The Thousand Names

by Django Wexler

  “You think she’d exile you?”

  “I hope she will. She may wish to kill me instead.”

  “What kind of a mother murders her children?”

  “My life is hers to begin with,” Feor said. “If she wishes to take it, that is her right.”

  “Well, you’ll always have a place with us.” And, Winter privately resolved, if “Mother” decides Feor needs to die, she’ll have to go through me. “What about Bobby?”

  “He will be safe, I think. To interfere with a naath, once bound, would itself be heresy.”

  Winter nodded grimly and looked back at the field. The drills were ending, and Bobby was re-forming the troops to march back to the barracks. Her face was drawn with exhaustion, and Winter wondered if she’d been sleeping.

  “We have to tell her,” she said. “I don’t know how much she remembers, but she knows something happened.” She could scarcely miss the fact that a palm-sized patch of her skin had turned to something closer to marble than flesh.

  Feor sighed. “You have to tell her.” She paused, concentrating, and switched languages. “Me . . . Vordanai . . . not . . . good . . . sufficient.”

  “You still need to be there,” Winter said. “She may have questions I can’t answer.”

  “Are you going to tell her that you know her secret?”

  “I think I have to,” Winter said. “Graff knows as well, so we can’t keep Bobby in the dark that the truth has gotten out. I think we can trust Graff to keep his mouth shut, but . . .”

  “And what about yours?”

  Now it was Winter’s turn to fall silent. That was the real question, and she didn’t have a good answer. She was still having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that Feor knew, and had known for some time. No matter how many times the Khandarai girl had insisted it was some supernatural naathem sense that had told her, Winter couldn’t help but feel like there was some flaw in her disguise. What if they all know, and they’re just laughing at me behind my back? That was ridiculous, of course—Davis, for one, would never settle for quiet mockery when there was a chance to push someone in the mud and kick them while they were down.

  “You don’t trust Bobby?” Feor asked.

  “No, not that,” Winter said. “God, if there’s anyone I can trust, it’d be her. And you, of course. It’s just . . .”

  “Just?”

  “It’s been two years.” Winter drew her knees to her chest. “I feel like I’d nearly convinced myself.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  MARCUS

  Marcus pushed open the door and found that he was the last to arrive. Val, Mor, and Fitz were all seated in flimsy wicker-and-wood chairs around a lacquered monolith of a table that even the Redeemers had found too heavy to move. Mor was putting a deck of cards through an elaborate shuffle.

  “Finally,” he said, as Marcus entered. “We were about to start without you.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Val muttered. “If it was just me against you and Fitz, I might as well hand over my purse and be done with it.”

  “So I’m the other sucker, is that it?” Marcus said.

  “Every table needs at least a couple,” Mor said.

  Fitz coughed. “You saw Adrecht?”

  The mood darkened. Marcus nodded, and there was a quiet moment as he pulled out one of the chairs and sat gingerly, lest it collapse.

  “And?” Val said gruffly. “How is he?”

  “Better,” Marcus said shortly. “He’s still not awake, but the cutter told me his fever is down and there’s no sign of festering at the . . . site.”

  “I knew he was too irritating to die,” Mor said, a little too cheerfully.

  “Liar,” Val said. “You were practically dividing up his things already.”

  Marcus looked down at his hands where they lay on the tabletop. He closed his left hand slowly, then shook his head.

  “It’s a shame,” Fitz said unexpectedly. All three captains looked at him, surprised.

  “Course it is,” said Val.

  “That’s war,” Mor said. “Or at least, it is if you’re fool enough to get within sticking range of someone with a bayonet. Getting shot I can understand, but—”

  “He saved my life,” Marcus said quietly.

  That brought another moment of awkward silence, which Marcus felt duty-bound to break. He slapped his palms on the table with a dull thud and put on a grin he didn’t feel. “Right!” he said. “Deal the cards already.”

