Hamish didn’t seem to treat the man any differently on account of which uniform he wore; he examined the wound, prodding it despite the man’s strangled cries of pain, even bending down to sniff it.
“Too bad.” He sighed, lowering his voice to near-gentle tones. I wasn’t sure that the young man could even hear, let alone understand, the surgeon, but he spoke as though only to him. “There’s no point digging round for the musket ball that caught you. If you’ll be a good lad and take a dram, it will ease the pain.”
Hamish gruffly ordered the mate nearest him to fetch a bottle—an oily-looking amber tincture. He considered a gill cup and poured out a larger glass instead, one of the port glasses filled not quite halfway. “Help with his head,” he barked, and the mate obliged.
The young officer swallowed, coughing. “Now don’t hack it back up again, it’s rather dear stuff,” Hamish said. “Haven’t much time now before it kicks in—your name?”
“Elias Hardinghold,” the young man murmured. I started—he was of the same family as Pauline, from Viola’s salon. He wasn’t just a Royalist officer; he was a son, a brother, or a cousin to someone I knew. A hollow ache opened in my chest, an awareness of someone else’s pain I could hold at bay when the man was a stranger to me.
“And have you any affairs you’ll need settled?”
My charm magic snuffed out, retracting as I recoiled. I had thought Hamish only waiting to treat the man, taking care of his pain before addressing the wound. No, he was a dead man, lying on the table in front of me.
“I’m yet a minor. Lately fostered by my aunt. Lady Rynne Hardinghold. Please inform her. Don’t tell her—don’t tell her…” His fingers trembled toward the gaping wound, and Hamish laid his hand on them.
“Of course I won’t mention the unsavory details,” Hamish replied. “You were wounded fighting in admirable fashion and died with little pain, how’s that for a story? Ah, feeling tired now, then.”
Hamish strode back toward the chest nearest me, digging for more bandages. “Why…?” I asked.
“Gut shot. Could smell the shit already—nothing to be done. That size dose of tincture of nightbloom spares him several hours of agony.” He glanced at my drawn face. “Common enough practice, to let them die dreaming instead of howling.”
I watched the young man’s eyelids flutter, dipping into a placid sleep. I wove a thick blanket of pure gold and laid it gently over him.
19
MORNING BROKE ON A CELEBRATORY MOOD AROUND THE CAMP. An incursion of Royalist troops had been rebuffed from Hazelwhite, leaving the town Reformist territory. Sianh returned to the farmhouse kitchen after reviewing the morning inspection. “Casualties?” Theodor asked immediately, pouncing on him as he walked through the door.
“Very limited. Forty wounded, mostly minor. All but a couple will be back on service before the week is out.”
“Then why do you look so grim?”
Sianh’s jaw was set in a firm line. “It was a foray. As Sophie has suggested to me, probably testing our strength after the casting. They would have taken the town had we yielded easily, but they did not press us. Those men on parade, all puffed up like parrots?” He shook his head. “I am afraid they think that is all there is to this war. That it was easy.”
“So now the Royalists, and we, know how long the casting lasts. Not very,” Alba said, appearing with an earthenware cup of musty tea.
“And Sophie is right,” Sianh said, “that they would require some kind of antidote if they were to try to occupy the same space while the casting was active.”
“As far as we know, none exists.” I had taken an inventory of which soldiers wore my charms and which hadn’t during the attack. Though my charms had alleviated the worst symptoms and those wearing them recovered quickest, no one felt battle-ready during the casting itself. “That evens our odds significantly. As far as I know, they can’t pinpoint their casting the way I can.”
Alba finished her tea with a flourish. “Well! If that’s the Serafans’ great secret weapon, and it barely dented us, I think we’re in fine shape. No need to grouse.” She nudged Sianh with her foot. He glared back at her. “I could make you some coffee if you like, would that wipe that sour look off your face?”
Sianh had discovered a penchant for Galatine-roasted coffee. “I suppose,” he conceded. “They will still use their casting, make no mistake. The Serafan military does not waste its resources, and casting remains a resource. They will recalculate.”
