A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

  It wasn’t like any of the songs Ji-hyeon’s second father would sing. It was like something out of her first father’s sutras on the many kinds of hells. Intense and bizarre as it had gotten during the combat, after the explosive or whatever it was had gone off across the valley everything had taken on an ethereal sheen, and if not for her aching back and hand, she might have been able to pretend it was all a nightmare, if only for a few moments at a time. Might have been able to let herself pretend this wasn’t all her fault.

  They had been close enough to the perimeter that when the bomb or trick or spell went off, she had heard the sudden termination of thousands of raging voices, the quiet that followed even weirder than their early shouting, wailing, and chanting. As Choi led them steadily onward, the Crimson soldiers who appeared through the smoke became less frequent, until they only encountered Cobalt troops. It made little difference, though, the fight having left both armies, and that in and of itself was unnerving—if the mysterious weapon hadn’t been detonated by either side, what had caused it? And if it was an explosion, why hadn’t she heard anything more than a distant pop?

  Hoartrap’s meddling was still the only explanation that made some kind of sense, but before she confronted him about experimenting on her battlefield without her say-so, she wanted something to drink. Maybe a ten-year-long nap. Looking at her battered guards, though, she felt the opening murmurs of her guilty conscience. Upright though they were, Ji-hyeon could see that their wounds were grave enough that both Keun-ju and Choi might never walk out of the barber’s tent. Even Fellwing had used the last of her strength to find Ji-hyeon’s friends in the fray, guiding the wildborn to their mistress, and now lay softly hooting in the crook of Ji-hyeon’s injured arm, too weak to fly. And what had it cost Ji-hyeon? A couple of fingers of her off hand.

  As they hobbled through the ruined pickets and started up the rise toward camp, Ji-hyeon looked back at where the fighting had been worst. A break in the smoke revealed that a new topography had formed in the Lark’s Tongue vale, the piled dead creating wide hill and dales as far as the haze let her see. There was more red than blue on the ground, and more blue than red upright, mechanically trying to line up all the Imperials who had surrendered after their command and the bulk of their army had vanished in a puff of smoke.

  “Ji-hyeon, was this…” Keun-ju began, following her gaze across the fume-filled valley. “Is this something you’ve seen before, campaigning with the Cobalts?”

  Ji-hyeon shook her head, but then that wasn’t quite true. The random people wandering around in shock, too scared to think anymore… that she had seen in the citizens of many of the towns they had sacked. And the smoke burning everyone’s eyes and lungs, she’d delivered that at Geminides, when they’d sapped the wall of the castle to bust in the back. Then in Myura, Hoartrap had used deviltry and black magic to make the enemy officers go missing, although there had only been a few of them that time. And of course, of all the elements at work in this tapestry Ji-hyeon had helped weave, the one constant everywhere was death: dead friends, dead foes, dead animals, a dead land soaked in dead blood spilled with dead metal. So yes, she had seen this before, just never like this, never all at once… And if she had planned better, if she had listened to Fennec and had them pull out instead of making a stand, none of this would have happened. What the hells was she doing out here in the heart of the Star, anyway, running around playing soldier with real people for her toys? Dismissing the counsel of her advisors and throwing herself down on the front line, where most of her bodyguard could be massacred to protect their child general? She hadn’t seen Chevaleresse Sasamaso since her idiotic charge into the thick of it, nor the rest of her retinue…

  “This is not your shame alone,” said Choi, looking carefully at Ji-hyeon, as though she could really peer into her ward’s thoughts just like Fennec always said. “Someone did this. Not you. We will hunt the truth.”

  “Of course we will,” said Ji-hyeon, standing a little straighter and feeling it all the way from the goose egg coming up on her back down to the oozing rag Keun-ju had tied around her bitten hand. “First we discover where Fennec hid, since he didn’t manage to keep up during our charge, and then… then…”

  Ji-hyeon stared up at the blue tents arrayed on the hillside above her, tried to remember what was important and what was not, tried to consider everything that had just happened and how to proceed, but all she could think about was the look of feral abandon in the Imperial woman’s eyes as she’d chewed off her fingers… That was something to focus on, anyway, and Ji-hyeon gestured with her crippled hand at the nearest white pavilion. “First thing we do is get tended by the barbers. Once we’re there we’ll have the officers brought in, figure out what happened, how many we lost, what our options are, with that other Imperial regiment no more than a few days out. Send sorties over to the Crimson camp and confiscate their supplies. Fennec can bide.”

