If I was going to survive to help the Reform, I was going to have to let go of those niceties now.
Charms first, I decided without thinking very deeply at all. Charms were what I was comfortable with, and where I knew how to predict the results. I drew quickly, long threads of thick golden light from the ether. They rushed toward me strong and fast, the practice honed by the long hours in the Fenian factories. I twisted them into rings, huge rings as big as the ship, my fingers making the motion of the glowing discs in miniature. I cast three of them tight around the ship, hovering over the hull below, the deck surrounding me, and above, the sails. I drove the magic first into the willing fibers of the sails and then, with effort that made my forehead bead sweat, into the wood. It was barely etched into the surface and I saw the pale white light leaking into the water and dissipating as soon as I’d tethered the magic to the hull.
Sailors ran past, either not noticing or not bothering about me, though I might well have been in the way, interrupting their precise and vital movements. Alba stood, a silent sentry, beside me.
There was a complement of swivel guns on the deck, a pitiful answer to the full broadside of cannon the Galatine vessel could deliver, and I let the charm magic dance over them as I considered them. We had questioned how a charm might affect the accuracy or safety of a gun; now was not the time to test the theory. A sailor pulled a crate of ammunition from the hold; I wondered, briefly, if I could ward off damp powder and ensure clean firing if I charmed the black powder. I might also render the explosive inert.
I shook my head and turned to the sailors themselves. I thought to charm their clothing, but stopped. They would have refused, and there was something unsettling about charming them against their will. I would charm the ship or its supplies, but not them, not their personal items, without their consent. The Galatine soldiers and their charmed uniforms were different; some of them simply didn’t believe, but Galatines didn’t, as a rule, have moral compunctions against charms. Not so the Fenians. Instead, I turned back to the sails, imbuing more charms into them, plying it in thick strands around the rigging as well.
The captain stopped briefly to speak to Alba. From their exchange I knew he had tried to insist we go below; from his red face I knew Alba’s refusal had been final. He shouted something in Fenian, and she asked a quiet question. I tried to focus on the sails, but the deafening report of a shot from the Royalist ship broke my concentration.
A warning shot only, but I shuddered.
“He is suggesting surrender,” Alba said, glowering. “He does not wish to fight to preserve the cargo.”
I bit my lip. Of course, this tub couldn’t stand against the Galatine ship; I was foolish for even trying to buffer us, to raise the possibility of victory. Charms couldn’t make the impossible possible.
Alba argued with the captain, while the Galatine ship was close enough now that I could see them readying to fire again. Likely this shot would be aimed for us, aimed for the sails and rigging to incapacitate us and make us easy to board. When that happened, I could be discovered. I had to assume I would be.
Quickly, without considering the ramifications of what I was doing, I spun darkness from the ether. I pulled black luck and death and misfortune, drew it tight around itself like a ball. With my fist clenched and my heart pounding against my ribs, I hurled it toward the Royalist ship. More specifically, toward a gunport and the maw of a cannon inside, its crew in the middle of loading the gun.
The black sparkling orb collided with the black cast iron of the gun and enveloped it. It didn’t press itself into the metal; I hadn’t expected that, and before I could decide if I should try to embed the curse in the unmalleable iron, the crew fired the gun.
It exploded.
Orange fire erupted in the side of the ship, and though several other guns fired shortly after, the shouts and chaos reached us from across the water. They were, for the moment, incapacitated. One gun crew, maybe more, injured. I shook off the guilt—they would have killed me. They still might. We had bought time, nothing more.
Then I saw the bright tongues of flame licking the interior deck of the ship, tracing the wood and lapping up one mast. The first explosion that followed shocked me, but the others I began to anticipate, one after the other, as casks of powder exploded and ignited more of the ship.
Alba took a tiny step forward, mouth open, surprised out of her pious complacency for perhaps the first time in years.
She turned to me as the captain gaped next to her, clearly congratulating himself on his good fortune.
This was only the beginning, her bright eyes promised while my knees buckled and darkness like that I had hurled at the ship seemed to dig into the pit of my stomach.
12
WE LANDED NEAR HAZELWHITE WITH NO FURTHER INTERVENTION from the Royalist navy. The weather hadn’t turned completely toward autumn this far south, and balmy sunshine bathed the shore where we landed longboat after longboat of supplies. The Fenian captain grumbled about the lack of proper docks, but he made haste unloading the crates. The black powder came last, barrel after volatile barrel.
I had gotten my feet wet alighting from the longboat, and took off my shoes and socks to try to dry them in the sun. It was already weaker sunlight than the height of summer, but I wrung out my socks and hoped for the best. In the encampment, near Hazelwhite village, there would be fresh socks and, far more important, Theodor. But for now I had to wait, with wet feet and poor patience, for the wagons that would take us and our supplies inland.
In truth, I was nervous. My role had been clear while abroad with Alba. I had felt a certain usefulness, necessity even; the army needed supplies and a boost against the better-equipped Royalists, and I could provide that. Now my role was unclear. Was I rejoining the Reformist army as anything aside from Theodor’s consort, Kristos’s sister, and a pair of willing but unhelpful hands?
