The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

  Prostitution, too, was kept behind closed doors. The Cut was thick with brothels, but there were no girls on display. Every other doorway seemed to boast a pair of toughs, escorting a steady stream of customers inside. Marcus could feel many eyes on him, with more purpose than the casual curiosity of the Newtown residents. Watchmen on the roofs and in the alleys marked their progress. He recalled that Armsmen hadn’t patrolled here in squads of less than a dozen, and found himself wishing he’d brought more guards.

  “You don’t see any Patriot Guard here,” Raesinia said. “Not in Newtown, either.”

  “What would they do in Newtown?”

  “Keep the peace?”

  “I think people are taking that into their own hands,” Marcus said grimly. “And there’s never been much peace here to begin with.”

  Raesinia looked around and frowned. At her direction, they turned off the River Road and into the labyrinth that was Oldtown’s inner lanes. Fortunately, their destination was visible from some distance away, towering among the ancient, shingle-roofed buildings like a great stone ship. It was an old Sworn Church, complete with a bronze double circle atop its spire, though the windows—which had presumably once borne the mosaics of colored glass so beloved of the Elysians—were now boarded over.

  The front doors, ancient, scarred things that looked as though they’d been through a siege, were firmly closed. Iron letters, weeping long stains of rust, proclaimed this to be the Third Church of the Savior Karis’ Mercy. Raesinia pulled back the big knocker, which squealed in protest, and slammed it against the door as though she were trying to break it down.

  “Mrs. Felda is a bit deaf,” she said to Marcus when he winced at the sound.

  “Who’s Mrs. Felda?” Marcus’ ground-in reticence in the presence of his monarch was warring with his desire to understand what the hell was going on.

  “The priest’s wife. She runs this place.”

  “And she knows something about gunpowder?”

  Raesinia laughed. “Not that I know of. But I have to admit I’ve never asked.”

  “Then why—”

  The door opened with a drawn-out squeal of desperate hinges, but only wide enough to reveal a frowning face. It was a young man, with a laughably wispy attempt at a mustache on his upper lip, but he was at least half a head taller than Marcus and much broader across the shoulders.

  “What?” he said. Then, as he took in his visitors, his big face flickered quickly through expressions. Delight at the sight of Raesinia, replaced immediately by guarded caution at seeing Marcus and the two armed Mierantai. “Raes? Who’s this?”

  “A friend,” Raesinia said. “We’re here to see Cora.”

  “I suppose that’s all right, then,” the young man said, with the air of someone working out a complicated intellectual puzzle. “Come in.” He opened the door a bit farther, then turned over his shoulder and bellowed, “Mrs. Felda! Raes is here!”

  “I thought,” Marcus said as they slipped inside, “we were keeping a low profile.”

  Raesinia shrugged, but Marcus thought she was fighting a grin.

  Like most of Vordan’s old Sworn Churches, this one had been remodeled considerably. In this case, most of the interior walls had been torn down and the grand altar and rows of pews replaced with a more modest worship space at the far end, beside a grand hearth and a huge table. The rest of the room was full of mismatched bedrolls, with hanging curtains creating smaller semiprivate spaces.

  People were everywhere, sleeping on every available inch of floor space, standing around the table eating, or simply slumped against the walls. A flock of old women tended several huge pots suspended above the fire, from which they dispensed bowls of brown stuff that reminded Marcus of the “army soup” of his Khandarai days.

  Raesinia was staring around, wide-eyed. Marcus wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but this clearly wasn’t it. Before he could ask, a large, heavyset woman bustled over to them, holding up her long black skirt to keep it from dragging on the filthy stone floor.

  “Hello, Raes!” she said, her voice loud enough to cut through the babble of many voices.

  “Hello, Mrs. Felda,” Raesinia said.

  “I heard you were dead,” Mrs. Felda said.

  “I’m not.”

  “Very good!” With that subject disposed of, Mrs. Felda looked up at Marcus. “Who’s this?”

  “His name’s Marcus,” Raesinia said. “He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Fair enough,” Mrs. Felda said. “And these two lads?”

