48

ERRIS

Council Street

Southgate District, New Sarresant

Jiri slowed to a walk as they turned down the wide street that ran between the council buildings. The first winter storms had abated, but their leavings stuck to the ground like a blanket of ice and sleet. Long icicles hung from rooftops, ominous spears threatening to impale passersby when the ice cracked and dropped. A good sign that there were people on the streets at all, never mind the weather. And there were a great many today, enough bodies to pack the gallery and make her late for Councilman d’Agarre’s meeting. Ostensibly a meeting of some body called the “Transitional Reform Council,” but neither she nor Voren had any illusions which puppeteer pulled those strings.

“What do you make of it, sir?” Sadrelle asked, riding beside her.

She frowned, looking up ahead. A swarming crowd, out of place both for the cold and the city’s politics, but she hadn’t taken any especial note of it. Such gatherings were common in better times.

“Nothing of great import, Aide-Lieutenant,” she said. “A sign of the city’s recovering health.”

“Sir?” Sadrelle asked, in a tone that suggested she had just ordered a bath drawn and filled with calf’s blood.

Only then did she notice the commotion in the center of the swarm, where it appeared a man had decided to go out naked into the cold, drawing a crowd to watch the spectacle of it. A heartbeat later she noticed a rather fine-looking coat being held aloft in a mocking fashion by one of the onlookers.

“Oh, Gods damn it,” she said, spurring Jiri into the press. She fell into her battle voice, calling for the crowd to move aside. Jiri was large enough to draw attention by herself, and trampling through the square got them to make way at once.

“What goes on here?” she called out, reining Jiri to a halt. “Who is this man?”

The naked man cowered on hands and knees, looking up toward her with dullness in his eyes. She saw bruises on his legs and back, with flushed skin on his chest that would bloom to purple soon enough.

Rage shone in the eyes of the crowd, with a pair of large men—one of whom held the coat she’d seen from afar—standing at the front rank on either side. “No concern of yours, Captain,” one of them said. “Just a tribunal on behalf of the people of New Sarresant.”

“She’s a general, you bloody fool,” Sadrelle called as his mount reined to a halt behind her.

“She’s fixing to be next if she doesn’t mind her business,” the man shouted back.

That made the crowd nervous; credit them with sense enough not to assault soldiers in broad daylight. Even so, the man’s words hung in the air, adding their own sort of chill to the biting cold.

She said nothing in reply, merely held a hand high enough for the crowd to see as she peeled off her glove, letting it drop to the ground at Jiri’s side. Gasps came from all around as their eyes settled on the broken skin on the back of her hand. By the time her second glove fell to the ground, the crowd had edged itself back a few paces, the men at the head sharing uncertain looks.

“He’s one of them,” one of the men offered, with an exaggerated spitting gesture even as he backed away. “One of the nobles. It’s no more than they deserve.”

“Go back to your homes,” she said in the voice she used for battlefield speeches. “And give this man back his clothes.”

The crowd broke, and coat, breeches, hose, and shirt were tossed forward from among the onlookers. “It’s justice,” the first man yelled back. “We’ll have them all before we’re through.”

She ignored it, dropping from Jiri’s saddle and tethering Body and Life as she knelt at the naked man’s side. He sucked in a wheezing breath, a sickly gurgle suggesting a pierced lung.

“Don’t speak,” she said. “We need to get you inside.”

Sadrelle brought the man’s coat to drape it over him as she tethered a strand of Body for herself. “Carefully, Aide-Lieutenant, get his feet. We have to move him.”

The man groaned as they hoisted him together, her Body-enhanced muscles enough to keep him steady as she made her way toward the council building. A warm fire and her bindings might be enough, but it would be a near thing.

“You missed quite a show, d’Arrent,” Voren said, leaning forward over his desk. “Councilman d’Agarre was apoplectic. Says the army are ‘a glorified pack of half-trained barbarians,’ I believe his words were.”

“My apologies, sir,” she said, taking a seat across from him in the temporary chambers he’d claimed for himself here at the Council-General.

“How is Vicomte Ouvrille?”

“He died, sir.”

Voren grimaced. “I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know him, not well at any rate. I’ll see to it his family is notified.”

“Sir, is this what the revolution means, to d’Agarre?” she asked. “To his followers?”

“There is no shortage of hate toward the nobility, d’Arrent.”

“Much of it well deserved, sir, all due respect. But that isn’t what I asked. What are Councilman d’Agarre’s intentions?”

“Peace, Chevalier-General,” Voren said. “Reyne d’Agarre is a young man, and an idealist. But he has no illusions that he can hold power without our backing, and that means he tolerates the nobility, or at least the vestiges of it within the army. And control of this city ultimately falls to us.”

“The men speak of worse than the Vicomte Ouvrille got, sir. Angry mobs calling themselves tribunals, seizing the watch’s guillotines to put on public displays of bloodletting.”

“Well, and what of it, d’Arrent? It’s no order I gave, but still better than the city would have had if Louis-Sallet had gotten his way. There are realities to this sort of business; surely you can understand that.”

A long moment passed.

“Yes, sir,” she said finally.

Voren sat back in his chair. He was right, of course; she never imagined their refusal to obey the Crown-Prince would result in bloodless resistance. But it was one thing to countenance a degree of lawlessness, quite another to make it an end unto itself.

“You did well with the vicomte,” Voren continued. “Good to show the citizens our strength. No need for the city to devolve into chaos.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“D’Agarre unleashed his invective on us for want of just such control,” Voren went on. “He claimed two of his lieutenants were killed here in the city. Assassinated, to hear him tell it. What would you make of that, General?”

“Two men murdered, sir? I’d call it a slow night, since d’Agarre’s people started barricading the streets.”

