“Amicia,” he said. “Come back. It is too soon.”
Miriam reached out with the power of the choir at her back and found her allies—odd allies. The faery folk and the magister had formed their own choir—an earthy green chorus, like a well-toned tavern revel compared to her beautifully ordered schola. But effective, despite singing carefully and softly in the aethereal, merely shaping and supporting her own with immense subtlety.
Supporting her.
She reached out—mind to mind, image to image, and boldly she went into Harmodius’s palace, where she was pleased to see he was still a handsome young man in velvet.
“It is a sin to seize another’s body,” Miriam said. “That seems a rude way to begin, but that’s who I am.”
Harmodius nodded. “Well, Madame Abbess, would you think better of me if I said he was dead when I took it? Of course, I would then have to confess that he was only dead because I stormed him from within and killed him in his own palace.”
Miriam shuddered, even in her own place of power. “That’s impossible.”
But suddenly they were in her place of power, and he was seated on a kneeling bench in his crimson velvet. “No, quite easy, Miriam,” he said. “Really, you must accept that I mean no harm because if I meant harm, I could effect it.”
Miriam nodded. “May I ask you politely to leave?” she asked. “And then perhaps we might build trust towards a meeting.”
Harmodius smiled. “I’d like to say we saved your girl,” he said. “But whatever happened out there was none of our doing. She’s on the edge of Becoming.”
Miriam put a hand to her metaphysical throat. “What?”
Harmodius shrugged. “You’ll see,” he said.
Back in the real, Harmodius was sitting with a pipe, forgotten, across his lap. The Faery Knight sat on a stool made of antlers—not dispensing justice or even holding court, but instead sewing on his deerskin hose.
“He’ll come for her,” the Faery Knight said. “Ssshe will be too great a temptassshion for him, and too great a potential threat.” He nodded in approval. “Ssshe isss very dangerousss.”
Harmodius rubbed his thumb along the sticky black tar that had formed on his pipe. “She will change his plans. Whatever they are.” Harmodius smiled—and just for a moment, it was the chilling smile of Aeskepiles. “And whatever else it means, it will hold him focused on her.”
The Faery Knight winced as he put his needle into his nearly immortal thumb. But he met the magister’s eye. “You intend to take him on?”
Harmodius frowned. “We’ll see.”
“He’ll kill you,” the Faery Knight said. “I have fought thisss foe before. Never direct confrontation. Alwaysss the indirect approach.”
Harmodius rose to his feet. “I hear you.”
“You would be a great losss, mortal.” The Faery Knight put out a hand, a very human gesture.
Harmodius nodded. “We’re going to take losses.”
An hour later, the Abbess sent them a copy of an imperial message warning of a horse plague delivered from the sky. The warning was timely—and the intent friendly. When the barghasts struck, they found a roof of ops bound white-hot air that burned their feathers and frightened them—and the choir within Lissen Carak turned them as they rose away.
“Now he’sss ssseen usss,” Tapio said bitterly.
“Not if my new friend Miriam stripped off his spies fast enough,” Harmodius allowed. “But we can’t chance it. Best assume we’ve been discovered.”
That night, Abenaki scouts to the north of Lissen Carak—out beyond Hawkshead—found the Black Mountain Pond clan and a great rout of bearish refugees moving slowly. They were pressed—at their backs was a tide of other creatures, old and new.
“We’ll have to fight,” Tapio said. He looked at the human magister. “Jussst to cover them.”
Harmodius nodded. “It is too soon, and in the wrong place,” he said. “Perfect.”
Hundreds of leagues to the south, in Harndon, the Archbishop of Lorica sat in a chair at the foot of the royal dais. Bohemund de Foi was in the full regalia of his office, despite recent defeat and the obvious defection of most of the Gallish knights, who were already negotiating with traitors to secure ships to carry them back to Galle.
The Archbishop was not yet ready to concede the game, and he was not without resources. He had a servant summon his secretary, Maître Gris, who came in his monkish robes.
