The Queen of Crows

by Myke Cole

“He walked away from us when we were at our lowest,” Barnard seethed. “We don’t want him.”

  Steven ignored the huge tinker, gesturing at the Song’s broken body. “That was poorly done, Heloise Factor. Do you know who that was?”

  “That man had my mother killed. Did you think to ransom him?”

  “Certainly not,” Steven said, “but a prisoner is useful in negotiat—”

  “There will be no negotiation,” Heloise said with sudden heat. “I will put an end to the Order and their tyranny. When the people of the Empire can live as they like, go where they like, pray how they like, do what they like, then I will negotiate. Until then, I will visit upon the Order what they visit on others. Again and again and again, until they learn.” She nudged the Song with one of the machine’s huge metal feet. “This man lived his entire life never fearing anything, never wanting for anything. It is too late for him, but perhaps the lesson will not be lost on those who come after.”

  Steven shook his head. “I have heard of your zealotry.”

  Heloise laughed. “I’m just a woman who has been hard done, who has lost those who she loved. I am angry, and I am tired, and I am through making deals.”

  One of the men with the two stripes touched Steven’s shoulder. “Come, sir. It is as Sald said. She is a mad brigand.”

  “Bite your tongue.” Barnard had found some of his heat. “She is a Palantine, and she—”

  Heloise stopped him with a wave. “Enough, Barnard. They do not hold to the Emperor, and you cannot expect them to hold to Palantines.”

  “We do not need your gratitude,” Steven said, “and we will not tell you how to lead your…” He paused, gesturing at the few survivors. “Company. We will camp here to see to our wounded and regroup, and then we march on the capital. There is a place in our auxiliary if you wish to join us. If not, then we will not hinder you.”

  Steven swallowed, stiffened. “But I will express my gratitude to you, Heloise Factor, and my admiration. Ever since we raised our banners against the false throne, we have waited for a moment to finish the fight. We never thought it would come from … such an unlikely quarter. I know you did not seek to aid us, Heloise, but you have helped my people to realize a dream we have held closest to our hearts since I was a younger man. And whether you will avail yourself of it or no, you have our thanks, and yes, our debt. Therefore, you may see my quartermaster to reprovision. My surgeons will tend to your wounded, if you will permit it. We will clothe you and arm you, and if you will not march with us, you may march beside us, and my pickets will watch over you, and permit no harm to come to you should you be overtaken by the enemy. This much we can do, and we will do it, and gladly.”

  “The capital,” Barnard snarled, “is not yours to take. It is our Empire, and it should be ruled by its own people.”

  “I have told you,” Steven’s voice was cold, “what I can do. And if there is something I have not said I can do, then you must assume that I cannot do it. You are welcome to our supply and our protection. However, should you hinder us in our aims, or give succor to the foe, then you will be just as welcome to our wrath.” He swept his arm across the battlefield, the kneeling prisoners, the heaps of dead. “You can see it is a warm welcome, indeed.”

  Barnard opened his mouth to say more, but Heloise cut him off. “We will take the night to think on it. We are the villagers of Lutet, the townsfolk of Lyse, and the Sindi and Hapti bands of the Traveling People. I lead, but we take our decisions jointly.”

  Steven smiled, made a formal bow. “I understand. That is wise. My people also take our decisions jointly, and it is their will that I serve here.” He pointed at a clearing off the main road some distance from the looted camp. “If I may prevail upon you to make your camp there, I will send my sutlers and surgeons straight away. Whether we will be friends or not, I cannot say, but at least let us do this one small thing for you. Your man,” Steven inclined his head toward Sald, “will be well cared for. You have my word.”

  Heloise nodded. “You are … kind, sir. Thank you.”

  “It is my honor,” Steven said, and turned on his heel, making his way toward a larger knot of officers clustered around the kneeling Pilgrims.

  “Sir Steven,” Heloise called after him, and he stopped, turned, eyebrow cocked.

  “There is one of them, the Pilgrims. His name is Brother Tone. He has wronged me. I would have him delivered to me, if he is among them.”

  Steven bowed. “Of course, Heloise. You may have whatever prisoners you wish, after we have questioned them. We ask only to hold the Sojourners and greater lords, if there are any left alive.”

  “I only want the one.”

  “Then you shall have him, if he is here to be had.”

  “And there were three … prisoners,” she said, unsure if she should admit to their wizardry, in case these red men hated them as much as the Order. “Their heads are shaved and they are ragged. I would see them, if they are still about.”

  Steven frowned, turned to one of the men with two stripes on his armband. They held a brief, whispered conference before he turned back to her. “We found three bundles of rags, jumbled amidst some … priestly vestments.”

  “Yes,” Heloise said, “do you have them?”

  “No,” Steven said, “we only found the rags. I doubt the prisoners you seek survived.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were burned.” One of the two-striped men waved to one of his valets, who came forward bearing one of the jeweled censers Heloise had seen the Pilgrims waving around the prisoners. It was blackened and melted, the brass hardened into solid runnels after it had cooled. “It did this to the vestments,” Steven said. “Of the rags, there was little more left than ash.”

