A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  Except Zosia knew the answer to that question already, having been there herself, or close to it. If you want vengeance badly enough you can bounce back from almost anything.

  “Zosia.” It was more of a sigh than a word as she tucked Indsorith back into her damask blankets. Her jade eyes were half-lidded but weren’t rolling around in their orbits anymore. “You … you really came.”

  “Of course I did,” said Zosia, and Choplicker knew better than to contradict her with one of his little chuffs. That, or he was too busy enjoying the lump in Zosia’s throat as she patted Indsorith’s shoulder. “Think you can stay awake a little longer? I’m going to whip you up another of my Star-famous juicy ghee drams.”

  Indsorith winced, and Zosia forced a smile. “If you’re well enough to worry me half to death getting out of bed, you’re damn sure well enough to take your medicine.”

  Right after that Zosia would go exploring and see if she could get some answers as to just what in the happy hells had happened to Diadem; hard to decide which was more unsettling, the riots in the streets or the shuttered, deserted castle. Hoartrap had insisted that the return of the Jex Toth signaled a mortal threat to the entire Star but hadn’t been specific about how exactly that would come to pass—was whatever had happened here in the Imperial capital the beginning of the end? Then there was the question of what was taking Ji-hyeon and the rest of the Cobalt Company so long to arrive. According to the plan they should have already come through the Gate and stormed this very castle. Zosia rather doubted they’d simply overslept, too …

  But all that could wait. Zosia wasn’t very well going to save the Star all by herself, but she could take care of the wounded woman in front of her. First, though, she had to look after herself—a sit on the royal chamber pot, a hunt for kaldi beans in the servants’ kitchen, a hurried breakfast of hazelnuts, dates, and whatever else she scared up, and retrieving that comfy seawolf mantle she’d forgotten back on the Crimson Throne. That order.

  Hurrying through her chores and picking up the forgotten fur from where it lay draped over the arm of the fire glass throne, her nose wrinkled as she noticed Choplicker had carried out his own foul business on the nearby onyx cathedra. What a ridiculous monster he was. No wonder they got along.

  By the time she had come back in, built the fire in the hearth back up, and made another concoction, Indsorith was dozing again. She stirred when Zosia sat on the bed beside her. Obediently lifting her head to sip the warm drink, she stared up over the chalice at her savior, and Zosia returned her gaze, the two women really looking each other in the eye for the first time in over twenty years. Indsorith had been little more than a child the last time they had met, and while she couldn’t yet be forty, the crown had aged her prematurely. That, and being locked in a dungeon for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time. Down all the years Indsorith had remained the same in Zosia’s mind, a spotty teenage queen with a big chip on her bony shoulders, and now she was a full-grown woman—and a stout one at that. But then Indsorith had surely thought of Zosia as she’d been in the prime of her life, not as a worn-out, sad-eyed old widow.

  “What happened?” Indsorith asked as she settled back into her pillow, her cracked, buttery lips shining in the firelight.

  “Was planning on asking you the same thing,” said Zosia as she set the chalice back on the table and gave Choplicker a threatening point of the finger—he was looking ready to jump up on the bed beside them. “How long did they have you locked up down there? And where’d everybody go?”

  Indsorith shook her head, the movement so faint her long, coppery hair didn’t rustle the bedding. Her eyes settled on the battered crown Zosia had left on a neighboring pillow. “I don’t … they drugged me. There was a ritual … but …” Indsorith closed her eyes, and Zosia was about to stealthily remove herself from the room when the queen looked back up at her. “The Witchfinder Plains. Were you there? With the Cobalts?”

  “Until last night,” said Zosia, and in her state Indsorith didn’t seem to notice the strangeness of that fact, given the distances involved.

  “The Fifteenth Regiment caught you. That was when Y’Homa took me … and the rituals, and the Gate … the things beyond the Gate … they’re coming … they’re coming …”

  “What’s coming?” Zosia didn’t scare easy, no she did not, but her hackles were good and raised now.

