CHAPTER

9

Upon his arrest at the white-gloved hands of Othean’s Samjok-o Guard, the Baron of Cockspar gave a formal declaration of his name, rank, and status as an active Crimson colonel taken hostage by the nefarious Cobalt Company … along with his loyal bodyguard. While that set the Immaculates to chattering among themselves, it didn’t get Domingo an immediate audience with the empress or any of her advisors. It did, however, get him comfortable chambers in the heart of the sprawling Winter Palace, and a rattan wheelchair to roll there in. Such amenities were obvious improvements on drafty, moth-eaten tents and bouncing, splintery cart-beds.

There was a time not so long ago that the notion of allowing a witchborn into his private rooms would have been unthinkable to Domingo. Anathema, even. But after being laid out in the wagon beside Brother Wan and then cuddled up on by Hoartrap the Touch, he was just relieved he didn’t have to share his bed with Captain Choi.

And what ridiculous beds they were, too! Their gilded cage had what looked to be two polished topaz kaldi tables instead of cots, though Domingo’s estimation of the Immaculate beds improved dramatically once he learned hot coals were placed beneath them to keep the stone mattress warm throughout the night. Choi seemed to think the climate unnaturally clement for the season, but to Domingo’s hot southern blood it was still damned chilly after dark, and the combination of heat and firmness against his lame hip made the Lion of Cockspar as comfy as an old tom snoring on a sunny windowsill.

Yet comfort wasn’t always enough to make one comfortable. When he woke one night to use his bedpan and saw the horned silhouette of the moonlit witchborn sitting up in a meditative posture on the other side of the paper screen that divided their room, for example, he found it difficult to relax again. Too close for comfort, too close by far.

Back home in Azgaroth there had been plenty of the freaks—too many, most citizens would agree—but while they weren’t persecuted the way they were in less enlightened parts of the Empire where the Chain was stronger, that didn’t mean the baron invited them into his house. No it did not. Their kind had always been mistrusted if not shunned by the good people of Cockspar for the quite reasonable reason that the things were bloody monsters, albeit ones that played at being pureborn, as he had so keenly put it to Lupitera as they returned from a drama she had dragged him to that was little more than a simpering apologia for the witchborn. His sister-in-law had offered some snide rejoinder about what higher form of life Domingo might be impersonating, though he couldn’t for the life of him recall if she’d compared him to a shrew or a shrike. She’d always had a flair for the one-liners, had Lupitera, having no doubt memorized a catalogue’s worth of them during her misspent youth on the other side of the playhouse stage.

Forcing his insubordinate bladder to produce a weak trickle into the porcelain bedpan, he wondered what his sister-in-law might make of him now, a man risking his life to help a witchborn, and an Immaculate one at that? Not that he’d had much choice in the matter, he told himself … but then another part of Domingo piped in, the one that only ever seemed to find its voice in the wee hours. Of course he’d had a choice. He could have told the anathema to take a long march off a short parapet. And if he’d had the courage of his convictions he would have—he’d always firmly believed death was the end of one’s troubles, not the start of fresh ones, and he’d rarely thought twice about ordering countless soldiers to sacrifice themselves, if the cause demanded it. Surely dying with his pride intact would be preferable to entering into a murderous pact with a monster …

And yet when the time had come he hadn’t even hesitated, capitulating as fast as humanly possible when it seemed like the witchborn was going to make good on her threat. Here at the end of life’s long campaign Baron Domingo Hjortt, the Lion of Cockspar, shied away from an honorable death like a spooked gelding from a Gate, despite the fact that he had absolutely nothing left to live for, and hadn’t for quite some time. No spouse nor heir, no regiment nor friends, no queen nor empire, not even the ability to stand upright despite the miraculous recovery of his other wounds, and for all the shit he’d ever talked about the cowardice of every single other person he’d ever met, Domingo had done exactly what his craven son would have: he bought his worthless life at the expense of his last scrap of self-respect.

“That is enough,” he told himself, the warm topaz beneath the bedding now oppressively hot despite the wind coming in from the sea, rattling against the thin outer screens of their room like a hungry animal eager to be let inside. “That’s an order, Colonel.”

