Hearts & Minds: Book Six in the Crown of Blood series

by White, Gwynn

  “There’s a label?” Meka turned his can over. “Flaked fish in brine.” He looked at Dip. “Where did you get these?”

  Dip scrambled over to him. “See that metal thing?” He poked a key glued onto the lid with a grimy finger. The key had a hole in its shaft. “It fits on this loose bit.” He waggled a slither of metal protruding off the can. “And then you turn it and the can opens.”

  Meka did as Dip instructed. The can was indeed filled with fish soaked in brine. It smelt vile. He put the tin down, careful not to slop any of the brine onto his hands. “Where did you find these? No one in the palace eats this stuff.”

  Dip shrugged. “What does it matter? It’s my gift to you.” He pointed at Shale’s rifle. “Them things…you just point it and pull that funny thing?” He jabbed the trigger with his spear tip. “Next, someone’s head is gone? That right?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that. It’s called a rifle.” Shale put his unopened can down and hefted the weapon for the boy to see. “And this is a trigger. Best not to go poking it.”

  Meka nudged Shale to shut him up. The Norin probably knew nothing about the code of reward and payment amongst Cian street urchins. The last thing they needed was for Dip to demand a rifle in exchange for the pheasant and the two “gifts.”

  Shale saw his scowl and tucked the rifle against his leg; he must have decoded it correctly. “They’re dangerous things. You have to be trained to use them or you could do yourself more harm than anyone else.”

  Dip glared at Meka and then made a point of speaking to Shale. “You’ve been trained?”

  “On shotguns. But the principles are the same. I was a Norin raider, working for the alliance before I fell in love with informas. The warlord let me transfer. A fat lot of good it did me. I got captured by Felix a few months later.”

  “Informas? Them weird things with the lights? Axel had one.”

  Meka dove his hand into his pocket and pulled out his informa. He flicked it up to his eye to activate it and pulled up the light. He held it out to Dip. “He had one of these?”

  Dip glanced at it. “Exactly that.” He dismissed it and looked pointedly at Meka’s rifle. “With all them crazies out there, a leader needs to take care of his boys. How—”

  Meka tossed the informa into Dip’s lap. “You can have that for helping us get to the palace.”

  Dip didn’t touch it. “Just that? The palace is risky. Very risky. And what about the food and them tins?”

  “That informa can do many things. It’s a fair trade, especially as you said it was easy getting into the kitchens. And as for the meat and the gifts. You offered them to us. So those don’t count.”

  Dip picked the informa up gingerly. “Is it any good for protecting my turf?”

  Not without intensive training, but Meka didn’t intend mentioning that. “Hold it in front of your eye, and I’ll set it so it answers to you.”

  It took a moment before Dip’s curiosity won out over his caution. Slowly, he lifted it to his eye. Meka spoke a few simple commands, and ownership passed to Dip. Even though it left him without light to navigate by and with no means of contacting Kai Lin, giving Dip the informa had to be better than arming children with lethal weapons. Especially when Dip had declared himself Grigor’s enemy.

  Dip rolled the informa in his hands. “What does it—”

  “Dip! Dip!” The slap of bare feet on stone made Meka—and Dip—turn. A boy emerged from the darkness. “Someone’s coming.”

  Dip dropped the informa into his pocket. As one, he and his crew jumped to their feet. Each boy wielded a weapon in each hand.

  Meka and Shale stood.

  “Anything we can help with?” Meka asked.

  “Nah!” Dip said. “We got this.”

  “And what exactly is this?” Shale asked.

  “Turf war,” Dip said. “Since the fires in the city, we’re fighting other gangs for our tunnels.” His chest puffed out. “We own the quickest route to the palace kitchens.” A scowl. “All them bastards wants it. That’s why one of them rifles would be a good thing.” Big brown eyes peered beseechingly at Meka and then at Shale.

  They both shook their heads.

  Dip scowled at them and then thumped the ground with the hilt of his spear. “Get ready to fight,” he snapped at his boys before striding off with the gang trailing him.

  “Tag along?” Meka asked Shale.

  “Nothing else to do.”

