“D’Arrent, our time is short, is it not?” Voren asked.
“Yes, sir, I can maintain this Need binding for a quarter hour perhaps, before exhausting my supply.”
He tsked. “Not nearly enough. We have planning to do.”
She glanced down at the maps, spread across Voren’s table. “Sir, I can formulate tactics in the cell. Have Marquand stay with you, or somewhere supplied with accurate maps, so I can bind to him when my Need supplies regenerate, if I must review details. We’re working up counter-strategies to the Gand invasion?”
Voren raised a hand, forestalling her review of current deployments. “In time, d’Arrent.”
“Sir?”
“Chevalier-General, events are being set in motion. Under better circumstances, I’d have given you more time to acclimate yourself to this idea, but we are running out of time.”
Her memory returned to the coach, when he had spoken of refusing to obey the Crown-Prince.
“Sir—” she began, but once again he cut her off.
“There is an organization in the city that plots revolution, violent revolution against the crown. I mean to support this organization, with as many of my soldiers as will follow my orders.”
Voren allowed her time to consider his words, reclining to watch her reactions, writ on the face of Foot-Captain Marquand.
“Violent revolution, sir?” she managed at last.
“Part of what we need to plan. I mean to seize power with minimal casualties, but with Reyne d’Agarre’s organization we can mollify the commonfolk and moneyed classes together. An arduous task without his foundation to build from. He imagines the Council-General can be invested with real power after the Lords’ Council is dissolved, and I mean to oblige him, for now.”
Her head spun, and for once she wished Marquand had been filled with his usual amount of drink. The games of kings and princes were so far beyond her imagining as to be folktales, stories from the priests of the Gods’ travels. She was a soldier. She needed an objective, an army, a battlefield. Leave it to men with elaborate surnames and noble titles to worry over who would rule.
“What part do I play in this, sir?”
“I need your support, d’Arrent. You are my best commander, and if what you’ve seen of the Gand invasion is true, without your newfound Need bindings we are lost. Can you refuse the Crown-Prince’s order to accompany him across the sea? To do so is to support this revolution. There is no other way. And, if you’ll pardon my speaking frankly, your arrest and imprisonment should make this an easy decision. But it is yours to make.”
The oaths of service she’d taken on graduating from the academy flashed through her memory. To uphold the realm. To defend Sarresant from all its enemies, without and within. To obey her officers, and the King. Her memory cast her further back, to the day she’d been taken. She’d been eleven, six full years past the mandated age of testing. Perhaps her father had sensed something different about his daughter, enough to keep her hidden as they ranged through the countryside. Blissful years, in her memory. Her father had raised her like a son, teaching her to ride, to hunt and fight and skin their kills for pelts. And then one day he had been slow to rouse from the inn, too deep in his cups the night before. A brown-robed man had laid a hand on her, scarring her with binder’s marks and tearing her life away from her forever. She’d gone to the binders’ camp years behind the other children, and pushed herself relentlessly to catch up, driving until she met and exceeded her teachers’ standards of perfection. While the other children learned obedience, had the lesson of humility instilled into their bones, Erris d’Arrent learned only excellence. It had been enough for them, then.
And so now, when Louis-Sallet de l’Arraignon demanded obedience, demanded loyalty enough to allow her homeland to burn, the Crown-Prince would reap what her teachers had sown years before: only excellence, nothing more.
“Sir,” she said, “you have my support.”
“You are sure, Chevalier-General? This will be no easy path to tread. It means blood on all of our hands, before the end.”
“Sir, my time is drawing short. If we have planning to do, we best get started.”
Her commander nodded. “Thank you, d’Arrent.” He leaned forward, shuffling through the maps until he produced the one he sought. “Our first priorities must be the palace and the harbor. If we can seize the Crown-Prince and the Duc-Governor it will go easier, convincing any would-be loyalists to stand down. And I worry the navy will flee the city if we do not secure the ships. Either way, we’ll need a pretext to begin deploying men inside the city.”
