“No more!” Recha begged. “Please, just let me eat in peace!”
She bent over the table and planted her face against the tabletop, pressing her check against the rough parchment in front of her. She pursed her lips and puffed strands of hair that fell across her eyes, blocking her view of her plate sitting off to the side.
The sight of the golden, roasted flank and leg of a pavaloro, or brush-turkey as some called them, made her mouth water. The steaming cherry peppers and small, boiled field potatoes on the side added a spicy aroma to the broiled meat. Some swore the pavaloro tasted like chicken, if cooked right and wasn’t fully grown yet.
Recha always thought they tasted a little gamey, yet she would much rather be eating it now than looking at it.
“You have to,” Cornelos insisted dryly without a hint of sympathy. “You haven’t looked at a single correspondence for three days. If they get any more piled up, rumors might start spreading that the campaign has taken a turn for the worse, or”—he reached under her and gently pulled the parchment she was laying on out from under her, tugging some of her hair in the process—“officials back in Zoragrin might start making decisions for themselves without bothering to send dispatches.”
Recha winced at the stings in her scalp. She rolled her face over to squint up at him sitting beside her.
He continued to sort through the stack of rolled and folded envelopes and parchments in front of him, opening the envelopes with his knife one minute and plucking a small potato from his plate to eat the next.
You can see me. Recha stared at him harder, knowing she was in his field of vision.
Cornelos continued with his mundane tasks, in stubborn defiance of meeting her gaze.
A twinge began growing in the small of her back, and the table’s edge dug into her chest. Recha focused the irritation into a soft growl and squinted her glare as tightly as she could up at her secretary.
Still, Cornelos ignored her.
The table’s edge against her chest began to rub, and she finally blinked. She puffed more of her hair out of her face then sat up, stretching her shoulders back to pull the twinge out of her back.
“You’re going to make some lucky woman a great wife one day, Cornelos,” she quipped, reaching for her ink bottle and quill.
Cornelos grunted and suddenly jerked his hand back, tearing the envelope he was opening too forcefully with a loud rip.
Recha pressed her lips tightly together, unable to stop from smiling but stifling a giggle, finally getting a reaction from him. With him distracted from sliding another dispatch in front of her to sign, she reached across to her plate and daintily plucked a cherry pepper.
She nipped at the mild pepper, holding it to her lips, then looked at him. Cornelos was giving her a flat stare, yet his redden cheeks deliciously added to his embarrassment. Recha gave him a small smile and shrugged before returning to devouring her pepper.
“Aren’t they cute?” Ramon Narvae chuckled from across the tent, breaking the mood.
Recha snapped around, sitting straight-backed in her chair. Cornelos’s face darkened from red to a shade of violet, nearly matching his uniform.
Narvae snickered, a crooked smile on his lips and a twinkle in his eye as he rested his elbows on the table, fiddling a steel thimble dangling from his fingers. His own plate sat beside him, his meal half picked over, and his own stack of dispatches in front of him.
Recha set her jaw, and her smile slipped. The thin skin of the pepper split between her fingernails, and her tightening grip squeezed out its juices, making the skin between her nails tingle.
“No throwing food, please,” Baltazar gruffly said, chewing on a pulled strip of pavaloro meat while simultaneously signing an order.
They mirror imaged each other too perfectly. Recha and Cornelos on one side of the square table, fit for six people, and Baltazar and Narvae on the other.
After all the excitement with the battle and final surrender of Don Givanzo’s army, Recha had suddenly become famished and hoped to eat with Baltazar before the armies resumed their march.
Unfortunately for her, while Baltazar had accepted the idea, he, Cornelos, and Narvae seemed to have silently agreed and conspired to turn her relaxing noon meal into a working luncheon. Baltazar hadn’t even asked for the dispatches. Narvae had simply produced them, along with a tall bottle of brandy—looted from the enemy camp, when she did not know—as if by magic. Not to be outdone by his uncle, Cornelos had rushed to get the dispatches he’d been hoarding, and thus her long, wonderful, pleasant meal plans had been shattered.
“We’re not children anymore, Papa,” Recha said, tossing the nibbled pepper back on her plate then cleaned her fingers on a napkin in her lap, although the faint idea of throwing it at Narvae lingered. “We’ve grown out of food wars.”
Growing up in a house full of training calleroses, save for one other girl, there had been times where jabs traded over dinner had turned into chaotic food battles. They would break out when Mama Vigodt had left to see the kitchen was cleaned, of course.
