Kate made her way through the palace, dragging Angelica with her. The noblewoman didn’t resist, perhaps because she’d guessed all the things that Kate might do if Angelica gave her any kind of excuse. The palace was almost as quiet, and probably for many of the same reasons: the presence of the army imposed a kind of order on it, even as it made it impossible for the normal business of the day to continue.
“This way,” Kate said, sensing her sister’s presence ahead.
“The great hall,” Angelica said beside her. “What a perfect spot for a usurper. I wonder, will she be a tyrant too?”
“Be quiet,” Kate snapped, pulling Angelica into a room that looked large enough that they could have used it for a drill square if they’d wanted to. There were probably enough soldiers in there for that, but there were also plenty of others: nobles, servants, people who looked like merchants or messengers.
Sophia sat at the heart of it all on a throne, with Sebastian beside her. Lucas was a little way away, and so were their cousins, who all seemed to have come through the battle in one piece, save for a wound on Ulf’s temple that he had a cloth pressed to, and a bandage wrapped around Hans’s leg.
“Sophia,” Kate called out, and the crowds parted for her, making room as Kate came through them. “I caught her.”
Sophia smiled at that. “I knew you would.”
“So what now?” Angelica demanded beside Kate. “Are you going to butcher me in front of everyone to prove your cruelty? Are you going to have that cat of yours eat me?”
Sophia shrugged. Kate hadn’t expected that. She’d expected her sister to already be there, ready to drive a knife into her enemy. But maybe Kate was just thinking of what she would do.
“Believe it or not, Angelica,” Sophia said, “you’re not my biggest concern right now. Frig, Ulf, can you make sure that the former queen doesn’t go anywhere? I’ll get around to her when I’ve dealt with more important things.”
Kate could feel Angelica fuming at that, but it wasn’t exactly as if she could fight as the twins pulled her to one side. She suspected that was part of the point, a small revenge on Sophia’s part.
“What’s more important than seeing her dead?” Kate asked.
“Practically everything,” Sophia said. “There are a thousand and one things to deal with now that the battle’s done. You, for one thing.”
“Me?” Kate said with a frown.
“We put together an invasion force,” Sophia said, “but now I need someone who can organize a real army and run it for me. There’s no one I trust to do that more than you, Kate. I want to make you the Commander of the Royal Army.”
“Me?” Kate said, pausing in shock, certain it had to be some kind of joke. “But I’m—”
“You’re the best soldier I know,” Sophia said, “and we both know you’d be wonderful at it.”
Kate shook her head. “There are other people who deserve it more. Hans is a commander. Lord Cranston…”
“They both agree with me that you should be the one to do this,” Sophia said with a smile. “I haven’t forgotten all the things you’ve done to get us here, Kate. Just say yes.”
“Yes,” Kate said, not knowing what else to say. “But… before I have to jump into all of the things that need doing here, before I actually have to be the commander, can I go take care of a couple of things? I… I’ll need some men.”
“What kind of things?” Sophia asked.
Kate let her see, sending the thoughts of everything she needed to do across to her sister.
“There are things I haven’t forgotten either.”
***
Kate made her way out into Ashton from the palace, walking down through streets that were almost as crowded as they might have been on a market day. It seemed that people were coming out into the streets to see what was happening. They stared at Kate as she passed, but Kate couldn’t sense any hatred there, or anger, or desire to defend the regime that had pushed them down for so long. They were simply waiting to see what Kate and her sister would do. What they stood for.
Well, Kate would show them that.
She made her way down toward the temple of the Masked Goddess, taking a breath before she stepped inside, as if the very air within might be against her. Inside, she wasn’t surprised to find it thronging, a masked priestess standing at the pulpit, delivering a sermon to an assembled group that mostly seemed to consist of other priestesses and nuns at the center, with nobles and ordinary people spread out around them in a broad ring. Kate could make out a cluster of watchmen in one corner, a group of the temple’s hunters in another. There were even a couple of men whose thoughts showed that they were slavers, standing there openly as if they didn’t care how things had changed in the city.
“And what has happened to our city today?” the priestess demanded, mid-sermon. “I’ll tell you what has happened: it has been taken by the very forces that our goddess seeks to contain. By those who have yielded to the evils of magic. By witches and those who support them!”
Kate heard a murmur of support rumble around the room.
“We have given our city over to those who would return our country to the days when magic ran wild, and there was no order in the world,” the priestess continued. “To people who would free the Indentured with no thought for what they still owe! Who would undermine our good work, and upset the delicate peace that has held since the end of the Civil Wars!”
Another noise of approval went around the room. Kate stalked forward.
“Maybe some things need upsetting,” she said, raising her voice. People looked around at her then. Perhaps some even recognized who she was, but she wanted to make sure. “My name is Kate Danse. My sister is now the queen.”
She moved all the way to the front of the temple, the eyes of everyone there upon her.
“All my life,” she said, “people like you have told me that I was evil, just for existing. People like you have told me that I should be grateful for being given a home where I was beaten and neglected, then due to be indentured to pay for the privilege. People like you joined in on the night men came to murder my family, or you stood by while many other families were murdered. You’re worried that my sister is here to change things? You should be.”