Alba snorted. “You tried to make coffee with only a third of the water you needed yesterday morning. Don’t tell me about impeccable Serafan calculations.” She pulled the crane over the hearth toward her and hung a kettle of water. “Does anyone want tea? Or am I only making coffee for the Serafan bear?”
“Where did you find tea?” Theodor asked Alba. “I thought we were out.”
“It’s foxwort. Mint family. In the hedgerow outside. It’s not very good,” she added, sipping. “But it does help settle the stomach, which, after that Serafan stunt, was helpful.”
I sniffed the foxwort tea—it smelled like mint left in a trunk of moldering linens for a very long time. “Coffee,” I said. “If we’re out of tea, how long will we even have coffee?” I wondered as she handed me a cup, chipped at the side but filled with richly scented brew.
“We didn’t have much tea to begin with,” Alba replied. “Coffee, flour, salt pork and fish, dried peas and beans—we have an abundance of those. Not much sugar.”
“You made quick work of memorizing the quartermaster’s inventory.” I smiled as she flushed—first she had herded supplies into Hazelwhite, and now she was shepherding them.
“What good am I here otherwise?” Alba replied. “I can’t fight, I don’t know tactics well enough to be of any use in planning, the good soldiers have no reason to trust a Kvys nun so I shan’t hang about the surgery, and I hate laundry. So, I assigned myself to the quartermaster.”
“What she does not say,” Sianh said, “is that she improved his inventorying systems, suggested better storage methods for the fresh produce, had a root cellar dug, and reworked the ration rolls. All of that will prolong our stores by at least four months. I am less concerned about winter than I was.”
Alba flushed. “I am only making myself useful.”
“Sounds like you’ve done a good job of it,” I said, sipping the coffee she’d handed me. It was quite good.
“We’ll need more than foxwort tea and reorganized supplies,” retorted Kristos. “We’re stagnating here. We need to move forward.” I knew what goaded him, perhaps more than anyone else in our cadre of leaders—the thought of siege on Galitha City, of our home under bombardment, the eventuality as uncertain as how much time we had to stop it.
“And so we will,” Sianh said. “You have put out your pamphlet for elections. And we have seen a significant influx of volunteers from it.”
“Elections, then, and boost their morale with a formal government, and then we move north,” Theodor said. “I need to work more with the artillery officers on range calculations.” He grimaced. “Wish them—and me—luck. Arithmetic was never my strong suit.”
Sianh sent Fig to summon the artillery officers while Theodor set out books and charts in the long, sparse parlor that ran along the other side of the hall from the kitchen. I noticed Sianh didn’t complain about Fig, his little mosquito, tagging along with him any longer, though he did box his ears once for leaving a map out in the dew.
“Your impatient brother is right. We’ll be pushing north sooner rather than later,” Alba said. “I’m working to prepare our supplies for that—we’ll need to talk, rather seriously,” she said to Sianh, whose shoulders slumped. “But I wonder if there is any preparation Sophie ought to undertake.” I knew she was thinking of the Royalist ship and my curse casting, and what effect it might have in battle. I stiffened as she hesitated. “But how, precisely?”
I shook my head. “I certainly don’t know enough about tactics
to make any plans.” I turned to Sianh, and saw Alba was pressing him with a pointed look, as well.
“Not you, too.” Sianh turned his back to the fire and audibly sighed at the comfortable warmth. “I have had nothing but nagging from your brother and your lover over tactics, tactics.”
“That is in fact why you were hired,” Alba said, plucking a mug from the shelf and filling it with coffee.
“Yes, but it is impossible to plan a pitched battle without knowing the Royalist troop strength, how they deploy their cavalry, the placement of their cannons.” He accepted the coffee from Alba with a slight bow. She sniffed and rolled her eyes. Yet, for all her disdain of the Serafan, I noticed that she had dosed his coffee with a liberal spoonful of the sugar she knew was limited. “Much of tactics is reaction. And that—I can only teach so much. Basic principles that must be applied, weighed against one another, when the situation presents itself.”