  * * *

  Steven was as good as his word, and no sooner had Heloise’s band sprawled exhausted in the grass than she heard the creaking of a cart. It was a camp kitchen built into a single wagon, complete with a cook fire in an iron basin, and a tub for washing the carving knives. Leahlabel and Florea circled it, unable to keep the frank admiration from their faces. Five servants rode on the wagon, two surgeons and three others who scrambled to lay out blankets, which they covered with bowls and trenchers, heels of bread. They set up a field table and chair, covered it with a fine cloth, and set it with silver plate before motioning to Heloise. “My lady,” one of them motioned her, “come down so we tend to your wounds and see you fed.”

  At the thought of leaving the machine, the now familiar fear rose in her. “Shall I eat fine food at a table while my companions sit on the ground and eat from wood trenchers?”

  The servant bowed deeply. “You are a good leader to your people, but the First Sword was specific that—”

  “The First Sword does not rule here. Whatever finery you’d set out for me can still be set out, and let all have run of it.”

  “As you wish,” the servant bowed lower, “but at least come down so we may tend to your wounds.”

  Heloise swallowed the fear, forced it down into her belly. “After all others have been tended to, I will consider it.” Her body itched, rubbed raw where she’d wrenched against the leather covering of the seat. Her muscles ached, as did the wounds Leahlabel had healed over. But even now, with the danger truly passed, the world outside the machine’s frame still felt too big, too close. She knew that by the time the surgeons had seen to everyone, they would have forgotten her, and she knew that she would let them.

  “Did you find Brother Tone?” she asked.

  The servant bowed again, so deeply his face was level with the flat ground. “Begging the lady’s pardon, but we did not. But our pickets are still searching the boundaries, and our heralds still name the dead.”

  Her people ate in silence, their faces masks of fatigue and shock. None spoke of Sald, just over the rise in the Red Lords’ camp. Even her father did little more than pass by her, reaching out to touch her foot, before snatching a few bites of bread and a swig from a wine flask then cur
ling on his side in the grass. Onas and Xilyka ate from the fine table, laid out with fruit, cheese, and a whole roast fish, but only because it kept them close to her.

  Onas brought her a handful of grapes and a heel of bread smothered in oil, and Heloise ate these, as well as accepting a swig from a waterskin before hanging in her straps. Heloise could see the question in his eyes, met them with as hard a stare as she could muster. Now was no time for him to press his idiot suit. He held her gaze for a moment, then turned away, anger flashing in his eyes. Heloise was simply glad to have him gone.

  She knew she should call a counsel, should discuss what was to be done. But she saw Leahlabel drowsing on Giorgi’s shoulder, Wolfun slumped against the stump of a tree that had been felled to build the tower that still smoked against Lyse’s battered walls. No, she thought. Later. For now, let them rest.

  She wasn’t sure when she had fallen asleep, only that she came awake suddenly in the night, roused by the tramping of feet, of shouts and the cracking of branches, the creaking of wheels. She fumbled a piece of seethestone from the bag, slamming it into the chute, squirting water after and waiting for what seemed an eternity before the engine roared into life. It was then she realized that she heard no clashing of metal, and that the shouts of alarm were not the screams of the wounded or dying. There was no fighting yet.

  She blinked into the darkness, lit now by lanterns and flickering torches. Down the road to the ruins of Lyse the looting was still going on, the lanterns bobbing like fireflies, and the Red Lords’ camp beyond, lit by so many campfires it was as if a pocket of day had been preserved.

  All around her, people were converging on her tiny camp.

  A column of villagers, almost all of them men grown, carried improvised weapons over their shoulders, farming implements or smithing tools. They looked sleepless, hollow-eyed, and hungry. A few warriors marched with them, men in boiled leather, with thin blades, wearing packs on their backs and riding calm horses, their hides crisscrossed with scars.

  Beside them was a wagon train of the Traveling People, the canvas showing the sigil of a thicket of thorn bushes. The Mothers walked out front, and behind them came a cloud of their men, short and strong, girded with the pair of silver-hooked knives that Heloise had come to know so well.

  Both columns halted as Heloise moved the machine forward. Leahlabel and Florea ran to the Mothers of the newly arrived band, chattering in their own language and pointing at the ruined town.

  The newly arrived Mothers looked at Heloise with dawning smiles, but the men at the head of the villager column knelt. “Palantine,” the one in front said, “deliverance from hell. Bless us, your servants.”

  Heloise’s stomach sank, and she could hear her father’s sharp intake of breath, but the truth was that she was grateful. A man who knelt and called her Palantine wouldn’t be likely to try to kill her or those she loved.

  “I am Heloise Factor,” she said, deliberately omitting the saintly title.

  “You are Heloise the Armored Saint,” the man said, “who turns back the tide, who delivers the wretched from misfortune, who will save us all.”

  Heloise opened her mouth to refuse, but Barnard interrupted her. “She is, and I assume the Emperor has called you to her banner.”

  “He has,” the man said. “I am Ernst, of the Vold. The men grown of all the villages of the coast have come with me. Seal’s Rock and the Shipbreakers, the Iron Bay and Fire Point and Smayd, and a dozen other settlements. We have heard the Order has been thrown off and the true faith proclaimed, that you march to free the Emperor from the fetters of His false servants. We have come to add our arms to your holy cause.”

