Fray

by Rowenna Miller

“Commander Otni—”

  “Did not request me. Very well.” She sat next to Emmi. “I will remain in the company of these ladies, then.” She met my eyes—she would learn what she could here. There were few moments that passed that could not, for Sastra-set Alba, be turned to some use.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Fig as he tugged my sleeve in haste.

  “The wall,” he replied. “Otni says you could be of some use there.”

  62

  FIG WAS JOINED BY A PAIR OF MEN CARRYING MUSKETS, THEIR red caps the only indicator of a uniform and their bearing more like those of dockworkers carting a shipment than soldiers under arms. No matter—those muskets, if loaded and primed, were just as deadly carried by a dockworker as a professional soldier, and I took Niko’s meaning in their presence. My company was not requested but summoned.

  The vacant city we moved through was much like what I’d already seen, broken windows and half-burned buildings. A small square near the public gardens held gallows, and I turned my face away. As we moved closer to the fortified wall surrounding the city, however, the damage grew more substantial, artillery fire knocking craters into the cobblestone streets and whole blocks splintered and burned.

  “These were houses,” I said. “The people—”

  “Mostly moved toward the city center, where it’s safer,” Fig said.

  “Mostly.” I glanced at the soldiers walking beside us, matching Fig’s quick pace with long strides. “And you? Are your families safe?”

  The man nearest me started, not expecting the Sophie Balstrade he’d imagined to care enough to inquire. Did he imagine a traitor, or a witch, or a spoiled princess in training, I wondered? “They’re all near Fountain Square,” he said. “We’ve turned those shops into warehouses for supplies and dormitories. Keeps everyone safer, I wager.”

  “I would say so,” I said, glancing at a chair, overturned and smashed to kindling in the middle of what had been someone’s front room.

  Niko met us as the street corroded into broken gravel in front of us. “Well done, Fig, go on back and have a rest.”

  “I can stay and keep running messages, sir, if you like.”

  Niko smiled with something close to indulgence and patted Fig’s shoulder. “Not needed. Have a nap.” Fig scurried off, and Niko beckoned me to follow him. It didn’t escape me that the two soldiers had not been dismissed. They stood behind me, and I could almost sense the weapons in their hands. “Take a look,” he said, almost nonchalant. Almost, except for a strain of something like hope in his voice.

  The street dipped uphill a few steps from us, and along that upturn, there was another set of barricades, this time built in successive layers like the terraces the Serafans used for their elaborate gardens. I couldn’t stop the sharp intake of my breath as I realized that one section had, very recently, been hit. Bits of wood splintered into long shards over scarred ground, and stretcher bearers were running the last of the wounded toward the hospital on Fountain Square.

  They passed close, and I made out the outline of a ragged piece of wood embedded deep in the man’s side, his linen shirt punctured by the splinter and stained with blood. He cried out with each jolt and turn of the stretcher, and I forced myself to keep my eyes on his pale, drawn face instead of turning away.

  Niko stopped the stretcher bearers and swiftly, silently clasped the wounded man’s hand. He spoke to him, in a low voice I couldn’t hear, but it had some effect. The man’s mouth set itself in a stoic line and he looked, for the moment, determined. Niko stepped away and turned on his heel toward me. “Now that you see what we’re facing, what can you do?”

  “What can I do?” I gaped. I could try to work a protection charm into the rickety barricades, I supposed. But I had little faith that it would stand up to repeated artillery fire—it was luck I could add, nothing more. A few hours, maybe, a few more missed aims. “You dragged me out here to see—” I swallowed. “If I could do anything for that poor man, to prevent more pain for anyone, I would.”

  “Then do it!” Niko roared, and I saw him, suddenly, differently. He was tired, nearly broken by the suffering around him. All of his pragmatism could only shore him up so far to make brutally necessary decisions time and again.

  There was another shot from the artillery, not so very far away, its deep, thunderous voice pounding alongside my heartbeat, and a round struck the pockmarked, vacant land nearest the wall. “Believe me. If I could end this right now, I would break every rule I have to do so. But I can’t.”