“Training exercises,” she said. “I’ve been conducting them with my men since we arrived. How much time do we have?”
“The Prince intends to give his order before the council tomorrow evening.”
“Tomorrow …? Gods damn us all,” she cursed, the words flowing from Marquand’s mouth with familiar ease. “Your pardon, sir.”
Voren waved away her apology. “I believe the men will follow us in this, d’Arrent. Do you agree?”
Nigh every soldier in the army had been born in the colonies. They would take the order hard—Sarresant soldiers were men and women of honor—but there was always a higher duty to home. If there would be difficulties they would come from the binders, trained almost from birth to believe themselves property of the crown. But she herself would serve as an example there; there would be conflict, but with swift, decisive action it could be settled to their advantage.
“Sir, I agree. There may be some small trouble, but most will follow. I am more concerned for the binders, and the priests. The crown’s training is thorough. Not all of them will bend easily.”
He nodded. “We have assurances from the prelates, and I’ve spoken with our senior binders in the Second Corps, but you are no doubt correct. As I said, this will be no easy path, for any of us.”
“What of the men who won’t follow you, sir? Or the captains and sailors of the navy who crossed the sea with Louis-Sallet?”
Voren gave her a grim look. “Blood on our hands, d’Arrent.”
Her stomach turned. One thing to decide in the abstract, another to order her men to kill their fellow soldiers and sailors for the crime of loyalty, for upholding oaths they’d sworn themselves.
“You will give them the opportunity to support us, at least?”
“Of course.”
She turned back to the maps. Time was short. Best get to work.
“Sir,” Acherre whispered, “are you back?”
She sat forward, propping herself up on her elbows from where she’d lain on the dusty floor of the cell. Disorienting. She hadn’t been lying down when she made the Need connection with Marquand.
“Yes, Lance-Lieutenant,” she replied. “You moved me?”
“Yes, sir. The guards came with the midday meal.” Acherre nodded toward the door, where a pair of bowls rested on the ground. “I told them you were asleep.”
“Quick thinking, Lance-Lieutenant.” Troubling that Acherre could move her body while her senses were suppressed by the Need binding. Would that lack of awareness persist in the face of real danger, if she suffered pain, or wounds? Yet another area for which she lacked understanding, another set of unknowns she’d need to test. Too damned many of those lately.
“Were you able to make contact, sir?” Acherre asked. “With the general?”
“Yes. Troubling news. You were born here in New Sarresant, right, Acherre?”
“Yes, sir. My father was a wine seller in the Market district, before they took me away for training.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No, sir.”
Credit the binders’ training for that. Connecting with family again after the academy was not explicitly prohibited, only frowned on to the point of taboo. They were soldiers, not citizens. Regulars could retire from the army after a completed tour, go home to wives, husbands, children. Binders, and especially fullbinders, served until they made their ma
rque. Twenty years on an officer’s pay, if somewhat fewer on a general’s.
“Could you obey the Crown-Prince’s command, if he gave it?” she asked.
“To leave the colonies, sir, to defend the Old World?”
She nodded.
Acherre went quiet.
“Could you, sir?” Acherre finally asked, a searching look behind her eyes.
“No,” she said with finality. “And I don’t mean to. Voren intends to join the Second Corps to the cause of revolution if Louis-Sallet goes ahead with his folly.”
Acherre sat back against the stone walls of the cell, looking up at the ceiling as she let out a breath.
“Then I would follow you, sir.”
“Very good, Lance-Lieutenant.” She made an effort not to show her relief. It was no sure thing. Voren was right: This would be a hard road, before the end. “Voren expects Louis-Sallet to give his order at the Lords’ Council, tomorrow night.”
“Sir? Will there be enough time to deploy our men into the city?”
“Not if we overreach. Too many objectives and we’ll never hold them all.”
“The marquis-general has you planning this, doesn’t he?”
