Victory of the Hawk

by Angela Highland

The commander’s weathered features creased in consternation as Khamsin spoke, and he opened and closed his mouth several times in succession before he finally barked, “Nirrivy. Right. Fine. We had reports the lot of you were massing, and I hazard a guess you were responsible for why three dozen of my Hawks haven’t reported back here after I turned them over to Captain Amarsaed.”

  “Actually, that lies mostly in the province of the esteemed akreshi Gerren and his people,” Khamsin purred, “who responded with fitting force when their lawful and acknowledged stronghold was invaded. I strongly suggest that as a gesture of goodwill, and as proof of your peaceful intentions, you turn over any of their kin you currently have in your custody.”

  “Lawful and acknowledged—” The words sputtered out of the commander’s second before Tembriel, at Gerren’s side, fixed a bright golden stare on him and lifted one hand. She didn’t speak, but then, she didn’t need to—the ball of flame that ignited into being around her fingers was eloquent enough. The second cut himself off with a strangled little cough, while his commander pointedly avoided meeting any elven eyes.

  “You’ll have them within three hours,” the commander said, as Kestar climbed out of the cart and came up behind him. “Some of the pointy-eared bastards escaped—”

  Kestar cleared his throat, and to his satisfaction, the commander had enough grace to correct himself. “Some of the…elven workers became unaccounted for when the Voice showed up and threw down fire on all our heads.” Then he paused again, this time to frown at the duchess. “You said ‘another appearance.’ You’ve seen Her?”

  “Once, akreshi, and I assure you that was quite enough,” Khamsin affirmed. “But she did not cause enough damage to account for all the citizens I see gathered now outside your walls.”

  “Sir…” The other officer, blushing scarlet under the cold stares of a dozen angry elves, couldn’t hide the crack of fear in his voice, and the anxiety in his eyes was too strong to be anything but genuine. “Sir, I don’t think they know.”

  “If you’re talking about the Anreulag rampaging through the capital, we know,” Kestar said.

  The commander wasn’t much older than Julian, perhaps, from the look of him. There was only a dusting of gray in his short brown hair, and the weathering of his features could have been born of sun and wind as much as age. When he rounded on Kestar, however, his heavy, dispirited stare added another ten years to his face.

  “You haven’t heard it all then, Vaarsen. We got several more reports before half of the telegraph stations near here were destroyed, and all the people you see here have brought their own eyewitness accounts—the Anreulag’s shattered Dareli and half the province around it. They tried to sacrifice Princess Margaine to appease Her, and the Bhandreid even shot Her close enough to make Her bleed, and none of it helped. She hasn’t stopped.”

  Tembriel, fire still dancing around her fingers, looked as if she’d like to hurl the flame straight into the commander’s face. “No weapon of human crafting can kill her, human,” she snarled. “Do not lie to us even to defend your queen.”

  “Two and a half thousand people saw it with their own eyes, elf,” the commander snapped. “The Anreulag was bleeding when She vanished. Only shame is the Bhandreid wasn’t a better shot, and couldn’t get in another before the Anreulag felled her for her troubles.”

  Sharp, strong reaction flashed across the faces of every elf in Gerren’s company. Tembriel drew in a harsh breath, her flames abruptly dying as she clenched her fingers into a fist. Beside her, Alarrah gripped her shoulder before casting a sudden thoughtful glance at Kestar. The healer called Gerren’s name, and though what she spoke next was in the tongue of the elves, Kestar recognized one word within the liquid flow of syllables. Amathilàen. Moonshadow.

  With a sinking heart, he watched Gerren turn to him. It took no premonition, no special insight granted him by gods or elven blood, to make him abruptly, unwaveringly certain of what Dolmerrath’s steward would say.

  “I think perhaps we may have just discovered what became of the sword.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The royal palace, Dareli, Jeuchar 15, AC 1876

  Men and women fit to still serve in the palace guard were growing fewer with each passing day, and the two on duty at Ealasaid’s door seemed to Margaine’s critical eye at least two or three years too young to have been truly accepted into the guard corps. Both wore ill-fitting uniforms that had been clearly tailored for larger, bulkier bodies, and neither seemed prepared to draw the blades they wore at their sides, much less defend the Bhandreid with them.

