The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

  “I left you with an impossible task,” Janus said. “I had hoped that secrecy would be sufficient to protect the Names, but in retrospect it seems obvious that the Priests of the Black would have more than ordinary means of gathering information. With the forces at your disposal, I could hardly expect you to stand up to the Penitent Damned.”

  Marcus shook his head, not sure what to say. In the privacy of his own skull, he’d entertained similar thoughts, but he found he couldn’t voice them, not to Janus.

  “And yet,” the general went on, “you did stand up to them. I have heard the story of your attack on the fire demon, and seen the bombs the Patriot Guard planted. Thousands of my soldiers owe you their lives.”

  “I had a lot of help,” Marcus said. “It was Raesinia—that is, the queen—who really took charge. And Sothe, Andy, and the others made it work. The Leatherbacks and the refugees.” He swallowed. “A lot of good people died there.”

  “A great many people have died,” Janus said, “both good and bad, to get us this far. But we are not finished yet.”

  “We’re still at war,” Marcus said.

  “I expect the Hamveltai will sue for peace, and the rest of the League will follow. They were always the least committed to the fight, and with Antova and Desland in our hands their ability to attack us is crippled. The queen will, I expect, offer generous terms. But Borel and Murnsk are still unbloodied, and the emperor in particular has barely begun to exert his strength.” Janus paused. “But that is not the heart of it. The queen tells me you know her secret.”

  Marcus nodded. “She carries a demon.”

  “The Thousand Names may eventually provide a key to help solving that problem. But the Priests of the Black will not make peace, not now. They know we have the Names, and they know a demonic presence sits on the throne of Vordan. A faith cannot be destroyed with cannonballs.”

  “So how do we beat them?”

  “We must go to Elysium,” Janus said. “We must break their power at the source, or we will never have peace.”

  “Elysium.” Marcus stared. “You’re—of course you’re serious. You’re always serious. But—”

  “I know the objections,” Janus said, holding up a hand. “Elysium is deep in Imperial Murnsk, surrounded by the armies of the emperor and a sea of hostile fanatics. It is a fortress-city that has never been taken, even during the Demon Wars, when the Church was young. And it is full of things like the one you fought on the Green Road.”

  “That about sums it up, yes,” Marcus said. “So how do we get there?”

  A brief smile crossed Janus’ face. “The same way we get anywhere else, Colonel. One step at a time.” His eyes sparkled, but his expression became serious again. “I wanted to ask if you were with me. After what happened here, no one would blame you for wanting to be out of it, least of all me. I could arrange an easy post somewhere, or a comfortable retirement, whichever you’d prefer.”

  “I . . .” Marcus shook his head.

  He’d always considered himself loyal to crown and country, but it had been a vague, distant thing, buried under more pressing concerns. In Khandar, he’d fought for nothing more or less than survival, against what often seemed to be impossible odds. He’d followed Janus home, and when the revolution broke out he’d been mostly driven by a sense of duty to the men under his command, the Armsmen who’d become his responsibility.

  Now Janus was willing to declare those responsibilities at an end. But while country had become vaguer than ever—Marcus wasn’t certain what Vordan really meant anymore—queen had taken on a personal solidity. She wasn’t some abstract ideal, a monarch whose honor his oaths obligated him to defend. She was a short, pretty woman with a quick smile, who wore ridiculous boyish trousers whenever she got the chance, never listened to advice when she ought to, and felt the pain of everyone who got hurt trying to protect her like a spear in her own heart. She’d been forced into this world, the world of demons and Penitent Damned, and for the crime of survival the Black Priests wanted to lock her away forever.

  He wanted to protect her. But the best place to do that was on the battlefield.

  “I’m with you, sir,” he said. As though that was ever in question. He wondered if Janus knew what he was going to say before he said it, whether he asked only for form’s sake. “May I ask one favor, though?”

  “Of course,” the general said.

