A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  The tents fell away as Ji-hyeon climbed up to the overlook. Loose stones and damp grass made her slip a time or two, but she soon conquered the hill. The guards hung back enough to give her the illusion of solitude, but their constant presence was as exasperating as it had been back on Hwabun. The more things change, eh, General?

  A pentacle of small stones garnished the crown of the hill, but Ji-hyeon didn’t know if it was an ancient site of worship or something recently erected by devote soldiers. The Lark’s Tongue rose ominously above her, even the first low ridge of the mountain seeming to dwarf her and her humble hill. Her scouts had assured her that the other sides of the mountain and all of its immediate neighbors were even more treacherous than the face, but while that meant they couldn’t be ambushed, it also meant they had no escape route. Zosia had insisted that making themselves so obviously vulnerable was the only thing that would provoke the Fifteenth Regiment into attacking immediately instead of waiting for reinforcements, but gazing up at the Lark’s Tongue Ji-hyeon felt the uneasy dread that comes in the space between when a decision is made and its consequences revealed.

  Sticking her hands in the pockets of Sullen’s coat, she was happy to discover a stale beedi. He had seemed pleasantly surprised to find she had a taste for the same flowers he did, albeit of a lesser potency—maybe the varietals were different, or maybe the leaves he rolled them in added something; but whatever the cause, she found his smokes a little intense. Having forgotten her pipe back at the tent, however, she would take an intense burn over none at all. Besides, contemplating an imminent battle with a massive Imperial army probably warranted a little intensity. Doubling back to her guards, she lit the beedi on one of their hooded lanterns and then returned to the hilltop, savoring the taste of fragrant saam and bitter leaf, the mental weight of Sullen warming her all the way down to where her naked knees emerged from his coat…

  She wandered into the center of the circle of stones and slowly twirled around, the camp laid out on all sides of the hill and creeping up the flanks of the mountains, dozens of bonfires and hundreds upon hundreds of smaller lights blazing even at this late hour. Thousands of soldiers, all ready to die at her command… or more accurately, thousands of mercenaries willing to kill to get her a crown, and all for a tael or two of silver. A few were volunteers who’d actually swallowed her song, true believers of the Cobalt Cause… a few, but probably not many. And the only thing her advisors could agree on was that the Imperials would be on top of them anytime now, and no matter how brilliantly they planned or fought, hundreds if not thousands of their people would die. Her heart began to canter beyond her reins, and she leaned down and stubbed out the beedi in the heart of the stone symbol, wishing she had something to focus on other than the enormity of her responsibility.

  She looked east, beyond the lights of her army, where the hills rolled as black and vast as the night sea north of Hwabun, but without the flash of distant lightning where the Sunken Kingdom slept. Would she ever see that view again, leaning on the railing between her two fathers, her elder sister reciting poetry, her younger running around on the deck, working off the tiny cups of kaldi Kang-ho had talked Jun-hwan into allowing her?

  The answer was obvious. She might see the Immaculate Isles again, but only from a distance. She’d tossed her family aside, and by the time this was over even her second father would be furious with her. Not that he deserved any better; the future he’d offered her was every bit as self-serving as the one her first father had. Actually, when you got right down to it, Kang-ho’s invitation was far more selfish than Jun-hwan’s—if she had done as her first father had asked and married Prince Byeong-gu, she would have still had her family, been able to visit Hwabun whenever she wanted. With Kang-ho’s plan, though, there was no fucking way she would ever set foot in the Immaculate Isles again, and it was likely her first father would never speak to her again, either. Seizing control of the wall and then working with the Imperials to expand the fortification to protect her freshly conquered city-state of Linkensterne wasn’t just an act of war against the Isles, it was an act of treason against her people, against her very family. Her second father had never phrased it like that, of course, he’d spun it as a grand adventure for his little girl, and wasn’t he living proof that you could shame the shit out of your family and still make everyone happy in the end? It would serve him right to be disappointed by what she had planned, the conniving—

  “Captain Fennec to see you, General,” called one of the guards, her voice jarring up here above everything.

