“I was perfectly safe,” I said. Of course I wasn’t going to tell him about running into the God-Empress’s soldiers, and I definitely couldn’t tell him about how they’d recognized me, since Jeddan’s the only Balaenic who knows the truth about me and the Castavirans. “It just took longer than I anticipated. Let me tell you what I learned.”
“Rest first,” Mattiak said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I shook my head. “You need to know this now,” I said, “because I’m not sure how much time you have.” Then I told them everything I’d discovered, and marked on the map the positions of the main army and the division that had routed ours, as well as the Castaviran city. “I don’t know how fast they’re going to travel,” I said, “but I think it’s safe to assume that division sent messengers to tell the main army what happened, and I think—sorry, I know I’m not military, but I think that division is coming this way to investigate how large a force we have and then return to join the main army.”
General Kalanik said, “That’s likely. If they keep on that heading, they’ll join that highway far ahead of the main army. They’re probably the advance force.”
“Which we will overrun,” General Drussik said, “if they’re as reduced as you say.” He looked as if he questioned my veracity or, possibly, my intelligence.
“I think,” said Mattiak, tapping the place on the map where that smaller division was, “it’s possible they’ve underestimated the size of our army. There’s no other reason to sacrifice an entire division.” But he looked uncertain, as if he were weighing other possibilities. I thought it was possible the God-Empress had simply decided they should be sacrifices to her, but held my tongue.
“Very interesting,” Mattiak said. He tapped the spot again, then said, “We’ll move out in the morning, after our staff meeting. We’ll discuss strategy then.”
We all filed out, but Mattiak took my arm and said, “You look exhausted. I was about to eat dinner when you arrived; would you care to join me?”
I nodded. Food sounded so good just then. We went to his tent, where a meal was already set. It looked like it might have gone cold. “Don’t worry about it,” Mattiak said after calling a servant to bring another plate. “It’s not that cold, and I’ve eaten worse.”
We ate in silence, me because I was too hungry to spare any time for words, Mattiak because he seemed preoccupied with his thoughts. As I was mopping up the last of the gravy with a chunk of bread, he said, “You weren’t telling us everything, were you?”
“I didn’t risk myself,” I lied—well, it was only sort of a lie; it was an accident that I’d nearly been caught, not a result of my being reckless.
“I know,” Mattiak said, which made me feel bad about abusing his trust in me. “But something happened that disturbed you. I was hoping you’d tell me what that was.”
I started to deny it, but instead found myself telling him what I’d thought as I looked over the God-Empress’s camp and wondered if I should kill her. “I’ve seen the way everyone behaves around her,” I said finally. “They’re afraid of her, and with good reason. I’ve seen her—” I hesitated only briefly before realizing he wouldn’t know when I’d seen this. “I’ve seen her have someone murdered just because she spoke to her on the wrong day. I can’t imagine what kind of a ruler she is to her own people, and she wants to rule Balaen too. Our government isn’t perfect, but it’s a hundred times better than that.”
“And you think her death would solve everything,” Mattiak said.
I shrugged. “Maybe not everything,” I said, “but it would have to have some effect.”
“Then I suppose the real question,” Mattiak said, “is if her death is your duty.”
“I seem to be ideally qualified to kill her,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.
“That’s not the same thing,” Mattiak said. “I know half a dozen men more qualified than you are, starting with Nessan, and that’s only if I thought this woman’s death would make a difference on the battlefield, which I don’t.”
“None of those men can slip through walls or walk invisibly across an enemy camp,” I said.
“But all of them have something you lack, Sesskia,” Mattiak said. “You’re not a killer. I think taking a human life is as far beyond your abilities as walking through walls is beyond mine.”
“That’s not true,” I blurted out, then realized my mistake and went silent. Mattiak leaned forward, and my eyes met his. “Tell me,” he said.
