A Court for Thieves (A Throne for Sisters—Book Two)

by Morgan Rice

  “No landscape is truly flat,” Lord Cranston said. “Even on the salt plains of Morgasa, there are variations in the ground, and a commander makes use of every one. Never ignore an advantage.”

  He started to show her where he would place men in defense and attack, how the small slope might provide marginal cover from arrow fire, and how a section of rabbit holes might be used to slow a charge just enough. Kate paid attention, even though she doubted that she would ever be in a position to command an army.

  At least, she paid attention until she saw Siobhan standing among the nearby tents, simply staring at her. The woman of the forest was in a spot where she wouldn’t attract attention, in spite of the plants that twined through her hair and the strange sense of power she exuded.

  She was watching Kate and smiling with something like satisfaction, or possibly triumph. It was impossible to know when her thoughts were so closed off.

  What are you doing here? Kate sent over to her, but there was no reply. Siobhan stepped back into the tents, and in a second, she was gone from sight.

  Kate wanted to go after her, but how could she do it when Lord Cranston was in the middle of teaching her the details of how to set for a charge? More than that, how could Kate be certain that the witch would even be there when she caught up, rather than disappearing completely?

  The big question was what she wanted. Was she just watching Kate’s training, keeping an eye on her apprentice, or was there more to it than that? Kate doubted that she was doing it simply for the amusement value, although it was impossible to tell for sure with Siobhan. Kate started to try to think of excuses to look for her, perhaps claiming the need to run an errand, or offering to get a drink for Lord Cranston.

  She was still trying to think of an excuse when a messenger ran onto the training field wearing insignia of the royal house. Kate stood hurriedly, although Lord Cranston took longer. Perhaps he cared less about what a messenger thought of him, or perhaps it simply took that long to straighten up, given a lifetime’s worth of old injuries.

  “What is it?” he asked the man, who stood there looking nervous.

  Briefly, Kate found herself wondering if this might be about her. Had the priests gone to the palace to seek restitution? Perhaps the Dowager or the Assembly of Nobles was sending a message for Lord Cranston to hand her over. No, if that happened, she had no doubt that the priests would come themselves to enjoy the moment of her capture.

  “Lord Cranston,” the man said, holding out a letter, “the Dowager requests the services of your company.”

  Lord Cranston nodded to Kate. “Read it, would you?”

  Kate was shocked that he would ask her to do that for him, and it seemed that the messenger was a little surprised too, because he clung on to the sealed letter until Kate pulled it sharply from his hands. The seal was a smaller version of the royal arms, with a portcullis in the shape of the island below a rose. Kate broke it open and read, picking through the spidery handwriting.

  “It says…” She could hardly believe what she was reading, and so she read it again to be sure. “It says that enemy ships have been sighted off the shores of the kingdom, and as the royal forces are unavailable—”

  “Practically nonexistent because the Assembly of Nobles won’t allow them,” Lord Cranston muttered while Kate continued to read.

  “—your company is asked to take part in the defense of the realm. It prevails upon your honor, your commitment to the country, and your longstanding loyalty.”

  “Is that it?” Lord Cranston asked.

  “There’s a bit at the bottom saying that the messenger will answer any questions you have,” Kate said. That made her turn her full attention to the man before them, and it was only as she caught more of his thoughts that she realized he wasn’t just any messenger. The man was one of the more senior servants in the royal household. He’d obviously been sent there for a reason.

  “Very well,” Lord Cranston said. “Kate, what questions do you think we should be asking?”

  Kate frowned at that, as did the messenger.

  “I really don’t think this is the time for some kind of lesson,” the man said.

  “There should always be time for lessons,” Lord Cranston replied. “Kate?”

  Kate tried to think. She didn’t want to embarrass herself, or Lord Cranston. “Um… well, the obvious one is what enemy are we facing? How many? Where are they coming from?”

  The messenger looked across to Lord Cranston, whose fingers stroked the end of his beard.

  “Answer it, please. It will save a lot of time if you just assume that I know what I’m doing.”

  The messenger clearly wasn’t happy about it, but he answered. “Reports state that it’s an expeditionary force of the New Army, probably a couple of ships’ worth at first, and likely to land somewhere between Ashton and Newspur Rocks.”

  “Which explains why they’ve come to us, Kate,” Lord Cranston said. “We’re here, after all, while the few royal forces are off doing… well, whatever it is soldiers do when they’re being paid by the crown.”

  That brought Kate to another question. “I thought the crown couldn’t raise soldiers directly without the Assembly of Nobles’ permission?”

  “Ah, an insightful one,” Lord Cranston said, seeming pleased and steepling his fingers. “Well, young man, are we all to be hanged as traitors afterward, for seeking to build the power of the Dowager against her nobles?”

  The messenger shook his head. “An emergency session of the Assembly’s inner council was called, authorizing it. I have the papers here.”

  He held them out, and they did indeed seem to authorize raising troops.

  “And now for the most important question,” Lord Cranston said. He looked at Kate expectantly until, in the end, she cheated by plucking the answer from his thoughts.

  “Are we getting paid?” she asked.

