Blood of the Gods

by David Mealing

  “You’ve missed your mark by a hundred leagues to the east, courier.”

  “Aye, but I took a purse for a parcel of letters to Kregiaw, more fool me.”

  He lifted his pack, caressing it with the care due a newborn babe. By now another two shapes had joined the first, and he rolled the banner, tucking it back in place. Better if fewer eyes saw the sigil, so long as word was passed that he traveled under an Imperial marque.

  “What business does a scion of Fox have in Gantar Baat?” the woman asked, her voice suddenly as frosted as the wind stinging his nose.

  So much for luck.

  He licked the dry sores forming on his lips. He’d hoped to avoid this part.

  “Tea,” he said, calling it up to them. “And I’ve a sample of our trade stock, if you—”

  Thunder sounded from the rampart of the palisade. A tuft of powder smoke. And a stinging hole in his chest, where the force of musket shot threw him backward to the ground.

  Pain seared his vision. The fucking bastards. They’d shot him, and hadn’t bothered to open their gate before they did it.

  Another roar from the wall, and a whistling crack where the next shot missed, chipping the ice.

  Words formed on his tongue, and died. Past time for talk.

  He sucked in a breath, opening his body to the strands that anchored him where he stood. Dizziness spun his eyes, the sensation of peering over the edge of a cliffside. Easy to lose himself, amid a sea of such connections. A field of stars, his mind set adrift between them. He was Yanjin Tigai, but he was not bleeding to death, shot through the chest on the ice of Kregiaw. He found another anchor point, the one he’d set moments before, and sprang back to it, feeling the rush of fresh breath through unbroken lungs.

  “That was quick,” Remarin said. “I take it they found your conversation stimulating.”

  Tigai coughed, the memory of his wounds still a reality, even if his body was whole.

  “Just shoot the bastards,” he said. “And give the signal to attack.”

  Cold eyes stared at him as he made his inspection of the dead. Cold eyes, cold winds, cold corpses. The whole bloody province was cold. Had no one told the northerners there was such a thing as springtime? A spat of wind and snow was well and good, to help one appreciate the next turning of the seasons, but a man deserved a spring and summer in his life. And now six of his men had seen their last, along with eleven guardsmen dressed in dark crimson trimmed with white. The damyu, the earth spirits, made no distinctions for how a man was given to the ground.

  “They fought well,” he said, drawing silent glares from the survivors, sitting together on the cold earth at the center of the camp. Five prisoners from among the guardsmen, and the better part of thirty who had been prisoners before the battle, neatly rounded up and put in ranks by Remarin’s shouted discipline. Tigai paced the line between the living and the dead, glancing between them as he spoke. “They died in battle. For men of our persuasion, there is no higher honor.”

  One of the prisoners spat, loud enough for all to hear. The lone woman among them, her crimson coat a thicker, finer fabric than any of the others. Enough to recognize her as an officer, even without the stripes of rank sewn into her cuffs.

  “You object to my eulogy, Captain?” he asked, pausing mid-stride to give her a sweet look.

  “You have less honor than a dog,” she said.

  One of his Ujibari moved toward her, hand raised to deliver a bruise to match the purple already swelling beneath the woman’s eye. Tigai gestured, signaling to hold.

  “What would the captain of a labor camp know of honor?” he said, still holding his smile for her benefit. It was a look he’d used to charm the underclothes from courtiers in manor halls and palaces from Qoba to Ghingwai, made all the sweeter for how out of place it was amid the snow and ice. “If you had any merit, you would be captaining men of worth, not assigned to supervise the digging of holes for shit half-frozen before it leaves your asses.”

  The captain glared at him, the left side of her face swollen to half close her eye. A Jun woman, ambitious enough to accept a posting no one else wanted, and fool enough not to see the reason why. But she’d ordered her men to fire on a courier—at him—for the suspicion of being out of place, even when his banner had clearly marked him on magi business for the Great and Noble House of the Fox. Not a captain in the whole of the Imperial service took their duties so seriously, not when the prize they guarded was a frozen shit-heap anchored in permanent ice.