“Witch!” the priestess said, pointing at her.
Kate pointed back. “How many people have you condemned with that word? How many people have burned for it, or hanged, or been sold? How much blood do you have on your hands?”
“I am clean in the sight of the goddess,” the priestess insisted. She gestured to the others there. “Friends! We have an opportunity. If we take this wretch, people will see that they can fight back. They will rise up with us. They will overthrow the invader who threatens us all. Grab her!”
The watchmen and the hunters started forward, moving toward Kate as one.
Kate laughed at that. “You didn’t think I came here alone, did you?”
She clapped her hands, and soldiers stepped out of the shadows they’d crept into while she’d been talking, holding crossbows and pistols. They surrounded the people there, and a part of Kate wanted to give them the order to fire, just to make the world a slightly better place. But that wasn’t the kingdom they were building, and she knew that Sophia wouldn’t want it.
“Take them into custody,” Kate said. She looked over to the priestess. “While we’re talking here, men are going around to every watch house where they dragged back the Indentured, every slaver’s mansion, every house that holds orphans to sell them. Everyone who has had a part in it, every single one, will know what it’s like to be the one in chains for a change, and you had better pray to your goddess that my sister doesn’t remember everything that you did to her as well as I do.”
Kate turned, ignoring their protests, and stalked from the church. She still had one more stop to make—a happier one.
***
Kate walked through Ashton almost in the opposite direction from the one she’d come in with the invasion, going from the center to the edges, past the squads of men clearing bodies from the streets, past the city walls with fresh musket scars to add to their old ones. She knew the route she was walking by heart. After all, she was heading for the one place in the city that she’d ever had a chance to call a real home.
The forge was not lit when she arrived, no smoke coming from the chimney there, and that made Kate pause, hoping that everything was all right, fearing that it might not be and that some act of violence might have kept Thomas from it in spite of the care with which Ishjemme’s troops had moved through the outskirts. Then she saw the horse with the colors of Lord Cranston’s men on it outside and she smiled, hurrying forward to pound on the door.
Thomas opened it, as large and as hearty as Kate remembered. He didn’t hesitate, but drew Kate into a hug that all but crushed her.
“I knew you would come back eventually,” he said, and Kate could hear the happiness in his voice. “Though I guess it’s not to apprentice with me again?”
Kate shook her head with a smile. “I have another job now.”
“Commanding an army no less,” Thomas said. “Come in, Kate. Winifred is making roast duck.”
Both Thomas’s wife and Will were within, the smell of cooking food delightful. To Kate’s surprise, Winifred came over and hugged her just as her husband had. Will’s mother had always been the one most cautious about her presence in the forge.
“It’s good to see you safe,” she said. “When you left and didn’t come back, I feared that something would happen to you. Come, sit down. Tell us everything that has happened with you.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Kate said.
“How about you start with the part where you went off to war and didn’t come back?” Thomas suggested. “And sit down while you do it. You must be famished.”
Kate did it, and she had to admit that there was something simple about telling the story of how she’d fought alongside Lord Cranston’s men, then had to abandon them. How she’d fought to be free of Siobhan, and how she’d traveled to find the truth about herself.
“And now you’ve come back here,” Thomas said. “Home.”
“Home,” Kate agreed, because the forge was the one place that had felt like it outside of Ishjemme. “I wanted to come back and thank you for all you did for me.”
“There’s no need for thanks,” Thomas said. “You’re our family, if there’s still room for us alongside the royalty of your real one.”
“Always,” Kate promised, taking out a pouch from within her tunic. “And I have a gift, too. It’s not much, we still haven’t gotten the royal treasury open, but I wanted to bring something.”
She thought of the time she and Will had come back with their pay from Lord Cranston’s company. There was far more gold this time, but she wanted that memory again.
“And, since I’m now to be in charge of my sister’s army, it occurs to me that I’ll need someone who knows about weapons overseeing their supply,” Kate said. “It would be a big job, but once we get the treasury open… there will be enough work to make sure that you’re never poor again.”
Thomas stared at her, the generosity of the offer seeming to hit him.
“Will you do it, Thomas?” Kate said.
“Of course I will,” Thomas assured her. He smiled. “I’ll probably need to take on an apprentice.”
“Enough talk about war,” Winifred said. “Let’s focus on happier things for a while. Will says that you’ve found yourself a brother you didn’t know you had.”
“That’s Lucas,” Kate said. “And it’s hard not to mention fighting if we’re talking about him, since I first met him in the middle of a battlefield.”
Winifred smiled at that. “Well, I suppose that’s an exception.”
“Things will get better though,” Kate promised. “Sophia will see to that now that she’s queen.”
“And so will you, I’m sure,” Winifred said.
Kate hoped so.
“Now, are you going to be staying here the night? I’ll make up a bed in the forge for you.”
Kate shook her head. “I wish I could, but I can’t abandon Sophia like that so soon after everything. I have to head back to the palace.”
“And I should go with you,” Will said. “That is, I’d like to… if you want? I mean, I have something to ask you.”
Kate smiled at his clumsiness. “I’d love to.”
She thought of all the things that they might do on the way, all the corners she might find in which to hide and kiss him, and her smile widened even more.