Rider of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  “Do not say it,” Imogen commanded, cutting him off. “You must not think this way.”

  He gave her a wry, bitter look, and turned away. She grabbed his wrist.

  “This is for you,” she said. “If you do not believe it is worth it then there is no point in us believing it.”

  “Imogen, I’m helpless,” he said in a low voice. “Men and women have died, are dying, to keep me safe, and it’s not going to be enough. It just seems ridiculous, that all of this stupid conflict is over one man’s head.”

  “Then what will you do? Go to Diana and say, here I am, cut off my head and stop killing people? This is not about one man’s head. It is about a country and two heads. Diana is bad for Tremontane. You are good for it. We fight to keep the country alive and you are just…I do not know the word. Your head is that of the country and I will die before I let it fall.”

  He looked at her in wonder. “It’s not even your country.”

  That staggered her. Yes, Mother had sent the Kirkellan for just this reason, though she couldn’t have foreseen these circumstances, but she had sent Imogen to be a Kirkellan in Aurilien, an observer and not a participant in Tremontanan matters. How Imogen’s heart had become tangled up in Tremontanan affairs was…. She looked at Jeffrey’s haggard, unshaven face. So it wasn’t such a mystery after all. “Then I will fight because I like your head where it is,” she said lightly.

  He smiled at her. “Then I’m not helpless as long as I have you to wield that saber on my behalf. It’s still covered in blood,” he pointed out. Imogen pulled out the tail of her shirt and tried to wipe it off, but it had dried tacky and her shirt caught on the smears.

  “It will pass when I again trample my enemies beneath my hooves,” she said.

  He grinned. “Pity we can’t bring the horses indoors. We’d have half again as many warriors, and Diana’s troops would all wet themselves in terror.”

  “I thought it too. The palace was not designed with horses in mind and perhaps it should have been.”

  “I’ll pass that along to the palace architect.” He took her free hand and squeezed it. “Go. Fight this battle.”

  “I will win this battle. You will see.”

  “And, Imogen?” He caught at her hand when she would have left. “Don’t tell them about Hrovald. I don’t want them falling into despair. Time enough to worry about it when this threat has passed.”

  “Then you do not fall into despair either, King of Tremontane.” She grinned at him and ran back to her troops, her bloody saber dark red in the light of the Devices lining the walls, candles burning without flame. “The Army is coming in a few hours,” she told them, “and we must stand firm until then.” Another burst of rifle fire, another burst of screams, then silence. “We are better than they are and we have better position. We cannot let them pass. Rest, and be ready.”

  She couldn’t take her own advice, was too restless to sit still. She paced the too-wide corridor, trying to become nothing but a pair of feet, a pair of legs, until Revalan stood in her way and refused to move. “You’re making everyone nervous,” he said, shifting his bulk to block her path again. “Especially those Tremontanans. Don’t make me tie you to a chair.”

  “You don’t have a chair.”

  “There’s a barricade just down that way.”

  “All right! I’ll stop.” She said to Trell, “Sorry, I have extra energy because I wish to again bloody my saber.”

  “Hope you don’t mind my saying this, ma’am, but none of us is that eager,” Trell said. “We’re fighting our fellow soldiers who are just in this because the Baroness told ’em lies. Don’t think we’re not prepared to do our duty, and all of us would die for the King if we had to, but it doesn’t make us like it.”

  Imogen bowed her head. “I am sorry,” she said. “It is not the same for us but I should have thought of how you would feel. You know you are doing the right thing.”

  “We do, ma’am, and we’re glad to have you Kirkellan with us. Is it true you held out for three hours against the invaders?”

  “I do not know how long it was. I think I need a Device that says what the time is. But it was long and tiring. So I should sit and rest now, I think.”

  She sat down next to what was left of her tiermatha. “How’s your King holding up?” Revalan said.

  “He’s not my King. I’m a warrior of the Kirkellan,” Imogen snapped.

  Revalan held up his hands in self-defense. “That’s not at all what I meant.”

  Imogen sighed. “Sorry, Rev.”

  “Where did that come from, anyway?” Saevonna said.

