A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  He’d missed her just as much as she’d missed him, apparently.

  Zosia spent all afternoon with Singh and her kids and then ate dinner with Fennec, bullshitting her old friends nearly as much as they bullshitted her. Everyone had their doubts about the coming combat, but Zosia did her best to assuage them—she wanted all hands on blades when the day broke, and if people started losing their nerve now, an already dicey ploy would become unwinnable. In the end all it took was Zosia agreeing to pay the Raniputri mercenaries double what Ji-hyeon had already promised them, and telling Fennec that if he tried to change teams now she’d add him to her shit list. It felt good to know that threat still carried weight with people who knew her from the old days.

  As the night wore on she went to check on Maroto again, but to hear his chums laugh about it the old bastard still hadn’t recovered from his overindulgence of the night before. Diggelby had just given him something to help him sleep through the night, so after bandying a few words with Purna, Zosia ambled on. Not having much else to do, she took her time getting back to her cot, content to idly follow Choplicker as he snuffled along. In the morning thousands of people would die terrible deaths because a few narcissists were convinced they knew what was best for the Star, and one revenge-minded woman was willing to exploit them. Tomorrow old friends and new might die. Tomorrow the Star might be a very different place than it was this evening.

  But tonight Zosia was going to sleep like a contented stinghound tucked in by his favorite centipede. Why shouldn’t she? Melodrama aside, odds were the imminent battle wouldn’t be the end of the matter; enough of one side or the other would retreat, gather their strength by preying on helpless villages who aided them from either fear or fervor, and then they would all go at it again. That order. Repeat as needed.

  She could practically feel the tents humming with nervous anticipation. This was what they’d all signed up for, war… but to hear the other Villains tell it, and to read between the lines of Ji-hyeon’s boasts, they’d yet to face a real engagement like this one. Whichever side was victorious, the devils would have more than they could eat on the morrow.

  Choplicker seemed to be leading her somewhere through camp, looking over his shoulder to make sure she was with him before turning this way or that. She wanted him on good behavior during the battle, so she went along with him instead of reeling him in. It felt like a dream… no, not quite, it felt like she was wandering through a memory. This night, long as it already felt, might as well last forever—she’d paced camps like this before, the eve of a big tussle, twenty years ago, twenty-five years ago, thirty years ago… and for all the battles she’d won or lost, here she was again.

  Ah, so that was what he wanted. The dog had backed his butt up so a friendly guard could properly scratch his rump. The tent the boy watched was the one they’d put the war nun in to convalesce, though the sawbones hadn’t thought much of the weirdborn’s prospects. Had Zosia known the sister was riddled with half-healed wounds before laying into her that morning, it wouldn’t have changed her course—it was as overdue as it was richly deserved. Be that as it may, the war nun’s continued unconsciousness was getting irritating, with her master Hjortt’s army scheduled to attack anon and nary a confession yet extracted. Zosia had already stopped by twice that day to see if Portolés was alert, but whatever the barber had stung her with to ease the pain had put her down but good.

  “She up?” Zosia asked the guard, who looked up from Choplicker and quickly snapped a salute.

  “She came ’round and took some water when I got on,” he said. “She’s asleep again, I think, but I can wake her for you, Captain. My pleasure.”

  “Not just yet,” Zosia decided, as much to spite Choplicker as to give the witch more time to recover before interviewing her. Depending on what she had to say, it was probably best if she was able to take another punch or two when the time came. “I’ll be back for her soon enough. Thanks.”

  Choplicker made to go in anyway, but at a sharp whistle he slunk back, baring his teeth at her but not making a sound. Zosia offered the guard a stiff salute, and from the grin on his face she supposed she’d made the kid’s night. Heading straight back to her tent, she gave Choplicker a reproachful shake of her head as he whined again. Whatever terms the queen offered now that she knew her assassination attempt at Kypck had failed, nothing could turn Zosia away from her due.

