The Guns of Empire

by Django Wexler

Raesinia blinked. “Alex?”

  “Our . . . guest. I thought the First Consul would have given you my report.”

  “He didn’t say anything about it,” Raesinia said, gritting her teeth. “Who’s Alex?”

  “We picked her up after the fight with the partisans. She’s”—Winter looked around—“like us. You understand?”

  A demon-host. While the precise nature of Raesinia’s power was known only to a few, it was impossible to conceal the presence of her demon from another host. Now that she knew what to look for, she could just about separate the pressure in her head into two distinct parts, one oriented toward Winter, the other into the tent.

  “Is she Murnskai?” Raesinia said. “A Penitent?”

  “She’s Hamveltai, as best we can tell. She’s been recovering from a nasty wound, so we haven’t gotten the chance to question her closely. She claims to be looking for revenge on the Priests of the Black, but . . .” Winter shrugged. “Janus asked me to try to get something more out of her.”

  “Can I speak with her?” Raesinia said.

  Winter frowned. “I was about to talk to her myself, but we can’t be certain it’s safe. If she is a Penitent—”

  “You don’t need to worry on my account,” Raesinia said. “I can take care of myself.”

  Unlike Sothe, Winter seemed willing to take that at face value. She nodded to the captain.

  “Bobby, wait outside, but don’t go far.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bobby saluted and moved off.

  Raesinia lowered her voice. “She’s one of us as well?”

  Winter nodded. “It’s . . . complicated, but yes.”

  Keeping my secret is going to be harder than I thought. There seemed to be a surprising number of demon-hosts around.

  Winter slipped through the tent flap, and Raesinia followed, her eyes taking a moment to adjust to the relative darkness. It was a cutter’s tent, with room for a surgeon and several patients, but currently only one bedroll was occupied. The young woman that Raesinia assumed was Alex was sitting up, reading a thick, leather-bound book. She was younger than Raesinia, probably still in her teens, with dark hair and wide, intelligent eyes. Her face was a little drawn, probably from the injury Winter had spoken of, but her expression was alert when she looked up at them.

  “Winter!” she said. “Thank God. I thought I was going to have to tackle another chapter.”

  “That bad?” Winter said.

  “I’m sure it’s fascinating, if you’re interested in the marriage arrangements of a Mithradacii Tyrant who’s been dead for a thousand years.”

  “I’ll ask Cyte if she has anything more exciting.” Winter gestured to Raesinia. “This is—”

  Raesinia had been watching Alex, and there was no recognition in her eyes. She caught Winter’s gaze and raised an eyebrow. Winter understood and with barely a stumble continued. “—Raes.”

  “Another demon-host,” Alex said. “Janus has quite the collection, doesn’t he?”

  Raesinia gave a noncommittal smile.

  Winter said, “Do you mind if we sit?”

  “It’s your tent,” Alex said. “I’m just borrowing it.”

  Winter dragged cushions over, and she and Raesinia sat down opposite Alex. Alex set the book aside.

  “So,” she said. “I’m assuming this isn’t a social call.” There was a touch of bitterness in her voice. “Have you and Janus decided whether I’m a Penitent yet?”

  “I was hoping I could ask you some questions,” Winter said. “If you’re feeling up to it.”

  Alex patted her midsection. “I think I can manage.”

  Winter exchanged a look with Raesinia, then said, “Did you read the name of your demon, or were you born with it?”

  “I was born with it,” Alex said. “For a long time I didn’t understand what I could do. It scared me.” She shrugged, and a shadow crossed her face. “I grew up on the streets in Hamvelt, begging charity from the guilds. It wasn’t a good place to be . . . different.”

  “Did someone teach you?” Winter said.

  “Not exactly. The old man—” Alex looked wary, then sighed. “I don’t suppose it matters now, does it? His name was Metzing, and he took me as an . . . apprentice, I suppose.”

  “In what trade?” Raesinia broke in.

  “He was a thief,” Alex said matter-of-factly. “The greatest thief in the world, actually. Now I guess I am.”

