A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  Domingo stared in horror at the anathema, then lurched forward to seize him by the cassock. He doubled over in pain without even getting upright, the jarring motion making him feel like a saw was slowly grinding across the back of his neck. Through gritted teeth, he managed, “I told you what I’d do if you looked.”

  Brother Wan clicked his horrible, inhuman mouth. “And that’s my secret, Colonel Hjortt—I didn’t. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. No witchborn can, as far as I know. My secret is the secret of all anathemas, that we concoct excuses for the pureborn to treat us with respect or, failing that, caution. Like others in the Dens, I possess excellent intuition, something you and I share, but also empathy, in which most pureborn are deficient. No witchborn would ever disavow someone of the belief that we could peer into their innermost thoughts, for to do so would be to sacrifice one of our few advantages. But in truth, anathemas of my presumed powers are simply good listeners, good guessers, and good at altering our personalities to endear us to those we seek to convince—if you had seen me interact with Portolés, you wouldn’t have recognized me, I don’t think. Why do you think they say our abilities work best with those we know intimately?”

  “But I felt you, I felt you rooting around in my skull—”

  “What you felt was nothing more than your own paranoia, Colonel.”

  “Why are you telling me this, then?” said Domingo, wrenching himself back up into a seated position against the back of the wagon bed.

  “You try it,” said Wan. “Put yourself in my position, factor in everything you know about me, my desires. And guess.”

  Domingo had made the barber use the scabbard of his saber for the splint on his leg, but in this position there was no hope of drawing it. Meeting the anathema’s too-friendly gaze, he said, “You don’t think I’m going to survive long enough to tell anyone about it.”

  Brother Wan’s bulbous eyes widened in mock amazement, and he raised his arms to the dawn. “Behold, an anathema in our midst! This witchborn mind-reader has passed itself off as Baron of Cockspar, but now reveals itself!”

  “If you think you can take me, monster, I’m ready for you,” said Domingo.

  “Tut-tut,” said Brother Wan, squirming back around on the riding board and untying the reins. “Maybe you don’t have the sight after all. Or maybe your mind is enfeebled with age. Don’t you remember that I wanted you to bear witness to the battle?”

  The wagon jerked forward, and Domingo shuddered as another paroxysm passed through his spine. “Whatever mad schemes you’ve hatched, Wan, my regiment may surprise you yet, and their colonel most of all.”

  “I think you’re the one in for a surprise,” said Wan as he drove the wagon down the long hillside, the first light of day shining on the glittering masses of the Fifteenth, and the Cobalts who manned their pickets on the far end of the valley. “Before it’s too late, are you sure you don’t want to be anointed? It’s not too late to receive the Chain’s blessing.”

  “Think I’ll manage without,” said Domingo, offering a silent apology to his murdered son. For all his experience, for all his vigilance, he had fallen into the same trap as Efrain. Why had he ever allowed an agent of the Chain into his command tent? He had learned long ago to salvage wisdom from his failed efforts, but of all his unsuccessful plans, this was far and away the worst, and one he might never be able to learn from.

  “This is the worst plan you’ve ever had, no mean feat,” said Purna as Diggelby laid one jar after another on his tea table with all the pride of a new parent showing off his progeny.

  “The best ones usually are,” said Maroto, thumping the pot in his hand and provoking the finger-long centipede into striking the glass. “I’m telling you, Purna, I won’t be any use like this—only cure is a bellyful of the worm that gnawed me. It’ll make me better than new.”

  “Until you come off it again,” said Purna. “How bad will it be next time, if you keep eating them?”

  “Baaaaaad,” said Diggelby. “I know from experience.”

  “Me, too,” said Maroto. “I swear on my honor, Purna. This is the last time.”

  She gave him a look he knew all too well, and it would have broken his heart if it wasn’t busy racing at the prospect of another worm. She wanted to believe him enough that for the moment she did. Or maybe he wanted her to believe enough that she was going along with it; the end result was all that mattered. “I’m going to see what’s taking them. Hurry the hells up. We should’ve already rendezvoused at the command tent.”

