The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

  “That’s got to be most of what’s missing from the powder mill’s output,” she said. “I don’t think I realized how much that actually was. It looks like enough powder for an—”

  “For an army,” Marcus said grimly. He gestured past the gunpowder, where Raesinia could see more stacked crates the size and shape of coffins. “Those are muskets. There’s got to be enough here for ten regiments.”

  “I thought Maurisk was making bombs,” Andy said. “What’s he going to do with all this?”

  “It has to be for the Patriot Guard,” Marcus said. “Halberds are all well and good for standing in front of buildings, but with this . . .”

  “He must have friends in the armament factories as well as the powder mills.” Raesinia raised her lantern. “Come on, spread out.”

  “What are we looking for?” Hayver said.

  “Paperwork.” Raesinia looked at the neat rows of weapons. “Nobody puts something like this together without paperwork.”

  * * *

  They found a clerk’s desk near the center of the warehouse, overflowing with stray paper. Raesinia hurried over, and Marcus and Andy stood beside her while Hayver and the three Mierantai kept looking, picking their way carefully closer to the front door of the warehouse.

  “Well?” Marcus said as Raesinia rummaged through the sheets. “We could just take it all.”

  “I don’t know if there’s anything useful here,” Raesinia said. “A lot of this is in code.”

  She set aside a stack of gibberish pages, then caught a scrap of readable text out of the corner of her eye and pounced. They were messages, written on flimsy foolscap with the message ENCODE AND DESTROY printed at the top.

  “Keeping your plaintext around after encoding?” Raesinia murmured, flipping through. “Naughty, naughty. Sothe would show you a thing or two.”

  Most of the messages, whose dates went back at least two weeks, were concerned with the movement of hidden shipments through the city, and all were unsigned. She put these aside, with mounting frustration. There has to be something here to tie Maurisk to all this. He’d been a canny conspirator when they worked together, but not always a cautious one. He has to slip up somewhere.

  There. A long document, with the heading DIRECTORY FOR THE NATIONAL DEFENSE. A list of names—her eyes flicked down it, and then back to the top.

  “In the interests of state security and given the present emergency, the following persons are to be arrested with all dispatch . . .”

  “The present emergency . . . ,” Raesinia whispered under her breath, scanning the list. The first name on it was Giles Durenne. “Marcus, I’ve got it.”

  “Got what?” said Marcus, who’d been poring through another stack of papers.

  “Here.” She thrust the list under his nose.

  He read for a moment, frowning. “Half these people are deputies. And Durenne?”

  “It’s a coup,” Raesinia said. “That’s almost the entire Radical caucus, and a lot of their allies.”

  “Nice to see that I rate a mention,” Marcus muttered.

  Raesinia looked back to the paper. The name “Colonel Marcus d’Ivoire” was in the midst of a mixed bag of officers of all ranks.

  “This is dated two days ago,” Marcus said.

  “He’s getting ready.” Raesinia looked around the warehouse. “It can’t be much longer—”

  There was a groan of metal, and the front door of the warehouse opened a fraction, letting in the lurid glow from the ship burning outside. Marcus slammed the bull’s-eye lantern closed and dropped to his knees, and Raesinia followed suit. Andy flattened herself behind the nearest caisson. Closer to the door, Raesinia saw the other lantern vanish as Hayver snuffed it and took cover.

  “Damn,” Marcus whispered. “I thought we’d have longer.”

  Something stabbed into Raesinia’s skull, a sudden pain behind her eyes that throbbed with every heartbeat. She blinked, breathing hard, and it faded slightly, leaving a coppery taste in her mouth.

  Raesinia swallowed hard. “What now?”

  “Hope they go away.”

  “If they don’t?”

  He shrugged. “Then we’ll see if they’re willing to risk firing near this much powder.”

  The door opened wider. The fire on the ship was still crackling, but over the top of it Raesinia heard another sound, a high-pitched ting that repeated every few seconds. She held her breath for a moment, then peeked around the edge of the desk as strange shadows twisted through the vast space.