  “The end … the end is here …” and Indsorith was fading again, eyelids fluttering, and hungry as she was to hear more, Zosia knew the woman needed rest more urgently than her liberator needed answers. She started to rise when Indsorith whimpered, as though the words hurt to say, “Don’t go.”

  “I won’t be gone long, and Chop will be here the whole time to keep you safe, so—”

  “Please.” Indsorith’s sunken eyes were still closed, and they scrunched tighter in a vain effort to dam back the wetness beginning to seep out around the edges. The utter ruin of the Star seemed to be off to a roaring start right here in her capital and the Crimson Queen expected Zosia to sit around playing nursemaid?

  “Of course … Your Majesty,” murmured Zosia, settling back onto the bed as Indsorith shuddered beside her, the relief on the woman’s bruised and scabbing face so sincere Zosia found her own eyes stinging. It had been so long since somebody had relied on her to take care of them that she didn’t even know what to do, her hand hovering uncertainly over the invalid. Zosia always had such steady hands, no matter how dangerous or frightening the encounter, but now her whole arm was trembling … and she only found her steel again when she gave in to her impulse and tenderly stroked the woman’s brow. The grimace melted from Indsorith’s face and her breathing grew steady, and Zosia caught herself humming one of the Kvelertakan folk songs she would softly croon for Leib when he was sick—it was the only time he could guilt her into it, since she had never cared for the sound of her own singing.

  The tune stuttered on her lips at the memory, but instead of letting the grief silence her, Zosia seized up the words to the ancient song, and in the tomblike quiet of Castle Diadem she sang to the sleeping queen of a crumbling empire, the devil at her feet keeping time with his tail as they waited for the world to end or Ji-hyeon to arrive with the Cobalt Company, whichever came first.

  CHAPTER

  3

  It might have just been the most beautiful morning Domingo Hjortt had ever experienced. The sudden transition from ball-biting cold to blessedly balmy as they emerged from the Othean Gate got things off to a grand start, and the incandescent bouquet of dawnlit clouds resting atop the golden roofs of the Immaculate palace set a scene so precisely picturesque it resembled the watercolor backdrops of his sister-in-law’s plays. It was not the combination of agreeable weather, impressive architecture, and tapestry-worthy sunrise that took Domingo’s breath away, however, but what stood arrayed in the vastness between the Temple of Pentacles from whence he had appeared and the distant walls of the castle-city: an army the likes of which he had never seen outside his most exhilarating fantasies.

  The legions were standing at attention on either side of the terra-cotta road that ran straight from the temple steps all the way to the palace, and by his dead mother’s saber it was a sight to behold. He had always dismissed the patina of the Immaculate soldiers’ armor as another herald of their degeneracy, the troops too lazy to take care of their equipment and their commanders too weak to enforce proper upkeep, but now he saw the green-tinted shoulder pads and breastplates for what they were—a glorious emerald uniform that would never fade in summer nor flake in winter.

  And their ranks! Domingo prided himself on maintaining the most orderly regiment in the Crimson Empire, but he was honorable enough to admit when he was outmatched. From his vantage point on the back of a wagon bouncing down the stairs of the temple he could see far enough out into the malachite rows to have no doubt that every single line was as straight as the first. Fifteen thousand soldiers on each side of the road, at a minimum, and each one might as well h
ave been a model cast from a single mold, that was how perfectly rigid they stood. It was beautiful.

  There was also a terraced platform smack in the middle of the road with a biddy perched atop it, presumably the Empress of the Immaculate Isles, but Domingo barely spared her a glance before returning his attention to her army. Now that he was right in front of the woman he was beginning to feel a tingle of injudicious but undeniable guilt over having murdered her son at the beginning of his campaign against the new Cobalt Company … But every war has its casualties, damn it, and framing the Cobalts for the assassination of Prince Byeong-gu had been a masterstroke, even if it ended up proving redundant. Sons died, often for no good reason, and if Domingo could accept that then so could Empress Ryuki—and indeed, she must have already come to terms with the matter, to initiate a truce with General Ji-hyeon.