Maybe I should have realized what was happening at that point, or maybe not; I was preoccupied with my feelings of fear and guilt, and right then I needed…I don’t know what I needed. Comfort? Absolution? Whatever it was, I told Mattiak about killing that bandit mage, about watching him go gray and rigid from what I’d done. I knew Mattiak wasn’t going to be horrified by my story, because he’s a soldier and he’s seen and done things as bad or worse, but I wasn’t prepared for him to say, when I was finished, “You’re right. That would make you an ideal assassin.”
I felt like he’d slapped me. That was when I realized I’d wanted reassurance that I wasn’t evil, not more condemnation. I stood to go—I don’t know how I looked, but I felt numb—and he grabbed my hand and made me sit. “I’m not finished,” he said.
“I’m not sure I want to hear the rest,” I said.
He shook his head, and he had that serious look again, the one that made me uncomfortable. “Sesskia, you can do things I can barely comprehend,” he said, “but what I do know is that none of them force you to be anything you don’t choose to be. That fire-summoning pouvra doesn’t make you burn everything you see. And much as I joke about you being a thief—even though I know some of those aren’t jokes—you aren’t forced to use the mind-moving pouvra solely to pick locks, or the walk-through-walls pouvra only to secretly enter my tent at night.” He grinned at me, and I had to smile, though I was also trying not to redden with embarrassment.
“The truth is, you choose how to use what you’ve learned,” he went on, “and I don’t give a damn how many killing applications you come up with, because I maintain you aren’t a killer. And that makes me happy.” He took a deep breath. “Everything about you makes me happy, Sesskia.”
His grip on my hand had loosened, become something gentle, and his thumb stroked the back of my hand. I stared at him. I still don’t know if I should have seen that coming. I feel stupid and embarrassed. I liked him. I thought we were friends, but apparently that’s not how he felt. I don’t—I have to write the rest first.
I just stared at him. It didn’t even occur to me to pull my hand away. “Sesskia,” he said again, “I know you’re waiting for your husband, but even you have to admit he’s almost certainly dead. You know as well as I do what kind of chaos central Balaen is in right now. If he hasn’t found you by now, he’s not coming.”
“No,” I said, but came up once again against the fact that I couldn’t tell him my husband is a powerful Castaviran mage who is absolutely still alive, wherever he is. “I know he’s alive,” was what I came out with, but it sounded weak even to me.
He pressed my hand, gently again, and reached across the table to brush his fingers across my cheek. This time I knew that touch for a lover’s caress, and it sent a shiver through me, though I had no idea what emotion had prompted it. “I understand,” he said. “It’s one of the things I love about you, your strength of spirit. But you should understand something, too. At some point, you’ll realize the truth, and when that happens, I will be here for you.”
I retrieved my hand and said, “I think I should go,” and walked away before he could say anything else. I went straight to my tent and curled up, fully clothed, on my bed. I lay like that for about ten minutes, then got up to write. Which brings me to now.
I’ll admit there was a fraction of a second in which I considered a reality where I returned his love. It didn’t last long, and I don’t feel guilty about it; it was as if I looked at a shirt that belonged to som
eone else and wondered how it might look on me, but never considered actually wearing it. I love Cederic, and that’s not going to change just because an attractive, interesting man told me he cares about me.
But—it’s like what happened when I learned Cederic had loved me for weeks before I knew it, and I thought back over that time and saw so many things I’d missed. In hindsight, Mattiak’s interest in me was obvious. Every time he brought up Cederic’s name, it was always accompanied with some comment about how dangerous things are in the east, or something reminding me we were separated and how it would be so long before he was found. He’s been trying to drive a wedge between me and my husband that would let him fit himself into the space between. And it makes me feel sick, because I thought we were friends. I thought I could trust him. But all he wanted was to steal my affections.
I feel stupid for not realizing. And I don’t know what to do or how to behave toward him. I have to be polite and friendly, and I can’t avoid him because I’m technically on his general staff, but I can’t have dinner alone with him anymore, knowing what he’s thinking when he’s looking at me.
