by Morgan Rice
He knew what those promises would have to be. To the Church of the Masked Goddess: renewed ascendancy. To the nobles, their Assembly back as it was. To the captains, gold, or the chance to push out foreigners, or both. He would make any promises he had to for his revenge.
“Ashton will fall,” he said. “So we will prepare your estates, Loris. When it falls, people will flock here, and they will remember who promised them that he could solve things. Then they will march together, and I will see Queen Sophia’s and King Sebastian’s heads on pikes!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Sebastian had always thought that he’d understood the business of ruling, but the sheer scale of the things he had to deal with managed to take even him a little by surprise. Keeping on top of the events of the kingdom meant gathering information from every corner of it, and that, it seemed, meant report after report, from both messengers and the crowd of lords and ladies who clustered in the great hall with seemingly nothing better to do.
“Your Majesty,” a courtier said. “More refugees have arrived at the city, saying that their villages have been burned.”
“Find space for them,” Sebastian ordered the man.
“Soon there will be no space,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t we turn at least a few away?”
“And if I were to turn you out of your home, my lord?” Sebastian countered. “If I were to give you and your family nowhere to go? Would you say that there was no space then?”
The courtier swallowed. “Space will be found, Your Majesty.”
He bowed and hurried off.
“You’re going to make enemies if you threaten them with seizing their lands when they disagree,” Hans said, beside him. Will was on the other side, the three providing a unified front in the face of the nearly endless needs of the kingdom.
“That’s not what I did,” Sebastian said. He thought about the conversation. “But it’s what he will hear, isn’t it?”
Hans nodded.
It was hard to get these decisions right. Every choice Sebastian made impacted on the lives of the people he ruled. Forcing the courtier to let in more people would probably save lives, but it would also mean more hungry, desperate people in Ashton, without their usual chances to work or protect their families. Already there had been fights and thefts, although in the great wash of Ashton, it was hard to notice.
“How are the defenses?” Sebastian asked Hans.
“The rebuilding work was already underway when we heard the news of the New Army landing,” his cousin said. “The inner walls have been reinforced, while fortifications have been placed around the outer city to slow the enemy’s advance.”
One of the lords spoke up then. Sebastian recognized Earl Neversham. “Your Majesty, the Assembly of… that is, the Assembly has asked questions regarding the tactics that you have chosen in defending against this invasion.”
Sebastian might have felt better about the man if he hadn’t almost called it the Assembly of Nobles, or if his family hadn’t made their money as slavers.
“What questions?” Sebastian asked.
“The issue has been raised of King Rupert’s approach to the last incursion by this foe,” the man said. “Whatever we may think of the ethics of it, it cannot be denied that it was very effective.”
“In destroying large sections of the kingdom,” Sebastian said. “Hans, how long is agriculture on the peninsula likely to take to recover?”
“Perhaps twenty years,” his cousin said. “Perhaps longer.”
Sebastian fixed Earl Neversham with a level stare. “And you want to do the same to the rest of the kingdom? Do you want the people to starve?”
“Of course not,” the man said, although Sebastian suspected that he probably hadn’t thought about it one way or the other. “But there is nothing to stop us from riding out to meet them with our armies.”
“Except for the part where the Master of Crows would see our every move, surround us, and slaughter us,” Will put in.
“We have no way of knowing that,” Earl Neversham said with a faint sneer that Sebastian suspected he wouldn’t have used on either him or Hans. “I have some experience in the royal regiment, and I think—”
“With respect,” Sebastian said, “Will has direct experience of fighting the New Army. As do I. As does Hans. If we go out to meet them in the field now, we will be defeated, and I will not sacrifice men like that for no good reason.”
“Then I will take that news back to the Assembly,” Earl Neversham said with a bow. In its way, it was a threat. This was not a tyranny where Sebastian could just do what he liked. The Assembly could overrule him, although it would probably take so much time to do so that the war would probably be done by then. Besides, he had enough support there for now to win the votes he needed. He hoped.
Then he saw Lord Cranston marching into the hall and knew that his troubles were just beginning.
“The three of you should come,” he said, ignoring the rest of the room. “There’s something you need to see.”
Sebastian followed without asking questions. If the mercenary captain was in enough of a hurry to do without so much as a sarcastic comment, the situation sounded grave indeed. Sebastian hurried after him, Hans and Will in his wake, half the court in theirs. Together, the group made its way up to the roof of the palace, from where it was possible to see both the city and the lands spread out around it.
“Do you see?” Lord Cranston said, pointing.
Sebastian saw. A black cloud sat on the horizon, except that it wasn’t a black cloud: it was a tumbling flock of birds, crows and ravens and more. Beneath it, a wide band of ochre uniforms stood out against the green of the landscape, the soldiers marching together as one.
“They’re here,” Sebastian said, a sense of dread filling him. Had they done enough to prepare? Could they ever do enough to prepare for that?
“They’re here,” Lord Cranston agreed. He started looking out at the army through a ship’s viewing glass, staring at it as if taking in every detail.
