Arranging it isn’t difficult, really. Colblain is a wonderful captain, an arrow that when shot from a bow speeds true and hard. He is not a thief, a spy or a cunning man. Subterfuge is not his bailiwick. For the task of trapping him I want Oweir, who has proven himself a master of many faces. He makes an able diplomat, a good soldier and an unremarkable presence when he puts his mind to it. I give him the assignment, and if he is astonished at what I ask he masks t well, proving that my choice is a sound one.
Sometime between Oweir’s trap springing and my heart settling from my confrontation with Silfie, I am interrupted by the corvid messenger’s arrival, gold and brown feathers, agitation, flapping spring air into my face. In his claws is a message and when I unroll it a chill lifts the fur down my spine and ruffles my feathers.
“So,” I say to the messenger. “They kept Rei back.”
The corvid messenger—does he? Yes. He nods, an awkward jerking of his head.
The answer is fell but not surprising. I say to him, “You know where you go next.”
The messenger gapes his beak and lifts into the air, leaving me on the ground, frustrated, tired…but tingling. I had sent Rei to attempt a negotiation in advance of my arrival…but if they’d been willing to use him as a messenger, he would have returned with the raven. Which could mean they had suspicions, suspicions that would not be allayed without my making a personal appearance. And a personal appearance was the exact thing I had hoped to avoid, given the risks involved.I would have to go.
And now more waiting. Waiting for Colblain. Waiting for the allies I’d sent for in case everything fell appart. Waiting for the pieces to fall together. I return to my tent.
This is the part I hate. But at least it’s a familiar hatred.
* * *
From Crossroads Tam has brought me several bags, and their contents are now scattered all over my tent as I try everything on, a piece at a time, sometimes several. This is a far more frustrating experience than waiting is. I’m trying to find nice clothes. Appropriate clothes for what I’m about to do.
“No,” Ragna says to the black shirt and black pants. “Too obvious.”
To the fussily embroidered blouse and breeches, “No one would ever believe that on you. You don’t wear it right.”
The cream pants and white blouse will get too dirty to make the best impression by the time I arrive. The brown breeches and white blouse are too plain. The leathers are too martial. I’d be angry at Ragna if I didn’t agree with her. None of it is right. It doesn’t help that I don’t know how to lie that well. Misdirect, maybe, but lying? I’m barely good enough to lie with my mouth. Lying with my clothing is too alien.
“Maybe you should go naked,” Ragna says at last with a quirk of her whiskers.
I scowl at her from across the tent. She’s folded all of Tam’s offerings after I’ve discarded them (violently). None of them will work.
“We need to choose something,” I say. “Maybe I’ll just dress like myself.”
“Maybe you should,” Ragna says. “But dressing as yourself—”
“What?” I ask.
Unlike other people, Ragna looks at you directly even when she’s not comfortable with something. I don’t know where she picked up that habit of being so open about the things she doesn’t like. And so accepting of them at the same time. It’s a strange thing to see. It somehow makes you more twitchy than if she’d tried to look away or mutter.
“If you dress the way you normally dress, you will be tempted to act the way you normally act,” Ragna says. “You cannot afford it, Mistress. Your plan is dangerous enough without that handicap.”
I sigh.
Someone rings the bell outside my tent and Ragna goes to see who’s visiting. She returns with a package and a puzzled expression, handing me the former and keeping the latter for herself. I open the package and shining silk spills onto my lap.
Teal silk, eye-wateringly bright, embroidered with blazing phoenixes. Phoenixes that look like me.
Oh, Silfie.
“That might work,” Ragna says. “Wear it over something simple but well-made. It will disguise your condition while also making it seem that you love luxury and have good taste. And that you are, perhaps, somewhat egotistical.”
There’s no note with the robe. I run my fingers over it. It’s soft and cool as water running.
“Mistress?” Ragna asks.
I shake my head. “It will do.”
She sends me armor against the task I must do. That must mean she still loves me…mustn’t it?
“You were going to leave tonight,” Ragna says.
I nod. My time-table is more forgiving than my armor, but not by much. Her eyes narrow as I sip from the tea she’s brought me. “It’s going to be cloudy.”
“The gods tell you this?” she asks, one side of her whiskers spreading.
“I tell me this,” I say, ignoring her faint amusement. “I was a creature of wind and weather long before any gods came along and tried to help me.”
She nods. “Tonight, then.”
“There’s a good possibility,” I say. We don’t have to say what for. As trite as it sounds, if you’re going to arrange a clandestine meeting with someone, doing it in the dark with the weather obscuring the stars is still a smart way to go about it.
“Do you think—?”
“I don’t know,” I say firmly. I will not judge him without evidence first. And while I’m anxious to be on my way, I can stay, just a little longer, to see if Colblain has betrayed me or if he’s found a new friend he’d rather meet in private.