  “You can. You will. It’s the last hope I have,” he added, desperation finally overtaking the control in his voice. He gestured to the men, who primed their weapons. “I’ll force you. I will.”

  “Force me to do what? Niko—”

  “Level on her.”

  “Not like this!” I stared at the rusted barrels of the old muskets, wishing desperately that I was wearing charmed clothing that might, maybe, induce a misfire in these battered firelocks. “I can use my magic to help, but not here. Not like this. Just listen—”

  “If not now, when? The time for deliberation is over. You’re either with our cause or you’re a traitor to your own people.” He took a breath and stepped away from me. “Make ready.” I watched the locks clack into place, ready to fire under the unwavering hands of the soldiers.

  “You’re right that I’m the last hope you have,” I said, forcing my voice to stay steady. “I’m going with Alba not to just secure supplies, but to embed enough charm magic in them to give you an advantage. Uniforms with protection spells. Shot charmed for accuracy. Anything I can.”

  He stared at me for a long time. “Secure your firelocks,” he finally ordered. “How can I know you’re telling the truth, that you’ll come back here with what we need?”

  I met his eyes. “Niko, trust me.”

  He evaded my gaze. “I have a hard time trusting you.”

  “I know!” I laughed, bitter and hard. “I know. That’s been the damn crux of it from the start, hasn’t it?” Niko thumbed the bayonet at his belt, the hilt slapping his waist. Repetitive, futile. “We can’t keep repeating this, Niko. Your best gamble is letting me go with Alba.”

  He assessed me, the long, searching look of someone who very badly wanted to be the confident architect Pyord had been and knowing he lacked the innate skills. Niko was something else, a clever, swift-moving Galitha City dockworker. A rapidly adapting child of Pellian immigrants like me.

  “Don’t try to be him,” I said on impulse. “Pyord. You can lead this army better than he could have. He dealt in complicated plans and subterfuge. You’re past that now.”

  Niko’s brows constricted. He didn’t reply to this; I hadn’t expected him to. “And you say you and Alba can get us the supplies we need?”

  “We can,” I said. “We can outfit an army that will win, not an army that will make a valiant last stand.”

  Niko nodded, slowly. Adjusting. “Very well. My people will help you get out of the city via the river. There’s very little movement north of us, you’ll have little enough trouble reaching Kvyset.”

  63

  THERE WAS NO NEED FOR DECEPTION OR COMPLICATED SCHEMES to leave the city. I simply changed into a simple, loose short gown and petticoat Alice leant me, with a subdued farewell. Leaving the Kvys disguise behind, I set out into the city with Alba and Niko. War made for clear lines drawn between combatant and comrade, between territories carved out on each side. It made for a strange sense of relief amid the chaos; I knew where I stood, the borders between friend and foe neatly demarcated for the first time in recent memory.

  “It is not so far from the river to the Kvys border,” Alba said as we made our plan with Niko, “that we cannot walk as the pilgrims do.”

  “And be robbed and beaten as pilgrims surely are.” Niko snorted. “No, the river runs north toward the coastline. A small vessel could carry you to a Kvys port. Provided you can pay.”

  “That I can promise,” Alba said. “And we will
have help waiting for us in Afenstrid. But the Galatine navy?”

  “They’ve massed here. They’ve not blockaded the mouth of the river; they can’t without sacrificing too much of their current strength.”

  “Patrols?” I asked.

  Niko shook his head. “Stretched too thin to patrol the coastline effectively.”

  “Perhaps ineffectively—but they must patrol. Then there is some risk in a sea voyage, too.” Alba smiled. “The pilgrim way puts us in no one else’s debt or constraint. What if we cannot trust the man we hire?”

  “You’ll be able to,” Niko said. “Between who I know here and your funds, we’ll have a trustworthy boat captain.”

  “And then there’s the time it takes,” I said. “A sea voyage, you agree, would be shorter. The sooner we can get ourselves out of Galitha, the sooner we can begin establishing suppliers for the army.”