  Margaine had to wonder, too, if either of them would move fast enough to prevent her if she commandeered one of their swords to force her way past them. “Your Highness,” the taller of the two youths said with distinct reluctance, “I’m terribly sorry, but Her Majesty the Bhandreid left orders that under no circumstances were you to be admitted to her chambers.”

  She stared hard at the boy, but could detect nothing out of the ordinary in his demeanor aside from an unmistakable hesitation to meet her eyes—and she couldn’t exactly fault him for that, not when almost every soul in the palace seemed at a loss as to how to treat her. No one had been so bold as to outright refuse her direct commands, or to challenge her when she took command once more, now that the Bhandreid was sequestered in her personal chambers. But more than once she’d caught people starring themselves when they thought she wasn’t looking, and all mentions of “Saint Margaine” had vanished entirely from her hearing.

  That was fine with her. She didn’t want to be a saint. Nor was she eager to be Bhandreid in Ealasaid’s stead.

  But, gods take it, she didn’t want her people terrified of her, or resisting her every step of the way as she fought to keep the city and the realm from descending into chaos. There was no one else to do it, not now.

  “I expect she did,” she said at last, and then drew steel into her voice. “I am countermanding that order. Doctor Corrinides requires access to his patient, and in order to report on Her Majesty’s condition to the people, I require access to her. Do you want to be the man who stands in the way of the business of the throne?”

  She didn’t have Ealasaid’s decades of practice at quelling a man with her gaze. Nor was she the Voice of the Gods, to burn a living being where he stood. But it seemed that what weight her word carried would suffice, for the guard hastily shook his head and muttered toward the floor, “No, Your Highness, of course not.”

  “Good, because I would prefer to avoid dismissing you. We need every able-bodied citizen, no matter their age, doing their duty for as long as this crisis lasts.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” the guard said, while his compatriot swallowed nervously and seemed to be doing his level best to remain invisible.

  “Now stand aside and let us pass.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.”

  The boys hastened to open the chamber doors for her and Tamber Corrinides, and Margaine opted to ignore the surreptitious flicker of the smaller boy’s hand as he starred himself at her passing. Yet her displeasure must have manifested in her face, for even as the doors closed again behind them, the doctor murmured, “You might have thanked them, my lady. Those boys were terrified of you.”

  “Along with everyone else in the palace, and all because I managed to avoid dying for the Anreulag,” Margaine replied. “It’s growing wearisome, and we’ve had enough rule by terror besides. Terror won’t see us through to peace.”

  A hoarse, breathless chuckle rose up to answer her from across the room, a noise that had barely enough force to reach past the velvet curtains swathing the ornate bed where the Bhandreid now lay. The curtains weren’t completely drawn; they’d been left open enough to allow air and light to reach Ealasaid.

  A lady-in-waiting sat in a chair at her bedside, a novel held open in her hands, but she hastily laid t
he book aside and rose to make her curtsey. “Your Highness. Will you require my assistance?”

  “No, thank you. Leave us.” Margaine waited until the other woman had taken her leave, and though her discomfort had not been quite so blatant as that of the boys guarding the door, still Margaine didn’t miss the speed of her departure. That too provoked an outburst of laughter from the figure in the bed, and Margaine scowled as the doctor stepped forward to begin his examination.

  “How do you plan to rule then, girl? Sweet words and genteel promises?” Ealasaid lay propped up on a mound of large, fat pillows in snow-white linen cases that made her look as though she were cradled in the embrace of several helpful clouds. The loose, flowing sleeping gown and thick eiderdown draped over her legs stood out in almost garish splashes of color against the pillows and her own pained gray countenance. Starkest of all, though, were the stretches of burned skin along her neck, shoulder and breast, gleaming dully with the patina of ointment the doctor had smeared upon them.

  The scents of camphor and sage dominated the room but could not entirely obliterate the underlying stench of fire-damaged flesh. As she had for hours ever since they’d moved her to her chambers, the Bhandreid lay unmoving, so as not to put pressure upon her wounds.

