by Morgan Rice
“The report is old,” he said, “and they were deceived. Tell the scout to take more care next time.”
“Yes, my lord,” a junior officer said.
Only then did the Master of Crows turn his attention to the more senior officers standing waiting near the door. He watched them talking among themselves for a moment or two, seeing the latest rounds of friendships and petty rivalries. When he gave them his full attention, they fell as silent as penitents in one of the Masked Goddess’s temples.
“How is the recovery from our invasion of the Dowager’s lands going?” he asked.
“Well, my lord,” one of the captains said, “we have sent out recruiting parties for more men.”
“The foundries work day and night to produce cannon,” another said, as if trying to outdo the first of them.
“Our shipmasters have commandeered vessels to replace those lost.”
They sounded as though they were trying to outdo one another in begging for his favor. Idly, the Master of Crows wondered if he should show some arbitrary sign of it to one of them, to stoke whatever jealousy lay between them. His crows told him which had cheated the others at cards, which was sleeping with another man’s wife. It would be an easy thing to stoke those resentments into anger. Perhaps a duel would result, and his crows would feast.
No, that would be a petty meal, and would cause too much disruption in his armies at a point where a far greater one was in the offing.
“You have done well then,” he said instead, the praise spread evenly for once. “I want our men ready to move at my command.”
“Yes, my lord,” they chorused.
Another man might have felt some pride at the feat of bringing men from so many different lands and factions together. His New Army had quashed the rivalries of the past, and could have paved the way for a brighter future for the world, if the Master of Crows had any interest in such things. He’d taken them and honed them into a single blade of many interlinked leaves; something that could be wielded with precision, rather than some clumsy collection of butcher’s knives.
“See that you are,” he warned them. “I will not miss the moment to act because you are too slow.”
That was the risk with any force this size. His birds could show him anything he chose to look at, but how quickly could men respond when he required it? The speed with which he could see events or have mynah birds caw commands was sometimes nothing more than a reminder of how slow things were.
He watched the men leave, hurrying back to their posts with a renewed sense of purpose. For his part, the Master of Crows seated himself in a high-backed chair, getting ready to renew his watch over events.
To his surprise, one of the junior officers chose that moment to speak up.
“My lord,” he asked, “do you think that we will ever be done with war? Do you think that we will ever finally win and go home?”
The others there shrank back from him, as if expecting their commander to jump up and kill the young man at any moment. Perhaps there were days when the Master of Crows might have, but today was not one of them.
“No, Clancel, I do not.”
Perhaps the young officer started at the use of his name, although it was no great feat to remember who his subordinates were. Perhaps he started at the fact that he was getting an answer at all. Either way, the shock seemed to embolden him.
“But, my lord, why not? Surely there must come a point where we have defeated all our enemies?”
The Master of Crows shook his head. “There will always be fresh enemies, fresh threats to our way of life. We must be vigilant against them. Indeed, peace would be bad for us. Peace breeds complacency and weakness. It is the phase where a nation grows no stronger, and prepares to slide into its dotage.”
They were well-rehearsed arguments, convincing to young men, spouted by the old as justifications for the battles of their youth. A whim struck the Master of Crows. Ordinarily, he did not act on whims, but in this quiet moment, he could see no harm in it.
“Clancel, what would you do if I told you that everything I have just said was an utter lie?” he demanded.
“My lord?” the young officer asked, in that tone men had when they didn’t want to answer.
“You heard what I said,” the Master of Crows replied. “Everything I have just told you is a lie. It is a move in a game, designed to motivate you to renewed efforts.”
To his credit, Clancel did his best. “Then I would have to ask what this game is, my lord, and what its purpose can be if it is not victory.”
The Master of Crows considered it for a moment, and then nodded. “The game is one that a man like you could never understand. That is not an insult, I do not pick stupid men for my officers, but this is too far from any normal man’s experience. People talk of chess, but what are three dozen pieces compared to those a real commander juggles?”
“The game is war?” Clancel asked, but then shook his head. “No, my lord, I could understand war. If you are talking of something more…”
He almost seemed to grasp it. As the Master of Crows had said, he did not make stupid men officers. The truth was that understanding the full scope of this game required more than intelligence. It required the skill to see the possibilities in small actions, the understanding of the way the world could turn and be turned. In a way, the destruction of the woman of the fountain made the world a poorer place for that. She had been one person who could truly appreciate the game’s scope.
Still, the Master of Crows decided to try. “The game is not war, not even power, but life and its control. All of it. Every moment is a struggle. There is pain and death throughout this world, and the only strength that matters is that needed to go on. The wars will not end, because they feed my crows and make me stronger. You will die, Clancel, eventually. All of you here in this room will, and I will not. And that is the whole of it.”
The men there stared at him as if he were mad, so he laughed then, making the whole thing into some grand joke. He laughed, and the men there laughed with him, because they did not wish to believe it, because the truth could no more be stared at than the sun.
