by Kate Elliott
“Nice of you to say so.”
“I respect competence.” He swiped at mosks. His glove-encased hands were hot, but the thin leather gave him a better grip on his weapons. “If we’re flanked,” he added, “you’ll go to the rear company and set up a defensive line.”
“Do you think they’re hoping to cut around behind us, Captain?”
“That’s what I would do, if I were defending the city. When we reach the first open channels, we’ll pull the pioneers back to reinforce the rearguard. Then if one of the other cohorts breaks as First Cohort did, we can send our reserve to rally them. Cursed if I’ll retreat again. It also gives us the option of wheeling on the enemy, taking them from the back.”
“If they attack.”
“If I’ve thought through every contingency, I can act faster when the hells break loose, as they will. I worry that Lord Radas prepares himself only for victory. He’s so used to people falling onto their faces before him he can’t imagine anything else.”
Her color heightened as if with a flash of heat. “Captain, if you’d keep your voice lower, I for one would appreciate it. This cohort is loyal to you but that doesn’t mean there aren’t men here who won’t carry tales in exchange for the prospect of advancement. To be blunt, I’d rather not be cleansed for being under suspicion of harboring traitorous thoughts.”
“Aui! My apologies.”
Yet his mind would spin and weave as they slogged through ground increasingly difficult to push across, sinkholes and mud pits like ambushes laid across the mire. A better plan; better commanders; more disciplined men, soldiers honed to a peak of skill and loyalty. His cohort was all right; he trusted them to hold their ground because he’d trained them. It was the rest of the cursed army he didn’t trust, and yet even to think that thought might get him killed, just for being honest about the army’s glaring weaknesses. Aui!
“Keep moving,” he called to a cadre of soldiers stymied by a slippery depression that in the wet season likely flowed with water. “Hack down the pipe-brush over there. Lay it down right across the mud. That’s right. Excellent.”
Onward, with the reeves watching from on high and, so far, no sign from the city hidden within the delta beyond that the Nessumarans meant to put up any further resistance.
• • •
AT DAWN, JOSS flew Toughid to Horn Hall and gave Kesta orders to delegate a reeve to convey Toughid, and an advance force, to Law Rock.
“Aui!” She glared at him. “We’re undermanned. I’ve got an entire flight running messages up and down West Track for the captain already. To move one hundred soldiers from the army to Toskala will mean every reeve we have here must make the journey twice. It’ll take three days at least. More if he decides he wants more lifted.”
“I’ll see if I can detach two flights from Copper Hall.”
He glided down over Copper Hall in late afternoon, flagging for permission to land. Fawkners came running, one of them an old acquaintance who recognized Scar.
“Is Marshal Masar in his cote?” Joss asked.
“You haven’t heard?” They wore expressions of grief-stricken pride. “You’ll find the marshal in council square.”
He crossed a bridge that linked the reeve hall to the council islet. A man dressed in reeve leathers trotted across the span toward Copper Hall, brushing past Joss without a word. Nessumara’s council square was an entire islet, banked with a stone revetment. Its elaborate garden surrounded a tiled roof supported by carved wood pillars. The paving under the roof was famous, spoken of in tales, but Joss only remarked the older folks sitting tensely on benches in the copious shade. Clerks of Sapanasu were writing busily. A pair of aged men in militia sashes were talking to a young runner, a lean lass dressed in kilt and vest. As he approached, the lass gestured a respectful leave-taking and took off running toward the eastern bridge.
The elders looked up as Joss approached.
“Greetings of the day,” said Joss.
The two men stared at him, making no welcoming gesture. Then one rose abruptly and smiled. Joss turned. Chief Sengel approached, accompanied by a stocky young man in a well-worn quilted militiaman’s coat whose hands bore a farmer’s calluses.
“Commander Joss! An unexpected visit.” The hells. Joss offered a forearm; Sengel hit hard, and his grin flashed when Joss did not stagger or wince. “This is Laukas, freshly jessed.”
“Is that right?” said Joss. “You’re the first I’ve heard of in—well—months. You are well come to the reeves, comrade.”
