by Morgan Rice
“I like the sound of that,” Sophia said with a smile. A place for them to sit together. Potentially a place for them to do more than just sit. Sophia hadn’t felt this way with anyone before. “Just so long as you know the way.”
“I do.”
They kept going along the close-walled stretches of the formal maze. It was comforting to know that he knew the way out of there, but even so, she found herself caught up in memories: of running along narrow corridors, running, hiding, hoping that they wouldn’t be found. Of flames, licking at the edges of things so that she could feel the heat and taste the bitterness of the smoke. Telling her sister to stay quiet, because the least sound could—
“Sophia?” Sebastian said in a gentle tone.
Sophia came back to herself, looking over at him and putting her arms around him. “Sorry. I wasn’t there for a moment.”
“Are you all right?” Sebastian asked. “If you aren’t well, maybe I can persuade my mother that it’s okay for you not to come to dinner.”
Sophia could see that wasn’t really an option though. What the dowager wanted, it seemed, the dowager got.
“No, it’s all right,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to make things difficult with your mother.”
And yet, she had a sinking feeling that things with his mother were about to get very difficult indeed.
***
Sophia stood with Sebastian outside the doors to a small dining room, waiting for a servant to announce them. She tried as hard as she could not to let her nerves show, but the trembling of her hand in his must have given it away.
“It’s all right,” Sebastian said. “My mother isn’t a monster.”
That was easier for him to say than for her to believe. The dowager had ruled the kingdom singlehandedly since her husband’s death, managing not to be overwhelmed by the Assembly of Nobles or the Church of the Masked Goddess. She’d stood through plots and economic troubles, wars overseas and threats of rebellion in the Near Colonies. Faced with her, Sophia felt certain that her deception would be unmasked in an instant.
“Prince Sebastian and Sophia of Meinhalt!” a servant announced, opening the door to a dining chamber that seemed quite small by the standards of the palace. That was to say that it was smaller than an entire building elsewhere.
There was a table there, and there were perhaps half a dozen other people seated around it, all dressed in a kind of court finery that was nevertheless a step less formal than it might have been for an official banquet. Sophia recognized Prince Rupert, but none of the others.
She quickly found herself caught in a bewildering round of introductions, obviously designed to put her at her ease, but which mostly seemed to impress on her just how out of her depth she was.
A woman in a silver gray veil was revealed as Justina, the Highest Priestess of the Masked Goddess. A man with mutton chop sideburns and graying hair turned out to be an admiral. The others were a baronet, a Shire governor, and the governor’s wife. There seemed to be no particular reason for this collection of guests other than it being what the dowager wanted. Perhaps these were friends from her youth, or people in her favor who happened to be visiting.
The only thing that made Sophia more nervous was when the dowager herself walked in. Dowager Queen Mary of the House of Flamberg was not a tall woman, and age had left her gray in both hair and pallor, but there was an iron hardness to her posture that said nothing would shake her. She wore mourning black, as she had since her husband’s death. She stood at the head of the table, gesturing to the others there.
“Please be seated,” she said.
Sophia did so, hoping that the presence of the others might allow her to hide a little, just one more guest among all the others there. Yet, as the servants started to bring pigeon and grouse, Sophia felt those steely eyes upon her.
“Sebastian, you must introduce me to your guest, dear.”
“Certainly, Mother. This is Sophia of Meinhalt. Sophia, this is my mother, Mary of Flamberg.”
“Your Majesty,” Sophia managed, bobbing in place as best she could.
“Ah, Meinhalt,” the Dowager said. “Such a sad affair. Tell me, girl, what is your opinion of the wars that beset the continent?”
Sophia could see enough of her thoughts to know that this was a test, but not enough to know what the answer ought to be. In the end, she grabbed her answer from Sebastian’s thoughts, hoping that he would know his mother well enough for it to be a good choice.
“My worry is that they won’t stay there,” Sophia said.
“A concern I’m sure we all share,” the dowager replied. Sophia couldn’t tell if she’d passed the older woman’s test or not. “Although it seems that my son is grateful that at least some things have come over the Knife-Water. You must tell us about yourself.”
Sophia did her best, trying to disguise lack of knowledge as modesty or reticence. “I came over before the city fell, Your Majesty. I think I was quite lucky in that.”
“The Goddess gives her gifts,” the High Priestess murmured.
“Indeed,” the dowager said. “Although I seem to recall you saying that she gives us hard gifts as well as pleasant ones sometimes, Justina.”
More questions followed. Had she enjoyed skating on the river in winter there? What did she think of the different sides of the war? Sophia did her best, but there was only so much her talent could help her, and only so much she knew about Meinhalt. She should have spent more time reading about it in the library. In the end, she did the only thing she could, and sought for a distraction.
“Admiral, I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to try to keep track of an entire navy’s movements. How do you manage it all?”
“Maps, my dear,” he said. “Mostly maps.”
He clearly intended it as a joke, so Sophia laughed along with him. He started to go off into a discussion of the various methods of combining nautical charts. Prince Rupert interrupted, claiming that no one could possibly want to know about that, and started to talk about hunting instead. Sophia didn’t mind, so long as she could keep the discussion away from her.
