“I don’t have time to receive someone in any degree of formality,” Blanche said, a little desperately.
Tancreda was like a native guide. “No,” she said firmly. “She must be here informally. No woman would intrude on the last hours before a wedding. Let me talk to her. For me”—Tancreda’s chin thrust out—“I will marry mine in this shirt and, as you say, flowers.” She grinned. “Married!” she laughed. “My cousin is delighted and my brother is appalled.”
“Your brother now knows what you’ve been doing all that time you said you were studying,” Kaitlin said. “He’s teasing you.”
Tancreda looked first surprised, and then delighted, laughed. “He always knew? Now he has to admit it.” She swept out of the room.
“You need servants,” Kaitlin said.
Blanche laughed. “I had servants in the laundry,” she said. “I know how to give orders. I’d love to have six girls from the palace laundry. Goodness, do you think I could wash linens this morning?” She giggled, and the other girl returned her giggle.
“I never had servants,” Kaitlin admitted. “I’m still not good at it. Tancreda can help us.”
“She’s here unofficially, and she has twenty women with her!” Tancreda said. “Seamstresses! Four embroiderers. A glover!”
Blanche found herself embracing the slim young woman who was the duchess of the great city. She had muscles like Gabriel’s. Blanche, no weakling, knew muscles.
“Call me Giselle,” the duchess said. She had the hard hands of a man. She threw herself into a chair like a man, too, and despite her kirtle and simple, elegant overdress edged in fur and pearls, she wore a sword and a dagger at her hips. “When I understood you were to be wed in the midst of this...” She shrugged and smiled. “My husband did the same to me. He insisted we wed immediately.”
Blanche sat, suddenly unafraid of her slightly ragged shift. “Why, Excellency? If I may ask?”
Giselle frowned. “He’s much older than I, and he said that he’d be dead soon enough.” She shrugged. “There were other reasons. But that was the true one.” Giselle stretched out her legs like a man and began to play with her dagger. “I assume that your man feels the same?”
“I think he feels that this is the last moment before the...campaign commences,” she said.
The duchess nodded. “It seems an odd choice,” she said. “Unless, pardon my bluntness, you are pregnant, and he does not expect to survive the campaign.”
The two of them locked eyes.
Blanche framed the words, That is none of your business, and then let them go with a sigh.
“Something like that,” she said.
Giselle’s beautiful, hard face cracked. “Damme,” she said. “That was asinine even for me.”
Blanche looked away.
“God knows, you are beautiful enough,” she said. She laughed. “Good. I’m sorry, but my husband and I are betting everything on you and your husband. So I have brought you an army of tailors and sempters and the like. The least I could do.” She laughed. “Having bet our city on your Red Knight, the cost of a few embroideries is nothing.”
Blanche leaned over and kissed the Duchess of Venike. “Did you find Gabriel five thousand military horses?”
Giselle’s eyes narrowed slightly. She sat back and nodded appraisingly. “Ah,” she said. “Not just a pretty face.”
Blanche shrugged.
“The marketplace rumour says you were a laundress,” Giselle said.
Blanche stood up. “The Queen of Alba’s laundress,” she said. “I’m a very good laundress. The emperor needs someone who can keep his linens really clean.”
Giselle also guffawed like a man. “I had that coming.”
Kaitlin, silent until then, nodded. “I was a laundress too,” she said.
“It’s a new fashion,” Blanche said.
Tancreda shrugged. “I’m not a laundress, more’s the pity,” she said. “My grandmother was empress.” She looked at Blanche. “Although, to be fair, my earliest memory of her was lecturing someone on how to get linens really white.”
“It’s a useful skill,” Blanche said.
Giselle leaned over and kissed Blanche. Her lips lingered a little too long and Blanche’s heart moved a little faster and she flushed.
“If the emperor jilts you, I’ll marry you myself,” Giselle said. “When I’m a widow.” She guffawed again.
Tancreda rolled her eyes and started marshaling lists. Again. And Blanche discovered that Giselle liked lists too.