  “Just the man I wanted to see,” she said, and straightened to watch him huff and puff up the last dozen feet of the rise.

  “You’re up late, General,” said Fennec. A few strands of dyed-black hair had escaped his ponytail, and he wiped them off his sweaty face, tucked them behind an ear. “Considering your counsel with Zosia kept you up so late last night, I would think you’d be abed.”

  “Were you watching my tent, Captain?” Ji-hyeon crossed her arms. “Or did you also happen to decide tonight was ideal for stargazing?”

  “Hoartrap roused me,” said Fennec, plopping down on a wide stone set in the pentacle’s border. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the starlight, she could see the worry plain on his face. Had she ever thought this old devil looked young and handsome? “He wants a word with you but, since you’re sometimes resistant to his uninvited appearances, suggested we come together. I told him to hang back down the hill until I’d said my piece and softened you up, then he could see if you felt like granting another audience.”

  “Tell me, Fennec, were you as relieved as I to see that Keun-ju safely found his way back to us?” Even in the dimness she could see he’d given up on playing her, making no effort to conceal a grimace.

  “Ji-hyeon, you need to understand that it was for your own good that—”

  “Oh, fuck you, Brother Mikal. It was for your own good, which is to say, my second father’s—you never gave a shit about what was best for me! You still don’t!”

  “I do,” said Fennec with that maddening sincerity he used to lubricate every lie. “Always have. I greatly prefer your company to that of your father. Either of them, as it happens. But we never would have gotten out of the Isles without Kang-ho’s blessing. I wasn’t the one to inform him of your dalliance, either—if you two had been more careful or, gods forbid, patient enough to wait until we were free to consummate your affair…”

  “Enough,” she said, glad the starlight was not so brilliant as to illuminate a blush. “You lied to me, Fennec.”

  “It’s what I do best,” he said with a shrug. “It never would have worked your way. To get you off Hwabun I had to convince Kang-ho I was on his side, not yours, and so that’s what I did.”

  “And all this time I thought we were on the same side.”

  “I knew if Keun-ju truly loved you he would find a way back to us,” said Fennec, peeling off one glove and then the other to let his clawed hands cool off in the night air—they must heat up something awful in the kidskin gloves. Watching him flex the grey-furred digits, Ji-hyeon gave silent thanks that only her hair had changed from their passage through the First Dark. From the panicked whimpers he’d issued when they’d emerged from the Raniputri Gate in Zygnema and he’d seen what his hands had become, their guide had not expected such a drastic transformation to his person. Yet nothing had changed about Choi—weird, but then Choi and weird went together. The beedi was catching up on Ji-hyeon now, and she found herself unable to stop staring at his altered hands, wondering what would have happened to her if she’d dared to open her eyes as they floated between Gates… But then he caught her staring and put his gloves back on sometimes. Between the snide comments he’d made about Choi’s ancestry and the pride he took in his appearance, the man clearly didn’t appreciate that a casual observer might now mistake him for wildborn. “It’s all a moot point, though, isn’t it? Keun-ju’s here now, so I say there’s no harm done.”

  “Moot p
oint? No harm done? I spent the last year thinking he betrayed us, and he spent the last year trying to find a way back to me!”

  “I swear on the devil I loosed, I wasn’t convinced he wasn’t secretly working for your first father. I’m still not, to be perfectly frank. It was safest to let you believe what you believed, rather than being distracted.”

  “I’m sure.” Ji-hyeon crossed her arms, hating that a part of her still wanted to believe him. “How charitable of you.”

  “It was a selfish ploy, I’m not arguing that.” Fennec sighed and hoisted himself back to his feet. “But be honest, if I had come clean as soon as we stepped out of the Raniputri Gate, would you have carried on with the plan, a plan that’s going to drastically improve the lives of countless people… Or would you have turned straight back around and gone after Keun-ju?”

  “I didn’t think honesty was a word you were familiar with,” said Ji-hyeon, refusing to admit he had a point. Vocally, anyway.