  That was another difference between noble Azgarothians like Domingo and the ever-scheming Immaculates; even if his homeland was under threat from whatever monsters haunted Jex Toth he’d sooner fillet his own scrotum than strike a deal with the woman who had killed his son. True, he had made noises to just that effect to Zosia, but only to lull her into a false sense of security, and as soon as he saw his opportunity he would pay her back a hundredfold, yes he dearly would.

  The carts were among the last units through the Lark’s Tongue Gate and so Domingo was brought to a halt at the rear of the Cobalt troops, the company lined up on either side of the road in front of the surrounding Immaculates. The Cobalt brass had also been posted here, just off to one side of the big dais erected in front of the temple … which meant whenever General Ji-hyeon and her deadbeat father arrived they would see their officers standing not between them and the empress, but behind her. These Immaculates loved their formal little pissing contests, didn’t they?

  Ah, there was a familiar face, and not a pretty one. Fennec, close enough that Domingo could have spit on the Usban Villain’s ponytail if only his mouth hadn’t gone so dry just before they crossed over. Standing beside him was the horned anathema who had helped Maroto lead the giant wolves into the Imperial camp back in the Kutumbans—in other words, one of those directly responsible for Domingo being so brutalized by a beast that he was confined to the wagon bed. Indeed, it was that very assault on his person that had compromised his thinking and led to his allowing Brother Wan to carry out the ritual at the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue. Forget Fennec the nothing-master, as soon as Domingo could muster the phlegm that white-haired witchborn was the one getting spat on.

  Now that he was sitting up, something that had been vaguely niggling at him ever since his cart had lurched down the temple steps finally made itself clear: it no longer hurt to turn his head … or, he found, to raise his battered back, or to stretch his sliced cheek in a widening smile. He slowly flexed his splinted hand. That wrist had been as broken as his heart not five minutes ago, and while it didn’t quite seem to have its old range of motion it definitely didn’t hurt. Was this something Hoartrap had done to him? Domingo didn’t believe in miracles, but whatever the source he was willing to make an exception for this!

  Alas, his elation was short-lived: trying to move his left leg no longer blinded him with pain, but that damn hip of his still wasn’t obeying any commands. It felt all stiff and lumpy, and Domingo simmered with disappointment. Being liberated from constant agony was all right, but what good did it do him if he still couldn’t get up and kick some teeth in?

  Ji-hyeon must have arrived while Domingo was taking stock of his sudden recovery, but while he heard the general’s voice he couldn’t see her. Peering around from the back of his wagon he could still spy the doors of the temple that opened into the nothingness of the Othean Gate, but the side of the tiered, brocaded stage was blocking his view of the front of the road. Ji-hyeon must be standing there at the base of the tower, and sure enough the empress atop the dais scowled downward as she replied to the unseen Cobalt General. Domingo took it as a point of personal pride that he did not speak High Immaculate, so the conversation meant nothing to him … until it took the sort of ugly tenor that is a universal cognate.

  Not being able to see or properly overhear the exchange, Domingo was left to his imagination as to what had provoked the empress’s snotty tone. Perhaps General Ji-hyeon hadn’t bowed low enough or something? That would be just bloody typical of Immaculates, wouldn’t it, to employ arcane deviltry to come together for a joint operation against an invading horde of demons from the Sunken Kingdom only to get into a row over etiquette. Domingo called over to Fennec to ask if he needed to drag himself up the empress’s tower to spank some manners into her when he was cut off by a scream from the front of the dais, followed by the reverberating twang of dozens of arrows unleashed as one.

  The scream abruptly stopped, as screams usually do once the arrows start flying.

