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As the first real snows of the season covered Bestandan in a wooly white quilt, the army should have been settling in for a long winter hibernation. William had heard the king send Duke Lukas south to get more troops, and Lukas couldn’t possibly be back for three or four months—or even longer if this was a particularly cruel winter. So there was no reason why, in the second week of December, William should have seen troops everywhere training hard and whole regiments taking to the snowy fields to practice large-scale maneuvers together.
Clearly, Lieutenant General Rath had new plans for the winter, but as always, Rath kept the details of his schemes to himself. William saw him frequently in the little green-shuttered parlor at the back of the tavern, working away at maps and piles of messages. But then he would carefully lock it all in a cabinet whenever he left the room.
All William needed was a minute alone in that room, and he could pick the lock. But there were always staff officers in the outer common room, which had a view into Rath’s private office. And Ned Slorcus still insisted on following William everywhere. At least when he wasn’t drunk.
Even though it was a Thursday, William had a meeting with Intira at noon at the abandoned village. So he made sure to provide Ned with plenty of whiskey at breakfast. Ned obligingly drank it all and then retired to the little garret room he had appropriated on the third floor above the tavern.
“You’re not going anywhere without me, are you?” he slurred, as William helped him into bed.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said William.
He hurried to get a horse from the messengers’ stable near the king’s mansion, but he was intercepted on the high street by Duchess Flora. She stood with her hands on her hips, frowning at the passing traffic.
“Have you seen her majesty or Lady Jorunn this morning, William?”
“No, your grace. Not today. My apologies.”
“It’s not your fault,” grumbled the duchess. “The queen was talking about riding out with Lady Jorunn and some other ladies to see the troops of the Earl of Levanger.”
The Annenstruker Earl of Levanger, Georg Unset, was here leading a brigade of his countrymen. He also happened to be Lady Jorunn Unset’s great-great-many-times-removed-nephew.
“And they have left without you, your grace?” asked William.
“What? Oh, no. I’m sure it’s...a misunderstanding. Everything’s so confused now, with all the planning for the attack before the holidays. Never mind.”
She returned to the king’s mansion, muttering under her breath, and William thought about what she had said. “The attack before the holidays”—meaning Seefest, the Solstice, and the New Year, of course.
Seefest was December 19—just over a week away.
The common soldiers hadn’t been told yet, but Flora was one of the highest-ranking commanders of the Gramiren army. Plus, she was the king’s mistress. If anyone would know what Rath was planning, it would be her.
William ran to the stable, saddled a horse, and hurried to meet Intira. He found the Immani spy seated on the burial mound, as usual. She was crushing rocks to dust with the fingers of her magysk hand, apparently for fun, as he rode up.
“King Broderick isn’t going to wait until spring,” he said. “Rath has a plan to attack before Seefest.”
Intira wiped the dust off her hand. “Are you sure? I’ve seen troops practicing for assaults, but I didn’t think they would do it so soon.”
“Neither did I. But I’ve heard about it from Duchess Flora herself.”
“Do you know where the attack is coming from? And do you know the specific day?”
“No.” William shrugged. “That’s all I have for now.”
“A week to prepare. Maybe a few days.” Intira stood. “Shit. I’d better tell everyone to get ready.”
William scrambled down the hill with her, then watched as she rode away into a swirling gray flurry. He mounted up and rode back to Bestandan, trying to think of how he could find out the exact day and direction of the attack. He was so absorbed in this problem, and the snow was falling so thickly now, that it wasn’t until he reached the bridge over the river that he noticed someone was following him.
He turned in his saddle as a dark, mounted figure trotted into view. To his shock, it was Ned Slorcus.
“Hello, William,” Ned said, beaming. “Been out for a ride by ourselves, have we?”
“Just scouting around,” said William. “It’s my job.”
Together, they continued over the bridge into Bestandan.
“You seem to have recovered pretty quickly from all that whiskey,” William added.
“I only drank a little,” said Ned. “You weren’t paying attention when I tossed the rest away. Like you always do.”
“Very clever.” William shivered, and not because of the cold.
“I followed you. I know you met someone in secret. And I know that someone is riding off in the direction of Leornian now. Doesn’t make it too hard to guess what you were doing.”
William slowly drew his slimmest dagger and turned in his saddle, preparing to leap. But Ned saw the movement and laughed.
“You’re not going to kill me here.”
They were off the bridge now, riding into the middle of town, and in spite of the snow, dozens of soldiers and townspeople were milling around.
“What do you want?” William sheathed the dagger, but kept his hand on the hilt.
“I want half of what the Sigors are giving you. No, wait. I want everything. That’s my price—everything they’re paying you, you can give to me. Plus another Sovereign per month, shall we say? Yes. I think that should do it.”
