The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

  There were two guards beside the door, day and night. Both were now dead, sprawled in the gravel. Knife wounds, fast and precise. One guard had fumbled a pistol out of his belt, and it lay nearby.

  That, Sothe thought, makes no sense. There were far easier ways to gain access to the house itself. Clover-by-Ost was too large to be very secure, and a little climbing would have given the intruder a way in without the chanciness of a fight. So he’s either a lunatic, or . . .

  She stepped over the bodies, pushed open the door, and headed through the maze of servants’ corridors for the stairs. A few turns on, she encountered the next body, a teenage maid with a single stab wound on the side of her head, just forward of the ear. A silver tea service lay where she’d dropped it, undisturbed.

  A lunatic who knows what he’s doing. The young woman hadn’t even had a chance to scream. Sothe ghosted past the corpse, up the servants’ stairs to the third floor. Another pair of bodies, another maid and a groom, lay atop each other where they’d fallen in a tangle of limbs. The young man’s face showed nothing but blank surprise.

  The “queen’s” chambers were on the fourth floor. Whoever the intruder was, he’d followed the direct route, making no attempt at stealth, and had simply silenced everyone who happened across his path. The door to the royal suite was kept locked, and Sothe was unsurprised to find the latch simply kicked out of the doorframe. Not subtle. But efficient, curiously efficient . . .

  She crept up to the door, glad she’d been out on her rounds—and thus armed and dressed for stealth—rather than dressed up in her Head of Royal Household guise. Not a floorboard squeaked underfoot, and the deep carpet absorbed her cautious steps without a whisper. She pressed herself against the side of the door and listened.

  Footsteps. The intruder was one room beyond, across the sitting room and in the queen’s bedchamber. The tone of his steps changed as he entered the washroom, boots clicking on marble, then changed back. Searching.

  That the man had to die was now apparent. Sothe would dearly have loved to capture him and find out where he’d come from, but his evident skill was such that she couldn’t risk it. She had a half dozen throwing knives tucked into her well-fitted blacks, along with two longer fighting knives in greased sheaths at the small of her back. She drew one of the smaller blades, a carefully balanced steel needle only a little bigger than her palm. The footsteps were coming closer—the intruder was returning to the bedroom door. She heard the door creak, ever so slightly, as he pulled it open—

  Without looking, she wound up and whipped the knife around the edge of the door. She aimed it squarely at where the center of an ordinary man’s chest would be—without looking, it was too risky trying for a fancy shot. It wouldn’t be fatal, but this was in the nature of opening remarks, rather than final arguments, and slowing him down would be helpful.

  There was a curious absence of sound, not the thump of blade in flesh but not the wooden thok of a miss. Maybe he ducked and I hit the bed. She was already making her next move, pushing herself out and spinning across the doorway to the other side. This was reasonably safe; even if he was waiting for her to appear, she’d be moving too fast for him to throw or shoot, and she’d have a quick glimpse of him and the room beyond.

  As she cleared the doorframe, she saw a figure in dark clothes, across the sitting room in the doorway to the bedroom, right where she’d expected him. He wore a linen mask over his face, and it glittered darkly, as though covered in shards of black glass. Of more concern to Sothe was his posture, right arm forward, as though just finishing a throw of his own.

  Something punched her hard in the midriff, throwing off her momentum. She grabbed the doorframe and pulled herself sideways, out of view, but at the last moment she could see the intruder’s left hand was still raised in front of his chest. Steel gleamed between his fingers—what looked very much like her knife, as though he’d picked it out of the air. Which is impossible.

  She thumped against the wall, awkwardly, and flattened next to an ornamental table. One hand went to her side, where she found the bare-metal hilt of a throwing knife much like her own, the blade buried deep in her flesh.

  Pain was just starting to bloom, and she fought it down with all the ruthlessness of two decades’ practice. Her heart wanted to pound, and her breathing to deepen. She denied these requests from her body, keeping her mind clear. The situation is not what was expected. Reassess.

