“The man doesn’t know war. We know war. My knights know war. And we’ll teach the Bastard how to wage it.”
That he danced between the pair of men, surely none had missed. Yet the margrave slapped his palm upon his chair and all but roared his boast, and seemed to stir to the thought of his own glory. He did not share the looks the other men scattered between, saw neither the fear, nor the loss, nor the loop they seemed to place upon his neck. Tessel’s army was meant to break nations, and he knew, though Scheyer could not see it, precisely how to wield it. Between them, they had a province, and too much confidence to bear.
That night, she straddled the sky. It helped. Sometimes, she forgot how fortunate she was to have been born by water and shade. As she looked over the tops of the trees that harkened east, and bore her back across that distance, she thought of what it was to hide. Here, and to the west, as far as the eye could see, there were plains. Vast. Empty. Fertile, perhaps. Soon they would teem with life, writhe in it as men stabbed men and forgot who they really were. For all that land, they would never be able to run far enough.
Such was the way of war, she knew. Not from experience, but from the stories. The things old men told younger men, to prove themselves and dishearten the rest. Verdan had been a town of such men—soldiers and soldiers’ sons, putting their hands to other ventures. They had earned their own blood killing Surinians, when Surinians still fought back. Then Surinians had become Effisians, and Matair and his soldiers were no longer needed.
And the rest? Battles kept churning, but the places changed. The faces, too, but the people? No. She could not imagine it was so.
The Brickheart was eager. He said as much, in those quiet moments when the soldiers gossiped and the nobles dined. In his eyes, they would smash a traitor and return home, simple as that. There was no need in him to be a hero, she realized—not like the margrave, certainly—but simply a desire to do his duty. That done, life would be as it was. In his eyes, everything would simply go back to its natural cycle.
Not for a minute could she believe that. The others drew strength from it, but not she. So many were gone. Fallit was dead. Kasimir, too. His house was emptied, his family scattered, and worse—two sons stood at opposite lines, and though neither would put thought to the fact, she had no doubt their swords would grow all too heavy at the sight.
And where am I in all of this?
Wind received her as she leaned a little deeper into the night. The windows were open, lacking the glass panes moneylenders and their like had begun to boast for their abodes. It must have been terrible cold in winter, but on nights like this, it was divine. Others might have shied away from the height—plainsmen had that tendency—but not she. She had climbed the tallest trees and dove the deepest depths of that wild Jurree, and she had never found a place so content as in the wind.
There was something about it. A secret men were not supposed to grasp. Sometimes, she wondered if it weren’t the world’s way of whispers. What secrets might be learned if only they listened?
It caressed her. As Fallit once had.
And she frowned because of it.
Some people dreamed. Their personal hells came back to haunt them by night’s embrace. But for Roswitte, waking was the nightmare. Sleep was just this empty thing that wrapped her in its arms. Then it, and everything else, just went on. Time had not diminished this. Merely, it dulled her reaction to it.
When she woke, Fallit’s ghost was still there, waiting. Even dead men did not appease him.
She had done her best to put Fallit’s death behind her. To simply…well, not forget, but certainly not to dwell. In the camp, it had been easier. There were always things to do. If not hunting, then patrolling, or anything, truly. She found she missed it. These nights here, kept like a bird in a cage, she found herself too much in her own mind. An addled mind. One she found herself dreading more than anything.
But how could one forget? The way he held her. The way he smelled. Little things. Pleasant things. She sighed a little, and clocked her head twice against the sill. How she longed for those little things. There was no one else—no one that could love her as honestly as he. Few that would even try. Even Verdan did not appeal to her so much now, as it did to Ivon.
But so long as she was alive, she had to keep moving forward. It was all one could do. Pain was inevitable. Wallowing in it was not.
