Winter War Awakening (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 3)

by Rosalyn Eves

  “Will you walk with me?” he asked.

  I searched his face, trying to read if he was still angry at me for what I’d done. I deserved the anger, but I did not like how it hung between us like the winter snow: an icy, formidable barrier.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Gábor steered me toward the edges of the camp, where we might have some privacy. Hooting followed us but quickly faded away. He made no move toward me but walked in tandem beside me, his arms swinging. His fingers closed, then opened, then closed again. My eyes drifted to the fine line of his jaw, now covered with a short beard. He had always been clean-shaven before. I wanted to touch it, feel the thick hairs rough against my fingertips, but I did not dare.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I never meant for anyone to be hurt—I only wanted to keep a part of you with me.”

  Gábor turned to look at me. “Men died, Anna. Some of them were my friends.”

  “I know.” I was used to being chastised—by my mother, by my governess, even by Ginny and Noémi. But it hurt more coming from Gábor, because his good opinion mattered more. I felt a sudden sympathy for Emma, from Miss Austen’s novel, standing before Mr. Knightley. I only wished I had her assurance of a happy ending. “I would undo their deaths if I could—I would give up my own life if it would change anything.”

  Gábor sighed, the stiffness going out of him. “I don’t want that. Besides, if we are going to assign blame, I deserve some of it for writing details of our location when I should have been more discreet. Anyway, I did not come to upbraid you but to tell you that General Bem is close, at last. And that Petőfi Sándor is dead—killed fighting alongside Bem as they withdrew from Transylvania.”

  I caught my breath. I had not known the poet well, but he had always been so vivid, so full of life. He had yearned to die in battle, and so he had—much as I might wish it otherwise. I remembered his pretty young wife, whom I’d met at a ball in Buda-Pest. Did she know?

  “They’re going to turn the army around,” Gábor said. “General Görgey believes that if we act quickly enough, we can surprise the Austrian soldiers before reinforcements reach them. With Bem’s aid, we’ll be equally matched.”

  I rubbed my hands against my arms, where the crisp air pricked gooseflesh beneath my woolen sleeves. Now that we were alone, I found I did not know what to do or say. The words I wanted to say—a lifetime of words—clotted in my throat. I could not seem to disentangle the ones that would do what I wanted them to: cut through everything that separated us. The heart was only an organ of muscle and blood, beating in my chest. How was I—or anyone—to translate its longing into action or language with any fluency?

  Gábor took my hand, and we walked into the gloaming until all the sounds of the camp died away on the air. We talked of little things and big things, of Emilija’s training any woman in camp who would join her, of Mátyás, his cheekbones jutting like ships from his hollowing cheeks. Gábor fell silent, his eyes fixed on the far horizon, where only a rim of gold remained. His hand slid from mine.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I—” He began, broke off, began again. “Guyon sent me to talk to some new recruits today, to persuade them to stay. And I did it. They will stay now, whether they wished to or not.”

  I didn’t understand the tightness in his voice, as though it pained him to tell me. “But surely we need them?”

  “Yes, we need them.” His voice was grim. “But, Anna, I used a Persuasion spell.”

  “But…” I recoiled a fraction before I caught myself. Persuasion was Coremancer magic, and Gábor had shown no sign of it before. Of all Luminate gifts, Persuasion troubled me most: my mother, my sister, my uncle Pál, and Archduchess Sophie had all used their Coremancer gifts to fit me to their idea of what I should be.

  “It’s come on gradually, since the Binding. I didn’t realize what I had until the war had begun, when Kossuth sent me as a government commissioner to help recruit soldiers, then to watch Görgey. I thought at first that it was only that I had a gift for talking, that in wartime my eloquence mattered more than my race.” His lips twisted ruefully. “We have a saying, ‘Among the gadže, a Rom’s only defense is his words.’ I thought that’s all they were: words, powerfully spoken.”

  He fell quiet, and the silence stretched between us. I waited.

  “I think I wrote you about the Romani men who joined my first division. They approached us, wanting to join up as soldiers. The lieutenant who met them cursed at them, told them that they were only good for carrying bugles and drums, and we had enough damned minstrels already. I couldn’t help myself: my anger boiled over into words. I told the lieutenant to stop speaking, to apologize at once. I told him that any man—or woman, for that matter—who wanted to fight should be allowed to join, and it was our privilege, not theirs, that they did so.”

  He laughed a little and rubbed his forehead. “To my shock, the man did. Apologized profusely, showed them where to get uniforms. And nothing more was said until later, when I heard his friends ribbing him about giving in to me. One said it must be a Romani curse, and the others all seemed to agree. I realized that the burning heat in my veins had been magic, not merely anger—but of course the magic that becomes a ‘Luminate gift’ when found in the nobility becomes a ‘curse’ when someone like me wields it.”

  I had not heard this bitterness from him in a long time. Why had he never told me of it before? I took his hand again and did not wince when he gripped a little too tight.

  “They knew Kossuth had sent me, so no one dared confront me directly. Instead, I found a dead mouse in my boots, and my soup at dinner was salted to the point that it was inedible. I was glad when Kossuth recalled me a week or so later and sent me to Perczel. I convinced the commander to let the Romani men go with me—I didn’t dare leave them with that division, and Perczel was much more appreciative of willing bodies.”

