by Matthew Ward
“You really believe that?”
“How many boys die in battle because they’re not yet ready to be men? How many families would sooner send a girl, if she’d more chance of coming home alive? How many daughters long for the chance to prove themselves a worthy inheritor?” Naradna sighed. “There are legacies beyond crowns and kingdoms, Saranal, and nothing secures them so well as a sword. Or do you consider yourself so far above the people you’d rule that you consider their wants alien to your own?”
Naradna’s words held too much truth. Worse, they revealed how narrow Melanna had set her sights. As the Emperor’s heir, she’d influence and power. She’d used none of it.
“You say I’ve failed,” she murmured. “You’re right. But so have you.”
Naradna snorted. “A petty claim can’t shield you from the truth.”
“I’ve been blind. I will do better. But you? You knew this all along, and still you lied. Instead of standing tall, you hid. You should have come to me. I’d have supported you. We’d have changed things. Now? You’re just a liar, proven in defeat, and no help to anyone.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what you’ve chosen.”
Naradna leapt to her feet, face colouring and eyes narrowed to slits. For a moment, she seemed poised to pounce, even knowing death would follow. Or perhaps, Melanna allowed, that would be the point of the attack, rather than its consequence.
One heartbeat, two, and the fury slipped from Naradna’s expression, if not her limbs. “So what happens now?”
“I confess I don’t know. I’ve greater concerns than you.” Melanna bottled up the day’s weariness, knowing it had driven her to harshness. “I want your promise you’ll not add to them.”
“And why should I give it?”
“Because if you don’t, I shall make it known that your brother knew who and what you were. That he is complicit in your deceptions and the death of your grandfather.”
“The warchiefs will abandon him.”
“I imagine so.”
“You need him.”
Melanna nodded. The men of Rhaled followed her out of fealty. Without the Princes Andwar, there remained a good chance the Icansae would slip away. “Then it’s in both our interests I have your promise.”
Naradna shot a murderous look and sank to the bed. When she spoke, defiance had fled her tone, leaving her sounding as weary as Melanna felt. “Everything I said of Aeldran is true, Saranal. If you harm him, you only weaken yourself.”
Taking the words as agreement, Melanna left the tent. She found Sera waiting outside.
“Ashanal?”
“She is to remain a prisoner for now. She’ll give no trouble.”
The night air banished cobwebs from Melanna’s thoughts, but their passing left her weary. For now. How long was that? And what would happen after?
“She told me many curious tales. I don’t know which I believe, and which I don’t.” Melanna, careful that her words wouldn’t carry to the guards, watched Sera closely. “Strangest was a claim that there are women in the army, fighting as men. I told her I didn’t believe it. After all, the lunassera tend the dying and the dead. They would know, wouldn’t they? You would know.”
Sera dipped her head. Behind the mask, her face remained as inscrutable as ever. “I cannot break the confidence of the dead, Ashanal.”
The answer was no answer, and yet told Melanna everything. Women do not bear swords. The tradition that had defined her adult life, and yet was conditional truth. How had the lunassera – demoted from bodyguards to physicians until her own rise – borne it as long as they had, knowing that other women fought and died in a manner forbidden them?
Sera had known. The Golden Court knew. Haldrane certainly did. A woman in the army. Preposterous. His sly joke was now twice the barb. Honour. Tradition. Just words, set aside whenever need was there, a blind eye turned to suit the beholder’s needs. The world, so black and white an hour before, drowned in grey. Even Naradna, broken and misguided though she was, saw it clearer.
“Ashanal?” Sera’s lips twisted. “I’m not sure what to say.”
Sera, who’d lost so many sisters to the pyre. To Tressian deceit. Honour is a privilege enjoyed by those free to indulge it. What use was that privilege when others prospered without?
Melanna embraced her, the path ahead now shining clear beneath the moon, and went in search of Haldrane.
As had become habit, Rosa left Sevaka sleeping and took to Vrasdavora’s ramparts. She threaded her way between the sentries on the east wall. Little enough to see, but it cheered her to find no slackness of watch. As when Sevaka had dragged her about the makeshift garrison earlier that night, she found faces more alert and confident than she’d any right to expect.
