Lin’s words stung, all the more for Sarine keeping quiet after Lin spoke them. Remarin and Mei might be close—no more than a hundred paces up or down, as the crow flew—but there were Herons in the way. He needed Sarine’s help, whether she trusted him or not.
“Fine,” he said, and Sarine’s relief showed through as she turned to her fellows, conferring again before they separated, lining up with Yuli as Lin moved into place behind Sarine.
“Veil’s blessings on you,” Sarine said to Yuli. “Or, that is … good luck.”
Yuli went, and Acherre and Ka’Inari followed her, taking the leftward staircase descending beneath the main floor. Sarine led him and Lin toward the other winding stair, climbing upward behind the wall bearing the mark of the heron.
Tigai made it a point to take the rear, keeping Lin between him and Sarine. He could hardly blame Sarine for her lack of trust, any more than Lin could have expected him to trust her. From the look of it, Sarine had sent their best combatants downward—between Yuli’s savagery and Acherre’s shields and exploding air, either might have made a fair match for the best the Herons had to offer. He wasn’t like to complain at having them both heading to find Remarin and, if the wind spirits were good, Mei, too. If they did meet a grandmaster Heron, he could get them out to his anchors on the ground floor, head downward to meet Yuli, and have them all back at Yanjin palace before sundown. Sarine’s mad desire to face magi was none of his concern, but he had to at least appear to care enough to try.
The second floor of the tower was split by hallways into a half-dozen broad chambers, where the ground floor had been a single wide expanse under high ceilings. He kept behind Lin with one of his pistols drawn, following as Sarine led them, but the chambers appeared empty, the hallways as silent as they were pristine. The third level was a similar design, winding hallways and smaller chambers, and equally devoid of any activity.
Then they climbed to the fourth floor and walked into chaos.
He’d seen soldiers’ camps before, but never one confined to a central chamber of a building. Tables strewn with maps and piles of paper had been arrayed within a grand hall, as broad and tall as the first-floor entryway. A hundred men and women swarmed between the tables, all of them wearing the red tabards of the Imperial army, with knots of rank varying from the lowest soldiers and couriers to the gold markers of generals and company commanders. All save for a handful of figures in the orange robes and hooded veils of the Herons, clustered together near a window on the far side of the hall.
He set an anchor without thinking, his muscles tensing with the threat of certain violence.
“Tigai?”
A soldier in a general’s regalia had turned from among a group of similarly dressed men standing around a table near the center of the room. It took another moment to recognize his brother underneath the plumed cap, gemmed spaulders, and breastplate, worn in the style—yellow paint beneath a red tabard—he’d always associated with their father.
The room went from awareness of their presence at the top of the stairs to hurried indifference as Dao strode to close the gap between them. Another general had done the same from another table, this one closing on Lin Qishan.
“Captain Lin,” the second general said, at the same time Dao said, “Tigai, it is you. What under the wind spirits brought you here to Kye-Min?”
Emotion surged in his chest. Dao was here. Alive. Impossible—Dao was supposed to be a captive, not leading Yanjin soldiers in a city nine hundred leagues from their estates. But here he was, as sure as Tigai himself was standing in this bloody tower. In spite of all decorum he wrapped his arms around his brother rather than replying, catching Dao mid-stride and too off-balance to return the gesture.
“General Bu,” Lin said behind him, ignoring the fact that Dao’s presence proved everything she’d told him was a lie. “We must make our report to Lady Khon, at her earliest convenience.”
“Reports said you’d been lost, fighting one of Ugirin’s magi,” the man Lin had called General Bu said, before Dao released his embrace, and Lin’s conversation faded into the noise of the rest of the chamber.
“It’s really you,” Tigai said. “Are Remarin and Mei here, too? Lin had said they were prisoners. But if we’re all here, we can—”
Dao stepped closer, suddenly lowering his voice. “Lord Fei Zan is Lady Khon’s prisoner,” Dao said, putting heavy enough emphasis on the first name for Tigai to follow his lead; “Lord Fei Zan” had to be Remarin, in the guise of some lord, though apparently the rest wouldn’t bear explaining in mixed company. “His serving girl is with him in his chambers, in the lower holds of the tower.”
