Rule

by Rowenna Miller

  But as they fired, I saw something else. A thin man, not wearing the uniform of any of Galitha’s regiments, surveyed the wall from the hill behind, a glass pressed to his eye. His robes were dark gray and pooled loosely at the crook of his elbow.

  Serafan robes.

  I sucked in a breath—he could see my curses. I knew he could. I suppressed panic—I was in no more danger now than before, no more likelihood of an attack here at the rear, on our supply wagons, past ranks upon ranks of Reformist soldiers. But I felt as though I was laid bare and vulnerable. There was no undoing it. The Serafans and the Royalists knew, now, our capabilities. No more advantage of secrecy.

  I turned my attention instead on the advancing ranks of our army. Sianh shouted across the din to the artillery—stop firing, I comprehended. A swath of infantry rushed toward the broken wall, bayonets fixed. I blinked at the sudden onslaught of blood, not believing how quickly men could butcher other men.

  The foray on the fortified position was over before I realized I should look away, with our victorious forces holding fast. Another rush, flying feet and flashing steel, and the emplaced Royalist artillery guarding the river was subdued.

  Then, eerie and thickly cloying, echoes of music rang across the field. Pipes. I felt suddenly uneasy, my stomach clenching in faint cramps, but the men in the fortification doubled over nearly instantly. Serafan cursing.

  37

  AS SOON AS I RECOGNIZED THE STRAINS OF MUSIC AND SAW THE dark, sparkling cloud over a section of the field, I began to look for Sianh. I stood and ran behind the supply wagons, earning judgmental glances from the oxen, trying to see where the casting was coming from. The music was fainter than the music we’d been cursed by from the ship, but I expected that. The Serafans didn’t want to curse the Royalists still holding positions close to the manor house itself.

  Sianh met me on the road toward the ford.

  “We cannot locate him,” he called. “There is a reason they are employing him. They have lost, even if he plays that damned song forever. But we cannot move past that section of the field while he plays.”

  “Covering someone’s retreat?” I suggested.

  “Very likely, and in that case covering the retreat of someone valuable.” The king, we both acknowledged silently.

  I scanned the hillsides, the forest edges, everywhere, searching for the telltale dark sparkle. Finally, I spotted a thin stream, which spread over the field but had, I realized as I squinted, a distinct point of origin under the cover of a large brush shelter.

  “There,” I said, pointing.

  Sianh pulled out his glass. “And I spot a piper and another man.” He nodded once. “Very good. I do not believe the riflemen will be able to aim effectively upon them, so we will press a foray toward them.”

  “Can you?” The curse would be stronger the closer they got, and those it affected would be hardly capable of standing upright, let alone fighting.

  “Perhaps.” He exhaled through his nose. “Can you do anything?”

  “I’ve never tried,” I confided. “Curse and charm don’t like to be near one another, though,” I murmured. I swiftly gathered a spike of bright white charm and drove it toward the stream of darkness. It severed through the line and the dark sparkle receded from it. The music faded, briefly, but there was a rapid if temporary effect on the men on the field.

  “Very good,” Sianh said. “Keep doing that.” Before I could ask anything else, he spurred his horse forward. I kept driving spikes of pure light into the darkness as he thundered across the ford, and I realized—he meant to eliminate the threat himself.

  As though the curse casters recognized what I was doing, or what the horseman bent on them intended on doing, or both, they intensified their efforts, the dark cloud growing thicker. But it pulled back, coalescing on a narrower and narrower part of the field.

  Coalescing, I saw, toward Sianh.

  I pulled all the light I could, with all my strength. The jabs and spikes of charm magic weren’t going to suffice, I knew. Not now. And I couldn’t sustain the same degree of magic that these two did, working in tandem and, I conceded, far fresher than me. I summoned a projectile of charm magic, and began to aim it at the base of their stream of dark curse, hoping, desperately, that if I cut it off at the source Sianh would have a chance.

  “It’s true, then.” Theodor stood beside me, watching the exchange of light and dark in battle over his victorious field.