  “Protection,” Marcus said, feeling as though he ought to hold up his end of the conversation a bit. “The streets aren’t safe.”

  “The good Lord knows it,” Mrs. Felda said. “Cora’s over at the back. Look for the stacks of books. Help yourself to a bowl if you’re hungry.”

  She moved off without waiting for an answer, attracted by someone shouting her name on the other side of the room.

  “She runs some kind of charity?” Marcus said.

  “More or less.” Raesinia scanned the room, her mouth set in a frown. “Come on.”

  “Stay here,” Marcus told the two guards, and hurried to keep up with Raesinia. They had to step carefully, since every flat surface was occupied, and Marcus had to stop himself from apologizing for nearly treading on people. Eventually, they made it to the vicinity of the big table, and he saw that in the corner beyond it there was what he could only think of as a small fortress made of books. Two haphazard stacks made the walls, with a narrow gap between them. A lantern glowed inside, and by its light Marcus could see a pale teenager bent over a stack of papers.

  “Cora?” Raesinia said when they were close enough that the noise from the hall wouldn’t drown her out. “It’s me.”

  The girl, Cora, looked up. Her round, freckled face showed signs of many nights without enough sleep, with dark crescents under her eyes that made her look as though she’d been in a boxing match. When she saw Raesinia, though, she lit up, and shot to her feet as if she’d been mounted on a spring.

  “Raes!” She ran forward, kicking several books out of her way, and wrapped Raesinia in a hug. Raesinia seemed to take this act of lesse majeste in stride, and ran her fingers affectionately through the girl’s short, spiky hair.

  “Cora,” Raesinia said. “This is Marcus.”

  Cora looked up and blinked. “You’re Captain d’Ivoire.”

  Marcus frowned. “Have we met?”

  “Not exactly. I was in the Vendre,” Cora said matter-of-factly. “The night of the siege. The guards were beating a woman because she didn’t want to . . . service them. You came and stopped them, then sent the Concordat men away and put your own in their place.”

  “Oh.” Sometimes that awful night blurred together in Marcus’ memory into the roar of the crowd and pools of blood on the stone steps of the ancient fortress. “I’m sorry we had to keep you there.”

  “It’s not your fault. It was Orlanko who had us arrested. And you probably saved a lot of us from having a . . . a bad night.” Cora dipped her head. “Thank you.”

  Marcus returned the nod, feeling himself blush a little.

  “Cora,” Raesinia broke in, keeping her voice low. “What is going on here?”

  Cora suddenly looked guilty. “Just the usual. Mrs. Felda—”

  “Don’t give me that. You’ve got a hall full of Borels and Murnskai!”

  Marcus, surprised, looked around the room again. Borelgai men were usually easy to spot by their full black beards and side whiskers, but there were only a few men in the room. On the street, Marcus might have identified Borelgai women by the fur-collared cloaks they wore, but here everyone was dressed in castoffs and rags. Even so, he did see a lot of pale, blond northerners, and the babble of voices, now that he was paying attention, had a distinctly polyglot air. There were a fair number of Vordanai
, many of them maimed or otherwise unhealthy, but most of the room was full of women and children. They huddled together in small, nervous groups, mothers keeping their sons and daughters close.

  “They didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Cora said.

  “Where did they come from?” Marcus said. “I wouldn’t have thought there were many Borels left in the city.” What the mobs had begun, the Patriot Guard had finished. Even Vordanai with Borelgai ancestry had to fend off suspicion.

  “That’s the problem,” Cora said. “After the revolution, all the Borel merchants and traders who could got out of town. The Murnskai did the same once the war started. But they left in a hurry, and they didn’t all bother to make arrangements for the staff they’d brought with them.”

  “But how did you get involved?” Raesinia said.

  Cora blushed. “A lot of them were on my payroll. You’d be amazed what you can do in the market with a little belowstairs gossip. A few of them came to me for help, and then . . . word spread, I guess.” She stared up at Raesinia, cheeks burning but eyes defiant. “Mrs. Felda said it was all right. She told me I ought to help them.”

