The Queen of Crows

by Myke Cole

  He gestured to Brother Tone, who spurred his horse forward. It was a calculated insult. The Sojourners were the lords of the Order, too high-ranking to sully themselves speaking to Kipti. It was a mere gray-cloaked Pilgrim who had been chosen to address them.

  “Come down now, all of you,” Tone called. “If I have to climb up this lump of rock I will be quite cross. Those of you from Lutet have seen me when I am cross, but it will be new to these Kipti and the Lysian turncoats with you now, so let me explain it to them.

  “When I am cross, I kill things that are alive, and burn things that are not. Ah, may the Emperor not judge me for a liar. Truthfully, I burn things that are alive, too. If I have to climb up there, there will be nothing left of Lyse by the time I am done. No two stones will stand atop one another.

  “But it need not come to that.” Tone raised his voice louder, ensuring it would be heard inside the town as well as atop the wall. “This tinker-clad heretic of a girl has led you from the right path. You have been fools to follow her, but fools are not devils. The Song gives you this one chance to repent your actions and turn from her. Tear the girl from her machine and bring her to us, and we may yet let you live.”

  Barnard turned, hefting his hammer, glaring at the Lysian sentries. They looked steadily at their feet, into the distance, anywhere but at him. Heloise could see the temptation in the hang of their heads and the slump of their shoulders. They only want to live. Tone is promising them that very thing.

  “He lies,” Samson said to them. “That’s a Pilgrim talking. Only thing their kind has ever done is kill. There is no mercy in them.”

  “I do not lie,” Tone said. “Shall I swear an oath? Shall I fetch the reliquary from the chapel tent?”

  Even Wolfun looked up at that, glancing quickly at Barnard before looking away. They believe him, Heloise thought. They’ll put me out.

  The silence dragged on, until Tone gave a satisfied nod. “Very well, then, I will fetch…”

  Heloise tipped back her head and laughed. The sound was startling, harsh and low, like a crow’s call. Even Tone let his words trail off as all eyes on the parapet snapped to her.

  “Oh, you are funny,” Heloise called down to the Pilgrim, “and you really must think villagers are stupid. I am, according to you, wizard-cursed, damned and blighted, contaminating everything I touch and the ground beneath my feet…”

  “And so you are!” Tone shouted up at her, eyes blazing.

  “Which means,” Heloise went on, as if explaining to a child, “that you must Knit this place, that you must burn it and everyone inside. And yet here you are promising mercy if only my people will give me up. It can mean only one thing.”

  “That the Sacred Throne has moved my heart to pity—” Tone tried to speak over her.

  “That you are afraid!” Heloise cut him off. “That your masters will be angry with you for letting us take this town. Or that you are not sure you can take it back.”

  Barnard’s eyes lit at Heloise’s words. He stepped to the edge of rampart and shook his fist. “She’s right! The powerful do not bargain, they do not make promises, because they do not have to. No, you murdering brigand. You are afraid, frightened by villagers and our champion in her machine, and you are right to be, because we will not give her up, and when you come for her, I will kill you, and I will build another box on her other shoulder, and we will carry your head in that as a reminder of how easily fools can die.”

  “You…” Tone’s cheeks burned so brightly that they looked purple even from this distance. “You will beg for your life before I am through.” But his mocking surety was gone now.

  “That is enough from you, Tinker,” the Song said, “we will have our response from the heretic girl, or her parents. Is her father among you?”

  “He is,” Samson called down to them, “and he spies the Pilgrim whose eye he blackened outside Hammersdown. A mere villager beat him like a festival-day doll, and that villager will do it again, just as soon as that Pilgrim is dumb enough to mount these walls.”

  And now it was the defenders’ turn to laugh, loud enough and long enough that Heloise knew they would remain, that they saw the Song’s offer for what it was: a bid to lure them out, unarmed, to the slaughter.