  “No … no!” Fennec reeled, steadying himself against Domingo’s wagon. He must have had a slightly better vantage of what had just happened, and what the man did next washed away Domingo’s surprise at the unexpected turn the negotiations had taken, replacing it with stomach-dropping dread: the Villain bolted toward the side of the empress’s dais, drawing his sword. Anything that came after such a move could be nothing short of an unmitigated catastrophe. “No!”

  The horned witchborn joined Fennec’s mad charge at the empress’s platform but moved so much swifter that her sword was in hand before the Villain’s cleared leather … and then returned to its sheath so fast Domingo would have had to second-guess whether it had ever been out at all, if not for the obvious blow she’d struck to the back of Fennec’s head.

  Queen Indsorith’s decree that Imperial regiments would have to begin incorporating Chainwitches had been a deciding factor in Domingo’s retirement. He had preferred to quit the war game altogether rather than work with the anathemas. Yet seeing how efficiently this one took out as seasoned a veteran as Fennec, he had to admit these creatures must have their uses. The Usban Villain toppled without another peep, and that was yet another mark in his assailant’s favor—knocking people out with your pommel is harder than it looks, and rarely takes a single pop. The witchborn caught him before he hit the red gravel and swung him around on her shoulder despite her smaller stature, and—

  There was a commotion at the temple entrance, and Domingo glanced over just in time to see General Ji-hyeon jump through it, straight back into the Gate. Well. That was unexpected, and more than a little—

  He started as a body crashed into the hay of the wagon bed beside him. Fennec, with the white-haired witchborn looming over them. She came down at Domingo fast as a shark in shallow water, and with the sharp teeth to match.

  “Baron Domingo Hjortt of Cockspar, Colonel of the Fifteenth Regiment,” she said in Crimson. “You will swear to do as I say or you will die immediately.”

  Before Domingo even had time to feel indignant at being threatened by an anathema she said, “I am Choi, your bodyguard. Not a Cobalt guard to keep you in chains, a Crimson guard to protect you, to serve you, to assist you, a concession Ji-hyeon allowed on account of your weakness. I am your bodyguard. Swear it.”

  “First I’ve heard of it,” gulped Domingo, not appreciating the close proximity of her monstrous mouth nor the all-too-human stink of kaldi emanating from it. “Just what happ—”

  “My last act will be to eat your face off your skull,” growled the red-eyed fiend. “That, or to come close enough to the Empress Ryuki to avenge my people. You alone can decide which path I will walk, Baron Domingo Hjortt of Cockspar. The empress will have questions for a captured Imperial colonel. A captured Imperial colonel will need to have his bodyguard with him at all times, as a point of honor. His bodyguard shall never leave his side—she will help him move, and she will be his sole translator. A captured Imperial colonel will insist upon these things, or a captured Imperial colonel will have his face eaten off his skull. Now. Swear it.”

  “I—” Domingo wasn’t even thinking, just speaking, wh
en those pointy teeth yawned over him. There were a few gaps where fangs were missing, but plenty still remained, and before she could bite off his nose he said, “I swear it, damn you, I swear. You’re my bodyguard, Choi my bodyguard, I swear it on my honor.”

  “Honor is good,” said Choi, jerking upright and standing beside the wagon bed as though nothing had happened. Domingo felt barely more aware of what the hells had just transpired than the unconscious Fennec lying beside him. “We have both lost ours this day, Baron Domingo Hjortt of Cockspar, but together we may yet redeem ourselves.”

  There came a growing commotion from the Cobalt troops all around them, as was to be expected following their general’s sudden flight through the Othean Gate, but Domingo was having a hard time tearing his attention away from the silently weeping witchborn who towered over him, her wet crimson eyes fixed upward at the Empress of the Immaculate Isles. Domingo wondered if he had looked half so righteous when he’d colluded with the Black Pope to seek justice for Efrain’s murder … or half so doomed. Choi’s taste in collaborators wasn’t much better than his, he was sorry to say, but then bloody-handed vengeance makes for strange bedfellows, doesn’t it?

  CHAPTER