“The truth is, Acherre,” she continued, “I’ve summoned you here as a binder today, not a cavalry officer.”
“Sir?” Acherre asked.
“I need to trust your discretion, Lance-Lieutenant. At our corps commander’s orders, I am pursuing a weapon we believe the enemy has at his disposal. What we discuss here is strictly confidential, on pain of treason. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir, I understand,” Acherre said. “Is this related to the golden light used by the enemy commanders?”
She tried to mask her surprise. “What do you know of it?”
“All of the binders have been talking about it, sir, since the scouting reports from Villecours. They say the Gand army has dozens of them, and we haven’t been able to find a combination of bindings to produce the effect.”
She sighed. Leave it to soldiers to gossip like highborn ladies at a masquerade. No sense hiding it.
“It’s called a Need binding, and I need to see if you can handle one.”
“Sir? Do you believe it involves Body, or Mind?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s a new energy.”
Acherre’s eyes went wide. “A new energy? Sir, I haven’t seen any new forms around the leylines since I was a girl.”
“Neither had I, Lance-Lieutenant.”
It took a moment for the meaning of those words to settle in. When it did, Acherre looked at her with awe. “Sir, you can use this new form?”
She nodded. “Yes, and I need to see if you can handle one side, or the other. There are two parts in a Need binding. I warn you, Foot-Captain Marquand finds it a less than pleasant experience.”
“Anything, sir. Just tell me what to do.” Her eyes shone with hunger. Once again Erris recognized herself in this young woman.
“Let’s start by seeing if you can be on the receiving end. Focus on a feeling of need—something you hope for, something powerful. The binding works differently than most. It requires the subject, the vessel, to share a strong feeling of need with the binder. You allow yourself to feel a strong need, say for victory over the Gandsmen. I’ll do the rest.”
“Yes, sir.” Acherre nodded, settling into her chair and taking a deep breath.
She closed her eyes, shifting her vision to the leylines, and saw at once the telltale colors and patterns of the ley-energies with which she was now familiar: Body, Life, Shelter, Entropy, and a few ink-clouds of Death. Need was so similar to the others for how she observed it, tethered it to produce an effect, but in other respects it was maddeningly different. Where every other energy pooled around the grid of lines, waiting to be used by any binder who could establish a connection, Need seemed to be a private reserve, tied to an individual and dependent on a connection between the binder and the source.
The moments drew on as she searched for Acherre’s Need. She traced the grid of leylines in her mind, searching for some sign of the golden light. The other patterns seemed to swarm around her, clouding her vision. An irritating distraction. For a moment she wondered if learning to recognize more types of leyline energies would be a detriment to establishing new Need connections.
Then she saw it.
It was small. A single thread from the broader grid of the leyline patterns, branching up until it seemed to merge with the young woman in front of her. Not her physical form—she had heard it said that the leylines existed in the space between what was real and what was not. Yet nonetheless this single thread traced itself into a pattern that she knew instinctively was tied to Lance-Lieutenant Acherre. She focused on the golden light pooling at the source of the thread. Need. How had she missed it before? Now, having seen Acherre’s thread, the pulsing light beckoned to her, inviting her to establish a tether like a garden flower opening itself to the sun. None of her previous vessels had been so warm, or welcoming. It piqued her sense of caution, and when she reached out to establish a binding, it was with the same tender care one might apply to testing the currents of an unfamiliar stream.
She willed the binding into place, and her senses shifted. One moment she had been Erris d’Arrent; the next she became Rosline Acherre.
Always before there was a rigidity to the sharing of senses, a hard delineation between her sense of self and the vessel over whom she assumed control. Behind Acherre’s eyes, she felt as if she could run a footrace. Energy surged within, a wellspring of youthful vigor. In other respects the binding seemed to function as it always had, but there was a comfort here. A familiarity like returning to camp after a successful sortie, like the warmth of a hot meal after days spent sleeping in the mud.