  They picked up their rifles and followed Dip and his gang into the darkness. After a short distance, the tunnel turned sharply right—into the most putrid air Meka had ever breathed. Shale gagged, and it took all of Meka’s self-control not to start retching, too. Dip and his boys raced on, clearly untroubled by the reek.

  Breathing through his mouth, Meka followed. Ahead of him, about three feet above him, a small fire burned on a slimy stone wall. Alert as bloodhounds, four urchins stared into the darkness.

  “Lookout,” Dip murmured, making for a rusted stepladder embedded into the wall. He and his boys shimmied up it.

  Meka was next. Some of the rungs had corroded away, but he climbed past them until he landed on a crumbling platform with room for the fire, the original four boys, and little else. Below him, three tunnels converged. In one of them, feet sloshed noisily in water.

  Dip’s enemy was upon him.

  Meka couldn’t deny the heaviness in his stomach that once again his people, who should have been allies, were fighting each other when the real enemies were Lukan and Felix.

  Dip frowned at the tunnel. “Makes no sense,” he muttered under his breath.

  “What? Meka whispered.

  “It’s coming toward us,” Dip whispered back.

  “So?”

  Dip glanced at him as if he were an ignoramus. “That’s one of them routes to the palace. No one should be coming from that direction.”

  Clearly, whoever it was, didn’t want to negotiate the guardsmen at the wolf enclosure. That meant he or she didn’t want to be seen. Maybe they’d have news on Grigor. Why else had Father suggested he come here? It took all of Meka’s self-control not to yell out to the oncoming person.

  Dip poked String with his spear tip. “Get down there with your bottle. But keep out of sight.”

  Meka grabbed String’s tattered tunic. “Hold up. You can’t go stabbing people with broken bottles. Especially when you don’t know who they are.”

  Dip’s grin showed far too many teeth. “That’s where you’re wrong. Axel Avanov himself gave us permission. Said he wanted to see us holding up people with broken bottles when he comes back to Cian.”

  Meka rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that was in a different context.”

  The footsteps swooshed closer.

  “Whatever,” Dip said. “This is our turf, and we gotta protect it.” He shoved String. “Go.”

  String slunk down the rotting stepladder.

  Dip waved at everyone else. “Line the edge of the wall.”

  Meka folded his arms as Dip’s boys instantly obeyed.

  “And us?” Shale wore a crooked smile as if amused by Dip’s battle plans.

  “Get into the shadows so you aren’t seen.”

  Meka snorted. “Dragon’s ass, Dip, just don’t turn around and say we owe you rifles for protecting us.”

  “As if I would.” The shiftiness in Dip’s eyes belied his indignation.

  “Not happening,” Meka said, “So forget it.”

  “You’re cluttering the place.” Dip shoved him and Shale toward the back wall. “Turf protecting needs space.”

  Meka and Shale shrugged at each other as they shuffled into the shadows. Spear at the ready, Dip shoved his way into the middle of his line of boys.

  Meka peered over the boys’ heads at the tunnel. No one would be hurt on his watch, and if Dip argued, he’d see exactly what a rifle could do.

  Sixteen

  The Bargain

  “Panic is the enemy,” Lukan muttered as he strode
away from the great hall. But he could not shake the expression in Countess Rosina’s eyes when she had witnessed Natalia about to murder her son. “The high-born aren’t the only ones with crystals.”

  More than a million guardsmen were descending on the city to defend him. Their ice crystals had been tested over generations. There was no doubt that they worked. Four hundred years of Avanov domination was a testimony to that. So, if he couldn’t rely on his high-born, he’d have to look to his guardsmen for protection. They were programmed to die unquestioningly to protect him from Nicholas.

  “What if it isn’t enough? What if they are all immune to their crystals?”

  His stomach knotted. Could that indeed be possible? Where there was one traitor, there were always more. Many more. He needed someone he could trust absolutely. A loner all his life, his aloneness could be his undoing. “I need help,” he muttered. “I need allies.”

  “Allies? Who would ally themselves with you?” the voices mocked. “There’s a reason you have no friends.”