Pencils flew. Sailors were drafted as runners; the silver bucket was found.
Before nones rang, Giselle was one of them.
* * *
In a separate apartment, by immemorial custom, Gabriel sat with his officers, forbidden to see his soon-to-be wife. His clothes were ready; indeed, he’d chosen his wedding suit and had it made before they left Liviapolis, as a small wager with himself.
“The royal army is west of N’gara, and already engaged,” Kronmir said, pointing at a rough map drawn on the marble floor in charcoal.
Mortirmir was lying on a daybed, head pillowed on cushions covered in embroidery and probably not meant to be actually used. He was already dressed for his wedding. In fact, when he rose he had donned his wedding clothes, and he clearly thought that Gabriel was a fool for waiting. “Fighting Ash?” he asked.
“Better to fight west of N’gara than at Lissen Carak. If we must, we can trade space for time,” Michael said.
“You mean, if we lose at N’gara?” Mortirmir said.
There was a small silence.
“Yes, Morgon,” Gabriel said.
“Why not just say so?” Morgon insisted.
“Naming calls,” Sauce snapped. “Christ on the cross, Master Mortirmir, must you always spit out whatever thought enters your head?”
“My thoughts are important,” Mortirmir said. “I feel you might value them.”
Sauce looked around, met Gabriel’s eye, and shook her head. “I need a breath of air,” she said, and pushed out of the crowded room.
Gabriel followed her out. “He does have important thoughts.”
“It’s as well,” Sauce spat, “as otherwise I might kill him.”
“He’s better with Tancreda around,” Gabriel admitted. He was watching the horizon. They were on a balcony, and he could see up the last curve of the canal and over a great bridge to the open sea. A pair of war galleys were coming in. “No dissent today, Sauce. Or over the next two weeks. I’m out of...” He paused.
“Money?” she asked.
“Everything. But money most of all. Patience, energy, spirit, gold, fodder, knights, and archers. I’m out of all of them.” He smiled, but it was not much of a smile.
She put a hand on his shoulder. “The army is ready to march. Company has never been better.”
Gabriel was still looking out to sea. “This is the easy part,” he said.
Sauce shrugged. “So you keep saying. Sometimes, I’m tempted to tell you to stop taking yon so seriously. You know what I think? I think that the great ones, the busy ones—like you and your mother and Thorn and Ash...you always think it’s the end of the world, the one great chance, the last desperate throw. And you know what this little whore of South Liviapolis says? It’s never the last time. It’s one day at a time, all the way. Never the last battle. Just another goddamned battle. You used to think you was cursed by God. An’ now, I note, you think mayhap you was chosen by God. An’ I say...mayhap you’re just another one, and the last, desperate throw is all in your wee head.” She met his eyes the way she had not in a year or more. “Wed your lass. I like her. Make some babies. Drink some wine. Fuck the end of the world. It’s overrated. Let the dragons and the little wee worms go hang. No matter what we do, some git like your Morgon Mortirmir will stick his pissle in the crack of doom and our kids will have to do it all again.”
She stood on her toes and kissed him on the lips, as she had not in a long time. “I love bein’ a knight, an
d a captain. But I learned a few things as a whore.” She smiled, and swept her sword to her side and passed him, leaving him looking out to sea.
* * *
And then, when most men might have been drinking with their friends, or contemplating wedding vows, the emperor and several of his officers were sitting in one of the duke’s great halls with a dozen Venikan noblemen and as many bankers.
The duke was present, unofficially, but his presence probably did something to attenuate the dismay of the bankers at the foreign emperor’s extortionate demands for money.
“You bring fewer than three thousand men and you want five hundred thousand ducats in gold?” asked one of the gold-haired Corners.
“Yes,” Gabriel said.
“You expect us to fund the whole war?” Theresa asked.
“This year, yes, Next year, perhaps.” Gabriel nodded.
“We will be broken by this. Who will repay us?” Corner asked.
