A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  “That’s not what I asked,” said Zosia. “Now tell me, why are you the messenger of this tale?”

  “Because I was the only one who knew exactly what you looked like now.” Portolés closed her throbbing eyes. “And to convince you of her sincerity. I have not come alone.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Portolés looked up at the tear-blurred woman. “In my valise are writs that give me absolute authority to act on the queen’s behalf, as I said, but there is something more. A manifest of the names of all the soldiers under Colonel Hjortt’s command who were present at Kypck. A sacrifice. As soon as I reported what happened, how queer it all was, and what you looked like, and your dog, the queen realized what treachery was afoot.”

  “A sacrifice, eh?”

  “Yes, Mistress Zosia, one to prevent a needless war. We are her gift to you, a token of her sorrow at your loss. I swear on the Fallen Mother, I was with Colonel Hjortt from the day he was given command of the Fifteenth, and not until we captured and killed your husband did he make any mention of such a plan. Queen Indsorith believes it was the Burnished Chain, and that must be why they sent agents after me, to stop me from alerting you to the truth.”

  “Hmmm,” said Zosia, and to Portolés’s elation she actually seemed to be considering it. “The Chain sent an Imperial colonel, knowing I would blame the queen. Interesting. That’s why your Black Pope sent assassins after you, and why you fought them?”

  “I… I can’t say for certain why she sent them, but I fought them because they would have stopped me,” said Portolés. “I don’t even know for certain how the Chain found out my mission. I… A brother of mine, in the Chainhouse, he may have spied on my thoughts, after I met with the queen.”

  “So you have no actual proof that the Chain ordered Hjortt to target me and my people?”

  “None,” said Portolés, knowing that here at the end of her mission she mustn’t deviate one step from what the queen had told her, mustn’t stray from the truth even to better convince Zosia. Besides, Boris was right, she was a terrible bluffer. “The queen has no evidence to point toward the Chain or any other suspect; the single thing she is sure of is that she played no part in it. Allmother have mercy, knowing Hjortt as I did from serving in his bodyguard, it might have been as simple as that idiot hoping to seize an extra parcel of land for himself before the smoke cleared from the civil war. However he settled on his wicked course, it was not sanctioned by the queen. She is not your enemy. And unless you order your Immaculate general to stop, or talk reason to her if she in more than name commands this army, there will be another war, the worst war yet. She said that across all the Star, only you and she know just how pointless another war will be—even if you but agree to look over my writs and display them to whoever leads the Imperial army that threatens you, it will be enough to stop the killing before it is too late. She entrusted me with the most powerful weapon on the Star, and bid me deliver it to you, by any means: the truth.”

  Portolés shuddered, so much talk winding her as much as a jog up every flight of stairs in Diadem.

  “That’s only half my question, though, sister—I can tell you believe, I can smell it all over you… So why go against officers of your church, especially when you discovered that your queen gained her crown by treachery and deceit? She made a deal with a devil, Portolés, and yet you buck at your chains to serve her.”

  There was that hungriness again as Zosia pocketed her still-smoldering pipe and leaned down over the bed, no doubt hoping to catch a crack in Portolés’s façade. There was no façade, so there would be no crack. For the first time, Portolés put into words the worm that had nested in her heart ever since Kypck. For all the orders and armies and schemes of mortals, it was true that nothing could destroy so absolutely as the truth.

  “I came because I am guilty. It was I who carried out Hjortt’s order. I was punished when I led the Fifteenth’s cavalry back to the regiment, but not for the true offense. My superiors in the Chain told me that what I did in Kypck, to you and your people, was no sin, no sin at all. That I did no wrong there, for I am a vessel of the Fallen Mother, and that by killing them I had saved the souls of pagan peasants. But Queen Indsorith… alone, in her throne room, she told me that it was evil. That it was a crime, no matter what justifications I might present. And she is right.” Portolés wept silently, her eyes becoming gummy as she shook with shame at what she had done, remembering how steady her maul had stayed as she brained the five Azgarothians who refused her order, one after another. Her faith had shielded her from this pain for so long, it was liberating to finally feel the full force of it. The magnitude of it was nothing short of heavenly… She had discharged her duty, and as she let the grief shake her she heard Zosia above her, crying as well.