  Heloise looked back out over the wall, and could see Tone, visibly enraged. Perhaps the Song was, too, his red cheeks hidden by the gold sun of his helmet. But the Song’s voice was just as sweet as he replied. “Foolish words from one angry man. I do not think the rest of you agree with him. I will give you one day to think it over, and return for your answer at dawn. At dawn, mind you. Anyone coming out before then will be judged a sally, and treated as an enemy. Keep to your walls, mull my words and the Sacred Throne’s gracious offer.”

  With that he wheeled his horse, the procession following behind, the army parting to make way for them. Tone shot a glance over his shoulder up at Samson, teeth bared. Heloise could see his shoulders shaking despite the distance. Even if the Song had been genuine in his offer of mercy, she knew that Tone would not honor it for her father.

  “That was well done,” Samson said, and Heloise could hear the shaking sigh in his voice. He shot a glance at Wolfun and the other sentries. “They’ll stick now.”

  Barnard took a step toward Leahlabel, and Giorgi stepped between them. Onas and Xilyka drew their weapons as well, but stayed at Heloise’s side.

  “What if he’d said yes?” Barnard’s words were tight, clipped. “What if he’d promised mercy for all, Kipti included. Would you have sent Heloise out to die, then? Would you have given her up?”

  “Don’t be such a damned fool,” Leahlabel said. “I just convinced every Traveling Person here that leaving these walls means certain death. Any doubting hearts have been shored up. Look beyond your own nose for an instant, you idiot ox.”

  Barnard’s face migrated from shock to realization to understanding. He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again. Heloise spoke quickly, in case he found words. “At least now we know when they will come, at dawn tomorrow. We must decide how we are to meet them.”

  “And we must go among our own,” Sigir said, “and ensure that all are still with us.”

  He met Heloise’s gaze evenly. “The Song was cunning in his speech. He knows what most of us want, a return to our old lives. He knows that dangling it for us is the best chance he has of turning you out, of ending this without a fight. Everyone in this town heard him. That is a weapon more deadly than all the flails in the Empire.”

  Sure enough, Poch and Danad were waiting for them as they descended the ramp from the wall, at the head of a knot of villagers. A few of the Traveling People stood by them, at a remove, but close enough to show their support.

  “Maior…” Danad began.

  “If you are thinking to turn her out,” Barnard snapped, “I’ll stave your skull in.”

  “With respect, Master Maior,” Poch said, “we are talking about one life against hundreds. Why shouldn’t we take them up on their offer? Everything can go back to how it was.”

  “How it was?” Barnard seethed. “Cowering in terror every time we heard hoofbeats? Giving up the best of our custom to strangers and turning a blind eye when they burned a village of our friends and kinfolk? That’s what you want to return to?”

  “She’s my daughter!” Samson roared, coming to stand with Barnard, huge fists trembling. “By the Throne, if any of you send her out, I will throw your own children after her!”

  A few in the crowd shouted back, and Sigir stepped between them. “There will be no fighting here.”

  “They may not even harm her!” Poch added. “Maybe they’ll just put her in irons for a time.”

  “We will not send her out,” Sigir said, his voice low and dangerous, “and mark my words, you two. If, for any reason, she goes out, you will accompany her. Then you’ll see how well the Order keeps its promises.”

  “Their bodies will accompany her,” Samson said. “I’ll keep their heads.”

&n
bsp; “You just try it, you…” Poch took a step toward Samson, and Heloise finally moved, stepping the machine between them, bumping the drover back with its metal hip.

  “I don’t need my father’s help,” she said. “You are lucky we need everyone on the walls. If you will not fight because you want to be free, you will fight because you want to be alive. You think you will save us all by giving up one life?” She flicked her eyes from Poch to Danad. “Very well, I think I will save us all by giving up two.”

  Poch and Danad stepped back, eyes wide. “You’re … you’re no different than the Order.”

  Heloise kept the hurt off her face. “You’re wrong,” she said. “The Order will kill you to make us slaves. I will kill you to make us free.”

  She pushed past them, not waiting for her entourage to follow, but hearing their footsteps behind her as they hurried to keep up.

  “And who asked to be free?” Poch yelled at her back. “I didn’t! None of us did!”

