edge of cracking. “We sought her all over the Star, at first suspecting an Imperial plot, and then a Raniputri one, until the rumor we heard more and more frequently became impossible to discount. She is with the Cobalt Company now, which is why we have that flag—it was still flying over the city when we reached Katheli, even after the Company had ridden out before your armies could catch them.”

  “They took a princess hostage…” Domingo mulled it over—this could be a godsend, if it provoked the Immaculates into war against the Cobalt Company, or it could be a total fucking fiasco if it convinced them to sit out the war entirely, or, worse, aid the rebellion in exchange for the return of their noble…

  “Not a hostage,” said the prince, his voice thick with sorrow. “A general. I interviewed dozens of survivors, and many told the same story—Ji-hyeon helped lead the charge on Katheli. We’d heard such songs before, the closer we got, but after that I could deny it no longer. I took the flag as a… memento. No, that’s not the word. In Crimson I should say… a reminder, a reminder to be more cautious with my heart. To not ignore the truth simply because I abhor it.”

  “What about Zosia?” Domingo asked, unable to help himself though the invocation of the forbidden name definitely raised the brows of every witchborn in the room. “If your princess was the general leading the Cobalts, where was Zosia?”

  “Ah, the phantom of your Stricken Queen,” said the prince, shaking his head. “Yes, she was there, too, if you believe the word of a few terror-stricken peasants who swore they saw her. I was more interested in finding my fiancée than listening to ghost stories.”

  Domingo tried to contain his excitement; further corroboration that Zosia had returned was as welcome as it was unsettling, but a wise tactician wages one battle at a time. Prince Byeong-gu’s story was interesting for more than the mention of Zosia.

  “And so after finally finding your intended after all that time, you expect me to believe you just turned around and ran back home?” The prince didn’t bow under Domingo’s gaze. “You didn’t catch up with your beloved general and have a friendly chat about old times? Maybe speculate on how your people’s relations with the Crimson Empire might improve once an Immaculate noblewoman helped the Cobalt Company seize the throne?”

  “No, I did not.” The prince sounded about as warm as the waters of Desolation Sound. “She could have been my first wife, but she ran away to be a petty criminal. I have nothing to say to a lying, scheming traitor like Ji-hyeon Bong. We should have listened to my uncle when he advised Mother against the engagement, but fool that I was, I convinced her to allow it. Taming the daughter of Kang-ho Bong seemed a challenge worthy of my talents, but I see now—”

  “Kang-ho?” Domingo shivered, couldn’t help himself, as he imagined that smarmy Immaculate scum coming apart under his bare hands. It was one thing to face an opponent on the field and then face him across a banquet table at court, that sort of thing happened all the time with members of the inconstant clergy. Kang-ho, though, Kang-ho had never, ever even attempted to be civil to his old enemy, only taking time out of laughing behind his back to laugh in Domingo’s face. He always pretended to forget Domingo’s name, which was not the sort of thing that becomes amusing with repetition. “The First Villain, Kang-ho? Everyone knew he’d fled back to the Isles, but how in all the heathen hells of your people did that crook sire a princess?”

  “He is royal by birth as a child of Hwabun, and he married into the Bong family, who are beyond reproach.” The prince seemed relieved, now that they had found some common ground in hating Kang-ho with the wrath of devils. “His husband is King Jun-hwan Bong, and with the aid of a wetmother they… well. Ji-hyuen calls King Jun-hwan Bong her first father, since she resembles him more, but given her deceit I am inclined to believe it is the blood of Kang-ho that—”

  “I know how babies are made,” said Domingo, a glorious stratagem blossoming in his brain like a crimson lotus. And here he’d been cursing this far-flung detour but an hour before. “Kang-ho’s daughter is one of the Cobalt leaders, you’re sure of this?”

  “Sure enough to abandon all hope of saving her from herself,” said the prince forlornly. “We should have been married last spring, and by now she could be fat with our—”

  “But nobody on the Isles knows what became of her, that’s what you’re telling me?” Domingo tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. “You found out her secret, and are going home to inform everyone—yes?”

  The still-seated bodyguard’s eyes opened infinitesimally wider, but the prince obliviously carried on. “By now my message will have reached Mother. I requested her to remove the white from my palace before I returned, for there is no longer cause to mourn my fiancée.”

  “Nothing else? Before I let you go, I would have every detail—for the safety of the Crimson Empire, what else did you tell Empress Ryuki about the Cobalt Company?”