I turned the socks over, though they were still clammy and cold. Even rejoining Theodor—what would that mean? I had grown used to being together, to working alongside one another. Now I had grown used to being apart again. Surely he had changed, under the weight of leading one side of a civil war. Would he see me the same way as before, or I him?
The wagons crested the hill above the shore, and I watched them eagerly, but the sun had shifted westward and I squinted. I sighed. I would have to wait, then, to even see if I recognized the wagon drivers. I doubted I would.
My socks were still damp when the wagons reached us, stopping before the sand, the oxen drawing them slowing obediently to a halt. I drew my socks over unwilling feet, making a face at the damp wool clinging to my toes.
“Sophie!” A familiar voice echoed across the strand and a figure ran toward me. I gasped, though I couldn’t see past the angle of the sun. I knew that voice.
Theodor.
He careened toward me and sank to the ground beside my crate, knees in the sand and hands finding mine. He laid his head on my lap and for a long moment neither one of us moved, shocked and overwhelmed by the realness of it, that we were both truly here, able to touch, able to speak. I lifted a tentative hand and laid it on his hair, overcome by the familiarity of the honey-brown queue under my fingers.
I finally found my voice. “I didn’t think you’d come yourself.”
He looked up. “Of course I did! The messenger said you were here, nothing could keep me away.”
“Not even a war?”
He waved a hand. “Not even that. Well, maybe if we were actually fending off a Royalist incursion. But we’re not.”
I took his hands in mine and lifted them from my lap, drawing him up beside me while I finished putting on my sodden shoes. “Not yet, anyway.”
“It’s coming,” he said. “But now we can face it. We’re outfitting the soldiers at a rate you wouldn’t believe—maybe don’t pick on the craftsmanship of the coats too much,” he added. I stifled a laugh. “And shot and powder—cannon coming, too. You did this.”
“Alba
did most of it,” I countered. “And I’m afraid we’re bearers of some disappointment about the ships.”
“Don’t worry about it now,” Theodor said. “You’ll debrief everyone at the officers’ headquarters as soon as we’re back. But for now”—he smiled gently—“for now I could breathe you like air.”
We climbed into the back of a wagon and settled next to one another on top of a bale of linen, drinking in all the courage and fortitude that simple closeness could offer us against the unknown. My tension melted into the comfortable silence. For now, we could be Theodor and Sophie, in a moment stolen from war.
We drove inland, the farm fields growing golden and some already harvested. Farmers in an apple orchard, picking early fruit, waved to us and cheered, recognizing the red and gray of Theodor’s uniform coat even if they didn’t realize at a distance that he was their Rebel Prince. The pastoral harvest scenes we passed were busy but calm, not the picture of a nation at war, an autumn not so different from that at the House of the Golden Sphere hundreds of miles away.
Then we crested a hill and I saw the encampment. Tents lined the gentle rolling field in rows like pale haystacks, one after another. The effect was impressively orderly until we grew closer and I could see that their sizes and dimensions were varied and their state of repair haphazard. More regular were the lines of men drilling in the open parade ground, wheeling and turning in movements that were, to my untrained eye, as precise as the soldiers who marched through the streets of Galitha City on the king’s birthday.
Some were even uniformed already, smallclothes of unbleached linen and coats of gray wool with red facings. Seeing the uniformed men march on the open plain, I was confident in that decision to spend a bit more on the bolts of red wool.
“How are you deciding who gets the uniforms first?” I asked as we passed more soldiers in their civilian clothes, moving through a bayonet drill. I flinched at the sight of the cruelly sharp, triangular blades on the ends of their muskets.
“The First Regiment is getting the first run of coats,” Theodor said. “For the most part, they’ve all been quite amenable to the formed-as-they-joined organization Sianh has devised. As they joined, we formed regiments—the First, Second, so forth. That way there’s respect in having been here longer, and some incentive to join sooner.”
“How many regiments?” I asked.
“Four. Each of ten companies of eighty. More coming every day—we’ll have the Fifth formed before long.”
I ran the math quickly. So many to outfit, and yet so few in the face of the established Royalist army.
“Quartermaster’s Division,” Theodor said as the wagons came to a stop by a ramshackle barn surrounded by wall tents and rapidly constructed canvas lean-tos. “And that’s the end of the line for our ride, I’m afraid—headquarters is that way.” He pointed to a two-story stone house on the hill, brick-red shutters and doors open and almost cheerful.
“Whose barn is this?” I asked suddenly. “And the house?” I stopped. “Did you… requisition these, from the nobility?” I thought of Niko, taking over full city blocks that he deemed necessary.
“No, not exactly.”
“Not a non-noble!” I protested. “That wouldn’t look well at all, the Reformist army tossing poor farmers off their land.”
“Hardly a poor farmer,” Theodor said, gesturing to the more-than-modest house with its fieldstone walls and thick panes of glass in the windows. “It’s the residence and fields of a farmer, non-noble, who believed he owned the land. Some story of being granted land generations ago after some war, for meritorious service?” I waited. “I don’t know, at any rate, it’s on the books as belonging to a lesser member of the Pommerly family, so of course we figured it would be ideal to take it over. Until we got here and discovered poor old Rufus in quite a sour mood about that.”