  Heloise caught her breath. She had never thought of herself on a mission to free the Emperor from the Order’s influence. To punish them, surely, and to free the world from their yoke. But the Order had always been part of the Emperor, and He of them. He was divine and they were mortal, and that distinction had been the difference between the holiness of the Throne and the evil of its servants. But the story had changed as it traveled. She remembered how rumors spread through the village, a secret whispered in one girl’s ear had become a totally different story by the time it was revealed by another. It was the same thing here. Her immediate thought was to correct Ernst, but she looked out over the column of villagers, at the fire in their eyes and the weapons on their shoulders.

  The Traveling Mother stepped forward now, and while she did not bow, her face was lit as she addressed Heloise. “The Great Wheel has turned us unto you, Heloise Factor, and it would have us travel the road together for a time. Word has reached us of one who has gathered travelers to her bosom, who would see them travel where and how they will, who will keep the Order’s hands from our purses, who will restore the free and open road. I am Mother Andrasaia of the Brock band of the Traveling People. We are careful of when we fight, but we will fight for this.”

  The first of the Red Lords’ pickets arrived then, Steven at their head, galloping on unarmored horses. The men hadn’t even had the time to don their armor, wearing only their red tabards for protection, swords naked in their hands. “Heloise!” Steven called to her. “What is going on?”

  And suddenly, Heloise knew. The truth was that she hadn’t believed she would survive Lyse, and so had made no plans for what to do beyond holding the walls.

  But now, she felt the weight of expectation from her own villagers gathered behind her, Samson and Barnard at her side. Heloise met Ernst’s eyes, then Andrasaia’s. No, she hadn’t thought of what to do next, but they clearly had.

  She nodded before turning to the First Sword. “I have been thinking of your offer, that we might march alongside you when you progress to the capital. After some consideration, I have decided to accept.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I set out to write The Armored Saint as a test of my ability to push beyond the limits of my subgenre, and to prove to myself, and all of you, that I was a Writer with a capital W. The book sold out its print run and went into its second printing within its first week of publication. No book is ever perfectly reviewed, but The Armored Saint has come as close to a uniformly positive reception as any book I’ve ever written.

  Jews have a Hebrew word we use to express boundless gratitude, דַּיֵּנוּ or, dayenu. It means “it would have been enough,” and we sing it with joy every Passover. I sing it now to everyone involved in this project—if Tor had agreed to take the book on, but it hadn’t met with such a great reception, it would have been enough. If you had loved it, but it hadn’t sold out its print run in the first week, dayenu.

  This is all a very fancy way to say thank you. If you’re holding this book in your hand, that means you’re back for the next round, and that The Armored Saint, such an important book to me, meant something to you, too. I have said before that I am no Emily Dickinson. I write to communicate. Without readers, I cannot be a writer. It is to you, most of all, that I give thanks.

  While I can’t thank every reader by name, there are some who I can. Thanks to Irene Gallo for backing my play and taking a risk on a writer stepping outside his comfort zone. Thanks to my editor, Lee Harris, who helped whip the book into its current shape. Thanks also to my agent, Joshua Bilmes, for detailed and probing editorial work. To Justin Landon, who, while no longer my editor, provided a critical sanity check at the eleventh hour. To my incredible cover artist, Tommy Arnold, for bringing Heloise to life and readers, stunned by his gorgeous work, into my fold. To Katharine Duckett and Mordicai Knode, who are largely responsible for whipping up the enthusiasm that has surrounded this series. And to fantasy illustrator Greg Manchess, who has been a constant friend in a sometimes unfriendly city, a calm voice, a gentle hand on my shoulder. Greg is, as anyone who has met him knows, one of the kindest men alive.

  Heloise has a tough journey ahead of her, and trials and triumphs yet to unfold. She’s a brave young woman, and if you’re reading this, then odds are that you love her as much as I do. We owe it to her
to bear witness.

  ALSO BY MYKE COLE

  THE SACRED THRONE TRILOGY

  The Armored Saint

  THE REAWAKENING TRILOGY

  Gemini Cell

  Javelin Rain

  Siege Line

  SHADOW OPS TRILOGY

  Control Point

  Fortress Frontier

  Breach Zone

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MYKE COLE is a devoted comic fan and voracious fantasy reader who never misses his weekly game night. His fandoms range from Star Wars to military history. He’s a former kendo champion and heavy-weapons fighter in the Society for Creative Anachronism. At the D&D table, he always plays paladins. After a career hunting people in the military, police, and intelligence services, Myke put these skills to good use on CBS’s hit show Hunted. Author of the Shadow Ops series and the Sacred Throne trilogy, which began with The Armored Saint, Myke lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  Visit him online at mykecole.com, or sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. The Armored Girl

  2. Rout and Succor

  3. Kipti

  4. To Lose, To Lead

  5. Stanching the Wound

  6. Deliberations

  7. Turned Out

  8. The Walls

  9. Rabbit in the Snare