War, she decided. Best to lose myself in that. She tried to focus, but the night was dark and the candlelit city forgotten beneath the clouded sky, and all she saw were faces. Essa. Her very name meant star, and she could not see them on this night. Leaving her alone hurt worse than most things she had left behind. Though she was not often one for fellow women’s company, the girl had taken on something of a special place within her heart. Perhaps it was the hurt, or her own loneliness—she was not one for reasons. Only realities.
And the reality was that Essa had been hurt. She knew not the whole, only that Rurik was somewhere at the heart of it. And Voren. No doubt the baker’s hand was in there somewhere. She frowned. She did not like the little sucklefish. But he fawned on Essa—perhaps even depended on her—in ways that Essa herself needed to get her mind off whatever it was that troubled her.
If only the girl had opened to her when they had a chance. Now she was surrounded by those mutts—the Gorjes—and that thought gave Roswitte greater horror than any. She had killed one, one the girl had been stupid enough to let get close. But now she wasn’t there.
Would it happen again?
No sense worrying about what you cannot change.
She was here. Now. With new worries, and new dogs, and as little to do about it as ever she could. That was a whole other bag of infuriating.
“So what do you think?”
She nearly leapt from her skin. Thankfully, it was one of those rare moments where neither dagger nor bow was near at hand, else conversation might have ended before it even began. For his part, Ivon smiled wanly at her confusion.
How long he had been standing there, she could not say. Nor did she like that fact. She was not one to be caught off-guard. And when had the others gone? Only Jörg—Ivon’s would-be shieldman—remained, and he for a fever that put him to his bed.
“Not me place to say…ser.”
Ivon shrugged, and moved in from the doorway. “Then I shall. I am bewildered by the Bastard, and furious at our lord margrave, and if I had the stones, I’d smash their heads together until their faces made as little sense as their minds.”
She stared at him. He stared back. The man had never spoken so candidly. Nor should he ever.
“That would be…a solution.”
“Or something. Vardick tells me the margrave is a good man. Father always spoke highly of him. So why is it I see only a headstrong fool?”
These were not questions she liked put to her. They had the uncomfortable ring of equality—of two voices, devoid of rank, set together as men, and that was not normal. “Couldn’t say, ser.”
And when did dusk turn to midnight?
“And the Bastard—all those bodies. All that land.”
“They did try to poke him, ser.”
Ivon bridled. “Yes, and I do suppose I would act the same way if I were in his stead but—an Imperial decree? If it has gone so far, this could not be the first inkling he has had of ill wills. And to march on his own, well, he is as mad as a dog in heat.”
Or madder. But who is sane anymore? She had to wonder. Her own lord took them to a midnight ride at the inkling of a notion she still did not perceive.
“I only wonder if we can put him down so easily as Scheyer would have it. We have the right of it, but a force so large—could they truly march against their own homes? What manner of man would do such a thing?”
She shifted uncomfortably on her perch. Her lord’s words had the unpleasant reek of a man possessed of self-conversation, not one seeking advice. A sounding board, as it were. She looked out at the darkness a moment, watching as the flames
danced with the apparitions of patrolling soldiers.
Whether he actually sought her counsel or not, Roswitte resolved that at least one man needed to hear the truth. She looked back to her lord as he rounded the table, lost in thought.
“Starved men. Thirsting men. Unpaid men. We’re all but men.” She paused there. “So’s to speak. And they admire the Bastard. Look to him as one o’ them.”
Ivon twisted on her with a sudden steel in his look. “And they would turn against their lords for this? Do they not know the meaning of treason?” But this only steeled her own convictions. She swung her legs back into the room and hopped off her perch.
“And that’s why they don’t trust you. Think it. What’ll you do? Kill them all? All them able-bodied menfolk. Tell me, how you figure to get your crops this spring, you go and do a thing like that? Your fine wines? Isn’t nobles what pick the earth, lord, or put your homes up all pretty. And you wonder why them Farrens is so popular?”
“You stop right there,” Ivon said very quietly. His voice tremored, despite the rage that ran clear beneath it.
“Equality has a certain appeal. All I’ll say. And the Bastard’s one of them, so I think things is sure to be bigger than all you lot think.
