Queen of Fire

by Anthony Ryan

  “The Seventh Order,” Ivern said, watching with Frentis from the fringes of the gathered captains, his face a mix of confusion and suspicion. “Hiding in the Realm Guard. And where else, one wonders.”

  “Aspect Grealin gave the impression they had many guises,” Frentis said.

  “Grealin.” Ivern shook his head. “Just how many lies did they tell us, do you think?”

  “Enough to keep us safe.” Frentis straightened as Brother Lernial said something and Insha ka Forna raised a hand to beckon him over.

  “What happens on Winterfall Eve?” Banders asked the brother.

  “Varinshold.” Lernial frowned in concentration, a vein pulsing in his temple and sweat beading his brow. “Lord Al Sorna attacks Varinshold. Something … something will happen.”

  “Al Sorna’s army is in Warnsclave,” Banders said. “How could he make such an attack?”

  Lernial gave a pained grunt, arching his back and exhaling slowly, then slumping forward, features slack with exhaustion. “That’s all,” he muttered.

  “There must be more,” Banders persisted, drawing a glower from Insha ka Forna.

  “Leave him!” she said. “This … hurts him, much.”

  “You can hear Lord Vaelin’s thoughts?” Frentis asked Lernial in a gentler tone.

  The brother shook his head. “Brother Caenis only. It’s … easier that way.” He gave a wan smile. “But to wade through even the most disciplined mind is a tiring task.”

  Frentis nodded his thanks and rose from the man’s side, moving away to confer with Banders and Sollis. “Three days until Winterfall Eve,” the baron said. “Scant time for planning. I’ve had my lot fell the few trees around here for ladders and engines, but none are ready yet.”

  “Which makes the sewers our only option,” Frentis said. “We know from Darnel’s knights that Aspects Elera and Dendrish are in the Blackhold, perhaps Aspect Arlyn too. I don’t give much for their chances if the city is attacked. I can secure them if you’ll allow me.”

  “Securing a gate is more important,” Sollis said.

  “The Aspects…”

  “Are aware that the Faith occasionally requires sacrifice. We will secure a gate to allow Baron Banders’s knights into the city, then make for the Blackhold.”

  “We, brother?”

  Sollis’s pale gaze was steady, yielding no room for argument. “Brother, you have led your company well, and they are loyal to you. But your loyalty is to me. Or are you no longer willing to call yourself a brother?”

  “I will never call myself anything else,” Frentis returned, anger rising to colour his face.

  Sollis merely blinked and turned to the baron. “We’ll set out at dawn, which should enable us to approach the city under dark in three nights.” He looked at Frentis. “Choose your people and be ready.”

  They followed the Brinewash towards Varinshold, moving in single file along the bank, which was damp enough to prevent any betraying dust cloud. Frentis chose Davoka, Draker and Thirty-Four to accompany him through the sewers, provoking Arendil and Illian to loud protests at being excluded. Davoka sternly rebuked the lady for her petulance, and Banders refused to even countenance the thought of Arendil leaving his sight. “You’ll stay by me at all times,” he told his grandson. “If this goes right, the fief will have need of a new lord by the week’s end.”

  They stopped after a two-day trek, occupying a shallow dip in the ground just south of the Brinewash, Varinshold out of sight just over the horizon. Sollis’s brothers scouted the surrounding country, mostly grass and expanses of ash left by the demise of the Urlish. They returned at nightfall reporting the Volarians seemed to have abandoned patrolling. “Could be they’ve no cavalry left for such duty,” Ermund suggested. “We killed hundreds back at the Spur.”

  They settled down to rest as night set in, huddling in cloaks against the chill as fires could not be risked. Frentis sat watching the others sleep, determined to stay awake, as he had for the past two nights, fighting exhaustion with every step. At one point he had snapped awake finding himself held in the saddle by Davoka, shaking his head at her stern entreaties to rest come the night. She waits for me there, he knew with a cold certainty.

  “Will it end tomorrow, brother?” It was Illian, sitting a few feet away, swaddled in a cloak taken from a dead Volarian at the Spur. It covered her easily, leaving only the pale oval of her face peering out from the hood.