His seditious heart seemed poised to ignore his command and press its attack when there came a grunt from the other side of the screen that partitioned his half of the room from that of his ostensible bodyguard. His injured neck had recovered along with the rest of him following the trip through the Gate, but he snapped his head around so quickly he nearly strained it anew. Those needly shivers were instantly forgotten as he saw the horned silhouette of Choi slowly topple from her seated posture, falling without another sound into her bedding. Was their plot discovered, had a silent, unseen assassin just cut her down in her midnight prayers? After forfeiting his honor was Domingo about to lose his life anyway, at the hands of a—

The witchborn grunted again, twisting around in her sheets, but it wasn’t an unhappy grunt, and Domingo’s panic turned to embarrassment at overhearing what sounded an awful lot like carnal bliss. Whether she assumed her roommate was asleep and was pleasuring herself or had dozed off in her meditations and was enjoying a wet dream was a question Domingo regretted asking himself as soon as he did, and he promptly buried his head under a pillow. It was just like being back at the Academy in Lemi, right down to the awkward erection the muffled sounds aroused. He hadn’t been troubled by that old pest in quite some time, but taking the matter in hand would offer some comfort, and after his disgraceful behavior comfort was the last thing he deserved.

The last thing either of them deserved, for that matter, and first thing in the morning he’d have a word with the witchborn about making such a racket—biting a pillow was just good practice, damn it, and if randy teenagers in a military school dormitory could learn that, then so could a grown woman, even a monster.

“I … what?” The witchborn set down her bowl of adzuki porridge as if Domingo had casually spit in it.

“You heard me, Captain, do you really want to make this more uncomfortable by having me repeat myself?” Domingo plopped more of the coconut cream into his porridge and stirred it up with his spoon, raising a mouthful and watching it steam. The witchborn had gotten him into his chair and wheeled him over to the room’s single window so they could look out at the sea as they ate breakfast, the salty breeze as bracing as kaldi would have been, if only they’d been brought that instead of thick, nutty tea. “I’m not even asking you to desist, just show a little respect for your neighbor and keep it to a low roar.”

“I was unaware,” said Choi, looking more mystified than mortified. “I kept my own tent at the Lark’s Tongue camp, so I did not know.”

“Didn’t know you make more of a ruckus than a cadet showing off at his first brothel, or didn’t know that parchment-thin scroll they put up between our beds wasn’t enough to mute your racket?” Domingo spooned porridge into his mouth. Back in the Cobalt camp he’d lived off soft foods, the wound Brother Wan had opened in his face making it agonizing to eat anything else, and he had sworn that if he lived long enough to recover he would never touch another bowl of gruel … yet even with a shiny new scar on his mouth instead of a braid of stitches he kept coming back to this delicately sweet slop. At first he’d been skeptical of the dish, as it bore a striking resemblance to refried beans—that always pasty and often rancid staple of Azgarothian camp cooks—but he had warmed surprisingly quickly to Immaculate cuisine. Even if breakfast bore an uncanny resemblance to dinner, both meals came with a wide array of options, so that on mornings when he didn’t feel up to a platter of pork belly with lettuce cups or a piping hot bowl of oxblood soup he could always fall back on a porridge or three.

His growing fondness for the foreign fare was a development as unexpected as Choi choosing to press the issue of her night songs. At least he’d cleared the air, and while nobody likes hearing that their solo sessions have been overheard, he assumed anyone in her position would prefer to be informed.

“Did I say anything?” Her bloodred eyes were intently fixed on him, as though he had a spider hanging from his forehead and she was a sting-junkie trying to ascertain the breed. “Anything at all? What did you hear, precisely?”

“What did I hear?” Now Domingo was the flustered one, his cheeks going the color of the chilies in the kimchi as he recalled his unintended excitement of the night before. “Captain, I will have you know I was doing my best not to listen! You didn’t make it very easy, with all the grunting and—”

“Tonight you’ll watch over me and listen,” she said, and before his dangling chin could reach his porridge she made a face as though he were the kinky one. “Not to … that. I was dreaming, and tonight when I dream I will try to speak to you. You will give your word to repeat what I have said to you when I awake. If I can even make myself heard …”

“I will, will I?” Domingo set down his breakfast and wiped off his chin with a blue silk napkin. He was getting far too stubbly. Even here in captivity the Immaculates had let both him and Choi keep their swords so he didn’t think he’d have trouble getting a razor; the question was whether he could keep a blade steady enough not to cut his own throat, considering he had yet to make it through a meal without his age-traitorous hand making a mess of him. “I swore to help you … well, I swore what I swore, and that’s the last we need speak of it, really, especially so long as we are guests of the empress. But I did not swear an oath to be your trained poodle, sitting or fetching or staying up all hours with a quill to write down anything you might say in your sleep.”

