Blood Road

by Amanda McCrina

  “It’ll be war anyway if they think I betrayed them.”

  “We have some time. As it stands, they expect you to travel to Choiro. That gives us a month, at least.”

  “A month to do what? Mass troops?”

  They had come out from the guardhouse onto the thoroughfare. The gate doors were shut; the guards had gone back to their posts. The sky was pearl-gray, and there was a sea wind pushing over the battlements. Torien followed Valle up the steps to the wall. The men on the wall stood aside to let them pass. A few of them saluted, belatedly and with some confusion recognizing Torien as the corporal had done. None of them spoke. None of them seemed sure of what to do about the Guardsman. Valle went down the walkway toward the southwestern tower. He stopped at the merlon from which the body hung and leaned over the crenellation to look, his hands on the merlons on either side. He straightened, slowly. He glanced back at Torien. His shoulders were stiff. “Again I must ask for your help,” he said.

  They raised the body carefully on the ropes. They pulled it over the wall and laid it down very gently on the walkway. Torien sat at the feet, trying not to look into what was left of the face. He had caught a glimpse as they pulled the body up, and he wished he hadn’t. He blinked and swallowed. He thought it was a trick of his eyes or the light that he saw one discolored hand move against the paving stones, but beside him Valle bent over the body and said, “Nico.” Then he looked up at Torien, his hands on Tarrega’s head. “Water,” he said.

  Wordlessly, Torien started to get to his feet. One of the guards, standing and watching with some others a little way down the wall, said, “I’ll go, sir.”

  Torien nodded. The man went at a run. Valle was holding Tarrega’s head between his hands and speaking softly in Modigno, his head bent, his mouth close to Tarrega’s ear. Tarrega turned his head against the paving stones. Torien sat slowly back down against the wall. Tarrega’s face was toward him, and he could not look away, though he wanted to, simultaneously repulsed and ashamed of his repulsion. The nose was a shattered ruin. The eye sockets gaped empty—burned-out holes where the eyes had been dark and cool and keen as a surgeon’s probe to match the knife-blade smile.

  He felt suddenly that Stratto had been right. It was ignorance, not clarity. One could not know after a fortnight. There was very much he did not know and he had been a fool to think he knew after a fortnight.

  The guard returned with a water-skin and a leather cup. He gave the skin and cup to Torien and stood back, uncomfortably. It was obvious he wanted to speak but did not know how to say what he wanted to say. Espere had not had the authority to execute a soldier summarily, and of necessity the guards must be afraid they would be punished for complicity. It was Valle’s prerogative to choose; they knew that.

  Valle did not pay any attention to the guard. He slid an arm under Tarrega’s shoulders and pulled him up gently and held him close, loosening his cloak with one hand to put it over Tarrega’s body.

  Torien poured water into the cup and leaned forward to put the cup against Tarrega’s crusted lips. Tarrega turned his head away against Valle’s shoulder. His lips were closed. Valle said something in Modigno, and Tarrega turned his head back, opening his mouth.

  His teeth were broken, his tongue cut out.

  Torien shut his eyes. There was an ache in him as though he had been kicked. He held the cup to Tarrega’s lips, tipping it slowly as Tarrega swallowed. Tarrega flinched, his mouth slackening. Water ran over Torien’s hands. He opened his eyes. Tarrega coughed and shivered, curling up under Valle’s arm. He sucked a breath, then let it go. His head dropped from Valle’s shoulder.

  Torien put the cup down and reached with numb fingers to feel for the pulse, but Valle caught his wrist quickly in his free hand. “I will need to speak with Lieutenant Chareste,” he said. His voice was calm, but his fingers around Torien’s wrist were as tight as a vise. “As soon as it may be arranged.”

  He heard his own voice say, “I’ll inform the surgeon.”

  Then he was going down the walkway for the gatehouse steps, somehow not stumbling, and Valle was sitting on the walkway behind him, holding Tarrega’s body and looking at nothing.

  He had remembered, as he went down the steps, that he must send wagons for the signo and the young Espere and the bodies at the cove, and he had given charge of it to the corporal, Savio, and he had ordered the surgeon along with the wagons, so that he and Valle were alone now with Chareste in a cell in the infirmary. The smoke of the morning cook fires was drifting through the open window, and the rumor of voices from the barrack blocks. Chareste lay on the mat with his ribs wrapped. He was in pain despite the numbing draught which the surgeon had administered, and he was trying bravely but unsuccessfully not to show it. There was sweat on his face though the cell was cool.

  “The morning after you left, Commander Risto. I had the watch. The Lieutenant took the rolls as usual, and then he was with the recruits on the parade ground. There was a messenger come up from the harbor just at mid-morning. The Commander came to me for a guard detail directly afterward. I gave him the men, sir. I didn’t know what he needed with them until they brought the Lieutenant in.”

  “Did you know the charge?” Valle said.

  “He told us it was for treason, sir. He told us the Lieutenant had been taking Mayaso coin.”

  “You did not believe him.”

  “I assumed he’d finally realized the Lieutenant had been leading him on, sir.”

  “About the signo, you mean.”

