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The meeting that morning could not have been more desolate of good feeling. A pall descended even more entirely when Lawrence entered the room, grief evident in his every movement. Presley had always wondered how the man could drift blissfully through life, in spite of all his many failures. But now, after Lawrence had lost half the city and his wife, Presley thought him the saddest man he had ever seen.
Worse still, he had nothing to offer. When asked about the troops, Lawrence deferred to Alfred. When questioned how the troops would be supplied, Lawrence bit the head off poor old Dr. Stark for even asking. When Presley jumped in to answer a question about the supply lines he and Alfred had worked out that morning before the meeting, Lawrence glared at him until a sharp change came over his face and Presley thought he might cry. And when asked how long it would take to prepare the army to take any offensive action, Lawrence sat silently as if he did not hear the question.
I pity him. I truly do, but all is about to be lost. The council needs to put Alfred or even Duke Robert in charge and tell Lawrence to go grieve somewhere else, so he can’t cause any more damage.
But the council did no such thing that morning, so Presley hurried away to his office where he might have the chance of doing some good. In the meeting, everyone had agreed that they needed an immediate plan to try and defeat Broderick’s army. With his forces occupying half the city, the Sigors had little hope of outlasting the siege. If only there were some way to even the odds. No one, however, had any particularly good ideas for achieving this. And now sitting alone at his desk with mounds of paper and teetering stacks of ledgers, Presley had no notion why he thought he might have any suggestions for how to defeat a larger force so much better placed.
What do I know about battle? Nothing, except how to get supplies to the people who have a clue.
Someone knocked on Presley’s door. He longed to send the intruder away with the lie that he was “too busy” to see them, but he wasn’t being remotely productive. With a sigh, he called, “Come in.”
He hadn’t been expecting Lawrence, but here he was. The dark circles under his eyes made Presley wonder if he had slept since the battle two days ago. He was almost positive from the dirt and bloodstains, Lawrence was still wearing the same trousers and shirt.
“I was hoping your... friend would be here,” Lawrence said, still standing near the door he had closed behind him.
Presley wasn’t sure if “friend” was supposed to be a euphemism for Grigory, his lover, or Intira, the spy he had arrived in the country with. “You find me alone. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Unless you have some weapon that will stop Broderick, I’m afraid not.”
Seeing as how Lawrence knew about Intira’s magysk arm, in addition to Grigory’s engineering genius, this answer still didn’t clarify things for Presley. “I don’t know if anyone has one of those, I’m sorry to say.”
“You will talk to him, though? If Grigory doesn’t come up with something, I really don’t know what else there is for us to do.”
Presley nodded, happy at least to know who Lawrence was talking about. What Grigory was up to, though, Presley could not say. Ever since the battle, he had spent nearly every waking hour in his workshop. Whether or not he had answers to the prayers of the privy council and Sigor supporters in general, however, he could not say.
“I will speak to him,” Presley said. He cleared his throat. “I truly am sorry about Countess Veronica. I had gotten to know her quite well, and she was a remarkable woman.”
Lawrence rubbed awkwardly at his eye. “You, I’m sure, thought she was too good for me.” Presley attempted to protest but Lawrence waved him off. “And for the first time ever, you and I can agree on something. She was far, far too good for me.”
“Having someone too good for you is something I’m intimately familiar with.”
Lawrence almost smiled. “I’m happy for you. I truly am. Someone deserves to have something good in this world.”
Presley found it difficult to swallow but he eventually got his throat cleared again. “Thank you. It is getting near lunch. I will go check on Grigory at his workshop and see if he has any new thoughts on the situation. If anyone might, it would be him.”
With a nod, Lawrence left the room. It took Presley longer than he would have thought possible to compose himself enough to be seen by others. But once he made it outside, the crisp air helped to clear his mind. He had a great deal to think about on his walk to Grigory’s workshop in the riverfront warehouse. He tried not to get emotional about the fact many of the supply numbers he worked through in his mind were issues that a few days ago he would have entrusted to Veronica.
The sheer number of people posed the biggest problem. With a large part of the city lost and limited access to anything outside the city walls, the northern half of the city overflowed. The entire Sigor army now had to fit into a slim chunk of Leornian, instead of being spread out in camps and throughout the town. And a huge number of citizens had fled before the Gramiren army, as well. Every home, inn, and often even shops now were fit to bursting with displaced people. All of whom needed fed and housed. Hopefully without disease racing through the entire populace.
Better talk to someone about sanitation. That’s likely to be even more important than how much grain and meat each person needs every day so they don’t starve or start killing each other over food.
Among those displaced people were Grigory, Intira, and himself, because Docent Lane was now behind Gramiren lines. Duke Robert had promised he would find rooms for them, but Presley didn’t know if that would be possible or not. They might end up sleeping in the stable or on the floor in a corridor somewhere. They had spent the previous night on couches in his office at the Bocburg.
He still had few definite answers to these problems when he arrived at Grigory’s workshop. The guards at the door to the grain reserves nodded to him, as did Grigory’s assistants when he stepped inside. None of the student assistants at this precise moment, however, appeared to be working on anything. They also seemed unable to look Presley in the eye.