“You’re joking.”
“Try me.” Ned turned and rode to Rath’s headquarters, where he dismounted and walked slowly up the front steps.
William followed and caught up at the door. “Let’s be reasonable,” he whispered.
Inside, a group of staff officers were writing messages and discussing something in hushed voices. They fell silent when they saw William and Ned approaching. Through the windows in the back, William could see that Rath wasn’t in. That was good news.
Ned led him upstairs, pausing at the top to turn and say, “Now, you can’t kill me here, either. All those men saw you come in with me.”
William hated to admit it, but Ned was right.
They went together into Ned’s little garret room, with a tiny bed, a desk, a stool, and large windows that gave a marvelous view up and down the snow-covered high street. The windows didn’t give much light on this dreary day, however, so Ned lit a lantern.
“Tea?” he asked. “Or should it be whiskey? It seems more appropriate to seal our new partnership with whiskey, don’t you think?” Ned picked up the bottle of whiskey from that morning and swirled its contents.
As William looked around the room at the lamp, the desk, and the window, a plan suddenly occurred to him. Quick as a cornered wolf, he drew his knife, lunged forward, and stabbed Ned through the heart. He caught the whiskey bottle as it fell, then lowered Ned’s body into the bed. Ned stared up at the ceiling, his face still trapped in a taunting smirk, his eyes barely starting to register the surprise of his own death.
William took the lamp apart and splashed oil around the floor, around the desk, and over Ned. Then he opened the window a little, pushed the desk against the windowsill, and set the lamp—with its remaining oil—on the desk. After washing his hands in Ned’s washbasin, he left and shut the door, locking it from the outside with the tip of his smallest knife.
Downstairs, he approached the highest-ranking staff officer—a young colonel who barely looked 25—and said, “I had to help Ned Slorcus to bed. He’s very drunk.”
“Again?” sighed the colonel.
“Someone should look in on him every once in a while.”
“Oh, fine then,” said the colonel. “I’ll send someone up in half an hour to make sure he hasn’t choked on his own vomit. Thanks for telling me.”
William left the tavern and crossed to an alley beside the parish church. Looking back, he could see the open window, and beyond it, he could make out the shape of the lantern. From everything he understood, he had to be able to see something in order to make the spell work on it.
From an inner pocket of his tunic, he took the blue stone that Intira had given him. Concentrating on the figure of the lamp, he muttered the magysk words: “Gloei Ful.”
Instantly, the lamp exploded with white-hot sparks and shattered. A few tiny bits of metal and broken glass tumbled down into the snow-covered street. William looked about anxiously, but no one seemed to have heard. Turning back to the garret window, he saw the glow of other flames now, reflected off the ceiling. The oil was alight.
He disappeared into the alleys and byways of the town, circling around to the king’s mansion, where he entered by a servants’ door, found a book, and positioned himself in the same quiet corner of the conservatory where he had seen the queen.
Five minutes passed—long enough for him to wonder if he had made some critical error—but then he heard frantic footsteps in the passageway, and people crying, “Hurry! There’s a fire!”
He went to the front parlors and found the king’s staff officers all pulling on their gloves and cloaks. “There’s a fire at Lord Rath’s headquarters!” said one of them. “Quick, somebody find some buckets!”
They all ran to the tavern, where a mixed group of townspeople and soldiers was already trying to organize a bucket line to the river. The fire had spread much more quickly than William had anticipated. Already, the whole top floor was engulfed in flame, and smoke was starting to seep from the doors and lower windows, as well. When someone handed William a bucket, he handed it on to someone else, then walked around to the front of the building in time to see the king arrive with Rath and Duchess Flora.
The same colonel William had spoken with earlier came trotting over, his face covered in soot. The king asked how the fire had started, and as William had hoped, the colonel speculated that it had been started by Ned Slorcus drunkenly knocking over a lamp.
“It’s my fault,” the colonel moaned, wringing his hands. “I should have sent someone up to check on him earlier.”
“It is hardly your fault when a drunkard kills himself through his own stupidity,” said the king. “I doubt anything of real value has been lost.”
“But all the plans are still in there,” cried the colonel. “Everything! We couldn’t get the cabinet open!”
The king swore, Rath turned pale, and Duchess Flora slapped a hand over her eyes.
“I’ll get the plans,” said William.
Rath tried to go with him, but the king, quite sensibly, ordered the general not to risk himself. “If we lose those plans, the only copy left is the one in your head.”
The colonel and several other staff officers went as far as the front steps, where William told them to wait with wet blankets and buckets of water. He splashed one bucket over his cloak; then he ducked through the front door and into a glowing, howling furnace.