  So young, Frentis thought. So small. You would never know, as no one knew when they looked at her. Annoyed by the comparison, he looked away. “Will what end?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  “The war,” she said, shuffling closer. “Draker said it’ll all be over come the new day.” She gave a rueful smile. “Then he said he’d buy a whorehouse with his spoils.”

  “I doubt there are any left to buy, my lady.”

  “But we’ll be done? The war will end?”

  “I hope so.”

  She seemed oddly deflated by this, a flicker of her increasingly rare pout on her lips. “No more Gorin,” she murmured. “No more Davoka. Arendil will go off and rule his fief, Draker to his whorehouse, you to the Order.”

  “And you, my lady?”

  “I don’t know. I have no idea if my father lives, if his house still stands.”

  “And your mother?”

  Illian’s expression soured a little. “Father used to tell me she died when I was little. One day I heard two of the maids gossiping, seems my darling mother took off with a sea captain when I was no more than a year old. Father had every scrap of clothing she owned stripped from the house, along with every image of her. I don’t even know what she looked like.”

  “Not all are suited to parentage,” Frentis said, thinking of his own family, if they could be called that. “Whatever your father’s fate, his lands and assets are now yours by right. I feel sure the queen will see to proper restitution in due course.”

  “Restitution.” She looked around at the surrounding fields of ash, rendered silver-blue in the moonlight. “Is that even possible now? So much has been broken. Besides, I’m not sure I want to regain ownership of an empty ruin.”

  “Arendil…” Frentis began in a cautious tone, “You seem … fond of him.”

  She gave a soft sigh of embarrassed exasperation. “I am. He’s very sweet, and one day I expect Lady Ulice will find him a wife suited to fine dresses and balls and empty talk with privileged fools. I am not. Not now, if I ever was.” She wriggled in the folds of her cloak, hefting her crossbow, her hands tight on the stock. “I’m made for this. I’m made for the Order, brother.”

  He could only stare at her completely serious expression. “There are no sisters of the Sixth Order,” he said, lost for any other response.

  “Why not?”

  “There just aren’t. There never have been.”

  “Because only men fight wars?” She nodded at Davoka. “What about her? What about me?”

  He shifted uncomfortably, lowering his gaze. “The composition of the Orders is set down by the tenets of the Faith. They can’t simply be cast aside…”

  “They could if you were to vouch for me. Especially if Brother Sollis were to add his voice. Everything has changed, I’ve heard you say so yourself.”

  “This is a foolish notion, Illian…”

  “Why is it foolish?”

  “Do you want to be like me?” He leaned forward, eyes locked on hers, suddenly angered by her naïvety. “Do you have any notion of what I have done?”

  “You’re a great warrior, and the man who saved my life.”

  Seeing her mystified, wide-eyed gaze, he sighed, his anger evaporating as he slumped back. “I have killed my way across half the world to return to this Realm, and when the queen comes to claim her throne she’ll make sure I face a reckoning.”

  “For what? Winning the war?”

  He just shook his head. “I was once just like you, lost, seeking a home, begging the same favour from someone who came to hat
e himself for saying yes. And I find myself with a surfeit of hate, my lady. Approach Brother Sollis if you wish, he will say the same thing.”

  “We’ll see,” she muttered, falling into a sullen silence.

  He watched her put the crossbow aside and pluck a bolt from her quiver, working the iron-headed barb on a small whetstone. No, he conceded. No longer made for dresses and balls. “Did you know,” he said, “in the southern jungles of the Volarian Empire, there lives a beast, fully twelve feet tall and covered all over with fur, that looks just like a man on stilts?”

  She angled her head at him, raising an eyebrow. “You’re making it up.”

  “No, it’s true. I swear on the Faith. And in the oceans to the east are great sharks, as big as a whale and striped red from end to end.”

  “I’ve heard of those,” she admitted. “My tutor showed me a picture once.”

  “Well, I’ve seen them. There is more than war to find in this world, Illian. There is as much beauty as there is ugliness, as long as you have the eyes to see it.”

