The San Colombo Pass and central Etrusca—Long Paw
Long Paw had just returned from a long patrol south, trying to net the Patriarch or any of his officers; a waste of time. They’d questioned terrified peasants and ridden hard on exhausted horses and they hadn’t seen or heard a thing. The Duchess of Venike had just unleashed the whole of the Venike ranger company into the hilly country above Firensi, where the Patriarch was rumoured to be hiding among his own people.
Long Paw put a hand on his back, which hurt, and stumbled a little because his legs hurt, too.
Petite Moulin shot him her open-faced smile. “You are hurt?”
“I’m old,” Long Paw muttered.
There was a stir toward the eastern edge of the fortified camp. The peasants were still burying the dead after the “Battle of San Batiste” (after stripping them of every possible valuable thing). Some of them raised their heads; a small horde of children ran toward the shouting.
“The Berona road,” Petite Moulin said in her Gallish accent.
“The convoy!” Long Paw said. Fatigue and incidental pain fell away, and he and Petite Moulin ran down their company street of tents to see the huge military wagons roll past the outposts and through the great wooden gate that had already been erected in case of a serious assault from Mitla.
Hundreds of wagons stretched away out of sight over the ridge. In fact, Long Paw wasn’t sure he’d ever seen so many wagons in his entire life. They had wheels as tall as a man, and each wagon was drawn by six horses in a complex hitch that wasn’t familiar to Long Paw. The wagons were full almost to bursting, piled high, with their covers laced taut against rain.
The wagoners were greeted with cheers, and they grinned, but the convoy rolled on. Long Paw stopped counting at two hundred wagons; there were still wagons coming over the far distant ridge.
“I’m lookin’ fer Corp’ral Favour,” said an urchin in strongly accented Alban. Long Paw didn’t know him, but there were suddenly hundreds of them; all Etrusca seemed to have dumped their unwanted children on the army.
Petite Moulin shook her head. In Etruscan, she said, “He is still on patrol.”
The boy nodded politely. “Then I am to find Ser Roberto Caffelo.”
Long Paw nodded. “That’s me,” he said.
“Donna Sugo wishes for you,” the boy said.
Petite Moulin and Long Paw looked at each other. Multilingual gears ground in tired brains. Then they both grinned.
“Sauce,” they said together.
Desiderata stood in her chamber, looking at her bed linens and thinking of Blanche. She was hardly a delicate flower; she did not actually need her pillowcases ironed to go to sleep, but Blanche was gone, and Desiderata knew every day how much she had relied on the young woman. And on Diota, executed, her head put on the gate like a traitor.
Desiderata went to the window and looked over the city. Almost at her feet, there were cranes, huge assemblies of wood, driven by enormous wooden wheels, by horses and oxen and even men. Forty cranes towered above the lower town; three on the former Episcopal Palace alone.
“We are rebuilding,” she said to the city. “We are not beaten.”
She wished that she could see hermetically into the workshops where Master Pye and all his guild allies were building their secret weapon. She wished that she could understand the progress of the plague. She wished that she could leave the responsibilities of being queen, and go north to save what could be saved, as a potent user of magik.
She wished her husband were alive.
She walked from the window to her son’s cradle and she watched him for a long time. He lay sleeping; a small being who was intensely curious, who surprised her every day. She had never expected a baby to have so much personality, but he had; jolly, joyous, inquisitive, eyes so wide he almost expected her son to speak.
She wanted to crush the small form to her breast, but she was an experienced mother by then and she had no intention of waking him. Delightful as he was, his demands were endless.
She sighed. Everyone’s demands were endless.
She walked to the door of her solar and there was Ser Ranald, with his axe.
“Your Grace,” he said. “She’s here.”
“No one is to come in,” she said. “I mean it, Ranald.”
“Yes, Your Grace. May I say …”
“No,” the queen snapped. “You may not.”
Ranald bowed.
The queen nodded. She walked down the passage, to where her guards had taken Lady Jane.
She opened the oak door. It was a good room, and had once been her husband’s library and his private study. The tapestries were gone, but the scrolls and books remained. She thought, briefly, of helping him with his armour in this very room, so long ago that it seemed a different world. She was so lost in the moment; the warmth of his response …
“Your Grace,” Lady Jane said. She curtsyed.
She was quite young—perhaps seventeen—and very pregnant. She had long, straight blond hair, and she looked more than a little like Blanche Gold.
Desiderata looked at the woman who had been her husband’s mistress and tried to imagine what had happened. She could not, really.
“You sent for me?” Lady Jane asked. She was terrified, but she bore it well enough, although her beautiful skin was splotchy with fear, as if a cat had left footprints on her cheeks.
“I sent for you and you ran,” the queen said.
“My father …” the lady began.
The queen shook her head. “Never mind your father,” she said, suddenly resolute. “Listen to me, Jane. Did you love him?”
“Oh God,” Jane said, and she burst into tears so suddenly that she startled both of them.
