The Infernal Battalion

by Django Wexler

  Two Borelgai Life Guards, their shakos lined with their trademark white fur, stood guard outside the door to the embassy suite. They came to attention as well, and the door opened to reveal the perpetual smile of Ihannes Pulwer-​Monsangton, Borel’s ambassador to Vordan. If Dorsay was all bluff informality, which Raesinia had come to respect during their time in Murnsk, Ihannes was the opposite, with the oily charm of the professional diplomat. Raesinia presented him with her own best smile and acknowledged his slight bow with a nod.

  “Your Highness,” he said. “You honor us.”

  “Ambassador.” Raesinia paused when Ihannes didn’t move aside.

  His smile turned apologetic. “His Grace has asked that this be a private meeting.”

  “Of course.” Raesinia gestured for Joanna and Barely to wait. “Eric, find me after my meeting with Mistress Cora.”

  Ihannes stepped aside, and Raesinia swept past him. The Borelgai suite was elaborately furnished, by the standards of the depleted palace, with furniture and decorations in the severe Borelgai style. More diplomatic posturing, she assumed.

  Attua Dorsay, the Duke of Brookspring, was seated at the head of the long table, vigorously applying butter and jam to several slices of toast. Ihannes cleared his throat theatrically, and Dorsay looked up.

  “You getting a cough, Ihannes?” he said. The twinkle in his eye made Raesinia certain he was needling the ambassador.

  “No, Your Grace.” Ihannes stepped aside. “The queen is here.”

  “I can see that,” Dorsay said. He gestured at his plate. “Care for any breakfast, Your Highness?”

  “No, thank you,” Raesinia said, barely restraining a smile at Ihannes’ pained expression.

  “Sit down, then. That’ll be all, Ihannes.”

  “Your Grace?” The ambassador’s brow furrowed.

  “I mean take yourself somewhere else,” Dorsay said. “I told you I wanted this to be a private meeting.”

  Ihannes’ expression went even frostier, but he bowed silently and left through an inner door. Dorsay resumed buttering his toast, which was already dripping.

  “Butter,” he said without much preamble. “You people have always been good at it.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace,” Raesinia said cautiously.

  “Butter, cream, cheese, and so on. All in short supply back home, since the war started. Do you know how much of our cheese comes from Vordan?” Before she could answer, he waved a hand. “I didn’t, and neither did Georg. Nobody thinks about these things before they start a war.”

  Georg referred to Georg Pulwer, the King of Borel, with whom Dorsay was apparently on a first-​name basis. Raesinia wasn’t sure how much of that was bluster and how much was truth. It was always hard to tell with Dorsay.

  “It was you who put us under blockade,” Raesinia said, keeping her tone light. “If it were up to me, His Majesty could have all the cheese he could eat.”

  “Which is a shockingly large amount, I can attest.” Dorsay crunched into the toast, getting flecks of butter in his bristly mustache. He sat back and sighed with pleasure. “Hells. No beating the real stuff. Back home they try to make something with goat’s milk, if you can believe that. Goat’s milk! Ha.”

  “Once the treaty is finished, I’ll send a few casks with you, as a going-​away present.”

  “A small price to pay to be rid of me!” Dorsay cackled. “No doubt you’ll throw a party to celebrate.”

  “You’ll always be welcome at my court,” Raesinia said. “You helped me keep the peace when we might as easily have been at each other’s throats.”

  “And your man d’Ivoire saved my neck from that snake Orlanko,” Dorsay said. “I won’t forget it, believe me.” He finished the toast, wiped his face on a napkin, and turned to look up at her. His famous nose, long and curved, stuck out like the prow of a ship. “That’s the spirit in which I asked you here, in fact. Nothing to do with the treaty. Wanted to pass on a bit of private information.”

  “Oh?” Raesinia hesitated for moment, then pulled a heavy wooden chair from the table and settled herself facing Dorsay. “Information is always appreciated.”

  “How much are you hearing out of Murnsk?”

  “Not a great deal,” Raesinia admitted. “They withdrew their ambassador when the war started, and we haven’t received any official response to our inquiries since. The Army of the North has pulled back over the border into Vordan.”