  The malice in her gaze, however, was undimmed. Margaine scowled to see it, and all the more deeply as Ealasaid’s lips curled in the thinnest of smiles. She didn’t bother to bat away the doctor as he leaned over her and frowned at the state of her wounds, for all her attention locked now on Margaine. “That is your intention, I presume? To take the throne now that it’s standing empty?”

  “I will hold it in my daughter’s name, assuming Adalonia stands long enough for her to reach her majority,” Margaine said.

  “Best of fortune with that, my dear. Have you come to me for counsel, or is this simply an expression of the last of your devotion to your sovereign?”

  Margaine closed the remaining distance between her and the bed, schooling her face into impassiveness as the doctor produced a stethoscope to listen to the Bhandreid’s heart. “Neither, Your Majesty,” she said. “I require information. I want to know about the gun.”

  A noise, part cackle and part cough, escaped the older woman, with enough force that Corrinides paused in his ministrations to tell her sternly, “Majesty, I must urge you to lie still and not exert yourself, if I’m to examine you properly.”

  “Don’t spout nonsense at me, boy, you and I both know the Voice of the Gods has killed me. My blasted body just hasn’t realized it yet.” Ealasaid’s dour gaze slid from Margaine to the doctor and back again. “And you. Ha. I thought you’d want to know about that. I expect you’ve already been asking the palace armorers about it.”

  “None of whom were able to tell me the weapon’s provenance,” Margaine said. “All I was able to learn was that it was made by the master gunsmith who served your father, and that it was the last weapon he made before he died.”

  “Which doesn’t tell you what you want to know. How he made it. Why he made it. And why it’s the only gun in this entire city that’s been able to deal any real harm the Voice of the Gods.”

  Cold satisfaction glinted in Ealasaid’s eyes, visible despite her profound exhaustion. It was meant to anger her, Margaine supposed. That she had to appeal to the old woman’s haughty ego galled—but she too was tired, and she no longer had time for the luxury of fury. “Would you do me the honor of explaining its history, my lady?”

  “Come now, girl, don’t you think pretending at manners is rather futile at this juncture? I’ll tell you what you want to know, but spare me your false courtesy. It isn’t what I want.”

  Of course she’d have a price. It was almost a relief to eschew formalities, but even now, Margaine refused to grant the Bhandreid the additional satisfaction of seeing her smirk. “Those are noble words coming from a woman who’s always professed that the realm is her highest priority, but as you wish. We’ll bargain. What do you want in exchange for telling me what may be the only thing that will let me keep the Voice of the Gods from killing us all?”

  “A noble death,” Ealasaid immediately replied, her voice rasping and thin, despite the ferocity of her tone. “I’m dying, girl. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but I can tell it’ll be soon enough. You’ll see to it nothing I’ve told you will be recorded in the royal archives, and I will be laid to rest with the dignity and honor befitting my forebears.”

  At that, Margaine had to scowl once more. “Forebears who have done just as you have, ruling this nation on a foundation of lies and blood. What befits them is ignominy, not dignity or honor.”

  “I will lie in state in St. Merrodrie’s and my name will be inscribed in the rolls of the ages, girl. Or you will learn nothing, and Adalonia will burn.”

  Tamber shot Margaine a look from across the bed as he straightened up again. “Her pulse is erratic, Highness. Her heart and lungs are too damaged,” he said quietly. “She’s right. She won’t last much longer.”

  “Hear that?” Ealasaid croaked. “Make your decision.”

  Margaine drew in a deep breath, slowly let it out again and inclined her head. “I accept your terms.”

  With a ragged sigh, the Bhandreid closed her eyes and lay there for a long moment before she finally whispered, “Seventy-nine years ago, we fought our last great battle with the elves. I wasn’t born then, and wouldn’t read the accounts of it for another twenty years. But my father told me the story as soon as I was old enough to understand. How his brother’s own daughter had fallen in love with the elves’ own prince. The Anreulag killed him at my father’s command. And when she’d wiped out the elven forces that stood against her, she brought back two prizes. One was my father’s niece. Darlana Araeldes.”

