Marcus looked up. “Sir. You should talk to the queen. Whatever happened between you, you can come to some kind of compromise. The army needs you.”
“No, Marcus. The Borelgai and the others would never accept that. Dorsay is right; there can never be peace while I sit in the First Consul’s chair.” He spread his hands. “I’m sure Mieran County has missed my guiding hand. The servants have no doubt let the vegetable garden go to ruin in my absence. There will be plenty for me to do.”
“And you’re all right with that?” Marcus said. “What about Elysium?”
There was a long silence. Janus stared, gray eyes focused on something far beyond the wall of the shed. He smiled, ever so slightly.
“Do you believe in God, Marcus?”
“Excuse me?” Marcus said.
“God. From the Wisdoms and so on. Heaven and the hells.”
“I suppose so.” Marcus hesitated. “He never seems as direct as He was in the Wisdoms, though. I’ve never believed in trusting in faith alone to get me out of a tight spot.”
“Very wise,” Janus said. “Would it surprise you if I said there was a time when I believed in God?”
“I think nothing about you would surprise me, sir.”
“It was the notion that there was a plan for the world. I could see it so clearly, see my part in it. You have no idea how wonderful that is, to know your exact position in the grand design, to have the course of your life spread out in front of you like a map.” Janus looked into Marcus’ eyes for a moment, then turned away. “Then it all went wrong, and I was off the map. Everything I’ve done since then has been trying to find a way back.”
Marcus scratched his beard. “Maybe you’re better off. Having someone else plan out your life for you doesn’t sound so appealing to me.”
Janus laughed again.
Marcus shot him a suspicious look. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Janus said. “Sometimes you’re smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
“Thank you, sir. I think.”
“Go and find Raesinia. She’s waiting for you.”
“Yes, sir.” Marcus stood up.
“And come visit me in Mieran County,” Janus said. “Especially in the fall. The fresh apples are extraordinary.”
“I will, sir.” Marcus paused in the doorway. “Thank you.”
Janus smiled, just for a moment, and turned back to his letter.
—
RAESINIA
The Grand Army of Vordan was going home.
The legal wrangling would take years, of course, or possibly longer, depending on how things went in the Deputies-General. But the basic requirements of the peace were not far from what Dorsay had first proposed at the conference, back at the beginning of summer. Borel and its allies would recognize Raesinia as the legitimate Queen of Vordan, the Deputies-General as the ruling body, with territorial boundaries the same as they’d been before the war. Duke Orlanko would be treated as a criminal and handed over to Vordanai authorities, if he was ever captured. And Count Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran would retire as a hero, returning home to Mieran County for a well-deserved rest.
Some among the deputies would be grateful for the war’s end. Others would no doubt want to push for more—changes to the treaty that had ended the War of the Princes, for example, which had forbidden Vordan from constructing a deepwater navy. Murnsk’s status was uncertain, and there was talk of a revolution brewing in Mohkba. There would also be the matter of compensation from Hamvelt, and the settlement of the scrip and bonds the Directory had issued so freely. Some promises would have to be kept, and others broken. That, Raesinia thought, was statecraft in a nutshell.
But for the moment what mattered was that the army was marching south. A vast blue column, reunited south of Polkhaiz, and once again well supplied and well fed. As it moved by easy stages, the weather changed, the unnatural cold giving way to the pleasant days of late spring. The land would take longer to recover, however—everywhere they went, they passed fields full of dead, rotting crops, smothered under the blanket of unseasonable snow. One of Raesinia’s first tasks when they reached Talbonn was going to be arranging shipments of staples to the devastated areas, which would both buy some goodwill with the people there and give Vordanai diplomats extra ammunition at the negotiating table.
Until then, however, she once again found herself with very little to do. She’d happily pardoned Morwen Kaanos, who’d written her a gruff but sincere apology. Giforte came up with lists, units to visit and awards to distribute. Letters to sign to widowed wives and bereaved husbands, mourning parents and orphaned children. There would be more of that, a great deal more, when they reached Vordan. Raesinia felt Sothe’s absence constantly, like an amputated limb. Come back soon. Please.
Marcus, of course, was always busy, coordinating the march and the reorganization of the more battered parts of the army. She saw him most nights for dinner, though, in the new tent her entourage had put together by cannibalizing several smaller ones. It lacked the beauty of the pavilion she’d left behind north of Isket, but there was a certain earnestness to its neatly stitched improvisations that made Raesinia smile.
Janus was already gone. They’d spoken only briefly.
“When you’re finished,” he’d said, after she’d explained her plan, “come and see me.”
She still wasn’t sure what to think about that. He’d departed in a carriage, with a mounted escort from the Girls’ Own. It was a long drive to Mieran County, even now that the roads had dried.
We can cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, another bridge was before her, and she was determined to deal with it, however much it made her heart thump and her stomach burn with acid.
Marcus came in, hanging his coat—brand-new, the buttons still gleaming—on the rack by the door. Servants ghosted over, pulling out his chair and offering him wine when he sat. Raesinia was on the other side of the table, going through another stack of Giforte’s letters to those who’d lost family.