Ragna sits next to me, thigh to thigh. We appear calm, but neither of us is.
“Have you thought about being queen?” Ragna asks. The Godkin word sounds strange on her mouth, as if she’s thinking of some other word she can’t quite translate.
“Queen of Shraeven?” I ask.
She nods.
The very idea should have made me bristle, astonished me, shocked and horrified. Instead, I find it merely…remote. Implausible. A scenario I can play out like a mock battle, to be brought out in the real war only when all else has failed. “Not seriously,” I say. “I’m not interested.”
“They would follow you,” she says.
“I’m counting on it.”
We are both silent then.
“You could remain single,” Ragna says with fanned whiskers.
“Or I could marry everyone I pleased. Angharad’s harem—can you imagine?” I laugh. “One wing in the palace for the men, one for the women.”
“One for the warprizes,” Ragna adds.
“Like you?” I tease.
She leans forward and licks my cheek, below my eye…fur up against the grain, all wrong, all right. “Like me,” she agrees with a husky voice, all laughing whiskers and brilliant, sea-storm eyes.
“Mistress!” the urgent voice at the flap’s is Donal’s, though he doesn’t step in. “Now! In the fields!”
I rise and am through the flap before he is done speaking. We run beneath cloud-choked skies toward the perimeter. Reaching it we split like water at a stone—Donal to give chase with the men and me to Colblain, who is standing mute and proud beneath the star-pricked sky. His hands are tied behind his back. He does not return my gaze, but he does not look like a guilty man.
“Back to my tent,” I tell his captors, and they march him away. He does not resist.
Alone and perplexed, I look after the soldiers who are now swiftly vanishing in pursuit of the second half of this problem. The wind ruffles my moon-silver forelock, but if this is an invitation from the gods to ask for answers, I ignore it. I go instead to my tent, wings folded against my back—so hard, I realize, that by the time I reach the flap the muscles along my wing arms and back ache.
I duck inside past the soldiers standing guard. Angry soldiers. Their jaws are as tight as my muscles.
Ragna is gone, smart pard. Just me and Colblain, then. Colblain Sixblood of the Snowflower Vale. A noble, a good soldier, an unbroken arrow of a captain.
“What are you doing here?” I ask him.
“The work of the Godson,” he says, looking up at me without lifting his head. “What are you doing here?”
I lift a brow. “My duty.”
“Your duty seems to drift apart from the Godson’s wishes,” Colblain says.
The hairs along my arms begin to lift. “And you are somehow more privy to the Godson’s will than I am? Has he been sending his communiqués to you, then, Captain?”
He rolls his eyes. “Oh, I need more evidence than you parading around with the mark of foreign powers on your face? Please. I’m not an idiot.”
“You think I’m failing my country,” I say.
“I think you’re a traitor,” Colblain says, and the baldness of it makes my heart skip.
“And so because of that belief, you would sell all the men who depend on you into the arms of men who have turned outlaw, men who should have known better,” I say.
“If being an outlaw is the only way to serve the cause of Godhead, then I will fight every law until they are all cast to ash,” he says.
I nod. “You know the punishment for treason.”
He lifts his chin and stares into my eyes. He’s not expecting me to flinch; I’m not expecting him to back down. We know each other that well.
I leave the tent and find Silfie there. I close my eyes—the Godkindred eye and the Shraevaenese eye—and say to her, “You can have him until dawn. I’ll stay for the execution.”
She nods and goes into my tent. A greater woman might have pitied Colblain, but not I.
* * *
I am sitting next to the officer’s campfire when Ragna joins me. Here in public spaces she keeps a slight distance from me, though I’m not sure why. I haven’t been keeping track of my relationships and who knows about them. It’s never mattered before, I don’t see why it matters now.
“You will kill him?” Ragna asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Why?”
I glance at her. “I am the civilian and military authority in this province and have been since appointed by the Godson. When that happened, the people working for former Governor Chordwain became criminals. You consort with criminals—especially by giving them intelligence that would get us killed—and you die for it.”
“Ah,” Ragna says. “Simple justice. Very clear.”
I shrug.
“Why did he do it, then?” Ragna asks.
“He thinks I work against the religious agenda of the Godson by carrying out his orders to pacify this province.” I stare moodily into the fire. “Pacify in my mind does not equal “kill until no one has the energy or courage to object.” There is no question that we are conquerers, but the conquering part is done. This is peacetime.”
She glances at me and the orange light on her eyes gives them a stark look, translucent waves under night-storm sky. “I did not think you would be so facile with peacetime. You did not seem so when first I met you.”
“Yes, well, this place is already leashed,” I say. “I have no particular desire to whip it into cowed submission.”
I don’t know if I like the look she gives me then but fortunately Donal interrupts us. I look up at him and his heaving chest…composed, he is, but it was a long chase.