Returning to her tasks as marquesa, she pulled over one of her dispatches, a request from Baroness Itzel asking permission to levee a tax to fix a dam.
Now’s not a good time to raise new taxes, she contemplated, holding her quill over the parchment. I already raised taxes to fund this campaign. That, plus the down payment for the weapons, Lazorna’s treasury is on the brink as it is.
She put quill to paper and held it there. But if that dam isn’t fixed and it effects the harvest, the people in that region will face taxes and food shortages.
Her fingers trembled, pressing a blot onto the parchment as scales of maybes, short, and far off effects, swung back and forth in her mind like a pendulum. She bit the inside of her cheek, and with the last bit of ink remaining on the tip of her quill wrote, “Granted.” Then she signed her name.
I’ll revoke it once the dam is fixed, she told herself, stuffing the reminder in the back of her mind with a thousand others as she set the signed dispatch in a small pile in the center of the table.
She frowned at Baltazar’s pile, twice as big and symmetrically stacked, despite the dispatches being different sizes from slips of paper to torn sheets. Baltazar himself sipped his watered wine then bit a potato in half to chew while signing or denying two more dispatches without looking away from the messages.
Recha shook her head. How does he do that?
Cornelos slid another message in front her, another request, and she groaned down at it. It was two pages long and, at a quick glance, appeared to have an itemized list.
“Huarita has been secured,” Narvae said, setting his thimble on the table as he held out a slip of a paper to Baltazar. “Two companies of horse from the Second Army. Should we rotate them out with companies of sword or pike from the Third?”
“No,” Baltazar replied, shaking his head. “Send an order to General Priet that those companies are to hold Huarita and scout the road north. We need to keep our lines of communications open, but if Borbin does abandon the siege to suddenly march south at full force, I want whoever’s stationed there to be able to move quickly. Better for us to be free to move than hold positions at our strength.”
“Right,” Narvae agreed. He tossed the message away then got another piece of paper out of his disorganized mess to start writing down Baltazar’s orders.
Recha craned her head up, longingly wanting to get a better look at those kinds of dispatches.
Ah, she inwardly groaned, that’s so much more interesting.
Cornelos nudged her elbow and whispered, “Recha.”
“Hmm?” she hummed.
“You’re pouting,” he replied.
Her eyebrows shot up at him. “I am not.”
“What was that?” Baltazar asked, his normal voice echoing in the tent after Recha and Cornelos kept their whispers low.
Old instincts kicked in, and they both went stiff and still, as if being caught saying things they shouldn’t have, like when they were children.
“Nothing!” Recha replied, shaking her head, making Baltazar raise a confused eyebrow. “Just . . .” she frowned down at list of complaints, having still not read them, “everybody’s complaints and requests seem to follow me everywhere.”
“Duties of the marc,” Baltazar chuckled. “That’s why I strive to rise no higher than marshal. Giving marching orders is much more enjoyable.” He pulled off a strip of pinkish-white flesh from his pavaloro breast then returned to his dispatches.
“Yeah,” Narvae grunted sarcastically. He picked up his thimble of brandy and tossed it back in one gulp, growling deeply afterward. “Much more fun.”
Recha’s ear twitched from a stifled hiccup coming from beside her. She glanced to find Cornelos battling between swallowing the remains of his pavaloro and laughing, his lips contorted in a tightly pressed, amused smile. Swallowing finally won the day, and then he coughed and gasped for air, dropping the pavaloro leg bone to reach of this cup of watered wine.
“Don’t choke yourself,” she said. She waited for him to take a drink then catch his breath before smiling slyly. “You’re not going to interrupt my lunch just to leave me with all of this.” She waved her hand at their stack of messages.
“Apologies.” Cornelos coughed again, nodding his head. “Yes, La Dama.” He took another drink then picked up a message he’d been starting to read before he’d choked himself. His eyes were halfway down the page when his head jerked, and he put the message aside.
“What’s that?” Recha asked.
“Nothing,” Cornelos replied halfheartedly, busying himself by shuffling the messages he had yet to open but not looking too closely at them.
Recha gave him a flat stare. “Cornelos.”
He sighed. “It’s Baron Escon hundredth request to join the army and be commissioned to the marshal staff or a general staff.” Cornelos shook his head in annoyance. “He’s begging for anything now.”
Recha frowned. Baron Escon was likely one of many requesting to join the campaign.
Probably thinks we’ve gone back to following the Rules and wants a share of any spoils. Another thought struck her. Or get away from his wife.