“I would think so! He didn’t own the land after all? But surely you won’t displace him?”
Theodor cracked a smile. “He was amenable to let us have the space given that he’d far prefer we win this war and grant him permanent, legal ownership. It’s a cruel trick that the southern nobility has been playing at for some time, I think—telling locals that they’re giving them land to ensure their loyalty, but they could snatch it back anytime.”
“No more of that,” I said confidently. “And we’ll be good caretakers of his house and crops.”
“Bit late for that, we trampled his pumpkin patch and accidentally burned a decent bit of the corn.”
“Theodor!”
“Accidentally! I paid him for it. Sianh was angrier than he was; we could have used that corn. Kristos!” he called as we went inside the house. “Look who I found.”
13
THE COZY WHITEWASHED KITCHEN OF THE HAZELWHITE farmhouse was perhaps the most incongruous place I could imagine for a military commanders’ headquarters. A fire burned low into hot coals on the broad hearth, centered by a large iron pot simmering with onion soup. The smell was delicious, nostalgic, and comforting—the precise opposite of the formal, meticulous debriefing unfolding at the scoured wood table.
“The regiments are currently divided according to the Serafan model,” Sianh said, quickly ticking off the numbers as he added, “so that each regiment includes a light infantry company and a company of grenadiers in addition to the regulars.”
“And this is better than the Galatine model?” Alba seemed to understand the brief review Sianh gave us covering our numbers, troop strength, and training better than I had thus far. I sat cross-legged on the soapstone ledge of the dry sink, trying to understand the martial situation as best I could.
“In my opinion, yes. It gives us greater flexibility in moving troops, which we can hope we will be doing quite soon.
“The arrival of our cannon barrels means we will formalize artillery regiments, as well.” Sianh paused. “I am unsure how to recruit. Thus far our entire troop strength has been trained as infantry.”
“Volunteers?” Kristos asked, uncertain.
“I suppose. Their sergeants and officers will need to be at least marginally competent in mathematics, for the range and angle calculations necessary.”
“How are you selecting the officers now?” I asked, piping up from my perch on the sink.
“We are not selecting them,” Sianh said flatly. “Your bookworm brother’s idea, they are elected.”
“It’s not terribly stupid,” Kristos countered with a smile. “It’s not as though any of them has any more skill with a musket than the others, for the most part, and they tended to arrive in groups that already had some poor sod herding the others along.”
“It shows,” Theodor said evenly, “a commitment to democratic ideals. Eventually the governance of the entire country should be at the will of elections. Might as well practice now, right?”
Kristos grinned. Clearly the two of them had come to a détente of sorts, either a comfortable working alliance or, perhaps, even a friendly rapport. “It made for excellent fodder for a pamphlet on how we intend to translate the successes of our army into a stable government. Printed by the distinguished Hazelwhite print shop.”
“Someone with a printing press in their shed?” I guessed.
Kristos nodded. “Widowed, bakes an excellent egg-and-onion pie, and sets type faster than a squirrel in a candy shop. That pamphlet, on democratic methodology in martial practice, has had four printings so far and we’ve distributed it all the way up to Rock’s Ford—I’m given to understand that it’s wormed its way into the Royalist encampment there.”
“It makes for good press, which we need if we’re going to keep pulling in recruits,” Theodor said. “And we didn’t have a better way to go about it, honestly. The companies elect their NCOs and company officers, we select the regimental officers from that pool.”
“Sianh is just a crab apple about it because a couple of the lieutenants need improvement.” Kristos shrugged.
“Need improvement! They need to be demoted. They are
ouajin crai.” He responded to our silence by adding, “It means a cup with a hole in it. Translated literally. An item meant to do a single task but unfit to do that task? You understand?”
“Ah! In Kvys we say a pastry crust made of custard.” Alba laughed.
“A sieve can’t hold much soup,” I added.
“And in the spirit of democratic ideals,” Theodor interrupted, “we will ask for volunteers for artillery regiments. Which we only have thanks to Sophie and Alba.”
“And a navy?” Kristos asked, smile creeping across his face. “We’re harried on our supply line by the Royalist navy, and it puts us at a disadvantage—on our ability to move our troops, we can’t blockade their ports—”
Alba held up a hand. “We negotiated contracts for the cannon, shot, powder, and cloth. But there is some unrest in Fen, workers’ strikes. The factory owners laid blame on us—”
“Figures,” Kristos snorted.
“And a nasty little caucus of them was ready to accuse Sophie of witchcraft,” Alba continued. “We had to leave.”
“Before you could complete the contracts for the ships?” Kristos’s lips pressed together into a thin line. “We need those ships.”
“We did the best we could,” Alba protested. “I couldn’t wait to finalize the arrangements before leaving for Fen, and then we had to leave Fen before we could go to the shipyards and entertain bids.”
“You did enough,” Theodor said, pulling me closer to him as though he could absorb me. “More than enough.”
“Not really,” Kristos retorted.
“What would you have us do?” I asked. “You got your charmed cloth and your cannons. If we were arrested, we wouldn’t be getting your ships in any case.”
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