by Robyn Bennis
She brought her rifle up, and a dozen muskets were raised to match it. She cursed, threw the weapon down, and said, “Get the wounded out first. Quickly now, before this place comes down on our heads.”
17
“AT LEAST THIS is a new experience,” Bernat said, and received a sour look from Josette. “What? I’ve never been a prisoner of war before. I don’t imagine anyone back at the palace has, either. They’ll be so jealous!”
Their pen had been hastily constructed in the street, fenced off with cheval de frise—tree trunks studded with wooden spikes, old swords, and any other convenient, sharp object. A few blocks over, the fire was spreading, and the only thing the Vins had done to fight it was to bring down the houses on either side with gunpowder charges.
As he looked around the pen, it seemed to Bernat that there were more prisoners now than there’d been insurrectionists at the outset. Despite the terrible casualties their force had taken, even more had emerged from their homes to join the mob, and had been captured at one point or another.
Only half a company of fusiliers guarded them. The rest of the Vins were back on the wall, though an assault today seemed increasingly unlikely. The 132nd had never committed to the attack, and for all the mob’s effort and sacrifice, they might as well have slept in. Bernat would have to remember that the next time someone criticized his own sleeping habits.
The sun wasn’t yet over the rooftops, which added to the subdued atmosphere pervading the prisoners. Most sat, a few stood, but no one spoke above a whisper, except some at the edges of the pen who were pleading innocence and ignorance to the guards. Even the wounded were quiet, some utterly silent, others speaking softly to anxious wives or husbands.
“Ever been a prisoner, Captain?” Jutes asked. Of the three of them, he alone was standing, studying the guards as if waiting for his moment.
“Not in connection with the army,” Josette said, without looking up. Her voice was more slurred now, the left side of her face swollen terribly.
“Well, it’s hardly even a fuss,” Jutes said. “A few days in the pen, a week at most, and they’ll have us all paroled. We only have to swear to stay out of the fighting until Garnia’s captured enough prisoners that we can be formally exchanged.”
“Which, the way this war is going, might take an age,” Josette said.
Bernat brightened. “Meaning we’ll be free to do as we wish?”
“As long as we don’t contribute to the war,” Jutes said.
“Then we should take a vacation! We can summer at my family estate in Copia Lugon, take a carriage tour of Ortus. Have you ever traveled through Ortus in the fall? It’s beautiful. Does your mother enjoy fishing at all? There are such lovely little streams. And if not, the hunting is excellent as well.”
“If she’s still alive by then.”
“Pish,” he said, genuinely optimistic. “I doubt they’ve even captured her, or she’d be in the pen with us. She must have been driven to ground during the night, and is only waiting for this to blow over.”
Josette only sat with her eyes on the ground, occasionally trying to pick a splinter of wood or bone out of the oozing, bloody mess of open flesh on the right side of her face, and doing more damage than good with her blind probing.
Bernat looked for Heny in the crowd, but thought better of calling her over when he saw her speaking to Mrs. Turel. Mr. Turel was on the ground between them, unconscious and still bleeding. “Help him,” Mrs. Turel said. “Help him, please.”
Heny chewed something Bernat could not identify, spat, and said, “I can help him die slower, or I can help him die faster. Which do you want? Choose quick. I got others to help.” Bernat didn’t catch the rest of their conversation, and was quite sure he didn’t want to catch it.
They all mused silently for a while, until Jutes narrowed his eyes at something outside the pen. He said, “Something’s happening, sir. Vin colonel’s coming over. And he’s got … oh hell.”
Bernat stood and looked over the heads of the other prisoners. He saw Elise walking just behind the colonel and his aides. He swallowed and said, “I’m, uh, I’m afraid they have caught your mother, after all.”
Josette didn’t stand, didn’t even look up, but only shook her head. “She wasn’t caught.”
“What do you … oh hell.” Bernat looked between them several times. “You can’t mean that … Surely you don’t think … For God’s sake, Josette, she’s your mother!”
“They’re coming to the edge of the pen, sir,” Jutes said, in as even and toneless a voice as was humanly possible. “They’re waving us over.”