She completed her circuit of the rampart and made her way up the northeast tower. Along the collapsing roadway, the fires of the Hadari picket line offered reminder of the siege that would come tomorrow. So many lives offered up to the Raven, and to little purpose.
Rosa crossed to the tower’s edge to stand beside the sentry. Not one of Vrasdavora’s garrison, but Thaldvar. The borderer stood with one foot between the crenellations and a bottle loose in his hand.
He nodded. “Lady Orova.”
“I thought you were out on the road.”
“Castellan Paradan was kind enough to send soldiers to relieve us. It’s been a long day. Even borderers need rest.”
She nodded. It had been a long day, for Thaldvar’s shrinking band most of all. The Tressian soldiery were all very well, but the borderers had a knack for finding firm footing. Without them, Sevaka’s ambush couldn’t have reached position in time. “You don’t seem to be resting.”
He swept the bottle out to encompass the valley. “I like to come up high when I’m nervous. Makes me feel like an eagle, rather than a mouse. The poor sentry was dead on his feet, so I offered to stand a turn.” He shrugged. “Seems it’s a night for restless souls.”
Rosa propped herself against the rampart and folded her arms. “I seldom sleep. Not any longer. It’s part of what I am.”
“I’d go mad without a few hours snatched from the world.”
“I think I went mad long ago.”
“Who says I didn’t?” He proffered the bottle, a touch unsteadily. “Care for a drink? One restless soul to another?”
“Liquor has even less grasp on my wits than sleep.”
He sniffed. “This isn’t liquor. It’s Lasmanora whiskey. Finest in the borderlands. You don’t sup it for drunkenness, but flavour.” Flavour or not, the slur to his words suggested drunkenness lay near. “Consider it one last toast before things turn sour.”
“You think tomorrow will go badly?”
He gave a slow, sad shake of the head. “Who said anything about tomorrow?”
“True. It could be weeks before this is done.”
“And by morning, the whiskey will be gone.” Thaldvar tilted his head, striking a pose common among statues of the great and the good. “Circumstance insists I offer to share, but a piece of me hopes you’ll refuse.”
“If that’s how it is…” She laughed and plucked the bottle from his hand. “Why are you still here?”
He frowned. “I told you, I offered to stand watch.”
Rosa took an experimental sniff. The sweet tang of peated heather summoned forth late nights and early mornings while still a squire, standing sentry at the Ravonn’s watch-forts. “I don’t mean that. Leave. No one will think less of you. It’s not your fight.”
Thaldvar shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve told myself that. Fool that I am, I stayed. Some notion of honour, I suppose. Now it’s too late. We do as much as we can for as long as we’re able, in the hope it repays our sins.”
“You have many sins?”
“Too many to count. But there’s always room for one more.”
Rosa grunted, thinking back to the broken truce. “That’s what I find.”
/> She swigged from the bottle. Sweet and rich and hot with promise. But as the sweetness faded, other tastes came to the fore. Sour. Metallic. Numbness crowded in behind, seeping outward through muscle and bone.
Lungs spasmed. The bottle slipped from Rosa’s fingers and shattered on stone. The world upended. She crumpled to her knees and grabbed at Thaldvar with a shuddering hand.
“What… Thaldvar?”
He broke her grip and stepped back. Wracked by a paroxysm of coughing, Rosa pitched forward against the rampart. A cry for help dissipated into a thin, hissing wheeze.
“I had no choice,” said Thaldvar. “I’m sorry.”
Hoisting her up by lifeless arms, he heaved her over the rampart and into the night.
Thirty-Five
“Captain? Captain?”
Swallowing to ease a throat bittered by inconstant sleep, Sevaka propped herself onto an elbow. “What’s wrong?”
Gavrida withdrew to respectful distance, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He was pale beneath the grime, his expression drawn. “I’ll wait outside while you dress.”
Respect offered to a Psanneque? “Out with it, lieutenant.”
“It’s Commander Orova—”
“Rosa?” Instantly awake, Sevaka dragged clothes from the bedside table and pulled them on. “What’s happened?”
His throat bobbed. “It’s not good.”
She fumbled her laces and tucked them behind her heel. “Take me.”