  “He means to kill you all,” the captain shouted. “Rush him together and you might bring him down. His men will negotiate, once he is—”

  This time he didn’t gesture to stop the Ujibari, and the captain got a fist to her cheekbone, hard enough to send her slumping to the ground.

  “Enough,” he said after the strike. “No one else need be injured today. In fact, I mean to free you. All of you, save four.”

  Glances passed among the prisoners, but they remained silent.

  “Shanying, scion of the House of Jian. Feng-To, former seneschal to the whitesmiths guilds of Konming Province. Dhazan, former magistrate of Bijan Qan.” He turned to the captain. “And you. Name Unknown, former captain of the Kregiaw labor camp.”

  This time murmurs rose in the assembled crowd, shared glances as though each man needed to affirm he had not been named.

  “Satisfy me I have my four, and the rest of you may raid the camp’s provisions and go free. There is an Imperial outpost at Gantar Baat, five days to the east, should you seek to turn yourselves in and serve the remainder of your sentences with honor. Elsewise, go south, forget your past lives, and seek employment in the hundred cities. Or come with me, and turn pirate. But first, offer up the prisoners I named, before any more of you need to die.”

  Remarin strode into the crowd to fetch the men who rose, or were pushed to rise by their fellows. Three men, and he would leave it to Remarin’s judgment to ascertain whether they were decoys. Tigai went instead to the captain, whose glare had frosted over, a look almost akin to curiosity where there had been vitriol, before.

  “I will require your name, Captain,” he said, extending a hand to help her rise. She left it there, staring at him, unmoving.

  “What does Fox want with these prisoners?” she asked.

  “Magi business,” he said, offering her a grin to continue his charade. She’d already shown she knew too much, but with luck she wouldn’t know enough to pierce the lie.

  “My name is Lin,” she said, ignoring his hand and rising on her own. “Lin Qishan, and if you are a servant of Fox then I am a First Consort to the Emperor.”

  “Lin Qishan,” he said. “If that is your real name, then I, too, am a consort to His Majesty. But it will serve, for now.”

  She bowed her head, and he left her there. Remarin would gather her along with the other three, and see them to him before it was time to depart.

  He knelt on the ice, shifting his senses as his men came to gather around him. They’d done this enough to know it would happen without warning, between blinks or breaths, and if they weren’t close they’d be left behind. The strands of home beckoned to him among the starfield, strands he knew as well as he knew his own skin. Different, when he worked in far-off places, but still a path to the comfortable and familiar.

  He found the link, and the world shifted beneath his feet, the icy wind replaced by the scented breezes of the South.

  6

  ERRIS

  High Command

  Southgate District, New Sarresant

  Maps of the southern colonies stared up at her as though she were the subject of their planning, and not the other way round. She knew city fighting, forests, the weathering of winter storms, amphibious landings, how to take a river crossing or set an ambush on an open plain. All the coursework at the military academies, and half again as much she’d devised on her own, fit to write her own textbooks if she managed to live to retirement. But nothing in any book or battlefield she�
��d ever seen prepared her to deal with an assassin armed with the same magic as Reyne d’Agarre.

  It wasn’t the same man, whatever foolish notions had spread through the city. One would think the eye testimony of the High Commander of the Armies of New Sarresant would be enough to dismiss such rumors, but Councilman d’Agarre had evidently embedded himself in the dreams—or the nightmares—of the citizenry. She’d seen d’Agarre’s magic firsthand, when he used it to cow the officers at high command, and again through the eyes of Marie d’Oreste, driving the native invaders and her soldiers alike mad with fear and rage. No, the assassin hadn’t been d’Agarre, but the man in black had used the same power to reach her through a company of gendarme police, then fought like a tempest before vanishing into the street. He’d failed to kill her, but would surely come to try again.

  “High Commander, sir, I have your next appointment,” her aide, Essily, said, hovering at the door to her private chamber. “Field-Colonel Regalle, here to discuss artillery stocks for the Gand invasion.”