“And what,” Alba pressed, “of adding magic to those tactics?”
Sianh sipped his coffee, carefully choosing his next words. “The uniforms are charmed. I believe I have seen an improvement among those wearing them. You could employ additional charms, though, yes? Is it helpful to have more than one charm?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not a science like chemistry, you can’t pour two things in a glass and watch what happens every time.”
“Is that what you think chemistry is?” Alba interjected. “We need to spend more time in the convent archives.”
“Anything but that,” I said. “But Sianh—what do we need? What could help us most, in a battle against the Royalists?”
Sianh sobered and set his coffee on the table. “Our liabilities on the field are significant. Our army will be undertrained and outnumbered when we come to a full-scale battle with the Royalists at Rock’s Ford. Do you know what an undertrained army does in the face of a highly skilled professional fighting force?”
I shook my head, numbness creeping through my limbs.
“They forget what they have been taught. They fumble with their muskets, they load slowly, they panic under bayonet charges. They turn tail and run. Fear becomes their enemy before they even come to blows with the opposing forces. And even if they fight perfectly, under immaculate command from their green officers and their unseasoned noncoms, even if they do not flee or fumble, we will require luck beyond luck to defeat the Royalist army at Rock’s Ford.”
I sucked in my breath. I knew our position was tenuous, but no one had said so quite so bluntly.
“And then,” Sianh continued, “we must march immediately on Galitha City, and push the Royalists there into a position of surrender, as, if they can utilize their navy to evacuate and muster elsewhere, we may well be chasing them for years.”
I could tell from Sianh’s tone what he thought of the chances of accomplishing this. Still, it gave me some direction. If our army needed to be bathed in good fortune, I could do that. I could conjure clouds of confidence around them to drive out fear, I could wash them in courage and surround them with luck. “That I can manage. I can cast a charm over our troops,” I said. Alba slowly turned in front of the hearth, ostensibly warming her hands, but she listened.
“Much as the Serafans did, with music, when I served with them.” Sianh considered this.
“Yes, but I can control it better than music. I settle it around them, nestle it into any willing fibers. It doesn’t last long, but it’s there. Your musicians could only follow so far before the casting would affect your enemy, too, yes?”
“This is true.” He set his empty cup on the table with the finality of a judge’s gavel. “And if you can control it that well, you could cast a curse over the Royalists, too. As the Serafans did. But only over the Royalists.”
Alba turned and stared at me, waiting. The entirety of the Reformist army, it felt, seemed to be waiting, hanging on my decision.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe I can.”
20
THE MORNING OF THRESHING MARKET DAWNED COLD BUT BRIGHT, and I knew that the sun would burn through the thin frost on the ground quickly enough. Alba had quietly gone to the barn that housed the quartermaster’s stores before dawn, and had apples and russet squash sorted and ready for distribution right after morning formation. The extra rations were small but offered a celebratory token for the holiday. I hovered behind her as the quartermaster’s mate, a thin youth who had worked in his father’s gristmill, doled out fruit and small gill cups of sugar with exacting precision.
Some of the men recognized me; even with only one man sent per mess to retrieve the extra ration, plenty knew who I was, and who the reedy nun next to me was, too. They whispered to one another, and for perhaps the first time in my life, the whispers didn’t make me feel like the subject of threats or vile gossip but something closer to a celebrated figure, like Viola or Princess Annette had been.
“You ought to do the handing out, miss,” the quartermaster’s mate said shyly, motioning me toward a pile of apples.
“You’ve got it well in hand,” I argued, but Alba shoved me forward.
“Do the smile and wave routine,” she said. “They’ve little cause for confidence, but you’re giving them some.”
I awkwardly stood by the apples, a particularly round and red variety called Banshee, though I wasn’t sure why it had earned such an imaginative name.
“Thanks, your ladyship,” one corporal stammered, taking the six apples for him and his mess mates.