“The combined revenues of the empire and of Alba, with some new taxes, over the next forty years,” Gabriel said. He had done the figures, with Michael and Master Julius and lately, again, with Sukey and Blanche.
“Forty years!” one of the bankers, a Niccolo something or other, shrugged. His smile was patronizing. “I do not think I can see any advantage in this.”
“Your other option is to be dead or taken by the enemy, all your goods rotting, and your gold winking in the sunlight.” Gabriel’s smile was at least as patronizing.
The banker frowned. “I am told there are ways of reaching accommodations with this...enemy. I think it is time we investigated them, instead of this absurd pretense of defiance that belongs to another age.” The man sat back, and two other of his peers nodded.
Theresa leaned back and motioned with her hand, as if bored and demanding wine, or coffee.
A pair of Venikan marines seized the banker under his armpits and hauled him from his chair. A third man pulled a bag over his head.
“Any accommodation with the enemy is treason,” Theresa said over the sound of the man’s begging. “The Council of Seven has spoken.”
The banker was carried away, feet dragging behind him. His demands became pleading, and the pleading became increasingly high-pitched, and the door opened—the door to the passageway and stairs that Kronmir had used, weeks before. They could hear his feet bumping against each step as he was carried relentlessly away.
The Corners looked at each other. “Niccolo Variner was a trusted friend,” the nearer said.
“No,” Theresa said. “He was a despicable traitor.” She nodded. “Pray, continue.”
The emperor raised his hands.
“It appears we have no other choice but to grant you these moneys,” Corner Primo said.
The emperor frowned. “No,” he said. “You don’t.”
* * *
Seven hours and much bell tolling later, the emperor, in red satin worked in gold thread, and the soon-to-be empress, in white and green, passed between the serried ranks of the company, through the Scholae’s ranks, under the sabers of the Vardariotes and finally under the axes of the Nordikaans. The people of Venike cheered them to the echo, and the soldiers cheered, and under Oak Pew’s magnificent veil, Blanche Gold wept a little, and could not have said why.
Or perhaps she could. Perhaps she might have wept for the past and the future. For what she had already lost, and for what she would lose. Perhaps even for what she gained.
But she never missed a step. Her shoulders stayed back, her head stayed up, and she bowed to saints, made reverence to the Patriarch, curtsied to her husband, and knelt to receive a crown.
None of it had any real impact on her. It was all at a distance until the red figure at her side, currently wearing a flame-coloured cloak trimmed in ermine that clashed terribly with his doublet, leaned over. The crown on her head had nine golden spikes and was as high as his own. She had watched him crowned in Liviapolis and had wondered then what he was thinking.
Now she seemed incapable of thought. And he leaned over, lifted a corner of her veil, and said, “And now you take precedence over the Queen of Alba.”
And then the reality of it descended on her, and for a long moment, she could not breathe.
* * *
The duke might have had reservations about his new allies, and the banking families might have been a state of near revolt, but the city did not stint.
Blanche surfaced from her thoughts and her internal confusions to find herself at a table set in the immense square in front of the magnificent Basilica of Saint Mark. She smiled at her husband and savoured the word.
“Husband?” she said aloud.
“Wife?” he said, looking at her. He put a hand on her hand and she was in his palace.
“I am not sure I ever thought you’d do it,” she admitted.
He grinned. Even in the aethereal. “There really weren’t a lot of rivals,” he said impishly.
She laughed and released his hand and turned to Morgon Mortirmir, because she was herself again, and Mortirmir needed help on social occasions.
But he was besotted with his Tancreda, and he never seemed to take his eyes off her. She wore a pale ivory silk embroidered with hundred, possibly thousands of pearls. She’d had another dress, but when the duchess had offered her own...
Tancreda laughed.
Ser Giorgos came over and offered a long toast to the happy couples. Ser Michael rose and made a few barbed comments, but not many.
He needn’t have held his tongue.