  “Your Highness,” the seated bodyguard hissed, but the prince waved her quiet, all confidence now that his tale was nearly told and his captors impressed with his innocence.

  “I told her everything—that I had found Ji-hyeon and that she was not kidnapped, but must have run away to become a general in this Cobalt Company. Oh, I advised her that Kang-ho ought to be questioned about his involvement in her disappearance. It hardly seems a coincidence, that she would join a mercenary army with the same name as her father’s old company.” The prince pursed his lips, and then decided to tell all. “I also asked Mother to as
k Uncle to call the matchmakers back to Othean, since I am apparently in need of a new fiancée. And that, Baron Hjortt, is everything there is to know—you cannot fit many High Immaculate characters on an owlbat scroll, and Mother insists I never write to her in the baser tongues. I hope this intelligence has been helpful?”

  The prince smiled cautiously up at Domingo, and Domingo smiled back. Then he whipped his saber down into the lad’s throat. The squatting bodyguard cried out, belatedly trying to lunge in front of her lord even as the witchborn who held a spear to her neck wrenched the blade with such force it nearly decapitated the woman. The seated bodyguard bellowed at Domingo as the colonel wiggled his blade free from the shocked, dying prince’s collarbone, the other bodyguard falling dead at Domingo’s feet. Then one of the witchborn punched in the screaming woman’s skull with a pick. It went very quiet in the command tent, save for the sound of blood running off of Prince Byeong-gu’s silk robe to pat-pat-pat on the face of the dead bodyguard beneath him. After a moment, the prince toppled over to sprawl with his countrywomen on the ground.

  “Fallen Mother have mercy,” Captain Shea finally managed, staring at the carnage. “The prince… you…?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” said Domingo, hardly surprised to see that every witchborn in the room wore the same stoic face, save the grimacing Brother Wan. But was it a happy grimace or a sad one?

  “The codes of war,” Shea whispered. “You told him—”

  “I told him the truth,” said Domingo, taking Brother Wan’s napkin from the table to wipe his saber off. “I chose to take him on his word that he was not an agent of the Cobalt Company, and therefore not an enemy combatant deserving of all those complicated bylaws cluttering up the Crimson Codices. What a happy day for all the Empire that we have not been at open war with the Immaculate Isles for many years, despite the recent Linkensterne debacle.”

  “Nor will we be again anytime soon,” said Brother Wan, his sharp, blue-grey tongue playing over the dry pegs in his upper jaw as he fished around under his robe. He removed a long, black-pommeled dagger and offered it to Domingo. “Next time you need to execute an enemy of the Empire, Colonel, pray use this gift of the Chain.”

  “I told you, Brother Wan, don’t lecture me on what to do with blades and I won’t lecture you on how to carry out your pagan worship.” Domingo sheathed his saber and waved away the offered knife, turning his full attention to the still-shaking Captain Shea. “Captain!”

  “Sir!” She stood straighter at that, but her eyes were still on the corpses. “Sir?”

  “Captain, it hardly needs saying, but you are to speak to no one of this… interrogation. No. One. Is that clear?” She nodded, but too quickly for Domingo’s liking, so he added, “As this is a matter of Imperial security, these agents of the Chain will be monitoring the camp to ensure no baseless rumors start flying around. As senior officer until we reconvene with the rest of the Fifteenth, it is dependent upon you to make sure any gossip is quashed long before it reaches the keen ears of these witchborn, or less friendly company. There is to be no gossip because there was no incident—no Immaculates were ever brought into camp. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir!” That was what Domingo needed—a statement, not a question.

  “Now, leave me with Brother Wan and his subordinates so we can clean this mess up.” As Captain Shea nearly tripped over the bodies in her haste to be away, Domingo looked up from the Cobalt flag strewn over the dirty table and called after her, “And send in another round of this venison. I think I’ve found my appetite at last.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  Goatsdamn, but Grandfather was a pain in the arse. Or rather, the small of the back. Shrunken as the greylock was, lugging him over hill and dale for days and then weeks and finally months without end had put a whiny kink in Sullen’s spine, one that troubled him even after he’d shrugged off the old man and settled in atop the mountain’s ridge. Family, man, what can you do?

  “Leave me to die in the mud like a common animal,” grunted Grandfather as Sullen lowered him down to sit on a slab of brown stone protruding from the lichen-draped mountainside. “That’s what they wanted you to do. Born-agains playing at being heathens. It’s enough to make a horned wolf puke.”