  Mor started expertly spinning cards across the scarred surface of the ancient table. Marcus was an indifferent cardplayer at the best of times, and this was shaping up to be one of his worse nights. Coins slid back and forth across the table, occasionally catching in a deep rut and bouncing salmon-like into the air. The first of these bounced off the top of Val’s head, to general laughter.

  In the pause while Fitz collected and shuffled the cards after the first round was over, Val said, “Marcus, you’re the colonel’s right-hand man these days, aren’t you?”

  Marcus shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m not sure he has one of those.”

  “You’re the best we’ve got,” Val persisted. “So have you got any idea where we go now?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Oh, come on,” Mor said. “Everyone’s been talking about it. Are we going to just dig in here, or go after the Divine Hand and his gang of malcontents?”

  The Divine Hand’s escape had become common knowledge over the past couple of days. As the initial shock of the Vordanai arrival had worn off, the citizens of Ashe-Katarion had come to see how few of the foreigners there really were, and the continued resistance of the Redeemer leader and the Steel Ghost had caused some dangerous rumblings. Jaffa’s Justices were spread thin, and Marcus didn’t dare send his men out in groups smaller than a dozen.

  “The colonel will have to hunt him down,” Val said. “Until we bring that bastard’s head back and put it on a spike, they aren’t going to believe we’re here to stay.”

  “How many of them even know what he looks like?” Mor retorted. “I don’t think spiked heads are going to solve anything.”

  “Strategically,” Fitz said, “going after him would be very dangerous. Until now we’ve been keeping ourselves fed from local resources, but if we have to leave the valley that will mean a proper supply train, which has to be based here in Ashe-Katarion. And that base would hardly be secure.”

  “What, then?” said Val. “Sit here in the Palace and wait for the mob to get angry enough to storm it?”

  “Yes,” Fitz said. “Rebellion has always been a fear of the Khandarai princes, and the inner city is quite defensible. Four battalions can hold it against almost any conceivable force of irregulars.”

  “It didn’t do the prince much good the first time,” Marcus put in.

  Fitz ducked his head respectfully. “The prince didn’t have four battalions the first time. Once General Khtoba threw in with the rebels, the inner city was already compromised.”

  “There’s another bastard I’d like to see on a spike,” Val muttered. “Ungrateful son of a bitch.”

  “If he’s still alive,” Mor said. “We know he was at Turalin, and the Auxiliaries lost a lot of men there.”

  “He’s alive,” Marcus said. He’d known Khtoba, slightly, in the old days. “He’s not a man who’d hang around when things went sour.”

  “Witness him going over to the Redeemers in the first place,” Val said. “Like I said—heads, spikes. End of problem.”

  “Assuming you can lay your hands on the heads,” Mor said.

  They were interrupted briefly when Fitz began to deal. Mor peeked at his hand, grunted, and dug in his pocket for a few more coins. Val sighed.

  I wonder what they would say if I told them it wasn’t the Divine Hand the colonel was worried about. Whatever the Thousand Names were, Janus wanted them very badly. He says he just wants to keep them away from Orlanko, but the look on his face . . . Marcus shivered at th
e memory. Janus had been on the point of carving up a helpless old woman to get the information he wanted, and his plan to send her to the prince’s torture chambers had been thwarted only by the fact that the torturers had all run away or been burned by the Redeemers. The two priestesses were currently languishing in cells under the Palace.

  Marcus played even more poorly in the second round than he had in the first. He’d been dealt a decent hand, for once, but his attention kept wandering. By the time Val collected the cards and shuffled for the third round, Marcus had decided his heart wasn’t in the game. He was just preparing his excuse when there was a knock at the door. Fitz, as the lowest-ranking member of the quartet, got up to open it, revealing Jen Alhundt. Marcus stiffened.

  “They told me I could find you here,” she said. “Gentlemen, I wonder if I might borrow the senior captain for a few minutes.”

  “Hell,” Val swore, looking at Fitz and Mor, then sighed. “I suppose so.”

  “I’m sorry to take you away from your game,” Jen said, when the door had closed behind them.