  First step, damage control. She pulled the knife free, took a deep breath, and evaluated the resulting agony dispassionately. Tolerable. Judging by the wound depth and location, it wouldn’t be seriously hampering, and blood loss would remain within acceptable levels.

  Second step, threat assessment. That throw was impossible. The flight time of a flung blade was an appreciable fraction of the time it had taken her to spin across the doorway. That meant her opponent had made his move before she had, timing the throw so perfectly it had intercepted her in midmovement. Even if she had known someone was going to leap across a doorway, and had been waiting for precisely that moment, she didn’t think she could have done that. Which means that nobody can.

  And my knife— He’d caught it. There had always been fanciful stories about men so fast they could catch a blade thrown at their face, but experiments and experience had taught Sothe that no one was that fast, except by luck. He doesn’t seem like the lucky type.

  The black mask rang alarm bells, too. Not conclusive, of course—anyone could wear a mask; that was the point of a mask—but how many people knew about this particular style?

  Tentative conclusion: sorcery. The man across the way was one of the Penitent Damned, a supernatural assassin.

  Course of action: unclear. It was possible that she would be able to defeat him, in spite of his evident advantages. Sothe had beaten many men over the years (and a handful of women), some of whom thought they’d had her in a bad spot. She’d been wounded, starved, tortured, outmuscled, and outgunned. In the end, she’d always come out on top.

  Her hands itched to draw the knives at her back, burst through the doorway, and see if the intruder’s skill at throwing knives extended to hand-to-hand combat. But she took a long breath, feeling blood drooling down her skin, and waited.

  No. Objectives first. Mission first. Her mission was to make sure the illusion of Raesinia’s presence here was maintained. The only chance of success was to kill this man, and even then the secret might get out in the confusion that followed the slaughter. Secondary objective. If secrecy could not be maintained, she had to warn Raesinia the ruse had come apart. That would be impossible if the intruder killed her.

  The right course was apparent. Retreat. It hurt her pride, but her pride was not important. Mission first.

  That decided, how to execute? The stairs, behind her, were in full view of the doorway. There was another set, but that would involve going through the sitting room, and the intruder would probably be able to run her down. Window, then. The nearest one of those was also in the sitting room, but much closer.

  Perhaps a second had passed.

  She grabbed the ornamental table by its spindly base, tipping china ornaments to shatter on the floor. Raising it in front of her like a shield, she bulled through the doorway. One knife thocked into the surface of the table, and Sothe ducked her head when she saw the man in black winding up for another throw. A moment later, the blade whistled an inch over her head.

  She threw the table, a clumsy effort, but enough that he had to step back into the bedroom for a moment. That bought her a moment to roll sideways, coming up with a knife in hand, whipping it at where he would have to be in order to attack. He twisted, letting the blade rip past his cheek by a hair’s breadth, and snatched another blade from a sheath at his side.

  Sothe bounced up and jumped, headfirst, at the window. It was four-paned, with a wooden crossbeam, but her momentum was enough to drive her through it in a splinte
ring crash. Shards of glass surrounded her for a moment, and she felt cuts open on her cheek and forehead. Then she was falling.

  The third-floor roof sloped out several feet beneath the four-floor windows, and Sothe hit it and rolled across the wooden shingles. The edge was just ahead—from there, it was an easy twenty-foot drop into an ornamental shrubbery, and then a quick run to the stables. She popped to her feet, jumped—

  The next knife intercepted her in midair. No, no, no. Nobody is that precise. Not possible. It was a perfect shot, a kill shot, just under her left breast and in between the ribs to find the heart. Sothe caught the hedge at an awkward angle, tumbled, and sprawled spread-eagled in the dust of the yard.

  She felt no pain, though the cuts on her side and face were a spreading agony now. But I don’t feel dead. Her heart, leash slipped now, pounded hard and strong in her chest.

  Cautiously she brought one hand up and found no blade embedded in her ribs. She brushed herself where she’d felt the impact, and nicked her finger on a shard of glass. When she sat up, more pieces cascaded off her.