  Niko grinned. “That’s true. And you’ve already noticed, sister, how badly we need the help.” Alba agreed, reticently, and I wondered if she was right to be more cautious of a sea voyage or if her wariness was borne out of yielding control to Niko and the boat captain. Necessity didn’t always make for comfort in these freshly brokered alliances.

  Niko himself accompanied us to the riverfront docks. These had been little used when the city was not at war; river vessels dropped their cargo here and carried people toward the eastern river cities and, occasionally, to Kvyset. The boats were smaller, dealing in the currency of muscle as they were rowed up and down the river. An old cob plodded along, drawing ferry boats across the river in a system of pulleys that had remained for decades.

  A farmer unloaded sacks of early potatoes and greens from the ferry, part of a tenuous network of suppliers bringing food from the thin northern farmlands. He watched us blandly as Niko spoke in rushed, quiet tones with the owner of a nearby skiff.

  “He will want more payment than your friend is willing to part with,” Alba said, watching the exchange.

  “I don’t think he’s my friend,” I replied. “But I suppose you’re right. Care to assist?”

  Alba folded her hands over her gray habit and inclined her head. She had, despite Niko’s arguments, replaced the veil. She glided toward them and an arrangement was swiftly reached. I envied her the deep pockets of her house and the graceful confidence that ended arguments so quickly.

  As promised, the journey from the river to the coastline was short, and the mouth of the river comfortably fed us into a broad harbor. No Galatine ships blocked this route yet; that could come before the war was over. If the main harbor and the river mouth were both blocked, no supplies could reach Galitha City by the sea, and if the Royalists had their plans laid well, they could siege the city from the other side. If Theodor and Kristos didn’t have our troops in the south in fighting order by then, it was likely to be a swift defeat.

  Alba spent the short time at sea drafting letters and calculating funds and running all sorts of tabulations that I only half understood. I thought I knew numbers from keeping my shop’s finances, but this was at a greater scale and more intricate tangle of investment and risk and payoff. If the Fenians committed to production, what did we owe to whom, in how many foundries and textile mills and shipyards? Each investment in one area meant trimming a bit from another venture—even the coffers of the Order of the Golden Sphere were not without limit.

  While Alba ran scenario after scenario on paper in our shared cabin, I holed up in a corner of the skiff not used overmuch by the pair of sailors keeping the vessel moving. And time and again, I pulled light from the ether around me without the aid of a needle or music. As I practiced over the course of a long summer day, it became clear how crude the conjuring I’d done on the ship from Serafe had been. Unlike my stitched charms, which I could imbue with precise charms for protection, love, money, or health, what I messily pulled and pressed into the sails of the brig had been merely vague good fortune.

  Moreover, I needed more control over the light itself, and practiced threading it into ever-more refined spirals and whorls before letting it dissipate. If I didn’t tack it to a physical object, it quickly faded and released itself back to wherever it had come from. Focusing on the actual work of charm casting, and on this uncharted method, took my mind off of the stinging question of whether I ought to be doing it at all.

  I couldn’t tell when we crossed the border into Kvys waters, but by sunrise of our second day at sea, we were in sight of Afenstrid.

  “It has Fen in the name,” I said as Alba pointed out the still-distant smudge of towers and walls.

  “Indeed. As I said, Fenians were originally Kvys colonists. The languages have diverged a bit over time, but a Kvys can still understand a Fenian most of the time, and vice versa.” She turned her impassive gaze on the shoreline. “Fen simply means rock. A particular connotation of hard, unyielding, yet valuable rock.”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “If rock is against you, there is no turning it. But it’s a worthwhile ally, I would say.” She returned to the cabin and packed her papers until we had reached the docks.

  I had expected a quiet fishing village or middling port city, like those we had seen in southern Galitha, but Afenstrid was nothing like those towns with their ramshackle wooden dockside buildings and warehouses. Instead, towers of white limestone and painted turrets bloomed behind the orderly docks, hemmed in by high walls of iron-bordered stone.