  “Yes, sir. He’d been making excuses for a month—keeping the boy alive until he could get him out of the fort. There was no opportunity until Commander Risto came.”

  “He confided this to you?”

  “He was a friend, sir. And I think he needed to confide in someone. It tore him apart—what he did to the boy.”

  “You knew he was a Guardsman?”

  Chareste hesitated. “Yes, sir. Not at first, though it had crossed my mind more than once that he must have prior orders—from Modigne, I thought, or maybe straight from Vione.”

  “Prior orders concerning the signi?”

  “Concerning the mines. Most of the officers knew that the Commander—well, that he had his own business with the Asani, sir. We knew what he’d commanded of the signi. We knew he wanted a war with the Mayasi. We were going to write to Vione. I was chosen to do it. He took me aside, then—this was a month ago, sir, directly after the Commander ordered the signi decimated. He showed me his seal. He asked me to give him time.”

  “You were the only one of the officers to know?”

  “Yes, sir. The others thought I’d sent to Vione as we’d planned.”

  “Tell me about the messenger.”

  “I didn’t pay him much attention, sir. There are always messengers up from the harbor. The Commander required it of the harbor master at each berthing—manifest and itinerary, along with the tax. There were ships come in on the tide that morning.”

  “You remember very clearly when he came, considering you didn’t pay him much attention.”

  “It struck me afterward, sir. I mean that I didn’t pay him much attention at the time.”

  “You understand there to be a correlation between this messenger and the Lieutenant’s arrest.”

  “Yes, sir. It happened all very directly, sir.”

  “There are others who will remember the messenger? Or were you the only one to see him?”

  Chareste’s brow furrowed. “I am sure there are others who saw him, sir.”

  “Otherwise he becomes very convenient for you,” Valle said.

  Chareste lay still against the mat. “I would not have betrayed the Lieutenant, sir.”

  “Perhaps not if you had known Espere would examine you for the other traitors in his command.”

  Chareste closed his eyes, briefly. “I can give you the duty roster for that morning, sir. I am sure there’ll be others who remember the messenger. I swear t
o you I did not betray him.”

  “I will see about the roster. When were you arrested?”

  “Four days ago, sir—the morning he put the Lieutenant on the wall.”

  “It was because you objected?”

  “I should have done earlier. He made me swear it to him, sir—the Lieutenant did. He made me swear I would not intervene. It was what he wanted, sir. I swore it to him. I wish I hadn’t.”

  “You had opportunity to speak with him?”

  “The second night. We’d had word of attacks on the Road. One of the trains reported they’d found the remains of Commander Risto’s patrol. I took the Lieutenant water and wine and a draught of poppy while the Commander went out on a cavalry sweep. He’d left the door open, sir.”

  “You were alone with the Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He said nothing to you of who might have betrayed him?”

  “No, sir. He asked the oath of me. That was all.”

  “And you did not speak with him again.”

  Chareste did not say anything.

  “Did you speak with him again, Lieutenant?”

  “Once again—yes, sir. Next morning—the morning of the execution. The Lieutenant couldn’t walk. The Commander ordered Corporal Savio and me to take him up to the wall.”

  “What did he say?”

  Chareste shifted on the mat. A spasm of pain went over his face. “He was—not in his right mind, sir. It was nothing.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Forgive me, Valle. It was done at my word.’”

  Valle’s face was blank. “You are very sure, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who is Valle?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I don’t know if he knew. He was hallucinating.”

  “The Commander was present to hear this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me what he said.”

  “He said he would make sure they knew who had betrayed them, sir.”

  “They?”

  “I don’t know what he meant, sir.”

  “Did the Lieutenant say anything?”

  “Not—to that, sir.”

  “To something else?”

  Chareste shut his eyes and swallowed.

  “Lieutenant,” Valle said, quietly, “it is very important that I know everything he said.”

  “He asked for my knife, sir—the Commander did. He ordered me to give him my service knife. I would not. God knows I could not. The Lieutenant told me to do it, sir.”

  “He told you to give Espere your knife.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He had clarity at that point.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That was all he said?”

  “He did not speak again. You saw what was done, sir.”

  “You said this was four mornings ago.”

  “Yes, sir. Others can confirm it for you, sir.”

  Valle was studying Chareste on the mat. “Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “It would have been a solace to him—all that you did for him. I am in your debt.”

  Chareste opened his eyes. He turned his head against the mat to look at Valle. He was trying, perhaps, to see if that had been mockery. “You haven’t reviewed the duty roster yet, sir.”

  “If I believed you betrayed him, Lieutenant,” Valle said, “you would be dead already.”

  “But you believe someone betrayed him,” Torien said.

  They were walking the corridor. They passed the cell where the infirmary slaves were preparing Tarrega’s body for burial. Valle did not look in through the doorway. “There are three possibilities that I can see,” he said. “That he betrayed us himself—possibly for gain, more likely for that he was afraid he’d been found out about the signo; or that he was himself betrayed, and gave up the rest of us under torture; or that we were all of us betrayed together by someone who knew the Guard was operating in Tasso, who knew the ship we used out of the cove. I find the latter the most plausible—or the least implausible, perhaps.”