  Imogen rubbed her eyes, which were dry and scratchy. “I don’t know. Forget I said anything. The King is holding up about as well as you’d expect. I’d hate to have to sit somewhere and let someone else protect me.”

  “Remember when I broke my arm while we were on long patrol and the crag-wolves came?” Kallum said. “Nearly drove me crazy to have to sit by the fire while the rest of you hunted.”

  “I remember you bitched about it long enough we thought about sitting on your head to make you stop,” said Revalan.

  “Still, I feel for him. He’s not a bad fighter, either. Did you ever spar with him, Imogen?”

  She shook her head. “Never came up.”

  “Well, I did. He’s damned fast, if a little undisciplined, though I was probably distracted by how good he looks with his shirt off.”

  “Kallum—”

  “I’m not making suggestive comments! I’m just stating a fact.”

  Imogen slapped him upside the head. “Keep your facts to yourself, then.” Kallum grinned at her and rubbed his head.

  “I wonder how Kionnal and Dorenna are doing,” Saevonna said. “Areli can’t return to us even if…well, however Kionnal’s doing, because that route’s blocked off. I wish we had them here.”

  “So do I. Does it seem too quiet to you?”

  They listened. No sounds of combat came from the western passage. Imogen got to her feet. “I’m going to check on them,” she said, and then the distant shouting began again, this time louder. “Everybody take your positions,” she said, and went to stand in the cross-hall leading to the north wing as if she could block it with her body alone. They waited, listening to the sounds of fighting rise and wane. Imogen’s hand gripping her saber hilt was numb; she made herself relax again. Two eyes. Two ears. One heart that pounded too hard in her chest however relaxed she made herself. Two lungs that took in air and expelled it, calmly, regularly. He was depending on her. Two legs, balanced lightly on two feet. Two hands, one white and bloodless, the other streaked with too much blood, none of it hers. Whether she’d be able to say the same when this was all over was heaven’s care and not hers.

  Silence again, then shouts. It was driving her mad. “Stand down—” she began, then realized the shouting was coming closer and wasn’t fading away. “This is it! Hold this position!” she shouted in Tremontanese, then repeated herself in Kirkellish. Across the way, Trell and most of his soldiers backed farther down the hall, staying out of sight of whoever was coming from the west. Another handful of Tremontanans faced the western hallway; the rest, including the Kirkellan, blocked the way into the north wing. Imogen flexed her fingers on the hilt of her saber, and waited.

  Blue-coated soldiers emerged at a flat run from the western hallway and flung themselves toward Trell’s group. Lieutenant Anselm flew past, turned, and took up a guard position in the eastern hallway. “They’re coming!” she panted, unnecessarily, and Imogen’s heart raced with the need to fight. Now, she thought, they need to come now.

  As if in response to her thoughts, the first green and brown soldiers emerged from the hallway, their momentum great enough to carry them into the arms of the North soldiers opposite. Lieutenant Anselm swept her sword around in an arc that nearly cut the first one in half, and the soldiers behind her stepped up to join her. “Trell, hold!” Imogen shouted, and held up her hand to the Kirkellan. Not yet time to
attack, hold…hold….

  “Now!” she screamed, and she and Trell leaped forward at the same time, pressing the attack on three sides. It was close work, too close, not enough room to move, and Imogen saw some of Diana’s soldiers working their way toward her position, trying to skirt the conflict and sneak past. She stepped back and they smiled, thinking she was retreating. She bared her teeth at them—they might think it was a smile, but she had learned it from the crag-wolves, who were as merciless in battle as she was. She blocked the first swing contemptuously and spitted the soldier with her return thrust, raised her foot and pushed him off her blade and into his comrade hard enough to make him stagger. “You should go home,” she told the second man, “there is nothing but death for you here.”