  Part of the window must have lodged in my clothes. Right there, over her heart, right at the spot where—

  Lucky. For a moment, it felt as though she didn’t dare breathe, or the world would collapse on top of her.

  Then she was in control again, up and moving, more glass falling away from her. There were horses in the stables, and arrangements with inns all along the road to Vordan City. This was not a completely unexpected result, though she’d been thinking more in terms of a small army than a lone intruder.

  Either way, the game is up. Raesinia has to be warned.

  * * *

  THE DIRECTORY FOR THE NATIONAL DEFENSE

  The President of the Directory for the National Defense, who was also in his person the Minister of War, looked across his desk at General de Ferre and saw a dead man looking back at him. De Ferre had always carried a few extra pounds, but his recent ordeal seemed to have left him half-melted, his face loose and jowly and his stomach sagging. His uniform, in contrast, was polished and immaculate.

  Maurisk picked up the glass from his desk and tossed back the bit of wine that remained. Vordan might have run out of brandy, but wine it had in plenty, and with the blockade strangling the export trade even the finest vintages were being dumped on the market for whatever they would bring. This had come from a particularly dusty and distinguished-looking bottle, but it might as well have been paint thinner to Maurisk’s numbed palate. He drank it anyway.

  “He let you go,” Maurisk said after he set the glass down.

  “Yes, sir,” de Ferre said.

  “Why?”

  “He said . . .” De Ferre paused and took a breath. “He said he wanted to be sure you knew he was coming, sir. Asked me to be certain to tell you everything I’d seen.”

  “Did he?” Maurisk tapped his finger on the desk. Pretty thin. “You are aware, of course, of how it must look from . . . my side of the table? In combination with your complete failure, there is a suggestion of . . . collusion.”

  “I am aware, sir.”

  “Do you have anything to say about it?”

  “Only to assure you that any such suggestion is false, sir. I am the most loyal man in the army. If there is a man who presents any evidence otherwise, I request permission to meet him blade in hand on the field of honor.”

  “I see.” Maurisk’s finger tapped again. De Ferre swallowed. “I will consider the matter. You are dismissed, for now, but make sure to keep yourself . . . available.”

  De Ferre looked surprised, then terrified and relieved in equal measure. He saluted, heels clicking, and left the office as quickly as decorum would allow. Kellerman opened the door for him, and slipped discreetly inside when the general left.

  “Shall I have the papers drawn up for his arrest, sir?”

  A corner of Maurisk’s lip curled in what might once have been a smile.

  “No,” he said, with a sigh. “No, I think not. I suspect we will find a use for him. After all, he’s the one man in the army I can be absolutely certain won’t go over to Vhalnich.” He sat back in his chair, staring at the empty glass. “Tell Zacaros to begin work on our little contingency plan. He’s to have a free hand.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And draft orders to the colonel in command at Orlan. Tell him he is on no account to allow the Army of the East to pass. Burn the boats, burn the bridges, burn the town, I don’t care. Tell him that if Vhalnich leaves the mountains, I will personally see to it that he and every surviving man in his command will wish they’d died on the battlefield.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything else?”

  “No.” The sickly half smile returned to Maurisk’s face. “Yes. Send someone to fetch me the printers and pamphleteers. We must be certain the public is well informed.”

  Chapter Twenty

  RAESINIA

  Janus. A week ago, people had argued over the price of bread, the progress of the war, the stupidity of the Deputies-General, or the difficulty of getting coffee and sugar through the blockade. Now there was only one thing anyone wanted to talk about, though always in whispers or behind closed doors. Janus.

  He was coming, they said, with thirty thousand battle-hardened veterans of the Army of the East, or with a few hundred half-starved men. The Hamveltai army had been scattered to the four winds, or was chasing him over the passes, or marched with him as an ally. He’d recruited an army of women, unnatural creatures twisted by sorcery, who shrugged off musket balls and ate the dead. He himself was a demon, an agent of the Sworn Church, a spy for Hamvelt or Borel or Murnsk.

  But he was coming. Everyone agreed on that.