“I do not think dogs can actually—”

“You know what I mean!”

“This is important,” she said, as though that settled the matter. The dainty celadon teacup she lifted to her lips looked even more out of place in her scraped and callused fingers than it did in Domingo’s liver-spotted hands. This woman must have seen her share of action, and more, or Domingo was no judge at all.

“Oh, well, if it’s important then …” said Domingo, but when she didn’t pick up on his obvious sarcasm he spelled it out for her. “If it’s that important then you’ll really want to do a better job of explaining yourself, is my meaning, because I don’t intend to waste my nights waiting to see if you’re a sleep talker. So you have a good long think on the tone with which you address me from now on, Captain Choi, because Colonel Hjortt does not respond well to nonsense.”

The moony witchborn stared past Domingo as if he weren’t even there. As she gazed off into space she opened her mouth a little but didn’t drink the tea or speak, running her tongue back and forth behind her fangs—he could tell that was what she was doing from all the missing teeth providing him windows to the interior. Wait … was she actually having a good long think?

“Very well,” she said, her eyes back on him, and she set the teacup down without taking a sip. “You will be the first I trust with this information, Domingo Hjortt. You will swear to keep my secret?”

“Who would I tell, exactly?” said Domingo, gesturing around the pink papered walls and richly painted screens of their spacious cell. A week of internment with Choi and they hadn’t seen a single other member of the Cobalt Company. Nor an Immaculate, for that matter, save the servants who delivered their meals and escorted them through the warren of empty wooden corridors to the massive bathing complex each evening. Half a regiment could have scrubbed up at the same time in that partially open-air arena of terraced pools, steaming grottos, and warm waterfalls, but the only other bather he ever saw was Choi.

There was something disquieting about being held captive in the biggest metropolis in the Star but hardly seeing another soul. But then they weren’t in Othean proper, were they, but one of the four palaces that occupied the corners of the capital city. Domingo seemed to remember hearing that the Immaculate court moved around between these cardinal castles, so perhaps the empress and her ministers were currently somewhere else and the Winter Palace was empty save for a handful of important prisoners. When he’d asked Choi why there weren’t guards posted in the long, screened-in hallway outside their quarters, she’d told him some ominous riddle about one viper being worth a dozen snarling hounds.

Seeing that the rhetorical nature of his question had flown right past her beastly head and she again seemed to be waiting on a literal declaration of intention, he said, “I’ve already sworn away my life to you, Captain Choi, so go ahead and have my word while you’re at it. I’ll keep your secrets. We’re in thick with each other now, even though it likely means we both go down together.”

As soon as he said it he realized it was what Zosia had told him when she’d called on him in the Cobalt camp, that or something like it, and he shivered at the inadvertent invocation of her words. Of all his phantoms, hers was the least welcome in his head.

“Have you heard the old songs that some wildborn may melt … ah, enter, may enter into the mind of another mortal?” Choi asked, reminding Domingo that there were actually worse ghosts haunting him of late.

“Old songs, as you say, nothing more,” he said, his scarred cheek itching as he remembered Brother Wan’s wagon-bed confession just before he’d tried to murder Domingo. “The witchborn … that is, the, uh, you weirdborn—”

“Wildborn.” It was the first time she’d corrected him on the matter, but the look on her face told him she had better not need to remind him again.

“Yes, well … you wildborn spread a lot of rumors about being able to look into other people’s minds to make yourselves appear useful, and dangerous,” said Domingo, remembering how violated he’d felt back when he had actually believed Wan’s ruse. “But the truth is you people are just naturally good at understanding mortals, empathizing and intuiting and such.”

“Wildborn are mortals, the same as you,” said Choi, looking at Domingo like he was the one with a black horn and a half growing out of his skull. “And my people, as you describe us, are not mine at all. Most of us are unique from one another, just as all people are, even those born in the same place, the same time, the same family. I may be of different blood than most of my house but I am a child of Hwabun before I am anything else.”