  “No more skulking on street corners, please. Just give me a command in the field. A battalion of good men.” Marcus waved his hands, a gesture intended to encompass the whole city around them. “I’ve had enough of this kind of war.”

  “I think I can do considerably better than a battalion,” Janus said. “The army will soon enter winter quarters, which will provide a welcome respite and a chance for reorganization. I’ll find you a place deserving of your talents.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Again, it’s the least I can do.”

  “Have you had any word of Alek Giforte, or the Preacher?”

  “I’m glad to be able to say they’re both well. Captain Giforte took his men deep into the forest and managed to elude the Patriot Guard pursuit, though he asked me to express his regret that he wasn’t able to provide more help. Captain Vahkerson was still awaiting trial for treason when we liberated the Directory prison. Apparently, there was something of a backlog.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, sir. They were both of considerable assistance.”

  Janus nodded and got to his feet, straightening his cloak so it fell neatly around his sword. “Well. I have a ceremony to attend, and you need to rest. I’ll give your regards to the queen. She asks after you often, by the way.”

  “Please thank her for me.” Marcus hesitated. “For . . . everything.”

  “I will.” Janus turned away, red cloak billowing neatly behind him.

  * * *

  RAESINIA

  The Deputies-General had spared no expense. In part, Raesinia guessed, this was to disguise their own impotence. With the Directory dissolved, the Patriot Guard disbanded, and the mob still enthralled by their heroic general, the legislature was helpless to resist Janus’ demands, and they knew it. To reassure themselves of their own importance, they’d gone into a frenzy of pomp and ceremony. Artisans had descended on the Sworn Cathedral, mending, replacing, and polishing, until every inch of woodwork gleamed and every carven saint seemed ready to spring to life.

  The great and powerful were streaming back into the capital now that the fighting was done, eager to get back to the business of suckling at the national teat. Carriages were lined up four deep in the square outside the Cathedral, and soldiers of the Army of the East formed a human fence that kept the mobs at bay. The royal procession, however, was waved past the lines of those waiting to disembark, and the driver brought the coach to a halt in front of the main doors, in a space kept empty by a pair of women in blue uniforms. A female captain waited between them while another young ranker fetched a set of cushioned steps to enable Raesinia to get down without jumping.

  “Your Majesty,” the captain said, saluting.

  “Captain,” Raesinia said.

  “May I say how honored I am that you requested the services of our battalion as your escort?”

  “It seems only fitting,” Raesinia said. “Is Colonel Ihernglass here?”

  “I’m afraid not, Your Majesty,” the captain said, frowning for a moment. “The colonel is . . . resting.”

  “Understandable. May I ask your name, then?”

  “Captain Abigail Giforte, Your Majesty.” She saluted again, then extended a hand. “If you’ll follow me?”

  The two rankers fell into step behind them as they went inside. More soldiers had cordoned off a path, but beyond them, the cream of Vordanai society had gathered to gawk at their young queen. Raesinia found herself falling back into her old habits, walking with neat
ly upright posture and eyes carefully avoiding meeting anyone’s gaze, as her old tutors had taught her. Give them a chance to stare. That’s what you’re here for. Don’t send any signals that you don’t mean to send. It had been drilled into her until it was unconscious instinct.

  “You serve under Colonel Ihernglass, then?” Raesinia said as they walked at a dignified pace down the long hallway.

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I command the Girls’ Own—that is, the First Battalion of the Third Regiment of the Line.”

  “I owe your men—your soldiers, I mean—a great deal.”

  The captain dipped her head. “They’ll be honored to hear it, Your Majesty.”

  The great arch was before them, and beyond it the main hall. The last time Raesinia had been here, it was a wreck, but the Deputies-General had refurbished its meeting place and left very little trace of its original sacred purpose. Two long, tiered benches lining the walls provided seats for the actual deputies, while a visitors’ gallery occupied the space where the altar and pulpit had once stood. Between them was the speaker’s rostrum, a polished wooden podium set atop a marble plinth with room for five or six people to stand. Sothe was already there, along with four more women soldiers. Raesinia’s head of household curtsied as she approached, and whispered in Raesinia’s ear as she passed.