Oh Grigory! How badly are you doing today?
Presley knocked on Grigory’s closed office door, since he wasn’t at any of the work benches. But he got no answer. He knocked again and glanced awkwardly at the idle assistants. They had obviously been looking at him, but they quickly turned away. Presley heard a groan from within, and he took it as an invitation to enter.
Grigory slumped in a chair and bent over his desk, head in hands, a mess of papers before him. Presley closed the door and hurried over behind Grigory. Draping himself over Grigory’s back, he asked, “Tough morning? Can I help?”
“No one can help,” he muttered into his hands. “It is hopeless.”
Presley kissed the top of his head. “You need food and sleep. I’m sure you would think of something, if you were more yourself.”
“What good is it if I do think of something? All of my brilliant plans have led us here. They do not work. I have been a failure.”
Memories of the Myrcian-Loshadnarodski war came back to Presley, particularly Grigory’s plea to run away from the death and destruction he did not want to cause. Is that bothering him now, or is he disappointed his wall reinforcements did not get built in time? Which was not even his failure. Presley rubbed Grigory’s shoulder. The muscle felt like a tense rock under his fingers. “What about your cavalry traps? Those worked. The Gramiren forces might have taken the city months ago but for your traps.”
“But the walls fell, and that is my fault.” He reached up and squeezed the hand Presley still had on his shoulder. “It means a lot that you believe in me, but your belief is not enough to save Leornian.”
Presley thought about what diplomatic options might be open to the Sigors should the city fall. As it looks increasingly like it will. He did not believe for an instant that Edwin would long outlive being captured by Broderick. And then there would be nothing to stand in the way of a murder’s complete control of Myrcia. He and Grigory had to do something.
Resting his head atop Grigory’s head, Presley lazily scanned the desk. Even though he was not particularly looking for anything, one of the drawings caught his eye. “What is this?” He snatched it up so he could get a better look.
“That? It is something Faustinus once asked me to design.” Grigory pointed at the drawing: a complex X-shaped structure with what appeared to be crossbow bolts around it. “Faustinus said to me, ‘Why don’t you draw something up for me to show the emperor, just as an exercise. I have no intention of doing anything with it.’”
“I wonder if his ‘no intention’ is the exact opposite of his ‘every intention’?”
“Possibly. I built a prototype, but I do not know what Faustinus did with it after that. I do not even know if he showed it to Tullius.”
“But what is it?” Presley tilted the paper first one way and the other, somehow hoping this would help the sketch make sense.
“A quick release, multiple bolt crossbow.” He shrugged when Presley raised an eyebrow at him. “I did not come up with a proper name. It was a thought exercise that Faustinus had no intention of using.”
“How does it work?”
“You feed a quiver of bolts into the top. A mechanism inside then slots the bolts through a magazine, where four are then grouped here in the middle along the X. The whole mechanism sits atop a platform—I have a drawing of that around here—and someone stands behind the platform and cranks back the string over the nut. When the trigger is released, all four bolts fly at once. Since an entire quiver was emptied in the top, as soon as the trigger is put back in place, four more bolts fall down into the slots.”
“How fast can all this happen?”
Grigory scrunched up his face as he sometimes did when answering complex engineering questions. Typically, it was such an adorable expression, Presley wanted to rip Grigory’s clothes off, but right now he was genuinely interested in the answer.
“Assuming everything works correctly, and the soldier cranking is strong and reasonably well trained, the entire quiver of twenty bolts can be loosed in half a minute. I think. I never ran proper tests. Faustinus had no intention of using it, remember?”
“But what if we used it now? How long would it take to manufacture? What supplies do you need?”
“This is nothing, though. I do not even know what made me think of it now. I am just so tired, I will doodle anything.”
“But Grigory!” Presley gave him a swift kiss. “This could change everything. One of these and two men—one to feed and one to crank—well supplied with bolts could hold an entire street indefinitely. This is the perfect weapon for fighting in a city.”
“Do you think so?”
“I certainly do. But you’re right. I’m not a soldier. Let’s take this to Alfred. He will know.” Presley rolled up the drawing and shoved it in one of Grigory’s many messenger tubes. “We will take this to the Bocburg. Alfred is probably there now, having lunch. I know I’m famished.”
Grigory stood, rubbing his eyes, and then taking a cloak from a peg on the wall behind his desk. “You really believe this could be something?”
Presley wrapped his arms around Grigory and gave him a slow, deep kiss. “Absolutely. How many can you make?”
“It will depend. I will need good wood. And steel. Hemp for the bow string will be best. As well as men who can make the gears and cogs for the inner mechanisms. It will be skilled work.”
“You’ll have everything you need, even if I have to personally kidnap every clockmaker and metalsmith in Leornian.”
Grigory smiled and brushed a curl of hair behind Presley’s ear. “You would kidnap people for me? Faustinus will be amused to hear how seriously you have taken his little exercise.”
“I don’t think ‘amused’ comes close to covering his reaction when we tell him we made this and used it.”