  He caught my eyes again, his own hollow. “Though given the disastrous battles that followed, I’m not sure I did them a favor.”

  I traced his fingers between mine. “Their deaths are not your fault. You did the best you could with the information you had.”

  But was that true? I’d done the same when I broke the Binding—and yet, on sleepless nights, I could not help question whether the war, the praetherian threat, could have been avoided if I’d done nothing. If Herr Steinberg had killed me outside the Binding in Eszterháza, perhaps the only thing on the plains this December would have been herds of cattle, making their placid way through the frostbitten grasses.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t find the right words in a letter. And then I did not want to see you look at me differently. The Coremancers you have known have been…difficult.”

  I gave a half laugh. “True.”

  “Of all Luminate gifts, this is the last I would claim,” he said. “I don’t want this magic. All my life I have seen the damage that compulsion brings in its wake. People don’t like to be forced, by magic or by physical threat. I think of what I could do as a Coremancer, how I could change the laws governing the Romani, and I am tempted—more than I like to admit. But if such laws are won by magic, will they hold? Will people be more resentful if they find they’ve been Persuaded into better treatment? And what if I cannot stop there? What if I use the gift for my own gain? I don’t want my words to be a weapon.”

  “Words do not have to be a weapon,” I said. “They can be a balm too.”

  I hesitated. The words hovering on my tongue could not be recalled once spoken. But Gábor needed them, and that need was greater than my pride. “I love you,” I said, giving him the truest balm I knew.

  I wrapped my arms around him, and after a heartbeat where I began to question everything, he settled his around me, and dropped a kiss against my temple. “Me tut kamav.” He dropped a second kiss on my h
air. “I love you.”

  “Me tut kamav,” I whispered back, and his eyes widened with such joyful surprise that I wished I knew more Romani, to envelop him in words that reminded him of home. I should have to learn. “I wish I had something better to offer you than my flawed gifts.”

  He ran a finger down a strand of my hair that had worked loose. “All of us offer flawed gifts alongside the true ones. Your gifts do not define you; you define your gifts. If you cannot see your courage and compassion, I can. But I don’t love you for your good qualities or your bad ones. I love you. Love doesn’t differentiate like that.”

  I smiled at him, gratitude for his goodness—the unspeakable gift of his love—suffusing me with warmth despite the cold night. “I think you answered your own fear: you may have a Coremancer gift, but that gift does not define you—you shape that gift. And because you are thoughtful and honorable, you will shape that gift in thoughtful and honorable ways.”

  His eyes were very soft as he smiled back. “Thank you.” Then he bent his head toward me, brushing his lips against mine, and we did not talk again for some time.

  I had never been so sharply aware of my own body. Culture and the religion of my childhood had trained me to see it as a mere thing to be ornamented, a vehicle to move my eyes and my mind through the world. But now I saw my body as something infinitely more, as matter that both desired and was desired. Even in my brief flirtation with Freddy back in England, I’d never felt like this: as though the whole world were centered in the places where our skin and lips touched.

  Was it the war and the awareness of my own mortality that made me feel this physicality so acutely? Or was it that seeing myself through Gábor’s eyes—as someone worthy of love—freed me to acknowledge my own feelings?

  The light around us shifted, long blue shadows swallowing the last of the early winter’s day. It was past time to go back—both Gábor and I had other responsibilities. But I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to lose him again, even if it was only to another camp. I didn’t want to face the battle and its aftermath—the uncertain grind toward an equally uncertain future.

  I willed the moment to stretch out indefinitely. Once, I had thought I wanted everything my world had to offer: a place among the powerful, important work, respect. The war had chiseled all that away from me, honing my wants until they remained few and bright: a breath of peace, my family, Gábor.

  “What if we didn’t go back?” I asked. There was no one to stop us from walking away from this war.

  His eyes closed for an instant: veins drew purple tracings across his eyelids. Was he pulled to this vision, as I was? His eyes opened again, dark in the fading light.

  “Is that really what you want?”

  Yes. I sighed. “No. Of course not.”

  Because how did one live in the aftermath of a tragedy? No matter how beguiling the possibility of flight, guilt would poison everything between us. “I just want you to be safe. I want us all to be safe. I want the war to be over.”

  I wished someone could promise me that we would survive this, that everything would come out right in the end. But there were no promises, not here, not now. Perhaps not ever.

  “I know.” Gábor held my hands to his chest, where I could feel the thrum of his heartbeat against my knuckles. “We’re doing the best we can.”

  What if that was not enough? That uncertainty loomed before us like a chasm. One misstep, and we’d all fall. I rose on my toes to kiss him, meeting his ache with my own aching. The kiss we shared was frantic, nearly wild, as though we could will away the war and our own shadows with the heat between us. When we broke apart, our lips were already chilled with the early-winter air, our breath coming white as fog between us.

  * * *

  The lidérc helped me slip away later that night. We borrowed a pair of horses, and her glamour hid us as we moved past bivouacking soldiers. The winter’s chill deepened as we rode, clouds above us blotting out the moon and the stars but withholding snow for now.