  A pair of women in gray robes matching Alba’s waited at the end of the docks. Their white veils set them apart from the tradesmen and merchants who also wore gray, black, and deep blue, even in the summer. Kvys were not keen on showy clothing, but they showed their wealth nonetheless. Black was not a cheap dye by any means, and I noticed the fine quality of the merchants’ summer-weight wool suits and the silk satin trim and intricate blackwork embroidery on the exposed shift and shirt collars and cuffs.

  Alba greeted them with a kiss and a torrent of Kvys, then quickly introduced me. If their knowing looks were any indication, the introduction was unnecessary. They had a carriage waiting, and the ride to the convent took most of what remained of the long summer day. Exhausted by my extended charm casting on board ship and unable to converse with the sisters, I stared out the window as the city unfolded into a bright meadow and then a brilliantly green forest of narrow birches. I could understand Alba’s reticence to leave this country for Serafe, and as we stopped for lunch in a moss-covered glen bordered by a crystalline brook, I wondered if I might have actually been transported into a fairy tale.

  Then I remembered the fire I’d helped to set in Galitha, not so very far away from this idyllic forest, and knew that this was no folk story. If there was any happy ending to be had here, I would have to help write it.

  We arrived at the House of the Golden Sphere just as dusk began to deepen the colors of the forest and soften its edges to velvet. I suppose I had expected the convent to look as dour as the sisters’ dress, but its dormitories and libraries and chapels were beautifully built of pale wood, with high arching roofs and tall windows so that light could wash each room. It looked as though it had grown out of the forest itself, and the trees pressed close against its outer walls of pale stone.

  “I know you must be tired, but there is something I must show you before you retire,” Alba said.

  Our traveling companions bowed slightly and took their leave, disappearing into a nearby dormitory.

  “The convent was built hundreds of years ago,” Alba said, “though I know it hardly looks it—we are scrupulous about the upkeep, of course. The oldest building is the basilica, at the center. It was built almost half a millennium ago, to the glory of the Creator. I wish for you to see it.”

  Though I was bone tired, the clean calm of the convent leant me some energy. I followed Alba to the center of the convent, where the concentric rings of buildings gave way to an open courtyard surrounding a limestone cathedral. It was smaller than the great cathedral in Galitha City, but no less b
eautifully built. I stepped toward it, taking in the way the light of the setting sun illuminated the swiftly sloping roofline and the arched tips of the windows.

  And then I gasped.

  The light wasn’t from the setting sun at all. It bloomed from the structure itself. Golden light shrouded the poplar frame of the doorway. It shone like a pale halo, exuding a calm beneficence. I stepped through the doorway, exquisitely attuned to the shimmering light, caught nearly breathless as it licked my sleeve and plucked at my hair in its gentle undulation. Inside, the beams supporting the ceiling of the chapel were overlaid with the familiar otherworldly brilliance. Even the leaded glass windows thrummed with charm magic, a delicate fuzz of light covering them like a film.

  I traced the nearest window, hand faltering as the magic pooled around my fingertip and receded.

  “It was the special practice of the sisters here,” Alba said quietly.

  I remembered that she was there. In a rush, I remembered that the Kvys hated casting, scorned it, that it was against every understanding I had of Kvys culture to embrace any part of it. I remembered that Alba had known I was a caster—had known this about me longer than I had known Alba—and yet had failed to say anything about this living light. I remembered that I couldn’t truly trust my allies as I would friends. That trust turned shaky the moment we stepped away from our uneasy but equal footing.

  “You didn’t see fit to tell me.”

  “It has to be seen. To be understood.”

  “You could have told me something. Anything. You—you can see this, can’t you?” I asked.

  She nodded slowly. “It has taken years for me to even perceive it. My aptitude for the art of the spheres is very low. So much so that, were I not a sister, not devoted to hours of silence and meditation, I would not see it clearly at all.”

  I waved my hand, silencing her without words. The hazy golden quiet of the chapel would not be interrupted by my angry voice. “But you can see my work.”