  “Cancel it,” she said. “Give Anchard my compliments, but see him off.”

  “Yes, sir,” Essily said, bowing as he backed away.

  “Field-Colonel Regalle?” Marquand asked, standing opposite her, across the table. “You give that boot-kisser a promotion, and I’m still a captain?”

  She returned her attention to the maps.

  “Squads of binders, perhaps,” she said. “Set to patrol with the city watch. It would reassure the citizens, though I can’t see us casting a net wide enough to catch someone with d’Agarre’s talents.”

  “I’m bloody serious,” Marquand said. “I’m overdue for a colonel’s stripe, if not a general’s star, with all this Gods-damned planning. I’ve never asked for it before, but I’ve earned it, you know I have.”

  She paused, taking a moment for Marquand. He’d been made foot-captain the day she made major, brevet ranks after the Battle of Talbad’s Ford, during the Thellan campaign. A bloody day. He’d ignored orders at her request, taking a squad of infantrymen and binders to screen for her horse while they crossed the river. Marquand’s bindings had held the line when a thousand soldiers would have broken, and lucky for them their superiors had been killed in the action. In the aftermath they’d been heroes rather than mutineers, and victory had made it all the sweeter.

  “How much have you had to drink today?” she asked.

  “Not a drop, not since we started this fucking planning.”

  “And before you came to the council hall?”

  He fell quiet, and she let the question linger. No more needed be said, as far as she was concerned. The assassin was all that mattered now. Who he might be working for, and what damage he could do, left unchecked. A tool of the Gand commander behind their golden eyes, she was all but certain. A single thorn in her side, and she’d have let it fester, her personal safety be damned, if not for what it might mean in the city. Too damned many unknowns. But one certainty: They couldn’t risk a campaign in the south, not when the enemy threatened to drive half the city mad. Not until she knew it well enough to counter it, or he took the field and forced her hand.

  “We’ll have to use binders,” Marquand said. “Confirmed reports say d’Agarre’s magic doesn’t work against them. Not squads, though, and no patrols. Concentrated teams, prepared to respond to disturbances, and assigned to major caravans for land-based trade.”

  She looked him over, finding the scowl she expected as he pored over the maps, though he seemed content to let the matter of his promotion lie.

  “I concur with your first point,” she said. “But without patrols, we risk a slow response to a disturbance, even in the city.”

  “Too much area to cover in either case,” he said. “And a bad precedent. Military ought not be used as police for civilians. Puts bad ideas in the wrong heads.”

  “Very well,” she said. “We’ll need to prepare deployment orders, and assign crews to each district captain. Shelter binders, with Body for support?” He nodded. “Good. Then we’ll need to inform Lord Voren.”

  “I’d as soon leave that to you, High Commander,” Marquand said. “That old fuck makes my skin crawl.”

  “That old fuck has the better part of the government resting on his shoulders. He’s the one tasked with garnering support for our invasion of Gand; we’d best let him know, if we intend to postpone.”

  Marquand shrugged, returning to the maps as though the matter were settled. And perhaps it was.

  “See to preparing the orders,” she said. “I’ll sign and seal them when I get back.”

  He nodded, offering a belated salute as she donned her coat, and left her private chambers behind.

  The Lords’ section of the council hall had been retooled for war before the battle for the city, and had grown into its purpose in the weeks and months since. She’d as good as moved in, sleeping in the cot in her office often enough she wouldn’t be at all surprised if her rooms in the Tank & Twine had been let to merchants in her absence. Voren had urged her to use the not-inconsiderable sums of the High Commander’s pay to purchase an estate in the city, to staff it with cooks and servants and use it to host lavish parties or whatever other nonsense the former nobility did with their coin. A waste of time and money, in her view. This was home. The salutes of aides as she passed, officers making way, or so lost in debating a point of strategy they didn’t notice her presence. She’d converted the Lords’ Council into a war college to rival and exceed any academy in the world, and all the more so since her students were in position to wage the wars themselves. Tables covered with maps dominated the central hall, decorated with painted figurines and piles of books, texts on strategy, military theory, mathematics, and more. When it worked, her Need connected them to units in the field, but every one of her commanders would be trained to think, to fight as she did. The enemy was out there, and when they met again she would be ready, Gods damn her soul.

