King Feder IV of Bracinta (ruled 1401–1405 Bracintan Calendar), the ‘Quiet King’. His reign, marred by factionalism and dissent, is noted for attempts to modernise the capabilities of the kingdom in the face of both foreign interference and domestic unrest.
When Masty appeared, it was without crown, robes or entourage, just a slight young man in Palleseen uniform shirtsleeves. Banders, who had been twitching her thumbs with anxiety, let out a full-on whoop of relief.
“It’s you! About damn time. You got your bag packed?”
Masty just looked at her, at all of them. “I just,” he said, haltingly, “thought it would be good. To wear the clothes again. Just the once. The stuff they’ve got me done up in, it’s, it’s not intended for wearing. If you understand me. More sort of being seen in.”
“Balls to it,” Banders tried. “Come on. Race you back to camp.”
“Banders, no.”
“Don’t make me go back just me and her. Someone’s going to kill someone. You skipped out on them before.”
“I hadn’t promised them, before.”
“Balls to your promise as well,” she said flatly. “Come on, Masty. We’re your people. We’re like family.”
“They killed my family,” said Masty.
“Yeah, I get that, and you are milking it a bit. And all the more reason to come with us. I mean, fine, a whole bunch of High Command saw you in the get-up, but it’s the get-up they saw. They’ll never know you.”
“Banders, I made a promise. To do my duty. To the nation. I don’t want to. I don’t really think kings are a terribly good way of doing anything. But they need me, especially now we’ve done what we did. There’s nobody else.”
Banders blinked rapidly. “Masty, man. It’s just going to be me. Just me. I mean, Cosserby, they got him, right? And everyone else is sodding off. It’s just me and her. I don’t want that.”
“You don’t have to go,” he pointed out. “Stay here. I’ll make you… I don’t know. What does a castellan do? You could be one of those.”
“I can’t, man. I… the army’s all I’ve got.” And Jack recalled she’d been very careful about not being seen, at the feast. Yes, she was a part of the ill-fated hospital, but they’d already demoted her off the bottom of the rank ladder, so what could they do exactly?
“Go to Thurrel,” Jack suggested to her. “You and him. He’ll need someone who knows what his new brief is.”
“Be his little cult goblin, you mean?” she asked bitterly.
“You’ll make a lovely cult goblin,” Masty said faintly.
“Screw you,” she told him, and hugged him fiercely, then punched him in the arm. And just as well he’d slipped away without attendants or there’d have been a diplomatic incident to answer for.
Then it was time for a different parting. Lidlet was heading out too, going to regroup with Foley and all the others who’d taken God’s hard bargain rather than die.
“We’ve got it planned out,” she told him, as though he was a superior officer she had to report to. “Where the Gallete ports are, where the other forces are. Nobody going back to Forthright, because they know our faces, but we’re heading everywhere else, here and back across the sea.” She had her chin stuck out pugnaciously as though waiting for him to forbid it. “Masty’s writ gets us past the locals, and I reckon we can blag our way into any camp that’s not actively locked down.”
“This isn’t going to go well,” Jack told her.
“Expert, are you?” She had her hands on her hips, head cocked, overdoing the defiance because, he guessed, she was very scared indeed. “We’re doing what you should have been doing all your life, Jack. We’re going to spread the word. We’re going to save lives. Teach the Loopholes. Sell insurance, even. By the time Higher Orders or the Commission are onto us, half the soldiers of the Sway will have God in their back pocket for when they take a hit.”
“This is not bloody dignified,” God grumbled. “Bloody insurance. This is not respect.”
“But you’re going with them,” Jack clarified.
“Oh you can’t wait to get rid of me, eh? Bastard ingrate. You and your disgusting pagan menagerie. It’s like a zoological garden in there now. That slug thing stinks!”
Jack just looked at Him, until God’s lip trembled and He said, “What’ll you do? When I’m not there to look after you?”
“No idea,” Jack admitted. “Live until they get me. Go into the Wood maybe. Smuggle gods. I’d say it’s a living, but nobody’s paid me for it yet. I’ll stick with the others, at first. Until we get somewhere we’ve got options. I imagine we’ll break up, after that. Find our own ways. And you, though? You’re Lidlet’s god now? You’re a Pal god?”