  No. She wasn’t crying at all. She was laughing.

  Unable to wipe away the thick film coating her eyes, Portolés blinked up at Zosia. The woman seemed to get ahold of herself, knelt down by Portolés’s head, and murmured:

  “You have acted with commendable bravery in the service of your Empire, Sister Portolés, and I cannot blame you for what happened at Kypck. I forgive you everything.”

  Of all the possible ends Portolés had contemplated, she had never dared hope for Zosia’s absolution. An unexpected sob slipped out of her before she could stop it.

  “There, there,” said Zosia, stroking away Portolés’s tears. “Was there anything else you wanted to confess, while you have such a sympathetic ear?”

  There was. Portolés wanted to tell Zosia how good it had felt watching Efrain Hjortt burn alive, how the first step on her long road to the Lark’s Tongue had come when she had decided to leave the little colonel to his fiery judgment… But here at last, her obligations met, she found herself finally free of the pride that had always governed her tongue. It was enough that she had done the right thing, she didn’t need to crow about it, especially not to the woman who had set the fire in the first place; all Portolés had done was do nothing, despite the screams of a burning sinner.

  “I… I thought I knew more than anyone in the Chain, even the Black Pope,” she said, feeling the burden of this last sin rise from her breast as she finally articulated what had so long gone unsaid in the back of her warm heart. “I rebelled in every way I could think of, sinned for the sake of sinning. I did everything they expected an anathema to do, because I… because I wanted to prove they were wrong. That the Fallen Mother loved me no matter what they said. That if I pushed myself far enough, she would reveal herself to me. I just wanted to see her, to see the truth behind the Chain, before I went to whatever reward awaits me beyond this earth.”

  “Oh yes, plenty of rewards to go around, sister, and plenty of earth, too.” Zosia laughed again, a malicious bark. “But since you’re so keen to see some truths, maybe I can assist…”

  The blur that was Zosia leaned down and ripped out Sister Portolés’s left eye. An enormous, heavy hand fell over her mouth, and try as she did to keep her right eye shut, thick fingers dug under it. Another searing rip brought a gasp up her throat, only to be choked off by the palm sealing her lips, a thumb and ring finger pinching her nose shut.

  “Everything all right in there, sir?” a voice called from just outside the buttoned flaps of the tent, and a masculine voice replied:

  “Better fetch the barber, lad, the nun seems to have had a fit.”

  Portolés thrashed in her chains, but they had bound her well to the bed. The tent came back into blurry focus, and even being smothered she still shuddered with relief to realize her eyes hadn’t actually been plucked out. They still burned, and, blinking the slime out of them, she saw not Zosia looming over her, but Hoartrap the Touch. He held her tight, suffocating her, and with his free hand waggled two shiny black leeches he held between thumb and fingers. Those must be what he had ripped off of her eyes. Tilting his head back, he dropped them into his mouth.

  “Here’s a little secret for you, sister, since you’ve been so fr
ee with yours,” he whispered, his mouth full of blood as he chewed and talked. “Devils come in all shapes and sizes, and if you know what to do with them, any miracle is possible. The only difference between the Chain and my sort is that we sorcerers are honest enough to own up to our deceptions, once the parlor trick is over and the applause dies down. Would that all my audiences were chained down and drug-addled when I came calling with a pair of leech goggles!”

  Portolés tried to bite him, but her teeth had been filed too close to the gums. The pain in her old wounds was nothing compared to the heat spreading from her chest, up her throat, pounding behind her eyes. She went limp, praying he would release her, if only to gloat a little longer. His hand tightened instead.

  “At the time I didn’t want to interrupt your little sob story, but I do think that having carried out your orders so diligently you’re entitled to a little peace of mind where your church is concerned. I would hazard that you and Indsorith are absolutely correct about the Chain having sent Hjortt after Zosia to set this charade into motion. That’s also why your own people tried to kill you before you could reach her, obviously, obviously. And the simple reason for all that plotting and scheming is that the Burnished Chain wants this war just as bad as me. That last little civil war of yours didn’t claim nearly enough lives to summon the powers we’re both after. This next one, though, promises to be a real corker—who knows what might happen, if the sacrifice is great enough!”