  “Too well,” said Choi, and they limped toward the busy sawbones, Ji-hyeon looking again over the murky field, wondering how many of the people who had trusted her when dawn broke that morning would never emerge from the smoke.

  CHAPTER

  27

  Hoartrap, you fucking piece of fuck shit, put me the fuck down right now or I’m going to devote my life to fucking you up, too! I’m not fucking crazy anymore!”

  “What a reassuring statement,” said Hoartrap, tightening his grip on Maroto. “Definitely not the sort of thing a raving madman would tell his captor.”

  “Who captured who?” Maroto said slyly, unable to keep from shaking with silent laughter. The bugs were definitely still in him, but even with their aid he was too exhausted to fight Hoartrap, straight bushed from lugging those two shields all over, running game for Purna’s unappreciative arse, but then that thought brought him back around to what had happened to her, and he started squirming again. “Just let me see her! Just let me see her before you murder my only friend!”

  “Nobody’s murdering anybody. Not yet, anyway.” Hoartrap muttered the last.

  “This is ’cause she found out, isn’t it?” And there it was, the blazing insight into Zosia’s evil heart. “She found out I killed her husband, so she’s revenging on me.”

  “Husband, you say,” said Hoartrap, though he didn’t sound interested, didn’t sound like he believed a word, was just trying to pass the time as he lugged his heavy cargo through the spectral landscape of dead folk and broken weapons and arrows sticking up from the dirt, everything beyond their immediate vicinity cloaked in the rank black air. Normally, scavengers would be all over a field this ripe, the humans coming for gear and maybe parts to sell to medical students, the animals and devils coming for a meal, but not so much as a fly buzzed in the dismal wasteland. “Whose husband was it you killed, Maroto?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Maroto moaned, sick with remorse and anger and a whole lot of bad bugs. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t, but you know how they are, they’ll take what you say and they’ll mess it all up, they’ll take a good thing and make it bad, they’ll find a way to get back at you, when all you did was set them free!”

  “Mmmm,” said Hoartrap, slowing his pace. “Crumbsnatcher, that’s who did it?”

  “Who else!” Maroto missed his rat so much, especially now; if he’d held on to him, he could have saved Purna. “I just wanted to see her again, that’s all, I didn’t know he’d make it happen so bad. And I was going to tell her, I was, that’s why I came looking for her, but she already knows, she has to, why else would she be so cold? Why else would she murder my friend? It’s payback, and I deserve it, but not Purna! Not her!”

  “My my,” said Hoartrap, coming to a stop and looking around, as if even he couldn’t orient himself in this infernal valley. “That’s quite the story. You’re sure it’s all true, not a nightmare some bug laid in your brain?”

  “Call me a fucking liar, Hoartrap, call me a liar and see what happens!” Maroto tensed, then gave what Hoartrap had asked some s
erious consideration. Through the mists of the battlefield and the worms and the sting and everything else, he had to wonder, now that the question had been posed… “I’m sure about it being my fault, from what I asked Crumbsnatcher to do. Not sure about Zee knowing it was me, because I wanted to tell her, want to tell her, ’cause she’s got to know it wasn’t the queen or the Chain or nobody but her old friend Maroto, but I didn’t get a chance, and now… now Purna’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “Did you tell her—Purna, I mean, or anyone else—about the terms of Crumbsnatcher’s freedom? Someone else in camp Zosia could have heard it from?” Good old Hoartrap always knew the surest way to talk Maroto down when he’d worked himself up way too high; you just had to look at all the angles, and then sometimes you saw there was nothing to fret over.

  “You’re the first one I’ve told, ever,” said Maroto, feeling relieved that Zosia couldn’t know, and then shame at his relief. “No way she could know. Which means she didn’t let Purna die as revenge, she let her bleed out because she’s just a selfish old fucker who don’t care about nobody but herself. I’ve got half a mind not to tell her at all, now, let her go barmy trying to figure out who sent the assassins, when all along it was—woof, what’s the hurry?”