Desiderata felt a strange urge to weep with her.
“Tell your father,” Desiderata said when the sobs had died back into the woman’s fear, “that you and your child will be welcome at my court. Tell him that his grandson will be a Fitzroy; that I will see he is raised with Constantine, and knighted, and treated in every way as the king’s son.” She went forward and put a kiss on Jane’s cheek. “Come,” she said. “We have other enemies. Let us be kind to each other. And no one should be punished for love.”
Lady Jane, unbelieving, fell into the queen’s arms. Then, Desiderata found herself weeping. But when they were both done, the queen felt a weight lift from her, as if, in facing this one task, she had begun well on all of them.
She dried her eyes with a fine lawn handkerchief—pressed, folded, but without the scent of rosewater that Blanche would have added—and then she dried Lady Jane’s. She passed the door again, and Ser Ranald stood rigidly on the other side.
“Take Lady Jane wherever she wishes to go,” the queen said. “I didn’t rip out her throat with my fangs, if that’s what you were imagining.”
Ranald gave her a wary smile.
“And then bring me my council. I need to plan to take the army north.”
“Now ye’r talkin’,” Ranald said.
“And bring me Lady Mary in private, please. In my solar.” She was thinking clearly, for the first time in a week. Maybe it was just sleep. She could see exactly how she could be in two places at one time.
Sauce was standing with the duchess and two men Long Paw had not seen before: a nondescript man like an Etruscan foot soldier, and a well-dressed man with a horribly maimed face and one eye gone, half his hair lost under a tangle of angry scar tissue.
The scarred man bowed to Long Paw when he was introduced as “Ser Roberto.”
“Paw, this is Fernando Lucca. He was Kronmir’s …” She looked at the man.
“Friend?” the scarred man asked. “Squire?” He frowned; the expression was normal on one side of his face and vanished into the caricature of ruined flesh on the other side.
Long Paw looked at the second man. “And this?”
The man answered him with a very slight smile. “Most people don’t notice me,” he said quietly.
“This is Master Brown, who helped save my life once,” the duchess said.
Long Paw held out his hand, and the nondescript man took it. Very close, he was easier to describe; his face had a forgettable roundness to it, and his clothes were the frayed-hem wools of the lowest order of agricultural workers. He smelled a little bad.
“Just to catch you up,” Sauce said, “they came in on the convoy.”
The duchess looked tired, but not distraught. Long Paw doubted she’d ever been distraught in her life.
She smiled at Long Paw as if reading his mind. “I want to get the Patriarch,” she said.
Long Paw said nothing.
Brown nodded. “Me, too.” He looked at the man who’d been named Lucca, the man with the ruined face. “Lucca and I have some … experience.”
“Working together,” Lucca said, forming his words carefully.
“The three of you can get the Patriarch,” the duchess said. “I’m sure of it. And be light enough on your feet to make it to the rendezvous at Arles.”
Lucca shrugged. “Emperor is my employer,” he said. “A job is a job. Kronmir was my mentor. I owe him. He comes first.”
Brown nodded. “What he said,” he muttered.
“As to that,” the duchess said, “I am not yet decided whether I will accompany the emperor or remain.”
Long Paw frowned. “Sauce, I’m not one to gripe, but …”
Sauce nodded. “I’ll see you right. You’ll be at Arles in time.”
Long Paw tried a different tack. “Who’s keeping watch on the Duke o’ Mitla, then?” he asked.
Brown managed his half-smile.
“Apparently the Duke of Mitla will not be troubling us this autumn,” Sauce said. “He was assassinated two days ago. Just about the time the battle was fought.”
The silence was palpable.
“His brother has already sent us a pair of heralds and tomorrow I’ll ride north to meet an embassy.” Sauce shrugged. “An embassy for which I’ll need the Duchess of Venike.”
The green-clad woman nodded. “Ah, duty,” she said. “Will you get him?”
Brown and Lucca bowed.
Long Paw nodded to them. “Am I the guide?” he asked.
Brown sniffed. “Yes,” he said.
Lucca nodded. “This could take months. You know that, right? But there’s more, Donna. The Venikans have prisoners; they’ve put them to the question. I didn’t know Master Jules was dead; I came to tell him, and you, that there’s evidence of a third player. The Patriarch is just an ally.” Lucca leaned close. “Or the Patriarch is something very nasty indeed.”
Sauce tapped her nose. “We’ve got our own suspicions. Very well—Long Paw is our go-between. For fifteen days. After that …”
Brown shook his head. “Don’t tell us,” he said fiercely. “I won’t die to protect your secrets.”
Sauce nodded. “We can pay you for this,” she said. “I’m a professional.”
Brown nodded. “I heard. Good on you. But this is on the house.” He bowed. Looked at Lucca. “I need access to Master Jules’s effects.”
Sauce nodded.
“And we need a caster. A good one.”
“Of course,” Sauce said.
