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Robert laid the report on the edge of the desk—the only empty spot that hadn’t been covered by other papers, journals, messages, and books.
“Ah, the latest from our mysterious source,” said Sir Alfred, still drawing notations on a map. “Anything vital in there?” The long, slanting beams of late afternoon sunlight fell on the desk over his shoulder, and he kept having to sit back to read what he had written.
“Not really, sir. The source says Duchess Flora has moved three squadrons of cavalry from Burlinglow to Stroudham.”
“Would those be the same three squadrons she moved from Stroudham to Burlinglow last Saturday?”
“The very ones, sir. Also, there are continuing tensions in camp between the false queen, Duchess Flora of Keneburg, and Lady Jorunn Unset.”
“Let’s hope that continues. Very well. I think that does it for today. Is it supper time yet, or is that only my imagination?”
Robert was about to suggest the two of them go find something to eat, when a knock came, and Princess Elwyn looked in. She had some kind of blue garment in her hands.
“Oh, hello, Robert,” she said. “I promised I would show Sir Alfred my handiwork. Or perhaps I should say I threatened to do so.”
She held up the garment, and it proved to be a quilted gambeson like the archers of the royal household wore. It had something resembling the Sigor coat of arms embroidered in silver thread on the right breast.
“That’s very good, your royal highness,” said Sir Alfred politely.
She let out a tiny snort. “It’s supposed to be a silver eagle. I don’t think it looks like an eagle. It looks like a fat hedgehog perching on a crescent moon.” She hid the gambeson behind her back. “Anyway, I was wondering if you’d like to come to supper with me, Sir Alfred. We’ll be dining in the royal nursery with my brother and sister. I would ask you, too, Robert, but I assume you’re going home to Alicia like a good boy.”
“Naturally, your royal highness,” said Robert.
Alfred frowned. “The...the nursery, ma’am?”
“It won’t just be playing with toy soldiers,” the princess went on. “If you don’t mind, I wonder if you could bring a map and explain the siege to my brother.”
“Surely her majesty the queen explains everything to him,” Robert put in.
“Or his majesty’s uncle, the captain general,” said Alfred.
The princess pursed her lips, then said, “With all due respect to my uncle and stepmother, I think it’s time for someone who knows what he’s talking about to explain warfare to my brother.” She held out a hand. “So, if you’re not busy, Sir Alfred....”
Alfred took her arm, and they left together, heading down the hall to the royal suite. Robert watched them go. He wondered if the princess remembered that there had been a time when he had explained military tactics to King Edwin using the royal toy soldiers. But that had been long ago, and Sir Alfred was obviously better qualified to brief the king on the current situation.
He left the palace and walked across the courtyard, thinking that perhaps tonight he might get out some toy soldiers at home and teach Bryan about flanking maneuvers. But before he got to the stable, he saw Intira Stylianos ride in. She spotted him, too, and gave him a broad, graceful wave.
“How lucky!” she said. “I was coming to find you. Do you have plans this evening?”
“Not especially. I was going home for supper.”
“Ah, I see.” Intira dismounted and came close, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Far be it from me to disturb your domestic bliss, Sir Robert, but do you remember when I said I would tell you more about our source at the enemy headquarters when you needed to know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve decided you need to know.” Smiling, in a carefree tone, she added, “I was nearly caught this morning on the river road near Presport. I’ve got an arrow in one of my saddlebags to prove it.”
The arrow was, in fact, still sticking out of the bag. Robert removed it. “Thank Earstien you got away.”
“Yes, I invoked quite a few gods and goddesses, myself. It was my horse that saved me, though. Maybe I should build a shrine to her.” Intira laughed. “But enough about my troubles. Did you want to come meet our ‘inside man’ or not? I figure if something happens to me, we need to have at least one other reliable person who knows who this fellow is and how to contact him.”
Robert thought of the warm hearth at home and supper with Alicia and an evening with toy soldiers, and he sighed. He really didn’t have much of a choice—Intira was absolutely right. They couldn’t lose contact with this vital source. He retrieved his horse from the stable, saddled it quickly with Intira’s help, and then followed her out of the castle.
They rode up Addle Street, then across the Aldred Bridge to the north bank of the Trahern. A light, cold drizzle began to fall as they turned west on a tiny farm lane and passed the outer pickets of the Sigor army. The men there knew Intira on sight and let her through without comment or question.
Robert pulled up the hood of his cloak, but he kept scanning around, memorizing landmarks at every turn in the road. A broken fencepost, a hollow tree, a rocky outcrop near the edge of a field—he stored them all away in the back of his mind. He needed to be able to find his way down this road in the dark by himself, if he ever needed to.
“I normally meet this fellow on Mondays and Fridays,” Intira said. “At least as often as we can manage. But I sent him a special message that I wanted to meet this evening. Hopefully he got it.”
“Does he know I’m coming?”
“He knows I’m going to introduce him to someone. I didn’t put your name in the message, though.”
“Probably for the best.”
They rode on in silence after that. The rain turned to sleet, rattling off his hood and cloak, and then into fat wet flakes of snow. The road twisted and turned through ravines and dry streambeds, almost disappearing in the gathering darkness. A few times, Robert could see distant squares of warm yellow light—lamps in the windows of tiny cottages and farmhouses. Twice he saw army camps in nearby fields, and he could smell the campfires and the coffee and stew. But they never met any traffic on the road.