Vrasdavora’s courtyard was empty, the walls already half-manned. The rush of boots and bodies spoke to a muster underway.
Sevaka sifted the possibilities, unease mounting. Not an attack. Not without drums or buccinas. And the garrison felt wrong. The faces she glimpsed were more confused than alarmed. What had become of Rosa to alarm Gavrida so? He’d been at Soraved. He’d seen her resilience clearer than any.
Answers came beneath the gatehouse stables, themselves meanly occupied. A handful of draught horses, Castellan Paradan’s destrier, a ring of the 11th, shields grounded and eyes outward, and…
Rosa lay on a bed of straw and blankets, uniform torn ragged. Black blood welled up from gashes at brow and shoulder. Her left leg was splinted and bound; her eyes, distant and sightless. A physician of the 11th, identified by his grubby white armband, knelt beside her. A curved needle and thread darted back and forth, drawing closed the puckered wound at her belly.
Sevaka bit down on her forearm. It muffled the cry, but did nothing to ease the tremor in her knees, nor the sour flutter in her stomach. One thing to hear Rosa speak of clawing her way out of a shallow grave, or of limbs re-stitched in battle’s wake. Another entirely to see it. For all its initial horror, the demon’s spear had been cleaner.
Pushing past the physician’s assistant, she fell to her knees and grabbed Rosa’s hand. “Rosa? Love? Can you hear me?”
Blue eyes settled, then twitched away, veins black and distended against scleral white. Lips muttered without sound or meaning, lost to delirium.
“Rosa?” Sevaka gripped her fingers tight. Her eyes settled on seeping wounds. “She should be healing. Why isn’t she healing?”
“She’s lucky to be alive, if you want to call it that.” The physician tugged the needle free and began another stitch. “Castellan wanted to burn her. The lieutenant wouldn’t let him.”
That explained the guard. Of course Paradan hadn’t understood. He knew Rosa only from a reputation no more certain than myths of demons and witchcraft.
Sevaka shot a grateful glance at Gavrida. Though of equal rank with Paradan, the other’s castellanship granted seniority. That kind of quarrel ended careers. Still might, if any of them lived to worry over such things. She stared again into Rosa’s glassy eyes, and saw nothing beyond lantern-light’s reflection. “What happened?”
“She fell from the northeast tower. Bounced halfway down the mountainside before anyone knew. We’d never have found her, but for the borderer’s warning.”
“Thaldvar?” Another debt added to a lengthy list.
Gavrida nodded. “Came running down the stairs, eyes wild and full of urgency. An act.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the confusion, he slipped into the chapel. He cut the proctor’s throat, and that of his apprentice.”
Cold crept into a knotted stomach. She’d liked Maldrath, who for all his fussiness had thrown himself willingly into the morning’s escapade. Sevaka gazed down at Rosa. Thaldvar had done this?
“You must be mistaken.”
“One of my lot heard the scream. She broke down the chapel door and caught the borderer among the remains of the lion amulets. He’d smashed them all.” He scowled. “The castellan expects an attack. He’s had the borderers rounded up. I’m surprised you heard nothing.”
“She’s always telling me I sleep like the dead,” murmured Sevaka. “Paradan sent you to wake me?”
“No.”
So the castellan didn’t want a Psanneque underfoot? Even in this? Unfortunate, because with Rosa out of the running, Sevaka was his commander. “Thank you, lieutenant.”
“I knew you’d want to know. In case…”
“In case Rosa dies?”
Heartsick, Sevaka sought refuge in logic. With Maldrath dead, the amulets had been their only hope of controlling the garrison constructs. Now the simarka would sit idle, and the kraikons would remain watchful sentries, incapable of responding to a siege’s ebb and flow. It should have been the direst news of all. But try as she might, Sevaka couldn’t make that leap. Not with Rosa lying thus, her eternal’s vigour robbed by…
By what? Thaldvar could answer. She drew the pain close until it hardened to fury. Paradan could wait. “Thaldvar. Where is he?”