  “I’ve been over every inch of this place, in case you’re worried.”

  “No bombs this time?” Raesinia said, equally quietly.

  “Nothing but a few rats.”

  At Raesinia’s request, the soldiers standing beside her on the rostrum were the four who’d survived the raid on the Hotel Ancerre. Andy, stiff as a board, looked close to panic as the attention of the room focused on them. Joanna, one arm still wrapped in bandages, seemed to take the scrutiny in stride, but she kept stealing glances at her smaller companion—Barely or Barley, Raesinia wasn’t certain which and couldn’t figure out a polite way to ask—who had a bandage wrapped around her head like a crown. Vicky, the last, wore an elegantly tailored dress uniform complete with gilded sword with an expression of severe embarrassment.

  The new President of the Deputies-General was an octogenarian Free Priest from Essyle, a jolly if somewhat forgetful old boy whose greatest feature was that, as a complete nonentity, he was regarded by all parties as a safe choice. He tottered up to the rostrum now, bowed deeply before Raesinia, and straightened up again with only a little difficulty. Once installed behind the podium, he cleared his throat, and in a creaky voice said, “I declare the one hundred and eighteenth session of the Deputies-General of the Kingdom of Vordan open.”

  There was more, something about procedures and minutes, but it was drowned under a rising cheer. Deputies on both sides of the aisle got their feet, applauding for Raesinia, or for themselves, or for Vordan in general. The president kept talking, regardless of the fact that no one could hear him, and the crowd had only begun to fall silent when he finished his long preamble.

  “As our first item of business,” the president said, “our esteemed monarch, Queen Raesinia Orboan, has come to make an address. Your Majesty?”

  “Thank you,” Raesinia said. Sothe, efficient as ever, discreetly pushed a cushioned step behind the podium so Raesinia would be able to stand at something like the correct height. Raesinia took her perch and looked out at the sea of faces, the deputies in their bleachers and the balconies full of onlookers, the hall full of those who hadn’t been able to cadge a seat. And, beyond them, the nation, waiting for the broadsheets that would spread her words across hundreds of miles.

  It’s a good thing, she thought, I don’t get stage fright. She pried her hands, carefully, away from where they had taken a death grip on the edges of the podium, and began her speech.

  It was a good speech—not her very best work, but as a speaker Raesinia was no Danton Aurenne. The marvelous acoustics of the Cathedral carried her voice to every corner of the vast room and muted the buzz of conversation in the crowd. She thanked the deputies for their efforts, which brought another round of applause, and thanked the dead and wounded soldiers for their sacrifice, which was met by an appropriately solemn silence. She trotted out the required platitudes about hoping for peace and prosperity—was there ever a ruler who wished for ruin and disaster?—while maintaining a will to resist aggression.

  She was following a script, and the audience nodded along, like connoisseurs of the theater at a well-remembered play, following every nuance of this particular performance. She said things because it would be remarked on if she didn’t say them. Her mind ran ahead, to the end of the speech, where the only substance lay. Most of the audience knew what was going to happen, or had guessed, but she had to say the words to make it real. Like I was a magician, she thought, and had to work hard not to giggle.

  “The events of the past few months,” she said, working up to the peroration, “have made it clear that the military of Vordan requires a single guiding hand, a single will to forge it into a sword aimed at the hearts of those who threaten our kingdom. There must be no more accusations of treason, no more feuding generals. My father, if he were alive, would have taken on the task himself.”

  When he had, Raesinia reflected, it was a disaster. Her father had been a great man, and a brave one, but he’d never had the talent for the battlefield.

  “But this is a new age,” she went on. “Vordan has a constitution, and true power is vested in the ultimate sovereign, the people, as represented by their deputies in this assembly. The monarch should not command the nations’ armies, lest she be tempted to ignore the will of the elected representatives. Yet we also must not stray down the path of the Directory and bring the iron fist of military discipline to civilian affairs.