“A good day?” she said without looking up.
“More or less.” Marcus yawned. “Two or three more days to Tsivny. Another few weeks to Talbonn. We’ll be back in Vordan well before the end of summer.”
“Good.” Raesinia signed her name and pushed the letters aside. “Still no word from Ihernglass?”
“No,” Marcus said. “Our communication with the Murnskai is still sketchy, though. Whaler says he’s trying all the channels he knows. Nobody seems to be able to get any messengers to Elysium, but there’s still a lot of northern tribes wandering around in that area. It may be a while before we hear anything.”
“He could be alive,” Raesinia said.
“He could be,” Marcus agreed. “I had to stop Captain Cyte from taking a company to go and look for him. I told her it might not help the peace process.”
Raesinia sighed. “Poor girl.”
“I’m going to make her a colonel,” Marcus said. “That might keep her busy enough to take her mind off it.”
“I doubt it,” Raesinia said.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Damn, damn, damn. This was not how she’d envisioned things going.
“What’s for dinner?” Marcus said, unsubtle as always. “I don’t think I’m ever going to take decent food for granted again.”
Do it, Raesinia told herself. Just do it. Or it’ll never get done.
“B-before that,” she managed, “I need to talk to you about something.” At her discreet signal, the waiting servants filed out through the tent flap. The last thing I need is an audience.
“Oh?” Marcus said. “Is something wrong?”
“When we get back to Vordan . . .” She paused, feeling for a moment as she had standing on the lip of the Prince’s Tower, about to step off into empty space. The soles of her feet tingled.
“Wh
en we get back to Vordan,” Marcus prompted.
“When we get back to Vordan,” Raesinia said, in a rush, “I think that you and I should get married.”
There was another, even more uncomfortable silence. The wineglass, nearly empty, dropped from Marcus’ fingers and rolled across the table, leaving a purple trail on the tablecloth. His eyes had gone as wide as if Raesinia had just shot him in the chest.
“Married?” he said after a long while. His voice was tiny.
Raesinia nodded eagerly. “I’ve been thinking about what happens now. We talked a little bit about it, remember? I can’t stay queen for too long, or it’ll become obvious that I’m not getting older. Before that happens, I want to get everything well established, so there’s as little uncertainty as possible. That means Vordan needs a king whom everyone already knows and respects. And the succession—”
“The succession,” Marcus said, eyes blank.
“I don’t think it’s possible for me to have children,” Raesinia said. “In my current state, I mean. So we’ll have to discreetly acquire one and present it as ours, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. The important thing is that there will be continuity. The country needs a stable monarchy more than ever, to balance the hot-heads in the Deputies-General.”
“You want me,” Marcus said, “to be King of Vordan.”
“Yes.” Raesinia grinned. This is going better than I expected. She’d spent a great deal of time thinking about his possible reactions. “I know you worry that you’re not a noble, but honestly, it isn’t going to make a difference. You’re a hero. Even if I weren’t marrying you, I’d have to make you at least a count for what you’ve done, and maybe a duke.” She put on a wicked smile. “There’s a thought. Now that the Last Duke is officially a traitor, his land is forfeit to the Crown. How would you like to be Duke Orlanko?”
“No,” Marcus said.
“I don’t blame you,” Raesinia said. “I’m sure we can find something more—”
“I mean no to all of it,” Marcus said. “I won’t do it.”
Raesinia blinked. She stared at Marcus, and to her astonishment found that there were tears in his eyes.
“Why?” she said, all the nervousness she’d tried to banish returning in a rush.
“It’s—” Marcus gritted his teeth. “I don’t . . .”
“Is it me?” Raesinia took a deep breath. “If the thought of being married to me is objectionable, it doesn’t have to be for long. And we don’t actually have to . . . you know.” Raesinia found her own tears threatening, and angrily wiped them away. “I need your help, Marcus.”
“No!” Marcus said, shooting to his feet. “It’s not that. I mean, that’s the whole problem.”
“What is?”
“You need my help. You want me to do this because I fit into your plan to do what’s best for Vordan, right?”
“I’m the queen,” Raesinia said. “I have to think of what’s best for Vordan.”
“Could you please stop being the queen for one damned minute?” Marcus roared.
Raesinia looked up at him, temporarily at a loss for words. A blush rapidly spread across his cheeks, and he scratched his beard.
“Sorry,” he said. “But every time I feel like I’ve gotten a little closer to you, you treat me like a . . . a tool. Just another piece for you to move on the game board. Is that really the only way you can think?” He shook his head. “When we were hiding from the Directory, and you were incognito—”
“I was happy,” Raesinia said quietly.
“I thought . . .” Marcus looked away. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m being foolish.”
“You’re not foolish.” Raesinia swallowed. “Suppose I weren’t the queen. What would you say?”
“Am I still Column-General of the Grand Army?”
“Only if you want to be.”
Marcus closed his eyes. “Then I’d say I think I fell in love with you somewhere along the way. With Raesinia Orboan, not the Queen of Vordan. And I’d very much like to know . . .” He broke off, blush deepening. “How you feel, I suppose.”