“That’s right, Lance-Lieutenant. Need is a powerful tool.”
They exchanged a look, and Acherre returned her smile.
“Now, as to our objectives,” she said. “Voren has placed a high priority on securing the harbor, and I agree. We must protect the ships if we are to have any hope of standing against the Gand invasion force. Bless Louis-Sallet for doing one thing right and bringing the navy with him. If we can secure those ships, prevent the admirals from fleeing the city, we may well have a fighting chance against what’s coming.”
“Sir,” Acherre said, “is it wise to assume the remainder of the army will not oppose us?”
“We have to roll the dice, Lance-Lieutenant. Our composition is the same as theirs, levees from the colonies. They won’t like the prince’s order any more than we do. I don’t have the men to fight a pitched battle against our own soldiers. The priority must be the ships.”
Acherre leaned forward, listening intently as she laid out the rest of her plans. It helped to have a foil for planning, and Acherre asked more than a few pertinent questions. The most pressing issue was redeploying the men into the city, starting at first light, and doing it without attracting undue attention from the prince, or the rest of the army. They might manage a handful of brigades moving into the city before the fighting started. The rest of the corps would have to be mobilized and ready to move when they gave the order.
Timing would be tight, which meant detailed and specific logistics, down to the smallest fighting company of the barest regiment. And all of this planned and delivered in a day, while she was imprisoned, with access to maps only as fast as her Need reserves replenished. She was mad to even attempt it.
She grinned as she checked her Need stores. Mad, yes. But she’d done worse.
To her surprise she’d already recovered a small portion of Need; it seemed to regenerate more quickly when she focused herself on tasks and ideas for which she felt a sense of urgency. Not a large quantity available, but it would be enough for a brief review of the Harbor maps.
She closed her eyes, tethering the binding, and reached out for Foot-Captain Marquand.
Her senses snapped into place, and she stuttered to a halt mid-stride. A jolting sensation. She’d expected to find him seated behind Voren’s maps. Instead he was out in the city, sauntering down the street alone.
She squinted into the unexpected sunlight. The Riverways. Marquand was wandering the Riverways, probably looking for some hole to crawl into before he drank himself into tomorrow.
“You listen to me, Foot-Captain,” she hissed in Marquand’s voice, for his benefit. “I need those maps. Get your wine-soaked ass back to the Harbor and do your duty or I’ll flay your fucking hide for my personal battle standard.”
She let the binding fade. Much as she wanted to lay into Marquand further, or perhaps take him to a rooftop and jump off just to teach him a lesson in obedience, Need was far too precious today to waste on mere discipline. He’d received the order. Drunkard he may be, but she’d never known him to fail in his duty, not when it mattered. More likely his little jaunt was a momentary lapse in judgment. Perhaps he’d failed to grasp the urgency of the situation. The alternative—that he’d grasped it perfectly well, and chose this moment to break—no, she could hardly bring herself to countenance that possibility. He could not mean to shirk his duty now.
Or worse, he could have decided his duty lay in working against them.
She could scarce believe it. Not of Marquand. Yet it was treason for which they asked. Who could say what steel lay at the core of any man or woman, without peeling back the skin to reveal it? She’d seen Marquand so piss-drunk he couldn’t remember his name, but she’d also seen him lead a charge of fifty men against a regiment of five hundred without batting an eye. If he decided to warn the Crown-Prince …
No. Time enough to settle that if it came to it. It would take him an hour at least to reach Rasailles. She’d check in on him then, and if he had indeed made his way to the palace, she’d bury his own dagger in his belly. For now she had planning to do, damn Marquand for a bloody fool.
Her other vessels were unlikely to be anywhere useful. But she had to try.
She reached for Marie d’Oreste, and slid her senses into place. At once she was assaulted by the smell of blood, and rot. A soldier lay on a table in front of her, writhing out of her grip, howling in pain. The chirurgeon whipped his bone saw away with a curse when the patient slipped loose, invective trailing off when he noticed what could only have been the golden light behind Marie’s eyes.