Her pedantic tone made Domingo uncomfortable; lecturing his sister-in-law on the obvious degeneracy and otherness of the witchborn was one thing, but it just seemed too rude to engage one of the things themselves in a debate on the matter. “Yes, well, we were discussing something very specific, weren’t we? About how your kind can’t actually get into other people’s heads like you claim, that you’re essentially charlatans skilled at playing the gullible, like mummers at a faire.”

“That is what you were talking about,” said Choi, “though I do not know why, or where you came by that story. Perhaps you have merely proven my point that the similarities among the wildborn are ascribed by those looking at us from without. The old songs I refer to have nothing to do with confidence tricksters, but dreamtrekkers.”

“Eh?” She had the infuriating quality of making less sense the more she talked. No wonder she mostly stayed silent as a scabbard despite how starved for conversation Domingo was growing, locked up with this taciturn freak. “Perhaps it would be better if you just had your say all in one go, Captain, since I can’t even begin to guess what you’re on about.”

“To dreamtrek is to allow your spirit to take leave of your flesh and go in search of another’s … and to melt into their mind, so that the two of you share a single dream.” Choi again had that faraway look in her creepy eyes, complementing the creepy picture she was painting. “It was an art of the Age of Wonders. Like so much else it was believed lost, but lineage-keepers on the Immaculate Isles have worked for centuries to rediscover the technique. The oil of the harpyfish is one key to unlocking the dreaming spirit, though it is believed there were others, and that many wildborn required nothing more than to focus their hearts and release their minds. In doing so they were able to melt into the dreams of others, not just those who shared a bed or a house but even confederates on the far corners of the Star.”

Old legends of nighthags descending on innocent sleepers and riding them until dawn flitted through Domingo’s mind. For some reason this conjured the mental image of his sister-in-law Lupitera saddling him up, making him don one of her wigs, and carrying her off on his sweaty back. He winced away the hideous image as the witchborn continued.

“I had never before attempted it, for dreamtrekking is a perilous art. The flesh of the dreamer may not rouse to danger, or worse, the spirit may become stranded in the First Dark, cut off forever from the world of mortals. Yet the time came when the practice no longer seemed an unnecessary risk but a challenge to be faced with honor, and I have indeed overcome that challenge, as I have so many others. I think.”

“You think?” Domingo still wasn’t sure where this was going, but he was a little intrigued … even if it was all sounding rather a lot like an Immaculate variation on Brother Wan’s bunkum, concocting supernatural explanations for mundane phenomena. Then again, all but his most debilitating injury had spontaneously mended themselves after the briefest exposure to the so-called First Dark, so he couldn’t very well deny there was something incredible about the space beyond the Gates … but no, this was codswallop! “Forgive an old Azgarothian his skepticism, Captain, but what I’m hearing from you is that you had a dream where you what, left your body? No no, that’s not even it, is it? You think you had a dream where you left your body. All the rest of it, if you will pardon my Crimson, sounds an awful lot like pagan pigshit.”

“I pardon your Crimson and forgive your skepticism,” said Choi. “It is possible you are correct, where my own experiments are concerned. I have been attempting to reach him for many, many nights, and each time I do I am sure I have succeeded. It is more vivid than any dream, it is real … but when I awake all the detail falls away as soon as I move to grasp it, and I am left with less than a dream, just a vague impression, like figures glimpsed retreating through a fog.”

“Excuse me, you said in your dream you reach for him?” asked Domingo, his thoughts of nighthags now supplanted by tales of incubi, which rather seemed to fit with her performance of the night before. “Him who? What exactly are you trying to accomplish with this dreamtrekking of yours?”

“I …” And now she looked away, suddenly finding her lukewarm tea quite nice indeed. Then she smiled faintly, perhaps at the memory of her inamorato, or perhaps at her own timidity in naming her paramour to a crippled old man who already kept far more dangerous secrets of hers. “Maroto.”

“Oh, Captain,” said Domingo, utterly disgusted. “Of all the Villains, hells, of all the men!”

“You have underestimated him, too,” said Choi in that same infuriatingly condescending tone she’d used when lecturing him on the witchborn. “Most do, to their peril.”