The young man did not smile. “I’m ready to fight,” he said. His hair, Joss saw, had been pulled back but wasn’t quite long enough to wrap in a ribboned topknot.
“What’s your eagle’s name? Maybe it’s one I know.”
Laukas glanced at Sengel, and the chief nodded. “Shy,” said the young man. “Although she’s actually pretty bold, so I guess you reeves—I mean, we—make a jest of their names?”
“But—” Joss stumbled over his words. “Shy is Masar’s eagle.”
“Wait here,” said Sengel.
“Yes, Marshal.” The young man stepped aside obediently.
“What in the hells?” demanded Joss.
Sengel walked with Joss out to the end of Council Pier where they could talk without being overheard. The channel was running low this deep in the dry season. A dead fish stank on a muddy lip of stone. The city had a tense anticipation of coiled rope just before it’s flung. Boats moved purposefully, piled high with an assortment of debris and junk, branches, planks, wheels, a blackened spar. Older folk poled and rowed, accompanied by youths.
“A cloak came down in the night. We filled him full of arrows and javelins until he did fall and lie in a stupor. I’d spoken to Masar about the situation. He claimed the right to unclasp the cloak as payment for his family.”
“He’s an old, failing man!”
“Which is exactly why I let him do it. Don’t you suppose that’s how he wanted to die, knowing he’d struck a blow rather than wasting away on a pallet? Now what can I help you with? I don’t have much time. The enemy’s eastern line is more than halfway across the mire and we’ve not got everything in place yet. Do you bring a message from the captain?”
“Aui!” And yet, he could imagine Masar taking on one last battle. It was a proud way to go. “Listen. Can you spare a flight to move troops up from the army to Toskala?”
Sengel shrugged. “I can’t, Commander. I’ve got three flights out today bringing in reinforcements to me. If you’ve just come from the army, you might have seen them.”
Joss shook his head, rubbing his forehead. “I went by Horn Hall first.”
Sengel looked closely at him. “What is it, Commander? Something troubling you?”
A horn rang in the distance. Drums rapped out a measure. Every soul seated under the council roof turned to stare eastward over a wide channel, although he could see nothing but the crowd of one-and two-story buildings that filled the neighboring isles. So much was hidden from him. He didn’t know the streets and alleys of this city—not Nessumara, precisely, although its complex tangle of islets, islands, canals, river channels, backwaters, and mires was famous in tale and in truth—but this unfolding market of events whose paths were obscure to him.
“I just think it’s cursed odd we reeves have become carters.”
Sengel laughed in the easy Qin way. “Not at all. Reeves are soldiers, doing what needs done.”
“Why’d the young man call you ‘marshal’?”
Sengel began walking back to the shaded square where people waited impatiently for him. “A courtesy, nothing more. I’m in charge of Nessumara’s defenses at the moment, and that includes the reeves. If there’s nothing else, Commander, I have to go inspect the defenses. If you don’t mind, could you walk Laukas over to Copper Hall? He hasn’t even been issued reeve leathers or harness. It just happened this morning.”
Laukas wasn’t shy, precisely, but bitter.
“Who’s marshal now?
” Joss asked him as they crossed the bridge.
“Chief Sengel’s acting as marshal. He’s got everything in hand in Nessumara. Without him, it’d be like we were walking into a cursed ambush, wouldn’t it? But now we have a hope of victory.”
44
MIDMORNING, KESHAD WAS working in quiet amity beside O’eki, each man at his own writing desk, when the door into the compound slammed open. Keshad splattered ink over his neat column of accounts.
O’eki looked up more calmly. “Seren? What is it?”
The Qin soldier limped inside and a young reeve hurried in behind, his face so creased with worry that O’eki set his brush on its stand and rose.
“Reeve Siras has come from Merciful Valley,” began Seren.
The reeve broke in over Seren’s words. “You’re to come immediately to Merciful Valley, Master O’eki. Chief Tuvi tells me to bring also Master Keshad.”
“What’s wrong?” demanded Keshad, throat tight.
The reeve wiped his brow. “Mistress Priya suggested you close down the warehouse until you return.”
“Very well,” said O’eki in a tone so flat Kesh was shocked to see how gray he had turned. “It will take me a short while to lock everything up. Seren, ask a hireling to collect a change of clothes and such necessities as we’ll need.”