  “General Nahom,” he announced loudly, hoping to drive them away. “He stood by me during the battle in Tarach. He’s loyal. Unlike you and everyone else in this palace.”

  He had been heading towards his archive, but now he changed direction and almost ran through the palace to Battle Command. He paused at the door. No one in this room could know how terrified he was. He was the emperor. He had to appear in command no matter what it took. Thankfully, it was a simple matter of arranging his face into its usual neutral disdain. He’d developed that skill as a young boy enduring the palace gossip about his father’s beatings. It had been honed during his teenage years when Axel and Tao had rejected and reviled him. He wiped his face of all emotion. Satisfied that he looked every inch an emperor, he glided into the disciplined intensity of Battle Command.

  No one noticed his arrival.

  All across the vast room, officers and troops alike pored over glowing threat boards. He caught snatches of conversation.

  “…need to find food…”

  “…the barracks were burned….”

  “…train from Karith is arriving with…”

  Indifferent to the logistics of housing his guardsmen in his burned-out capital, he cleared his throat loudly.

  An officer looked up, saw him, bowed, and said even louder, “Sire.”

  All around the room, heads jerked up. Then the bowing started. He saw no disloyalty in any of their eyes. Nothing but the blank, dutiful stare of a loyal, trusted guardsman.

  But he’d been fooled once before.

  General Nahom came out of his office. He bowed lower than anyone else. “Sire, it is an honor to see you.” His face was drawn with tiredness. It didn’t matter. It was Nahom’s job to defend him, not to lie around sleeping.

  “General Nahom,” he said coldly. “We need to speak.”

  “Sire, you have news for us on how to breach Count Felix’s new lair?”

  Lukan gawped at him. Didn’t the fool know that Tao commanded Felix’s Hive? And that the high-born had turned against him? That the Pavel family…

  Lukan snapped his mouth shut. How could Nahom know? He’d been in Battle Command, striving to follow his emperor’s instruction to bring a million guardsmen to Cian and to find Felix’s Hive. Warmth spread through Lukan. Not the kind that beaded as sweat, but the kind that comforted and reassured. He waved the question away. “The attack… We must plan our defense.”

  Nahom looked blank, “We’re under attack, sire?” He glanced at the closest threat board.

  “Of course not,” Lukan snapped. “But it’s coming, and we have to be prepared. Why else do you think I brought all these troops to Cian?”

  “I was instructed to recall the troops by Count Zarot, sire. For what purpose, I don’t know. But it’s not my place to question my order.”

  Lukan sighed away his frustration. There was little point in castigating the man for not knowing orders he hadn’t yet received. “Any reasonable man would know that,” he said to the voices. “See, I’m not crazy.” He closed his ears to the hisses.

  Nahom swallowed so loudly it sounded as if his throat had locked. “Sire, forgive my impertinence, but does this have anything to do with the kidnapping of the true crown prince?”

  The man dared mention, Nicholas?

  Only the knowledge that he needed Nahom’s help stopped him from hitting the man. “It has.” He escaped into Nahom’s office, assessed the selection of chairs, picked the most comfortable one behind Nahom’s desk and sat.

  Nahom stood at attention on the other side of the desk.

  “Sit,” Lukan snapped. While Nahom sat, Lukan dug in his pocket for his informa.

  It wasn’t there.

  He recalled throwing it at Natalia.

  He held out his hand. “Your informa.”

  Nahom handed his device over.

  Lukan programmed it to accept a new owner, him, and then created a composite image of Nicholas, Axel, and Lynx. He put the device on the desk and pointed at the image. “Axel Avanov, head of the Pathfinder Alliance. He was responsible for the attack on Cian. Lynx of Norin. A traitor who once bore the title of Empress of All Chenaya and the Conquered Territories.” He ignored Nahom’s gasp of surprise at that tidbit. “And, finally, the one I’ve already shown you, Crown Prince Nicholas, also known as the Light-Bearer.” He waited for Nahom’s reaction.

  It was slow in coming.

  Lukan gripped the informa with both hands and squeezed it tight.

  Finally, Nahom shifted in his seat. “These are the traitors who are going to attack us, sire?”

  “Yes.”