  Four men in Patriot Guard sashes were struggling to haul the main door open on its sliding track. Two more, muskets in hand, stood peering into the darkness, but it was the figure beside them that drew Raesinia’s attention. It was a woman, old and gray-haired, walking with the aid of a long, knob-handled stick. The point of the stick must have been sheathed in metal, because it made a ting and threw a tiny spark every time it struck the flagstones.

  She had one hand outstretched, and hovering above it was something like a miniature sun. It was a ball of flame, about the size of a man’s head, colors shifting and twisting under a perfectly smooth surface as though a roaring blaze was contained in a glass bowl. When the woman moved her hand, the flame followed, as though it were tethered to her finger by a string.

  Raesinia had become very adept at leaping to certain kinds of conclusions. Nothing of this world could let someone hold a ball of fire in her hands, and that left only a few possibilities.

  “It’s one of them,” she hissed. “The Penitents. We have to get out of here now.”

  Marcus risked a glance of his own. “Balls of the fucking Beast,” he said. “You’re not serious.”

  Raesinia waved to Andy, gesturing toward the back door. The girl nodded and slunk off, keeping to the shadows between the caissons. Marcus ducked back behind the desk, and Raesinia gave his shoulder a tug. She led him on hands and knees, threading their way among the piled implements of war.

  “You are here,” the old woman said. Her voice was raspy and nearly unintelligible under a thick Murnskai accent. “I feel you. Do not hide.”

  She raised her hand, and a portion of the ball of flame split off and rose toward the ceiling. It brightened as it did so, from the light of a bonfire to the light of the sun itself, throwing the whole warehouse into sudden, stark illumination. The shadows vanished.

  “There!” one of the Patriot Guard shouted. Musket barrels swung around.

  At the same time, the long shapes of Mierantai rifles came up over the boxes of muskets. The blasts were nearly simultaneous, muzzle flashes washed out in the brilliant light. Balls pinged and thoked among the stacked boxes, and one of the Guards fell backward with a cry and a spray of blood.

  “So much for staying quiet,” Raesinia said.

  “Back!” Marcus shouted, rising to a crouch and drawing his pistol. “Everybody back!”

  Hayver and the Mierantai fell back from among the muskets, the riflemen running bent over to present smaller targets while Hayver stood up in full view of the Patriot Guards. The four who’d been wrestling with the door now raised their own muskets, but a shot from Andy sent them scattering for cover before they could fire. The old woman glanced at them scornfully.

  “Shoot her!” Raesinia hissed. She drew one of her own pistols, aimed, and fired as soon as it looked as though the guards were lining up another shot. It was too far for someone of her low skill to hope to score a hit, however, and besides sending the enemy ducking for cover again, there was no obvious effect. She tossed the empty weapon away and drew the other. “Marcus! Get them to shoot the woman.”

  A musket cracked, and one of the Mierantai stumbled and crashed into a stack of boxes. His two companions dove for cover, and Andy popped up and fired again, raising sparks where the ball glanced off a stone outside. Raesinia caught sight of Hayver, taking cover behind a box a
nd frantically ramming a new round into his musket. The old woman continued her unhurried advance, staff tinking on the floor, while behind her the Patriot Guard fired from the sides of the doorway and ducked out of sight. One of them took too long in aiming, and a Mierantai rifle cracked, sending him sprawling to the floor.

  Hayver rose from cover, musket swinging about, aiming square at the old woman from less than twenty yards. She had time to turn her head before his weapon bloomed with fire and smoke. Something fast and bright happened, just in front of her, the sphere of flame swooping with trip-hammer speed to place itself between them. Something spattered across the old woman’s clothes, spraying droplets that smoked wherever they landed.

  She melted the ball—

  “Hayver!” Marcus shouted. “Back!”

  Hayver backpedaled, dropping his musket and scrabbling for his pistol. He backed into a stack of musket crates and stumbled, sending the topmost crashing to the floor. Weapons packed neatly in straw spilled across the floor.