Without a word, Josette lifted herself up and pushed her way through the prisoners. Jutes followed, and Bernat took up the rear, kindly apologizing to all the people she’d knocked around on her way forward.
When they reached the edge, and Josette and Elise stood across the cheval de frise from each other, Bernat steeled himself for the coming explosion. He had known Josette angry before, but this would be a haranguing for the history books.
But Josette only stared at her, and said in her still-slurred voice, “You evil bitch.”
Elise flinched, looked at the ground, then at Josette’s wound. She finally met her daughter’s eyes, and spoke as if she’d been rehearsing her words all night. “Josie, you remember those stories about what Durum was like, before the Garnians came? Durum was powerful. It was wealthy. They had to move the walls out six times in as many generations, to account for the growth. Then Garnia took over, and turned it into the trash heap it is today.”
Josette took a deep breath. “The Vins aren’t going to change anything, Mother. Somewhere deep in your heart, you know that. So why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you just leave? Move to Vinzhalia? Breed horses? Or maybe just horseshit, which you can obviously produce at will and in great abundance. If Father saw this, it would break his heart.”
“Your father was the one who turned me to it.” Elise took no satisfaction in her daughter’s surprise. “He was Vinzhalian.”
The chill was so sharp following those words that it spread outward from Josette through the nearby prisoners. They began to stand, a few at a time, and stare silently at Elise on Josette’s behalf.
“The Dupres fled Durum when the Garnians invaded, but your Grandma Dupre came back with Mehmed, back to their ancestral home, after her husband was hanged for stealing, and your Grandma Sargis hid them in her attic until they learned to hide their Vin accents, and could tell everyone they were from out west.”
“My God,” Josette said. “My entire family has been spying for the Vins, since before I was born.”
Elise shook her head. “No, not that long. We were only planning to sneak away to Vinzhalia after we were married. Mehmed still had family there, and we thought they might hide us ’til I could get rid of my accent, the way we hid Mehmed. But then you came along, and I couldn’t see myself trekking that far through the wilderness carrying a baby, and so the move kept gettin’ put off and off. We were almost ready, and you was almost old enough, when your father got conscripted. If it weren’t for that, you would’ve been raised in Vinzhalia, and you being so young at the time, you’d hardly even remember being Garnian after a while.”
Bernat thought that if the first row of prisoners threw themselves onto the spikes of the cheval de frise, the next row might be able to clamber over them and tear Elise to pieces. He thought they might just do it, too.
Elise took a small step back, but went on. “When he didn’t return, I thought of taking you to Vinzhalia myself, but you never would have taken to it. You were always your father’s daughter. So I stayed here. I stayed here for your sake, but I had to have some kind’a plan to ensure your future…”
“You evil bitch,” was all Josette said in reply.
“It did ensure your future, though, didn’t it? Ensured your future, and kept me fed after you left, ’cause you sure as hell wasn’t sending any money home, was you?”
Josette shook her h
ead, and even that small movement seemed a wild gesticulation, in comparison to her former rigidity. “Are you trying to tell me that I bought my commission in the Army of Garnia with money you made by spying for our enemies? You should have told me. You should have told me when I was a girl. Everyone could have avoided a fair bit of trouble, that way.”
Elise shrugged. “Your father always wanted to tell you, but I knew it’d be a disaster if we did. You never did understand, about doing the things that had to be done. You sure didn’t when you left. You remember when you came home crying over them wolf cubs you couldn’t bring yourself to finish off?”
Josette looked up. “How did you even know about that? I never told you.”
“’Cause I followed you.” Her mother laughed. “I followed you and finished the job you couldn’t finish yourself. All this time, I thought you knew that, thought you must’a seen my footprints next to yours on your way back. But I suppose you never could track worth a damn.”
“She makes up for it with other qualities,” Bernat replied. “Not being an evil bitch, foremost among them.” There was a short pause, in which Josette could almost hear the gears turning in his head, before he added, “Not by this day’s standards, at least.”