During their rare sojourns within Vrasdavora’s walls, the borderers had barracked in the garrison quarters beneath the southwest tower. They dwelled there now, bound and shackled about the circumference, their weapons stripped away and a six-man guard beyond the door. Thaldvar hung at the chamber’s centre, his bound wrists suspended from the chandelier hook by thick ropes and his feet barely brushing the floor. He was naked to the waist, sweat and blood mingling atop livid bruises.
Split lips formed a grimace as the door creaked shut. “Captain.”
Sevaka struck him across the face. Once. Twice. Three times. The dull smack of flesh. The gasp of pain. Each better than the last. “Why? I trusted you! She trusted you!”
Thaldvar hawked a bloody gobbet onto the floor. “I’d… no choice.”
“Folk always say that. It’s so rarely true. What you lacked was a backbone.”
Sevaka froze, fist levelled for a fourth blow. Lacking a backbone. Her mother’s favourite derision. It tripped so easily from the tongue.
So be it. Better a little of Ebigail Kiradin’s strength than none at all.
She punched him again. Thaldvar spat away a tooth.
“My brother,” he gasped. “Haldrane has my brother.”
Sevaka lowered her fist. “You think that’s enough? After what you’ve done?”
He stared through tangled, greasy hair. The charming, self-deprecating man had gone. A broken, wretched soul remained. Her punches had not made him so, nor the blows inflicted by Paradan’s men before they’d strung him up.
“No.” Red spittle flecked the words. “But still he has my brother and his family. He promised… freedom if I obeyed, and death if I did not.”
The Psanneque’s anger ebbed. The Kiradin stoked it anew. “You were his creature all along. You all were. Never trust a borderer.”
No other spoke. The borderers’ hatred thickened the air.
“I thought myself free until this morning,” said Thaldvar. “If my arrow had flown true…? Raven curse me for the miss. His agents found me while I watched the road.”
That morning. Thaldvar had drawn her eye to Haldrane. Had spoken with vehemence. She should have suspected, but at Ahrad Thaldvar had been the only welcoming face in a fortress full of disdain. They’d been
comrades, maybe even friends, and it had blinded her.
Humiliation united Psanneque and Kiradin. Wrath ran cold as ice.
“The castellan will hang you for this.” Sevaka slipped the dagger from her belt. The stench of blood and sweat filled her nostrils, and the Kiradin took charge. “There’ll be no drop to hurl you into the mists. You’ll die in agony, tongue thick in your throat and lungs burning. If you seek any kindness, tell me what you did to Rosa.”
“Haldrane gave me poison. Silver dust. Fleenroot. Moonglove. I don’t know what else.”
Silver as a bane of magic – vicious against Lumestra’s sunlight, so legend told, but potent enough against all others. Fleenroot killed the dead. Moonglove brought peace to the dying. A poison crafted for an eternal, who was all of those things, and none. That it hadn’t yet killed Rosa didn’t mean it wouldn’t.
“An antidote. Is there one?”
“None I know. Haldrane threw in everything that offered the possibility of harm. From how he spoke, he was uncertain it would work.” Thaldvar coughed. “I never wanted this.”
“What you wanted is irrelevant. All that matters is what you’ve done.”
“I chose my family over a stranger.” He closed his eyes. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“I chose a stranger over my family. If she dies…” Sevaka stared at each of the borderers in turn. “Will none of you plead for his life?”
Two dozen gazes averted. No one spoke.
“There’s no love for me in this room,” breathed Thaldvar. “This sin is mine alone.”
Sevaka nodded. The hatred she’d felt before had not been meant for her, but Thaldvar, whose betrayal marked them all. Fully in the Kiradin’s grip, she felt no more sympathy for them than for him. Never trust a borderer.
She drew closer still, until her lips were level with his ear. “You don’t deserve mercy.”
The Kiradin slid the dagger home between his ribs. She rejoiced as the light faded from his eyes. The Psanneque wept without tears.
“You had no right!”
Castellan Paradan bore his rank on slender shoulders. A man not yet in his prime, he exuded brittle confidence, inexperience balanced by highblood privilege. Even suffused with fury, his face remained wary – fearful of the woman in the gore-slicked coat. As he should have been. Alone in his quarters he’d no support. Precisely why Sevaka had sought him there before word of Thaldvar’s death spread.