  The news had filtered into the city gradually, amid a profusion of other rumors about what had happened in front of the walls of Antova. All the papers were echoing the Directory-sanctioned truth—that Janus had turned his coat, like de Brogle, and brought his army over to the side of the Free Cities League. He was marching toward Vordan, they acknowledged, but loyal units of the army were assembling to stop him, and it was only a matter of time before he was captured or at least forced to withdraw.

  The people Raesinia listened to were not so sure. Janus, it was widely agreed, was the best general in the Vordanai army—or any other army, some said—and the prospects of a scratch force confronting his (Hamveltai-aided, possibly sorcerous or female or both) troops seemed grim. If he reached the city, then . . . what?

  Some said they would fight, house to house and street to street if necessary. The Patriot Guard had begun enlistments for Civic Defense militias, rough neighborhood mobs armed with improvised or antiquated weapons. These CDs, immediately dubbed “seedies” by the populace, were charged with keeping the peace throughout most of the city. Northside, Raesinia had heard, things were tense but quiet, with regular militia patrols and the semblance of a normal life. The Island and the Exchange were the domain of the Patriot Guard, who kept a tight hold over all the bridges and landings.

  South of the river, though, the seedies had a different character. A responsibility for keeping the peace was, after all, also a license to break it, and the militias had begun enriching themselves at their constituents’ expense. Food prices rose as seedies imposed impromptu “taxes,” or simply charged protection money to remain in their good graces.

  On the South Bank, there were those who said they looked forward to the day Janus marched his troops into Vordan. It was Janus and the queen who’d saved Vordan once before, and now that the Directory had gone as bad as Orlanko, he was coming back to do it again. He would sweep away the politicians and the traitors, end the war, lift the blockade, make the streets safe again. When he arrived, it was whispered, he would send Maurisk to the Spike, announce his marriage to Queen Raesinia, and take the throne.

  Raesinia was able to take this last rumor in stride. It might come to that, in the end. If
Janus demanded the throne, with an army at his back, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to refuse. Worse, she wasn’t sure if she should. She’d started the revolution to take power away from Orlanko and give it to the people. So many had died—her friends had died—to keep Vordan free of tyranny. And then, as soon as war threatened, the elected representatives of the people had happily handed it all back to someone like Maurisk. Maybe Vordan would be better off with Janus in charge. Whatever his faults, no one had ever accused him of being incompetent.

  There were public executions every day now in Farus’ Triumph, enough to strain even the Spike, and they drew huge, jeering crowds. There was no longer a pretense that the accused were spies for the enemy; now they were simply traitors, heard expressing approval of Janus, criticizing the government, or simply turned in by overzealous or vengeful neighbors.

  She, Marcus, and Feor had returned to Mrs. Felda’s church after their escape from the Penitent Damned, and spent the next few days with their heads down, expecting another attack. Feor had been practically comatose, exhausted and feverish, and Mrs. Felda had taken on the task of nursing her back to health. Marcus, at Raesinia’s prompting, had explained what he knew of the Steel Ghost from his time in Khandar, which didn’t help all that much.

  When it became clear that black-masked giants were not going to break down the doors of the church, it left them with the question of what to do next. They’d been in the midst of an endless, circular argument with far too many unknowns when the news of Janus’ march arrived.

  * * *

  “Marcus isn’t going to like this,” Andy said.

  “Marcus wasn’t the queen of this particular country, last time I checked,” Raesinia said. She and Andy looked at each other, and Andy was clearly stifling a laugh. “Besides, he’s got his hands full. Someone has to think about these people.”

  Mrs. Felda’s church was filling up. Some of the foreigners, mostly Hamveltai, had been sent home with the supply convoys, but lately their places had been taken by Vordanai. People from the Docks or Newtown who’d been forced from their homes by seedie “taxes,” or fled ahead of accusations of treason. It was all Mrs. Felda and her volunteers could do to feed them all and find them beds, and sooner or later word would get out to the Patriot Guard or the seedies about the church. Just having a building full of Borelgai women and children would be enough to send Mrs. Felda, her family, and everyone who worked with them to the Spike.