“You never thought with your head, never took a clear view of things.” Her mother frowned. “You know, that wolf was the best thing that ever happened to us. Price of meat more than doubled, on account of that wolf. I even stopped passing things on to Vinzhalian scouts. Didn’t need to, with the money I was bringing in from hunting. That wolf was a godsend, and you shot it. You killed it, and for what? Duty to the town? Loyalty to a bunch of jackasses who, like as not, would have strung you up with the rest of us if they’d known where your father really came from?” She laughed. “Ain’t that just Garnia to a tee? And that’s why I could never tell you where you really belonged. There was too much of where you didn’t belong already baked into you.”
Josette flashed an ironic smile. “You’re one to speak, Mother.”
Elise only shook her head. “Last year, I got you out of here before the Vinzhalian army came, didn’t I? As much as it hurt—and it did hurt—to treat you so bad you wouldn’t stay. And I tried to make sure you’d be out of here this time, too.”
Bernat nearly exploded. “Wait a minute. You didn’t try to get me out last year! You told me to stay! You tried to keep me here!” He gasped as the facts of the matter finally dawned on him. “You were going to take me hostage and ransom me to my family!”
“No!” Elise said. “I mean, not this time. I really did want to go away with you, this time. We could have lived wherever you wanted. And maybe later on … well, lots of countries take in expatriate nobles, don’t they?”
But Bernat was having none of it. He screamed out, “You bitch! You evil, evil bitch!”
Josette only had to clear her throat to stop him.
“Sorry,” he said, pushing the word out in a resentful puff of air. He took a moment to calm himself. “This isn’t about me. I realize that, and I apologize.”
The Vin colonel, who until now had been standing silent and awkward alongside his aides, took advantage of the lull to step forward and ask Elise in perfect Garnian, “I take it these are the two you’d like us not to shoot?”
If there was a single person in the pen uninterested in this conversation, they were interested now. A murmur spread through the mob, as those who hadn’t heard asked about it from those who had.
“You can’t shoot prisoners,” Josette said, flatly. “Not unless you want Garnia to start shooting yours.”
The colonel turned to her and bowed. “You are indeed correct … Lieutenant, is it? Or Captain? I can never remember how the ranks in your aeronautical corps work. I cannot shoot prisoners. But I can shoot rebels, insurrectionists, and spies. I see no uniforms, and so I necessarily see no soldiers. I may shoot or spare whomever of you I please. Be happy that we have a deal with your mother to spare you.”
“All of this was your idea?” Josette asked her mother.
The colonel answered before her mother could. “No need to blame her. Major Dvakov had the honor of conceiving the plan. Nuri? Step up, now. There’s a good man. He’s been our liaison with Mrs. Dupre.”
Dvakov stepped forward and gave Josette a crisp bow. She noticed that he had her pistol tucked into his sword belt. “I can take but half the credit. The plan was conceived jointly.” The major grinned, clearly aware that he was destroying any deniability that her mother might still retain. “And I must congratulate Mrs. Dupre for her part. She assured us we would destroy the entire resistance in one swoop, but in my wildest imaginings, I never thought it would be this easy.”
Josette sucked on her front teeth and said, “We’re having an off day.”
Major Dvakov tilted his head to the side, studying her as a bird studies a worm. “I should think you are. Your ship, your mother, and your battalion all failed you today, and the sun not even full in the sky. I think it will come as a relief, when we shoot you.”
“We’re not shooting her!” her mother cried, loud enough to echo off the nearby houses.
Major Dvakov turned to his colonel, eyes wide, and spoke like a little child imploring his father, “Oh, but we must, Colonel. Do you not recognize her?”
The colonel had been appraising Josette since Dvakov mentioned an airship. “Is it really her?” he asked. “I thought she was taller.”
Dvakov grinned in reply. “I met her earlier, when she was in uniform. And what will our country say of us if we have the Shark, the bane of balloonists, the very witch of the sky, held firmly in our grasp, with an ironclad pretext on which to execute her, and we let her go?”