  “I suspected as much. Our forces have pulled out as well, but Borel has significant commercial interest in western Murnsk, and sometimes they pass tidbits along.”

  Raesinia nodded. Once again, she missed Sothe. Vordan’s intelligence service had been largely dismantled in the wake of Orlanko’s rebellion, but Sothe had a knack for acquiring information. Raesinia had tasked Alek Giforte with creating something to fill the void left by the Concordat, but that project was still in its infancy.

  “Western Murnsk is in chaos,” Dorsay went on. “To put it mildly. The bizarre weather has wreaked havoc, and to make matters worse, the northern savages have crossed the Bataria in strength, raiding and burning as they go. I imagine you saw some of that for yourself.”

  “I did indeed,” Raesinia said. Dorsay didn’t know that neither event was a coincidence—​the summer had turned freezing under the magical influence of the Black Priests, and the Trans-​Batariai tribes had come in response to Elysium’s call to defeat the approaching Vordanai army. “What is the emperor doing about it?”

  “Not a great deal, and that’s the part that’s odd. There are some strange rumors coming out of Mohkba. Some people are saying the emperor’s dead, and others insist that Prince Cesha Dzurk is a traitor and is lying about it to seize the throne.”

  “Janus smashed at least two sizable Murnskai armies on his way north,” Raesinia said. “We heard that the crown prince was killed in the fighting. It wouldn’t be a surprise if all that caused some upheaval.” She shook her head. “If the harvest was ruined, the whole region must be facing famine. Perhaps we should organize some kind of aid.”

  “It’s not usually the winners of a war who offer help to the losers,” Dorsay said, eyes twinkling.

  “We were never at war with the people of Murnsk,” Raesinia said. “Our quarrel was with Elysium. And the emperor, once he set himself against us.”

  “Elysium is the crux of it,” Dorsay said. “Something very strange has happened there. As best we can tell, much of the Church administration has decamped, legging it for Mohkba and points east as fast as their mules will carry them. No one has gotten close enough to Elysium to find out what’s happening there in weeks. People who try just...” He waved his hands. “Vanish.”

  “Has it been sacked by the barbarians?” Raesinia said.

  “That’s what everyone seems to think, but I haven’t seen any real information. You’d think the savages would loot and then run home, not hang about picking off scouts. For that matter, it would take a hell of an army to sack Elysium, even with modern guns. I have a hard time imagining a bunch of primitives managing it with bows and spears.”

  Destroying Elysium had been Janus’ goal, his reason for marching north. He’d been turned back by the weather, the efforts of the Black Priests, and his own officers, who’d sided with Raesinia and refused to waste more lives on his crusade. Now, it seemed, someone might have accomplished the task for him.

  And it mattered more than Dorsay knew. Elysium was, publicly, the seat of the Sworn Church, revered by millions as the holiest place on the continent. Only a few knew it was also home to the Priests of the Black, the secret order dedicated to rooting out and destroying sorcery, architects of the war intended to remove Raesinia from the throne. Anything that had damaged them had to be good news, but Raesinia felt strangely unsettled. We need to know what’s happening.

  “Very interesting,” she said aloud. “May I ask, though, why you wanted to share this with me?”

  “Partly because I thought you might have something to ad
d,” Dorsay said.

  “I would if I did,” Raesinia said, wincing internally at the lie. Dorsay seemed sincere, but she was hardly going to talk to him about magic and demons, not least because it might lead to questions about her own condition. “You seem to be considerably better informed than I am.”

  “Fair enough. But I also wanted to ask a favor. Do you have any news of Vhalnich?”

  “He’s on his way to his old estate, in Mieran County.” Raesinia frowned. “Why? You think he could be behind this business at Elysium?”

  “More rumors. Nothing solid. But... troubling.” Dorsay shrugged. “It would... ease my mind, let’s say, if we could confirm that Vhalnich is settling down to country life and not causing trouble.”

  “I understand,” Raesinia said. “I’ll send a courier to check on him. We have people there, and I’ll get you a full report.”