The eyes of the others weren’t on her, for the most part, but there were exceptions. The High Priestess glanced at her from time to time with an odd look Sophia didn’t dare try to read her to interpret. Sebastian seemed to be looking at her whenever Sophia looked over at him, his expression soft with love, or hopeful, or wanting to make sure that she was all right. Rupert glanced at her more than once with a hungry look that said what had happened earlier between them wasn’t done. That was enough to make Sophia want to cling close to Sebastian and not let him go.
And the dowager considered her evenly, as if trying to make sense of Sophia or stare into her heart. There was something unchanging, certainly unblinking, about that gaze. That worried her more than the rest of it put together. She felt like a specimen kept under glass for examination, unable to keep anything hidden. Right then, she felt as though she was an imposter, and every glance, every word out of place, only made her feel it more. How long could she keep up this deception?
Somehow, she managed to make it through the dinner, exchanging polite conversation with the others while they ate what seemed like an entire feast’s worth of food. Sophia ate sparingly, and when the time came to leave, she was only too grateful to be allowed to stand, ready to go.
Of course, there were still goodbyes to be said, and one by one, Sophia found herself taking the hands of the other guests, murmuring farewells and comments about how much she had enjoyed the evening. Even Rupert’s touch didn’t linger more than a second or so longer than it should have.
The dowager smiled as Sophia offered a curtsey, taking her hand instead.
“It is good to see that my son has found such a pleasant, intelligent girl to spend time with,” she said, and Sophia would have been happy with the compliment in any other circumstances. As it was, she had to force herself to smile back and murmur what an honor it was, because of the thoughts she
could sense behind the words.
I will find out who this girl is. A match for my son must be suitable, and girls do not appear from thin air.
Sophia had to fight the urge to run from the room. She was grateful when Sebastian took her arm, leading her from it.
“That went better than I expected,” Sebastian said as they left. “I think my mother likes you.”
Sophia smiled back. “I hope so.”
She hoped it, but she didn’t believe it. She could feel her plans unraveling beneath her, pulling apart under the weight of the dowager’s suspicion. Right then, a part of Sophia wanted nothing more than to run and not come back.
No. She couldn’t just walk away from all this. Not now, not after everything she’d been through, after she’d worked so hard to get to this point, taken so many risks.
And after she fell in love with Sebastian.
As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t just run.
Then she realized in a flash what she needed to do: she needed to speak to her sister. Kate was the practical one. Kate would have a plan, and probably an entire way out of this mess.
She would venture out into the city streets, and do whatever she had to do to find her.
Kate, she sent. I’m coming.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kate could feel the excitement building in her as she walked with Will toward the outskirts of Ashton. There, the houses gave way to more open spaces, and Kate could see the greenery of the Ridings beyond, flat and open and free.
One day, she would head out into that open space, but not this morning. This morning, Kate was more interested in the spot on the edge of the city where the gray and blue flags of Will’s regiment sat.
“Are you sure that you want to go see my company?” Will asked. He seemed surprised by the thought that Kate would find any of it interesting. “There are a hundred other things we could do today.”
Kate caught glimpses of them in his thoughts. They could go to the theater or walk in one of the green spaces near the city. They could go and find food together in one of the taverns or wander up to a space where Will knew a fiddler would be playing and people would be dancing. All of that sounded good, but it wasn’t what Kate wanted.
“I want to see what it’s like,” Kate said. “How am I supposed to make the best weapons if I don’t know anything about the kind of people who are going to be using them?”
It was a good argument, but it wasn’t the whole truth. The truth was that there was just something about the thought of one of the free companies being there that made Kate tingle with curiosity. These were men who got to travel the world, fighting enemies and visiting exotic places. She wanted to know all about it. She wanted to see it for herself.
Even so, Will seemed a bit nervous as they got closer, and Kate could see that he was worried about what might happen when he got there, and how the other members of his regiment might react to Kate. Kate was determined not to let that affect her. She wanted this.
They finally reached the space where the regiment was camped, tents spread out in a neat square for those members of it who didn’t have families in the city to take them in, or who couldn’t be trusted to come back if they left. Kate guessed that a part of it was also to keep the soldiers on the edge of the city where they couldn’t do much damage, too.
There were men there, training and working, sitting around in the heat of the day or gambling among themselves. Kate saw raw recruits without so much as uniforms working on staying in formation while a sergeant yelled orders at them. There were more experienced men working on sword fighting and archery, musket drills and wrestling.
There was an edge to it, as well. Kate found herself picking up on concerns about the possibility of war, men training harder because they wanted to be ready in case violence came. Two men sparring with blunted steels seemed to be leaving bruises on one another with the violence of their efforts.
“I know it’s not much,” Will said, “and it’s all a bit rough at the moment, but—”
“It’s perfect,” Kate said.