Tigai’s heart rushed. The “serving girl” had to be Mei. “I trust Lord Fei is whole and well, then? As are his servants?”
“Fei Zan is well,” Dao replied. His eyes carried the rest. Grief, anger, though none of it showed on his face. So Remarin was here, and whole. The omission spoke the rest: Mei was here, too, but she’d been hurt.
Tigai feigned nonchalance. “Fine news,” he said. “Now you must tell me why the Yanjin legions have been stationed here in Kye-Min. Were there no better assignments for our men closer to home?”
“We came at the personal request of Lord Fei Zan, under the banner of the Great and Noble House of the Fox. But we serve the Emperor, as we always have.”
Tigai bowed at mention of the Emperor’s name, and Dao returned it. So, Remarin wasn’t just playing at being a lord; he was masquerading as a magi, and a high-ranked member of the Great and Noble House of the Fox at that. The heart of whatever plan had been hatching here eluded him, but he began to see the shape. Remarin had been captured, but must have convinced his captors he was someone he was not—someone with enough pull to call Dao and Mei here as well. And now all three were in the Tower of the Heron.
“Lord Tigai has an urgent message for Lady Khon’s ears alone,” Lin was saying. “He has traveled the length of the Empire to deliver it. If you delay, Lady Khon will lay it on your head, General.”
Dao turned toward them. “What’s this?”
“Lady Khon is in the middle of planning a battle,” General Bu said. “With respect, Captain, and the same to you, Lord Yanjin, you know the enemy has used their magic to break our lines and threaten this very tower. Lady Khon is—”
“Lady Khon will wish to hear what my brother has to say,” Dao said. “It is of the utmost urgency he meet with her at once.”
Tigai had been about to hook himself and Dao to the strands. Instead he paused as General Bu bowed swiftly to Dao.
“Very well, Lord Yanjin,” General Bu said. “If you deem it best.”
Dao turned crisply, leading Tigai, Lin, and Sarine through the center of the room. The soldiers and generals took only passing notice as they strode by tables full of men arguing, the business of warfare resumed in full, if they’d even stopped long enough to notice his company’s arrival. Even the Herons in their orange robes gave only passing glances as Dao led them to the stairs.
Dao cut a path through another floor of activity after they ascended the stairs, this time with an orange-robed magi for every five soldiers, instead of every twenty. The wide chamber had been replaced by a smaller network of rooms and hallways, but with no less bustle for it, couriers and soldiers running through the halls, barely ducking aside as they bowed for his brother’s sake. They reached another stair and climbed it, emerging on the sixth floor before Dao stopped long enough to check that the hall was empty, turn, and speak.
“You’re here for Remarin and Mei, aren’t you?” Dao said, all pretense of himself as reserved general gone. “Death spirits but you’re a bloody fool sometimes, Tigai. Do you not realize this city is the front line of a war? And not only a war, a war between the Great and Noble Houses and rebel magi from every corner of the Empire. Do you realize Isaru’s rebels have a weapon that has all but routed every Imperial soldier in the eastern half of the city? I thought you were dead after the Imperial palace, and here you sh
ow up neck-deep in trouble, asking to meet with Bavda Khon as though she were the prettiest girl on the Emperor’s pleasure yacht. What exactly was your plan, beyond storming into the Herons’ tower and marching to the apex? Well? You forced me to go along with your ridiculous claim to have any hope of saving face, and now you’re going to tell me exactly what you’re doing here.”
Dao’s tirade would have knifed through him, back at the estate, every bit as searing as one of their father’s harshest lectures. Here, after too many weeks and months alone, it came as a balm for an ache he didn’t know he’d had.
“Well,” he said. “For a start, the rebels’ weapon doesn’t belong to Lord Isaru. She’s standing here next to you.”