She closed Acherre’s eyes at once, shifting her vision to the leylines. Body, of course, but also a new form, spiraling blue coils entwining themselves around the leylines as they raced about almost too fast to see. She felt a certain pride that the blue coils seemed more common beneath her tent, for all they were scarce throughout the camp. Some truth after all in the old joke about military intelligence.
Mind.
An amusing thought, that binders like Acherre could see telltale sign of the exercise of intellect. Perhaps she ought to perform more arithmetic exercises, or bouts of philosophy or other such nonsense before Mind binders came calling.
Reaching out, she tested once more whether she could form a tether while bound to a Need vessel. And once more she found nothing, as good as binding empty air. Good. At least she seemed to be learning some of the rules for how this binding worked.
Before she released the connection, she spoke for Acherre’s benefit, using the other woman’s voice. “So you see, Lance-Lieutenant,” she said, “through a Need binding, one could deliver orders, see a battle unfold firsthand. A multitude of possibilities.”
She let her binding fade, her senses slipping back into her body. She spared a moment to flicker her vision to the leylines to confirm Mind was now among the energies she could see, and it was, thank the Gods. Time enough later to experiment with its use; she trusted Acherre more than most officers under her command, but this was a matter best kept to those who needed to know.
Acherre’s arm trembled as she lifted it, regarding her own limb as if it were a foreign entity.
“Are you all right, Lance-Lieutenant?” Erris asked.
“Yes, sir,” Acherre said, near breathless. “That was … that was an incredible experience, sir.”
“My apologies if I frightened you. Had you suspected the nature of the Need connection from your scouting reports?”
Acherre swallowed. “No, sir. But if the golden light means someone else is seeing through the enemy officers’ eyes, directing their maneuvers—”
She finished the thought. “Yes, Lance-Lieutenant. One commander, able to control the entirety of the enemy army. There may be more Need binders elsewhere, of course, but I have reason to suspect it is a single binder deciding strategy for the Gandsmen here in the New World, and quite possibly the Old World as well.”
A moment of silence lingered as Acherre contemplated the implications of the news. Finally, the younger woman looked up at her. “Is he good, sir?”
“Good?” She gave a soft laugh. “You mean a competent strategist? Yes, Acherre. He’s bloody good.”
“Well, you have it, too, sir. Need.” She said it with all the confidence of youth, as if the mere observation that Erris had the same power neutralized the enemy’s advantage.
“Yes,” she replied, projecting a confidence she could not claim was real. “Yes, Lance-Lieutenant, I do. And we must see whether you can handle Need from the other side.”
“Yes, sir. Just tell me what to do.” Acherre closed her eyes in preparation.
“No, Lance-Lieutenant,” she said. “My first experience with the golden light came unbidden, without shifting my sight.”
Acherre frowned. “I’ve never tethered bindings without seeing the leylines.”
“Nor had I, but it came instinctively in the moment. I doubt we’ll be able to replicate it here, on demand.” She felt a pang of guilt over th
at, but she had no intention of offering herself as a test subject. Marquand was right; it was a violation of the sort that made her skin crawl, and if she maintained a double standard concerning the use of the binding on others, well, she wasn’t entirely sure what to think about her hypocrisy. One problem at a time.
“How will I recognize it, sir?” Acherre asked.
“I first saw it as a shining light,” she said, remembering the field at Villecours. “It seemed to melt away from my vision, as if it shone from a great distance.”
Acherre frowned. “A pulse of golden light, like a glimmer at the corner of my eye?”
“Yes, Lance-Lieutenant, precisely. Look for a sign of that nature, and you will—”
“Sir, I’ve seen a pulse of light in the distance since you broke the tether. I assumed it was an aftereffect of the binding.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “Where?”
Acherre pointed. “Behind you, sir.”
She swiveled about in her seat, seeing nothing. “You’re certain, Acherre?”
“Yes, sir, it hasn’t dimmed at all, though it is difficult to keep in focus.”