“Forgive me, Clancel,” he said, “I am in a mood to jest with you today. The wars are harsh, but they are necessary, and sometimes men must remember to laugh, or they will go mad with it.”
For a moment, the junior officer stared at him with a thoughtful look. For the briefest moment, the Master of Crows thought that he would have the strength of will to see through it, to hold to the burning flame of it all, but no, he nodded.
“Thank you, my lord.”
The Master of Crows nodded to the table. “You should shift that piece the width of a nail to the north. The troops there have moved.”
He left the officer to do it, settling back into his chair and letting his attention return to his crows. The ones flying above Sophia’s fleet circled, unable to get too close because the men of Ishjemme knew to shoot at them when they did. He didn’t need to get close, though, to see the ships cutting through the water, sending up spray as they headed for Ashton.
How long had it taken to get to this point? How many pieces had he had to move into place to bring this about? His last invasion had been glorious, but the truth was that it had been little more than an overture, an opening act. It had been a necessary move to set the next phase in motion, and if the Master of Crows had calculated that correctly…
“Clancel,” he said. “I have messages. Bring paper.”
He waited for it, and then started to write orders in a neat, precise hand. Landing points, timings, expected outcomes. The orders would shift as his crows told him more of events, but by this point, the general course of things was flowing as surely as a river.
“Take them to the commanders,” he said. “Tell them to begin.”
His crows showed him other things beside the mass of ships. They showed him an empty cell in the basement of a townhouse. They showed him the spot where an ancient fountain was crumbling in
to dust. They showed him the space where the angry leaders of Stonehome were even now gathering a small group of chasers to bring back those who had left without asking. To another man, those might have looked like minor things. Even after he had explained the game to Clancel, he was sure that the officer would not understand what they meant.
They meant a battle that would eclipse those that had gone before. They meant a tipping point, a moment that would no doubt be written about again and again in the years to come, looking for its causes. The Master of Crows wondered if any of them would understand his role in the war and the violence that would come.
Probably not, but the truth was that it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the battle was coming, in death after death with no would-be protector there to shield the island kingdom from him now. The Master of Crows would feast on the battle to come, and in the aftermath, he would sweep through the space it left.
It would be the greatest meal that the crows had ever had. The carnage would be spectacular, the energy produced incalculable. Perhaps, just perhaps, it would even prove to be enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
The townhouse had a long stretch of garden to the rear, and Angelica toured it, taking in the scents of the flowers there, admiring the small pond set to the rear with its lilies and its dragonflies.
A servant approached with a goblet of wine set on a silver tray. The servant was a woman a few years older than Angelica, innocuous enough looking with her medium-brown hair and slight frame, plain dark dress, and refusal to look up from the ground as she walked. She was so diffident that Angelica could barely see anything of her features. The goblet was a delicate copper thing, set with a design around it of green thorns.
“Do all assassins announce their presence so readily?” Angelica asked, very carefully tipping out the contents of the goblet onto the grass.
The so-called servant’s demeanor shifted imperceptibly then, as she looked Angelica squarely in the eye. Something harder crept in beneath the rest of her expression, changing what had seemed like just a foolish servant into something that looked more like a snake getting ready to strike.
“Only when we are sent for. The first task is done. You requested my presence?”
Requested was the wrong word for it. Angelica had demanded it, required it, commanded it. Yet, when there was a murderer of this caliber standing in front of her, it didn’t pay to be picky about these things.
“You are not what I expected,” Angelica said. “What do I call you?”
The woman shrugged. “Call me Rose. And you of all people should know that being anything but what people expect can be useful, my lady.”
There was something about her expression then that said she saw through all the carefully crafted outer layers of Angelica’s façade, to what lay beneath. It was disconcerting, especially since this was the first time she’d met the assassin face to face like this. There was always the thin thread of fear that worried Angelica that she might not leave this meeting alive.
“You have a task for me,” Rose said.
“I had a task for you,” Angelica said.
“Two targets, in a guarded castle, in a place I do not know,” the assassin replied. “And you sent another to do the job: an amateur whose bumbling only made things harder. These things take time, my lady. Especially when you were the one to interrupt me for another matter.”
Angelica had to admit that she had handled that part well.
“You’re right,” she said. “I have no quarrel with you, Rose.”
The assassin shrugged. “I have no quarrel with anyone. It’s a foolish motive for killing. There’s no profit in it.”
“And for enough gold you would kill anyone?” Angelica asked.
The other woman looked at her as if it were foolish even to ask the question. “The gold is proportionate to the difficulties involved, of course. As I said, the matter of the sisters is a particularly tricky one.”
Angelica suspected that she was just trying to push her price up a little further, but she let that go. When it came to getting rid of Sophia, the price didn’t matter.