  “He’s dead?” Winter said.

  Alex nodded, anger filling her expression. “They killed him. The Black Priests. He was the closest thing to a father I ever had, and they left him floating in the Vor just because they wanted to get to me.”

  Raesinia winced. That described too many people in her own life—Ben, Faro, even Danton—lives destroyed by her enemies to get to her in one way or another.

  “You hadn’t heard of them before that?” Raesinia said.

  “I’d heard of them,” Alex said. “I just didn’t think they were real.” She tapped the history book. “Back then, sure, everyone knows the Black Priests fought demons and sorcerers. But not anymore. I thought I was the only one, somehow.” She forced a laugh. “Seems a little unlikely, now that I think about it.”

  “You got away from them?” Winter said.

  “Not . . . exactly.” Alex sat up a little straighter. “Not at all, in fact. There was a Penitent named Shade in Vordan City—”

  “Ionkovo,” Raesinia said grimly.

  “You know him?” Alex sounded surprised.

  “Not socially,” Raesinia muttered. “He tried to kill me.”

  “Then you probably know what he can do. He uses shadows as a gateway to some other place. He can climb in and out wherever it’s dark enough.” She shuddered. “He carried me through with him, on the way out of the city. They’d given me something to knock me out, but I woke up near the end. It was . . . unpleasant.” Alex swallowed. “He turned me over to another Penitent. I spent a month chained to the bed of a cart, half-mad from whatever potion they were feeding me. They were going to keep me like that all the way to Elysium.”

  Raesinia felt a chill. Ionkovo had no doubt intended a similar fate for her, when he’d tried to capture her during Maurisk’s attempted coup. Only Winter’s last-minute rescue had stopped him. From the look on Winter’s face, Raesinia guessed her thoughts were running along the same lines.

  “Did you get there?” Winter said. “To Elysium?”

  “Oh,” Alex said. “No. If you’re hoping for intelligence, I’m afraid I don’t know much. We met up with another caravan, carrying another prisoner. A boy named Abraham. He . . .” Alex paused. “He figured out a way to escape, and he took me with him.”

  “Escape to where?” Winter said. “Where have you been hiding?”

  “Into the forests, at first. There were some people who helped us, here and there.”

  “And then you decided to come look for Janus?” Winter said.

  “More or less. Even before the peace conference, the priests were telling anyone who would listen that Janus was out to destroy the Church and that he had demonic powers. It gets the peasants ready to fight.” Raesinia, thinking of the tirade she’d just endured, nodded. Alex went on. “I didn’t think much of it at first, but after a while I started to hear some more solid rumors about what had happened in Vordan. And I thought, maybe this is my chance. I owe the Black Priests, for the old man and for myself. So I came to find out if it was true.” She grinned. “I wasn’t planning on getting shot along the way, of course.”

  Winter sat back, pondering that. Raesinia said, “What happened to Abraham?”

  “It’s . . .” Alex shook her head. “I want you to trust me, so I’m trying not to lie to you. But some things aren’t my secrets to tell, you understand? He won’t bother anyone.”

  “I understand.” Winter got to her fee
t. “Thank you for being as open as you can. I’ll speak to Janus—”

  “Wait,” Alex said. “You still think I’m one of them?”

  Winter looked pained. “I didn’t say that.”

  “I took an awful risk coming here.” Alex put her hand on her side where it was bandaged. “More than I probably understood at the time. All I’m asking for is a chance to help. If you’re going to fight the Black Priests, you’ll need it, believe me.”

  “I know,” Winter said. “But you have to appreciate our position.”

  “How am I supposed to prove that I’m not something?” Alex rolled her eyes. “Maybe Abraham was right.”

  Raesinia took Alex’s hand, which seemed to startle the girl. Their eyes met.

  “When the time comes, you’ll be in the fight,” Raesinia said. “General Ihernglass and I understand what it means to need revenge.”

  Winter coughed, and Raesinia sat back. Alex blinked.

  “All right,” she said, looking away from Raesinia. “Any chance I’ll be able to leave this tent anytime soon?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Winter said.