“I . . .” Raesinia’s tongue felt as thick and dry as leather, and her heart hammered in her chest. It was one thing to say you wanted to marry someone for perfectly logical and defensible reasons, but this was quite another. “I think,” she said very carefully, “that I may have fallen in love with you, too.”
“Oh.” Marcus’ eyes had gone wide again. “Really?”
“Really.” Raesinia took a deep breath. “But you know that I can’t just stop being the queen. I can’t stop thinking about politics forever.”
“It doesn’t have to be forever,” Marcus said, smiling a little. “Just every once in a while.”
The breath went out of her in a whoosh. “Then you will do it?”
He nodded, very slowly, as though worried the world might shatter if he moved too fast. “But not because the queen is asking me to.”
“No.” Raesinia closed her eyes. “Thank you.”
When she opened them again, he was standing there, waiting. Raesinia’s heart was still beating fast, but it was a different kind of feeling, a not entirely unpleasant one. She got to her feet and straightened up, the top of her head coming up just past his chin.
“Column-General,” she said, “would it irretrievably compromise the gravity of your office if I were to kiss you?”
“No,” Marcus said. “But would it be an offense against the dignity of the queen?”
“Probably,” Raesinia said. “But the hell with it.”
They kissed. At one point Raesinia was pretty sure her heart stopped, but she didn’t think Marcus noticed.
—
WINTER
Winter felt crushed grass against her cheek.
She opened her eyes. She was lying on her side with something hard pressed against her back. Around her was a grassy field, dead and brown but free of snow, with a white-covered pine forest beyond it and a clear blue sky overhead.
Bobby. She wasn’t sure how much of what she remembered had actually happened. The mountains unrolling in front of me, like a map. Clouds. And . . . She didn’t know what had happened next.
She sat up, and both her head and her arm began throbbing at once. Winter closed her eyes for a moment and put her good hand to her forehead until the waves of pain subsided. When blood stopped pounding in her ears, she looked around again, and her breath caught in her throat.
“Bobby!”
It was Bobby that Winter had been propped against. She sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs and her head lowered. Her glorious crystal wings were curled in, too, encircling her in an interlocking web of transparent feathers. She was naked, her skin the perfect, smooth white of marble, shot through with twisting veins of gray. Her many wounds, captured like scars as her body healed in this strange new way, were now erased, subsumed into the whole.
A wind whipped across the clearing, and the grass rustled. There was no other sound.
“Bobby, can you hear me?” Winter said.
Hesitantly, she reached out and touched the crystal, and found it as hard and unyielding as rock. Shifting around behind Bobby, she could see the knobs of her spine standing out from her bent back, rendered in stone as though by a master sculptor. The skin, when Winter touched it, felt like marble in truth, cold and solid.
No. Winter put a hand on Bobby’s shoulder and shook her, or tried to. It was like trying to shake a mountain. No, no, no. She’ll be okay. She’s always been okay.
The space she stood in was perfectly circular. For a radius of five or six yards around Bobby, the thin snow had melted entirely, leaving the clearing of dead grass. Beyond the forest, she could see the blued shapes of mountains, but they looked a long way off. Where the hell are we? How long were we flying?
“Bobby, please,”
Winter said. “Get up. You have to get up.”
The statue made no response. Winter reached out with Infernivore, trying to feel for Bobby’s demon, though she’d never managed that before. She reached in to the statue, searching for something her demon could get ahold of, and found only the emptiness of lifeless stone.
“No, no, no,” Winter said. She slammed her good hand against Bobby’s shoulder, hard enough to bruise. “Not you, too. Get up! You have to . . . to . . .” Her eyes were filling with tears, and her hand throbbed. “Please. One more time? I promise, I’ll never let you hurt yourself to save me again. Just . . .” Her knees trembled, and she sank against Bobby’s cold, hard back. “Don’t leave me here. Please.”
Infernivore shifted inside her. For a wild moment Winter thought it had picked up some trace of Bobby, but the demon’s attention was elsewhere. The cold wind shifted against her cheek, turning hot and dry, and for a moment Winter smelled the baking sand of a desert more than three thousand miles away. Flying grit stung her eyes, and she had to put an arm up to shield them.
After a few moments the wind died, and Winter looked up. A tornado of sand fell away, revealing a man in the loose, dark robes of the Desoltai. His face was covered by a metal mask, crude and plain, with two rectangular gashes for the eyes and another for the mouth.
“You,” Winter whispered. Malik-dan-Belial. The Steel Ghost. Marcus had told her of his encounters with the Khandarai in Vordan. “What are you doing here?”
“It has required some effort to find you, Winter Ihernglass,” the Ghost said, in accented Vordanai. “I apologize it took me so long. Even dust on the wind can only travel so quickly.”
“You—” Winter shook her head and looked back at Bobby. “You were part of Mother’s cult, weren’t you? Just like Feor. Please, help her. You must know something. I’ll do whatever you want—”
“She is gone,” the Steel Ghost said. His voice held surprising gentleness. “I am sorry.”
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