“Have the defenses manned,” Sebastian said. “Bring people in from the outer city. Demolish whatever buildings you can on the outskirts before they arrive. I want clear lines of fire. I want every man, woman, and child within the walls before they get here.”
“Straightaway,” Will promised.
Hans turned to go with him, but to Sebastian’s surprise, Lord Cranston held up a hand.
“There’s more you need to see. Both of you.” He held out the viewing glass.
Sebastian took it first, pointing it toward the advancing army. It was only through the glass that he saw the posts being carried before the army, the figures impaled upon them. Every so often a crow would come down to peck at them before flying away. Despite that, it was still far too easy to work out who they were.
“Ulf… Frig…”
“What about them?” Hans demanded, then took the viewing glass as Sebastian handed it over. He looked through it, and then roared in a way that Sebastian might have expected from his dead brother. Sebastian had to grab him to stop him from running off down the stairs.
“Let me go!” Hans demanded. “I’m going to kill them, and you will not stop me!”
“Hans, think,” Sebastian said. “It’s what he wants. It’s what he wants you to do!”
“Then he’ll get what he wants and more,” Hans said. “He killed my brother and my sister!”
“And I know what it feels like to lose someone,” Sebastian said. “It feels like it’s carved your soul out, leaving a dead space inside that just fills up with anger.”
“Then you know why I have to do this,” Hans said.
“No,” Sebastian shot back. “I know why you have to hold back. The best revenge against the Master of Crows isn’t to throw yourself against him blindly. It’s to win. It’s to protect the people of Ashton, and then, when the New Army breaks itself against our walls, when he doesn’t have anything left, we’ll crush him together.”
Hans stepp
ed back, breathing hard. Sebastian could still see the anger in his eyes, but Hans was the most self-controlled of all the siblings. Sebastian didn’t want to think about what might happen when Jan or Endi found out.
“You’re right,” Hans said. “We need to win this. When it’s done, though, I want your word that the Master of Crows will be dead.”
“You have it,” Sebastian assured him. There were some things that shouldn’t be left in the world.
Before that part, they still had to protect the people of Ashton. It would be a hard fight, maybe an unwinnable one. Sebastian would have felt a lot better if Lucas had been there to fight on their side, or Kate had been there to sneak out and kill the Master of Crows while no one was looking.
Above all, he wished that Sophia were here, and not just because of the power that Sebastian had heard about her bringing to bear in the past. He wished that she were here because trying to do this without her left Sebastian feeling incomplete and weaker than he should have been.
“I will hold,” he promised. “I will hold until you can come back for me and our baby.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sophia sheltered as best she could beneath an awning on one of the caravan’s carts along with King Akar’s translator and a couple of the others who didn’t want to walk. The heat of the Morgassa sun was oppressive, beating down and leaching the moisture from her body. It reflected off the salt plain they were currently on, the crust cracking as the caravan worked its way over it. Even Sienne lounged within the wagon, apparently not wanting to do more than stretch in the sun.
“Are you all right, my lady?” the translator asked, offering her water. She seemed to have taken it upon herself to serve as Sophia’s maid.
“I’m fine, thank you,” Sophia said. “Tell me about yourself. It will help to pass the time.”
“There is little to tell,” the woman said. “I serve our king. I was born into his service.”
“I don’t even know your name,” Sophia said.
“I am Lani,” she said, seeming unwilling to say more.
Sophia didn’t push her, but she planned to get more out of the translator when there was time.
“You should come up and ride in here,” Sophia called down to Kate and Lucas. Lucas was wrapped in his usual silks, a scarf around his head to keep off the sun. Kate had improvised something similar using a bolt of red cloth, copying the costumes of some of their guides.
“I want to see the route,” Kate called back up. “We’re almost to the edge of this salt flat.”
Looking out of the wagon, Sophia saw that it was true. Their little group had made better time than they’d hoped. Ahead, a set of jagged hills stretched as a barrier, a dirt road cut through them the only hint that there were people there at all.
Their group pulled up onto that road, wagons and soldiers, horses and strange-looking creatures that their guides called camels, which moved with a misshapen lack of grace, but were a lot stronger and faster than they appeared. The caravan plodded forward, eventually coming to a fork in the road with no sign, and no sense of which way was the right one to go.
Even so, the guides pointed insistently to the right-hand fork.
“They say that is the best way,” Lani translated. “There are watering holes both ways, but the left way has… dangers.”
Sophia nodded. “If that is what they think is best, then—”
She gasped as the vision hit her.
Dry ground. Empty holes where water had once been. Animals staggering to a halt and then collapsing. People crawling as their bodies gave way beneath the heat…
“Wait,” Sophia said. “The water holes have dried up that way. If we go that way, we’ll die. Tell them that we must take the left-hand path.”
“As you command,” Lani said, and relayed the instruction to the guides. They said something back. “They say that the dangers that way are very great, my lady. That the water holes only dry up once in a dozen years.”
“They have dried up this year,” Sophia assured her. “I saw it. Trust me.”
“I do not need to trust you,” Lani said. “My king has commanded, and I obey.”