“Did you just call me here to talk to me?” Rose asked. “That would be a dangerous game, wanting to know me by sight, wasting my time, but there have been those who played it.”
“I take it they are mostly dead?” Angelica asked.
“Mostly,” the assassin agreed with a nod. “Although I’ll admit that you interest me enough to make an exception, my lady.”
Angelica wasn’t sure if the interest of an assassin was exactly something to crave, but it seemed to be intended as a compliment, and in one way at least, Angelica supposed that she could see similarities with this woman: they were both willing to reach out and take what they wanted, for one thing, and neither of them was afraid to kill.
“Do you want me to return to my work with the sisters?” she asked.
Angelica considered for a moment, then shook her head. “Not yet. I have a matter that might fall more easily within your remit.”
If the assassin was angered by that small insult, she showed no sign of it. “I was able to get in here without being observed,” she said. “I performed the task you set. I could have killed you easily if I had wished to do so. What is this task of yours, my lady?”
“I would like Rupert killed.” There was a risk in just saying the words, because Rupert had spies of his own, people who gave him information out of fear, or greed, or loyalty to the crown he would never be able to live up to.
The assassin was silent for several seconds. “I see,” she said at last. “You do not set simple tasks. First the sisters and now this?”
“First this,” Angelica corrected her. “But the sisters too.”
“Why do you want Prince Rupert dead?” Rose asked. Her hand snaked out, catching Angelica’s arm, making her wince as she touched some of the bruises Angelica had so carefully covered over with powder. “Ah, I see.”
“You see less than you think,” Angelica snapped. “I’m not some wife tired of her husband’s whoring and drunkenness.”
“You’re not a wife at all, just yet,” the assassin pointed out.
If it had been someone else, Angelica might have slapped them for that.
“Have a care,” she said.
“Oh, I’m always careful,” Rose replied. “Which is why I’ll tell you now that it will not be easy.”
Anger flashed in Angelica then. “Is anything easy for you?” she demanded. “The sisters weren’t easy. Rupert isn’t easy. What are you waiting for? Me to ask you to slay a babe in arms?”
“Had I wished to kill you here, that would have been easy,” Rose said. “I would not have poisoned the wine. I would have put poison on the stem of the cup, for the moment when you poured it away.”
Angelica resisted the urge to wipe her hand frantically on her dress. If there had been such a poison, she would already be dead.
“Will you do this thing or not?” Angelica asked.
“Oh, I’ll do it,” Rose assured her.
“Good. Although not immediately. Not until Rupert and I are married where everyone can see us. Not until there can be no doubt.”
Rose nodded. “I understand. Of course, I should probably warn you that a crown prince dropping dead on his wedding night will probably raise suspicions, and it is the kind of situation where no expense will be spared in hunting down the killer.”
“That is why you have just helped to provide one,” Angelica said.
“Ah,” the assassin replied. “I see.” She nodded. “Everything will be as you wish. And my payment…”
“Will be more than generous,” Angelica assured her. It was one circumstance where she wouldn’t even betray her employee. It was better not to upset assassins, as a rule. Rose turned to go.
Angelica again resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her dress, but only just. She watched the assassin go instead, thinking about how things were unfolding. The situation was becoming complex; sh
e hoped that her most recent move would help her to simplify it.
“It would be better if Sophia were dead,” Angelica whispered to herself, but that would come soon enough. It would remove the threat she posed, both by who she was and what she meant to Sebastian. A knife in the middle of war was not so hard to arrange. Perhaps she would not even need to pay the assassin for it.
After that, the main challenge to the throne would be removed. Rupert would ascend, if he did all that Angelica had primed him to do. He would marry her, crown her as his queen…
And if she were the empty-headed noble girl she pretended to be, that might be enough for Angelica, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t even close to enough.
“I’m done trusting men to give me power,” she said to the water of the pond. She’d heard stories of witches who could see the future using nothing more than the flat surface of such a pool. Angelica needed no magic, though, just the will to make the future that she wanted for herself.
She trailed her fingers through the water, thinking through what it had taken to get to this point. Sebastian had been her first move in the game. Marrying him was meant to secure her ties to the throne and put her in a position where she could have pushed aside Rupert for the throne by simply showing the world what he was. Sebastian had proved just how unreliable he was, though. He didn’t have it in him to do what was needed, and his feelings for Sophia…
“She will die,” Angelica reassured herself. “She will.”
Now there was Rupert, who had the ambition, but far too many dangerous edges to his personality. Angelica had briefly entertained the idea that they might live as king and queen, but the truth was that he was too dangerously unpredictable for that. So he was going to die, too.
It would leave Angelica as queen over all of it.
Of course, Rose had been right: a situation benefiting her so clearly would only arouse suspicion. That was why she had chosen to have the assassin release Sebastian, rather than keeping him for her plaything. That part would come in time, when he was reviled by the people for “murdering” the king, and safely locked away in a tower somewhere.