It was no secret that the barons who chose to go on campaign congregated together through most of the marches, spending little to no time tending to their men and instead leaving that to the lower capitáns and officers.
Minds focused on spoils and seeing war as a game. She sniffed disdainfully.
“That’s the field marshal’s decision whether to take on more staff officers,” he said, her interest gone.
“No baron is going to request a field marshal for a posting,” Baltazar mumbled lowly yet loud enough to hear, without looking up.
“As if we need them,” Narvae added boldly.
Recha sensed a lull in the tide of papers Cornelos had been sliding her way as everyone shared their mutual sentiments of the limited role the barons had in the army. She seized it by snatching the pavaloro leg from her plate and began to eat. She bounced her eyes from one man to another, looking to make sure their heads were down and their attentions distracted by their work as she ripped the flesh from the bone.
They probably wouldn’t care, she chided herself, fearing the men would be somehow upset at her taking proper bites instead of small, ladylike ones. Mama Vigodt’s teachings still lingered, however. She had taken her role of guardian to make sure Recha grew up as a lady seriously, which made the worry linger.
So, she ate faster, stripping the leg to the bone within minutes, barely getting a taste of the meat, which was going lukewarm. Her throat clung on one swallow, and she gulped it down just in time to prevent choking herself.
A sharp knock on a support post by the tent flap made her start and toss the bone back on the plate.
“La Dama!” a guard outside called. “Field Marshal! General Galvez is requesting to enter. He claims it is urgent.”
“Send him in!” Recha called back, wiping her lips with her napkin.
Baltazar had his head half-raised and mouth open to speak, but she had replied first. He shrugged and ate a potato as Hiraldo slipped through the tent flap, carrying a midsized, iron chest with both hands.
“Hiraldo!” Recha said happily. “You caught us having lunch. Care to join? I’m sure . . .”
Hiraldo wore a tense, hard frown. His eyes scanned their medium-sized tent, large enough for the table and servants, but they had sent the servants away once they had set the food down. He glanced behind him over his shoulder, waiting for the tent flap to close back.
“Is something wrong, General?” Baltazar asked, sitting up and keeping his voice low.
“Nothing . . . wrong,” Hiraldo replied nervously. “But we might have a situation. May I?” He looked at Cornelos and gestured with his head at the table.
Cornelos sprang up to clear a spot on the table. Narvae helped a little, mostly moving his pile of papers and clutching his bottle of brandy before sitting back in his chair.
Hiraldo walked up to the table then gently placed the chest on the cleared spot, minimizing any thud. However, Recha tilted her head at a soft, clinking sound from within.
“We were going through the captured baggage train,” Hiraldo began, “when one squad came running to report this.” He flipped open the latch then opened the chest lid.
Recha’s eyes went wide, and she slowly rose to her feet.
Faintly glowing back at her were gold coins, golden deberes, in disheveled sacks, packed too tightly to dissolve into a jumble.
“How—” Her throat was suddenly dry. She seized her coffee cup then took a quick swallow, the lukewarm roast making her wince and her nose wrinkle, but at least it brought moisture back to her mouth. “How many is that?” she asked with a cough.
“By a rough count”—Hiraldo paused, glancing down at the chest—“probably five hundred.”
“Congratulations, General,” Narvae said, snickering while he poured brandy in his thimble then raised it to him. “You captured the Don’s secret horde. To your spoils!” He tossed the thimble back in one gulp, oblivious to Recha and Baltazar frowning disapprovingly.
“Forgive me, Marshal,” Hiraldo said respectfully but also frowned, unamused and tensely nervous, “but I’m afraid this situation is much more serious.
“Recha . . .” The corners of his eyes and cheeks twitched. He leaned over the chest toward her and lowered his voice. “There are over twenty wagons full of these chests.”
The world went deathly quiet.
They were in the middle of an army camp of three converged armies. A gentle breeze had rumpled the canvas of their tent countless times while they had eaten, yet now it had conspicuously died down.
Recha’s body went stiff, draining the feeling out of her as her mind spun mythical numbers until they devolved into ridiculous figures. She grew to the point she couldn’t feel the coffee cup she held with the tips of her fingers.
“Ah!” Narvae snapped, breaking the silence, and everyone out the mental trap of adding up impossible numbers.
The marshal sat up with his thimble and brandy bottle both held out away from him as he grimaced down into his lap. His right hand dripped with red brandy, staining his uniform sleeve. He had apparently been refiling his thimble when Hiraldo had revealed the truth of their capture, got lost in the same quandary as the rest of them, and overflowed the small container before realizing.
