by Matthew Ward
A little more than a year before, Admiral Tralnov would have fallen over herself trying to please Sevaka’s influential mother. But Ebigail Kiradin was gone, and Sevaka had given up the family name as a last act of spite against a woman to whom family and continuity were everything. Twice a pariah, once through circumstance and again out of choice, she’d little prospect of being trusted with responsibility. Psanneque, the name she’d taken upon orphaning herself, meant “exile”, and carried bleak connotations.
“At least this way I get to see you.” Rosa laid a hand on hers. “Selann’s a long way off.”
“Come with me. I’ll smuggle you aboard.”
The prickle returned to Rosa’s shoulders. Sevaka had spoken lightly enough, but joining her on that particular course of conversation would only lead to argument – and Rosa had even less enthusiasm for overt discord than she did unseemly affection.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said instead.
“I thought to make it a surprise,” Sevaka replied. “Seems I failed.”
“Lord Noktza told me.”
“Ah. And how is Riego?”
“Insufferable,” said Rosa. “He’s instructed me to play hero for the 7th this evening. Speeches. Wine. More speeches. Over and over until I slit my wrists out of boredom.”
“For all the good that’ll do,” said Sevaka. “Sounds ghastly. Would you like me to come along? If you can bear to be seen with me, that is.”
Rosa passed over the barb and seized gladly on the rest. “I’d hoped you might.”
Sevaka looked herself up and down, taking in the weather-stained shirt and coat, the cracked and peeling sword belt. “I’m not exactly dressed for it.”
“For carousing with soldiers? You’re fine. They’re not worth making the effort.”
“You did.”
“But not for them,” Rosa said. “For you.”
Sevaka’s smile made all worthwhile. The murderous skirts. The Zephyr’s voyeuristic crew. Maybe even the silent confession that Noktza had been right, in perhaps a small way.
“Well that’s different.” Sevaka shot her a quizzical look. “Wait a minute. Dockside. Dress. The spectre of drink. You’re not planning on killing anyone tonight?”
Rosa blinked. How had she forgotten? Their friendship had begun that bitter night on the Tressian dockside. The night of Kas’ wake. She’d settled one of his old quarrels and saved Sevaka’s life in the process. Not that she recalled much of it. She barely remembered Aske Tarev’s skull breaking beneath her fists. How many things had changed since then? How many had remained the same? She stared down at her hand and flexed her knuckles. The blood was long since washed away, but the anger had never really faded.
Could she ever really let it go? Did she even want to?
Uncaring of intrusive eyes, she leaned in and kissed Sevaka.
“No promises. But I’ll try not to.”
Five
Firestone lanterns and torches flickered among the tents and squat stone barrack-blocks bounding three sides of the muster field. Amber tongues leapt from firepits towards the night sky, as wild as the fiddle and fife that goaded crowds to dancing and carousal.
The music took root in Sevaka’s soul, rousing blood made sluggish by the boredom of travel.
Beside her, Rosa went taut in that way that she so often did, and that Sevaka pretended so often not to notice. “I’m going to kill him.”
Sevaka smiled wryly. “And so easily the promise is broken.”
The victim’s identity took little sleuthing. At full strength, which the losses of war and the complications of leave seldom allowed, a regiment numbered a thousand men and women under arms, plus as many as a dozen companies of wayfarers, pavissionaires and other auxiliaries. Easily twice that was gathered across the muster field and beneath the overhang of the wall-ward buildings. Despite Noktza’s words, the 7th were not alone. Sevaka spotted tabards of at least three other regiments, as well as the plainer, rougher garb of borderers and the bright surcoats of knights. And that was before she tallied the array of spouses, children, traders, courtesans, craftsmen, and servants.
Five regiments held Ahrad – plus perhaps another thousand knights – but the soldiers were outnumbered at least three times over by their hangers-on. The luckiest had quarters within the inner bailey – most lived in ramshackle houses beneath the western walls.
“I don’t think you have to talk to all of them.”
“That’s not the point.”