  “Thank you.” Dorsay extended a hand. “It’s been such a bear getting the peace talks this far, I’d hate for anything to cause problems now.”

  From another man, those words might have been a veiled threat, but Dorsay meant them honestly. Raesinia shook his hand and nodded.

  *

  Count Albrecht Strav was seventy years old if he was a day, with a long queue of bone ​white hair and wild, bushy eyebrows. He laughed frequently and without modesty, the full-​throated cackles of someone who is long past caring what other people think of him. His desk, a massive slab of a thing polished to a fine sheen, was clear of everything but a daggerlike letter opener. One side of his office was occupied by a hearth, and he’d built the fire up to massive proportions, hot enough to make Raesinia sweat.

  “Sorry for that,” he said when she arrived. “Always cold these days, even at midsummer. Don’t get old, m’girl, if you can avoid it.”

  “I’ll try my best,” Raesinia said, unable to keep a hint of wry humor out of her voice.

  “Expect you want an update,” Strav went on. “Commendable, commendable. Your father never took an interest. Didn’t have much of a head for figures.” Strav guffawed. “Neither do I, tell the truth, but I make do.”

  Strav had been Deputy Minister of the Treasury nearly thirty years ago, well before Raesinia was born. Not having a head for figures was probably one reason he’d never gotten the top job, though he was right that King Farus VIII hadn’t paid much attention to financial matters. Orlanko had given the job to Rackhil Grieg, whose blatant profiteering and sale of “tax farm” franchises had brought the Vordanai economy to the brink of ruin before the revolution had intervened.

  Now Raesinia had brought in her own expert to set things right. And she’d brought in Strav to, more or less, occupy a chair and provide the weight of his noble pedigree. As best she could tell, he was accomplishing both tasks nicely.

  “So,” she said, out of politeness. “How are things progressing?”

  “Splendidly!” Strav laughed. “Just splendidly. All the lads are doing splendid work. And the lass, of course. Mustn’t forget her. She seems to work as hard as the rest of ’em put together. She’s a good girl, that one. Reminds me of my granddaughter, Vincent’s girl.” He paused. “Or was it Jaten’s? I lose track after I can’t count ’em on my fingers anymore, ha!”

  “Wonderful,” Raesinia said smoothly. “I’ll just have a word with her about the figures, then.”

  “Of course! She can come up with any figures you need. She’s a demon for ’em. Never known a girl who liked figurin’ so much.”

  “Thank you, Count Strav.” Raesinia beckoned to her guards, and they escaped from the sweltering heat of the office. Their true destination was down the hall, but it wouldn’t have been polite to pay a call on the Treasury without at least a token visit to the minister.

  The real heart of the ministry was a large, airy room that had once been a servants’ dining hall. It had been taken over to be the financial equivalent of a workshop. The walls were lined with bookshelves, piled high with thick, leather-​bound volumes and scrolls tied with colored ribbons. Several tables were set side by side, flanked by benches and almost completely covered with paper. The occupants of the room were nearly lost amid the clutter, a half dozen young men and women who looked like they’d had about a day of sleep in the last week among them. At the center was a girl of fifteen, her straw-​colored hair tied back into an unruly tail, her face a mass of freckles.

  “Raes!” Cora squeaked, bounding to her feet. Then, seeing the looks she got from the other clerks, she cleared her throat and said, in more ordinary tones, “Your Highness, I mean. It’s an honor.”

  Cora bowed, and the rest bowed with her. Raesinia nodded to them and grinned at Cora.

  “I appreciate your hard work, all of you,” she said. “Cora, I wonder if we could speak privately?”

  “Of course!” Cora extracted herself from her spot at the table, while the young woman next to her grabbed a stack of papers to keep it from toppling. Oblivious, Cora opened a door in the corner. “There’s room in here.”

  The private space proved to be an old servant’s bedroom, with a cot in one corner and a desk in the other. More books were stacked in untidy piles on the floor.

  Raesinia’s guards waited outside, and as soon as the door was closed she wrapped Cora in a hug.

  “Sorry,” Cora said. “I’m still not good at remembering—​you know.” You know apparently meant the fact that her friend was now the Queen of Vordan.