Recha quickly noticed everyone at the table were holding their cups and joined Baltazar and Cornelos, casually putting her cup back on the table as Narvae wiped his hands and lap with a napkin, cursing under his breath.
“Hiraldo,” Baltazar said, his voice hard and low, all propriety of rank abandoned, “how many know about this and who is guarding those wagons?”
“Me, my staff, and the squad who opened this chest first,” Hiraldo replied. “All are under orders not to talk to anyone about this. Because their capitán sent for me and they didn’t help themselves, I posted the squad who found them on guard of the wagons. They’re too heavy to move, but—”
“They don’t need to move the wagons,” Narvae said, shaking his head. “One wrong word and the whole camp will storm them!”
“Keep your voice down!” Recha hissed.
“We should hitch those wagons and send them to Zoragrin as soon as possible,” Cornelos said. “Every minute they sit there is a risk to our armies’ discipline and a loss to the marc.”
“There are over twenty of them,” Narvae snapped. “You know how much manpower they’re going to need to haul and protect? Who are we going to assign to such a detail? I can’t think of anyone trustworthy enough to handle it.” He drew himself up and gingerly turned to Baltazar. “No offense, Baltazar.”
Baltazar grunted back.
Recha pursed her lips. No trust or worry of offending me, I guess.
She took a deep breath, calming her nerves before she attempted to calm the situation. “Before we can decide what to do with it,” she said, straightening her divided skirts before sitting back down, “we need to know just how much we have. Any ideas of how many of those chests fill up one wagon?”
“Chests are pretty heavy,” Hiraldo replied, studying the chest and working his jaw as he figured in his head. “Couldn’t do too much digging out in the open, but I suspect there are around twenty or so to a wagon. Anymore, and they’d make too heavy a load.”
“A rough estimate—twenty chests to twenty wagons you’ve found so far,” Narvae said, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded and head drooping. “Add around five hundred deberes per chest, that’s . . . that’s—”
“Two hundred thousand,” Cornelos finished. “Minimum.”
Narvae let out a whistle and turned to Baltazar. “Did we just seize the Orsembian treasury?”
Baltazar snorted. “Too poor to be the entire treasury of a marc.” He flashed a look at Recha. “Hopefully.”
Recha shared a look with Cornelos. Lazorna’s finances were a recuring nightmare that she could never get straightened out. Even with the three years not dedicated to campaigning, the marc’s treasury was still a mess. Returning to campaign and funding her armies had placed Lazorna on the verge of bankruptcy, and the bill to pay the merchants for the armies’ weapons alone could be just the thing to tip it over the edge.
So long as they don’t call in their notes all at once. She stared at gold. Perhaps defeating this army was Savior sent. Her shoulders slumped. Still have no idea what to do with it, though.
“Still doesn’t explain why Borbin’s son was hauling it around,” Narvae said.
Studying the deberes, something struck Recha as peculiar.
“Those are Saran coins,” she said. Each marc minted their own coinage, each one tried to have some pattern, design, or shape to make them distinct. The deberes in the chest were shaped into octagons, the mold Marqués Narios preferred.
Where’d they get so many Saran—
Recha burst out laughing, reverberating straight from her gut as she leaned over the table, scaring everyone else in the tent.
“That . . .. That’s . . .” she tried to speak but breathing and laughing were both making it difficult. She took a big gulp of air to push the giggles down. “Givanzo got this from marrying Narios’s daughter. We just captured the wedding dowry!”
Rumor had it that Borbin had nearly drained Saran dry forcing the marriage. Now it was staring her in the face that that rumor was probably true.
Narvae joined in on the laughter, followed by Hiraldo. Cornelos snickered, but Baltazar just shook his head, refusing to break the seriousness of their discussion.
“I still advise we send it to Zoragrin,” Cornelos urged. “That’s where it’ll be safest, and we can put it to use.”
“And which army should we send back with them as escort?” Narvae asked condescendingly.
The two locked glares at each other over the table.
“If I might ask,” Hiraldo interjected, breaking the staring contest, “could the First Army requisition some of the gold as spoils? It was a company of sword from the First that originally secured the baggage train.”
“Not for long,” Narvae said. “They were forced out at the last moment. Besides, if you make an official requisition, then all the armies are going to know what’s in those wagons.”
Recha sighed, her humorous jollies over realizing where Givanzo could have gotten so much wealth squandered by the returning debate. She had to fight the urge to rub her temples.