  Black stars bloomed in Portolés’s vision, the man rising rising rising away from sight, his voice still hissing in her ear.

  “But do you know the biggest secret of all, my devil-blooded, witchborn friend? It’s that none of you are devil-blooded at all, nor born of a witch, nor any of the other lies they spread around campfire and Chainhouse. You and your breed, my dear, are divine. There’s a reason that more and more of you are born every year, despite there being fewer and fewer devils making their way into our world. It’s because they’re not where we’ve been, but where we’re going. You’re not some degenerate legacy of a corrupted ancestor—you, my child, are the future. Our future. There will come a day when your kind rules the Star, and whisper songs of savage mortals, the great fiends of antiquity…”

  Portolés convulsed, felt something give in her chest, but even as she went to meet whatever gods or devils would have her, his fingers dug deeper into her flesh, his lips brushing her gnarled ear.

  “But thank the Fallen Mother, that day is still a long way off.”

  CHAPTER

  23

  Since sleeping without cares was apparently out of the question, Zosia would have settled for sleeping at all, but it wasn’t to be. She did have few waking dreams of Leib lying beside her on the cot, humming the old marching songs she’d taught him during their annual summer treks up to that icy lake on the far side of the divide, the only place on the whole Star where she’d been able to pretend, if only for a few days of camping, that she and her husband had truly escaped the whole Star, had found themselves a sanctuary. If they could have stayed there forever, swimming in mountain-cold water and then warming up in the grass, instead of always having to return to Kypck, pink from the high mountain sun and reinvigorated for their duties to the village…

  Yeah, that didn’t really count as sleep. Grumble, stub her toe in the dark, get her armor on backward the first time around, stumble out of her tent an hour or two before dawn, and make the barber wake up the weirdborn nun even if it took every bug in his bag. That order. Aside from the last, she executed her plan flawlessly.

  They had already moved her corpse out of the tent, knowing the white pavilions would be overfull within a few hours, if the battle went off as expected. The man who had brought her in had apparently been tasked with her carrying her out of camp so that she wouldn’t start stinking up the place prematurely. The guards Ji-hyeon had assigned to keep him in custody had scared him up a spade and accompanied him up the rise to the edge of camp, lest this be some bizarre part of their plot. Thanking the sawbones who had given her the disheartening information, she was glad for once to have Choplicker along, the devil leading her uphill without needing to be asked.

  They found the man ankle-deep in his work, his two handlers sitting on their asses until one of them recognized the approaching woman and they both scrambled to attention. She didn’t even bother returning the salute or acknowledging the grave digger, her full attention on the lump of sackcloth. Squatting over the corpse, Zosia couldn’t unearth her satisfaction, deep as she dug—she should have taken more time doing it, she told herself, but no, that wasn’t quite it. Nor was it the soon-to-be-resolved business with the cavalry of the Fifteenth and their Colonel Hjortt, business Zosia had told herself and her adversary would be a far longer time coming… Vengeance is something best enjoyed when it’s piping hot on the plate in front of you, rather than hoping it’ll still be there when it cools down a bit, so she had no intention of letting Efrain Hjortt off the hook a second time, assuming she’d land him a third. What it was, she decided, was that this was all coming just a little too easily, the war nun, the colonel, and the cavalry who had carried out the crime at Kypck dropping square in her lap, just as she joined up with an army big enough to help her seal the deal. Zosia didn’t believe in destiny, but she certainly put stock in deviltry, and focused her full attention on Choplicker, who was staring up into the dark morning, toward the night-swallowed Lark’s Tongue. Could it be…

  “You’re really her, aren’t you?” said the prisoner, leaning on his shovel.

  “Get back to work,” barked one of the guards, but Zosia said, “It’s fine, I want to talk to him. Both of you, piss off back to camp.”

  “The spy—” began the other guard.

  “I’m not a fucking spy!” the man spat, but then that was what any spy would say, wasn’t it?