Rosa’s arm, crooked through Sevaka’s since leaving the Zephyr, slithered free. Her expression grew guarded as she tugged her dress into place. Sevaka knew the ritual. The donning of armour and the raising of ramparts ahead of battle. She didn’t resent it, not as such. She even found it endearing, in its way. What she hated was that when the walls came up, she invariably found herself on the wrong side.
A voice rang out. “Who goes?”
Two sentries approached, a lieutenant at their head. All sober, to Sevaka’s eye. She wondered what infraction had damned them to be thus on a night of celebration.
“Lady Roslava Orova, Knight of Essamere and Champion to the Council.” Rosa’s voice held not the uncertain tone of moments before, but a battlefield’s authority. “I believe I’m expected.”
The lieutenant saluted, expression stiffening as perceptions shifted. “Yes, lady. And your companion?”
“My friend, Lady Sevaka.”
Sevaka kept her dismay hidden. She’d thought they were past this, but in four simple words, Rosa had concealed both her identity and their closeness.
The lieutenant spared Sevaka barely a glance. “If you’ll both follow me?”
He set a brisk pace across the crowded muster field. Sevaka fell into step beside Rosa “Your friend?”
“We are friends. If we weren’t, we couldn’t be anything else.”
A sterling reply, for it was true enough. Had Rosa’s tone been warmer, Sevaka might even have believed her. “Embarrassed to be slumming with a kinless exile? Half the officers will already know. Or does soldiering knock the gossip out of a highblood?”
“Kas and I served with the 7th for years. And this is hard enough without fending off half-baked innuendo about your lineage.” The rampart of Rosa’s public face cracked. “I really don’t want to kill anyone. But if someone starts hurling slurs about us – about you—”
“A champion for my honour. How romantic.” Try as she might, Sevaka couldn’t help but feel mollified. “All right. But your promises about the wine better hold up.”
“They will. The Sarravins own half the farmland along the Tevar Flood, and Emilia has a reputation for generosity.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence, though one a touch more companionable than before. It wasn’t that Sevaka didn’t understand Rosa’s reluctance. In fact, she sympathised, having striven to conceal more than one past relationship from her mother’s judgemental eye. She’d shared her passions freely, and seldom with those equal to her family’s once-imposing rank. Now situations were reversed.
She breathed deep of the swirling smoke. Soft fragrance betrayed that more tinder had been gathered beneath Fellhallow’s eaves than was entirely wise, but it soothed away hurt. Yes, she understood. But understanding was the domain of the mind, not the heart, and the heart hung heavy with every reminder of the gulf between pragmatism and desire.
Fortunately, a lifetime as Ebigail Kiradin’s daughter had taught Sevaka how to keep such burdens from touching her expression. By the time they’d threaded their way through the fires to the long, bottle-strewn table at the muster field’s heart, her smile was back in place.
“Lady Orova…” Emilia Sarravin, Commander of the 7th, broke away from a knot of her junior officers, hand extended in greeting. Sevaka knew her to be on the cusp of her fortieth year, but she looked older – worn in the way folk were by military life. Her uniform – king’s blue, and bearing the Tressian hawk – was crisp, and closely tailored. “So glad you
could join us. I told Riego not to trouble you, but he said you’d insisted.”
“Did he now?” Rosa shook the proffered hand, her expression unreadable. “I was glad to be invited. It’s like coming home. Do you know…?”
Lady Sarravin glanced in Sevaka’s direction. “Sevaka? Only by name. But her mother sought to send my father to the gallows.” Her expression flickered. “But that’s all done with, thank Lumestra.”
But it wasn’t, was it? It’d never be done with, or else why offer reminder? “I have no mother,” said Sevaka. “I am myself alone.”
“Well said.” Lady Sarravin’s expression lightened. “You’re welcome at my table, of course.”
One wave dismissed Rosa’s escort. Another summoned a servant bearing goblets and a bottle of wine. A whirl of introductions followed, an array of majors, captains, lieutenants and squires, all of whom offered either handshake or salute, according to their family’s relative standing with Rosa’s own. The Orovas were not of the first rank – although their star was said to be on the rise – so even the lowest squire could have treated her as an equal, had lineage justified it.