  Sentries bearing field muskets stood guard at the mouth of the long hallway bridging the Lords’ Council with the rest of the council hall, offering a last pair of salutes before she left her world behind. Blue velvet carpet cushioned her steps as she strode toward the other half of the building, where the Council-General, the elected estate of the commonfolk, had met before the revolution, and continued on as the government entire in its wake. She’d had the carpets torn up and removed from high command; it seemed the councilors of the Republic were content to remove only the paintings of the de l’Arraignon Kings, leaving discolored spots on the walls where they’d hung before. The rest of the hall was empty for the moment, though couriers came and went across both sides of the building, attending to governance and military matters as the need arose. The twin pillars of the Republic: égalité and honorable service, so her recruiters said when they went to drum up fresh levies. Clear enough, at times, to see which way power flowed. If not for Voren, the Assembly could bugger itself for all she cared, so long as they provided the coin to feed and equip her soldiers.

  “High Commander,” Omera greeted her when she stepped across the threshold into the outer hallways of the Council-General. “His Lordship awaits.”

  Groups of men and women in plain clothes exchanged conversation up and down the hall, taking note of her with no more than raised eyebrows, for all she represented the power of the military. And somehow Voren’s servant had known to be here, waiting for her, or had been set to watch in case she arrived.

  The Bhakal servant led her swiftly through the chambers, where her uniform—freshly tailored, cut to include five stars on her sleeves and collar—stood out as a gentleman’s suit or lady’s dress would have done on the opposite side of the building. Yet they gave way for Voren’s servant, noticing him first and her second, leaving whispers behind as they passed through the hall.

  “High Commander d’Arrent for you, sir,” she overheard Omera announce when they arrived in the foyer of an office twice as large as hers, with fresh paint and moldings suggesting they’
d made it by tearing through walls of two—or three—lesser chambers.

  Voren appeared in the doorway moments later, as though he’d sprung from his desk, or already been standing. An old man by the time she’d met him, but with a tireless energy, and fire in his eyes today.

  “High Commander,” Voren said. “I hadn’t thought you would come so soon. A delight, truly.”

  “Sir, I’m afraid my visit is not—”

  He cut her short with a gesture, inviting her inside. “Let us speak of it shortly. First, I must reintroduce you to an acquaintance I believe we both hold in high esteem.”

  She entered the chamber ahead of him, and found a young woman seated in one of the cushioned chairs opposite the desk. A pretty enough girl, in a plain-looking way, dressed in an undyed tunic and breeches that wouldn’t have been out of place among the workers of Southgate or the Maw. Little enough to note about her, save for the blue and gold tattoos on the backs of her hands—a royal marque, sanctioning the use of the leylines, which marked her a priest, a noble, or a cat’s-paw for one or both.

  “Erris d’Arrent,” Voren said, closing the door behind them. “I have the honor of presenting the hero of the Battle of New Sarresant.”

  Nerves were writ large on the girl’s face. Not a face she recognized, but for Voren to call her that, she had to be …

  “Sarine,” she said, the memory coming to the fore. The strange girl who had appeared at the height of the battle, standing at the fulcrum point of the enemy’s position, fighting alongside the 11th Light Cavalry until she vanished in the moment of victory.

  “Commander d’Arrent,” the girl said. “It’s an honor to meet you in person.”

  Erris stared. It was as though a specter had arisen from the fog of war, a dream she had never more than half believed, suddenly confirmed as real.

  Voren beamed, returning to his seat behind the desk. “We ought to defer our pleasantries for now. Madame Sarine brings us news of great import, pertaining to the identity of our mysterious assassin.”