“Eminence,” he said with a bow.
The archbishop nodded. “I need Master Gilles. And, I think, it is time we made more use of your friend.”
Maître Gris frowned. “I cannot summon him like a servant,” he said.
The archbishop frowned. “But he is a servant. Fetch him for me. I want him to kill this Random.”
Maître Gris bowed again. “As you command, eminence. But messages to this man sometimes take time.”
“Then you should stop talking,” the archbishop shot back. “I am impatient.”
When Master Gilles arrived, he was covered in charms. The archbishop glanced at him and raised an eyebrow. “You appear ridiculous,” he said.
Master Gilles was clearly terrified. “I am alive,” he said. “We have very powerful enemies.”
“And allies,” the archbishop said. “I want you to dispose of several people, beginning with that treacherous sell-sword.”
“The Red Knight?” Master Gilles shook his head. “He is beyond me.”
“No, you fool. I will leave him for my ally. But I mean Du Corse.” The archbishop snapped his fingers at a servant.
The liveried servants of the palace were all members of the Royal Household and all too aware that there might be a new king, that the queen was alive, and that de Vrailly was dead. The service was deteriorating. There was rebellion in the corridors, and the archbishop knew that only fear would keep them docile.
The archbishop glanced back at Amaury, his captain. “Take this one and whip him until his manners are better,” he said.
Captain Amaury nodded, struck the boy to the floor with his armoured fist, and two purple and yellow halberdiers seized the boy and dragged him out.
“You want me to kill the Seigneur Du Corse,” Master Gilles said quietly.
“Yes,” the archbishop said.
Master Gilles bridled for a moment, and then shook his head and sighed. “Very well, eminence. I will need an item of his clothing.”
“I anticipated your request. I have a cap he wore but two days back.” The archbishop handed the cap, still stained with sweat, to the magister.
“May I ask why?” the older man asked.
“He has disobeyed me repeatedly. He has led the revolt of the good knights against the wishes of Mother Church and against me. He signed a craven compact with the rebels when our army was the larger and would have won a straight fight in the field, or at the very least held the bridges while we rebuilt. And now… now he will not even aid me in holding the royal palace. He believes he is in a state of peace with the rebels. I am not. I will hold this citadel until my last breath. And when Du Corse is dead, by the will of God, the other knights will return to their allegiance. When my spy kills Gerald Random, I will have the city back in my hand in an hour.” He nodded sharply and considered what he might have to do to summon his secret ally. He looked up, and Gilles was still there.
“But mostly, Gilles, because I order it, and you will obey.” The archbishop smiled. “Now scuttle away and execute my will.”
It was clear that the magister was going to waste his time in protest. The man bowed. “But…” he began.
Whatever he was intending to say was lost when the servant’s door opened, and in came Maître Gris. With him was a man in green and black, a nondescript man of middle height with a cloak on his left arm and a pointed cap like a falcon’s beak on his head. He was arm in arm with the monk, a surprising bit of familiarity.
Maître Gris bowed. His bow was stiff.
“Not so difficult to find, af
ter all,” the archbishop said sharply.
The stranger smiled. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I was already in the palace,” he said. “I have business here, anyway.”
The two of them crossed the floor to the middle of the room, where Master Gilles still stood. The new man bowed very slightly, the cloak fell from his arm, and he spun as he raised his right hand and Master Gilles staggered back, gave a short scream of despair, and fell, clutching his stomach.
Without pausing, the new man’s leg shot out and he rolled Maître Gris, swept his legs and dropped him on his face, with his right arm already dislocated behind his back. The monk gave a tortured scream. The green and black man kicked him with precision.
Unhurried, the black and green stranger stepped over the thrashing monk and pointed his left hand unerringly at the archbishop. Something metal winked in his hand.