It was a way of putting things that worried Sophia a little. King Akar had told her that everyone he commanded was free, but Sophia had seen herself how quickly that could become a lie. She was grateful when Lani relayed her insistence, and the caravan swung to the left.
It pushed forward, up a slight slope, then along through the rocks. The guides looked skittish at having to go this way, and even a couple of King Akar’s soldiers looked as though they would rather go any other way.
“What is it that they’re so afraid of?” Sophia asked Lani.
“They say that wild things live this way, my lady.”
Sophia wasn’t sure what that meant, but she knew it had to be better than the certain death of the other direction. The caravan pushed forward, moving to the edge of the rocks, so that Sophia could look out on an open area of semi-desert beyond. Compared to her kingdom, it was a wasteland, but next to the salt flat, it was almost a paradise.
The only problem was what stood in between.
Lizards basked on rocks and sand, each larger than a wolf, each with spines running down its back and claws as big as knives. One yawned wide, revealing teeth that looked as though they might be able to punch through armor.
“There are too many to fight our way through,” Lucas said, as Sophia stepped down for a better look.
“And we can’t sneak through,” Kate said. “They’d only scent us.”
“The men want to know if you’re ready to turn back,” Lani asked Sophia.
Sophia didn’t want to say yes, because doing that would mean giving up. They couldn’t take the other route, so if they couldn’t take this one, they might as well go home. A part of her longed for that, longed to see Sebastian and Violet again, but after all this way, she wasn’t going to give up. She found herself looking over to Sienne. If she could tame a forest cat, couldn’t she do something with the lizards before them?
“There’s something I want to try first,” Sophia said.
She stepped toward the lizards, reaching out with her gift. It seemed like forever since she’d tamed Sienne, but Sophia could still remember the feeling of connecting with a mind that wasn’t human, and she’d had plenty of practice with her powers since then.
She felt for the shape of the lizards’ minds and found them, jagged and predatory. Reaching into them meant reshaping almost everything that Sophia thought about the world. For a moment, she was the hunger and the need to pounce, the heating blood that came from the sun’s glare and the scent of rotting flesh from previous kills. Then Sophia reached out and started to calm, started to push thoughts into the beasts, started to push them.
She stepped out into them, and they parted like a crowd making way for a procession, stepping back until they were as far from Sophia as they could get.
“Bring the wagons through,” she said. “Hurry.”
She wasn’t sure how long she could hold something like this. Affecting one mind was hard enough; to affect so many took absolute concentration. Sophia sweated as she worked to hold the lizards there, and a single bead of it dripped into her eye. Her concentration wavered only for an instant, but it was enough for one of the beasts to leap forward at her, and Sophia couldn’t move to give it her attention, because that would just have meant releasing the others.
Sienne leapt to her defense, the forest cat pouncing on the lizard, her claws ripping into it while her jaws clamped down on the nape of its neck. She shook it the way a smaller cat might have a rabbit, the crushing pressure breaking bones and cutting off breath. Finally, almost contemptuously, she tossed it aside.
“Hurry,” Sophia said to the others, and they finally started to move. The camels and the horses came first, the wagons following. Kate and Lucas brought up the rear, walking slowly with Sophia as they made their way toward the far side. Sophia was shaking with the effort of hold
ing the lizards back now, and Sienne was growling, as if preparing for another attack.
A lizard broke clear, and Lucas’s sword flashed down to cut its head from its body. Another came at them, and Kate shot it with one of her pistols.
“Time to run, I think,” Kate said to Sophia.
Sophia nodded and sent a burst of fear out into the beasts, making them recoil as she and the others ran for the safety of the wagons. Lucas and Kate had her arms, all but carrying her as they forced Sophia forward. The three of them dove into the last of the wagons, while around them, their soldiers sent a volley of arrow and musket fire into the advancing lizards, and Sienne leapt up beside them.
The drivers whipped the horses into motion, and they set off.
Around Sophia, all the others in the wagon were shaking. Lani was there, and she was looking at Sophia with obvious fear and shock.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” Sophia said. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“You might,” Lani said. “You might when you know…”
Sophia looked into her mind. Like that, it was easy to see that King Akar had sent her to make sure that they took nothing from the Forgotten City; that she was to poison them if they did. She didn’t want to, but she’d served him all her life, and if she failed, he would have her impaled. Now, she knelt there, waiting for death at being discovered.
“You have nothing to worry about,” Sophia said. “I’m not going to hurt you, and we really aren’t here to steal.”
She heard Lani breathe a sigh of relief. “I thought…”
“I know what you thought,” Sophia said, “but you’re safe here. I’m not going to hurt you. Nothing is. We’re past the danger of the beasts now.”
Lani shook her head. “Forgive me, my lady, but you’re mistaken. The danger of the beasts is just the first of the dangers on this journey. We will not be safe until we reach the Forgotten City. Maybe not even then.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Lucas held back the thirst he felt, being patient, knowing that they would need more water later on. Around him, the caravan continued on into Morgassa’s wastes, traveling along tracks that probably saw more animals than people.
