The Marshaling

Bethniel stumbled into the hospital. Soldiers and servants moaned in dense rows, victims of the cyclones that had ravaged the camp. Prenlin stepped over and around the wounded and bowed. “Are you ill, madam?”

“No,” she sighed. “Just tired. I need to find Gustave of Sect Dameron.”

“In the Caleisbahn ward. I’ll get you something to restore your energy.”

Thanking her, Bethniel picked her way to the far side of the pavilion. In the week since their wedding, Thabean had secretly trained her to use the Woern, but her first real lessons had come when she helped disperse the cyclones that raged through the night. As dawn broke, the thunderclouds had shredded into wisps across an azure sky, and Bethniel had finally been able to look for Gustave. The commodore had sent her here.

In a corner, the Caleisbahn physician slumped on a stool, surrounded by several dozen injured pirates. Gustave lay asleep, his right arm propped on a cushion. It ended at a thickly bandaged elbow.

Gently squeezing his shoulder, she whispered his name in mindspeech. He remained insensate, his breathing deep and steady. Cursing, she shook the Caleisbahn doctor awake.

“I must speak with Commander Gustave. Can you rouse him?”

The man’s expression passed from groggy to scornful. “Be gone, woman! Master Healer,” he said as Prenlin arrived, bearing a steaming cup, “advise your pan cleaner not to disturb my patients!”

“This will revive you, madam.” Prenlin handed the cup to Bethniel and raised an eyebrow at the other healer. “This is Bethniel Graystone, doctor. She has assumed Thabean Graystone’s place on the Council.”

Eyes wide, he sprang to his feet and bowed. “Madam! My apologies. How may I serve you?”

“I need to speak to Gustave,” she repeated and sipped the tincture. It was horribly bitter, but the nostril-flaring scent jolted through her blood, and the warmth eased her aches. The Caleisbahn physician held a potion under Gustave’s nose until he gagged and his eyes fluttered open.

Bethniel shooed the healers away and knelt beside the pirate. “Gustave, Vic had to flee. She wanted you to meet her.”

Head lolling, he mumbled the name “Samson.”

“Gustave.” She shook his shoulder. “Vic said you should meet her ‘where you made your sally?’ What does that mean?”

He sucked a deep, noisy breath and roused himself. “We fought Meylnara at the caldera.” His eyes fell on his missing forearm. Yelping, he twisted right and left, as if looking for it.

“Seaman!” the Caleisbahn healer barked. “Control yourself.”

“Was he injured by the cyclones?” Bethniel asked.

“No. Victoria brought him in yesterday, before your . . . ascension, madam. All the bones beneath the elbow were pulverized. We had no choice but to take it.”

“Why did Meylnara attack you?” she asked Gustave.

Gustave scrubbed his remaining hand over his cheeks. “She wanted to ask the Caldera tribe to harbor you. But Meylnara and her People had launched an assault on their stronghold. Victoria and I took the opportunity to try to kill her. We failed.”

Bethniel stared at him, ears pumping with blood. What could Vic have been thinking, taking on Meylnara alone? And how could she have imagined Gustave would be capable of meeting her? Voice taut, she asked where to find the place.

Furious, she stalked to Vic’s tent. Who did she think she was, the Blade still, going off alone to assassinate fieldmarshals? She had a child to think of! She has me to think of. In the pit of her stomach, a small voice wailed.

She stuffed clothes and supplies into a satchel, went to the mess and asked for cheese and flatcakes. Still clearing away debris, the cooks provided the food immediately and without a hint of surprise, as if wizards wandered in, demanding a week’s rations all the time. Shoving the food into the satchel, she flew up and headed for the caldera.

Flying had come easily to her, as had much of what Thabean had taught her. Her chest tight, she pushed aside her grief and used her anger at Vic to speed to the caldera. Still fuming, she landed in the clearing Gustave described. Elesendar, let her be all right. She scanned the empty ground, the hollow spaces beneath trees and bushes. Samovael had seemed determined to murder Vic, but he and Grunnaire had staggered into the Council chamber at dawn and admitted they hadn’t found her. Nelchior had insulted the returned wizards until the moment he vomited on the Council table.

Dropping the satchel in a gap between roots, Bethniel laid her palm on the trunk and prayed that Vic would find it. “She’s all right,” she said aloud. “She has to be. She still has a destiny to fulfill.” But history had already changed. No records told of a ‘Lady Bethniel,’ a latent wizard who had been Thabean’s lover and heir. History said he had died with honor and glory in battle, not that he was unceremoniously executed for violating the Code he held sacred. Even Meylnara was not the evil witch history painted her but a scared, lonely woman, sentenced to death because her mother committed the same crime as Thabean and Vic. Where was Vic? What if she’d been killed by the storm? I might be alone now, Bethniel thought, dread twisting.

Clicks blurred behind her. Two warriors stood in the clearing, their tattoos marking them as Caldera tribe. Antennae waving, they bent their heads toward her.

Her fear turned over once again to anger. “The Sacrifice is dead,” she clapped.

The two spun round and vanished into the forest. Bethniel gazed at the screen of vegetation. “Thabean didn’t die for the Kia, he died for me!” she shouted. “He shouldn’t have died at all. None of this should be happening at all!”

Growling, she swiped at tears born more of fury than sorrow. Hunting a last time for Vic, she prayed to find her sister asleep under a bush.

The Caldera Center emerged from the forest and bowed. “We erred.”

Her pulse beat in her throat. “How—” She wanted to ask how they could have erred so badly, but her father always said, casting blame does nothing to correct mistakes. “How did you err?”