  “Yeah, Fa,” said Sullen, knowing the prospect of meeting an army was stirring up memories for the old man. “You sure this is far enough off the path?”

  “It’ll do,” said Grandfather, closing his eyes as he panted. As though he’d been the one to haul Sullen up the steep, treeless mountain. The two men looked back down the way they had come, the crust of frost on rock and moss sparkling in the dawn. Far below, a road cut through the evergreen bamboo and browning saam groves that thrived in the valleys here, a ribbon of bare earth wound through the hair of the mountains. “They’ll make through yon pass and camp in that meadowland beyond. Creeks coming down to water the animal, flat enough for tents—too posh for lambs like them to pass up.”

  “I still think it’s best if I go myself, just at first,” said Sullen. Grandfather cracked one eye at his grandson, and Sullen blundered on, knowing full well that reason never carried him nearly far enough with the stubborn old wolf. “I’m faster and quieter, and—”

  “And you don’t know what your uncle looks like,” said Grandfather. “And even if you are a little quicker without me, so what? If some half-wit sees you creeping and gets lucky with a weakbow, where does that leave me? Up a damn mountain, waiting for a vulture to peck out my liver, or whatever mercy the Old Watchers give me for sitting out a fight. We stick to the creeks it’ll cover your racket, and if they catch us ’fore we find your uncle you can always toss me on the enemy to cover your escape, you’re so worried about getting away.”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Sullen. Grandfather had adamantly refused to hear his account of his encounter with the Faceless Mistress after their brief initial exchange on the subject back in Emeritus, saying if the gods wanted to involve him they’d call on him themselves, instead of sending Sullen. As a result, Sullen hadn’t told the old man about his need to thwart this Zosia character from murdering an entire people, a need far more pressing than reuniting Grandfather with his ne’er-do-well son. Since that Faceless Mistress implied the two of ’em ought to be in the same camp, though, maybe it did make more sense to find Uncle Craven first. “Never mind. We’ll go together.”

  “Oh, I hope that’s not true, laddie,” said Grandfather. “I hope you’ve got more thaws than me ahead of you yet.”

  “No, I mean… you know what I mean.”

  “Oi, there we are—not a breath too soon! Ha!”

  Following Grandfather’s gaze, Sullen made out a distant glint that might have been morning light striking a patch of early snow in the dying saam forest. It bobbed up the road, disappearing for stretches and then reappearing, and at last it came close enough for Sullen to decide what was what. Four riders in dark blue, the occasional twinkle coming from their bridles, which seemed to be the only edge of metal not obscured to prevent just such detection. The scouts passed far beneath them, and though Sullen knew he and Grandfather must be invisible at their perch among the high rocks, he still pressed himself flat to the frozen earth.

  More shimmers and sparkles came quickly after, and then, as though the first few were but the trickles heralding a flash flood, a column of reflected light poured up the wide road. On and on the caravan came, Sullen quickly losing count of individuals, and then losing count of wagons, and finally turning to Grandfather when the stream showed no sign of stopping after close to an hour.

  “Didja know there’d be so many?”

  “One good wolf is worth a thousand sheep,” said Grandfather, but even he looked rattled by the sheer size of the Cobalt Company.

  Grandfather had always just looked like Grandfather, but now with the chill light of dawn striking his leathery features and the few wisps of hair left on his head and chin, Sullen had to be real: Grandfather had gotten… well, old. Maybe it w
as being away from the Savannahs, chasing rumors and false leads all across the Body of the Star, dealing with crazy Outlanders and exploring desolate ruins—Sullen felt five years older, so imagine what toll the quest must have taken on Grandfather.

  Then again, Grandfather hadn’t been the one touched up by a god. The old man clearly slept like a babe whenever he wasn’t taking watch, and probably sometimes when he was, too, whereas Sullen hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since his encounter with the Faceless Mistress. During the months since, he had yet to unearth any information at all about her worship, the faith of the Forsaken Empire as obscure as its fate, but he did learn much of the woman she had charged him with hunting down: Cobalt Zosia. They called her the Stricken Queen now, but in her day she’d brought this land to its knees, leading an uprising of peasants against the Crimson Empire and becoming queen, only to die at the hands of her successor, Indsorith. Yet now she returned from her twenty years in the earth, and brought fresh war against the rule of her assassin.

  And Sullen, armed only with his mother’s spear and his father’s knives, was supposed to stand against a woman whom not even death could stop, on behalf of a long-forgotten god he’d never once prayed to. If he failed, more people would die than he could even count. It was enough to get anyone down.