“And what would you advise, then?”
“I think His Grace Ibin had the right of it. Kill him in bed with a sharp knife—but afield? Bring prayers with you, ser. You’ll be needing them.”
There was nothing more to be said. A woman could be beaten for less.
Ivon made another round of the table before he slipped silently back out the door, bobbing his head in—In what? Defeat? Uncertainty? A shade of doubt crossed her as she regarded it. It was not a color that looked well on her lord, and she could not help but wonder if she had pressed too far.
Oh, she had. There was no doubting that. One was not supposed to address their betters as such but…it needed to be said. She maintained that. She only wished it had been someone else to make the observation.
She caught Jörg’s fever-lidded stare. “Little bear,” he grumbled. “Shut your hole to rest,” she snapped clean back. And so he did, with a sickly smirk.
Turning for the window, she leaned out once more into the damp chill. It invaded her lungs and drew heavy across her skin, with a shiver of goosebumps.
But it was quiet. So quiet. If she had screamed, it might have carried across the plains for miles, like the echoing crack of thunder. So she had to wonder: how far would the Bastard’s own cries carry? Hundreds of miles and hundreds of years stretched between the Empire’s boundaries, built its walls, and tamed its wild plains. There were hills and forests, even mountains to the south. They stretched between two oceans, and basked in the wonders of a continent.
Words. They were all just words to her. It was almost comical how whimsical one could become on the promise of power, or providence shared—yet she had seen none of it, and never would. She knew the woods. She walked these plains. If they burned, what would be left for her?
A little girl’s face drew to mind, and only then did she feel the chill. She was not sure Idasia was wide enough to smother the coming cries.
The night would be long.
Chapter 10
Relatives, as Leopold saw it, were so many roaches. They always came unbidden, pretended as though they stood taller than they were, and never seemed to notice the boot pressing on their backs. Too tough a shell or too hard a head, a man was hard-pressed to say. Though even in this reduced family, one had to suppose they noticed. They just didn’t care.
Hard-headed.
Figures whirled before them all, to the light and life of the dancing glass. Flames caught within the chandeliers and dangling paper lanterns, to cast each corner of the room in a different, fairer light, such that one might think themselves transcended from the bare mortal coil.
Memory may have been key, but forgetting, Leopold had found, was always easier. A few pretty lights, some dancing girls, and the world could fall away for a few hours at a time. Eyes saw what they wanted to see and turned away again, leaving him to do the Lord’s work in the shadows. Or his own. He liked to think they were as one, oft enough. But if not, well, at least he was entertained.
Sadly, not all his relatives could be so easily amused.
While his younger brothers, Matthias and Rufus, had each taken to the floor with wife and dame, and their youngest sister Kanasa stood defending herself against the sharks of the nobility, Leopold’s closest attendants remained his closest brother—Heinrich—and the fop’s sagging wife.
They touched him on the arm and dropped voices to the weight of steel, even as some Asanti trollop contorted atop their table, the gold links of her outfit only accentuating her ample gifts.
“Two months he’s languished in the tower, brother. We cannot let it lie. Mauritz stands a fierce man, and a good uncle, but if he can do it to his brother…” Heinrich droned, even as the woman’s back arched.
It was the penultimate ceremony, the culmination of an octave’s debauchery, in honor of news that had lit the whole city. On the morrow, he would address the Empire for the first time as Emperor Leopold, the second of his name, master of all that was and all that ever should be. Already the crown sat upon his head, the coronation done, but this would be the moment he stood before his people and became something more.
“His troops march through the streets. His troops watch the palace. And his troops have bidden us remain, for our protection. Are you so blind?”