There’s no one I can tell, either; I’m not close to the other mages in that way, and the only other person I have more than a casual relationship with is Nessan, and this isn’t something I can share with him. I wish Jeddan were here. I wish Cederic were here. Hah. I wouldn’t have this problem if he were, because much as I’m angry with Mattiak right now, I don’t think he’s the type to make a play for a man’s wife with the man actually standing there. Clearly he has no problem doing it when the man is absent.
It’s far too late now. I have to meet with the general staff in the morning, where we’ll learn what Mattiak has decided. I hope it’s that we’re moving east to attack the God-Empress’s army. I might not be a killer, but right now I could happily burn swathes through the enemy line.
Chapter Twenty
7 Seresstine
We struck camp and moved east this morning. The strategy, as I understand it, is to intercept that weakened division so it can’t rejoin the army. It should be easy to defeat and will give our mages practice before we face however many dozens of mages the God-Empress has in her camp. I’m glad to be moving. Mattiak estimates we’ll encounter them sometime tomorrow morning, and after we defeat them, we’ll reevaluate our position with regard to the main army. “After we defeat them,” his exact words, which makes me wonder if he’s really that confident or just good at optimism.
He invited me to eat with him tonight and I declined, saying I was going to eat with the mages so we could talk about what they might be able to do. He smiled, and said, “Another time,” and the look in his eyes told me he knew what I was doing, and he wasn’t offended. It made me angry, that he was so confident of winning my heart he could humor my coldness toward him. Nothing I can do about it but endure. At least he won’t attack me—I’m certain he won’t be happy unless I come to him voluntarily.
We’re going into battle tomorrow. All the mages are nervous and excited, but none of them seem afraid, or worried about being able to perform. We’ve talked about tactics, and I’ve told them something of what the Castaviran mages can do, and how to recognize them—they’re usually mounted, to give them a better view of the battlefield, I think. And I’ve made it clear that disabling them is not enough; we can’t afford to have them coming back to attack our troops. They all say they understand, that they can kill if they have to, but it’s not the sort of thing you know until you’re at that point.
The spies are the most relaxed, probably because we’re not sure they’ll have anything to do in this battle. Nessan joined us after dinner and said the same thing. He’s going to scout ahead tonight; I volunteered to help, but he shook his head and said, “This isn’t something I can hand off to you,” and then he was gone. I wonder what Mattiak told him.
Sleep, now, and we’ll see what the morning brings.
8 Seresstine
I’ve just come back from the surgeon’s tent. He’d told me Paddrek wasn’t going to survive, but I hoped he was wrong. Why is there no pouvra for healing? I even tried the binding pouvra, but it did nothing. As usual. Though I suppose if that’s what it was for, the Castaviran mages would have known.
I’ve been trying to tell myself it could have been worse. He’s the only mage who died and only three others were wounded, none of them seriously. But Paddrek wasn’t a number, he was a man, and a friend. It was so stupid—he’d gotten out of formation, concentrating on maintaining fire, and our unit of defenders let some of the God-Empress’s soldiers through. They didn’t get any further than Paddrek, I saw to that, but that wasn’t much comfort with him screaming and clutching his stomach to keep his intestines from sliding out. I guess I should be glad he’s not in pain anymore, but I’d rather he was alive.
We struck camp early so we could reach a place Mattiak’s scouts, i.e. Nessan, had described as a good place for us to stage our attack. There had been a lot of discussion about where to put the mages, mostly about whether it was better they stay on the ground where they didn’t look like anyone else, or be in the wagon where they could have a better view of the battlefield but also be more exposed.
In the end, we decided on the ground, mainly because of my repeated insistence that we have no shield pouvra (I still can’t work out what Cederic did, damn him for being so brilliant. He’s going to teach me that when we’re reunited) and are better off being slightly less effective at fighting if it means being better protected. So we were assigned a unit (as I mentioned above) to keep us from being overrun by the God-Empress’s army and sent to where we’d be out of our army’s way.