Later that afternoon D.13 landed on Syr Christos’s outstretched arm and delivered a message straight from the emperor’s own hand. Sauce read it aloud to the company; it praised them for their victory and announced the destruction of the Necromancer.
By midnight, six hundred wagons had passed through the army and headed west to the passes. The company folded its tents in the very early morning and marched in behind them as a strong rear guard, and found supplies left in prepared camps.
Long Paw and Brown and Lucca and M’bub Ali were long gone. In fact, all four were asleep while a middle-aged woman named Beatrice watched their horses in a merchant tavern’s barn just north of the Mitla Gate of Firensi.
Beatrice had never even contemplated a life of violence. She’d been a capable farm wife until the duke took her daughter as a concubine. A year later, everyone in her family was dead.
And so was the duke.
She watched the darkness, listened to men snore, and tried to imagine herself as a hard-faced mercenary killer, or one of their sluts.
She said some prayers.
They were terrifying men, every one of them, and she knew they were on their way to kill the Patriarch, and it all horrified her.
She said more prayers, and then she woke one of the infidels to take his watch. The man was now in Etruscan clothing; his swarthy good looks were not very different from the men of Rhum, and he grinned at her in the one candlelight of the barn’s lower half.
Brown, who had lain awake watching her, now watched her crawl into her blankets, and then let his eyes close. He didn’t trust her; he had enough trouble trusting Lucca.
“People,” he said to himself.
Arles—Empress Blanche
Two hundred leagues and a mountain range to the north, the empress rose early and read the night’s dispatches with Master Julius. She noted in the messages that the Venikans had drovers gathering cattle in the lands that had formerly been the Darkness and she read with interest about the assassination of the Duke of Mitla, although some reports claimed he’d died of the sudden onset of a disease.
She sipped quaveh from a small porcelain cup and wished she still had Jules Kronmir.
“Majesty?” said a Hillman voice. “Miss Kaitlin. An’ the Queen o’ Arles.”
“Thanks, Jock,” she said, her eyes still on the reports. “Julius, move the main convoy to the base of the pass. Thanks.” The former company notary, now functioning as something like an imperial chancellor, was also the keeper of Kronmir’s master map, an enormous and not terribly accurate rendering of the whole of the Nova and Antica Terra in Kronmir’s own hand, with hundreds of small pins and flags to indicate … almost everything: herds of bullocks, water sources, the known location of imperial couriers, either birds or people; some untagged pins of which only Kronmir and Syr Alcaeus had known the meanings. But before he’d left, he’d instructed her in its use, and now she used the messages to move the pins, or that’s how she saw it. She and Julius, and Michael and Gabriel, and Alcaeus back in Liviapolis, were the only ones fully privy to the meanings of the flags; Kronmir had begged her not to commit any of it to parchment or paper.
Jock knocked on the solar’s outer door. Master Julius nodded at her and dropped the curtain over the map, and the empress casually closed the heavy leather folder that held the day’s uncoded imperial courier messages. Kaitlin was the closest thing she had to a friend; Clarissa de Chartres was one of her closest allies.
Kronmir had said “no one” and Blanche knew he meant it.
Clarissa entered first with two ladies; one the fierce-faced older woman who’d attended her before, the other young, blond, pretty, and eager; she curtsied so deeply that Blanche was afraid she’d fall on her face.
“The Demoiselle Isabella,” Clarissa said.
“The Duke of Mitla is dead,” Blanche said.
Clarissa shook her head. “I am so envious of your … servants,” she said.
Blanche shrugged prettily. “It may have been disease,” she said.
“The will of God perhaps?” Clarissa asked. She smiled.
“The will of Gabriel Muriens?” Kaitlin said. “Honestly, I’ve put up with three years of him and he generally gets his way.”
Clarissa looked at her hands in her lap and smiled again.
“You know, you could be a veritable demon from hell and that innocent face would confound us,” Blanche said to Clarissa, who raised her eyes and laughed.
“I know,” she said. “No one ever imagines I have a bad thought.”
Kaitlin shook her head. “Unfair,” she said. “I apparently look like I’m nothing but bad thoughts.”
“What brings you two at this difficult hour?” Blanche asked.
“The smell of quaveh,” Kaitlin said. “And pregnancy. And because today we have our sword lesson with Michael and I’m to remind you, Majesty.”
“Send me Michael when you have time,” Blanche said. She was still getting used to sending for people as opposed to going for them in person, an action that caused chaos among everyone’s servants.
“And I brought young Beatrice to … serve you,” Clarissa said. “Using men-at-arms as maids may well have its charms, but I thought you might like a girl.”
Blanche looked at the enthusiastic young woman who was kneeling before her.
“Really?” she said a little distantly.
“I would be the best serving lady ever,” the young woman said.
Blanche made a face. In her head she thought, Young woman, I was myself the best serving woman ever. “I’m not sure I need a—”
“Blanche,” Kaitlin said.
Clarissa de Sartres straightened as if Kaitlin had uttered a blasphemy.