Terrific. We were worried about the armies fighting over this, but now we are starting to. I should just order it all . . . She groaned, rethinking the thought before it fully formed. But will just sending to Zoragrin really help much?
“We could use this money to supplement the armies’ supplies and payroll,” Baltazar suggested. “The deberes are already loaded and separated. Divided among the armies splits up the load, puts them under guard, and into each’s coffers without any requisitions. It will also eliminate the need to keep the communication lines open to pay the armies and keep them paid if they are cut.”
Ever the general, thinking of the armies first. Recha leaned back in her chair and began pulling her hair, wrapping it tighter and tighter over her left shoulder. But two hundred thousand deberes. I can’t just let that much gold go to one—
“With respect, Field Marshal,” Cornelos said, “we can’t just spend all of this in one place. The marc has many obligations right now. Some are being told to wait until the end of this campaign to be addressed, but this prize could do a lot of good. Least of all paying for several obligations the marc has taken on to fund this campaign.”
“If you’re thinking of paying off the merchants early, don’t,” Hiraldo said. “General Ros reported their ship was weighing anchor as they unloaded the last crate to us.”
“We can still have funds ready to pay them when they call to collect their note,” Cornelos retorted.
He turned enthusiastically to Recha. “We need their continued business. Especially for the future.”
“We need to pay the armies for today,” Narvae growled. “Or there’s not going to be any future business.”
“And paid soldiers stand better than those who haven’t,” Baltazar added. “Especially behind enemy lines.” His hard-set jaw told Recha he had already made up his mind. “General Galvez, divide the wagons—”
“In half!” Recha said firmly.
The men snapped around toward her. However, Recha focused on only one.
Baltazar’s jaw remained hard-set as he laced his fingers together in front of him on the table.
“Recha,” he said, his tone commanding yet respectful, “these wagons were part of the enemy’s baggage train, taken by the army, after battle. As with the other spoils of war gathered from this camp, this is an army matter, and I must ask you to respect my judgment in this.”
Recha’s fingers sliced through the strands of her hair. She held his eyes, unblinking. “Papa,” she said, leaning toward him against the table, “I’m not overstepping our agreement. I agree that most spoils an army takes should go to supplementing that army. But this is too much money to ignore.
“Half of it can be divided among the three armies in Orsembar to supplement their payrolls. The other half should be sent back to Zoragrin—ten percent to supplement the Fourth Army, a quarter held in trust as a payment to the merchants, and the rest for the marc’s treasury. The armies will be served for the present and the marc’s needs, as well.
“Besides”—she shrugged, relaxing her shoulders and offering a soft smile—“weren’t you the one who said the armies need to move fast? Getting paid is one thing, but I think that’s too much gold for us to carry and still be able to move like we need to.”
Baltazar concealed half his face behind his laced fingers, elbows propped on the table. The bushy tips of his mustache twitched randomly as his eyes went in and out of focus, possibly thinking over his stance and Recha’s. At least, that’s what she hoped.
Finally, he gave a sharp nod. “Very well,” he said. “Carry on, General.”
“Yes, sir,” Hiraldo replied. “La Dama.”
Recha began leaning back to enjoy her moment of persuasive triumph when she caught the glint of the gold coins again out of the corner of her eye as Hiraldo started to close the chest. A sudden urge gripped her.
“Wait!” she blurted out, startling everyone again. She sprang stiffly to her feet, hands folded in front of her, then walked around Cornelos to beside Hiraldo. “May I?”
Hiraldo confusedly frowned at her but stepped aside. The chest’s lid creaked on its hinges, its weight dragging it down as Hiraldo let go.
Recha leaped to seize it and pull it open again. She stared down at the coins and grinned.
“Recha . . .” Baltazar said worriedly, “what are you—”
Recha dove her hands into the coins. The stacks in the middle of the chest crumbled in her grasp as she curled her fingers around the palm-sized, minted metal. She grabbed as many deberes as she could then pulled them out. She squeezed them in her grip, tighter and tighter until the cold gold slipped between her fingers and rained back into the chest with musical jingle.
She giggled, listening to it and the shivers that the feel of gold falling from her hands sent up her arms. Her hands balled into fists after the last deber fell, and she shook them excitedly.
“I’ve always wanted to do that!” she said with a laugh.
Cornelos sighed, hanging his head. Baltazar tried to hide a bemused smile under his mustache. Narvae smirked approvingly, full thimble halfway to his lips. Hiraldo simply waited patiently aside.