“Try to bind it, just as you would Body or Mind,” she said, rising to her feet. “Once you can sense the golden light it functions identically to the other leyline energies.”
A look of determination creased Acherre’s face.
“Focus, Lance-Lieutenant.”
“I am, sir. I just can’t. It won’t come. It’s as if I am trying to bind a stone.”
“Gods damn it, try harder!” she barked. “If you can see Need it means someone is in danger, something to which you have a connection, something …” She trailed off.
The light had appeared for her.
She tethered it at once, and felt her vision snap behind the eyes of a man half a world away. She couldn’t say how she knew how far the binding had carried her senses. A thinness perhaps, a strain on the binding. In any case, the black sky above confirmed it for her; in New Sarresant the sun was a few hours shy of twilight. Wherever this man was, it was on the far side of the world.
Salt in the air suggested she was near the sea, and a glance at the horizon confirmed it. Water, yes, but also wood. If she had thought the harbor of New Sarresant resembled a forest, it was a thin copse of saplings compared to the sight in front of her. Dozens of ships. Hundreds. And a massive gangway down the center, extending for a league or more into the sea. Torches lined the way, illuminating the teeming mass of soldiers in clean ranks as they marched up onto the ramps attached to the closest ships.
Gand uniforms. Gand soldiers.
Her mind struggled to process what she was seeing. Soldiers marched in ranks all the way out onto the dike through the center of the harbor, winding back through the city in neat blocks that would have satisfied any parade sergeant. Fifty thousand if she had to guess, maybe more. Two armies’ worth at least, loaded onto tall ships worthy of making the crossing to the New World. Her stomach sank. These ships were bound for New Sarresant; she knew it in her bones.
“Ho there, what are you about then?”
The voice startled her, and it took a moment to understand the words. Her command of the Gand tongue was far from perfect, but it was enough.
The man whose skin she wore had wedged himself between a stack of crates and the side of a tall building, likely a storeroom. An excellent hiding place, all but invisible to passersby, with a solid view of the harbor. The sort of place she might have chosen herself had she been the one to take on this scouting mission, a hidden vantage that required hours of quiet waiting. He’d likely been there since the night before, patiently observing the goings-on by the waterfront. Whatever else her vessel was, he was a master scout. Yet he’d been found. The voice that had called out belonged to a newcomer wearing a Gand sergeant’s uniform, peering into the crack. Quite the attentive soldier to take note of this particular spot.
“By the Gods,” the sergeant exclaimed in the Gand tongue. “One of the light-blessed.”
Gods damn it. The bloody golden light behind the eyes. That was what had given away her vessel’s hiding place. The poor scout had infiltrated whatever Gand town this was, managed to skulk his way into an impeccable observation point, and she’d ruined it all. Reaching down, she thumbed the hilt of the dagger she felt hanging from the scout’s belt. Nothing for it now but to gamble.
“Come here,” she called in the Gand tongue. Clearly the man whom she’d made her vessel had a far better command of their language than she herself did; the words seemed to roll from his tongue with a natural ease.
The Gand sergeant obeyed at once, leaning in toward the crack behind which she was hidden. Whatever these “light-blessed” were to the Gandsmen, clearly they knew the phenomenon well enough not to question. Gods but she was lifetimes behind the enemy commander for implementation of Need.
She edged forward, right to the street. Then she drew the dagger and rammed it through the bottom of the sergeant’s chin in a fluid motion. With Body it would have been a sure, silent kill. As it was, the man cried out in a gurgling scream as he collapsed onto the street. Frantic, she scrambled out from behind the crates, looking up and down the waterfront. Oh yes, they had heard. Soldiers were coming.
“Forgive me, my friend,” she said aloud, not to the dying Gand sergeant, but for the benefit of the scout whose skin she wore through the power of Need. “You have done your duty by Sarresant. Your work today will save thousands of lives.”
She closed her eyes, as much to hide the telltale glow from the oncoming soldiers as to steel herself for what she had to do next.