  “I have taken the answer from history. The ancient republics of the Old Coast were wise in this, as in so much else. When war or disaster threatened, they would appoint a single leader best able to deal with the problem, men who would step aside when the crisis was past. Today, I ask the Deputies-General to follow their example, and to name Count General Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran the First Consul of the Kingdom of Vordan!”

  Not bad, she thought, as the applause began. The bit about the constitution—which still did not technically exist, in anything but the broadest outline—had been certain to play well with the men largely responsible for it. Emphasizing the limits of the new post, rather than its vast powers, made it more acceptable in a city so recently out from under the bloody hand of a tyrant.

  The title “consul” had been Raesinia’s suggestion. It carried the weight of history, the connotations of great men who worked selflessly for their republic and then stepped aside. And the truth was that Vordan needed Janus, with practically unlimited authority, if it was going to stand a chance once the vast, slow-moving legions of Murnsk were brought to bear and while Borel continued its stranglehold on the coasts.

  Now Janus himself appeared, immaculate in army blue and the red of his home county. He was escorted up the aisle between the deputies by four men of the Mierantai Volunteers, with red uniforms and long rifles on their shoulders. They stopped, standing rigidly at attention, and saluted, while Janus took a few more steps forward and then sank to one knee.

  “Count Mieran,” Raesinia said. “If the Deputies-General does grant my request, will you serve in the post of consul for as long as the emergency requires?”

  “I will, Your Majesty,” Janus said, his normally soft voice ringing throughout the hall.

  “And do you swear, on your sacred honor, to exercise the powers granted to you only in defense of Vordan and its interests?”

  “I swear, Your Majesty.”

  “And do you swear that on the successful conclusion of the war, you will relinquish your office, and submit yours to the orders of this assembly, where all authority rightfully resides?”

  “I swear, Your Majesty.”

  “Then I submit my proposal to the De
puties-General,” Raesinia said, turning to the president. “I request a vote.”

  She stepped back, and the old man took the podium again, going through the motions. The vote was more or less a formality, of course. Even if Janus’ troops hadn’t occupied the city, the streets wouldn’t have stood for anything less than their hero being put in charge of the nation’s armies. The deputies had tasted the mob’s wrath once before, for failing to put Janus in command, and she doubted any of them wanted to try it again.

  Looking down at him, though, Raesinia felt suddenly uncertain. This was the right thing to do, the only thing she could have done, but there was a sudden, awful sense that she’d stepped over a cliff without looking down. Janus stared up at her, gray eyes huge and luminous, and the briefest of smiles flashed across his face.

  Be wary of Vhalnich, the Ghost had said. He plans deep.

  Epilogue

  SHADE

  Adam Ionkovo pulled himself out of a shadow when the guard turned her back, landing on the flagstones with the slightest rasp of leather on stone. The woman, in a blue army uniform with a musket on her shoulder, was still looking toward the stairs, listening to a muted conversation from the guardroom above.

  They were in the cells under the Guardhouse, former headquarters of the Armsmen, which Janus’ Army of the East had taken over for important prisoners. One level down, Maurisk and the rest of the Directory languished, along with a few other “traitors” who’d been rounded up or surrendered themselves. This level was unused, except for this single cell, with its single prisoner.

  It was also only a few floors away from where Ionkovo himself had been “imprisoned” while he was playing his little game with d’Ivoire. The irony was not lost on the Penitent Damned.

  He had chosen his moment carefully. The infernai, the desert creature who served the Beast, had dogged his every step the past few days, especially when he came anywhere near either Vhalnich or the queen. The sand-thing couldn’t keep Ionkovo from slipping away, but he couldn’t hurt it, either. A stalemate, which the Penitent found intensely frustrating. But tonight, with both the queen and Vhalnich at the Sworn Cathedral, he was betting that the infernai would be there, too, giving him at least temporary freedom of action in other matters.