“We have him,” he says.
“And?”
“He’s what we thought he was,” Donal says. “Oweir is with him now.” He cants his head. “May I speak, Mistress?”
“Of course,” I say.
“If you execute Colblain, you’ll break cover.”
I freeze in place. He’s right. And I’m so used to the battlefield that I never thought of it. Subterfuge is not my strong suit.
Curse it all.
* * *
“Stop the ritual,” I say. Donal enters the tent an instant before I do, which makes my arrival only slightly less scandalous. I’m not supposed to be involved at all until the end. Fortunately, the rite isn’t far advanced—two men are in the tent, standing across from a bound Colblain and staring down at him. Silfie is in the corner, officiating; she would have taken his confession just before summoning the first of the soldiers.
At this point, Colblain should be answering to the men. All the soldiers in the camp have the right and the duty to face the man who would betray them and ask him why he did it. It’s only after they’ve all asked and Colblain has answered that I enter with the evidence against him already weighed by those outside to make my judgement or hear any final plea. It would have been a long night for Colblain, but he got lucky.
“Send them away.”
“Mistress?” Silfie is standing, orange eyes glittering in the low light.
“There are extenuating circumstances,” I say.
The soldiers salute me and leave, though I can tell by the rigidity of their gait that they are displeased. The whole camp will be restless. That might make my story more convincing, but it will do so by making real trouble for me when I get back.
“Don’t set him loose,” I say, “but let him go back to his tent.”
Colblain eyes me, but Silfie speaks first, “But he deserves this!”
“Maybe,” I say.
Colblain laughs then. “Don’t think that you can fool them now just by not killing me. They know everything I know. Including the details of your grand masquerade.”
I smile. “Who says it’s a masquerade?”
He grins, all teeth now. “You can’t even fool me and you want to fool them, forewarned? Good luck.”
“Let me kill him now,” Donal says, drawing his sword with a smile that would have looked merry on any other country boy’s face. Here it looks ghastly. “We could say that I did it in a fit of passion.”
“I’ll do it—” Silfie says, though she isn’t allowed weapons in this tent. Her lifted hands, tensed into clawed arcs, are menacing enough.
I shake my head and press the flap open. To the two men stationed at the tent’s entrance, I say, “Take Captain Colblain to his tent.”
We are alone and they look so disappointed, my Second and my captain. Sitting, Silfie says, “Now what?”
“Now I leave as planned.” I ignore the flash of their eyes in the dimness. “They may know the plan, but that doesn’t mean they can’t still believe me. I just have to be more convincing.”
I’ve sometimes heard people described as exploding but never witnessed it until Silfie flies off her bench, arms flapping open and the words leaping from her nearly frothing mouth. “You’re insane, Angharad! They’ll know! They’ll kill you!”
“I can convince them,” I say.
Donal is merely looking at me.
“You can’t convince someone who’s already been warned that you’re lying,” Silfie is saying, all acid and frustration. “We need another plan. A different plan. Curse it all, Angharad, I didn’t follow you this far into this insane place so you could make babies with rapists and then throw your life away on a traitor’s word!”
Too much. There’s only so much I can take. Beneath my eyes Silfie actually begins to wilt, a little, a little more, until she’s standing silently, loosely, as if she doesn’t know what do with her hands or eyes or mouth or ears. I reach out and grasp her shoulder in a firm hand and say, “Silfia. No more.”
“You’re inexplicable,” she says. “The choices you make…I can’t fathom them. They’re stupid.” She looks to Donal. “Tell her.”
Donal says, “They’re her choices to make.”
Is that glitter in her eye the light or tears? I didn’t mean to make her cry. She marches out of the tent anyway, ears flat against her glossy curls. I feel empty and sad, but resolute.
“I hate to say so, Mistress,” Donal says into the ensuing quiet, “but going through with it now…well, the chances you’ll succeed aren’t good.”
“I can make it work,” I say, because I must.
My fingers are caught by their tips by his blunt ones.
Brought to his mouth.
Puff of breath, moist and body-warm. Almost a kiss, more intimate than one, on the tired joints of my fingers, across the valleys between my knuckles. My fur ruffles. I feel light-headed and strange.
He brings my hand to his forehead then, in that show of allegiance and fealty.
“Please, Mistress,” he says. “Reconsider? There are other ways to pull our enemies out of hiding.”
“Short of arresting former Governor Chordwain,” I say, “I can’t imagine what.”
“So why not try it?”
I blink at him. “Try what?” Then I back-track. “Arresting Chordwain?” I laugh. “Oh, Donal. That would be outrageous.”
He grins, all fang and sparkle and darkness. “Would it?”
My fingers are still in his. Remembering them, I flush with something. Embarrassment, probably. “Donal—”
“Don’t leave,” he says.