Bad Tom rose, five tables away, and roared the crowd to silence. He walked to the center of the tables: tables spread with gold and silver plate, where six hundred noblemen and noblewomen of the city sat with knights and ladies from Alba and Morea and Dar as Salaam.
He had a heavy gold cup in his fist, and he raised it high.
“Gentles all!” he roared. “I’ve known this loon wha’ you call emperor for nigh on six year, and I expect that I know him as well as any man born.” He looked around.
Gabriel groaned.
“An’ the lass he wedded,” Tom said with a smile. “I don’ think I’d be takin’ me role too far to say that I ga’ him the advice that brought us all here today when I tol’ him...”
Sauce, who had risen from her seat to make a speech of her own, kicked Tom adeptly behind the knee, and he stumbled, whirled without spilling a drop...and paused.
“Ach, aye,” he said. “So there’s stories best not told in fine company. Mayhap...So I’ll leave my stories for another day. Here’s to a loon and his lady. When they...” Tom’s fingers began to entwine, and Sauce, a foot smaller, inserted herself in front of him and seemed to eclipse him.
“We wish them every happiness!” Sauce called.
“In bed and out!” Tom roared, and ladies in the crowd swooned...or shrieked with laughter. A few began to measure Tom with their hands.
The crowd laughed, and many “Vivats” were shouted. Many Venikans wished them long life, and there were some raucous requests.
“Uh-oh,” the emperor said.
Blanche was laughing under her veils and wondering if she had to wear them to the very end of the evening. She saw Tancreda kissing her new husband and smiled. Beyond them...
Forty veteran archers of the company marched in step along the path between the tables and halted in front of their captain.
Smoke and Long Paw stepped out from the ranks. Long Paw bowed deeply.
“The which we promised Wilful Murder,” Smoke said.
“Oh my God,” the emperor said, and tried to hide his head under the table.
“I think you have to take this like a man, sweet,” Blanche said.
“We promised him that if you did wed Mistress Blanche”—Smoke paused and realized he was probably on dangerous ground—“which I meant to say as when you wed.”
Some of the archers could barely contain themselves.
“Which Wilful and the rest o’ we wrote ye a wedding song,” Smoke continu
ed. “A month ago an’ more.”
“Afore the battle,” Smoke said.
Cully cleared his throat.
A hundred paces away, Bad Tom turned to Sauce. “An you wouldn’t let me speak, lass?”
Sauce shrugged. “You I can control,” she said. “The ghost of Wilful Murder is beyond me.” She got up and walked across the square to join the archers, and so did fifty other men and women, including Ser Michael and Kaitlin and George Brewes and Francis Atcourt.
Sauce put her hands on her silk-clad hips and sang a single clear note.
There’s a red cloak by the fire where the lad and lassie met,
And it would not do to do the do they’re doing in it yet,
But now they’re bound and wedded and we’re very much impressed
To know at last the captain’s found her cuckoo’s nest.
There were verses of the same, and the empress decided that if her charms could be described in song, she could remove her veil, while people who could translate Alban were suddenly in very high demand in the crowd, and the emperor put on a brave face and beamed at his soldiers.
Mortirmir turned and looked at his captain. “I swear they’re implying that you didn’t know how people copulated until recently,” he said.
Blanche dissolved. Kaitlin pretended she was having a fainting spell, and, in fact, three hours later, the worse for drink despite the baby she now knew lay in her womb, and still given to fits of giggles, the two of them and the Duchess of Venike were sitting on the empress’s wedding bed, singing...
But now they’re wed and wedded and we’re very much impressed
To know at last the captain’s found her cuckoo’s nest.
Giselle shook her head. “I don’t even understand the verse about the horses,” she said.
Kaitlin explained.
Giselle fell to the floor, clutching her sides. She kept trying to speak, and there she lay, blowing like a gaffed fish.
“I’m not sure what I think of knowing that Wilful Murder thought my breasts were the finest he’d ever seen,” Blanche said. She smiled, remembering the man.
Mark my words...