At last, the path ran downhill, crossed a stream, and intersected another road at an acute angle. Above this intersection, a densely-wooded little hill rose steeply. Following Intira, Robert led his horse a little way into the thickets at the base of the hill. After tying up their mounts, they scrambled up the slope, passing broken walls and tumbled stones. It seemed like an abandoned village, though it was now so dark that Robert couldn’t tell, exactly. It might have been a ruined castle, for all he knew.
When they reached the top, they found a slim, hooded man in dark riding clothes seated on a low burial mound and whittling something with his knife. It looked like a horse. When the man saw Intira, he stuffed the little figure in his pocket, sheathed his knife, and came over to meet them.
Robert didn’t recognize the other man until he lowered his hood. It was William Aitken.
“It’s you,” said William, clearly as shocked as Robert was. He was fighting hard not to show it, though. He stuck his thumbs in his belt and looked slowly around, as if he and Robert met in ruined villages by moonlight all the time.
“And you,” said Robert. “Did you bring enough knives?”
William barely cracked a smile. “Did you bring your big, stupid sword?”
“I see you two know each other,” said Intira.
“You might say we used to work together,” said William.
“Ah, of course. During the Loshadnarodski War.” She nodded. “So much the better. Unless you don’t trust each other, anymore.”
“Trust is...such a strong word,” said William.
“Exactly,” agreed Robert. “I suppose I trust you to know your job, though.”
William bowed. “And the same to you, Robert. I think ‘respect’ might be a better word than ‘trust’ to describe how we feel about each other.”
Robert bowed back. “Well said.”
Intira stepped between them. “If I weren’t here, would the two of you be trying to kill each other right now?”
“Most likely,” said William.
“Indeed,” said Robert. “It’s nothing personal, though.”
“It’s at least somewhat personal. But we still respect each other, don’t we, Robert?”
“Quite.”
“I suppose I have to admire your honesty,” said Intira. “But we’re all working together now on the same side, aren’t we? Yes? Yes. Will you two promise not to kill each other if I’m not around?”
Robert stared at William. William stared back. After a few tense seconds, they both laughed. And they both promised not to kill each other.
Intira took a seat on the burial mound. “With that out of the way, tell us the latest, William.”
She pulled a whiskey flask from her pocket and passed it around, along with a little parcel of slightly-flattened sweet cakes in a greasy bag marked “Crane’s.” William accepted the flask and took a very small sip. He passed it to Robert, who took an even smaller sip.
“Duke Lukas has left,” said William. “The king has sent him south to raise reinforcements.”
“His own troops?” asked Intira. “Or more Annenstruker ‘volunteers’ from Lukas’s cousin, King Galt?”
“Both, if necessary.”
That was important news, if true. The duke’s seat was in Severn, more than three hundred miles to the southwest. The Annenstruker border was two hundred miles south of that.
“If Broderick is waiting for Lukas to come back,” mused Robert, “then he doesn’t intend to make a full assault until spring, at the earliest.”
Intira took the flask back from Robert and took a longer drink. Turning to William, she asked, “Do you know for sure when Broderick intends to attack?”
“No. I have tried to see the plan that General Rath is working on, but I never have a chance.” William frowned and bowed his head, his eyes disappearing in shadow. “He keeps it with him most of the time. And when he doesn’t, I have Ned Slorcus following me everywhere.”
Robert shook his head. He remembered Slorcus—a good scout in the field, but unprincipled and dangerously unpredictable.
“You seem to be able to get him drunk and make him pass out whenever you like,” observed Intira.
“Yes, but that’s not going to work forever,” said William. “Eventually he’s either going to figure out what I’m doing, or Rath will notice and replace Ned with someone more competent.”
“You could just kill him,” Robert suggested.
William gave him a sly grin. “Listen to you. I remember when you would have thought that was unworthy of a true knight.”
“I remember when you wouldn’t need me to tell you to do it,” Robert replied.
“The trouble is that Rath knows Ned is tailing me. If Ned washes up on the riverbank with a knife wound in his neck, everyone will know who killed him.”
“Then disguise the means of death,” said Intira, slowly tugging the black leather riding glove off her false left hand.
Robert had only seen it once before, and never entirely uncovered. It had an outer layer of some kind of tan, supple leather that nearly seemed like real skin. She peeled that aside, however, revealing gleaming metal bones, tiny clockwork gears, and shimmering jewels that pulsed with gentle light in time to Intira’s heartbeat.
William took a step back and scowled. Then he moved closer again, eyes scanning the delicate machinery with an expression somewhere between disgust and envy. “So you do have magy,” he whispered.
“Just a little something a friend of mine in the Empire made for me,” she said, running the fingers of her real hand over the various jewels. “I lost mine in a boating accident, you see.”
After a few moments, she chose a small octagonal blue gem and plucked it from its setting. She held it out to William, who took it warily and kept it at arm’s length from his face.
“Hold it out exactly like that,” she said, “and then look at something you want to destroy. That fallen tree over there, for example.” She pointed past Robert. “Then all you have to do is say the words, ‘Gloei Ful.’”
William held the stone out in the direction of the fallen tree. Robert stepped quickly out of the way, as he saw William start to mutter the words. Instantly, there was a flash of blue light, a rush of wind, and a clap of thunder as the tree burst into wild yellow flames. For half a minute, the heat was so intense they all had to retreat to the far side of the burial mounds. But the fire slowly died away, although Robert did not know if this was because the spell was dying, as well, or because of the steady damp snow falling all around them.
“Well,” said William, turning the stone over in his hands a few times. “Well. That seems...useful.”
“It is. Just try not to use it anywhere around Lady Jorunn Unset. She’s a hillichmagnar, so she will feel the magy immediately. And then,” Intira winked, “she will know you were talking to someone you shouldn’t have.”