“Blanche, it took me months to get used to it. Just do it. You can’t dress by yourself; you just slow everyone down. Really, you need two ladies and a couple of maids.” She shrugged.
Blanche looked at Kaitlin.
Clarissa looked out the window.
Kaitlin looked at the Queen of Arles. “We weren’t born to this,” she said. “I can do laundry better than your laundry maid.”
“And I can sew and iron better than your staff,” Blanche said.
Clarissa burst out laughing. It was not a ladylike laugh, but a snorting, gurgling laugh.
“I can sew, too,” Clarissa said, snorting and wiping away tears of laughter. “I wanted to be a nun,” she admitted.
The other two woman looked amazed.
“I was never going to be a nun.” Kaitlin laughed. “Imagine, a Lantorn nun? I’d ha’e been the laugh of the place.”
Blanche looked down at Beatrice. “I suppose I must try you, demoiselle.”
The young woman’s back straightened. Her smile grew, if anything, broader.
“How are you at hair?” Blanche asked, playing with a strand of her own.
Beatrice giggled.
Blanche turned to Kaitlin. “Let’s have the swords. Whenever the Lord Michael is available.”
“You outrank him,” Kaitlin said. “You could just order him to come.”
Clarissa made a noise of disgust. “You can’t really order anyone ever,” she said. “This is the first rule of giving orders, I think.”
“What do you mean?” Kaitlin asked.
Clarissa raised a perfectly curved eyebrow. “I mean that when you snap an order at a servant, they resent it; if you request the same in gracious language, they resent it less, but ultimately, they do your bidding of their own free will because you are paying them, not because they love you. And likewise, when you snap an order at a great lord, he, too, resents it; when you ask graciously, he resents it less …”
Blanche laughed. “And when you provide his daughter with a juicy marriage, he remembers why he should obey you?”
Clarissa smiled. All three of them were of an age; all three had seen a great deal of life in a very short time.
“No one was ever particularly nice to me when I was serving,” Kaitlin said. And then, a little dreamily, “Well, of course, Michael was.”
“And look where that got you,” Blanche said, patting her friend’s tummy.
“You’re a fine one to talk,” Kaitlin said.
Clarissa looked out the window.
Blanche inclined her head to the Queen of Arles. “I think we’ll come to you for lessons, Your Grace. I have a feeling you’ve had all the training we lack.”
“I wouldn’t mind improving my ironing,” Clarissa said. “Although my real ambition is to write books.”
“Ugh,” said Kaitlin in distaste.
“Ooh,” said Blanche, pierced with interest. “What kind of books?”
“I never really learned to read,” Kaitlin admitted. “Michael taught me, but it’s work.”
Clarissa smiled shyly. “I write some poetry,” she said. “And some glosses on religious works.” She got up suddenly.
“Would you like sword lessons, Your Grace?” Blanche asked.
Clarissa stopped. “Yes,” she said. “My constable … treats me like a woman.” She shrugged.
“Aye,” Blanche said. “It’s an occupational hazard.”
Clarissa suddenly spat, “I find it tiresome.”
Kaitlin laughed. “Honey, we all find it tiresome.” She got up, favoured her back, and then stretched like a long-limbed cat. “Never mind. I’ll fetch Michael, and we’ll have some fun.”
Blanche looked at Master Julius, whose quill was moving very quickly. He met her eye and mouthed two words.
“Lord Michael is drilling the Arelat Levy,” Blanche said.
“I should have known that,” Clarissa said.
“Me, too,” Kaitlin said. “He’s my husband.”
“Let’s say two hours,” Blanche said graciously.
Both ladies nodded and left her to her solar with her new “lady.” Outside the solar, Clarissa stopped dead in the corridor and barked a short, odd laugh.
Kaitlin paused behind one of Clarissa’s ladies. “Your Grace?” she asked.
Clarissa looked back at Kaitlin. “Think of how she dismissed us,” the Queen of Arles said. “She is a quick learner.”
“There’s nothing very difficult about using a sword,” Michael said with hearty reassurance. He was already tired, and he wasn’t sure that giving sword lessons for ladies was what he ought to be doing.
On the other hand, he was looking forward to seeing his wife for an entire hour.
His wife, Kaitlin, as well as the Queen of Arles, Clarissa; the Empress of Man, Blanche; and her maid Beatrice all stood before him on a heavily flagged courtyard. There were ill-concealed faces at every window.
The four women all held arming swords.
“I know,” Blanche said. “I’ve killed a man and a couple of bogglins.”
All the women laughed.
Michael smiled. “Right,” he said. “And that’s the point, really. The part I can’t teach you is the real part: getting the job done. Any way you do it, if you live and the other bastard dies, is the best way.”
“This is definitely not what my constable taught,” Clarissa muttered.
“Nonetheless, ladies, there are some ways that are better and some that are worse. Let’s just start with how to hold a sword.” He proceeded to demonstrate; he showed them how to hold the sword like a hammer, how to hold it like a fishing rod, how to hold it with a thumb on the flat of the blade.