  She gave a small laugh. “Perhaps I’ll find a sea captain of my own one day, go looking for it.” The words were empty, he knew, the humour forced. Her mind was set on but one course.

  “I hope so too.”

  He saw her frown as she scanned his face, youthful beauty marred by concern. “You must sleep, brother. Please. I’ll watch you. If you start to get … upset, I’ll wake you.”

  There are some dreams you can’t wake from. But he was so tired now, and a battle waited no more than three hours hence. “Don’t neglect your own rest,” he told her, settling onto his side, breathing deep, then closing his eyes.

  She sits alone in a spacious chamber of marble floors and fine furnishings; it is midafternoon and a gentle breeze sways the lace curtains hanging over the arches leading to the balcony. The chamber belonged to Council-man Lorvek and is filled with artifacts bought or stolen from all corners of the world; Alpiran statuary of bronze and marble, fine paintings from the Unified Realm, exquisite ceramics from the Far West, garish war masks from the southern tribe lands. A priceless collection, the fruit of several lifetimes’ labour. It is how they persist, these select few red-clad, filling their endless days with successive obsession, for art, wealth, flesh … or murder.

  She casts a glance around Lorvek’s collection and decides to have it all destroyed the following morning. The feeding two days ago has left her invigorated but with a sour edginess. The Gifted had been foul indeed, a nondescript man of middle years with the ability to hold a person in place, frozen, immobile, but awake. He had spent over two decades wandering the empire killing women, freezing them so they could only suffer in silence as he visited all manner of torments upon their flesh. He would have been a useful recruit for the Ally, given enough time, but his mind was far too fractured to justify the effort needed. He had tried to resist her, somehow sensing the threat despite the drugs, casting his gift at her like the flailing invisible hand of an addled drunk. She would have laughed at him once, even retreated for a while to allow the drug haze to fade before returning to enjoy his impotent rage as she made it last. But she hadn’t, the stumbling wretch deserved little regard and certainly no pity, but the blood had tasted foul as she slashed his throat, fighting a reflexive gag as she forced herself to drink deep, wondering if all the death she had wrought would also taint her blood.

  She forces the memory away and slows her breathing, calming her mind, focusing her thoughts. I feel you, beloved, she tells him. I know you feel me too.

  She waits, mind open to a response, knowing he is there, but feeling only the depth of his enmity. Will you not talk to me? she implores. Are you not lonely too? And we have shared so much.

  Anger swells, reaching across the great divide to lash at her, making her wince. I fear for you, she persists. We know she lives, beloved. We know she comes to take the city, and you know what she will do when she finds you.

  The anger dims, replaced by grim acceptance and a great depth of guilt.

  Forget all the nonsense they instilled in you, she begs. All the lies they told you. The Faith is a child’s illusion, nobility a coward’s mask. They are not for such as us, my love. You felt it, when we were killing together. I know you did. We soared above them all, and we can do so again. Leave now. Run. Come back to me.

  The sensation changes, emotion fading to be replaced by an image, a darkly beautiful young woman, half her face bathed in firelight, her brow creased in confusion and regret. Her lips move but the sound is lost to her, although she knows the words with absolute clarity. I made my bargain, beloved. I cannot make another.

  I had no choice, she tells him now.

  The image fades, swirling in her mind until it transforms into a voice, hard and cold but blessedly familiar. Neither do I.

  They mustered two hours shy of dawn, gathering around Sollis as he unfurled a recently drawn map of the city, pointing to the north-east gate. “I suggest an attack in two directions, my lord,” he said to Banders. “Your knights to press a charge along Gate Lane, it’s wide enough for ten men abreast and leads directly to the harbour. If successful, you’ll cut the city in two and sow confusion in the enemy’s ranks. My brothers, Brother Frentis’s company and the Renfaelin common folk will make for the Blackhold. It’s a stout fortress and will provide a place of retreat should the day go against us.”