A field hospital. Gods damn it, Marie was in the camps outside the city. A fine bloody time to be nursing the wounded. Bless the woman for her charity, but there was no time.
“Marie,” she said, “I need you to find Marquis-General Voren of the Second Corps. He’s at the Tank and Twine in the Harbor district. Move on the double.”
“What’s going on here?” the chirurgeon demanded.
She let the binding fade.
“Sir?” Acherre asked as her senses returned to their cell. “Is somewhat amiss?”
No time.
She reached for Sister Elise, feeling her reserves of Need dwindling.
This time she sat astride a horse, on a slow walk amid a caravan of the same making their way along a road. Brown robes all around her, riding, walking, driving wagons. Nowhere near the city; they were returning to their abbey at Arentaigne.
No point sending a message. Too far. She let the binding fade.
“Sir?” Acherre again.
“No time, Lance-Lieutenant.”
She needed a new connection. Now. She closed her eyes, letting the feeling of need overwhelm her. She imagined the Crown-Prince subduing their attempt at a coup, ordering the remains of the army back across the sea. She let herself feel the horror of the enemy invasion force making an uncontested landing within the New Sarresant harbor, commencing the butchery the enemy commander had promised, back in his command tent when she’d worn Marie d’Oreste’s skin.
The golden light flickered at the edge of her vision. For a moment it seemed as if it would spring up, welcoming her embrace like the rays of an autumn sunrise.
And then, nothing. Her stores were exhausted.
She tethered Body and slammed a fist into the wall of her cell. Stone cracked and chipped, shards knifing through the air in a cloud of dust before it broke, and her fist connected with the Shelter binding beneath the wall. With a snapping sound, the force repelled her strike, sending her backward across the cell, throwing her into the far wall and knocking the breath from her lungs.
She gave a choking laugh, once she’d sucked in enough air for it. She’d been a fool. Expending all her Need to study the maps had been foolish in the extreme. Without it she was isolated, at the mercy of her body taking
the time to generate more leyline energy. She took another deep, steadying breath.
“Sir?” Acherre asked once more, lowering the arm she’d used to shield herself from the shards of stone. “Is there anything I might do to help?”
Before she could reply, a hard rapping came on the door.
“Enough of that, prisoners!” shouted a stern voice. A woman, some priest who had been tapped to maintain the Shelter bindings today. Erris didn’t envy her that posting: A binder of any real strength could overpower the guards at a moment’s notice whenever they dropped the Shelter shield for meals, fresh linens, waste collection, or anything else besides. It was only the threat of the remainder of the Citadel’s guard, and the binders among them, that might give a prisoner pause. Little enough surety in that, for the woman assigned to hold the barrier.
“We’ll behave ourselves, sister,” she called back. No reason to put fear into an innocent woman.
She turned back to Acherre. “And no, Lance-Lieutenant. Nothing to be done now. Not until my Need stores replenish.”
Acherre frowned, but made no complaint.
“For now, we continue our work.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was slower going than she might have hoped without reference to Voren’s maps of the city. General strategy only, directives for each unit with plans for how to deliver messages without drawing the notice of the city guard, or the other corps of the army. Still, they made progress, and before long she was satisfied with their framework for deploying the brigades toward the Harbor. Time to turn attention to the remainder of their men, stationed in the camps. They’d need to make a quick-time march through the woods between the city and Rasailles without drawing overmuch attention, in hopes of securing the Duc’s family and the Crown-Prince before any loyalist opposition could take the field.
A thundercrack from below broke her concentration.
Acherre rose to her feet at once, with Erris not far behind. Dust fell from the ceiling as the walls shook.
“An attack?” the lance-lieutenant asked.
“Well ahead of schedule if so. Voren couldn’t have moved the corps into the city so quickly.”
Soul of the World Page 44