“Now, Your Grace …” he said to Blanche.
Blanche nodded her head graciously. “My lord,” she said. “I would like to propose, as I really do wish to learn this, and as it takes so very long to say our titles and so little time to say our names, that for the duration of these lessons, we all refer to each other by our baptismal names.”
Michael laughed. “You know, Blanche,” he said, “in my whole life of training to arms, my master never referred to me as anything but ‘you idiot.’”
“I draw the line at ‘idiot,’” Blanche said. “I’ll accept ‘you incompetent ninny.’”
“Duly noted,” Michael said. “Now, if you could take the sword in your hand properly and strike the pell?”
The pell in question was a large stake of hardwood planted deeply in the courtyard, with a crisscross of marks showing that Clarissa’s men-at-arms, at least those who had survived the siege, practiced regularly.
“Don’t you teach us a guard and a cut first?” Clarissa asked.
“No,” Michael said. “See if you can find it for yourself.”
“Jesus,” muttered Kaitlin.
Blanche strolled up to the pole, stopped with the sword behind her, held out like a tail, and then snapped the blade forward in a flat cut at the pole, just above waist height.
The sword cut deeply into the hard wood and a chip the size of a woman’s hand shot away. The sword was stuck and Blanche started to lever it out, and Michael put a hand over hers.
“Whoa!” he said, as if she were an awkward horse. “Someone has strong arms. Nice cut, Blanche. I pity the bogglins. But only take the blade out on the same line you put it in. Otherwise you use up a lot of blades.” He took his hand away and she worked the blade out gently, and got it free.
Beatrice stepped up. Unlike the other three women, she was dressed in a kirtle and overgown, where they were in men’s hose, and in moving, she caught the sword point in her overgown. She shook her head. “Sorry.” She made a face. “I’m clumsy,” she said.
“I doubt it,” Michael said. “Take some cuts.”
Beatrice was interested in the idea of having her thumb on the flat of the blade, and she stood there, her tongue between her teeth, playing with the feel of the sword in her hand. “I could cut myself very easily,” she said.
“Nothing to worry about,” Michael said.
She cut at the post. Her thumb grip kept the point low, and her blow was at waist height—not particularly hard, but neat. Before anyone could say anything, she stepped back and cut again, this time with one foot passing forward, and a small chip flew.
“Very nice,” Michael said. “Now try another grip,” Michael said.
Beatrice cut a third time, this time laying the naked blade on her shoulder and cutting so close to her own ear that Clarissa winced. But she turned her hand in making the cut and the flat of the sword bounced harmlessly off the pell. Michael turned the sword in her hand so that the edge fell on her shoulder.
“Now I really could cut myself,” she said.
Michael shrugged. “Swords are dangerous.”
She cut, and her sword made a satisfying thunk into the wood. She beamed with pleasure. “Ahh,” she said.
Michael smiled. “Next?”
Beatrice looked at the empress, who seemed satisfied. She grinned. “I could do this all day,” she said.
Kaitlin nodded. “I want a turn, Beatrice,” she said, as if they were on a playground.
She stepped up, took a distance, and cut, her blade rising above her head and cutting down into the pell. Like Blanche, she stuck the sword so deeply that she needed help and leverage to remove it.
“Again,” Michael said. He used a different tone of voice with Kaitlin. “Someone has cut a lot of firewood.”
“My brothers were lazy.” She frowned. “And my sisters, too, come to that.”
She cut again, this time starting on her shoulder, then passing back and rising to above her rounded waist and cutting flat. She hit just above her former angled cut and a large chip of wood flew away.
Michael shook his head. “Weak women,” he said. “Where are they when you need them? The poor post has to last out the week, ladies.”
For an hour, he cycled them through, allowing them to cut from any angle, any position.
“Aren’t you going to teach us guards?” Blanche asked.
Clarissa smiled. “I think I know a dozen,” she said.
“Not for a while,” Michael said. “I have two early goals for all of you: to feel comfortable striking, and to feel comfortable drawing, which we’ll do tomorrow. I’m a heretic; I find that if people use a sword regularly, they develop their own guards based on their own bodies.” He flourished his own sword, drawing it, rolling it over the back of his hand and catching it. “That is all the time we have today.”
All four women looked dashed. For Blanche, this meant a return to the stacks of vellum awaiting her; for Kaitlin, the loss of her husband to drilling troops; for the new Queen of Arles, the end of the best hour she’d had in four months.
“I wish this would go on forever,” she said. “I want to become a master!”
Michael waved to Robin, his squire. “Robin will be happy to guide you in further cutting,” he said. “The empress, that is, Blanche and I have to go through the morning reports.”
As if this was an official cue, all of them turned and bowed or curtsied to Blanche, who inclined her head with regal dignity. She didn’t even smile.