“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced, eminence. I am Jules Kronmir, and for some days now I have fed poisoned information to your people… mistaken estimates, foolish inflations and downright lies. It has been great fun, and I confess that I feel at this late date that I can claim almost complete credit for the collapse of your forces. Because of me, you halted at Second Bridge when a quick pursuit might have destroyed the Red Knight, and because of me, de Vrailly pushed forward later, when it was the wrong move, and because of me, the city rose behind you.” Kronmir was very close to the archbishop. “Ah, and because of me, your captains hired my people and my friends as Royal Guards.” He laughed.
His eyes flicked to the two purple and yellow guards as they moved. They were unsure of themselves, halberds leveled but still out of distance to confront or attack the intruder.
He winked at the nearest. “What you gentlemen need to ask yourself is what, if anything, this useless sack of flesh has ever done for you? I would suggest that the answer is not enough. Even now, the corridors of this palace are being taken by the guilds. I recommend that you both lay down your arms, and surrender, and perhaps I’ll arrange for you to have a future.”
Both men placed their halberds gently on the marble floor.
“Cowards!” the archbishop spat. “Gilles!”
Kronmir smiled. “Master Gilles has several inches of Witchbane in his gut. I suspect he will recover in time, but he will not be casting any time soon. As for you—” Kronmir’s voice dropped to a croon, like a mother singing a lullaby. “I wanted you to hear how easily I defeated you. After that, you die, and, I suspect, burn forever in hell.”
The archbishop began the invocation of his ally.
The small steel ballestrina coughed. A six-inch steel dart went straight through the archbishop’s skull, killing him instantly. The range was four inches, and the poison on the dart was wasted.
The archbishop’s body fell forward, and his mitre fell to the floor with a silken rustle. The two purple and yellow thugs were kneeling on the floor.
Kronmir looked around, admiring his effect. Then he stepped up to the great arched window, leaned out, and jumped for the moat, his precious ballestrina clutched close.
Before Maître Gris could drag in another sobbing breath, a dozen Guild crossbowmen burst in through the main doors and rushed the room. They were on edge, weapons cocked and their captain had a drawn and bloodied sword, but they were steady enough that they did not shoot the two disarmed haberdiers.
“By the rood!” spat the captain, a heavy man from the Butcher’s Guild. “The bloody archbishop is dead!” He touched the magister, who lay sobbing on the floor. “Christ!” he muttered. “Witchbane!”
But despite the blood and the misery, the captain sounded relieved, and so, ten minutes later, was Ser Gerald Random now in full possession of the palace. He looked down at the archbishop’s rapidly cooling corpse.
“Sic transit gloria mundi,” he said. “Take the others, and keep them under guard.”
Less than fifty paces away, Jules Kronmir was climbing out of the moat in broad daylight, the least elegant part of his plan. But he made it over the low retaining wall into a cart where Lucca, his best blade, waited with dry clothes in a tinker’s donkey cart.
“What now, boss?” Lucca asked.
Kronmir had on a dry shirt and hose. He leaned back against the wall. “I think we’d like a ship,” he said. “To Venike. I am only guessing. But employers like it when you plan ahead.”
Lucca looked around as if a horde of boglins had just appeared. “Venike? Is it that bad? Are they on to us?”
Kronmir laughed. “There is no longer a ‘they’ to be ‘on to us,’” he said. “Our side is in possession. And all the dirty work is done.” He took the flask of wine that Lucca offered him, drank some and smiled his approval.
“Possibly my best work,” he added.
Chapter Fourteen
Sixty leagues south of South Ford, moving the so-called royal army had become an exercise in metaphysical logistics. They’d had two days of solid rain and everyone was soaked to the skin, ill-tempered and bug-bitten.
The sky was always full of an enemy and, according to the messages received, that enemy carried a pestilence deadly to every horse in the army. The captain, as the most powerful magister present, found himself awake all day and all night, and had three skirmishes with them before the cunning predators retired to higher altitudes.