  Marcus waved a hand. “The way things were going, you probably saved me a month’s wages.”

  They walked a while in silence, Marcus awkward, Jen apparently serene. He hadn’t spoken to her since that night on the Tsel crossing, which seemed like a thousand years ago. That night, fear and the knowledge of impending battle had closed the distance between them, but here in the Palace it had opened back up into a bottomless pit that threatened to swallow any attempt at small talk.

  Jen broke the impasse. “The colonel seems to be a bit . . . distant recently.”

  Marcus sighed theatrically. “If you ask me what he’s planning to do next, I swear I’m going to scream.”

  “Oh?”

  “I just got out of my last interrogation,” Marcus said, jerking his head toward the drawing room. “Why everyone seems to think the colonel confides his secret plans to me I don’t understand.”

  “You do spend a great deal of time with him,” Jen said.

  “Yes, but you know what he’s like.”

  “Not really. I’ve read his file, but we’ve hardly spoken.”

  Marcus paused, reflecting. He’d spent so much time in Janus’ company it hadn’t occurred to him that the rest of the regiment hadn’t had similar opportunities, but thinking back he couldn’t recall the colonel speaking to Val, Mor, or any of the others outside of a terse order or the acknowledgment of a report. His longest conversations had probably been with the Preacher, with whom he shared an interest in artillery, and Give-Em-Hell, who more and more practically worshipped at Janus’ feet.

  “He’s . . .” Marcus sighed again. “Sometimes I think he just likes being dramatic, like a penny-opera villain. It’s always, ‘Oh, you’ll see, Captain,’ or, ‘Matters will become clear soon, Captain.’” Marcus managed to produce a reasonable simulation of Janus’ erudite accent, and Jen chuckled.

  “You must know something, even if it’s just from standing around behind him,” she said.

  Marcus shifted awkwardly, and smiled to cover it. “If I did, I couldn’t tell you. You’re a spy, after all.”

  “A clerk,” she insisted. “Just a clerk. But I do have a report to write.” She tipped her head and looked at him slyly. Stray hairs escaping from her bun hung in front of her eyes. “I’m really not going to get any more out of you?”

  “I think that’s all I can say that’s consistent with my duty as an officer,” Marcus said, with mock gravity.

  “The hell with it, then.” She pushed up her spectacles and rubbed her eyes, then reached behind her head and tugged at her hair until it came loose from its bun and flopped free. He’d never seen her let it down before. It fell just to her shoulders, mouse brown and slightly frizzy. “I’m officially off duty. What about you?”

  Marcus looked down at his uniform. “We haven’t really worked out a duty schedule, to tell the truth. But nothing seems to be going on at the moment.”

  “Come with me, then. I’ve got something special I want to show you.”

  • • •

  The room she led him to was furnished in the same eclectic mix of ancient and cheap as the rest of the post-Redeemer Palace. Here the ancient included a massive bed with brass poles, big enough to sleep six or seven, with equally ancient faded linen obviously scrounged from the bottom of some dusty closet. Beside it was a little table and chair, and a couple of open trunks.

  Whoever was staying in the room was not very organized, and the floor beside the trunk was strewn with clothes. Marcus spotted a few undergarments of a notably feminine nature and felt his cheeks color slightly. He turned to find Jen tugging the thick door closed behind them.

  “This is your room?” he said.

  She grinned wickedly. “Of course. Where better to secretly murder you?” Catching his expression, her smile faded a little. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” Marcus cleared his throat. “It’s just been a long time since I was in a lady’s bedroom.”

  Jen arched an eyebrow. “Oh, come on. The gallant captain must have had some conquests among the impressionable native girls.”

  “About the only Khandarai women who would have anything to do with us wanted to be paid afterward,” Marcus said. He reflected a moment. “Actually, mostly they wanted to be paid in advance.”

  “Well, I think I can get by without a chaperone just this once,” she said. “I don’t want to share this.”

  “Share what?”