  “Ack,” said Diggelby, pulling a face as he chomped his worm and passed the box to Maroto. The bug-headed noble didn’t even take his own advice; he’d told Maroto just the other night not to chew the things. Extracting one of the grubs that extruded from the piece of bamboo laid in the box, Maroto gulped it in one go, then had another for good measure. And a third; these were a lot smaller than the one Diggelby had given him before, so he had to make sure he took enough to overpower his hangover.

  “You really should keep them in cemetery dirt,” he said, passing the small box back over. “I didn’t even know they could live anywhere else.”

  “Ah,” said Diggelby, nodding with the air of a master imparting wisdom to a novice. “Graveworms require such soil, but these little fellows are only found in this rubbery bamboo that grows down in the Dominions, on the border between—”

  “Diggelby,” said Maroto, more focused than he had felt in memory, and not from ingesting the bugs. “Diggelby, what did you just feed me? A graveworm, right? Just some exotic breed?”

  “Hmmm?” Diggelby’s eyes were all pupil, and Maroto began to panic. The pasha was off his fucking gourd on grubs. “Oh no. Nothing like a graveworm. Bamboo worms are…” He grinned, showing teeth dripping with white goo. “Unique.”

  “Unique how?” asked Maroto, having no idea if his pounding heart and sweaty brow stemmed from the insects in his belly or his anxiety at what they might do. He could have just slit his own throat.

  “Dreamy,” said Diggelby, waving his hand back and forth and giggling at the tracers they left hanging in the air. Wait, what? Ancestors watch over him, Maroto was already starting to hallucinate. “Something to help you sleep, and see such sights as—”

  “Diggelby, you dumb moron, I said graveworms, graveworms!”

  “No,” said Diggelby, sounding completely sober as he leaned forward and pointed at Maroto. “You said you needed another of the worms I fed you last night. Last night I gave you one of these, because you’d spent all day puking and I knew you’d never sleep through the night without it. The graveworm was two nights ago, so don’t blame me if you can’t communicate with language like most upright persons.”

  “Why would I want to take something to sleep right before a battle!”

  “Because when you take a hit off of this guy, you’ll be more awake than you’ve ever been in your life, and still get to see all the dream stuff from the bamboo worms.” Diggelby held up an empty wine bottle with an enormous scorpion clicking angrily in the base. “I put him in when he was tiny, and he’s grown too big to get out. I don’t know what I’ll do when his stinger won’t fit through the neck.” Diggelby inserted his pinky into the opening, and before he’d wiggled it twice the monstrous arachnid jumped clear up the side of the bottle, burying its stinger in the fingertip. Diggelby yanked it out with a yelp, his pale pinky turning as blue as the bands on the scorpion’s back. “You have to be quick about it, or your finger will swell and you’ll never get it out.”

  There was a time when Maroto would have tried to stick his tongue down the neck of the bottle to get the most out of the experience, but those days were mercifully gone. Well, not so gone, then, considering he was starting to feel a torpor in his limbs from the whatsit worms, and sleeping this one out was starting to sound pretty capital, as Diggelby would say… The dreams of last night were returning to him now, stranger dreams than any he’d ever lived, and going back to that place would be so nice…

&
nbsp; No. He had oaths to keep, and grabbed the bottle from Diggelby. Tried to, anyway, but his numb arm just knocked it out of his friend’s hand, and it shattered open on a steel spike protruding from the shield at Maroto’s feet. There was a desperate moment where nobody moved, and then everyone moved at once. The scorpion scuttled out from the shards of glass, and Maroto managed to get a sandaled foot in its path just as Diggelby lunged forward to grab at it, inadvertently headbutting Maroto in the stomach. Bless the gods of the undergrowth, for the scorpion planted its stinger deep in Maroto’s ankle before scurrying across the tent and into the heap of Diggelby’s bedding.

  “I’ll find you later,” Diggelby called after it in a come-hither voice. “He got you, didn’t he?”

  “Uh,” said Maroto, vibrating all over. It felt like he had injected magma into his ankle, the hit unlike any scorpion he’d ever sampled. He definitely wasn’t drowsy anymore, his thoughts coming faster than he could voice them: “WhatkindoffuckingscorpionisthatDiggelby?”