  “You proved very neatly that Chareste wasn’t making up those last words out of thin air. Obviously Tarrega was of the mind that he’d betrayed you—and so was the signo at the ship.”

  “The signo said they had been at the ship a week this morning. In other words, they were at the ship the morning of the arrest. I do not believe Nico would have broken so quickly.”

  “Then it was deliberate.”

  “In that case, why wait so long to arrest Lieutenant Chareste? It is more plausible to me that Espere already knew of the ship when he arrested Nico. The Lieutenant’s messenger is significant.”

  “There has to be a reason for his saying he betrayed you.”

  Valle was looking down the corridor. “It is possible the Lieutenant is right—that it was hallucination.”

  “Possible but not likely?”

  “No,” Valle said, “not likely.”

  “Anyway, if you’re right and Espere knew everything by the time he made the arrest, then what did he need from Tarrega under examination?”

  “I do not believe Espere knew everything. I believe he knew there were Guardsmen in Tasso, and I believe he knew of the ship. I do not think he could have known that the Guardsmen who were supposed to be either in the city or with the ship were in fact out on the Road on a near-spontaneous rescue mission.”

  “Then that was the betrayal.”

  “Perhaps, though it raises a question of why Espere would execute Nico without waiting to see if he had spoken true. To me, it suggests he had found another way to satisfy himself concerning our whereabouts. Five days ago, he heard from a train that your patrol had been slaughtered on the Road. He went out with a cavalry troop to see for himself. The next morning, he put Nico on the wall.”

  Torien turned this over in his head. “He thought it had been you and the Guard.”

  “He would have assumed so when he did not find you or Senna or the signo among the dead. After that, he had only to wait. He knew we would need come back for the ship eventually.”

  “It still doesn’t explain away what Tarrega said to Chareste.”

  “‘It was done at my word’ could be in reference to a great many things and not necessarily to betrayal.”

  “Had he something else for which to beg your forgiveness with his last words?”

  Valle was not looking at him. “I have seen it before: trivial things which become suddenly more important in the face of death. That much I can understand. What I do not understand is why he should have called me by that name. He only ever called me by first name.”

  Torien, not knowing what to say, said nothing.

  Valle came back from wherever he had gone. “I will go through the Lieutenant’s duty roster, for thoroughness’s sake. I do not imagine he was lying. We know Espere had informants in Modigne, and we know the messages came and went very openly. We’ve intercepted them before.”

  “‘The sign of the Boar’?”

  “A code—a clumsy one, as you have seen. They had gotten careless.”

  “Afterward?”

  “It is necessary that I go to Choiro. I must speak with the High Commander. He will be able to tell me exactly who among the Guard command knew detail enough of our mission to betray us.”

  “In the meantime I’m to prepare the garrison for war?”

  Valle was silent, for a moment. “Send word to the Asano,” he said, finally. “Send to him—do not go yourself. Give him the truth. Ask him to grant us time. Reaffirm to him that Lieutenant Senna is in his hands as our pledge of good faith, but remind him also that we have Lieutenant Espere.”

  “If he isn’t dead already.”

  “I wouldn’t include that part,” Valle said.

  They buried Tarrega and Stratto in the morning, and the signi who had died at the ship. They buried Espere, too, because he had not bee
n convicted before a court martial and could not by law be burned. They buried Tarrega and Stratto in full harness as officers of the Guard—Tarrega who was really Nico Briule, born on Epyris, who had taken the Tasso mission as his first command. Valle, in his own harness, spoke their names and the prayer for the dead. There was no one to speak the names of the signi, but Torien said the prayer for them, though by strict technicality they were not his soldiers and it was not his place.

  Valle left afterward on a trade ship out of Kabira, bound for Modigne. From Modigne he would take ship for Salina, and from Salina he would go by riverboat up the Breche to Choiro. It was still early enough in the summer for the river passage. In another few weeks, the Breche would be shrunken back from wide, dusty banks and shallow enough to cross on foot, and in places dried to cracked brown clay under the Vareno sun. The privileged of Choiro would be gone up to their summer estates in the hills. The Emperor would be at Civiparro or perhaps at Ebre, on the Salino coast. Things went very slowly in Choiro in summertime. It would be a month at least before Torien had word again from Valle, and it might easily be two.

  That day went very busily in the mundane work of command to which he must now accustom himself. He divided up Tarrega’s and Chareste’s duties among the remaining officers and wrote out a lieutenant’s commission for the corporal, Savio. On Savio’s recommendation, he sent for a man who trained animals for the games to come remove the spotted cat from Espere’s office.

  In the evening, he dispatched a rider to the mines. Besides what he had written to the Asano, Aidar, he had written also briefly to Alluin and to the signo, saying none of the things he wanted to say—only that he had come safely to the fort and would write again when there was news and he had opportunity. He left intentionally vague that he was still here in Tasso. He might as well have said nothing at all. Alluin would sense that something had happened and that he was not being told. Perhaps Aidar would tell him in confidence, and he would understand why it could not be written. Even so, the letter seemed like a lie.