  “Something I found over here that I want to show you,” grunted Hoartrap, trotting off in a new direction. Through a gap in the smoke, Maroto saw the Lark’s Tongue straight behind them, but when he tried to correct the old wizard’s course he was reminded that they had something to see, at the center of the vale. Whatever it was, he doubted it was worth the bother; he was starting to crash pretty hard, but when they reached Hoartrap’s destination he sobered up in one devil’s breath of a hurry.

  Hoartrap set him down on his own feet just as they stepped out of the smoke, and Maroto’s knees almost went out on him as he surveyed the manifest impossibility. The miasma wouldn’t cross the border of the enormous circular clearing, so here in the bull’s-eye of what had been the battlefield was a perfect circle of fresh air, and beneath it, where crushed grass and kicked-up earth and a goodly many corpses ought to be, stretched a Gate. There were only six Gates on the Star, one for each Arm and the last in Diadem, everyone knew that… but here was a seventh, and it was wider than all the other six put together.

  “This wasn’t fucking here this morning,” breathed Maroto, taking a step back from the edge where the flattened field gave way to absolutely fucking nothing. Made him feel ill, being this close to one, and he felt a powerful itch on his ankle. Looking down, he saw that the scorpion sting had started oozing grey slime down the side of his foot. Droplets peeled away from his skin and blew sideways into the Gate. “Where’d it come from?”

  “I have a theory as to that,” said Hoartrap, cracking his knuckles. “But I don’t think you’ll like it.”

  “Then you know what, don’t even tell me. I’ve given myself enough black eyes, trying to see too far. If you think it’s bad, I definitely don’t—”

  But then Hoartrap bum-rushed Maroto for the second time that day, carrying them both over the lip of the Gate.

  It felt wrong, not having Grandfather’s comforting weight on his shoulders, but then wrong was something Sullen would have to get used to. He slowed to a fast walk as he neared the edge of camp, not wanting to risk startling another kid into shooting his arse now that more and more roughed-up soldiers were moving between the tents. More than one of the grunts gave Sullen the iron eye, and he checked the cobalt handkerchiefs he’d tied on his bandolier, making sure his allegiances were right out there for everyone to see. There was a whole lot less singing and drinking than he’d expect out of returning victors, and given how idly they were all coming up the hill, they must have won, or come close enough—the fighting had stopped and they weren’t being overrun by Imperials, so that seemed like it’d inspire a smile somewhere, anywhere… not a one. As he broke from the tight cluster of the camp and headed down past the white pavilions where most of the screaming was coming from, he saw the whole floor of the vale still blanketed in smoke, rising too high for him to see the far hills where the Crimsons had come in from the plains. He wondered if things were as grim on their side of the valley.

  “Sullen!” Ji-hyeon. Fast as the relief bloomed at hearing her voice it wilted again, as he turned and saw how harmed she was. She looked like she’d been dunked in the giant bucket of chum from the Ballad of Count Raven and the Sea King, blood and bits of meat clinging to her from boots to forehead. The horned woman carried Ji-hyeon’s helm for her, looking even more torn up than her mistress, and helping the general along was Keun-ju, the pretty boy’s veil missing and his face caked in blood, a few shafts sprouting from his armor. They’d all made it out was what mattered, and Sullen sprinted over to meet the trio under the awning of a barber’s tent. “Sullen, I’m so glad you’re okay!”

  “Oi,” said Sullen, wanting to hug her, but reckoning that would’ve been low form even without her lover in the way, looking Sullen up and down like he was a butcher dubious if the animal before him was fit for consumption. Sullen wanted to tell Ji-hyeon straightaway about Grandfather, but with these two unfriendly strangers watching him, he just couldn’t do it, and instead said, “You, um, you all right? All of you? Just missed you setting out, I guess. Sorry I couldn’t help.”

  “We would have benefited from your presence,” said Choi, not angry or mean about it, just telling it for what it was.

  “Missed the whole engagement, did you?” said Keun-ju, and, not knowing if the barb he felt in the words was intentional or not, Sullen treated it as an honest question.