“That stunt your squad pulled in the mountains didn’t have anything to do with Maroto’s skill, and you know it!” said Domingo, his pride smarting at the memory even if his healed wounds no longer did. “It was fool’s luck, plain and simple. Unless you intend to look me in the eye and swear on your honor that you somehow timed the appearance of that horned wolf that fucking ruined me, before I could do worse to the Moldy Maroto.”

“No, that was indeed what you call fool’s luck,” agreed Choi. “And it was you who ruined the wolf, and more fool’s luck that in its death throes it struck you. You are as good as your reputation, Domingo Hjortt. When I spoke of your underestimating Maroto I referred to your tactics at the Battle of Willowtip, where you—”

“I know what I did at Willowtip,” said Domingo, not caring to relive it with her dry summation. “But how the devils do you? Is your beefy beau still singing songs of the one time I played into his clumsy fingers, what, twenty-four years ago?”

“No,” said Choi. “I read of it long before I left Hwabun. I have always taken an interest in military history.”

“Military history,” said Domingo with a sigh. “I suppose that’s what I am now, aren’t I? And to think I … as good as my reputation?”

It had taken a moment to sink in through his annoyance at being reminded of yet another of his defeats at the hands of the Cobalts, but a word of praise from a fellow veteran always attracted his notice eventually. It was the strangest thing, and no doubt a symptom of not getting enough sleep on top of all his other woes, but Domingo suddenly found himself choked up at the notion of some Immaculate monster reading about his career.

“Do you think it was coincidence that the Empress Ryuki bided until you had retired from command before launching her reclamation of Linkensterne and the construction of the accompanying wall?” Choi refilled her tea, then his, and then as if to make sure he didn’t think she actually had the empress’s ear, she added, “I do not think it was coincidence. You are the greatest living Crimson officer, and your province is one of the closest to the Immaculate border. Any in the Isles who are trained in the art of war learn of your deeds.”

“Yes, well, we lost the one war that mattered, didn’t we?” he said with a grim smile, more honest with himself than he’d been in a very long time. At least when he was fully awake.

“To only examine the victor is to learn but one set of steps, and to truly learn the dance of war you must study both partners equally,” said Choi, quoting Lord Bleak’s Ironfist as though it were the most natural thing in the world for an Immaculate to be conversant in Imperial chivalric codes. And who knew, maybe such things were common here—for all the many Azgarothian tomes, Crimson catalogues, Usban scrolls, and Raniputri histories in his library Domingo had only ever read a single Immaculate manual, and that translation of Ji-un Park’s Most Enviable Positions was over two hundred years out of date. In retrospect he might have learned something about modern warfare from these island-dwelling fops after all, considering they hadn’t lost a major conflict in his lifetime. “You may have a low opinion of Maroto, but I tell you now I have seen him in both victory and defeat, and while you may win more often, he has learned to lose better.”

Domingo almost delivered a quip about just how good Maroto was at being a loser, but seeing the earnest expression of this warrior who through no fault of her own had been treating him with the utmost respect, he abandoned it at the last moment and just muttered, “Maroto is … yes, well, what about him, anyway?”

“I did not even tell my general I was attempting to contact Maroto by dreamtrekking, for her brow was already laden with worries and I did not know if I could even execute the art successfully. I chose to wait until I had results. Yet as I have told you, while I believe I have accomplished what I set out to do I cannot be certain that I am indeed dreamtrekking and not simply dreaming. When I wake I have no memory of what exactly transpired, only the sense that I have been with him, that we have communicated much to each other … but what we have said and done, exactly, is forgotten. So I keep trying, for any exercise improves with practice.”

“And certain forms of exercise inspire more commitment than others,” said Domingo. Her tale of nocturnal trysts reminded him of how in his dreams Concilia had never left him, that they were still husband and wife, and how every time he awoke from such dreams his mornings were bright and gay … until the moment he remembered she was long gone, and he was alone. Whether Choi was actually capable of witchy astral projection or had simply hit on the trick for ensuring happy dreams, he couldn’t blame her for wanting to spend as much time there as possible. “I still don’t see what you expect to gain from my keeping a vigil—even assuming you talk in your sleep, that won’t prove anything.”