Recha bit her lower lip, wringing her fingers together from the urge to run them through the gold again. Instead, she slammed the chest lid shut, breathing a big sigh of relief in curing the temptation.
“You have your orders, General,” she said.
She pressed against the side of the chest to push it across the table toward Hiraldo, but it didn’t budge. She frowned, wrinkling her nose at not being able to move it, and sharply sniffed to move out of the way. She caught Cornelos trying to hide a small smile, angling his head just so she could barely see around the top of his head.
As punishment, she snatched a pepper off his plate then bit the tip off it.
Cornelos threw his head up and gaped at her.
“What?” she asked, shrugging. “You weren’t eating it.”
Hiraldo stepped in to retrieve the hefty chest. He made a step toward the tent flap, paused, then turned back. “One more thing. We’re starting to go through the prisoners and are finding some are conscripted men. Me and the other generals were curious on our policy regarding them. Are all prisoners to be marched back to work on Puerlato’s siege fortifications, or can we see if there are any of the conscripted men worthy enough to recruit?”
Recha stared. “Recruit—”
A bit of pepper stuck in her teeth, forcing her to pause and run her tongue along her teeth to get it out. “Recruit Orsembians?” she growled.
“We will suffer more casualties during this campaign,” Hiraldo explained. “As much as the armies need to be paid, the problem of reinforcing and replacing losses might be even greater. If we can supplement our forces with Orsembians who were conscripted, or veterans campaigning for pay, that could solve that problem.”
“Might be risky, though,” Narvae said to Baltazar. “Orsembians in our ranks while we march through their homes.”
Baltazar was stroking his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s not like they haven’t marched through them before,” he said thoughtfully.
Recha’s eyebrows leapt up. “You’re not actually considering—”
A sharp knock came from the tent pole outside.
“Pardon, La Dama,” a guard outside said. “A Capitán Viezo is requesting to speak with you.”
“Now what, Sevesco?” she cursed under her breath, taking a frustrated bite out of the remaining pepper. She spun on her heels toward the tent flap then stopped.
“Hide that,” she whispered to Hiraldo, pointing at the chest, then stomped out of the tent.
She threw the tent flap back and pursed her lips at the head of her espis standing off to the side, out of uniform and dressed like a laborer in dusty trousers and jacket over his long-sleeved shirt. He was watching Hiraldo’s staff standing away from him, none meeting his eye, with a practiced smile and his hands behind his back.
Great! Recha ate the remaining bite of her pepper then tossed the stem away. He knows they’re hiding something.
“Sevesco,” she said warningly, snatching his attention. She approached him, keeping her voice low. “You’re out of uniform.”
“People are more willing to talk if they think you’re a common labor instead of an officer,” he replied cheerfully.
“Oh?” Recha raised an eyebrow. “And whom have you been talking to?”
Please don’t say wagon drivers carrying loads of gold, she prayed. Please don’t say wagon drivers carrying loads of gold.
“I’ve been doing some snooping around the prisoners and camp followers you just caught,” Sevesco explained, keeping his voice just as low, “looking for tidbits of information that might not be in any reports we collected last night—camp rumors and such. Turns out you caught some Sarans in the mix, but that’s not important. I ran across one particular story about last night that caught my attention, though. It was about how we lost the baggage train that you narrowly threatened to massacre to get back.”
“I was not going to—”
Recha bit her lip. Being called ruthless by Baltazar was one thing, but by Sevesco, too?
“Did you find out something important or not? If not, or if you just heard a funny story, Cornelos has more paperwork for me.”
Sevesco shrugged. “Would someone the Orsembians are calling a Hero be important?”
~~~
Recha’s jaw burned from clenching her teeth together to preserve her calm demeanor. Every now and then, she would roll her shoulders back in a constant battle against the urge to warily hunker among her guards as they escorted her deep into the camp’s infirmary.
Cries of hungry or scared children reverberated in steady pulses, interrupted by the sudden wails of men. A vile stench hung in the air—a mixture of bile, vomit, blood, and manure. The rising wind cast the camp into a muted gray by sweeping rolling clouds overhead, completing the macabre scene.
I guess it was a good thing I didn’t eat all my lunch. Recha kept her hands folded in front of her, pressed into her belly.
Most of the tents or people sitting out beside tents weren’t injured. Most were the women and children they had captured along with the enemy’s baggage train, being sorted, their backgrounds checked, and looked after for injuries.
Companies of her own soldiers were tending to them, guarding them while staff officers sorted them. Red, bloodshot eyes and hateful glares followed her as she walked behind Sevesco through the infirmary.