  “I don’t know the Classical Immaculate name for the species,” said Diggelby thoughtfully. “I just call it that brute I found in my slipper back in the Panteran Wastes.”

  Maroto stared at Diggelby, who seemed to be swelling like a puffer fish, ripples extending down his fleshy neck and across his padded caftan. He had just dosed Maroto with two separate exotic bugs, neither of which even an inveterate connoisseur of his experience had tried before, and one of which was presumably unknown outside of the wilds. They were both still giggling when Purna shoved her melting face into the tent and told them to move their arses. Snatching up the two heaviest shields in Diggelby’s collection, Maroto glided after her. He had promises to keep, even though breaking them always came so much easier.

  CHAPTER

  24

  So much for her esteemed personal guard. With first light showing but not a one of Tapai Purna’s crew, Ji-hyeon mounted her charger and gave a final blow of her horn. With Keun-ju, Fennec, Choi, and Chevaleresse Sasamaso leading the dozen mounted knights that made up her bodyguard, she cantered through the camp, waving her flag-spear and picking up a wake of foot soldiers as she rode down the base of the Lark’s Tongue, toward the bloody battle at its foot. Dark as it remained with the sun still hidden beyond the foothills, Ji-hyeon was pleased her army had been ready to meet their attackers, and begrudgingly impressed by the initiative of the Fifteenth Regiment.

  The Crimson cavalry had attempted to crash through the pickets and pikers stationed just where the incline steepened, but before they’d reached the massed infantry more horns had sounded and the Cobalts responded in kind. Faaris Kimaera was an old sellsword Fennec had scared up in Nux Vomica, and the master horseman had led the motley Cobalt cavalry down from the southern ridge to intercept the Crimson riders. When the Imperials veered across the edge of the valley to meet them, Chevaleresse Singh’s dragoons had swept down from the northern ridge, striking the Crimson cavalry across the rear flank. Beset on two sides by riders and with the Cobalt pikers jabbing at them from the slope above them, the Crimson cavalry nevertheless held their own. They defended their sides, repelling the Cobalts from penetrating their troop, and pushed hard up the hill, meeting rebel polearms with heavy lances and crushing the tightly packed defenders under hoof as they broke through the front lines. Behind them, the Crimson foot were charging fast, a wave of blood crossing the valley to wash up the base of the Lark’s Tongue.

  Avoiding the press of her main infantry, where she’d do more harm than good trying to break through and the soldiers jogging after her would be wasted, Ji-hyeon led her retinue and the several hundred infantry who had followed them from camp around to the north, where their fellows were thinner on the ground. Mostly deaf from the cacophony of the battle before she even joined it, she reached Kimaera’s cavalry and skirted their edge, meaning to bolster their defenses from the charging red infantry while the Cobalt riders drove inward to meet Singh’s contingent, squeezing the Crimson cavalry between them. Hoisting her spear aloft and giving the flag a final wave, Ji-hyeon set the weapon and spurred her charger into the oncoming horde, Choi on her left with an enormous crescent-bladed moon-spear and Keun-ju on the right with a long, tasseled trident. Fennec seemed to have fallen behind with Kimaera’s cavalry, but her mounted knights and the crowd of panting foot soldiers still trotted behind them. Fellwing circled low over Ji-hyeon, and she tried not to be reminded of a vulture as her speeding horse delivered her to the fiercest battle of her life.

  Arrows sped back and forth on either side of her, and then Ji-hyeon’s charger crashed into the raging red sea. Her flag-spear punched through the breastplate of a bellowing woman in the front, and Ji-hyeon dropped the weapon just in time to avoid having her arm wrenched out of joint as the horse carried her deeper into the enemy infantry. She jerked the reins to wheel back out of the horde, but the Imperials were packed too tight all around her, with more pushing in all the time. Worse still, the Cobalt soldiers she had intended to lead into the fray had fallen behind, and now the front line was behind her. She had used this maneuver half a dozen times, but never driven so deep into the enemy. Shit.