  Bobby met them outside, with a couple of Girls’ Own guards carrying food and drink. Winter waved the soldiers on.

  “Sorry,” Raesinia said. “I didn’t mean to undercut your authority.”

  “You’re the queen,” Winter said. “You’re entitled to.”

  “I just . . . know how she feels.” Raesinia took a deep breath. “If she’s a Penitent, she’s a very impressive liar.”

  “She’s still not telling us everything,” Winter said. “There has to be more to the story of how she escaped.”

  “That doesn’t make her one of them, though,” Raesinia said. “You and I can both appreciate the value of someone who can keep a secret.”

  Winter smiled and turned to Bobby. “Can you keep a guard around if I give her freedom of the camp?”

  Bobby nodded. “I don’t see the harm. If she is a Penitent, the walls of a tent aren’t going to be much of an obstacle.”

  “Spread the word to keep an eye on her,” Winter said. “If anything seems strange, I want to hear about it.” She turned to Raesinia. “Thank you for your help, Your Majesty.”

  “It’s nothing.” Janus wasn’t going to tell me about this. Raesinia wondered, not for the first time, what else he was hiding.

  —

  They reached Tsivny the same day that Sothe brought her the spy.

  Raesinia’s entourage had thinned considerably since leaving Talbonn. There were a half dozen Grenadier Guards, who watched her tent in shifts, and as many servants to do the basic work of cooking and cleaning. The pair from the Girls’ Own, Barely and Joanna, accompanied her whenever she went out. And then there was Sothe, theoretically her Head of Household, in actuality her bodyguard, spymaster, and occasional assassin.

  Raesinia had grown used to Sothe’s nearly constant presence back in Vordan, but since the army had marched they’d actually seen very little of one another. Sothe had been against accompanying the army at all, of course, but once Raesinia had made up her mind the spy had thrown herself into creating an intelligence network to keep her mistress up to date on everything that mattered about the Grand Army. Sothe had her own tent, where she sometimes sat up late into the night working at a portable writing desk, but more often she was out among the troops. Raesinia always pictured her skulking around, overhearing conversations, although she suspected Sothe’s work was a little more sophisticated than that.

  That morning they’d broken free of the line of forests and back onto cultivated ground, winding down around a last pair of hills and into the valley of the Norilia. The river itself winked in the distance, long, lazy curves catching the sun, and they were once again riding through fields of beets, turnips, and rye. Raesinia had always heard that, lacking decent roads, Murnsk lived by its rivers, but she hadn’t appreciated until now how literally true that was—all the people seemed to live within a day’s ride of the banks, leaving the vast areas between the rivers as wild forests.

  Tsivny wasn’t even as big a town as Vantzolk, a stone church and a handful of timbered buildings clinging to one bank of the river. There had been a bridge, a wide wooden span big enough for wagons, but by the time they got there all that was left was a charred skeleton. Partisans, Raesinia guessed. At least they didn’t burn the town. In any event, Janus seemed to have expected this development, because carts loaded with rough-cut logs were rolling toward the town as soon as the scouts reported it clear of the enemy. The river was deep, but not particularly wide, and by the time the rest of the column began to wind out of the woods and toward the camp, a new bridge was already rising on the ruins of the old.

  Raesinia had just sat down in her own tent when there was a scratch at the flap. Barely poked her head in.

  “Your Majesty? Mistress Sothe is here, and she says it’s urgent. She’s got someone with her. Civilian, looks like.”

  “Send them in,” Raesinia said, curiosity piqued immediately. Sothe didn’t need to ask permission to enter her tent; if she’d done so, it was because she didn’t want this civilian knowing her true status.

  Sothe entered first, a slim figure in black and gray, the trim lines of her dress not betraying the weapons Raesinia had no doubt it concealed. Her guest followed, a young man with dirty blond hair in a long canvas coat and felt cap. He bowed low as he came in, and Raesinia nodded in return.

  “Your Majesty,” he said.