I did this to them. She squeezed her fingers tighter together until her fingernails dug into her knuckles. I took your loved ones away.
It hadn’t escaped her that soldiers on campaign often formed relationships and even married camp followers. It was an old lesson Baltazar had warned her Companions against when growing up, although he hadn’t known she was eavesdropping when he had.
“They may say camp women make good wives, but not for calleroses or you four,” he’d said. “You four are going to be proper officers and gentlemen. Paragons of what it means to be calleros. Not embarrassments.”
“How much farther?” she asked.
“Just up here,” Sevesco assured her from over his shoulder. He causally walked down the lane between the hastily erected, open tents, taking long, determined strides. The path was clear from word spreading that Recha was making a surprise visit. Sevesco walked several paces in front of them, hands in his pocket, shoulders hunched, trying look inconspicuous.
If he dragged me out here for nothing—
A deep, howling yell jerked her from her thoughts.
Sevesco turned off to a completely erected tent. The lane abruptly cut off, and several paces away sat a group of disheveled men, sitting on the ground under guard. Many of them gave her startled looks, while others grimly listened and looked at the tent.
Orsembian soldiers. She tilted her head, her curiosity growing. Her guard, however, formed a line between them and her, sharing nods to the soldiers guarding the prisoners.
“He’s in here,” Sevesco said, grabbing the tent flap then disappearing inside.
Recha and one member of her guard followed and halted at the entrance, staring at the scene before them.
“Hold him down, for Savior’s sake!” a man demanded the instant she entered.
Four men wrangled with an enormous man filling up two short, wooden tables. They struggled to tie ropes around the giant as he kicked and jerked underneath them. Another man—a doctor Recha assumed—dressed in undershirt, suspenders, and trousers, held the big man’s head. A roll of bandages hung off the man’s face, covering half of it.
“There is nothing we can do,” another man, standing off to the side with his arms folded, said. “He’s just going to bleed out with those wounds.”
“No!” Harquis yelled, charging across the tent and glaring at the man. “You must save him!”
The hair on the back Recha’s neck stood up. Harquis!
As if hearing her thoughts, the cultist rounded on her, his white eyes locked on her.
She jerked back at his contorted features, the veins sticking out of his neck and pulsing on his sweaty forehead. His cheeks and knuckles went white, clutching the shafts of her guards’ halberds. The pink eye on his jacket was the only color that stood out about him.
Recha stared, mouth slightly ajar, unsure of what to do. “What is going on here?” she demanded.
“Eulalia!” the injured man roared, arching his back and sticking his chest up into the air. He held the pose for a few moments until finally giving way under the weight of the men on top of him.
The yell ripped through the tent, leaving her standing speechless. She had heard many cries on her way here, many outbursts of pain and loss. There was something in the timbre in that cry, a longing lost that cut into her chest and rang in harmony with something deep within her.
Harquis snapped around as everyone else gawked at her. “Marquesa!” he said, pointing at the man on the tables. “This man must be saved! I beseech you, order these men to do so.”
Recha passed perplexed looks between the equally confused doctors. She passed a glance around the rest of the startled faces of the men holding the bigger man down until fixing on Sevesco, conspicuously in a corner of the tent.
“What is he doing here?” she asked him.
“He is Scorched, La Dama,” Harquis said before Sevesco had a chance. “He must live!”
“He found us,” Sevesco whispered, shrugging. “But the man on the table—or actually, tables—is the man the Orsembians are calling a hero.”
Recha looked back at the injured man. The doctors’ helpers finally got the man’s legs tied down. He was missing his left boot and bleeding from kicking his feet, loosening the bandage. His clothes were cut and slashed with shallow bloodstains up his body, as if he had jumped into a whirlwind of razor blades.
“He’s too far gone,” the doctor off to the side said. “Begging your pardon, La Dama, but with all those wounds, especially his face”—he grimaced at the man—“he’s going to bleed out in the hour.”
“We can stop the bleeding!” the doctor holding the man’s head said. “Once we’ve stopped it and sewed him up, we can treat his face. Most of them are old scars.”
Recha slowly approached the table, listening to the doctors and taking in the man now that the helpers were securing the ropes and getting off him.
Have I . . . seen him before?
Her brow furled as she thought back. A man of his size should have stuck out, but she couldn’t place him.
“It would be better if it was done quickly,” the other doctor suggested. “He’s a soldier; he’d understand.”