Sevaka, who had so recently and loudly reinforced her status as a Psanneque, received only nods of acknowledgement, despite the captain’s saltire on her faded epaulettes. So she ignored the litany of names and ranks, and instead focused her full attention on the wine. Which was, as Rosa had promised, quite excellent.
She’d finished her second goblet by the time introductions were complete. As she snagged a bottle for a refill, Lady Sarravin shot her a glance.
“Drink your fill. There’s plenty more. We may be on reduced rations, but there’s wine enough to run the Silverway red.”
Sevaka nodded. Between the invasion of the previous year, the burning of much of the Southshires’ croplands and the Settlement Decree leaving too many farms short of workers – which in turn had seen many grumbling soldiers and unwilling prisoners assigned to pick up the slack – shortages were rife. Easy enough to manage when you’d a crew of a mere dozen to tend – and when duty took you to docksides famous for cargo going astray for the right price. Feeding a regiment was a different matter.
“I’m told the Council are working to resolve things,” said Rosa.
“Which means Thrakkian traders are filling their purses with our coin,” grumbled a heavyset major. “Probably selling us our own stolen grain.”
“It is what it is,” said Lady Sarravin. “I can’t keep food in their bellies, but I can at least give my lads and lasses drink enough to take their minds off their pangs. If only for one night. Let others watch the walls.”
Sevaka stared out across the muster field. “You supplied all this?”
“Why not? This ’73 would be wasted on them, but the estate cellars run deep and to some variety. What use is privilege if it cannot spur one to generosity? Or to toast one’s friends?” She raised her goblet high, and her voice a fraction higher, cutting through the hubbub. “To our guest. A daughter of Essamere – which we shall forgive her – and also of the 7th, which makes her dearer than kin. To Lady Orova!”
“Lady Orova!”
Sevaka readily joined her voice to the chorus.
Rosa, face expressionless but spots of colour high on her cheeks, pulled out a chair, used it as a stepping stone to the table top, and raised her own goblet up to the moonlit skies. “To Tressia’s finest, even if their commander’s a preening Sartorov.” The words drew unabashed grins from around the table, betraying chapterhouse allegiances buried beneath the regular army’s king’s blue. “To the 7th!”
“To the 7th!”
Cheers rippled outward, gathering momentum as common soldiers took up the cry. They redoubled as Rosa emptied her goblet at a single pull and did the same with the refill. By the time she returned to ground level, there was enough vigour to her expression that she’d pass for human. None of it, Sevaka knew, was to do with the wine. Angry mob or drunken throng, crowds lost their terror once you were among them.
Lady Sarravin smiled. “Preening or not, this Sartorov thanks you.”
“For drinking your wine like it’s farthing ale?” said Rosa.
“For giving them something to aspire to. Soldiers need exemplars, and you’ve certainly been that… even before you were chosen as the new champion.”
She cast surreptitiously about, and led Rosa a pace or two from the table. Sevaka, uninvited but scenting the whiff of gossip, followed.
“A shame about Lord Akadra,” Lady Sarravin murmured. “I’ve heard the rumours, of course – and in all their contradictory splendour – but I don’t know what really happened. You were there, weren’t you?”
For the first time, Sevaka realised that Lady Sarravin, who had supposedly been carousing since sundown, had eyes as clear as Sommertide skies.
Rosa shrugged, though she looked little relaxed to Sevaka’s eye. “When the Hadari retreated, the southwealders started fighting among themselves. The council charged Viktor to bring it to an end, and he did. But when the rebels murdered his betrothed… It didn’t end well.”
“And the burnings? I understand he killed thousands.”
“The fields of the Grelyt Valley are still black. Nothing grows there now. And Viktor just… walked away from it all.”
“You didn’t try to bring him back?”
Rosa shook her head. “The Council would have punished him. Maybe even hanged him. Better it’s all forgotten.”