  “Go back,” I gasped. “The king—may be—”

  “I sent light infantry to intercept him if he did. Too late for me to do anything.”

  “Except one thing.” I could barely breathe. I grabbed his hand.

  Renewed energy rushed through me, and the charm magic under my control blazed with power. Now more than a ball, it was a miniature sun in my hand. I split it, sending one part swiftly over Sianh, hovering as a protective skin around him. The other I hurled toward the source of the dark magic, smothering its base with light.

  I didn’t see Sianh cut down the piper and the caster, because I had my head between my knees, charm magic sparking bright around my buzzing eyes.

  “What happened?” Theodor demanded. “Are you—” He searched my face, lines of worry furrowing his forehead, too close to mine.

  “Fine, I’m fine.” I shook off the last of the charm magic from my hands and the dazed hum from my head. “I hadn’t expected that much of a… surge.”

  “You’ll have to explain this to me later,” Theodor said. “For now, we have prisoners to secure. And Westland Hall to search.”

  He didn’t mention the last item on his short but weighty list—determine which of the Royalist leadership we would capture, or had allowed to escape. Including, possibly, his father.

  The process of securing the field, moving the artillery, and beginning to evacuate the wounded from where they had fallen felt stilted, a plodding pace after the rapid wash of movement over the field of battle. I felt drained, the beginnings of a headache pressing my temples, and was grateful, for once, to be useless.

  Sianh found me sitting next to the oxen. I was beginning to think one particular ox might even have warmed up to me after our day-long sojourn together. “Theodor would like you to accompany him at the house.”

  “Who did we catch?”

  Sianh’s laugh cut through air heavy with smoke. “Catch? Like a fish? We caught no one. Intercepted no one, took no one of import prisoner.”

  My shoulders drooped, but Sianh shook his head. “No, this was expected. The king would not allow himself to be taken prisoner, for he is too great a liability in the wrong hands. What if we threatened to execute him in exchange for surrender? What then? His nobles could neither let him die nor surrender. So they will protect him first.”

  “Fair point,” I said. “So why does Theodor need me at the house?”

  “Family business,” Sianh said, with a strange, ominous humor coloring his faint smile. “You and two clerks are going with him to negotiate the terms of surrender.”

  Polly—Lady Apollonia—waited to receive us in the grand formal parlor of the house, which was mostly unscathed save a shattered windowpane from a stray musket ball. She wore a dark blue gown of thick duchesse satin, the color and the plain trim like mourning clothes. If the rigors of a military conflict in her backyard wore on her, it didn’t show. Her hair was perfectly coiffed and powdered, and rouge stained the bow of her lips to doll-like perfection.

  I slid next to an ornate cherry wood chair, knowing better than to sit and make myself at home, an unwelcome guest in this unwelcoming house. The clerks, also keenly aware that they were intruding on the private home of their vanquished enemy, quietly made themselves scarce at a card table in the corner and began setting up their paper and ink.

  “Theodor,” Polly said in greeting. “Is this to be treated as a formal surrender, or will you be ransacking the house?”

  “I’ll do no such thing. But why are you here?” Theodor moved toward her, but she b
acked away, subtly. Confirming the distance between the two of them.

  “You did not expect Father,” she retorted.

  “No, I did not. Perhaps Pommerly. Perhaps Merhaven. Perhaps an officer I knew, perhaps one I did not. I didn’t expect you, my dear sister.”

  Her eyes grew icy at the term of endearment. “You don’t get to leverage family ties. Not now. I know that I am not valuable to the continued success of the Royalist army, so I stayed to confirm the terms of our surrender.” She raised her pert chin, her rosy lips a thin line. She was beautiful, perhaps even more so than I remembered, mature bearing and serious countenance balancing the girlish plump cheeks and wide eyes. “Regardless of what you and your lieutenants decide to do with me after.”

  “You’ll be free to leave,” Theodor said, shocked. “What, did you expect me to confine my own sister to a prison barge?”