  She brushed past him, heading for one of the trunks. The casual touch left Marcus feeling even more awkward than before, but Jen didn’t appear to notice. She tossed more clothing aside, then a couple of blankets, and finally emerged with a wooden crate the shape of a coffin, a couple of feet long. Words had been burned onto the outside, in such an elaborate script that Marcus couldn’t read them, but he recognized the shape immediately.

  “Where did you get that?” he said.

  “It was a gift,” she said, setting the little box reverently on the table. “From some of my friends at the Cobweb.” She looked up at him. “Looking back on it now, I don’t think they ever expected me to come back.”

  “And you haven’t opened it yet?”

  “Sort of silly, I know,” she said. “If I really had been killed at one of the battles, I expect I would have regretted it. But somehow just sitting by myself didn’t seem . . . I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Let me borrow your knife, would you?”

  Marcus wordlessly drew his belt knife and handed it across. Jen pried up one of the thin wooden planks, which were nailed only loosely into place, and pulled the top of the box off. Inside, nestled in spun wool like a fresh egg, was a thick-bellied glass bottle that glistened amber all the way up to the wax seal at the neck. Another seal, pressed with a fanciful rendition of the charging-bull standard of Hamvelt, adorned the front.

  “It always seemed vaguely unpatriotic to me,” Jen said, lifting the bottle gently from its cradle. “I mean, we’ve got brandy in Vordan. Why does everyone love this Hamveltai stuff?”

  “Because it’s better,” Marcus said fervently. “You’ve never had any?”

  “I could never afford it. Clerking for the secret police doesn’t pay as well as you might imagine.”

  Marcus smiled. Just the sight of the bottle sent him back in time, to his days at the War College. He and Adrecht had had—not friends, not really, but cronies, men they lived, studied, and drank with. Drank with most of all. He’d sometimes thought that the War College was really a thinly disguised royal subsidy to the local tavern industry. Adrecht had once obtained a half-empty bottle of Hamveltai brandy, through some unexplained but presumably nefarious method, and there had been just about enough for everyone to have a sniff. He’d never forgotten the taste, which compared to even the best of the local stuff like pure spring water to sewer sludge.

  Jen worked the point of the knife delicately under the wax, split the seal up one side, and peeled it off the top of the bottle. She
’d produced a couple of glasses from somewhere, and Marcus watched as she expertly tipped two fingers of the liquid amber into each. She handed him one, held up her own, and met his eyes.

  “To Count Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran,” she said. “God grant that he know what the hell he’s doing.”

  “God grant,” Marcus said fervently. They both sipped. The bite on his tongue seemed to dissolve into smoke before it reached the back of his mouth. It was better even than he remembered. From the look in Jen’s eyes, she was similarly enraptured. She put the glass on the table slowly, and stared at it as though she thought it might move.

  “Saints and martyrs,” she swore. “Now I am glad I didn’t get killed in the battle.”

  “If only we had a bottle for every man in the regiment, they’d all come back alive,” Marcus said.

  Jen laughed. “If we had that much, we could probably buy the throne of Khandar.”

  “You’d be surprised. You remember those carts, the really heavy ones at the end of the train? The ones that were always getting stuck.”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Supposedly the prince packed them full of gold before he fled the city. All the treasures of the Exopterai Dynasty, or at least all the ones he could carry. Now he’s probably got them tucked away safe in his dungeons again.”

  Not every treasure. These “Thousand Names” weren’t in the prince’s hoard. But someone else must have had the same idea as Exopter did. His mood darkened. Whatever it is, it’s clearly more important than a few sacks full of coin. If only he’d tell me, I might be able to come up with something.

  Jen, sipping from her glass, watched his face. “Something wrong?”

  Marcus shrugged and looked down. “Not really.”

  “No?” She leaned closer, until they were only inches apart. “You can tell me. I won’t even put it in a report. I promise.”

  Her tone was still light, but there was an undercurrent of real concern. Marcus sighed.

  “I was just wishing the colonel would take me a bit more into his confidence. Then I might be able to say something when people ask me what happens next.”