  “There’s no such person in the royal records,” Margaine said.

  Her severe tone provoked another weak gasp of laughter from Ealasaid. “Of course not. Father had her excised from them as soon as he discovered she was pregnant by her elf lover. Every law of the Church commanded he put her to death. But he banished her instead to the remotest convent he could find.”

  Such an exercise of royal prerogative in blatant violation of holy law might have astonished Margaine no more than a week before, yet the only reaction she could find within her now was bitter laughter of her own. “And the other prize?” she demanded, when the Bhandreid’s voice grew fainter.

  “A sword. The elf prince’s sword, the one weapon they had that could hurt the Anreulag in battle. He brought the damned thing back and had his head armorer melt it down and make him a gun.” Ealasaid opened her eyes, though her lids seemed to have grown heavy. Her gaze was dull, with the barest spark of life in its depths. Even then, her voice retained a ghost of arrogant pride. “Father knighted the man for his contributions to weapons development. It’s taken other gunsmiths decades to replicate what he did, making pistols that could fire multiple shots, and without him we never could have gone to war with Tantiulo…”

  Margaine could have argued whether that was an accomplishment worth lauding, but the older woman’s voice trailed off again into a rasping, whistling silence. Her eyes drifted closed again, and after a moment the doctor said, “I think that’s all you’ll be able to get out of her for now, my lady. You should let her rest. I’ll stay with her.”

  He was too polite to utter it plainly, but Margaine heard the meaning beneath the doctor’s words. Let her die. “Send the guards with word at the slightest change in her condition,” she said. “I have arrangements to make, and until I can make them, I’ll be with my daughter.”

  “Of course, Highness.”

  She strode out of the chamber then, anxious to quit the company of imminent death and bask instead in the comfort of her baby’s new and vibrant life. Yet not even the prospect of Padraiga in her arms, where she belonged, could distract her from the duty pressing on her.
The gun she’d confiscated in St. Merrodrie’s was a gun made from an elven weapon, the only weapon that could kill the Voice of the Gods, and it fell to her now to decide how to use it. How to choose who would fire it—she’d have to ask them to stand in range of the Anreulag’s power—or whether she could ask of any loyal subject of the crown what she would not do herself.

  Whether she’d have to volunteer to die again, and this time, with no clever subterfuge of the doctor’s to save her.

  The camp of the Army of Nirrivy, Kilmerry Province, Jeuchar 16, AC 1876

  The outpost commander kept his word to the duchess, and within a few hours of their meeting, the gates opened on a group of males and females who stole out on silent feet through the refugee camp beyond the walls. Their faces were thin and worn from work and care; their garments were threadbare and patched. Several sported shaved heads, others mangled ears that reminded Kestar uneasily of Faanshi. One elf woman was even carrying a child in her arms, a tiny boy with pointed ears, who stared warily and silently at everyone they passed.

  Gerren, along with every elf who’d ridden out of Dolmerrath, waited for them on the nearest edge of the Nirrivan encampment. Dozens of curious humans had gathered nearby to watch, but Kestar paid them little mind. An aching need to see the elves rejoining their kin kept all his attention on those who emerged through the gates.

  Gerren began to sing in a warm, clear tenor as soon as the first arrivals came into sight, and then other voices joined him in a swell of ethereal harmony. First Dolmerrath’s elves, and then, one by one, the freed slaves of Riannach sang with them.

  Kestar knew none of the words, but they sank deep in nonetheless, reaching that hidden part of him that Faanshi had first found with the sunlight of her magic. Words weren’t needed for the sentiments given wing and voice by the song, and in the faces of those who sang. There was welcome on behalf of Gerren and his scouts, and relief from those coming out of Riannach. Acknowledgement and surcease of suffering. Grief, particularly from Tembriel—who, Kestar thought, sang as much for her lost brother as she did for those her people greeted. And a defiance from all of them that could not be denied, as they sang in full sight and hearing of humans who, like him, stood and watched in uneasy silence.