She started to walk the camp, gravitating to the supply tent where swords and pikes, crossbows and blunderbusses stood in neat stacks. Molds for shot stood next to sharpening stones for knives and halberds. A shaven-headed quartermaster looked at her with suspicion until he saw that Will was with her, then let her move among the weapons, admiring the work.
“Looking for flaws in the blades?” he asked, although it was obvious that he didn’t believe Kate would have a clue where to start.
“Well, the edges on those knives could use some work,” Kate said, “and I think that axe has picked up some warps in the edge while it was hardening.”
Now the quartermaster looked at her with a level of surprise that Kate found a little insulting.
“Kate has been learning from my father while I’ve been gone,” Will said.
“Why shouldn’t I know about swords?” Kate demanded.
She kept walking around the camp, taking in everything that was going on there, from the eagerness of the recruits as they worked to learn the skills of soldiering to the careful, energy-saving movements of the veterans.
In that moment, Kate knew that this was even closer to what she wanted than life at the forge was. In the forge, she was getting to make weapons and learn about them, but these men got to use them. They had lives where they traveled and fought, worked together and got away from the mundanity of the city.
More than that, if there was any path that might let Kate move closer to vengeance, this was the one.
“Would you like to spar?” Kate asked Will, picking up two of the wooden practice blades. They were heavier than the one she’d designed, the oak handles rough in her hand.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
In answer, Kate tossed one to him. Will caught it, bringing it up into a guard position. Kate copied him. He struck at her slowly, and she deflected it, thrusting back at him. They went back and forth, and Kate felt as though she was catching the rhythm of it, deflecting those blows that came too close to her, while swinging her own strokes back for Will to parry. The swords were heavy, but Kate managed to keep hers in the way of the attacks that came toward her.
“Trying to get her ready to join the company, Will?” an older man called over. “Or just trying to impress her?”
Kate stepped back, wondering what it would be like. She and Will could go around together, fighting alongside one another, traveling to places Kate had barely heard about.
“Maybe I want to join,” Kate said, putting her fists on her hips.
The veteran laughed as if that were the best joke he’d heard all day.
“You want to join? Oh, that’s a good one. You should have brought her before this, Will. We can always use a good laugh.”
Kate could feel her hand tightening around the hilt of her wooden sword.
“I’m serious,” she snapped.
“Hear that, lads?” the veteran called out, and still, it seemed as though he was repeating a good joke he’d heard. “She’s serious. She wants to join Lord Cranston’s men!”
That got more laughs from around the camp, and now a rough circle of men started to form around Kate and Will. They’d obviously decided that there was entertainment to be had here.
Kate could sense just how worried Will was by all of it. He wanted to walk away right then. He wanted to get Kate back to the forge before anything else could happen. Kate stood there instead, facing up to them.
“Why shouldn’t I join you?” Kate demanded. “If you’re all so worried that war might be coming, aren’t you going to need everyone you can get?”
“Every man we can get,” the veteran said. “The regiments are no place for girls. Especially not ones barely old enough to be away from their mothers.”
Kate could feel her expression hardening as her anger rose. “Shut your mouth. You know nothing about my mother.”
She saw the veteran shrug. “Oh, are you going to make me
? Dancing around with your wooden sword as if you have a clue what you’re doing with it? Will was being soft with you, girl. Do you want to know what a real fight feels like?”
Kate could feel herself getting angry now. “I know what a fight feels like.”
That got another laugh from the assembled men, and there was a kind of cruelty behind it. Kate caught thoughts of battles, of moments when men had come at them with blades. They weren’t taking her seriously. Even Will looked more as though he wanted to get Kate out of there than like he wanted to support her.
“I don’t think you do,” the veteran said. He gestured toward one of the younger recruits, a boy who had more fat than muscle, but even so was bigger than Kate. “You, get out there with a practice blade. Let’s show the little girl why she isn’t cut out for war.”
The boy stepped forward, looking nervous as he took a wooden sword. Even so, he stood out in front of Kate, adjusting his grip as he raised his weapon, as if trying to remember what he was doing.
“This isn’t a good idea,” Will said. “Why don’t we just—”
“You brought her here,” the veteran snapped. “Now remember where you stand in this company and get out of the way. If the girl wants to fight, she can fight.”
Kate reached out to put a hand on Will’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Will.”
She stepped out to face up to her opponent, raising her weapon the way she had when training with Will. The men around her laughed, or joked to one another, or made bets on exactly how long she would last.
“The fight keeps going until one of you gives in,” the veteran said. “You want to be one of us, girl? You have to show us that you’re not weak. Begin!”
Her powers gave her plenty of warning of the first couple of attacks, letting her dodge back out of range so that they cut through the air. But her powers weren’t a perfect guide, and Kate still had to rely on her reflexes and her reactions, parrying on instinct, trying to get her sword in the way.
When she did, the impact jarred down her arm. The recruit she was facing might have weight to lose, but he still hit with all the power that his size gave him. Kate’s sword shivered with each blow, and she knew that this boy wanted to hurt her then. He wanted to prove to the men there that he was one of them; that he had the same toughness, the same ruthlessness. Kate gave way under the attacks.