She only sighed. “Beatrice,” she said. “You may have another half-hour if you wish it.” She held out her hand, Michael took it, and they went up to the scriptorum together. On the stairs, she said, “That was … so much fun.”
“I’d like all of you to be able to draw and kill anything that threatens you. I can’t imagine any of you forced into protracted sword fights, but against an assassin …” Michael let his words trail off.
Blanche nodded. “Not to mention various bogglins, wardens, and other creatures of the Wild coming through my tent.”
Michael shuddered, remembering the fighting at Gilson’s Hole, when they had come within a hair’s breadth of losing the queen, her son, and Blanche. “By Saint George, I hope not.”
Blanche stepped off the steep steps at the top of the tower. “By Saint Mary Magdalene and all the saints, I hope it is as you pray,” she said. “But this time, if it happens again, I will be ready, and I will be in maille, at least.”
“You are pregnant,” Michael said quietly.
“Kaitlin told you?” Blanche asked. “Too early to say for sure. But yes, I would guess as much.” She smiled. “In fact, I’m very sure. But nothing that will incommode me in the next, say, thirty days.”
“I have trouble imagining anything that would incommode you, Your Grace,” Michael said. He grinned.
She grinned back. “Good,” she said, and pushed open the door to the solar. Inside stood two androgynous young people in the black-and-white clothing of imperial messengers. There was also a bird on Master Julius’s fist and another on a perch. Julius held out a tiny scroll and she seized it, her heart suddenly hammering in her chest.
She didn’t breathe a moment as she read …
…. and then she flushed. “They have finished the Necromancer,” Blanche said aloud, her eyes on the vellum before her. “They will be on the way here. There’s orders for food.”
Michael was reading another message. “And you know where to find food? Here? In Arles?”
“I do,” Blanche said. “There is a convoy coming over the mountains. I intend to send Comnena and the Scholae to bring it in. Just in case.”
Michael nodded.
Blanche handed him her message. It was in code, and he sat down, began to figure the day’s code, and looked up at her. “You can read the code?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“It changes every day!” he protested.
She shrugged. “It is only a little mental book-keeping,” she muttered. “Like tracking laundry marks.”
He whistled.
Master Julius spoke very quietly, as if they were in church. “She saves us hours sometimes,” he said.
Michael nodded. “So that’s why he married you,” he said. “A genius cryptologist.”
Blanche glared at him. “I’m sure that was at the forefront of his mind,” she said.
Scrolls were read, passed back and forth, read again. The clerks began to copy them fair in plain text.
“But do you need a guard on the convoy?” Michael asked. “We seem to be in charge of the whole countryside.” He shrugged. “A forty-league ride in either direction is no small thing, Your Grace.”
Blanche glanced at Michael. “Julius, clear the room,” she said. “Just the three of us, please.”
“Ma’am,” he said, and shooed the messengers and secretaries out. The messengers took the birds; Blanche patted each of them in turn.
When the room was clear, she walked around it, looked out each of the arrow slits, and then opened the curtains on the master map.
“Michael, Master Julius,” she said. “Kronmir had a theory that the Patriarch was not a servant of the Necromancer, but of a third, or is it fourth, power.” She looked at Master Julius for confirmation. The notary nodded.
“Yes,” he said. Outside the rare occasions on which Master Julius drank too much, he became taciturn and wasted few words.
Michael sat back. “That’s an uncomfortable notion,” he said.
“Gabriel says there could be fifty powers, or more, and we wouldn’t know until they tip their hands,” Blanche said, tapping a roll of parchment on the table. “From now until Gabriel returns, we guard everything. Messengers go in pairs, convoys have guards. It seems to me that our most sensitive point right now is food.”
Julius was nodding along with his mistress.
She passed Michael a large, folio-sized sheet of paper. On it was a report in a small, expert hand detailing levels of dissent inside Arles, especially about the seizure of food.
“Christ, we spy on the new queen?” he asked.
“Michael,” Blanche said, the way a mother might speak to an erring son.
Michael grimaced. “Silly me, of course we do. Blood of God, you mean people are angered when we’re feeding those starving wretches out there?” he asked.
Blanche nodded. “There is a good deal of anger in Arles,” she said. “Not least of which is about how many or how few of the wretches starving out there in the fields may actually be missing sons and husbands. A very prickly topic. Comnena is trying to process people as fast as he can, but it’s not quick.” Comnena was, in fact, examining anyone who claimed to be from Arles. Twice now they had found men with living worms. “And the city people treat them like traitors; some of them anyway.”
“Merciful saints,” muttered Michael, reading the report to the end. “I wondered why someone as important as Comnena was on this.”
Blanche nodded. “Two reasons,” she said softly. “One, because we cannot afford a new infiltration. The second, because at least one of our two cases seems to be a new worm, not an old worm.”
Michael paled. “They’re still out there,” he said.