  “The Burnished Chain says that everything happens,” said Fennec, waving an arm over the camp beneath them. “I never put much stock in their teachings, and even less after I stole the habit of a missionary, but they might be on to something there. Everything happens. Whatever led us here, Ji-hyeon, we’re all together now, you, Keun-ju, me, and Choi. Just like we planned. Life got in the way, as it always does, but in the end, here we are. Don’t let the details trouble an already burdened brow, one responsible for the fates of thousands.”

  Ji-hyeon clapped slowly and softly, sufficiently buzzed to be amused rather than annoyed. “A beautiful speech, Captain Fennec. How foolish of me to focus on the details, when all they amount to is your betrayal.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic,” said Fennec.

  “What do you want, Fennec?” she asked, really needing to know all of a sudden. And thirsty, so damn thirsty. “I mean it. I know what the others do, more or less, but what about you? What is it you really want? What would you take, if there weren’t any… details to get in your way?”

  Fennec’s jagged smile broadened, but he didn’t speak.

  “What happened to your devil?” It was the most personal question you could ask, but after all the ways he’d made her squirm over the years she figured he owed her a little fidget of his own. “Father’s wish was that Fellwing serve me instead of him, which was a clever way of going about it, but what about you? What did you want so badly that you gave up the most valuable treasure a mortal can possess?”

  Fennec’s grin had become a grimace, and he muttered something in his native Usban.

  “What’s that, Captain?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Fennec, sounding as weary as she’d ever heard him. “Hold on to yours, Ji-hyeon. Whatever you’d trade Fellwing for, you’ll find it was a poor bargain.”

  “So you don’t think I should see if she could get me a glass of wheat ale? My mouth feels dustier than your scruples.”

  “I would advise against it,” said Fennec, smiling at her just like he used to when they were goofing off back at Hwabun, and she felt an urge to hug him. Smothered that urge with a pillow.

  “Not even if it was a really cold one, with a slice of orange?”

  “Not even for that. Now, it is very late and I am not as young as my beautiful and talented commander, so maybe I could trouble you with a concern or two that I harbor?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Ji-hyeon. “Depends on the concerns.”

  “Zosia,” said Fennec immediately. “I don’t know what you two talked about, and I don’t need to, but—”

  “Ah, I’m afraid that’s a ‘maybe not,’ Fennec, but rest easy; your name didn’t come up more than once or twice.”

  “This isn’t about me, it’s about you, and it’s about her—if you only heed one thing I tell you, it’s—”

  “Don’t trust her?” said Ji-hyeon.

  “If you would let me finish…” said Fennec, a wonder the words escaped between his clenched teeth. “You can trust Zosia, but only so far as her best interests lie. As soon as someone gets in her path, watch out—it doesn’t matter if it’s you, or me, or all her old Villains combined; if Zosia doesn’t get her way, it’s trouble for whoever disagrees with her.”

  “A happy thing that she and I are in agreement, then,” said Ji-hyeon, remembering how radically the older woman’s demeanor had shifted when she realized her impostor was eager for her help in a shared goal.

  “For now, yes. But tomorrow, who can say? You’ve always been able to say no to me, Ji-hyeon, to Hoartrap or Choi or Chevaleresse Sasamaso… And even when we disagreed with your orders we carried them out. Zosia is not a woman you can rebuff and expect her to listen.” Even in the darkness Ji-hyeon must have displayed her irritation fairly well, for Fennec raised his palms in peace, and said, “I’ll say no more unless you ask me to. I could tell you stories…”

  “I’ve heard the stories. She doesn’t frighten me.”

  “No? She should!” Fennec glanced over his shoulder, as though Cold Cobalt were a devil to be summoned by repeating her name. “She frightens me, the other captains, even Hoartrap—a woman willing to lay low for twenty years before emerging like a cicada devil to enact her plans is capable of anything. She doesn’t rush into things. She came here, came to you, because you have become part of her scheme, and I know from experience that Zosia will sacrifice anything or anyone to get what she wants.”

  “Unlike you,” said Ji-hyeon. “Or my second father. Or Hoartrap. Or me.”