“Underground secret cult,” God said. “I never did that before. Sounds racy, doesn’t it? Makes me dangerous and revolutionary.” He shrugged tired, old shoulders. Though not as old as before, maybe. A few more dark hairs in the matted beard, a few less wrinkles on the face. “The God of used-up soldiers, who’d have thought?”
“Kosha would have been proud,” Jack said.
“Screw Kosha.”
“I’m proud too.”
“Screw you as well,” said God, although His voice choked a bit, saying it.
The others had their gear together. The Butcher and his boy and all their alchemical paraphernalia; Alv with almost nothing; Tallifer, with her ember of a god lurking in the sleeve of her Bracite robe. They were going away from the armies, both the armies. There had been talk of a travelling medicine show, of finding a city some place nobody was fighting and setting up a hospital for civilians. And Jack knew that wasn’t for him, and he’d be no real use there either, but he could keep them company on the road until something else came up.
In the corner of the room, the final member of their little band had stood silent and stone-faced all this time. Now Banders went over and prodded her. “You ready to move?”
“Well,” said Acting-Sage-Inquirer Prassel, “I hadn’t thought that it was my call, what with my being your prisoner.”
“Prisoner nothing,” Banders told her. “All friends here, aren’t we. You and me, we’re heading home.”
“And if I have them arrest you as a collaborator the moment we get to the pickets?”
“Then I won’t be around to explain how your empty seat at the table was on account of you and me heroically trying to stop it all from happening,” Banders said easily. “Instead I might have to explain how you were in on all of it, and how it’s your turn in the chair after the duty Inquirer’s finished with me. I mean, it does look bloody suspicious, doesn’t it? You’ll just have to content yourself with being literally the only senior officer in a hundred miles who can actually give a coherent order. And you know what? I reckon Higher Orders aren’t talking, back at camp. I reckon what happened at dinner isn’t exactly part of their regular reports home. On account of every one of them would be rated unsound and recalled for some hard questions. So I reckon you can play the lot of them like a fiddle and make the whole army your bitch. Magister.”
“What, me and Thurrel and you, is it?” Prassel asked with distaste. “Is that what this has come to?”
“You don’t like Thurrel all of a sudden?”
“Let me think about it.” And Prassel had a hounded look, but Jack reckoned he could see the seeds of ambition in there, too. And there were worse people than Prassel to be pulling the strings. Probably.
And that was the pair of them heading out, back to the army and all the pieces that nobody else would be able to pick up. And I’ll probably never even know how that turns out.
Lidlet left next, which meant that God left too. And Jack stood at a high window of the palace, watching her stride off, Bracite robe over Pal uniform, and God on her shoulder like an ill-trained monkey. A brief flash of off-white head as the little face tilted back and up towards him. But no waving, because God was mean. And Lidlet had a stomping stride and God had to hold on. And that was Jack’s faith out the door and walking away, and he knew that, even bound to its precepts as he was, and smuggle all the gods there were, he’d never be the same man. He felt like the opened chrysalis that a new religion had hatched from and abandoned.
Outside in the courtyard, his four travelling companions were ready, stomping and pacing like horses keen to be given their head. Time for Jack to go, too.
He turned. Caeleen was right behind him, robe over uniform just like Lidlet. He felt something clench inside him. Desire and longing and all the things he’d ever denied himself.
The day held its breath. Or he did, at least.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’ve got the world. The whole world to be wicked in. I’m the master. Nobody’s chains are on me. And I don’t know what to do.” Her voice was still sly, her face composed. Her hands twitched, fingers drumming at her thumbs. “So I thought, why not go with Jack? He won’t turn me away, will he? While I work out how I’m going to ruin everything for everyone. Like demons do.”
A lot of words turned up in his head, then, and some of them florid enough that the Bracite poets would have looked down their noses at him. They tangled like hooks and wire in his mouth and he couldn’t get a one of them out. He didn’t want to breathe, in case the moment broke.
He put out a hand, and she took it, and together they went down to join the others.