  “Father would have done no better for you,” Polly replied.

  “Or would he have had me hanged, Polly? Drawn and quartered, perhaps?” Bitterness finally broke through his tempered speech. I realized that my grip on the blooming vines carved into the chair back next to me was turning my knuckles white, and dropped my arm. “What did he have done with Ballantine?”

  Polly blanched. “Such is done with traitors, Theo.” She sat on one side of a polished cherrywood table, her dark blue silk ballooning between chair arms built for a man, not a woman’s full gowns. “Which you knew before fomenting this rebellion. Before you turned traitor to your father, before you sought his crown for your own.”

  Theodor closed his eyes for a long moment. “They’ve turned you so far against me? Polly, you know me. Have I ever hankered after power? Is ambition my greatest weakness? Hardly.” He took two confident steps toward her, but stopped as she stiffened. “You may not agree with my politics. But I want the laws of Galitha restored. Trust that. I don’t want a crown.”

  She averted her gaze. “Yet the people, the angry rabble of them who would kill Papa and me as surely as they have killed so many of our friends, our cousins, our fellows—those people would put a crown on your head.” She looked up, eyes almost as dark a blue as her gown meeting Theodor’s. “You would refuse it?”

  He sighed in exasperation. “I’ve far less confidence than you that they want a king at all. And I would do whatever the laws of Galitha prescribed!”

  “Laws you wrote, laws that break our natural order, laws that turned this country upside down? And for what?” She shoved the chair back with a jolt and a shuddering scrape, and looked out the window behind her. “For bloodshed and pain and turmoil.”

  “The nobility sowed that pain themselves,” he answered, low. “The people did not decide one day, under my tutelage or any other’s, to be discontent with the scraps we’d been feeding them. Their grievances were fair—Polly, look at me! They were just!”

  She dismissed his speech with stony silence. “We ought to discuss the terms of surrender.”

  “The terms of surrender, yes.” Theodor sighed. “You know, I am sure, that your position for negotiation is not strong. Unless there is something further you are considering parting with? Surrender of the king, perhaps?”

  Her smile lacked all humor. “Not a chance.”

  “Then terms—your soldiers and officers will spend the remainder of this war confined to a prison camp near Hazelwhite. There will be no parole, and exchanges only considered between persons of comparable status.”

  “A prison camp. Better, I suppose, than ships—but oh, yes. You haven’t enough of those to spare on incarceration.”

  Theodor continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “Your supplies will be forfeit to us, save the individual soldiers’ and officers’ uniforms and personal effects, which they may keep.”

  Polly did not react. These were, surely, terms she had anticipated. We could not afford to send her troops back on parole, to fight another day. And we needed the supplies.

  “They may march under their regimental colors, provided that they are not recalcitrant or disobedient.” This concession had been one of the only ones we could afford, and Theodor was convinced it would confirm our civility and refute rumors of barbarism. “All weapons will be confiscated.”

  Polly lifted an eyebrow, and her hand slipped into her pocket. Before Theodor or I could react, there was a slim penknife with a mother-of-pearl handle on the desk between them.

  Theodor exhaled in a controlled, thin sigh. “You can keep your knife,” he said, terse.

  “You said all weapons.” She left the knife on the table.

  “I did.” Theodor paused. “I know this will be difficult, but Westland Hall and the lands surrounding it are forfeit as well. We will also occupy the military academy.”

  “I expected no less.” She traced the polished russet wood in front of her. “I suppose there’s precious little chance that much of this will survive.”

  “I’m not in the business of tearing apart houses for sport, Polly. Of setting fires to watch things burn.”

  “No, but plenty in your retinue are.” For the first time, she glanced at me. “I presume that I have parole?”

  “You do. Take anything you would like, take horse and carriage and—”

  “And go where?” she shot back. Her pristine composure cracked, just slightly, and I saw her—a terrified young woman who had just lost not only her house and her security but her confidence that her way of life could continue. “Where can I go?”