  Banders nodded his agreement and turned to address his assembled captains. “The odds do not favour us, as you know. But we are told Lord Vaelin comes to take this city and I intend to aid him in doing so. Tell every knight and man at arms that come the morning there will be no turning from the charge, no restraint is to be shown, and no mercy. The city stands infested, and we will cleanse it.” He glanced at Arendil, adding in a sombre tone, “Lord Darnel is not to be taken alive, regardless of any entreaties to knightly custom. He has forfeited life and knighthood long since.”

  The four of them made their way to the city on foot, heading for the northern stretch of wall where the Brinewash emerged from the city through a great sluice gate. They crawled slowly for the final half mile, Draker grunting along behind and drawing an irritated kick from Davoka. The outlaw had become much stealthier over the months but often had need of a reminder. As expected, the sluice gate was too well guarded to allow entry, even if it had been possible to navigate the frothing current that slid over the barrier in a constant rush. Instead Frentis led them into the river and followed the wall north. They wore thin clothing of light fabric, boots having been abandoned before entering the chill waters, their weapons confined to daggers and swords.

  The pipe emerged from the wall three feet above the water where the river began to arc away from the city and commence its long winding journey into the heart of the Realm. A continual stream of effluent flowed from the pipe, leaving a foul-smelling stain on the river that had Draker gagging as they swam through it. Frentis hugged the wall, eyes fixed on the parapet above, finding it empty though there was the faint murmur of Volarian voices nearby. He had discounted this exit when they escaped the city during the invasion given the ease with which archers would have picked them off as soon as they emerged. Now he gambled on its vulnerability, doubting even a soul as cautious as Blood Rose would see much threat in so exposed an entry point.

  He moved along the wall, hands exploring for holds, but finding nothing.

  “It’s too slippy, brother,” Draker whispered next to his ear, his large hand scraping moss from the stone.

  Frentis turned as Thirty-Four tapped his shoulder. The former slave patted his chest and pointed to the mouth of the pipe, then made an upward-pushing motion with both arms. Frentis took another look at the moss-covered wall and gave a reluctant nod. The splash of disturbed water would have to be risked if they were to continue.

  He and Davoka moved to either side of Thirty-Four, drawing breath then sinking under the water. Frentis took hold of the man’s slim leg and placed the foot on his shoulder, counted to three to
ensure Davoka was similarly prepared, reached out to slap her arm, and they both kicked upwards in unison, boosting Thirty-Four out of the water to clamp his hands on the rim of the pipe. He hung there for a few seconds as they scanned the wall above, waiting for any sign of discovery. Nothing. Even the murmur of voices seemed to have gone.

  Thirty-Four levered himself onto the top of the pipe and caught the coiled rope Frentis threw him, looping it over the great iron tube and tying it tight with his usual facility for knots. Draker hauled himself up first, squirming into the pipe and biting down curses at the filth now piling up in front of him. It took several anxious moments before his head finally disappeared into the pipe. Davoka followed him, grunting as she heaved herself into the opening, pushing Draker’s bulk ahead of her. Frentis gestured for Thirty-Four to follow then climbed up, casting a final glance at the walls as he undid the rope from the pipe, dragging it behind as he squirmed through.

  “Nothing beats the smell of home, eh, brother?” Draker asked as he emerged into the sewers. The big outlaw stood in the channel of rushing filth, casting his gaze right and left. “Reckon it’s this way,” he said, pointing right. “Channel loops back around towards the gate, as I recall.”

  “Lead on,” Frentis told him.

  It took over an hour of sloshing through the polluted water, and a couple of wrong turns before they came to the requisite drain. It was an iron grate twenty feet from the north gate with a narrow opening where the inner wall met the road. Frentis remembered slipping through the opening with relative ease one time, many years ago when he had run from a vengeful shop owner. Now, however, even Thirty-Four found the opening too narrow.

  “There’s a wider one on Firestone Way,” Draker recalled.

  “Too far,” Frentis said. He peered through the opening at the wasted streets beyond, finding a series of jagged silhouettes, collapsed walls, and burnt-out buildings, devoid of good cover, the sky above now a grey-blue signifying a fast-approaching sunrise. “They’ll see our approach.”