“It may, if I remember this conversation as I am dreaming,” said Choi. “I have the sense that in my dreamtreks I am far sharper and more aware than in ordinary dreams. If I find my way to Maroto again I can put questions to him that only he could answer, and if I focus hard enough perhaps I can repeat his words loud enough that they pass through my lips as I lie sleeping.”

“This is sounding more and more like a carnival trick,” said Domingo. “Or worse, one of those swindlers who purport to speak with the dead, bilking grieving families out of their inheritance for the promise of a word or two from the other side.”

“The dead cannot speak, but sleepers often do,” said Choi decisively. “I have been attempting to do more than share pleasant dreams with him, and now we may have discovered a means. I will tell him what has befallen our general and our army, and will find out where he is and what has happened to him. I suspect we exchange this intelligence anew each time we meet, only to lose it again on waking. Perhaps the secret is not to try to carry it with us along our treks back to our flesh, but to set it sailing with our words as loudly as we can, while we are still at our sharpest in the heart of the dream. This must be why ancient oracles required a witness—to catch the wisdom they would not recall upon waking from their reveries.”

“I would be lying if I said that didn’t sound like utter balderdash,” said Domingo, picking up his post-prandial cigar from its silver tray. It was admittedly civilized of the Immaculates to provide him with a stubby stick at every meal … and downright infuriating that these Endonian cigars they offered their prisoners of war were the equal of the very best in his humidor back home in Cockspar.

“Balderdash?” asked Choi as Domingo used the provided shears to snip off the end of his cigar and lit it on the tea candle.

“Never … mind,” Domingo said around preliminary puffs. Once the woody cigar was good and going he sent a satisfied plume sailing over the ornamental waves carved into the windowsill, out to Othean Bay. “Tell you what, Choi—I’ll humor you and play awestruck scribe to your midnight oracle, in exchange for a favor owed. Agreed?”

“I do not agree to terms that have not been named,” said Choi. “A favor can mean many things, some which would be fair and others which would not.”

“Quite so, quite so,” said Domingo. “But those are my terms. You’ve got all day to mull it over, as I assume your nighttime sojourns are just that, but be aware I am intractable on this matter. A favor owed for my service, and nothing less.”

“Then I agree,” snapped Choi, more fired up than he’d seen her since the disastrous morning of their arrival at Othean. “It is that vital.”

“Apparently so,” said Domingo, setting down his teacup with a careless clatter on the saucer and reaching out to bump her waiting fist. “Just so I know what to do, though, what happens in the event that you aren’t able to remember your mission? What if instead of interrogating Maroto’s dream soul or whatever it is and passing along the word to me, you two just, well, have the same sort of encounter you did last night?”

“Then you go away,” said Choi, gazing out to the windswept blue sea as she at long last seemed to feel a touch of the embarrassment Domingo would have harbored from the first, had their roles been reversed. Then she looked back at him, imperious as ever, and said, “And if my maneuver does succeed and I do pass along information, I do not expect it to take all night, and so you may wish to excuse yourself at a certain juncture regardless. I will do as you requested and attempt to be quiet, but I do not know how many more nights either of us has left, and I intend to savor each one.”

“Yes, well,” said Domingo, ruffled all over again. “What do you say for now we change the topic to something more pleasant, like all my military failures or the human rights of the weird, er, wildborn, or virtually anything else at all?”

“If we do, is the favor I owe you paid?” she asked, and looking at the witchborn’s sharp smile he supposed she had more of a sense of humor than she’d previously let on.

“For the small matter of my eavesdropping on your dreamy rendezvous with one of my most hated enemies?” said Domingo, feeling a bit puckish himself in response to her wry smile. “Not even close, Captain, but it’s a start, it’s a start.”

And so it was, right up until the Samjok-o Guard arrived to interrogate the captured Crimson colonel as to why the Imperial navy, while flying Chainite flags, had barged past an Immaculate blockade in the Haunted Sea only to come zipping back out again, and was now seeking asylum at Othean instead of sailing back to Diadem.

Domingo and Choi exchanged a long and meaningful look after she had translated, and clearing his throat, Domingo announced that he might have some ideas, but as a senior officer of the Crimson Empire he could only share his intelligence with the empress herself.