  Slithering out of smoky, sweaty clothes in the chill of her tent, she supposed that was the real tragedy of it all. For all her musings that night, the truth was that she was here because she set out to bring down the queen… but even if she had died in Kypck alongside Leib and their people, this war would still be happening. General Ji-hyeon’s plot against the Crimson Empire was exactly what Zosia had vowed and wished for, right down to the color of the flag on the rebel standards, but here on the cusp of successful retaliation, she was just another participant in a cast of many thousands. She had traveled to the far corners of the Star, only to find that the means to her end was doing just fine without her. She had become redundant in her own vengeance.

  Crawling under her furs, she let out a long, wistful sigh. She had abandoned the Crown of Samoth precisely because she had concluded that it was beyond her power to change the world. Well, that and a guilty conscience over the realization that she had hurt just as many people as any tyrant before her, whatever her intentions. Now, twenty-some years older, she was all set to stir up the same crock of shit she’d thrown out the last time around, and for the same obvious reason—she thought the sovereign of the Crimson Empire was an asshole.

  Except this time around she had only herself to blame for putting the crown on the queen’s brow. Maybe she wouldn’t sleep tonight after all.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Portolés was dreaming of Brother Wan when her eyes began to burn. She stumbled out of her visions, into the glaring lantern light, and tried to rub the itchy crust from her eyes, but both her hands were shackled to the makeshift frame of the cot. She felt languid from more than sleepiness and injury, and remembered the biting centipede the sawbones had offered her when last she woke. Had she accepted? Probably, from the heaviness of her limbs and the lightness of her head, though she had no personal experience with such medicine—the Holy Barbers of the Church declared it a sin to distract an anathema from the material experience of its redemption, and so when they had corrected her tongue, teeth, and other failings she had felt every prick of stitch and rasp of file.

  “You look well,” said Cold Zosia, the Stricken Queen dragging a stool over next to the bed. The old woman shimmered, and Portolés closed her stinging eyes, offered a prayer to the Fallen Mother for strength. When she opened her eyes they had adjusted to the brightness of the room, and there could be no doubting the woman before was of flesh and blood, not dream and smoke. “Probably could have given you a few more taps and you’d be no worse for wear, big strong monster like you.”

  “Zosia.” The name sent a shiver down Portolés’s spine even now. “This is an honor. It’s not often a lowly nun is granted audience with a god.”

  “Oh, it’s not so rare as your people make it out to be,” said Zosia, crossing her legs. “But I don’t think Indsorith sent you all the way here just to talk theology.”

  “Not much time, now.” Portolés licked her lips, amazed that even with the drug, simply talking was so painful. The sawbones who had tended her had told her to make peace with her Savior, but she hadn’t reckoned on it coming so quick. She wondered if she’d been dying ever since Heretic had rescued her from the butte, if need alone had kept her alive this long, and now that her confessor had finally arrived she could be set free. “I provoked your general before. That was unwise. If the Immaculate girl truly commands here, if only in your name, you would do well to bring her here as well.”

  “Oh, the kid’s in charge, all right,” said Zosia. “But what makes you think she wants to hear anything out of a Chainwitch?”

  “Quee
n Indsorith wishes to prevent war. I have the authority to broker a peace on her behalf, something the Imperial regiments harrying you lack. If I can convince your Immaculate general, if we can convince her, there will be no battle. There will be no war.”

  “Before Ji-hyeon hears word one of anything you have to say, I need to be convinced,” said Zosia, not sounding as though that possibility were very likely. “So somehow dear Queen Indsorith got the idea that I was going to lead a rebellion against her? I wonder who put that notion in her head?”

  “It wasn’t her order,” said Portolés, keeping her voice low. Given Zosia’s demeanor, it was imperative she not provoke the woman’s wrath, lest it overrule her reason. But how could you keep someone calm when discussing the crimes you had committed against her? “She never ordered Colonel Hjortt to Kypck, never ordered him to make an example out of any village. She never ordered him to execute anyone, not your lover, your townsfolk. None of this was her doing.”