  Theodor paused. “You can go follow after Father. I’m sure he’s either joining the rest of the Royalist army in preparing to siege the capital, or he’s holed up somewhere that’s safe. Safe for now, at any rate.” He paused. “I would ensure you weren’t followed, in case that was your concern. I won’t use you as homing pigeon to find him.”

  “And I can be promised safety on the road?” She shook her head. “Even you, at the head of your army, can’t promise that. Not everyone is Royalist or Reformist. Plenty are mercenaries in service to themselves alone.”

  “You can stay here,” Theodor said abruptly. I started. This hadn’t been discussed. “In an occupied house, which I imagine will be serving at least partially as a hospital, so it shan’t be particularly pleasant. You will not get in the way or obstruct our operations here.”

  Her lips parted and her breath was shaky. “I—I had not expected to be offered any such concession.”

  Theodor swallowed hard as he watched her. “I hadn’t expected to give it.”

  38

  ONCE THEODOR HAD ARRANGED WITH SEVERAL SUBALTERNS AND Hamish how to divide Westland Hall into a field hospital, headquarters, and reserve a small apartment for his sister, my strength was fading fast. Too much casting, and the increasingly heavy burden of the part I had played in the outcome of the Battle of Rock’s Ford, were tightening into bands of pressure around my head and causing a bone-crushing weariness.

  I stumbled as I tried to walk toward the door and Hamish intercepted me. “Are you aiming to make yourself truly ill?”

  “Hardly.” I smiled weakly.

  “Now, I know there’s little enough scientific study on the effects of what you do on the human body. But from what this old physick can tell, it demands rest. Not more work, not even standing.” He took my hand in his, as though assessing my pulse, but remarked instead, “And cold! Phaw, girl, you need a hot toddy by the fireside more than any other remedy I might offer.”

  “I can’t take someone’s place here in the field hospital…” I protested weakly, knowing that my chances at a comfortable fire and something hot to drink were unlikely in the still-organizing military camp outside.

  “I wouldn’t let you bed down among them, at any rate. You’d be up all night listening to the worst cases. And a woman in her shift among those men? Not decorous, not a bit.” He hailed the nearest lieutenant with a logbook. “Set this patient up in one of the spare rooms upstairs.” He paused. “And build up her fire before you leave her.” I had the good sense not to argue with Hamis
h Oglethorpe despite my conviction that someone else could have used a warm bed more than me.

  I had stripped off my shoes and socks, soaked from the wet fields, and was hanging my petticoats near the fire to dry the hems when Theodor found me. “Good,” he said as he surveyed the room and followed my lead in hanging his stockings and breeches by the fire. “If it takes the surgeon’s orders to make you settle down for a rest, so be it.”

  “Ah, don’t talk so loudly,” I said. “My head is splitting.”

  “Then come here,” he said, beckoning me to the thick wool rug in front of the roaring fire. I leaned against Theodor and dug a tin of Hamish’s headache balm from my pocket. I handed it wordlessly to Theodor, who understood what I wanted, his fingertips massaging the scented balm into the hundred points of needling pain in my neck and skull.

  He spoke quietly, honoring my request, though I would have preferred the comfortable rapport of silence. “If someday military tacticians write analyses of the Battle of Rock’s Ford, I wonder what they’ll make of the grass fire.”

  I closed my eyes. “I don’t know what to make of it,” I said. “I know what I did, and what it caused, but I can’t work out what it means.” I felt I should turn and face Theodor, to have a proper conversation, but my shoulders were a mass of worry and his hands on them were strong enough to work some of the tension away. “What it means for my participation with the army.”

  “The grenadiers were halted,” Theodor reminded me. “They might have broken our line of infantry.”

  “But we lost almost an entire troop of dragoons,” I whispered. “What would have happened if I—if instead—”

  “No one ever knows for certain what would have happened,” Theodor said, pressing his palm into a particularly obdurate knot. “Even the best scholars and analysts can’t pinpoint those answers. And you’ve said a hundred times that there’s no way of knowing, for sure, what happened because of a charm or a curse.”