  “Nah, she, uh, Zosia had us run up the mountain, to the hump up there? These… Myurans, they said, this regiment from Myura, they’d snuck around the back, and were trying to get us from behind, so we, you know. Stopped ’em.”

  “Must have been quite the clash,” said Keun-ju, and Sullen finally kenned what this guy was driving at; unlike everyone else he’d passed coming down here, he didn’t have a scrape on him, his clothes free of the blood, dirt, and the smoky stench that coated the rest of the Cobalts. That explained the looks he’d been getting from the soldiers he’d passed. “Were there many casualties?”

  Sullen felt the straps of Grandfather’s harness tighten across his chest, even though he’d taken them off and left them with the remains, and he took the first of three steps that would carry him to this smart-mouthed arsehole.

  “Enough, Keun-ju,” said Ji-hyeon, smiling wearily at Sullen. Her eyes were glassy, and she had the shakes even worse than most of the other troops he’d passed on the way down here. “That’s great, Sullen. I wondered where the Myurans got to, since they weren’t with the Fifteenth. I’ll have Captain Zosia give me a full report, so don’t worry about it now. I’ve got… I’ve got some other stuff to do first.”

  She lifted a bandaged hand, and he saw that the cloth was dark and sopping. Fellwing lay cradled in her elbow, the charcoal black owlbat now turned grey, and diminished somehow, but the devil would be fine, in time. It was feeding on something intangible that Ji-hyeon was giving off, he could tell somehow, and once it had enough strength to return to the air it would find plenty more nourishment in this place.

  “Yeah, definitely, get yourself looked after,” said Sullen. “Anything I can do? Not here, right, but just… anything?”

  “Oh sure, lots,” said Ji-hyeon, but then she just stared past Sullen at nothing at all, lips pursed.

  “No one from Purna’s squad arrived at command this morning,” said Choi. “The general orders any able officers to report here, so if you know where she or your uncle is, you could tell them that.”

  Did he know where his uncle was? The eternal question. Whenever Sullen thought about how his uncle had abandoned the clan but not tried to help him and Grandfather, he would get a sad, sour stirring in his stomach, and his heartbeat would quicken unpleasantly. He felt the old symptoms now, but ignored them—he hadn’t met Ji-hyeon and her people at the command tent in time,
either, and big as the camp was, big as the fight had been, Maroto had probably just missed them, same as Sullen. He was around here somewhere, he wouldn’t just disappear as soon as the threat of violence revealed itself… He wouldn’t do that to Sullen again, not now that he’d finally tracked him down, and they were going to hear his explanation, just like Grandfather had always wanted. The old man had died for something after all, then: to give Sullen this opportunity.

  “I’ll find him. I’m good at that.”

  Keun-ju muttered something about what Sullen was good at, and he was glad he’d missed it, because Ji-hyeon looked to be having a tough enough day without Sullen beating her boyfriend’s arse.

  “Yeah, that would be helpful,” said Ji-hyeon, sagging a little in Keun-ju’s arms. “Thanks, Sullen.”

  “It’s my honor, General,” said Sullen, knowing a dismissal when he heard one, and wishing he was good for something other than chasing after his no-account uncle. “Feel better.”

  “Thanks, Sullen,” she said again, but her eyes were back on nothing. “And thank your grandfather for me.”

  Sullen set off quick as he could, so she wouldn’t see his face, wouldn’t see that for a frost-cold boy from the Frozen Savannahs, he couldn’t think about Fa without melting. He iced himself back over by focusing on the task at hand, what sometimes felt like the only task he’d ever known. Though his gut told him to look for his uncle back in the rear of the camp, hiding out in his tent, he decided to give Maroto the benefit of the doubt one last time, and started his search down on the hazy battlefield.

  Instead of waiting for Hoartrap and Maroto to fall into it, the Gate swam up to catch them, and Maroto instinctively closed his eyes as he felt the textured blackness press its slick, cool membrane against his face and chest. It accepted him, and he was sinking into heaving mulch, fronds or cilia brushing against him, pushing him along, pulling him up, and just as he pondered if he’d rather drown in deviltry with his eyes closed or open, his ears popped and he felt solid ground beneath his feet, cool air on his skin.