His words seemed to prompt Dao to notice Sarine for the first time. At a glance, Tigai had mistaken her for Natarii, with her overly long nose, pale skin, and hair the color of tree bark, even without any of their face tattoos. A proper Jun lord would give little notice to the northern clansfolk, and he would have expected nothing less from his brother. But there were differences. Yuli’s hair was blond, as a contrast, to say nothing of Sarine’s strange manner of speech. She was a foreigner, from somewhere distant enough he’d never heard or seen anything like her magic.
“Lord Yanjin,” Sarine said. “You’re Tigai’s brother; I understood that right, yes?”
Dao looked shaken. “You mean to tell me you’ve brought a foreign magi here?”
“I don’t know what side of this you mean for our house to fall on,” Tigai said. “All I know is magi loyal to the Emperor kidnapped Remarin and Mei. I thought they had you, too, before I found you here. I meant to come here and get them out.”
“And you agreed to help me,” Sarine said. “As a condition for my help in reaching the tower.”
“Help her,” Dao said, his expression still paled. “Help her with what?”
Sarine looked to Tigai, uncertain, but Lin answered at once.
“They mean to kill Lady Khon,” Lin said. “And any other Herons on the cusp of ascension.”
Now Dao looked as though he’d choked on a date.
“You always said I would do better with something serious in my life,” Tigai said. “I never knew it, until the bankers began to threaten us, but I don’t give a damn about our father’s name, our palace, or our service to the Emperor. Sarine showed up with the means to get me here, and I promised what I had to promise to reach you, and Remarin, and Mei. If she’d bade me kiss a demon, I would bloody well have done it, if it meant a chance to keep my family safe. That’s what I care about. Not our blood, our lands or titles. You, and you’re a bloody fool yourself if you think I would have been anywhere else in this fucking world while any of you are in danger. I’d take on half the Great and Noble Houses for a rumor of where I could find you, and I’ll kill Bavda Khon herself if it means finding a way to set you free.”
“Convenient,” an icy voice said, and all four of them pivoted to see a woman in an orange robe trimmed with gold, watching them behind a white silk veil. “But I caution you to reconsider. Surrender your companion to me—the girl called Sarine—and no one needs to die.”
56
ERRIS
1st Corps Encampment
Northwest of New Sarresant, Sinari Land
Handlers and gendarmes were waiting when they arrived at Royens’s camp. They’d traveled farther than Erris had expected, but then, with the Great Barrier coming down, the 1st Corps’ commander had no need to shy away from the wild. Credit to him for inspiring his men to be fearless, facing the unknown. They were on the tribes’ land, here, though by any other account it was a military camp, with soldiers, tents, wagons, aides, and quartermasters conducting all the usual business of the army.
“We’ll find you a tent, if you intend to stay here,” she said to Ka’Hannat and Tirana as they disembarked from the coach. “Else, some horses to take you back to your tribes.”
Tirana bowed her head and translated for the shaman, who listened and replied to her directly, his eyes a misted gray that resembled glass in the dim torch-and lamplight. “The horses, High Commander,” he said. “We must reach our people before we meet again, in the city.”
His words chilled her, though the breeze was chill enough. Winter was some weeks off yet, but its first storms were already putting frost on grass and tree branches. A sergeant pointed the way to Royens’s command tents when she asked, and hushed whispers followed her as she went through the camp. Word spread ahead of her walking. Too late in the day for them to swarm her, and poor discipline if they’d done it, besides. But they followed her with awe in their eyes, and it spread warmth in her chest to see it. These were her soldiers, some of her best. Veterans, under battle-hardened commanders. Gods forgive her for what she had to order them to do.
Royens’s command tents were arrayed at the heart of the camp, and the field-marshal himself was there, standing over a small desk in the firelight. A broad-shouldered man as thick as he was tall, with none of the softness of command, cutting a striking image in his uniform, only a shade less decorated than hers. Tuyard’s presence was a surprise, though not an unwelcome one, hovering beside Royens as they both pored over papers spread over top of his desk. Marquand, however, she hadn’t expected to see. And Voren, sitting next to him on a wood chair, with no sign of manacles, chains, or restraints.