“We did not anticipate that two would be one. The Concordance has begun. You are the Fulcrum; events shall turn about you. You must choose.”

“You said the Fulcrum was passive.”

“We erred,” the Center repeated. “The Concordance is in your hands.”

“What about Vic, the One?”

“The One will play a role. But you will choose the future of your people and ours. The lineage of the Child seeks dominance over all lineages and peoples. We follow the Treaty of the First and seek to coexist.”

“And you will send us home when Meylnara is dead,” Bethniel reminded them of the terms Vic had made.

“If the Sacrifice is made, those from history will be returned.”

“But the Sacrifice is dead!” she shouted, clapping a moment later.

“The Child moves toward the camp of the Council. We will await the One.” Like a ghost, it melted back into the forest.

* * *

The quiet heat inside her tent pressed into Bethniel’s pores. She’d always lived in quiet, among people who used their voices only to express the most urgent or profound emotions. Because she’d always known it, she’d never associated silence with solitude, until now. In a day, she’d lost her husband and her sister. She’d inherited a title she didn’t want to own, a people she didn’t want to command, and a power she would have refused if given the choice. “You must choose.” The words haunted her. “If the Sacrifice is made.” She wondered why she wasn’t curled up in a ball, weeping her eyes dry, but she had nothing to give over to weeping. She had nothing.

The tent flap rustled as Lillem came inside and stood at attention.

“Out,” she commanded.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Mourn!” she spat.

“There must still be a sacrifice.”

She waved him off. “Fine, sergeant. You’re dismissed.”

“Highness—”

“It’s madam, now.”

“Madam . . . Thabean is gone. Your sister is likely gone. We must do this thing.”

“I don’t know how,” she said bitterly. Vic had been convinced her experience with the soldiers in the training yard was the key, but Bethniel had no idea what had happened there. Her only hope was to Listen to Meylnara and find a way to shift her connection to the forest through mindspeech.

Lillem knelt beside her. “There must still be a sacrifice.”

Tears streamed at last. “I know.” Elesendar help me.

“I will help you.”

Wiping her nose, she rose. “The Caldera Center told me Meylnara is on her way here.” She drew back her shoulders and raised her head. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to do it. I’ll need you to guard my back and get Gustave from the hospital. If I . . . you’ll need him to talk to the Kragnashians, so you can go home.”

The lieutenant saluted. “Yes, Highness—madam.”

“Tell Fainend I want to see him.”

Lillem left, and Fainend arrived soon after. “Meylnara’s on her way,” Bethniel said. “I need to know what happens if I do not designate an heir to my seat on the Council?”

“If you died without a clear line of succession, the next Candidate for the Elixir would be chosen from the educated by lot. But in that case, Nelchior could claim the northern reaches for himself.”

“No wonder he and Thabean were at odds.”

“That was one reason, madam. For the others, one need only be acquainted with the wizard.”

She snorted. “Before Thabean bequeathed everything to me, did he have a roster of candidates?”

“He did, madam.”

“Come with me to Saelbeneth’s, and tell me about them on the way.”

* * *

Vic reached the caldera when the sun stood halfway to its zenith, heat beating out of a cloudless sky. It was as if the storm had dumped every bit of moisture from the air and the forest had sucked it all up, leaving nothing but brittle bark and sandy soil, ripe for fire. Panting, Vic landed in the clearing where they’d faced Meylnara. There was no sign of Gustave—she’d been a fool to think he’d be capable of standing, much less walking the fifteen leagues between here and the Council’s camp. Defeated, she collapsed to her knees and spotted a leather strap near the forest edge. In a hollow at the base of a trunk was a satchel holding supplies. “Bless you, Bethniel,” she breathed, opening a canteen. The water was hot but wet. She drank in sips, restoring moisture slowly, so she wouldn’t vomit it all back up.

Soap and a comb folded into fresh clothing teased out a fleeting chuckle. “That’s my sister.” Yet as she scrubbed blood and dirt from her hands, her mouth twisted down. Joseph. Sucking in a breath, she pushed the sorrow away and changed into a tunic and trousers. The silken robe stank of iron and death. She rolled it up and stuffed it in the hollow. Joseph was a soldier in this war. She would mourn him when it was over.

She swallowed more water and bit into a pome, staunching her hunger. Some cheese sated the devouring emptiness in her belly. She ate slowly, chewed and swallowed carefully, gaining strength for the fight ahead. When she finished and was wrapping up the remaining food, the Caldera Center flowed into the clearing and clicked at her, tossing its head. Two warriors flanked it, their mandibles heavily tattooed, and added their clicks and whistles. Wishing she understood them, Vic held her hands before her and bowed.

Staccato chirps and long burrs flurried from the Center. Wing covers snapped open and shut, and the creature’s mouthparts made a giant circle in the air. It lowered its head and thorax to a height Vic could mount.

All her life, she had railed and fought against fate. She’d followed it too—even chased it. But she had never surrendered to it, until now. The creature was incomprehensible, but she trusted it with that same certainty she had trusted Fembrosh a thousand times before. The Kia had steered her toward this moment, and the Kragnashians would see she met her destiny. Bowing again, she climbed onto the Center and settled between split wing covers.

They swept through the forest, gliding through brambles, glossing over logs, melting between trees. She huddled within the Center’s carapace, safe from whipping branches and nettles while she fretted over the blood weeping from her womb, mucking her trousers and staining the silky gossamer wings beneath her. Her abdomen throbbed, and her body ached as if a fever were coming on. Fists clenched, she called upon the Woern and cooled the air round her skin. Do just enough. Aches receded, and she felt nerves and muscles come alive, preparing for the long day ahead.