The doctor holding the man’s head leaped between him and the injured man. “What kind of doctor are you?” he spat, growling up at them. His spectacles hung from his nose. “He only has multiple lacerations, not a gut wound. By the Savior, are mercy killings in place of care what passes for doctoring among Lazornians?”
Recha snapped her head up. “You’re an Orsembian?”
Her guard at the tent entrance shuffled his feet and took one step in before she raised a hand to him.
The doctor with the spectacles dropped his head and kept it low as he turned about. “Doctor Maranon, at your service, La Dama,” he said. “Formally of Don Givanzo’s brigade, which is now . . . I am only here now to look after my patients.”
“We allowed him to stay out of professional curtesy, La Dama,” the last doctor said. “He knew the condition of the prisoners, but I’m afraid there’s no calming this one down! He’s having a bad reaction to the laudanum. Whatever delusion he’s in, there’s no getting him out.”
Recha’s attention was drawn to the loose bandages wrapped and hanging off the injured man’s face. Blood stained them from ear to ear. A gurgling wheeze escaped his mouth, interrupted sporadically with a mild cough that blew the bandage from his mouth. The cloth clung to his cheeks as if they were hollow.
Her eyebrows shot up. He’s the man that moved the wagon!
The memory flooded her of the lone Orsembian who had pushed back a wagon from the circle while others had argued. Cornelos had pointed at the gap, expecting orders, but she had waved him down to wait. They had been too far away to hear what the man had said after moving the wagon, but whatever it’d been had made them start walking out, avoiding a bloodbath.
The sight of the blood dripping on the table under him, though, made her frown.
“He doesn’t look good,” she said, shaking her head. She looked at Harquis, meeting his glossy stare, then to Sevesco, and finally to the doctors. “If he’s not going to make it, I won’t allow any more suf—”
The injured man’s great hand seized hers. His rough calluses gently held her in a tight embrace.
Recha froze, staring down at the man. Everyone else froze, as well.
The injured man was tied and no longer struggling. He stared back at her. A dark pair of eyes focused and unfocused, as if seeing yet not seeing her with pooling tears dripping from their corners.
“It’s . . . all right . . . Eulalia,” the injured man finally said, his breathing slowing, calming. He ran his big thumb across the back of her hand. “I’ll take care . . . of everything. We’ll . . . go home . . . soon.”
Recha flickered a glance down at her hand, to his caressing thumb. Is he . . . trying to comfort me?
“It’s all right,” she agreed, forcing her voice to be as calm as possible. “Everything is well.”
The man let out a deep breath and nodded, drawing a collective sigh of relief from everyone else. His head’s motion loosened the bandages hanging from his face. Like falling leaves, they peeled off his cheeks and drifted onto the floor.
Recha’s stomach rolled. A soft gasp barely escaped her tightening throat, cutting her breath and leaving her mouth gaping. She stared at the most horrendous sight she had ever seen, and she couldn’t look away.
The man’s cheeks weren’t hollow; they’d been carved out. Red-soaked bundles of cloth were pressed into holes where the sides of his mouth should have been. Slashes and zigzagging scars were etched around them. His mouth muscles were visible underneath the remaining skin, and pieces of his lips were missing, exposing his teeth.
What happened to his face? The thought screamed inside her head. Her body started to shake. He was an enemy soldier. Anything could have happened last night under the cover of darkness. Did one of my soldiers . . . do that?
She glared at Doctor Maranon. “His face,” she demanded, “who did this to him?”
Maranon held his hands up. “Forgive me, La Dama,” he plead, “but I don’t know. He’s had those scars for years. I asked about them back when I first treated him, but he would never say how or who—”
“Borbin,” the injured man hissed, barely a whisper.
Everyone in the tent turned toward the injured man, his head lulling back against the table, rolling on the wood.
“It’s the laudanum,” the other doctor said. “The delirium’s making him babble.”
Recha shot a look at Harquis. His milky eyes bore back into hers.
“Scorched,” the cultist growled, “as deeply as you.” He turned his head down at the injured man. “He’s been burning for years.”
“What’s his name?” she asked.
“Necrem,” Maranon replied, dabbing Necrem’s weeping cheeks with a damp cloth. “Necrem Oso.”
Recha licked her lips then took a deep breath to steady her nerves. She squeezed Necrem’s hand and calmy asked, “Necrem? Who did this to you?”
The man’s head shot up at hearing his name. His pupils were wider than before, less focused. The remains of his lips peeled back, exposing all of his teeth as he hissed, “Marqués Borbin!”