  The messenger nodded. “I am authorized to offer your company up to ten thousand Royals, payable at the end of the conflict.”

  It was a considerable sum, but it wasn’t the truth. Kate could see that much on the surface of the man’s mind, and although she felt a little uncomfortable diving into the conversation even further, she couldn’t help herself.

  “Fifteen,” she said, “with five payable immediately.”

  “Fifteen? I’m not—”

  “Fifteen or we stay here and find better things to do than risk our lives,” Kate said. “Lord Cranston was just teaching me all about grass, for example.”

  Actually, the man had been told he could go up to seventeen if required, but Kate thought that she should at least give him some chance to say he’d gotten a good deal.

  “Fifteen,” he agreed. “But your company is to mobilize within—”

  “We will be at the most likely landing site within a few hours,” Lord Cranston said, pushing on in the face of the other man’s apparent disbelief. “A good commander shows up early to battle. That way, he gets to pick the ground he actually wants. Tell the Dowager that all is in hand, and that I expect payment promptly.”

  The messenger nodded, half-saluted, seemed to remember himself, and then left.

  “You did well, Kate,” Lord Cranston said. “Another lesson: loyal soldiers risk their lives for the love of their country and the sweethearts left behind, then get paid a pittance. A free company does it for a far more honest reason: for the money.”

  Kate wasn’t sure that she agreed with the sentiment, but she did feel a little proud at having gotten Lord Cranston’s company more coin than had been offered. She wasn’t even sure if Lord Cranston really believed that it was just for the money, though. He’d said himself that the New Army needed to be stopped.

  “Spread the message,” Lord Cranston said. He raised his voice, so that others around the practice field might listen. “Sound trumpets, lads. I want you lined up in marching order in ten minutes! We’re going to war!”

  He might have set a fire in the middle of the camp, given
the speed of everything that happened next. Men ran from their tents, shouting orders and hurrying to grab equipment. Soldiers who’d been practicing broke off from it with determined looks, knowing that the real thing was coming.

  For her part, Kate found herself sent by Lord Cranston to prepare his armor and his weapons, his horse and his charts. She ran to prepare it all, and somewhere in it all she had to find enough time to ready her own blade and prepare for the possibility of what was coming.

  There was no chaos to the way the company moved now. Instead, the various parts of it slid together like some perfectly judged mechanism, spilling soldiers onto the field in their tunics and occasional flashes of steel armor. Kate found herself looking for Will, and saw him helping to wheel one of the great brass cannons into place to chain them to a team of horses. She found herself wondering about Rosalind too. Would she be all right here alone? What would happen to her and those like her if these invaders broke through?

  “Focus, Kate,” Lord Cranston said. “I need you to pay attention. This is not practice now; this is war. You will need to be at your best, for all our sakes. The enemy is coming, and you will need to remember all you have learned.”

  Kate nodded, trying to focus on her orders. Lord Cranston was right: battle was coming, and she would need every scrap of skill she had in order to survive it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  The journey across to the island had been long but essentially peaceful. The one back made Sebastian’s arms burn with the effort of rowing, his stomach knot with the lack of fresh water, and his whole body tense with the terror that enemy ships might come hunting for their small boats at any moment. That was before he even began to consider the pain of the hastily bandaged wound in his side, or the cut on his cheek.

  He didn’t know why no enemies had come for them. Perhaps it was because they assumed that the small boats would be ripped apart by the waves in the course of the crossing. Perhaps it was because their commanders had better things to do than chase a retreating force. That was a worrying thought in itself, because it made Sebastian wonder what those better things might be.

  The only thing he could think of was beating the small boats back to the kingdom.

  The landing craft they rowed were sturdy things for their size, but they certainly weren’t designed for the journey across the Knifewater. Waves washed into their tiny flotilla, so that they had to bail with helmets and the remains of armor that was no more than dead weight otherwise. Partway across, a man washed overboard, and the weight of the breastplate he still wore dragged him down before it was even possible to think about turning to help him. One of the boats capsized as something struck it from underneath, and at least one man was pulled under the water in a spreading cloud of blood before they managed to right it. Sebastian never even saw what the creature was that had done it.

  It was a few dozen miles of water, but right then it felt like an eternity. Sebastian and the others rowed, but the truth was that they were a tiny thing against the sheer scale of the sea around them, barely able to control where they went in the face of the wind and the currents.

  When the familiar pale cliffs of his mother’s kingdom came into view, Sebastian could only count it as a minor miracle. Several of the other men proclaimed it exactly that, shouting their thanks to the Masked Goddess and declaring that they would donate to her temples as soon as they were safe enough to reach them.

  Sebastian knew it wasn’t done yet. It was one thing to spot a coastline, but quite another to find a safe spot to land on it. They still had to row the distance into shore without being dashed on rocks or pulled back out into the strait. He thought he saw buildings dotting one stretch of the shore and pointed.

  “There. Aim for them.”

  It took another hour. Another hour of blistered hands and backbreaking rowing, of the heat of the sun bearing down and the salt water rasping at his skin. With the waves around them rising to their familiar sharp peaks, Sebastian was certain that their boats must capsize in the face of it.