The Qin soldier nodded and limped out, brows drawn down.
“What’s happened, curse you!” demanded Keshad.
“Close up your books quickly, Kesh,” snapped O’eki. “Grab anything you need. Make it fast.”
The hells!
THEY LAUNCHED FROM Assizes Square. O’eki hooked in with Siras, and Kesh was handed over to Reeve Miyara, who looked as if she hadn’t slept in a week.
“What happened?” he asked as she hooked him in.
“Anything the chief wants you to know, he’ll tell you.”
The earth lurched; the ground leaped away from under him as wings battered the air. He yelped, squeezing shut his eyes. She offered no word of encouragement, no friendly banter to ease the transition. After a while he cracked an eye only to find the land falling away so rapidly he felt sick to his stomach, so he clamped his eyes shut again.
“How do you get used to this?” he muttered. Her knee jabbed into his back. “Aui!”
He took the hint. If she didn’t want to talk, then he wouldn’t talk. But it was cursed hard to keep your eyes shut for so long, and the next time he opened them there was nothing but water beneath, swaying and glittering under a cloudless sky.
Better not to look. He lifted an arm to shield his eyes, but after a while his arm got tired, and then the other arm got tired, and eventually the steady rumble of the wind and the tense silence of his companion numbed him enough that he could regard the sea below with resigned terror. Just let Miravia be alive. As long as he held to that thought, he could endure.
They’d launched before noon and soon he had to piss, even though they’d warned him to relieve himself before flight. But there was nowhere to land except the south shore shining gold off to the left, and he sure as the hells wasn’t going to ask her to detour just for him. They rose higher yet until the air stung in his chest and his eyes watered, and he started to shiver, but she said nothing and the eagle flew on, alternating gliding on strong winds and then beating for stretches. To cross the Olo’o Sea by ship took two days, or a long day and night, yet the waters quickly slid past as the day wore on. Late in the afternoon they passed above the hinterlands of Astafero, the settlement a smear of buildings far below, and sped straight for the magnificent Spires. The winds buffeted them, and he shuddered convulsively in a cold blast that swept off the high, forbidding peaks whose crowns glittered a blinding white.
They plummeted and he shrieked as the earth hurtled up. They hit and he fell hard to his knees as she unhooked him without warning. He knelt at a cliff’s edge, the spray of a waterfall spanning the gulf of air. He crept away from the chasm, and the first time he tried to stand he could not. The reeve was shucking the harness from her eagle, releasing it, and by the time he got his feet under him she was walking in company with a Qin soldier into the trees. Another sentry waited at the path’s edge, so he hurried after.
“Where’s O’eki and the other—what was his name?” he called.
“Master O’eki is a heavier burden, and Siras hasn’t as much experience to push his raptor so hard.” She tossed the words over her shoulder and kept walking. He struggled past the sentry, who nodded at him but stayed where he was, waiting for the other reeve. Aui! He had to piss so badly that he staggered a few steps off the path, shook himself free of his trousers, and released.
Afterward, legs steadier, he loped through the forest and caught her up as she and her escort emerged into the clearing with its living shelters and store houses and a herd of goats ransacking their way along the tree line.
Soldiers came running. Priya, sitting on the porch with the baby in her arms, looked up, then stood, her posture inexpressibly weary. She had cut off all her hair, shorn like a sheep every which way, and by the look on her face as she watched him stumble over the uneven ground toward her, he knew what had happened.
He should have understood. He had met the emperor’s brother. He knew what manner of people the Sirniakans were. He knew what the captain’s mother was. She had warned him.
“It can’t be true,” he said, stubbing his toes as he tried to take the steps in a single leap. “It can’t be true. I could have saved her if I’d agreed to marry her. If I’d taken her away—”
Her voice was as colorless as undyed linen. “Chief Tuvi wishes to speak to you, Master Keshad.”
He balanced on the porch’s edge, heels bouncing over air. “Does he think I had something to do with it?”
Soldiers had fenced him in while he wasn’t looking. These men had been sent to Merciful Valley to protect Mai’s life, and they had failed.