  “Cora . . .” Raesinia hugged the girl again, then pulled away and looked her firmly in the eye. “I know you want to help people, but this is dangerous. If the Patriot Guard find out, you know what they’ll say. A whole nest of Borelgai and Murnskai?”

  “That’s why I couldn’t turn them away!” Cora lowered her voice. “You haven’t listened to them, Raes. It’s not just the Guard. If you’re Borel and you’re caught on the streets, anyone who wants can just drag you away, and nobody will lift a finger to stop them now that the Armsmen are gone.”

  Hell. Marcus frowned. “It’s really that bad?”

  Cora nodded.

  “You still can’t keep them all here,” Raesinia said. “Someone is going to notice. You and Mrs. Felda could get spiked for harboring enemies of the state.”

  “I had some ideas,” Cora said. “We might be able to get them out of the city—”

  “And then what?”

  “I haven’t gotten that far,” Cora said. “What do you want me to do? Tell them to clear out?”

  “I . . .” Raesinia looked around the room, then shook her head. “No, of course not. You were right. But I don’t know what we’re going to do now.”

  Marcus cleared his throat. “I might be able to offer some assistance.”

  The two young women looked up at him in surprise, as if they’d forgotten he was there.

  “Supply trains leave for the Army of the East every couple of days,” he said. “I may be able to arrange to start sending people with them.”

  Cora frowned. “Would the soldiers stay quiet about it?”

  “They will if Janus orders them to. I’ll speak to him about it. It may take a while to move everybody, though.”

  “I think we’ve got time,” Cora said. “Everyone knows Mrs. Felda keeps a charity here, so nobody asks questions when we have food brought in. And the Patriot Guard hardly ever come into Oldtown anyway.”

  Raesinia nodded. “It could work. Thank you, Marcus. And I’m sorry I blew up at you, Cora.”

  “It’s all right.” Cora sighed and ran her hands through her hair, further mussing it. “I’ve been a bit frantic myself. You have no idea what the war is doing to the markets.”

  The markets? Marcus shot Raesinia an inquisitive look.

  “Cora is a genius at anything involving money or commerce,” Raesinia explained.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Cora said, blushing furiously. “I just keep my eyes open.”

  Looking down at the frazzled teenager, Marcus had a hard time believing it. “So she’s the one you wanted to talk to?”

  “Right,” Raesinia said. “I’d nearly forgotten about that. Cora, we need your help with something. How many major powder mills are there within easy overland shipment range of Vordan City?”

  “Five,” Cora said immediately. “The di Bartolo in the south, the Neffoy east of the Thieves Island, the—”

  “How many of them can manufacture flash powder?” Raesinia said.

  Cora blinked. “Flash powder?”

  “It’s a sort of very fine gunpowder,” Marcus explained. “It takes special equipment to make.”

  “There must not be much trade in it,” Cora said. “I don’t recall off the top of my head. Hold on.”

  She turned and dove into one of the piles of books, delicately shifting volumes in a way that kept the whole structure barely standing while she excavated the one she wanted. All of the books were thick, leather-bound tomes, marked only with numerical codes that meant nothing to Marcus, though Cora apparently knew them intimately. She had one particular book open in a matter of moments, and flipped rapidly back and forth through the pages.

  “Ah,” she said. “Got it. Flash powder. Local sales only, no long-range trade. That’s a bit odd.”

  “It doesn’t travel well, I’m told,” Marcus said.

  Cora nodded absently, her finger tracing a line in the book. “Last year . . . it looks like there are a couple of bespoke places producing it a pound or so at a time . . .”

  “It would have to be more than that,” Raesinia said.

  “Dozens of pounds at the least,” Marcus agreed. “Maybe hundreds.”

  “Then it has to be the Halverson Mill. They’re on the north bank, up the river a way. As far as I can tell from this, they’re the only ones who make it in bulk.”

  “Does it say how much they’ve made recently? Or who buys it?”