Blanche shrugged. “We don’t even know where they come from,” she admitted. “Or how they get into people in the first place.” She shuddered. “I used to dread dying of leprosy; then I dreaded rape. Now all my fears have been replaced by this … infestation.” She looked away, took a breath. “Kronmir went south to investigate the Patriarch; now he’s dead.” She rolled her head, stretching her neck. “I need to do more sword swinging.” She smiled. “My point is that we’re not safe, Arles is not safe, and we need to remain vigilant right to the end.”
Michael nodded. “Right. So we send the Scholae to cover the convoy.”
“And anything else you can think of to feed the survivors, get them shelter, and get them processed so we can move them,” Blanche said. “We have almost six thousand northern Etruscans ready to go home. More by the end of the week. They need food and a safe road. If we’re quick, they can, maybe, help bring in their own harvests on their own farms.”
Michael was reading another report, also about dissent, this one from Harndon. “So?” he asked.
“What if Comnena marched them to the convoy, fed them from the beef herd there, and then took them over the mountains to Sauce? While we have a clear chain of logistics and outposts?” She leaned forward.
He shook his head. “I know you feel for them—” he began.
“It’s not Christian charity,” she snapped. “Or if it is, it’s also practical. By Thursday we could have ten thousand of them out of the fields; that’s ten thousand mouths we are not trying to feed at the end of a two-hundred-league supply line. That’s a lighter burden on the Arelat, both here in the city and out in the countryside. Because the food coming over the mountains isn’t for starving people, is it, Michael?”
“No,” he said. “It’s for armies.” He looked at the paper with the report on dissent in Arelat, and back at Blanche’s eyes. “Gabriel said nothing of this,” he said.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t think of it. I did.”
Michael looked out a small window. “I hate making decisions,” he admitted. “But yes. If we can get ten thousand mouths back over the mountains to Mitla and Berona, let’s do it. They’ll have to leave day after tomorrow, though. Sauce will come home in three days, unless there’s more action. The big convoy will pass her position … later today? I hope?”
Blanche was already writing orders.
Forty leagues from Arles—The Red Knight
It was twelve days until the gates would open, and Gabriel was suddenly awake, his brain busy. His first thought was that he was just forty leagues from Blanche, and he wondered what she might be doing, and with an awkward grunt, he threw his cloak over his squire and page, who were both sound asleep. He lay for a moment with his back hurting, and he flexed, first his silver hand, which caused him no pain at all, and then his flesh hand, which ached from old injuries and because he’d slept on it. His hips hurt, his shoulders hurt, and he lay thinking about people dying.
Sometime in the night he’d rolled off the pile of cut ferns provided for the emperor’s “comfort” and he got slowly to his feet and shook his head, shivering from the cold. He crept away, feeling three times as old as he really was.
But his rising woke Anne, and she leapt into action, fetching a copper pot, boiling water at a campfire, and making a tea from spruce tips as her mother had taught her. She added his usual dollop of honey and put the cup in his hand just as Francis Atcourt limped to the command fire with a black-and-white bird on his arm and a leather folder. Anne knew that this was an important time; she slipped away to see to Ataelus.
Gabriel took the tea, sipped it, and took the scroll from the small tube on the great bird’s left leg. The bird grabbed his thumb as if it was a perch and pierced his chamois gloves.
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Is this the famous E.34?” he asked.
“The very same,” Atcourt said with pleasure.
Gabriel patted her plumage and kissed the top of her head. “You probably saved us all, sweeting,” he said. E.34 had been the first messenger bird to survive the trip into Arles and out again, bringing them word that the citadel on the mountain was still holding. He held her on one hand while he opened the scroll with the other and he smiled. It was in Blanche’s own hand, the ink scarcely dry; she had been awake earlier than he.
Convoy 4 is in. Sauce is moving north; her cavalry may reach the San Colombo today. Clarissa has the harvest rolling in; we went to the fields ourselves yestereven and I’m tired. E.16 reports a terrible attack on Havre, with heavy losses in shipping; “sea monsters” blamed. I have sent Ser George south with a convoy of Etruscan refugees. All is well here. When will you come?
The word back was lined through and made him smile. So did the somewhat scattershot order of the information. On the other hand …
They had eight convoys out there; some entirely of cattle on the hoof. Four was the largest convoy of wagons and its arrival was another tiny victory. Gabriel did some mental arithmetic and realized that Sauce would have the main body back to Arles either eight or nine days before the gates opened—a day behind his own column. Clarissa was concentrating on the Arelat grain harvest; everyone needed that grain.
Ash’s surrogates had assaulted the major Gallish seaport, which meant that Ash was expending masses of effort on sea monsters.
As soon as he read Blanche’s words, Gabriel saw the implications of repatriating the thousands of northern Etruscan peasants and former soldiers who had been taken by the Necromancer. He all but winced that he hadn’t thought of sending them back to where they could feed themselves.
He kissed the message.
Then Jon Gang appeared with a stool and pushed it behind his legs until he sat; Monteverdi, his trumpeter, produced hot water. Gang brought another stool for Atcourt, who was over forty and happy to have it.