  “Thank you for helping me,” I told her.

  “I am not doing this purely for you—the sooner this war ends, the sooner I can go home.”

  She almost never spoke of home, only of a mythic mother who had not survived the Binding.

  “Where is home?”

  She was quiet for a moment, weighing her answer. “There’s a curve of the Duna River where the hills capture and hold the summer light, not far from Pécs. That is where I would go, were I free to go anywhere.”

  I pulled my cloak tighter around me. “It sounds heavenly. I’ve begun to wonder if I shall ever be warm again.” Or safe.

  “You would be welcome to visit,” the lidérc said, her voice diffident.

  “If we get through this war, I should be honored.” I hesitated a moment, because the lidérc was guarded about her past, but curiosity goaded me. “You’ve come a great distance with Mátyás, and then with Emilija and with me. None of us are praetherian. Why do you help us?”

  She was silent so long that I began to think I’d offended her, and she would not answer. Then, “It’s not just about you. Or about me. If the praetheria are to survive, if humans are to survive, then we have to find a way to live together without fighting. Also”—a rare flash of her pointed teeth—“Emilija has more sense than most humans. And Mátyás was kind to me.”

  “And me?” It was a foolish question, fishing for a compliment, and I regretted it as soon as I’d uttered it.

  “You amuse me,” she said, her grin growing wider.

  I started to laugh, then choked it back, remembering our need for secrecy and speed. She might have said much worse.

  I’d expected to travel for some time, as Haynau’s army was some four or five miles behind us. But we had not traveled half that distance when we began to encounter foot soldiers in full uniform, followed by mounted cavalry. It was an hour past midnight.

  We pulled off the road into the shelter of a copse. The lidérc’s glamour would hide us, but only so far—if the soldiers bumped into our horses, the glamour would not suffice to convince them they’d felt nothing.

  The soldiers carried muted Lumen lamps, casting only enough light to reveal their footing but not enough to be seen at a distance. A cannon rumbled past us.

  The soldiers were moving into place for a nighttime assault.

  I swallowed a curse. I might have lost my only opportunity to speak to Franz Joseph. Once battle was engaged, he’d be much more difficult to reach. And what of the soldiers sleeping behind us? “We should warn the armies.”

  “They’ll have sentries to give warning faster than we can reach them,” the lidérc pointed out. “What about the emperor?”

  “We can’t reach him now,” I said, gesturing at the waves of soldiers.

  The lidérc smiled again, a curiously feral smile. “I can reach him. If you can point him out to me, I can guarantee he will come speak to us.”

  I’d nearly forgotten her other gift, for luring travelers. For some time, we watched the passing troops in silence. I began to despair that we’d missed the emperor—how could we recognize one individual soldier in the dark, amidst all the others?

  But then a standard bearer rode by, the Hapsburg crest snapping in the breeze. And just beyond him, in a pristine red-and-white uniform, a young man with a familiar bearing.

  “I think that’s him.”

  “You think?” The lidérc raised her eyebrows at me. “Well, we shall know soon enough.”

  She drew her hands together, then opened them, like a flower blooming. A coursing light rested just above her palms, a swirl of white and gold and traces of peach. She drew her hands away, and the light hung suspended.

  None of the soldiers looked toward us, save one. Behind the standard bearer, the mounted officer nudged his horse out of line. A few of his men shouted at him, and when he didn�
�t turn back (or even respond), a handful rode after him.

  The first time I’d seen this part of the lidérc’s gift, I’d been overwhelmed by the ferocious draw toward its light. This time, I felt none of that, only a mild amusement that it gathered Franz Joseph so surely while leaving everyone around him untouched. When he came within hailing distance, the lidérc let the light wink out.

  She gave me a tiny shove. “Tell him to send his men back.”

  I stumbled away from the trees, feeling a trifle foolish, and called, “Franz Joseph, please send your men back. I mean you no harm: I’d just like a word.”

  “Who are you?” Franz Joseph squinted into the gloom before him. Without the lidérc’s light, neither of us could see much.

  “It’s Anna—Anna Arden.”

  Even in the dimness, I could see Franz Joseph stiffen. He shouted back at his attendants to halt, then slid down from his saddle to walk toward me.

  He was very trusting, this young emperor. I might have slit his throat before his attendants could reach him—if I were the throat-slitting sort.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. His shoulders relaxed as he came close enough to see my face, his hand falling from the hilt of his sword. Perhaps not so trusting, after all.

  “Your mother gave me to the Russians, in exchange for their cooperation in the war. The Russians, in turn, gave me to a praetherian army, who are waiting out this war to establish their own rule over us.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “My mother would never act in such underhanded fashion.”

  “When I found Anna,” the lidérc said, stepping forward, “she was being held in caves by a praetherian army.”

  He shook his head. “You must have misunderstood. Your uncle—”

  “Yes. My uncle sold me too.” I rubbed my cheek, which was beginning to feel numb from the constant cold wind. “If you won’t believe me, don’t. But you need to know that a praetherian army is waiting for us—perhaps waiting for this very battle, where you crush us and then they crush you.”