  Cora shook her head. “These are compilations of last year’s stock books. There’s nothing that detailed.”

  “It’s still something,” Marcus said. “We can find the owner and ask him.”

  “I’m not sure that would be a wise idea,” Raesinia said. “If he’s involved, then he’ll just deny everything, and then they’ll know we’re looking for them.”

  “Ah,” Marcus said.

  For a moment he’d been thinking as though he were still Captain of Armsmen, or at least the second in command of the First Colonials, with a regiment of musketeers at his back. Here and now, he had no official authority to investigate whatsoever, and all he had to back him was a single squad of riflemen. If Maurisk really was involved in the bombing, then he had thousands of Patriot Guard he could call on against anyone he could plausibly accuse of being a traitor. If Raesinia is serious about this, we’re going to need more men. He resolved to write to the Preacher when he got back to Twin Turrets and see if he could scrounge up a few more reliable bodies.

  “This is about the bomb at Farus’ Triumph, isn’t it?” Cora said, breaking in on his thoughts like a bucket of cold water. “The day they unveiled the Spike. They said you were nearly killed.”

  “Wait,” Marcus said. “She knows you’re the queen?”

  Raesinia nodded. “My old . . . identity is supposed to have died at the Vendre. There’s only a couple of people who know the truth. Cora, Sothe . . .” She hesitated. “And Maurisk.”

  “Excuse us a moment.” Marcus grabbed Raesinia’s shoulder and pulled her away from Cora, his voice a hiss. “You did not tell me about Maurisk.”

  “It didn’t seem relevant,” Raesinia said, with a note in her voice that said she’d known exactly what she was doing.

  “Not relevant? That the top suspect in your attempted assassination knows you have a tendency to wander around incognito and will recognize your former identity? You might as well paint a target on yourself!”

  “Only if he knows I’m here!”

  Marcus scowled. “That won’t take long, if you keep visiting old friends.”

  “Cora’s the only old friend I have left,” Raesinia said, a bit of pain in her voice. She took hold of Marcus’ hand and pushed it aside irritably. “Anyway, are you supposed to be manhandling your monar
ch?”

  Marcus looked down at his hand as though it had caught fire, and swallowed hard. “Sorry.”

  Raesinia waved his apology away. “I hardly think Mrs. Felda or the people here will tell the Patriot Guard we’ve been by. And we need Cora’s help.”

  “If there’s anything else I ought to know,” Marcus grated, “please bring it to my attention.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Raesinia walked back to Cora. “Sorry. Yes, it’s about the bombing. I wasn’t nearly killed, though. I wasn’t even there. But some other people were.”

  “You’re trying to figure out who did it?” Cora said.

  Raesinia nodded.

  “What we’d really like to know,” Marcus said, “is who bought the flash powder from Halverson, and what happened to it after that.”

  “If they’re in on the plot, they’re not likely to have kept records,” Raesinia said.

  “They’ll have to write something down,” Cora said. “Powder production is tightly monitored by the army. You couldn’t just take hundreds of pounds away from a mill without fudging the books somewhere. The mill’s capacity is a constant. The raw materials are recorded. From there it’d just be a matter of math to figure it out.”

  Raesinia and Marcus looked at each other.

  A genius, eh? “If we could get you those records,” he said slowly, “you could tell us where the powder went?”

  “Probably,” Cora said.

  “Then we might be able to track down where they assembled the bomb,” Marcus said. “That would be a start.”

  “Where would the records be kept?” Raesinia said.

  “At the Exchange Central Office. There’s a military post there to handle war supplies.”

  A grin spread across Raesinia’s face. Marcus looked from her to Cora, and stifled a groan.

  Chapter Six

  WINTER

  The game known as “handball” had ancient origins, though nobody was quite certain how ancient. It went back at least as far as the reign of Farus the Conqueror, who was supposed to have won the allegiance of one recalcitrant noble by his prodigious feats on the field. According to Cyte, there was some evidence it was much older, being descended from the ceremonial contests of the Mithradacii Children of the Sun thousands of years before the birth of Karis.