A flicker of a snarl lunged up through his throat, but he drowned it with wine. Instead, he cast back over his shoulder, leering through the chattering crowd of performers—both those in masks and those in silks—to the robed figure beside the wall. There, his children played, fussing with others and with one of the castle dogs. It was a well-groomed bitch, he had to give her that, being sleek of body and possessed of a fine sheen of reddish-brown fur. A smile wormed its way up from his knotted bowels at the sight of those smiles mirrored on their own flushed cheeks, but sank quickly enough with the reality that certain things simply could not stand.
He was a man that would do anything for his children, but even he recognized there were some things emperors should maintain. To see their children with the beasts of the earth, well, that was not a thing for public.
A snap of his fingers drew up the robed man’s attention. With a nod, Bertold’s slender form leaned low to the pair of children and shared words. Then he reached to take each of the Imperial heirs by the hands. Leopold’s eyes never left them as they began the slow navigation of the room.
“What of your sister, my lord emperor? Your dear father had so many hopes for her, and she is getting so…so very old, now.” Marren, Heinrich’s wife, paused with brandy upon her tongue and a finger pressed to her lip. “I could recommend a few. But do not wait too long. A peach such as that, left to pass her prime, well…the withering is swift.”
So far as Leopold was concerned, Marren had withered long before she ever married his toad of a brother. He longed to tell her such, but even he still had the grace to hold his tongue. As to his sister—eighteen hardly seemed the age of fright and spinsterhood. Maker be good, his own daughter would be well into her years before that question ever confronted her.
Sharing was not one of his strong suits.
“I think the lady does just fine at her own.” His wife’s words were like music to his ears. She loomed over the table, emerged from the chaos of the party with a train of women at her side, and all the starlight of the heavens twinkling in her bejeweled hair. Forbidden or no, he would make the world know she was an empress.
Beyond her, Kanasa touched hand to breast and smiled a moment with one of her more attractive suitors. Some baron or something. Leopold glanced at his sister, let his eyes mark her. She certainly had the look. Between the hair of chestnut and lace, and the face of angels, she would never have trouble with the heart. No, it was children’s duty to play a while before true duty beckoned. He would
let her have a little time. As head of their house, the others would respect it.
“With due respect, it is not becoming, Your Majesty,” Marren huffed. Still, she drew in her lip and smiled on the Empress and her handmaidens, raising her glass to all. “Ladies, ever a pleasure. And my lady empress, a most bounteous feast. I could think of no better way to celebrate your coronations.”
“I could,” Heinrich grumbled. “It is not unheard of for emperors to celebrate with certain freedoms. You could—”
“Perhaps my lords would be more comfortable upon the floor,” Leopold’s wife graciously interrupted. “We shall soon begin the Fassa-dance, and I know myself shall not suffice.”
Heinrich stared at her, letting his anger blossom into a smile. “I am sure that is not at all true, majesty.”
“Well. It would give us a chance to rescue your sister,” Marren added, looking pointedly into the crowd. “Ladies? Would you join us? Leave our new masters alone a moment?”
They fled with all the proper rituals, Ersili curtsying to them as they made scarce. Leopold sufficed with a bitter nod, but might have given more if he wasn’t immediately assaulted. Even as his wife’s lips opened to speak, there was a loving shriek that formed around his name, his preferred name that is—Papa!—and then everything was pain as a child-body launched into his lap. He startled, nearly losing his drink in the process, but his wife scooped it from his grip in the knick of time, and saved him for his subjects, and his children.
In due time, both son and daughter had scrambled to his side, his daughter pulling herself up his lap even as his young son circled it. He kissed their delicate heads and fussed their hair, to laughter and to false anger both. He held them close, and asked earnestly after their evening. All the while, Ersili waited to the side, the grim specter of reality poised within their little corner of delusion. More than a few eyes wandered his way, but no one said a word to him. There were advantages to being the Emperor.
In Leopold’s life, there was no pleasure so great as family. He recognized the irony of this, of course, in how much he hated his father’s, but there was a difference. Family you make, relatives someone else makes for you. The one you pick, the one you don’t. Perhaps he might have felt differently if he had ever known the latter, but what he saw he did not particularly like.
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