  But Heloise ignored him, storming up the chapter house steps and pulling the doors wide with such fury that the machine’s great strength slammed them against the walls.

  It wasn’t until they shut behind her that she sagged in her straps, letting Poch’s words wash over her, reverberating in her mind. You’re no different than the Order.

  He wasn’t right. He couldn’t be right.

  But she listened to the frightened silence of the people around her. Onas and Xilyka, her father, Sigir and Barnard. Her best friends, her kin. She could feel their eyes on her back, their minds whirling as they tried to figure what they could say.

  You’re no different than the Order. If the words were false, why did they feel so true?

  11

  FOR THE GOOD OF ALL

  The mother may love her daughter, the father his son, but this is not righteousness. The lord may love his vassal, and the shepherd his flock, yet this too is not righteousness. Nor may it be said to be love, not truly. Nay, it is but the shadow of love. For only one true love exists, love of the Emperor. For all these other loves benefit but a few—a family, a herd, a kingdom. To love the Emperor is to love the world.

  —Sermon given in the Imperial Shrine on the centennial of the Fehta

  Giorgi knelt on the rampart, adding another of the small casks to the stack behind the wooden embrasure painted with spent pitch. “You keep it wet,” he said to Wolfun, his face serious. “If you have to choose between your men going thirsty, and keeping these casks wet, then you choose thirst.”

  Wolfun cocked an eyebrow. “And if they use fire-arrows?”

  “Then you get the casks off the wall and under the rampart. Soak your shirts and lay them over each cask.”

  “That bad?” Heloise asked, striding up behind the Sindi.

  Giorgi shrugged. “You’ve seen our fire-flowers? On festival days?”

  Heloise felt a tiny fragment of the girl she’d once been. The loud bangs, the bright bursts of colors against the night sky. “Of course.”

  Giorgi squatted, got a good grip on one of the casks, and heaved it into position.

  “That’s what these are.”

  Wolfun’s eyebrow rose even higher. “You’re going to entertain them to death with colored lights?”

  “The fire-flowers I saw were all long sticks,” Heloise said. “Why are these so heavy?”

  “The fire-flower is inside,” Giorgi said, “the rest are hobnails and old spoons, broken knife points, that sort of thing. Metal scraps.”

  “Oh,” Heloise said, picturing the bursting fire-flower, the sparks showering down, except now instead of colored light, it was shards of sharp metal, arcing and spinning.

  “Are you sure it’ll work?” Wolfun asked, eyeing the casks as if he expected them to go up at any moment.

  “Fire-flowers are like the Talent,” Giorgi said. “They always work if you know how to work them.”

  “And how do we work them?” Heloise asked.

  “The casks are oiled,” Giorgi said, “you light them, then kick them over the side. And you make damn certain the man doing the kicking doesn’t take an arrow before he gets the chance.”

  Heloise imagined the cask going off on the rampart, the metal fragments scything through her own people. “I see.”

  “Your eminence,” Sigir said, “are you certain this is worth the risk?”

  “Don’t be foolish.” Giorgi stood, putting his hands on his hips. “There are ten times our number down there. There is nothing but risks from here on through tomorrow. We must take every one on offer.”

  Sigir looked like he might protest, but Heloise cut him off, “Giorgi is right. We cannot afford to pass up any advantage. If one of these things can cut down a squadron of the enemy, it could mean the difference between winning and losing here.”

  Now it was Giorgi’s turn to cock an eyebrow.

  “It can cut down a squadron, yes?” Heloise asked.

  Giorgi shook his head. “If it lands just right, and the fire reaches the flower at the right time, maybe.”

  “Those are a lot of ifs,” Wolfun said.

  “Aye.” Giorgi nodded. “Quite a lot, indeed.”

  Beyond the line of tents, Heloise could see the siege engines coming together. She was astonished by the speed with which they’d been assembled, stripped trees turned to beams, beams to structures in just one day. The Emperor’s engineers knew their business. “Will the fire-flowers help against those?”

  Giorgi shaded his eyes with a hand. “They might.”