But the captain’s need for sleep—his own weakness—and a need to rid himself of the omnipresent enemy made for the delay. He ordered the column to halt in an easily defended wagon camp just west of the gorge while he waited for the Queen’s party, a day behind, to catch up.
The lost day was welcomed by many—dry bowstrings and dry clothes cooked yellow at fires, as if nature, too, had decreed a day of rest. Out of a misty morning came a bright afternoon. Men wandered about—walking out into the pristine woodlands or along the gorge in chaotic patterns that hid—to those above—that more were leaving camp than returning. The sun dappled the glades around the camp and lit the bright green leaves and the last farmer’s fields of the now distant Brogat, and the men and women, Alban, Occitan and Morean, settled in to a good meal with heavy guards. Sukey’s girls carried mess kettles out to the mounted vedettes and Gelfred’s partisans and tried not to giggle as they passed rows of hungry men in hastily dug trenches. The guard changed an hour before sunset, and heavy patrols suddenly launched from both ends of the camp.
They found nothing, but they made the captain feel better, and they put on a good show for the distant barghasts.
Just at the edge of night, the Queen’s party came in, trailing the monstrous avians like picnickers trailing mosquitoes.
Gabriel was ready—indeed, ever since the Queen had come back into his range, he’d been in contact with her, and now, both used weak counters and cast reckless and inaccurate missiles until the barghasts grew bold. Swooping from the safety of their altitude, they dropped on the Queen’s party as they rode, fully exposed, along the low path in the gorge’s edge. They leaped like wolves upon sheep.
Sheep seldom have hundreds of professional soldiers guarding them. Nor was the animal cunning of the barghast any match for Gelfred’s hunter mind. He had designed the ambush, complete to slaughtered sheep left in forest openings—and crossbowmen in trees with woven leaf screens who could loose their bolts down into the gorge where the overbold barghasts circled below the archers, trapped like trout against a beaver dam.
Every caster present, no matter how lowly, cast together on the first shrill of the horns, and twenty-one set to frame the words Fiat Lux. Every avian was surrounded in a nimbus of light that perfectly outlined them against the darkening sky—
Before Desiderata’s golden light began to pluck them from the air, before the captain rose from his body, dangerously exposed, to chase the last two down—before that, the population of barghasts was culled in a sheet of forged iron tips and heavy bodkin points and quarter-pound arrows. An ancient wyvern—an important clan leader—died in a moment.
The sky was empty.
The Red Knight bent his knee and kissed the Queen’s hand. “Another good victory for your grace,” he said.
“Another good victory for my captain,” she allowed. “Come, Ser Gabriel. I wish to read all the dispatches.”
“Grim reading, your grace,” he said, and motioned to Toby to start lighting candles in his pavilion. The Queen had acquired courtiers and new men—but he knew most of them and he also knew his sole power over her would not last long. Corcy was at her side, and that seemed well enough. There were two pretty younger men he didn’t know at all. And Towbray. The earl looked like a tired old falcon—bedraggled and yet still dangerous.
There was Blanche. Their eyes crossed, and she flushed, looked away, and frowned.
Damn.
Nicomedes laid out glasses and Alcaeus opened a leather pouch and stacked the messages in the neat imperial order of times and dates. Becca Almspend put a hand gently on the Queen’s arm and then pulled out her spectacles and began to read.
“You see? I’m not even allowed to read my own messages,” the Queen said.
“Not your own, your grace, but my master the Emperor’s,” Ser Alcaeus said. “Loaned to you perhaps.”
A frosty silence lay over the table.
“Alcaeus?” the captain said, in that particular voice.
A pause.
“My apologies, your grace. I felt a point needed to be made, but I have spoken ill.” Alcaeus’s voice was silky with twenty years of surviving various courts, but his brow sprung beads of sweat.
Lady Almspend looked up from the dispatches. “I’m sure we all know the debt of gratitude we owe the Emperor in these dark days,” she said.
Michael cleared his throat. Francis Atcourt looked out the pavilion wall at the suddenly fascinating tail end of the sunset.
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