Before the sun had fully risen, Gabriel was shaved and had his rancid arming clothes back on over a clean shirt, and so did Atcourt and Tom Lachlan. The camp, such as it was, was being packed on a couple of horses. Toby was still coaching Anne, whether she needed it or not, and Gabriel was tempted to intervene, but instead he and Atcourt put on their gloves and traded blows; sharp arming swords against bucklers until their breath steamed in the mountain air. Tom Lachlan took a tour of the flying column’s horse lines and then rode up and dismounted, already in full harness; but he picked up a buckler and took a turn.
Father François appeared in his nut-brown habit and bare feet, and said mass for the command staff while Gabriel dispatched three birds and a pair of human messengers, one eye on the celebration of the eucharist, the other on his messenger birds. Du Corse was one ridge to the north with a thousand Gallish knights; Pavalo Payam was two ridges to the south with almost two thousand Royal Mamluks and their servants, all mounted. In the last hours, as reports rolled in, their various armies’ roles had transformed from a race to Arles to save the gate, the former mission, to a slow ride across the southern Gallish plains, making use of available forage, fattening his horses for the next fights and resting his men and women. Arles was his depot, and any time he spent there would deplete his reserves.
“We have a week in hand,” he said to Tom Lachlan after they had swaggered swords and swashed bucklers.
“Lads and lasses need to take a breath,” Tom said. “Where’s Sukey?”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “At Arles as of last night,” he said.
Tom nodded. “Hoot, hoot,” he said. “That’s a treat.” He paused, as if embarrassed; a rare moment for Tom. “Let’s say we win,” he said after a pause.
Gabriel smiled. “Sure,” he said.
Behind him, Anne Woodstock and Monteverdi exchanged looks.
Tom looked at his emperor. “I want somewhat,” he said finally.
“What kind of somewhat?” Gabriel asked.
“Earl of Eastwall,” Tom Lachlan said. “Or northern Thrake. I’ll take either.”
“You’re the Drover!” Gabriel said.
Tom laughed. “That was Hector’s world, not mine. He was a pretty, pretty man, and a maun fighter, but his whole world ran from the Inn to the Hills.” Tom looked out over the distant plains of Galle. “I want to wed Sukey,” he said.
“Tom Lachlan!” Gabriel said. He reined in his horse in surprise.
“Ach, aye. Don’t make it worset for me.” Tom grinned.
Gabriel grinned back and realized that somehow, at twenty-three, he’d become one of those middle-aged men who liked to hear that other men were getting married.
“But ye ken, Gabriel—I’m not king o’ any man, nor duke nor earl nor baron. Drover is just a job.” Tom was actually flushed.
“So’s emperor,” Gabriel said. “It’s like being drover. Ask Blanche. Mostly it’s about moving cattle.”
“Aye,” Tom laughed. “I kenned that when Kronmir made me tell him everything about movin’ coos. I was maun feared you’d send me to drove ’em.”
“I considered it,” Gabriel admitted.
“I like leadin’ men. I like fightin’ but I could, perhaps, be brought to admit I’m a little weary o’ the whole thing.” Tom made a face. “Never thought I’d admit to yon,” he said. “None o’ this is worth a kettle o’ beans. Here’s my point.”
Gabriel raised his hand. “I hear you,” he said. “Give me a few days. I think you’d make an excellent Earl of Eastwall, but I’m not at all sure we’re going to have a wall when we’re done. And I’m not sure Outwallers need feudal lords. I’m not sure anyone needs a feudal lord.”
“An’ that’s a load o’ bull-whallop, Gabriel. Don’t go prat’n to me about the rights o’ man. You know as well as I that ye’re a bloody-handed tyrant in drivin’ this war; nor could she be done any other way. Aye?” Tom shook his head. “Most loons can nae more govern themselves nor they could swim in fire.”
Gabriel set his jaw.
Tom laughed. “Ye’r plannin’ to turn Jack?” he asked.
Gabriel had to smile. “I want to leave our world with a system to hold the next few times without all this …”
Tom laughed. “Well, for me, I would na’ ha’e it any other way. A red sword and a bright sunset, that’s me,” he quipped, quoting a popular epic poem. He shrugged. “Ye’ll gi’ me somewhat ta make Sukey a great lady?”
Gabriel wondered if this wasn’t Tom putting his own dreams on Sukey’s head, but he smiled. “Tom, I’ll make you Grand Duke of the Moon if that’s what you want.”
Lachlan laughed. “Now that’s my cap’n,” he said.
Gabriel smiled at Tom. “Sukey is already a great lady,” he said. “The title won’t change her.” He raised an eyebrow. “But mayhap it should be a title for each of you? And not just a reward for you.”
Tom’s beliefs didn’t always run to equality of any kind. “Hoot, hoot,” he said thoughtfully. “Aye, mayhap. In point o’ fact, I can all but hear her shoutin’ at me now.”