  Somehow, they made it into shore, on a shale landing slope that was dotted with fishing boats and led up to rows of houses. Sebastian all but fell out of the boat, held up by the hands of men who didn’t seem much steadier.

  “You got us back,” Sergeant Varkin said, sounding astonished. “I was sure we were going to die, but you brought us home.” He clasped Sebastian’s hand. “I’ll not forget that, your highness. None of us will.”

  Sure enough, the other men crowded round, at least half of them wanting to shake his hand. Sebastian wasn’t sure that he deserved it. Without his presence, there would have been no ill-conceived scheme to attack the island. As for their escape, it had been as much about the strength of the men as anything he’d done.

  He looked up and suspected that his work might not be done. Soldiers ringed the small landing space, or at least the kind of irregulars who passed for it when there was nothing better. Half of them looked like fishermen pressed into hurried service, with harpoons and bill hooks that still looked wickedly sharp for all that.

  “Who goes?” a man called down.

  “Prince…” Sebastian’s voice was cracked with the effort and the lack of water, but he forced authority into it with an effort. “Prince Sebastian and the royal army. Look at the uniforms if you don’t believe me!”

  He was grateful in that moment that they weren’t one of the free companies; that they actually wore the blue, gray, and gold of the royal house. Combined with their voices, it was enough to make the men above pause, then stand back as Sebastian came forward.

  “Goddess,” one of them said. He was a round man who looked more like a merchant than a soldier. “It is him! I saw him at a trade dinner once. Your highness, forgive us, we didn’t know it was you.”

  Now that they knew who he was, fear gave way to a kind of awe. A couple of men even attempted rough salutes.

  Sebastian waved that away. “You did what I would expect you to do, and what you might need to do again, soon enough.”

  “Is there anything we can do for you and your men?” the merchant soldier asked. “Water, food?”

  Sebastian nodded. “My men will appreciate that,” he said. “What I need, though, is the fastest horse you can find me. My mother needs to hear what happened here.”

  ***

  By the time Sebastian reached Ashton, riding at full tilt, he felt as though he might tumble from his horse in exhaustion. Did he really need to push himself so hard, when the village had sent messages ahead of him with fresh horsemen and carrier birds?

  Probably not, but Sebastian wasn’t going to shirk his duty. If the New Army’s fleet didn’t have the time to hunt down his fleeing boats, what were they doing instead? One possibility was obvious: they were moving ahead with an attack. He had to bring the warning.

  So he thundered through the streets of the city, barely possessing the strength to keep clinging to his horse as he made his way to the walled precinct of the palace. There was a delegation of courtiers and servants waiting for him, and Sebastian guessed that the messages must have gotten through. He should have expected it.

  What he didn’t expect was the applause.

  They clapped and cheered as he rode between them, offering bows and curtseys as he stumbled from his horse with what felt like all the grace of a sack falling from a cart. They chattered around him, offering congratulations, wine, even a garland of flowers better suited to one of the conquering heroes of some ancient land.

  Sebastian realized then that this reception wasn’t some spontaneous outpouring of affection. It was one that had probably been planned almost before he set off for the Strait Islands, there to celebrate his glorious victory over a bunch of farmers. That there was now a real victory to celebrate only made the whole thing seem more hollow.

  “Your highness!” a noble girl exclaimed in what was practically a shriek of delight. “You’ve been wounded!”

  She probably meant that it looked very dashing, but Sebas
tian couldn’t help wondering if she would have been even happier had the musket ball struck a little higher, giving her an excuse to break out her finest black dresses for the mourning to follow.

  “Excuse me, please,” Sebastian said, pushing through them, yet they seemed so reluctant to part that for a moment Sebastian had memories of being hemmed in by enemy troops. The difference was that he wasn’t allowed to cut these ones down.

  “Out of the way, all of you,” a woman’s voice called, and Sebastian was astonished to see Milady d’Angelica pushing her way through the crowd toward him. She looked surprisingly restrained in the way she was dressed today, in a simple and elegant cream dress rather than her usual elaborate confections. She pushed her way through to him, reaching out for his arm without being asked. “Can’t you see that he’s practically falling down?”

  She supported him as they pushed through the crowd, and that was a shock in itself. Sebastian had never conceived of Angelica being kind or supportive in any way, let alone all but shoving aside minor nobles to get him to safety.

  “What have you done to yourself?” she asked, and Sebastian could hear what sounded like genuine concern there. “I know you were going off to prove yourself, but this?”

  Sebastian was only too aware of how he must look, in his disheveled uniform crusted with blood. He guessed that he probably didn’t smell any better, after so long spent rowing across the Knifewater. He certainly couldn’t smell half as good as Angelica did, with the kind of subtle perfume that spoke of flowers and honey, expense and just a hint of more than that.

  “I’m sorry, your highness,” she said. “I know I’m forgetting propriety with all this. It’s just something of a shock to see you like this. I hope you don’t mind me helping?”

  “No, I’m grateful for it,” Sebastian said, as they passed into the palace proper. Still, there were people on every side, applauding him as if he’d presided over a glorious victory rather than a hasty retreat. He sighed. “They’re all acting as if I singlehandedly won all the wars on the continent at once.”