  The second man came in swinging more carefully than the first, and she blocked his first swing, then the next, brought up her saber toward his eyes and thrust for the heart; he blocked, and she grinned more widely. The rush of battle-lust rose up inside her, filling her with strength and agility that felt like nothing else in the world, it felt like life itself even as she brought her saber around, chopped at the man’s knees and thrust hard at his chest when he tried to dodge. Bright red blood bubbled up around his lips as he slipped off her blade. He looked so surprised she nearly laughed, but had to save her attention for the next woman who came at her, sword raised incautiously; she sliced into her belly and saw the woman fall, clutching herself. She was so young, even younger than Imogen, with her eyes wide as if she couldn’t understand where she was or how she’d got there—

  —and Imogen had to duck and raise her blade quickly. That moment’s inattention had nearly cost her her head. She thrust and parried and thrust again, shoving aside the compassion that had no place on the battlefield, even if that field was a palace hallway. Time to think about the morality of war later. Now was simply the fight, and the battle-lust, and stroke after stroke until her arm tired and she had to step back and let someone else take her place for the moment.

  She squatted to catch her breath, laid her saber across her knees, and surveyed the scene with eyes that stung with sweat. The initial counterattack had worked; fighters on both sides were having to tread carefully because so many soldiers, blue and green, had fallen in the center of the intersection. But now Diana’s soldiers had gotten their bearings and were pressing hard against the defenders of the north wing hall. There were enough of them that they’d managed to turn the pincer strategy against them, half the green soldiers engaging Trell’s group, the other half fighting Imogen’s, back to back, with Lieutenant Anselm’s people hacking desperately away at the enemy, trying to drive a wedge between them.

  One of Imogen’s warriors fell, and she dragged the woman aside and took her place. Her throat felt raw from screaming defiance at the foe, the saber dragged at her arm, but she pressed forward, she would not let him down would not let him down would not let him down—

  A familiar face startled her so much she dropped her guard for a split second. Diana was just as surprised to see her, which was all that saved Imogen from having her heart riven in two. She blocked Diana’s thrust, shoved her hard so she stumbled back a few steps, then drove in for the kill, which Diana blocked. “Fat girl,” Diana sneered, though her malice was diminished by how heavily she was breathing. “Thought I’d find you—” oof—“at your lover’s side.”

  “My place is here, and here you are to fight me,” Imogen panted, and struck again. She was so tired. If Diana had appeared two hours ago, this stupid little fight would have been over already.

  Diana sliced at Imogen’s throat, and Imogen parried, though not easily. “I would have been content to be Consort, you know,” Diana said, breathing hard, “rule through the King, I would have been satisfied with that. But you came along—” she parried a blow that would have taken her head off— “and I realized that wasn’t enough for me. Any King who thinks a foreigner is worthy to share the Crown deserves to have it taken from him.”

  “You are too wrong even for me to tell you all the wrong you are,” Imogen said. She didn’t have the breath to spare, but she couldn’t help herself. “I am not Consort and I not become Consort. You do not deserve the Crown.” She would not die here. She would not die by this woman’s hand. She was so tired.

  “Deserve? That doesn’t enter into it. I can take it, that makes it mine.” Diana swept Imogen’s blade aside, and all at once her left side erupted with pain. She tried to scream, but her throat had closed up. She was so tired, and now she hurt. Diana’s sword, bright with blood—with her blood—passed before her eyes. She tried to collapse, but Diana’s claw gripped the neck of her jerkin and pulled her close, eye to bloodshot, maniacal eye. “I wanted to arrange for you to die in front of him,” Diana said, “but just you dying will have to satisfy me.” She shoved Imogen away; Imogen, her arms and legs weak with exhaustion and pain, couldn’t keep herself from falling hard against the wall. She tasted blood, pain shot through her head, and she remembered nothing more.

  Echoes of voices. She was at the bottom of a deep well. Far above, light and shadow and noise, but here at the bottom of the well…no, she was rising, floating upward, the black sides of the well going gray and then rolling up on themselves, vanishing. She was lying on the floor at an awkward angle—no, she was lying on someone’s body, and the awkward angle was because her back was arched painfully across the corpse. Everything was too bright and echoed too loudly. People were fighting all around her. She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there. Fighting, growing tired, Diana—

  Imogen tried to sit up, her heart pounding in terror, but her body wasn’t responding. Her side was on fire. Diana had stabbed her. Eyes prickling with tears, she fumbled around her clothing until she could feel her side. Bloody, painful, but…it was fairly deep, but wasn’t anywhere near her vital organs. Stupid Diana and her stupid love of the dramatic hadn’t bothered to see just how solidly she’d connected. Imogen tried to rise again, and this time managed to get to her feet. Her vision went black for a moment, and she leaned heavily on her saber, making it bend alarmingly. She breathed deeply, making herself remain calm even as terror sped like a knife-edged wind through her brain, hurry hurry hurry she’s got him now, capture the King and you win the game—

  The fighting was confined to the cross-hall; the route to the north wing was absurdly clear, as if someone had drawn an invisible line and said “thus far, and no farther” to the combatants. Only the bodies of soldiers here and there along the way revealed there had been fighting in this hallway at all.