Then we waited. Not very long, though. We saw them approaching, of course, long before they reached us; one of the good features of our position was that it was just over a low rise, which gave Mattiak a view of the whole battlefield and put him in a position to dictate changes in strategy. He doesn’t do much of that. His officers are bright and are good at understanding how they fit into the army, and altering their tactics accordingly. Not that I have any idea what those tactics are—that’s just something Mattiak told me over dinner. The memory of all those dinners is sour now.
Anyway, the mages didn’t have anything to do until we could see the army clearly. We could tell it was a lot smaller than ours, of course; I don’t know what we would have done if the entire army had come marching down the road. I was straining to see the mages, and half-listening to a conversation Rutika and Ryenn were having, and then there was a cry, and the sound of trumpets, and the front of our army surged forward and met theirs with an enormous clash of sound that rippled over our heads. Fire blossomed here and there along their line and arched from the battle mages to fly into our army, making spots of fire the soldiers shifted to avoid. I grinned because I knew they wouldn’t be able to do what we could.
“There, left of center—oh, and right, too,” Elleria said. “They’re spread out in a line like their range is limited.”
“They aren’t outside our range,” Ryenn said. “Shall we attack?” He’s one of our upper class mages and his language sounds elegant no matter what he’s saying.
“Let’s give them a surprise,” I said. “Count of three, and let’s see if we can hit all…yes, there’s ten of them.” I counted off three, and said, “NOW!”
A wall of fire sprang up where the battle mages were, burning hot and yellow, and then there was a lot of screaming, not just from the mages—there weren’t enough of them for us to hear them over the noise of the battlefield—but from the several ranks of soldiers in front of them who turned to see where the heat came from, then stumbled in their haste to get away from it. The mages’ horses thrashed about, and burning bodies fell to the earth and out of our sight.
“Dismiss it, and let’s see what’s left,” I said, and the fire flickered out. Not a single mage was still mounted. Crazed horses bucked and ran, trampling more soldiers and making the rear of the enemy army look like a riptide ha
d torn it apart. The effect was spreading forward as more soldiers turned to see what was going on, until it reached the place where our soldiers were fighting theirs, and even I could see the tide turning against the enemy.
More fires erupted, smaller this time. “Find your targets, and attack independently,” I shouted, and then rocks and even small trees were hurtling through the air toward the enemy mages. I couldn’t see much of anything except a glimpse, now and then, of a scorched white robe, but it seemed the other mages didn’t have the same problem. The fires went out. No new ones arose.
“Take a rest,” I said, and we all sat down for a minute. Still no new fires. “Time for new targets,” I said. “Remember what the General said—mages first, then the officers. Let’s see how well they do when they don’t have direction.” I felt a wicked pleasure at doing to them what they’d done to us, but didn’t have time to indulge it, because I had to follow my own orders.
That was when it got long and brutal. My instructions were to continue attacking until we were too exhausted to manifest pouvra or they started running, and neither of those things happened for a while. Paddrek was wounded somewhere in the middle there, and I had to force those soldiers back with fire because everyone else was either focused on their own attacks or waffling in a corner—no, that’s unfair, the spies weren’t trained for combat, and what could they have done that wouldn’t get them killed? They made sure we had plenty of water, and helped with the wounded, and took Paddrek to the surgeon’s tent, and I’m glad they were there.
Then the sound of the battle changed. I haven’t been in many battles—well, no battles, really, but I’ve been close enough I could tell the moment when one side starts to flee. That was our signal to sit down and rest while the soldiers pursued the enemy. Not far, I think, because we weren’t sure how far the main army had come and nobody wanted to run into them. I think I fell asleep, because it only seemed like seconds before I was being prodded to get up and return to camp.
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