Voren barked a short laugh. “Truly though. D’Agarre claims they were men of influence within his ranks, men he claims were skilled enough fighters that anything short of a fullbinder shouldn’t have stood against them.”

She snorted.

“Yes, General, I know,” Voren said. “Humor him. What do we know of the fullbinders that have gone missing from our ranks? Are there any among the priests who might have access to Body, Entropy, Death?”

“Few enough,” she said. “And those would have been trained to healing or stewardship, not for combat.”

“Our fullbinders, then.”

“Laurent is the most skilled to have gone missing. Perhaps four or five more. And Louis-Sallet’s flowerguards, if they survived the council. I can get a full report from the Second Corps by tomorrow.”

He nodded. “Do it, if you please, General. But do it for the full army, not only the Second.”

“Sir?”

A spark showed in Voren’s eyes as he rose from behind his desk.

“It’s time, General d’Arrent. My attentions are going to be on securing the governance of the city, and the Gandsmen are coming. Your Need bindings will have to be implemented in more than just the Second Corps.” He opened a drawer, withdrawing a small wooden box and placing it on the desk, pushing it toward her. “It’s time we begin planning our defenses in earnest.”

She kept emotion from showing even as her heart raced.

He opened the wooden box, tilting the lid back and revealing a pair of gold pins. Five stars in a circle. “Congratulations, General. Or shall I say ‘High Commander.’ The armies of New Sarresant are yours, Erris d’Arrent.”

He broke into a wide grin. “Yours if you want them, that is,” he said.

Her head spun. Sixty thousand souls under her command. The fate of the colonies in her hands.

“Sir, I was a brigade commander not six months ago …”

“And the finest mind in the army,” he finished for her. “Take the posting, d’Arrent. Not a soul in the colonies would do it better; we both know it for truth.”

Her jaw worked, and she found herself nodding.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Thank you, sir.”

He beamed, coming out from behind the desk as she rose, belatedly, to attention.

“We’ll have to get you a new coat tailored for your rank, but for now these will do.” He leaned down and withdrew the gold pins, fixing them into place as she stood before him.

When he was done he stepped back, offering her a salute. She returned it, feeling a rush of pride even as the weight of it settled onto her shoulders.

The remainder of her pleasantries with Voren passed in a blur, her head spinning as she considered the implications for command. No time for training exercises to mold the existing unit commanders toward her preferred way of thinking, but then again a decentralized style might be unnecessary in an army equipped with Need. One vessel for each brigade commander should be sufficient, with two or three assigned to each cavalry unit for redundancy’s sake to ensure the accuracy of her field reports. And the navy. She’d have to speak with High Admiral Tuyard at once for full manpower reports and preliminary planning for the invasion.

Fifty thousand infantry, the lion’s share veterans of the spring and summer campaigns, with eight thousand horse. Two hundred wheeled cannons and their firing teams. Crew enough for perhaps eighty ships, with at least sixteen men-o’-war. More details after she spoke with the admiral, gun counts and the status of each ship’s complement. Three hundred binders with varying degrees of combat-relevant talents and training, and forty-odd fullbinders. All told they would be outnumbered by the Gandsmen four-to-three or perhaps three-to-two, with the enemy’s command structure already leveraging Need to the hilt. But she had the choosing of the ground, and her men would be fighting on their home soil.

Two weeks until the enemy arrived, perhaps more. Her connection with the scout on the far side of the world had revealed only the enemy’s preparations; it could have been days, perhaps a week or more before the last ship was ready to sail. Her men were rested in spite of the chaos in the city. The enemy soldiers would be coming off a hard voyage through winter storms. The first step would be to find them. A patrol sweep, ships spread along the coastline to catch sight of enemy sails on the horizon. Scouts posted along the barrier as well; she wouldn’t be caught by a flanking maneuver again, in case the enemy had levees marching north from their colonies. Then deployment in the field, once she knew where they would invade.

These things and more ran through her head. Ammunition stores. Snowfall. The ground upon which they would fight—always that, above other considerations. If Tuyard could harry the Gandsmen to make landfall in the south, they might prepare an ambush in the narrows where the southern rivers fed into the sea.

“Sir, is everything well with the marquis-general?” Sadrelle asked, falling into step beside her as she made her exit from Voren’s offices into the council halls.

“Sadrelle,” she said, “I’ve been promoted to High Commander of the army. We need to rouse the division commands and begin vetting our supplies and disposition in the—” She cut herself off, turning to look sharply at her aide who had fallen a step behind, wearing a look of surprise. “You support our victory, do you not, Aide-Lieutenant?”

“Sir, I … Congratulations,” Sadrelle stammered, quickening his steps to catch up. “Yes, of course I support our efforts and hope for victory. Why would—?”

His words washed over her as she shifted her vision to the leylines, searching for the threads of gold. In another time she might have worried over the implications of forging Need connections without the informed consent of her vessels; now, with mere weeks to plan a full defense of her homeland, such concerns paled before the immediate needs of the army. She found Need, snapping a connection into place between her and Sadrelle. Her vision shifted into his skin for an instant before she released the binding. Good enough. She could find him again.

Her aide sucked in a breath, his eyes wide with shock as she resumed her brisk pace toward the council stable yard.

“Move, Aide-Lieutenant,” she called over her shoulder. “Gather the division commanders of every corps, tell them to report to high command on the double.”

She took a few more long strides, then stopped. “And have them bring an aide. Someone known to be loyal to our cause.”

Flicking her eyes shut, she made a check of her stores. Need in abundance, springing from her like a fountain of gold.

Voren had spoken truly: It was time, past time, to begin laying the groundwork for victory.