  “She—”

  “She’s off in her bed sleeping, where you should be, too, Captain Fennec—you’ve already snapped your trap quite a bit for one night, if you want it to be sharp for the morrow.”

  “May I share my other concerns with you first? They are urgent.”

  “If they were so urgent, why didn’t you start with them?” Ji-hyeon groused. “Whatever, fine. Just be quick about it.”

  “I did start with them, days ago, and have repeated them twice daily since we made camp.” Fennec was in his obnoxious listen-to-reason mode—she could practically predict the words even before they left his mouth. “We shouldn’t be here, Ji-hyeon—that was the Fifteenth who met us in the mountains, and they’ll be on top of us in two days, if not sooner. The whole point of our plan to lure them out of Cockspar and then have my allies in the city open the gates for us was to avoid fighting them. If we don’t have their city, we don’t have anything to barter with—why would the Imperials call off fighting and help us take back Linkensterne when they have us trapped and vulnerable?”

  “They hate the Immaculates more than us, and are galled about the wall being built?”

  “I’m not so sure about their hating anyone more than us right now. And you heard Choi’s report—there were pennants for both the Fifteenth and the Ninth when she and Maroto brought a pack of monsters down on that Imperial camp. The Ninth are Myura’s regiment, Ji-hyeon, meaning whoever survived the slaughter at their castle has combined forces with Azgaroth’s regiment…” When Ji-hyeon apparently didn’t show enough awe at having this intelligence repeated to her for the umpteenth time, Fennec’s tone became almost frantic.

  “We are about to meet the single most effective regiment in the Empire, on the bloody Star, and they’re bringing with them revenge-minded Myurans. Add to that Maroto’s cunning plan of being chased by wolves straight into the Imperial camp, where your subtle scouts apparently made no secret they were Cobalt agents, and you have one very angry army coming to bear on us, and you’ll do what, exactly, to preserve our precarious position? Ride out and explain everything? Tell them we never really meant to kill all those Imperial soldiers and citizens, we just needed to get some practice before heading back to Linkensterne? Offer them a cut of the action if they start taking orders from you instead of the Crimson Queen?”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” said Ji-hyeon, trying not to smile.

  “If we had snatched the capital of Azgaroth out from under them, if we had strength
of numbers, if we hadn’t antagonized the Imperials quite so much up until this point, then maybe we could have parleyed them into helping us take Linkensterne. It was never a sure thing, but now, here, boxed in by hill and mountain, the only sure thing is that we die like devils in a trap. We should never have hammered down stakes, not here, but there’s still time to pull them out. I can rouse the officers, give the order now, and we’ll be safely away by dawn. If we’re still here when the Azgarothians arrive, it will be catastrophic.”

  “We need supplies, Fennec, we’ll never keep our strength marching to Linkensterne if we don’t get more rations, rations that the Fifteenth has in abundance—it’s as simple as that.”

  “It’s as simple as liberating every town and farm between here and the Immaculate wall! It’s as simple as losing a few hundred, maybe even a thousand to starvation and exhaustion, but the rest of us live long enough to resupply somewhere else. We send our terms of peace to Diadem and the Fifteenth, who will be hounding us every step of the way, and who knows, maybe it still works, maybe the queen is bitter enough over losing Linkensterne that she decides to back our play. Maybe not, but either way we’re alive to regroup and think of something else!”

  Seeing the spittle fly from his lips, it finally dawned on Ji-hyeon what was going on here. Fennec didn’t know her intentions, of course, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have been put at ease, because for all his experience and bluster, Fennec was scared. Terrified. He sounded like a condemned man pleading reason with his executioner.

  “We’re not abandoning camp, Captain—we’re staying here until the Fifteenth arrive.”

  “Then we are utterly fucked. If only from bullshit chivalry and respect for their Myuran comrades, the Fifteenth won’t listen to our terms, they won’t, and so we will have to fight them. And if we fight them at our current strength, we will lose, and then the game is over, and nobody gets to go home.”

  “I am home, Captain,” said Ji-hyeon sharply. “Any more concerns, or can I let my captain go get some beauty sleep, now that he’s assuaged his conscience?”