  Pikes jabbed at her, swords scraped across her horse’s chainmail, bounced off her greaves. She fumbled her twin long swords from their scabbard, nearly dropping one as an arrow ricocheted off the side of her helm. Adept at riding as she’d become since leaving Hwabun, wielding a sword in each hand while surrounded by a furious armed and armored mob didn’t allow for elegance, or much control of her charger. The warhorse was a better steed than Ji-hyeon was a rider, fortunately, his controlled bucking and kicking preventing her from being dragged down by the Imperials.

  For now, anyway, the Crimson soldiers were throwing themselves at her, eyes wide under their pot helms and mouths flecked with froth as they careened at her, heedless of her horse’s hooves or her steel blades. They were clearly mad with rage, behaving less like trained soldiers and more like fire ants swarming their prey. In the past her legendary appearance had instilled palpable fear in her foes, but here the soldiers betrayed no trace of anything resembling recognition or even understandable wariness, only a fury that was all the more disturbing for its presence on virtually every face. A man with skin as red as his tabard kept spitting and foaming after her sword jabbed through his throat, as though hate alone might keep him alive.

  Two more men seized her leg on the other side, and as she swung around to beat them back, her faceplate was misted with blood as Choi’s moon-spear hacked one of their heads off and embedded in the neck of the other. Still he clung to her greaves, trying to pull her down, and with a slash of a sword she completed the job Choi had started. Arms already sore, she spurred her horse’s left flank, and the well-trained animal angled them back around as best he could in the tumult. Yet as he turned and Ji-hyeon saw Choi’s spear blade fanning through the air to beat the red soldiers back, she realized in the press she had no idea which way they had come. This was exactly what Fennec had tried to warn her about; she’d done a very, very stupid thing, and was on the verge of panic when a chirp from Fellwing caused her to look up, beyond the chaos, and see the Lark’s Tongue off to her left.

  “Fall back!” she cried, but even as she gave the order she realized she couldn’t hear her own voice over the raging battle, couldn’t see Keun-ju or Chevaleresse Sasamaso or any of her other knights, only the turbulent waves of red curling with flashing steel and, impossibly distant, the ragged blue line of her infantry. A pike jabbed up, glancing off the snout of her helm, a sword pierced her charger’s armor, causing him to rear up violently and nearly dislodge her, and Ji-hyeon cursed herself for the biggest fool to ever jump headfirst into hell.

  By the time Zosia slid back down into camp, corralled the hundred confused foot soldiers Ji-hyeon had given her to command, and had them tap a like number of archers from the formation firing down into the valley, the Cobalts holding the front already looked to be in some serious shit. They’d be in a far riper mess if she didn’t
get things in hand on their rear, however, which she had to repeat three times to the lieutenant commanding the archers before the woman would let her take off with a hundred sorely needed shooters. Then it was a race back up the hill, through camp, keeping her eye on the exposed hump that marked where a small plateau jutted out of the Lark’s Tongue five hundred feet farther up the mountainside. Any moment she expected to see the first Crimson soldiers crest it and come charging down the steep slope into camp, but nothing stirred among the rocks and cacti. The Lark’s Tongue was bare to the hump and nearly bald from there to the summit, with only a few low bands of the pine that swathed the surrounding mountains, but she never would have scrambled high enough to spot the flashes of metal coming around the mountain’s shoulder as the sun finally rose if Choplicker hadn’t made such a stink about it.

  There was nothing beyond the front of the range here but a lot of rough country, and ever since the Fifteenth had left the road fifteen miles south to follow the Cobalts’ trail they’d been monitored by scouts, who’d reported no contingents splitting off to flank them. That meant the ambush had been set into motion before they even came down from the mountains, which bespoke a degree of tactical sophistication Zosia never would have credited to Efrain Hjortt—the boy must be taking things a lot more seriously since she’d cut his thumbs off. He couldn’t have spared a large force for such a risky course through the trackless wilds, but it might have been enough to cripple the Cobalts, if Zosia wasn’t there to help. She knew a classic wolf trap maneuver when she saw one, though she’d always led the Imperials into them instead of building the gambit around an existing camp; a lot could go wrong if you didn’t already have both units in position to crush the enemy between them, as she hoped to demonstrate by taking that defensible plateau first and firing on the Imperials as they came scrambling down from the pass above.