  “He’s in my custody now,” said Zosia. “Dismissed. If I hear another word about it, I’ll have Ji-hyeon whip the both of you, but only when my wrist wears out from taking the first round. Now get.”

  Watching the guards shuffle back down the steep decline, the prisoner seemed even less happy than he had with them riding his ass. His rationale made sense, when he voiced it. “I’m going in here with her, aren’t I?”

  “Depends,” said Zosia, a thought striking her, and she pulled back the sheet to see if… But no, it was indeed Sister Portolés under the cloth, eyes staring at her maker or maybe at nothing, who among the living could say for sure? “Barber said she had a fit?”

  “Oh, I don’t doubt it,” said the man dejectedly. “Getting your fresh wounds beat back open by a madwoman will give you the fits something bad. Betting fellow would say I might be about to have a fit myself, soon as I dig a deep enough hole.”

  “Like I said, depends,” said Zosia, about to rise back to her feet when the faint smell of stale smoke crept up her nostrils. Leaning close, she took a sniff of the woman’s shroud. Especially noxious toilet water and strong tubāq, a blend she would have recognized even if the barber hadn’t mentioned that Hoartrap had been the one to pay a call just before the run shuffled off the Star for good. His presence at her deathbed was damning enough, but that he’d evidently taken enough time to stink up the place with his pipe raised even more questions…

  “What was she supposed to tell me?”

  “Like I said in the tent, to the general, I don’t know. Found some papers on her after she got beat on enough for me to slap the chains on her, but couldn’t make much out of ’em: writs with the queen’s seal and a roster of soldiers. That’s the extent of it, so if you’re going to put your devil on me to get the truth, do it quick and see for yourself I’m no liar.”

  “Devil?” Zosia rose to her full height, but Choplicker kept his attention on the unseen mountain, sniffing the dark as he took a few more tentative steps up the slope. “She told you that?”

  “Lady, she never told me shit, other than a bunch of blather that sounded less like Chainite double-talk and more l
ike the half-baked tracts I helped pass out back in the Jewel.” The man was evidently the sort who liked sassing his betters, even when they held his life in their hands. Maybe especially then. “I know because I read those pamphlets, listened to the songs. Cold Cobalt has a devil to do her bidding, don’t she? Or was that just another misprint, somewhere along the way someone scribbled down ‘devil’ when they should’ve wrote ‘dog’?”

  “We know which regiment is out there, so why wouldn’t you come up with a better story, one where you rode in with the Fifteenth?” Zosia was talking to the dead war nun, but the man spoke for her.

  “Hey, Cold Zosia, True Queen of Samoth?” She looked up at him, an already gaunt, dirty face made all the more hellish by the faint light of the lantern the guards had left. “Fuck you, lady.”

  “Fuck me?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, as if warming to the idea. “Definitely. I believed in you, in what they said about your ways being better than those of the Chain or the Crown. I risked my life to keep your dream alive—maybe it wasn’t much of a life to risk, but it’s the only one I got, and maybe it wasn’t my dream, just something I heard about secondhand, but it meant something to me. The only thing I hate more than the Crown is the Chain, so yeah, the Song of Cold Cobalt was something I believed in. And you know? I kept believing, right until I saw you lay into her. It took me lying and scheming and getting luckier than any devil to bring her here, to where I thought it might do some good, and what does the wise Zosia do? You killed her before she could even make a case for herself!”

  “For a son of Diadem committed to the Code of Cobalt and dead set against Chain and Empire, you seem awfully broken up about a dead weirdborn.”

  “Her name’s Portolés. Sister Portolés,” said the man, staring at the war nun’s winding sheet. “I never would have taken her here, I’d known you’d be just as bad to her as her kind would be to you, given the chance. So much for a fair shake. So much for a better world. You’re no better than the Chain or the Crown, you just wear a different color and shit on different folks. Now, are you going to fuck off and let me bury her, or are you going to kill me? Because after the hours I put in serving the false memory of a dead woman who ain’t even that, I’d appreciate the courtesy of not digging my own grave. Let the birds and beasts have me, maybe they’ll find more use for a willing soldier than any of you lot ever did.”