  “This is Master Whaler,” Sothe said. She stepped across the tent to Raesinia’s side and bent to whisper in her ear. “He’s a Borelgai spy, though he doesn’t know I know that. He thinks he’s bribed me for access to you.”

  Raesinia glanced up at Sothe, startled, but she didn’t want to give the game away by asking questions. She contented herself with an upraised eyebrow, then turned back to Whaler, who was still bent at the waist.

  “Please rise, Master Whaler,” Raesinia said. “Welcome.”

  “I have a message for Your Majesty,” Whaler said, glancing at Sothe. “One best heard in private, I think.”

  “Of course. Sothe, wait outside, if you would?”

  Sothe grimaced, but there was nothing for it. There were times when Raesinia was very glad she was unkillable—if she’d been an ordinary human, she had a feeling Sothe would have demanded she live her entire life in a cage behind a phalanx of guards.

  “A message, you said?” Raesinia said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” Whaler said. “From His Grace the Duke of Brookspring.”

  “From Dorsay?” Raesinia faked surprise. “You’re a spy?”

  He grinned rakishly. “That’s a harsh way of putting it, Your Majesty, but not entirely inaccurate.”

  “And why does Dorsay think I want to hear anything from him?” Raesinia waved a hand at the army around her. “We are at war, if you haven’t noticed.”

  “It hasn’t escaped my attention,” Whaler said. “But His Grace instructed me to say that the last time you spoke with him, he didn’t think you were entirely immune to reasonable compromise.”

  “High praise,” Raesinia said dryly. “And?”

  “Now that the situation has evolved, he wishes to speak with you again, in the hope that your interests may coincide with his.”

  “Fascinating,” Raesinia said, thinking furiously. “He could simply send over a party under a flag of truce, of course.”

  “His Grace is anxious that the First Consul be unaware of these discussions.”

  Ah. That made sense, after Janus’ display at the abortive peace conference. “I see. In that case, how does he propose to accomplish this talk?”

  “If Your Majesty agrees, you can accompany me, with a small party, to a place between the lines. His Grace will be there with a similarly small escort.”

  “That sounds like a marvelo
us way to kidnap me,” Raesinia said.

  “It’s also a good way for His Grace to put himself in danger from your scouts,” Whaler pointed out. “A certain amount of trust is required on both sides.”

  “How can I be certain you speak for Dorsay?”

  “He told me to tell you that he hoped less time would pass between your meetings than last time. He said you’d take his meaning.”

  Raesinia thought back to her last meeting with the Duke of Brookspring. “I visited your father’s court with a military delegation, and we were introduced to the royal children. You were about two years old, but I thought you comported yourself with dignity . . .”

  “I understand,” Raesinia said slowly. “Thank you, Master Whaler. I must . . . consider.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty. But I suggest you move quickly, or the situation may continue to evolve.”

  —

  “You think it’s a trap, of course,” Raesinia said to Sothe.

  “I don’t, actually,” Sothe said. She sat at Raesinia’s table, where Marcus usually ate dinner. Raesinia herself paced back and forth in front of her.

  “What do you mean?” Raesinia said. “You think everything is a trap.”

  “It may be a trap in the diplomatic sense,” Sothe said. “But I don’t think the Borels want to murder you or haul you away, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Duke Orlanko certainly does.”

  “At the moment he doesn’t seem to be making the decisions.” Sothe shrugged. “It’d be just too easy for us to turn Whaler over to Janus once he gives us a location for the meeting. I’m sure Dorsay will take precautions, but I think this is a genuine offer to negotiate.”

  “To negotiate with me,” Raesinia said. “Not with Janus.”

  “Dorsay told you he thought Janus was mad,” Sothe said. “You don’t negotiate with madmen.”

  Raesinia pursed her lips. “What if Janus finds out?”

  “You’re the queen,” Sothe said. “Entering into negotiations with foreign representatives is your prerogative.”

  “He may not agree, with the army in the field, but it hardly matters. If I do this, he’ll say I’m actively working to undermine him.” Raesinia paced, turned, and shook her head. “He won’t necessarily be wrong. Can we risk that division, this far from Vordan?”