“I’ll go in,” he said. They had all failed.
Priya nodded. The baby was suckling on a bottle sewn from a sheep’s udder, content for the moment, eyes shut.
It was easier to shut your eyes, wasn’t it? To pretend you didn’t have to look at the horrible truth. He shed his sandals and pushed aside the canvas. The outer chamber was empty, two rolled-up pallets stowed out of the way, but a curtain was tied up to reveal the inner chamber. The canvas wall on the far side had also been tied up to allow in light and air. Miravia was sitting on a pillow beside a man reclining on a pallet, his legs covered by a length of silk and his torso belted into a silk jacket. She bent forward, setting a cup to Chief Tuvi’s lips as she smiled and began to speak in response to something he had just evidently said.
She smiled at Tuvi!
Kesh’s feet scuffing startled her. She spilled the liquid on Tuvi’s chin as she jerked upright, head whipping around to stare. Her lips moved, forming his name. She had hacked off her hair, and what was left spiked in ragged clumps like a badly mown hayfield. She was more beautiful in her grief than he had ever seen her, sorrow honing her spirit so its beauty stabbed like lightning.
The chief raised himself on an elbow, his gaze an arrow pinning Kesh. “Here you are,” he said, his voice hoarse with pain. “Sit if you will, Master Keshad.”
“You don’t think I had anything to do with it!”
“To do with what?” asked the chief.
Miravia burst into tears and, sobbing, jumped to her feet and ducked out through the back flat onto the wraparound porch. When Kesh moved to go after her, Tuvi stopped him with a word.
“Sit.”
Kesh sat, missing the pillow.
The chief pulled the silk off his legs. He wore a local kilt, and his skin, in the fading light, was revealed as a mass of welts and blisters.
“Bringing you here, did the reeves speak of what I told them to keep secret?” asked the chief as Kesh tried not to stare.
“No.”
“Did the captain’s mother ever speak to you of her plans?”
“I told Captai
n Anji everything! She offered to give me Miravia if I would take Mai as well. It was cursed obvious she wanted to be rid of Mai. What in the hells happened?”
“Sheyshi was her agent all along.”
“Sheyshi? The slave? But she’s . . . stupid. How could she be—?”
If you shut your eyes, you would not see what walked and talked right in front of you. Was anyone ever really as stupid as Sheyshi had constantly been?
“We saw what we expected to see.” Tuvi grunted and lay back on the heap of pillows. “If you will, a sip of juice.”
Kesh found the cup Miravia had set down before she had run off. How odd to feel compassion for his rival’s pain. The man had never done him any harm, as far as he knew. After swallowing the juice, the chief breathed as his eyes watered.
At last, he sighed. “We were all taken in. She stabbed Mai by the pool. When Mai fell in, I tried to drag her body out but the pool’s sorcery burned me. She sank into the depths.”
“Are you saying you’ve no body?”
“I lost her. The demons—or maybe the gods of this place—took her.” Tuvi raised a hand, welted with fine red scars, and covered his eyes as he wept.
He wept, as hardened a soldier as he was.
“That old bitch—!” cried Kesh.
“Sheh!” The Hundred word cut like an edged blade. Shame! “No man speaks so of the var’s sister, a princess of the blood.”
“She had Mai killed!”
“So it seems. Nevertheless, if you insult her again, I must kill you for the sake of the captain’s honor. I admit, it is not the Qin way to make a stab in the dark, but when her brother condemned her to a life in the Sirniakan palace, it must be expected she would learn to live as the locals do in order to survive. So must we all. Mai’s power was considerable. A threat to her, coming to this land as a stranger to a son who did not know her well and who never liked his uncle, her brother. The var is a hard man to please. Sheyshi must have been the princess’s agent all along. The princess’s relationship with Beje and Cherfa was closer than we ever imagined. They must have been in communication all those years. It was Beje who helped smuggle the young Anjihosh past the empire’s border nineteen years ago. I was part of that effort, you know. I did not suspect Commander Beje might have been her agent still. Or perhaps he knew nothing, and she used Cherfa to place an agent into her son’s troop. To protect him. It has only ever been her desire to protect her son.”