“High Commander,” Tuyard said, first to notice her entry. “They’d told us you were coming. I’d heard—”
“What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded. Voren—or no, Fei Zan, better to think of him as the foreign creature he was—sat with a calm expression on his face, like a father expecting an outburst from a petulant child. “Why is this man not under arms?”
“The priests were bloody well going to kill him,” Marquand said. “I couldn’t get him out of the city in chains, and by the time we reached the rest of the army, it seemed safe enough to leave him free.”
“Are you fucking mad?” she asked. “What’s to prevent him from having knifed you, showing up here wearing my face and ordering the army to march?”
“High Commander d’Arrent,” Voren said in the same reassuring tones he’d always used, “I will submit to being chained, if you feel it necessary, but—”
“The prisoner will not speak in my presence again unless ordered to,” she snapped. “And Marquand, even if you bloody well ought to have known better, I’d assumed the rest of you had more sense.”
Royens stiffened at the rebuke, though Tuyard seemed to take it in stride, curling his lip into a half smile as he spoke.
“High Commander,” Tuyard said, “we defer to your wishes, of course.”
“To my orders, Tuyard. This isn’t a bloody royal court.”
“And that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it?”
Silence prevailed in the tent. Tuyard was a snake, but a snake who danced the political game as well as any lord or councilman on either side of the ocean. As terrifying as her course was, it was made real in being spoken aloud. She couldn’t be certain she was ready to hear it.
“The priests tried to arrest you,” Tuyard continued. “Didn’t they? And Lerand was there; some factions within the Assembly will be in on it as well.”
“I can bloody well confirm it,” Marquand said. “Militiamen attacked the Citadel and the harbor, with priests behind them.”
“They’ve tried to seize power,” Tuyard said. “And you mean to refuse them.”
“First we settle what Voren is doing here,” she said.
“If you would grant me leave to speak …?” Voren said. When she remained silent, he went on. “High Commander, you know the workings of Need as well as any man or woman of this age. You must know I could not have submitted to your binding if I weren’t loyal to you, to your cause, beyond questioning. You ask why I didn’t wear your face and order the army on some personal crusade. I ask: If such was my goal, would I not have seen it done while I was in personal command of our forces? I’ve done nothing but act in
furtherance of your interests, and the interests of New Sarresant. I’ve answered every question forthrightly and honestly, holding nothing in reserve. Allow me to serve you now, with what knowledge I have of events here, and abroad.”
Field-Marshal Royens had been quiet, watching her with deference since she entered his tent. But he spoke now, his voice quiet in the aftermath of Voren’s passion.
“Sir,” Royens said, “I’ve heard Lord Voren’s account of what lies ahead of us. In my judgment, he’s acting in good faith. If I erred in allowing him to remain free, then I accept responsibility for that decision. But I see him as a weapon for our cause. One we might well need, before we’re done.”
“Our cause,” she said.
“It’s time, High Commander,” Tuyard said. “Enough pretense. The Church and the Assembly have imagined themselves in control since the Duc-Governor was deposed. If we are to wage the wars you’ve deemed necessary, we must act to assert our authority. That is, your authority, Commander d’Arrent.”
There it was. Treason. A second revolution. Somehow it came without the thunder of the first.
“Why would you support me in this, Tuyard?” she asked. “Surely you have schemes and allies elsewhere.”
Tuyard seemed genuinely taken aback, though she didn’t put it out of reach that even that sort of reaction had been practiced and rehearsed.
“High Commander, I support you because I believe what you’ve said. We have enemies, without and within, that mean to destroy us. True enough I might have been able to seize the throne and declare myself King. But without your leadership, this country is doomed. I, and all my allies, will fight to install you as Queen—or Empress, in light of your conquest of Gand—because this is a time for genius, and whatever my lust for power, I know well enough my own limitations.”
He said it with candor, and she found herself half believing it before he was done. Tuyard was a coward, first and foremost, and the enemy behind the Thellan armies would not hesitate to subjugate him at the first sign of weakness, to say nothing of the requirement for Need when the armies of the East began their invasion.
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