  The old woman raised her hand, her face gleeful. The fiery orb subdivided again, and a smaller mote zipped across the space between them to impact on Hayver’s chest. It spread across him in an instant, as though he’d been dipped in lamp oil, outlining him in a nimbus of fire that brightened until it was white-hot. The pistol in his hand exploded as the charge cooked off, spraying blood across the floor, but Hayver was already screaming. His flyaway hair seemed to glow as each strand burst into brief, brilliant flame.

  “Hayver!” Andy put her musket to her shoulder, sighting on the woman, and pulled the trigger. Sparks flashed in the pan, but she must have been hasty loading, because the shot didn’t fire. Another shot, from one of the Mierantai, did. The ball of flame skipped across to interpose itself, again spattering her with molten lead, which she ignored as though it were drops of rain. Another bolt of fire slashed out, and the rifleman began to burn.

  “Run!” Marcus shouted.

  Raesinia watched Hayver collapse, no more than a darker shape inside his personal ball of hellfire. The woman glanced at him and extended her hand, and the flames around him shot back toward her, rejoining the orb hovering before her. What was left behind was a steaming, blackened ruin barely recognizable as human.

  Marcus was halfway to the door already, with Andy close behind him. The third Mierantai had thrown himself behind the barrels of gunpowder, loading his rifle, his face the grim mask of someone staring death in the face. The old woman regathered her flame from his burning companion, calling them back to her hand like a medieval falconer and his hunting bird.

  We’re not going to make it. Raesinia threaded her way back through the piles, ignoring the Patriot Guard musket balls that still snapped and whined around her. The Mierantai got to his feet and fired, producing no more than another spatter of lead, and more fire snapped out. As he burned, the charges in his belt pouch exploded, nearly tearing him in half. The old woman gave a harsh, cackling laugh.

  Marcus and Andy had reached the last row of cannon, but there was an open space between them and the back door. If they run, she’ll burn them. They’d apparently reached this conclusion, and Marcus had hold of Andy’s arm, holding her in the protective shadow of the guns. Raesinia found herself among the chests and caissons, huddling as the woman, the Penitent Damned, stalked closer.

  Raesinia’s eyes fell on the closest chest. It wasn’t locked, just latched. She pried it open an inch with one finger, and found it full of linen bags. Her knowledge of artillery was limited, but she guessed that these were premeasured portions of powder, used for speed in the heat of battle. Each one was about the size of her hand. They can’t be very heavy . . .

  Carefully, she extracted one of the pouches and let the chest close. She hefted it, testing the weight, and then gauged the old woman’s unhurried progress. A few more steps. Marcus, just stay put a little longer . . .

  “Andy, go!” she heard Marcus shout. The girl ran, and he stood up, pistol in hand. The old woman smiled.

  Goddamn all chivalrous bastards!

  Raesinia sprang to her feet as the report of his pistol echoed through the warehouse. She took a step forward, winding up, and hurled the sack of powder toward the old woman with all the strength she could muster.

  It wasn’t a very accurate throw—she probably wouldn’t have done much more than bounce the sack near her feet. But, as she’d hoped, the flaming orb snapped across to intercept it with all the speed of instinct. The powder charge went off with a roar, blowing the flaming sphere apart as though it were made of burning oil. Fragments of flame went everywhere, scattering across the warehouse like from a flint. In the center of it, wreathed in flame, the old woman had gone to one knee.

  “Go!” Raesinia shouted, running for the door at top speed. Andy was already out, and Marcus needed no urging. He dropped his pistol and ran.

  It’s all going to go up. The warehouse was full of powder—packed securely, to be sure, but no one had anticipated the kegs being splashed with liquid fire. God Almighty. It’ll take out half the Docks. She wondered, idly, what it would feel like—if she would be literally blown to bits, or just badly burned. If I get blown to bits, which part of me does the binding stick to? The heart?

  Every step toward the door seemed to stretch. When she finally reached it, she couldn’t help looking over her shoulder. The old woman was back on her feet, face dark with concentration. All around her, bits and pieces of flame were rising into the air, falling inward toward her hand like an explosion in reverse.

  Well, thanks for that.