“I keep telling everyone, I’m not a ladyship,” I said with a laugh.
“Yes, ma’am. Miss?” He blushed as red as the apples.
“Titles matter less than good, honest respect,” I said. “And anyway, the time is past for ladyships and your lords!”
The line of men laughed, but I realized what I’d said. There was no treading backward on my ill-considered joke, even if it could and likely would be read and repeated as an endorsement of stripping Galitha of titled nobility entirely. What system of governance would follow this war? Would any threads of the nobility be salvaged? Were they, I thought doubtfully, even worth salvaging? The question hung over us like underripe fruit. The elections were set for the next day, with Threshing Market the final opportunity to join the army and gain a vote—or a position in the Council of Country.
I finished distributing apples, and by noon they were roasting merrily in the thick-walled camp kitchens dug from what had been a turnip field.
“I think that’s gone rather well so far,” Theodor said, joining me outside, watching the units joke and talk, almost like a large threshing party after a field had been cleared. A very large party, I considered with restrained confidence. More uniforms arrived from the seamstresses in Hazelwhite regularly, and I looked out over a scene populated nearly entirely by gray-and-red uniformed men.
Theodor set a case on the barrel next to him and I started with surprise. “Your violin!”
“Not mine,” he replied. “Mine’s somewhere in Galitha City still—probably matchsticks by now, poor lad.” He pulled the violin from its case and I saw that it was different—older, scratched, and with replaced pegs in the neck of varying colors of wood. “I picked this up in Hazelwhite, a secondhand shop selling bits and bobs.”
“You spent Reformist army money on a fiddle?” I asked with feigned horror.
“The shopkeep gave it to me—said he’d give the Rebel Prince and the Reformist army anything they asked for.”
“And all you asked for was a violin.” I laughed as he tuned the instrument.
“No, all he had of any use was a violin. And some shoes. I took him up on the offer for shoes.” He struck up a lively tune—a harvest tune, I realized. One of the songs we danced to in taverns and in the square in Galitha City for Threshing Market.
Several of the men nearest us recognized the song, and began to clap and call to one another. A pair of women, camp followers married to soldiers, sat on the edge of the camp kitchen with their feet hanging into the n
arrow trench that ran around it. They jumped up and caught another three women carrying russet squash back to their kitchen.
Laughing, the five beckoned to a couple of messes of men, who happily joined them. With no dance caller but the formations well-memorized, they stepped into a simple country reel. I liked the easier dances common in the taverns at Threshing Market and at Galatine wedding parties, and I recalled the name of this one.
“Wedding Morning,” I said. “They’re dancing Wedding Morning.”
“Now to see if I remember it well enough to play the right amount of time,” Theodor said. He kept playing, and more lines of dancers formed in the parade ground.
Kristos and Sianh followed the commotion to the field. Sianh raised an eyebrow but smiled tacitly, and Kristos laughed out loud and caught my arm. “You know this one, Sophie!”
“I do, but Kristos—should we?” I glanced at Theodor and Sianh—was it improper for us to dance with the soldiers?
“Hang it all, who cares? They ought to see us having some fun once in a while, lest they decide we’re a bunch of sour old barn owls.”
Sianh shrugged his acquiescence, and I let Kristos drag me to a line just forming, short by one couple. Next to us, a corporal and his partner, a plump and red-cheeked farm girl in a faded gown of purple sprigged cotton, gaped at us until Kristos laughed at them and half shouted, “I promise we won’t trod on your feet!”
“I promise no such thing,” I added as I counted eight steps in a circle and then eight steps back. I had never been a graceful dancer, but the bright music and the dancers’ inevitable mistakes made for a merry time in the taverns; it was no different here.
Theodor finished the reel and began another tune, also one of the harvest songs. “Sheaves’ Return!” Kristos shouted, calling the name of a dance that moved in a circle, plucking first the women and then the men into the middle like sheaves of wheat. All around us, the dancers fell into step, forming circles that expanded and constricted with the music.
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