“But you must understand,” she continued, “I cannot allow you to be captured.”
With as firm a grip as she could manage, she plunged the dagger into her own belly. A searing pain tore through her, vomit and blood mixing at the back of her throat.
Ten paces across the street. Ten paces to the waterfront.
She cracked her eyes a fraction to see the way clear, then sprinted, feeling adrenaline course through the scout’s veins. The enemy soldiers understood now, and came rushing on. Too late. She vaulted the stone wall at the water’s edge, and the scout hurdled over the side, crashing into the deathly cold of the sea.
She released the binding.
Acherre was still seated, her face streaked with tears. Seeing Erris regain control of herself, the lance-lieutenant stiffened, wiping her cheeks.
“Sir,” Acherre began, “I apologize. I will try harder, I will—”
“Enough!” she cried. “Gods damn it, we have bigger problems. Run and saddle Jiri, Lance-Lieutenant, now! We ride for the city, for high command.”
“Sir?”
“Go, soldier!”
Acherre ran.
Erris watched her leave the tent, then sagged against the side of the table, tears threatening to overwhelm her. Gods, the pain. It had to be done. It had to be. Time enough to gather herself, and be strong, on the ride into the city. For now she let herself feel the pain of it, offering up a silent prayer for the scout she’d left bleeding in the water on the far side of the world.
37
SARINE
The Revellion Townhouse
Gardens District, New Sarresant
She’s incredible, Sarine,” Donatien said. “I’ve learned more in a week under her instruction than all last year at the academy.”
An inward sigh. She could feign enough interest to escape notice when he started up this line of conversation, but it was becoming harder by the day.
“What did she have you practicing today?” she asked.
“Mock maneuvers near the coast, outside the city. She had us drilling with flotsam in the shallows, ‘simulating an amphibious landing,’ she called it. Half of the division attacking, half defending. Chaotic, of course, but she insisted we learn precision even in unpredictable circumstances.”
He went on to recount some brilliant maneuver he’d performed, sufficient to earn the accolades of Chevalier-General Erri
s d’Arrent herself. In her head she spoke Donatien’s commander’s name with mock reverence, a deification worthy of the Exarch, if not for the sarcastic bite nested within. She’d hoped this would be different, when they’d committed to the cause of standing in the way of Reyne d’Agarre. It seemed Donatien had forgotten, and left her prowling the streets on her own. An unfair assessment, and she knew it in her head, but that didn’t erase the feeling.
“Why do you think she has you planning for an invasion by sea?” she asked after he finished. “Does it have anything to do with the Crown-Prince’s arrival?”
The question surprised him, though he made an effort to hide it. “Just an exercise,” he began, then adopted a contemplative look. “Though I suppose it is possible she expects an attack. I’ve heard no reports to confirm it, either way.”
“Half the royal navy is here in New Sarresant,” Sarine said. “More, perhaps. Word has been on every tongue in the city, speculating why. And still we hear nothing.”
She knew it sounded as though she was accusing him. He seemed to take it in stride.
“The consensus among the First Division’s officers is we may be planning an assault in the south. Perhaps that’s why the general has us working by the sea: to simulate an offensive maneuver. I wonder if she’ll have us running joint exercises with the navy next.”
She nodded absently, looking out through the glass of the Revellion library. The city seemed hushed in the twilight hours, torches being lit along the streets as the sun faded away behind them.
“D’Agarre has been quiet since the ships arrived,” she said, changing the subject.
Revellion started, as if he’d already been lost in thought, planning for his next maneuver. He made a quick recovery. “Nothing since the night in the warehouse?”
She shook her head. “Not even any gatherings at the d’Agarre manse. He leaves to call on a few houses during the daylight hours, but without a pattern I can tell. Nothing to indicate what he’s planning.”
“The man you fought, he intimated they knew you were watching.”
“Yes. But that’s not it. D’Agarre wouldn’t cease his plans on my account.”
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