  “Oh, well all right then!” Zosia threw her hands up. “I’ll admit, I was a little worried on that account, but you’ve put my mind to rest. I will quibble with your choice of words, though—he was my husband, they were my friends, and you butchered them.”

  “You have no reason to believe me, I know, but—”

  “But what?” There was that temper Portolés had been warned of, a temper that might ignite an empire. “She had her move, but she fucked it up. Or rather, her assassins did—that’s really the only thing an assassin needs to do, assassinate the target. And now that she sees the plan got botched, she sends you here as a peace offering? I’m supposed to think that it was coincidence that her troops went rogue, coincidence that they happened on Kypck instead of any other of the Empire’s thousand other backwaters? Does she think I’m a complete idiot?”

  “No,” Portolés said patiently. “She does not. She knows better than that, doesn’t she? Something terrible happened to you, to your people, and now you are doing what anyone would expect you to do. And given your history, it is obvious that you would suspect the queen, even if it hadn’t been Imperial soldiers who came for you.”

  “Our history?” Zosia raised an eyebrow. “I’ve told no one of what happened between us, even after everything at Kypck. Am I to understand she broke all of the oaths we made to one another?”

  Devils take centipedes and all their soporific kind, Portolés was making a real mess of this. She had tried to talk the queen out of sending her for exactly this reason; that devilish tongue of hers always found a way to betray her. She bit the wicked flesh before trying again. “Given the graveness of the crime against you, and the importance of my mission, she thought it necessary that I know everything. So that if I found you in time you would know beyond any doubt that she sent me, and that I speak with the authority I claim. If I were acting on behalf of any other party I could not know what I do. I am her vouchsafe against further deception.”

  Zosia was listening now, really listening for the first time. “Prove it, then.”

  “Prove what?” Portolés wasn’t stalling, she really didn’t know what else to say that could convince this woman.

  “Tell me the whole story, then, or rather, the version she told you. Then we can hear what I’m sure is a most convincing argument as to why she isn’t the one I should blame.”

  “If you insist, Mistress Zosia.” That foul curiosity that forever plagued Portolés’s heart thrummed in delight at the prospect of having Zosia provide corroboration to the queen’s most secret of songs. “Queen Indsorith was a lesser daughter of a minor noble in the Juniusian Court when you killed King Kaldruut and captured the Carnelian Crown. When your first mandate as Cobalt Queen was to disperse the Empire’s wealth amongst the people, Junius was first to resist. And like all provinces who refused you, they suffered swift repercussions from your soldiers. What members of Indsorith’s family survived your assault did not last long in the Ketzerel labor camps you exiled them to. Only when her last relations perished in bondage did the queen escape, coming to Diadem with a poorly conceived plan to assassinate you.”

  “She described it as ‘poorly planned’?” Zosia smiled for the first time. “Well, I suppose it was.”

  “She was caught before reaching the second floor of the castle, but instead of a public execution you ordered that she be brought in chains to your throne room. Thereupon you had your private audience.” Portolés waited, assuming this would be enough, but Zosia waved her on as she pulled out a curved black pipe and set to lighting it. “She said you looked… tired. You asked her what she intended, armed only with a sword and a grudge, and she told you what had happened to her people. Not to beg for mercy, but to be heard, but once, before her death. Everyone, even an Imperial noble, recognized that your reforms grew from a desire to help the people, but in doing so, countless innocents were paying the price. Instead of being ill-starred to be born a turnip farmer, they were ill-starred to be born noble, or landed, or devout.”

  “Your church, sister, was as corrupt then as it is now.” Zosia blew smoke at Portolés. “I only wish I’d ignored my advisors and put every last one of your clergy to the sword. They said the Chain would help ease the transition to an egalitarian Empire, but those black-robed vultures conspired with the merchants and nobles to thwart me at every turn. That’s my chief regret, that I didn’t raze every Chainhouse before departing. But please, continue, this is all quite good.”