  The blue and silver soldiers who’d been the last line of defense were gone, mostly, though one slumped against the reception desk as if he were taking a nap. He looked up at her as she passed and mouthed a word she couldn’t understand. The only sound came from the fighting, far behind her. Her heart felt as if it were trying to smash its way through her ribs, her side hurt, and she was still having trouble seeing. She dragged her way toward Jeffrey’s command room. She had no idea what she would do when she got there, since she didn’t think she could lift her saber more than waist high, but she could…she could throw herself on Diana, crush her under her weight, pity she didn’t weigh twice as much as she did, this saber is getting really heavy and the lights shouldn’t be flashing like that, should they?

  The door to the command room stood open. She could hear Diana speaking in that swooping way she did when she was telling someone how wonderful she was. That meant Jeffrey was still alive. Her exhausted heart tried to react to this with joy, but she felt only weariness.

  “…too late for any other solution.”

  “Diana, we have a common enemy here. Don’t be a fool. Hrovald will destroy the city if we don’t stop him, your forces and mine together.” That was Jeffrey, sounding unharmed if a bit tired.

  “But with you still in command and your ass firmly placed upon the throne. You think I don’t know what it means if I give in to you now?”

  “You don’t have to die. You
can go into exile. I’ll even pardon your officers. Just let this end.”

  Diana laughed. “You forget who has the upper hand here.”

  “I’ll admit you have me outnumbered. I’m counting on your officers—my officers—being unwilling to murder their King.”

  “My officers are loyal to me, not to you, Jeffrey. It’s what happens when you fight together, day after day, for years on end.”

  Imogen came out of her reverie, blinked away the grayness at the edges of her vision, and pushed the door farther open so she could see into the room. Diana, her back to the door, stood opposite Jeffrey. They both had their swords in a rest position. Between Diana and Imogen stood five men and women in green and brown Tremontanan uniforms. They were armed as well, but held their swords ready for an attack. Colonel Williams lay collapsed on the map table, blood pooling beneath his body, and a couple of blue and silver soldiers ranged themselves around Jeffrey, their swords also drawn and ready to attack. They looked tense and afraid. She couldn’t tell how Diana’s officers felt. She stepped into the room a few paces, then stopped, uncertain what to do.

  Jeffrey saw her. His eyes widened, and his lips parted in amazement. “Imogen,” he said.

  Diana laughed. “The fat bitch is dead, Jeffrey. That’s a pathetic ruse.”

  “The fat bitch is right here and thinks your aim is bad,” Imogen said.

  Diana’s head whipped around. Quick as a snake, Jeffrey’s sword was up and plunged into Diana’s stomach nearly to the hilt, angled upward to strike the heart. Unlike Diana, Jeffrey’s aim was excellent. Her head came back around, and she stared at Jeffrey with the same amazed look he’d just given Imogen. She looked down at the hilt of his sword, at his hand spotted with her blood, then sagged at the knees. Jeffrey withdrew his sword and let her collapse onto the bloody floor. “This ends now,” he said in a cold, cutting voice. “Drop your weapons and you won’t hang for treason. One chance. Now.”

  Swords thumped to the floor, bouncing hollowly as they struck the soft carpet. “Good,” said Jeffrey. “Go out there and tell your soldiers to stand down. They won’t suffer for their leader’s idiocy either, but if the killing doesn’t stop now, they’re going to suffer for their own. Go!” he shouted, and they scrambled to flee. One of them bumped into Imogen, who rocked unsteadily, then collapsed. She closed her eyes and felt the world steady beneath her.