  “What will they do with that tower?” Heloise asked.

  “They’ll roll right up to the walls,” Wolfun answered. “That ram, too, see it?”

  Heloise could make out what looked like the peaked roof of a small shack. “That’s … that’s a house.”

  Wolfun laughed. “It is, I suppose. But it don’t house people. There’s a tree swinging on chains under that roof, and wheels, too. They’ll roll it up to our gates and knock on ’em ’til they open.”

  “That’s not good,” Giorgi said.

  Wolfun shrugged. “Not bad, either. They’re rushing. They took their time, they’d have twice as many. This is … manageable.” He paused. “I hope.”

  Heloise looked down at the enemy soldiers, some looking up at the wall they would have to assault the following day, others gambling or napping against stacks of shields, helmets tipped over their faces. The armored knights around the squat black tent looked as if they hadn’t moved since they’d been posted. If the guard had changed, Heloise hadn’t seen it.

  But it was the villagers that held her eyes for the longest. They looked so familiar to her, homespun shirts and woven belts that she had seen a hundred times in Lutet. Here was a gray-haired, broad-shouldered man who was the spitting image of her father, there, a boy who could have passed for Ingomer. They weren’t here because they hated Heloise or the rebels holding the town.

  “I do not want to kill their levy,” she said.

  Wolfun frowned. “They want to kill you, your eminence. And come the morrow, they will be about it.”

  “No,” Heloise said, “they don’t want to kill anyone. They want the same thing we want—to live. But they know that, if they don’t try to kill us, the Order will kill them. That’s not the same thing.”

  “Maybe not in the thinking of it.” Wolfun stroked his beard. “But I don’t see how that matters. In the doing of it, there is only them trying to kill us, and us trying to kill them.”

  “You have a good heart, Heloise.” Giorgi touched the machine’s metal elbow. “But I hope you can steel it for what’s to come. I have seen these,” he nudged the casks with his boot, “at work. They aren’t pretty, and they will not distinguish between levy and Pilgrim.”

  “I will do what has to be done,” Heloise answered Giorgi, still looking at Wolfun, “but it does matter what we want, what we think. That’s the difference between us and the Order. Not wanting to do it counts for something.” Poch’s words still burned in her mind, makin
g her own sound lame.

  “As you say, your eminence.” Wolfun bowed as he spoke, so she could not see his face.

  * * *

  Heloise returned to the chapter house after the casks were stacked. She had meant to see if she could close her eyes and sleep for a moment, but found herself pushing through the nave and out into the boneyard behind. The tiny, hemmed-in space felt enormous after the tight confines of the chapter house, and it took her a moment to realize why. It wasn’t just the broad dome of the sky visible above her, or that the sounds of the defenders preparing for battle, carrying sheaves of arrows, fixing the rivets on pieces of armor, reached her only faintly. It was that she was, at long last, alone. Since she’d fled the village, everyone seemed to need her to be something. A saint, a daughter, a warrior, a leader. None of those things felt right to her. If she could just sit and think about it long enough, alone, she knew she could … not arrive at it, but get closer to making sense of it.

  But the precious moment was not to last, and she kept the irritation off her face as Onas picked his way through the weed-encrusted headstones. Her gut warred with itself, sour at being disturbed and happy as always to see the Sindi youth. His smile, his confidence, his joy. Still, she would have preferred it to be Xilyka, if it had to be anyone.

  “You shouldn’t be alone,” he said.

  “I never am.” The words came out more harshly than she intended, and his smile faltered, if only for a moment.

  “I’m in no danger.” Heloise softened her voice, tried to smile for him, though the scars on her face made it hard. “In the machine, I could take on five men by myself. And who is going to find me here?”

  “Still.” Onas shrugged. “You’re important to all of us.”

  Her face fell at that, and Onas looked pained. “I realize it must be … hard for you. Everyone wanting a piece of you all the time. I’m sorry for that. I’m only trying to…”

  “Do as your mother ordered. I know.” She sighed. “I’m glad of you, Onas. From the beginning I have been glad of you.”