  Nahom looked at him questioningly.

  Lukan stared straight back.

  Nahom cleared his throat. “Um… sire, is there anything else you can tell me?”

  Valid question. But without access to Nicholas’s ice crystal, Lukan operated in the dark. All he had to go on were half-remembered snippets of a conversation he’d shared with Dmitri almost twenty years ago. That hardly qualified as intelligence. At that time, the bastard Dmitri had offered him a book on the curse but had then refused to hand it over.

  The voices rustled.

  He forced his hands to relax around the informa. If they knew he was tense, they’d chime in. He didn’t need them interfering now.

  With as much confidence as he could muster, he said, “My sources tell me that Axel Avanov will bring an army as numberless as the sands of the sea to my palace. It’s the timing I’m unsure of.”

  Nahom rubbed his stubble. “Troubling, sire.” A frown. “As numberless as the sands of the sea, you say, sire. That’s a lot of sand.” Now a head shake. “Sire…”

  Lukan braced himself for more inane nonsense.

  “No one knows for sure how many troops serve in the Pathfinder Alliance, sire. But surely it’s not that many?”

  At last some sense. He let out a small sigh of relief. There had to have been a reason Zarot, who had been the Lord of the Conquest at the time, had appointed Nahom to head up Battle Command. The man couldn’t be a complete idiot.

  Still, Lukan contradicted him, “The army that marches on Cian will be vast. We have to assume that the traitor has allies we know nothing about.”

  “Sire, even if he does bring a vast army, there are no troops in the world as fine as your guardsmen. We will easily protect you. The only reason the alliance survived for so long was that they fought in those mines in Treven.”

  Lukan snorted softly. That and the help of Stefan Zarot, who had double-crossed me for years.

  Not programmed to detect nuances, Nahom said, “The cowards won’t have anywhere to hide when they come to Cian, sire. They’ll have to face our regiments head on. They won’t survive the encounter.”

  Lukan wanted to believe him, but with his life at stake, he could not afford to be casual. “Those are mere words. I need the assurance of a fool-proof plan.”

  “Of course, sire.” Nahom gripped the edge of the desk. “Forgive
me, sire, but if I’m to do my best, I need to understand a few things.”

  That sounded reasonable. And if he didn’t like the question, he could always ignore it. “You are free to ask questions.”

  “Thank you, sire.” Nahom’s fingernails digging into the wood relaxed visibly. “Are you expecting them to come by air like they did last time?”

  “I destroyed Axel’s airship fleet,” Lukan said coldly. How was it possible that no one ever remembered his victories?

  “Perhaps it’s because they are not the victories you think they are,” the voices said.

  “Shut up!” Lukan shouted.

  Nahom’s fingernails whitened again.

  Lukan waved at him. “Carry on. What were you asking?”

  “A-a-and were those all his craft, sire? Does he have more?”

  “Even his flagship fell to my guns.”

  Nahom settled back in his chair. “Then we must expect them to come by sea, sire.” Another frown. “With our ships blockading the harbor and the coastline, they won’t make landfall. And if they come across Serreti Mountains, we’ll stop them long before they reach Cian. Those traitors will not slip past us. Sire, you have nothing to fear.”

  While that made sense, uncertainty niggled. “Maybe, but…” He broke off, unable to verbalize his bone-crushing fear of his son.

  Nahom clawed the table. “Sire, perhaps we can ask Count Zarot? He…”

  A horrible sense of presentiment blanked out Nahom’s voice. It made his skin crawl as if someone with unseen eyes watched him.

  A throat cleared behind him.

  He jumped and looked over his shoulder.

  No one was there.

  He glanced at Nahom. The man had fallen silent but showed no awareness of anything untoward. If anything, Nahom looked at him expectantly. With far more important concerns to worry about, Nahom could wait.

  “Dmitri,” he demanded. “Is that you?”

  “Aye.”

  He pounded his fist on the desk. “And you think it’s fair to sneak up on me like this when I’m in conference with my staff?”

  “You maligned me for refusing to give you my book on the curse. Yet at the time, you knew the terms of ownership, and you failed to obey them.”