Josette’s mother looked as if she was trying to turn Major Dvakov to stone with her gaze. “You told me I could pick any two of them. These are the two I pick.”
The major laughed at her and threw his arms joyously into the air. “Yes, but you didn’t say it was her! You never even told us she was in the city. All this time, we thought she was in the sky above us, and she’s been right here. Oh, you have been a bad, bad little spy, Elise. So bad that I think our deal is forfeit. Is that your opinion as well, Colonel?”
The colonel replied in Vinzhalian, and only then did Josette appreciate that Major Dvakov had carried on the conversation thus far in Garnian—no doubt so that Josette would understand every goddamn word.
Her mother joined the discussion in what seemed equally fluent Vinzhalian, until she was silenced by the major casually shoving his palm into her face.
When the argument between the Vin officers died down, the colonel turned to Elise and said in Garnian, “I’m sorry. If I had the least doubt about who she is, I could grant your request. As it is, I cannot in good conscience allow her to go free.”
Her mother, voice quivering, never meeting her eyes, said very softly, “I’m sorry, Josie.” She looked next to Bernat, expectantly.
Josette turned to see Bernat staring absently at the sky, his chin held in his hand. After a moment, he looked at Elise as if just now noticing her, and said, “Oh, are you waiting for me? I’d prefer to remain where I am, thank you. I’ll not walk away, arm in arm, while you put your own daughter in front of a firing squad.”
Her mother’s eyes were swimming now. “But I love you,” she whispered.
“You only wanted me for the ransom!”
Major Dvakov interjected in whining Garnian, “Can we please get this finished? I haven’t had breakfast.”
* * *
“YOU CERTAINLY NEVER struck me as a Vin,” Bernat said to Josette as they were marched away with hands bound behind their backs, alongside Jutes, Corne, Heny, Pesha, Mrs. Turel, and a couple others that Major Dvakov took to be high-ranking co-conspirators. Elise was nowhere to be seen, having fled under the force of Bernat’s glare, and disappeared down a side street while Dvakov was collecting the prisoners.
“That’s because I’m not a Vin.” Josette said it forcefully, mo
re frustrated than depressed.
“I know, I know,” he said. “But, if not for a conscription, you might have ended up a filthy royalist. It makes my stomach turn.”
“Monarchist,” Josette said, hardly paying attention to him. She was looking about, her eyes cast slightly up.
“Come again?” Bernat asked.
“The Vins are monarchists,” she said. “We’re royalists.”
He frowned. “Are we? Yes, yes, of course, that’s what I meant: a filthy monarchist.” He meant to go on, but their march was rather shorter than he’d expected—just around a corner, so the prisoners in the stockade couldn’t see. As a boy, he’d watched one of his father’s tenant farmers do the same while slaughtering pigs.
As the fusiliers lined them up against a row of houses, with Josette’s eyes still darting about, Bernat finally realized what she was watching for. He wasn’t sure whether it was folly or tenacity to believe that Mistral would swoop in and save them all in the nick of time, and he didn’t suppose he had long enough to figure out the answer.
Whichever it was, he found himself sliding his eyes back and forth across the crest of the wall. He was still at it when they lined him against the wall next to Jutes, who leaned over and whispered, “That was a bloody stupid thing you did.”
Bernat found that it took force of will to take his gaze off the sky and its slim hope of salvation. “You’re going to have to be more specific,” he said, sparing only a glance.
“I mean, saying you’d stay with us,” Jutes said.
Bernat unwound by degrees, returned a wan smile to Jutes, and shrugged. “I listened to my heart. Shame it’s even less practical than the rest of me.”
Jutes looked at his feet. “Well,” he said, and did not quite sigh, but let most of his breath out. “Thank you.”
Bernat grasped for words to adequately answer Jutes’s gratitude, and despaired of finding them in the little time he had.
Dvakov made his way along the line, an orderly following close behind, until he came to Bernat. He searched him for intelligence and found none—a state of affairs which Josette, in the ordinary course of events, would not hesitate to make a biting comment about. But she made no such comment now, so at least there was a silver lining to all this.