The entire ceiling was on fire above him, with the flames rolling back and forth like glowing clouds, dropping a steady rain of cinders and molten varnish. Most of the papers that the staff officers had left on the tables were burning now, too, along with the upholstery on the benches and chairs. William pulled his cloak tight around his face, leaving only a tiny slit to see out of, and he ran to Rath’s office in the back. Already, the green paint on the shutters was blistering and smoking.
It took him three tries to pick the lock on the big cabinet, which was already too hot to touch without gloves. Inside, he found stacks of papers and a single large, rolled up map. After checking to see no one had followed him inside, he quickly spread out the map.
He didn’t have time to memorize the names of all the regiments that were pictured, but he could see the general outline of the plan pretty clearly. Rath was going to take a huge force around to the southeast of the city and then attack from that direction. Rath was completely ignoring the Sigor supply lines in the north, because once he got through the city wall, the supply lines would be irrelevant. The legend at the bottom said, “Dec. 19.” That was Seefest, eight days away.
William rolled the map up again, then gathered it with the rest of Rath’s papers inside his cloak. He heard timbers creaking and groaning overhead, and he ran back through the blazing common room seconds before the entire ceiling came down.
Everyone cheered when he staggered out into the snow. Two soldiers wrapped him in a blanket and led him farther away from the rapidly-collapsing tavern. The staff officers took the map and papers from him, while the king came over to shake his hand.
“Damn it all, William,” he said. “If you weren’t already a baron, I would make you one right now.”
Rath shook his hand, too. “Can’t thank you enough. I should never have trusted that idiot, Slorcus.”
“This was more than a drunken accident,” said a stern feminine voice.
William, Rath, and the king looked around to see Lady Jorunn Unset approaching with the queen and Princess Donella in her wake.
“If it wasn’t an accident, my lady,” said the king, “then what was it?”
“Magy,” said Lady Jorunn. She frowned up at the burning building, then turned slowly in place, eyes narrowed as if she were peering into a world no one else could see. “Very strong magy. I can feel it from here. Lord William, who barely escaped the flames, fairly reeks of it.”
William became uncomfortably aware of the pressure of the little blue stone in his tunic pocket.
“Was it Caedmon Aldred?” asked the queen.
“No.” Jorunn tilted her head to one side. “It’s.... No, I will not guess the source until I am sure.”
“Very wise, your ladyship,” said the queen. Duchess Flora rolled her eyes.
“The fire, however, was likely caused by someone with a magysk weapon,” Jorunn continued. “The spells are still fresh. Whoever did this cannot have gotten far.”
The king turned to William. “Do you think you can still ride?”
“Of course, your majesty,” said William, who was pretty sure what the king had in mind. “I will go north of the river and search the roads toward Hutton and Leornian. Perhaps someone could do the same on this side.”
Rath nodded and called for his staff officers to assemble all the scouts in camp. William didn’t wait for them, however. He fetched a horse from the stables and galloped over to the north bank, heading east. At Champsford, he borrowed a fresh mount from a cavalry regiment camped in the area, and then hurried on to the crossroads and the abandoned village, where he turned toward Hutton.
His horse was straining and stumbling by the time he rounded the last little corner and spotted Intira on the road ahead. She had been riding back more slowly than he had—probably on the lookout for Gramiren patrols, which was something William never had to worry about on this side of the lines.
As he closed the distance, and she turned to see him, a group of archers in blue surcoats stepped out of the trees and nocked arrows to their strings. One of them let fly a little early, but luckily his aim was bad, and the arrow missed William by ten feet. Intira shouted for the archers to hold, and then dismounted to wait for William.
“Did you forget to tell me something important?” she asked with a bemused smile.
William glared at the archers and led Intira slightly away from them. “I’ve seen Rath’s war plan. He’s going to circle around. Hit the city from the southeast. They’re coming on Seefest.”
“How many men?”
“Not sure. Multiple brigades. Plenty of cavalry.” William paused, trying to catch his breath.
Intira snapped her fingers at the archers, who looked a bit sheepish now. “You, there! Get this man some water. And find him a fresh horse, too!”
“One other thing,” said William, his heart sinking. “I had to use that jewel to kill Ned Slorcus. But Lady Jorunn felt the magy.”
“What? I told you not to—”
“I thought she was out of camp.”
“So you set Ned Slorcus on fire?”
“I set Rath’s entire headquarters on fire. It was the only way I could get in and see the plans without anyone else around.”
“Fuck me,” said Intira. “Do you know if Jorunn could tell whose magy it was? Could she tell who put the spells in the jewel, in other words?”
“She knew it was not from Caedmon Aldred, but beyond that, she was not sure.”
“Lovely. Well, I guess I’d better start looking over my shoulder for a hillichmagnar.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not to worry. She hasn’t caught me yet, has she?”