  “Yes, well…” Small wonder the church outlawed the mere mention of this woman’s name. “After she had spoken her piece, you lectured her on the difficulty of ruling any land, let alone one in such desperate need of change. She responded with an insult, something about how Samoth would be hard pressed to find a worse ruler than you. That, she said, is when everything about your attitude changed, and you challenged her to the duel. And the rest is the rest, but you must believe that she would never, ever repay your—”

  “The duel,” snapped Zosia. “What did she tell you of it? I told you to tell me everything.”

  “My apologies,” said Portolés, the sickeningly strong fumes of the woman’s pipe filling the tent. “You told her… you told her you would grant her wish, as any devil would, and released her from her chains. You ordered her to resume her quest against you, then and there, but cautioned her that your duel could only result in death or exile. Then you fought, there in the throne room, on the edge of the precipice.”

  “Yes, then?” Zosia leaned forward. This woman was even prouder than Portolés, eager to relive her victory through the war nun’s words.

  “You defeated her—forgive me, I have not the tongue for describing whatever brilliant feint you felled her with. But after, as she lay disarmed on the floor, expecting you to deliver your hammer to her heart or perhaps kick her over the edge, to fall upon Diadem as an example, you dropped your weapon beside her. Lifted her up. Planted your crown upon her brow, and explained your meaning: she had accepted your terms, even if she did not rightly understand them, and as you were the victor she was bound to obey them.”

  Surely this was enough… but apparently not, Zosia waiting, a hungry smile behind the marrow-yellow stem of her pipe. Portolés concluded the tale in as colorful and flattering a fashion as she could manage.

  “She was to learn firsthand whether ruling an empire and safeguarding the happiness and security of its subjects was as easy as she supposed. You drafted documents meant to guarantee the loyalty of your Villains as well as the rest of the governing bodies you had installed, and then you vanished from the Star. You even cunningly secured a fresh corpse from the pauper’s field, and after the two of you dyed the dead woman’s hair to match your own, she was hurled over the edge of the throne room to prove the story of your defeat—from that height, little remained of her features in the street below, save long cobalt hair and your dress. Queen Indsorith had won much more than she had set out to gain, and in exchange you were permitted to fade into the night, never to be seen again.”

  “Yessssss,�
� Zosia said, savoring the telling of the tale far more than Portolés would have thought possible. After an uncomfortably long silence, and then, as if only just remembering more recent events, she snapped straight up on her stool and pointed her pipe at Portolés. “And Indsorith bided her time, patient as any devil, and only when I had long stopped fearing any retribution she sent you after me, to avenge her family. To take everything from me, just as I had taken it from her. The only difference is I never intended to hurt her, never intended to hurt anyone. I was healing the Empire, not harming it.”

  So says every tyrant, thought Portolés, but for once her tongue did not betray her. “So you believe.”

  “So I believe.” Zosia nodded, standing. “Thank you, sister.”

  “Hear me out,” said Portolés, realizing the arrogant woman meant to leave. “I… I beg you, Zosia, now that I have proven myself the messenger, listen to the message. Believe what you will when I am done, but pray, hear me out, in the name of your murdered people.”

  “I think I’ve heard enough,” said Zosia. “Except, perhaps, why Indsorith should send you, of all people, to deliver this message. And why a war nun of the Burnished Chain would do the bidding of the Crimson Queen instead of her Black Pope—it is true that you fought your own kind on the road, is it not? Much as I’d like to claim the credit, the wounds you will die from came not from my hands, but those of your beloved church. Don’t tell me you simply grew tired of being treated as a beast by those who hitched the plough to your back?”

  “It wasn’t Indsorith,” said Portolés, praying her sincerity overcame a devilish tongue and the false tranquility of the insect sting. “Anyone who wished to hurt the queen would set you against her. What better means of harming her, of harming you both, than giving you cause to war against her? If she’d wanted you dead, don’t you think she would have tried a little harder? Please, Zosia, you are too smart to be led by the nose like this, you know better than any that war will never—”