  Uhlan had the boat against the dock, though there was no sign of the two men who’d been with him. Andy was the first over the side, and Marcus wasn’t far behind, shoving frantically against the bank. He held out his hand as the boat wobbled out into the current, and Raesinia grabbed it, clasping him wrist to wrist. He swung her into the boat, tumbling over himself, so they ended up side by side in the bottom, along with a half inch of scummy water.

  “Away from the bank!” Marcus gasped. “Now!”

  Uhlan had the idea already, shoving the little craft deeper into the current. Raesinia hauled herself to the rail, watching the shore and waiting for a figure escorted by a ball of fire to emerge. But none did, and within a few minutes the gloom of night swallowed warehouse 192.

  Lieutenant Uhlan pushed the boat so far into the middle of the river that his pole lost touch with the bottom, and they were obliged to row. He and Marcus took the oars, driving the boat across the dark water and toward the dim lights of the Island.

  “A Penitent,” Raesinia said to Marcus, no longer caring whether Uhlan and Andy overheard. “That was one of them. The Penitent Damned.”

  “It seems like it,” Marcus said, panting with the effort of rowing.

  “Maurisk must be working with the Priests of the Black.”

  Marcus gave an assenting grunt.

  “That hypocritical, double-crossing fucker,” Raesinia hissed. “After everything he said . . .” She trailed off, still feeling dazed. “What the hell do we do now?”

  “Get back to Twin Turrets,” Marcus said. “Warn Janus.”

  Part Three

  THE DIRECTORY FOR THE NATIONAL DEFENSE

  Maurisk took up the bottle of flaghaelen with a shaking hand and tipped it over his glass. After a moment, a single amber drop ran down the side of the bottle, hung suspended on the rim for a moment, then splashed into the bottom of the glass. Maurisk stared at the bare smear of liquid, gritted his teeth, and shoved glass and bottle aside.

  There was a soft knock at the door.

  “What?” Maurisk snapped.

  “Zacaros is here, sir,” said Kellerman, from outside.

  “Finally. Bring him in.”

  The commander of the Patriot Guard had evidently taken the time to put on his elaborate, immaculate uniform, or else he’d still been wearing it in the small hours of the mor
ning. Maurisk wouldn’t have put a bet either way. But while his gold lace was carefully arranged, his hair was askew, inexpertly tugged across his balding pate, and sweat coated his jowly face.

  “President,” he said, with a nod. Zacaros refused to offer salutes to civilians, which Maurisk thought was rich from a man who’d been a banker only months before. “I got here as soon as I was brought up-to-date on the situation.”

  “Really?” Maurisk said. “Then perhaps you can enlighten me as to the situation.”

  Maurisk had received a private briefing—practically a scolding—at the hands of Ionkovo. And may demons hurry up and devour that smug priest. But it wouldn’t do to let anyone know that, least of all Zacaros. The commander of the Patriot Guard was a stupid man, but an ambitious one.

  “Warehouse 192 was attacked by an unknown force,” Zacaros said. “Our riverboat was burned, and the assailants forced their way into the building through a hidden door and did some small damage to the contents. A skirmish apparently followed, and . . .” Zacaros paused. “The results are not clear. A number of bodies were found badly burned, as though they’d been doused in oil. All six of our men who were present were killed.”

  That would be the work of Ionkovo’s associate. The Penitent Damned called her Cinder. It was a pity about the men guarding the warehouse; he’d chosen them specifically for their loyalty. But Ionkovo had warned that anyone who saw his agents at work would be eliminated, and Maurisk had to approve. As the old saying went, “Three men can keep a secret only once two of them are at the bottom of the river.”

  “And have we identified these ‘assailants’?”

  “No. There was nothing remarkable on the unburned bodies. I believe they were hired thugs from Oldtown, and my men are making inquiries.”

  If there was anything less likely to produce results than asking pointed questions in Oldtown, Maurisk didn’t know it. Unless it’s relying on idiots to make decisions. Zacaros’ only usefulness was in the loyalty he inspired in his men and his willingness to obey orders.