“It’s my tent!” I exclaim.
He laughs. “Mistress. I meant the camp. Don’t leave on your errand.” Now I am blushing, and it’s certainly embarrassment. But he’s still talking. “Gather us back together. Let’s explore the possibility of arresting the ex-governor. Or anything else we can come up with.”
“And hope there are no more Colblains to betray us?” I say bitterly.
“You can trust us,” Donal says, just as I expect him to.
“That’s what I thought about Colblain.”
I’m expecting discomfort, platitudes, something. Instead, Donal snorts and says, “Then you had a Godkin’s blindsight and a Godkindred Kingdom native’s naïveté. He’s a noble, Angharad, following the perfect steps from childhood to power. Why would he truck with someone sullied like you?”
“I am also a Godkin noble,” I say, pulling back. Not anger, though. Uncertainty.
Pushing my white forelock from my silver eye is an intimacy that should have galled, but Donal makes it seem as impersonal as exposing evidence. “Not to Colblain or anyone like him anymore. You might not perceive your loyalties as having changed, Mistress, but events conspire to make you seem so. Do you blame Colblain then for cutting free of you before you drag him down?”
That makes me bristle, but not enough to say anything. I’m not so stupid or so blind as to deny the obvious. Having foreign gods speak to me probably doesn’t make me look well in other people’s eyes. I just thought—
“You have our loyalty because we believe in you,” Donal says. “Colblain, however, doesn’t need to give you fealty to have honor, position and power. In fact, he could lose all those things by trusting you too much.”
“If you knew all these things, why didn’t you say something?” I ask, acerbic.
He shrugs. “I thought better of the Godkin than I should have. I see now you are merely people. People with fancier houses and broader lands and strange ambitions, but still people.”
It is easy to forget that Donal is a foreigner and not merely a citizen with a rural accent. We are so accustomed to thinking of our provinces as part of the empire that we forget they were once sovereign countries of their own. “And the Neshanti have no ambitions, no fancy houses and no broad lands?” I ask.
He grins without humor. “No, Mistress. The Godkindred Kingdom took all those things away.”
I wonder how my flush looks in that all white ear. He squeezes my fingers. “Don’t feel over-bad about it. Our nobles were not much better than yours. We might hate having to serve new ones, but the level of abuse and irritation is much the same.”
“It won’t be that way in Shraeven,” I say.
“That would be very nice,” he says. No touch of wistfulness. A soldier’s skepticism mixed with a captain’s loyalty.
I sigh. “Gather the others. We have a change in plans to discuss.”
“Aye, Mistress.”
* * *
To say my captains are relieved to hear of my change in plans would be understating the matter. Colblain’s treachery has shaken everyone, and I suppose they all thought me half-gone with madness myself to be willing to go on as we’d decided.
Yes, they were relieved about the change in plans, but the new plan itself? That is a different matter.
“You can do that?” Oweir asks, brows lifting. Not in thought, mind, but in consternation.
“Of course she can,” Silfie says. “She’s the governor. He’s not.”
“But he was the governor,” Oweir says. “Doesn’t he have temporary immunity?”
Gavan says. “That’s a myth.”
“A courtesy,” I say. “It is a courtesy for in-coming governors to overlook the transgressions of their predecessors. In an attempt to make the empire look less culpable, unstable, or corrupt.”
They all stare at me. I wonder why until Silfie says, “What…did you just call us?”
“Us?” I ask. Then realize. I tuck my white forelock behind that silvery ear: not affected nonchalance, but baring my face. A symbolic acceptance of the obvious. “We might as well call a pear a pear. We’re no more a kingdom than I am a temple virgin. A country that conquers and annexes other countries, denying them their sovereignty, is an empire, plain and simply said.”
“You will win no friends speaking so!” Gavan exclaims. “Mistress! It might even be considered—”
I shake my head. “What would make the Godson laugh to hear it would never be treason, Gavan. And he would have delight, I suspect, to hear it.” I smile wryly. “Besides, do any of you disagree?”
“I sure don’t,” Donal says, emphasizing an accent that I hadn’t realized he’d shrugged off in our march until now. When he meets my eyes with glittering ones it strikes me that he is proud of me…and all too aware of what the Godkindred Kingdom has become and I was too blind to accept.
Until now.
Did Shraeven free me, or am I now doomed?
“Mistress,” Oweir says, “We worry.”
“So do I,” I say. “But not about this. Let’s draw up scenarios based on what might fall out when we arrest Chordwain. I want the men prepared.”
Gavan and Oweir and—yes, Silfie—are somewhat uneasy, but they are soon embroiled in the session and become as comfortable with the notion as Donal. And amazingly, as we go through the possible repercussions, I begin to believe that this might work even better than our original plan.