“And we do forget so well in the Republic. Our mistakes, our families and even our purpose.” Lady Sarravin tilted her goblet. “To Viktor Akadra, may he find what peace he deserves.”
“Viktor Akadra.”
Sevaka murmured the toast’s reply and examined Lady Sarravin’s face for any hint that she knew that Rosa’s tale was, if not a pack of lies, one that strayed far from absolute truth. Personal embellishment aside, it was official history approved by the Council, and laid down forevermore in the Republic’s archives. Sevaka knew better. She knew about the Dark that had risen to claim the Southshires, and the price paid to defeat it. A truth shared by few others, and some of those had been posted to outposts so distant that their knowledge would trouble no one else.
“Still,” said Lady Sarravin, “it need not all be to the bad. I understand Messela Akadra is hardly comporting herself well. Where one family fades, another burns bright. Perhaps your family, Rosa.”
“My family?” Rosa said warily. “I don’t follow.”
“Don’t be so modest. I know your uncle Davor’s working to see that your efforts are properly recognised, and it’s hardly unknown for the Council’s own champion to sit among its ranks. But if that’s to happen, you need to be more than a name and a body count. Come along with me. You really must meet…”
Sevaka took another pull on her goblet. Whatever Lord Noktza had intended from Rosa’s attendance, Lady Sarravin sought to profit by being remembered as the one who’d brought her together with the scions of influential families. It was everything Sevaka had hoped to put behind her: whispers, conspiracy, jockeying for position – a game played to its own purpose and the Republic’s detriment.
Ignoring Rosa’s pleading glance, Sevaka hitched her sword belt a fraction higher, plucked a bottle from the table, and strode towards the nearest firepit.
“You ladies enjoy yourselves. I’m of the mood to dance.”
A long, tedious hour passed before Rosa finally extracted herself from Lady Sarravin’s social hurricane. Lumestra alone knew what they’d made of her. After three exchanges of platitudes and one insubstantial conversation, she felt certain her face had set solid and cold as ice.
Enough of the officers she’d met – especially those of the 1st, who’d seized on the chance to broach Lady Sarravin’s wine stocks – would remember little, but still the worry remained. In all cases save one. The upstart major of the 10th – who’d jumped to the entirely wrong conclusion of her profession before introductions could be made – had a sprained wrist to remind
of the perils of wandering hands. Rosa had earned more grins than scowls at furnishing him thus, which made her suspect the major’s was a luck pressed too far, too often.
An hour to escape, and the better part of another without sign of Sevaka, who’d gone from the fire where Rosa had seen her last. As the search wended far from Lady Sarravin’s entourage of pressed uniforms and ribboned hair to the frayed cloth and filthy faces of the common ranks, Rosa grew suspicious that Sevaka had abandoned her entirely.
Finally, after receiving direction from a sergeant as lamentably sober as Rosa herself, she found her quarry. Not amidst the music and dance of the muster field, but on the ramparts of the inner wall.
Shoulder wedged in the jamb between drum tower and battlement, and wine bottle propped between the crenellations, Sevaka was lost in conversation with a tall fellow of tanned complexion whose neat, dark beard and watchful eyes lent sardonic cast to his features. He straightened as Rosa approached.
“Lady Orova, is it? Your reputation precedes you.”
Rosa eyed him warily. Too many platitudes over too short a period had left her with a tin ear. “And you are?”
“Indro Thaldvar. I’m an unforgivable ruffian, by which I mean to say I’m a borderer.”
That much Rosa had already guessed from Thaldvar’s garb: rough, practical leathers and a cloak the colour of winter skies. No two borderers’ tales were exactly the same, but most hailed from the ravaged villages of the Eastshires, or else claimed lineage from the lost lands beyond the Ravonn. Though not officially part of the Republic’s army, they were invaluable to its operation, able to walk unnoticed where a column of soldiery could not.
The common soldiery resented the borderers their freedom; the nobility disdained them as uncivilised. Rosa could never have lived as Thaldvar and his kind did, always on the move and with no real home to return to.