  “You’re improving,” Raesinia said. “And it’s only for everyone else’s benefit. In private you can always call me Raes.”

  Of the original cabal—​the conspiracy that Raesinia had started against her own government and Duke Orlanko, which had helped to spark the revolution—​Cora was the only one who hadn’t died or betrayed her. Apart from Sothe, she was Raesinia’s oldest friend and one of the few who knew all her secrets.

  She was also a financial genius. It had been Cora who’d parlayed the information Raesinia had brought from the palace into a fortune in the markets, then used that fortune to support the revolution. She’d engineered the run on the Second Pennysworth Bank that had given the supernatural orator Danton his first push, and later she’d helped Raesinia and Marcus expose Maurisk’s conspiracy by following the paper trail of missing flash powder.

  As soon as she’d had the chance, Raesinia had installed her here, in the Ministry of Finance. She would have made Cora minister, but it seemed unlikely that the Deputies-​General would accept a fifteen-​year-​old girl, however brilliant, at the head of the nation’s finances. Count Strav was amiable, unambitious, and unlikely to interfere, so he made an acceptable figurehead, while Cora and a contingent recruited from the University did the actual business of righting the listing Vordanai ship.

  “Raes.” Cora squeezed her again. “God. The back room of the Blue Mask feels like a hundred years ago, doesn’t it?”

  “Longer,” Raesinia said.

  She pulled away far enough to study Cora’s face. The girl had grown—​taller than Raesinia now and not quite as ravaged by acne as before—​but it was more than that. She’d been innocent when Raesinia had recruited her, and none of them were innocent now. There was a sadness in her dark green eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  A moment of silence stretched, uncomfortably, until Raesinia cleared her throat.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you more often,” she said. “It’s been... chaotic since we got back.”

  “You’re the queen, Raes. Of course you’re going to be busy.” Cora grinned, and just like that she was once again the bright, cocky girl Raesinia had first met. “How’s...?” She waved a hand vaguely. “The country, I guess?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Raesinia said. “Is your team working all right?”

  Cora nodded enthusiastically. “They’re great. Especially Annabel. She’s terrifyingly bright. She’s from Murnsk—​did you know her parents didn’t even want her to learn to read? She had to run away from a caravan to get here. And
—” Cora paused and coughed. “Sorry. I can introduce you later, if you’d like.”

  “I would.” Raesinia couldn’t help but smile. Cora’s enthusiasm was infectious. “And Strav isn’t giving you any trouble?”

  “As long as he gets to sign his name to the reports, he seems happy. And we send him around to the other ministries when they won’t listen to me.” Cora frowned. “It would help if we had a Minister of War. Someone needs to get the spending there under control.”

  Raesinia sighed. “Tell that to the Deputies. God knows I have.”

  “Anyway, we’re making some progress on taxes. Orlanko left us a mess, and I figured trying to go back to the old system right away would just cause more problems. So we’ve been working at the local level to try to get something people can live with. It’s slow work, but—” Cora stopped herself again. She really was getting better. “The details are all in my reports. We’re getting there.”

  “So what’s the problem?” There’s always a problem.

  “Debt, piled on more debt.” Cora made a face. “The old Crown had debts to everyone—​the nobles, the Borels, the League cities, even the churches. The first Deputies-​General declared all of that void, but then we started issuing scrip, especially when Janus’ armies were fighting the League. Now nobody knows what the status of all of that is, and the people who held the old debt are petitioning for some kind of settlement, which we definitely can’t afford.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Get the Deputies to reaffirm their commitment to honor the scrip we paid to Desland and the other League cities,” Cora said.

  “If we have too much debt, wouldn’t it be better not to pay them?”

  “No, because if we can convince them we will honor the scrip, then I can borrow in the Hamvelt market, and the rates there are better than anything we can get internally. And then I can use that to pay off some of the most expensive liabilities, and that will give us more room to—” She stopped again. “It would help, basically.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Raesinia smiled. “I’ll do what I can, though trying to get the Deputies to do anything is like wrestling a sack of cats.”