“Yes,” Gabriel agreed. “So that every response had to be—”
“Calculated,” Morgon agreed. Then he looked at the tall Hillman in the blue-black armour. “Thomas Lachlan, I am sorry. But for your puissance, I would be dead.”
“Aye, laddy! And where were yer precious warlockeries?” Bad Tom was very much himself.
“I spent too much on the … the dragon working. As our adversary called it.” Mortirmir suddenly looked seventeen and deflated. “I cocked up. And then I had to scrabble to stay alive in the aethereal. Until Gabriel charged, it focused almost everything on me.” Mortirmir looked at Gabriel. “You chose to attack in the real. Why?”
Gabriel was watching a burial party while Anne disarmed him. He intended on going to stand and watch his men buried. He shrugged. “I can usually get things in the Wild to focus on me,” he said. His voice was distant.
“All the more reason to build Fell Swords,” Mortirmir said. “The real … is where the sorcerous pay no attention.”
Gabriel paused. He was being disarmed of all his harness, but he put out a hand to stop his page and he looked at Mortirmir. “That may be the most profound thing you’ve ever said.”
“I doubt it,” Mortirmir said. “First, I said—”
“Not now, Mortirmir,” Gabriel said.
Anne got the maille off him, and he sighed. “Do you think it really wanted to surrender?” Gabriel asked.
Mortirmir looked at him. A rare look passed over his face; a raw emotion. Regret. “Yes,” Mortirmir said. “Part of it anyway.” He paused, and looked under his eyebrows at Gabriel; a rare look of self-awareness from the mage. “When I cut the links between its entities, it was arguing among itself. And then I took down its … connections. And then it … tried to kill itself.”
Tom Lachlan shrugged. “Better this way,” he said. “Better that it is dead. Ye’r too soft, Emperor-man.”
“Better with sixty dead?” Gabriel asked. “I haven’t even looked yet. Who did I lose? Cully? Francis? Maybe just Gropf?”
“Listen, lad,” Bad Tom said. “Shed no tears for the old monster. Think o’ what Pavalo will say. Think o’ all the lads an’ lasses in Dar. Free to farm. Think o’ watchin’ the whole fuckin’ herd day an’ night. Knowin’ that in a dozen worms, they’d start the whole fewkin’ thing again.” He looked at Gabriel.
“Wyverns stopped fighting,” Gabriel said through his fatigue and depression. “And wardens. Demons. Whatever. They made peace. They even fight alongside us.” He shook off Anne’s hand. “I need to see our people buried,” he said. And turned to stalk off.
“Sixty dead?” Bad Tom insisted. “Sixty, and we scragged the fewkin’ Necromancer.” He looked out over the stinking corpses. “Wyverns don’t ha’e empires, don’t lay waste to civilizations. We scragged the Necromancer. We win. It lost. The end.”
Gabriel turned back, and his jaw set a moment. “Tom,” he said, “Has it occurred to you that we’re taking losses in every one of these fights? We lead from in front, and we die. Kerak and Kronmir and Master Smythe and Wilful Murder and John Crayford and, in the end, you and me. You get that? They were alive. Now they are dead.”
Bad Tom shrugged. “No, laddie. They will live forever in song. An’ so will we. An’ when ye go down, I’ll be there wi’ ye, and that’s why what we have to do here an’ now is drink the fewkin’ wine and sing the songs and e’en, God save us, smell flowers. An’ pretty girls. Life is too short to waste on yon; they’re dead, all praise to ’em, and we’re alive. Amen.”
“I wish I found it so simple,” Gabriel said.
“Simple, you lout? You sound like bloody Mortirmir here. Nothin’ simple about yon, laddie. I kilt fifty loons before I kenned it. They’re dead and I’m not.” Tom pushed him gently with one ham-size hand. “I ha’e always gi’in ye the best advice, have I not?”
That made Gabriel smile. “That you have,” he said. “Except … never mind.”
“Aye. So take this as read. Mourn the dead when you’ve the luxury of time. Until then, the only rule is that you are alive and they’re dead.” Tom raised an eyebrow. “Eh? Don’t mourn inside, whatever you do outside. Wastes your strength.”
“Tom Lachlan, the philosopher of war,” Gabriel said.
“Ach, aye,” Tom said with a grin. “Like enow’.”
Gabriel turned back to Mortirmir. “What happened at the very end? The … Necromancer … went out like a light.”
Morgon’s eyes sparkled. “I subsumed it,” he said, unable to hide a gleam of triumph.
Chapter Five
The San Colombo Pass and central Etrusca—Long Paw
Long Paw had just returned from a long patrol south, trying to net the Patriarch or any of his officers; a waste of time. They’d questioned terrified peasants and ridden hard on exhausted horses and they hadn’t seen or heard a thing. The Duchess of Venike had just unleashed the whole of the Venike ranger company into the hilly country above Firensi, where the Patriarch was rumoured to be hiding among his own people.
Long Paw put a hand on his back, which hurt, and stumbled a little because his legs hurt, too.
Petite Moulin shot him her open-faced smile. “You are hurt?”
“I’m old,” Long Paw muttered.
There was a stir toward the eastern edge of the fortified camp. The peasants were still burying the dead after the “Battle of San Batiste” (after stripping them of every possible valuable thing). Some of them raised their heads; a small horde of children ran toward the shouting.
“The Berona road,” Petite Moulin said in her Gallish accent.
“The convoy!” Long Paw said. Fatigue and incidental pain fell away, and he and Petite Moulin ran down their company street of tents to see the huge military wagons roll past the outposts and through the great wooden gate that had already been erected in case of a serious assault from Mitla.
Hundreds of wagons stretched away out of sight over the ridge. In fact, Long Paw wasn’t sure he’d ever seen so many wagons in his entire life. They had wheels as tall as a man, and each wagon was drawn by six horses in a complex hitch that wasn’t familiar to Long Paw. The wagons were full almost to bursting, piled high, with their covers laced taut against rain.
The wagoners were greeted with cheers, and they grinned, but the convoy rolled on. Long Paw stopped counting at two hundred wagons; there were still wagons coming over the far distant ridge.
“I’m lookin’ fer Corp’ral Favour,” said an urchin in strongly accented Alban. Long Paw didn’t know him, but there were suddenly hundreds of them; all Etrusca seemed to have dumped their unwanted children on the army.
Petite Moulin shook her head. In Etruscan, she said, “He is still on patrol.”
The boy nodded politely. “Then I am to find Ser Roberto Caffelo.”
Long Paw nodded. “That’s me,” he said.
“Donna Sugo wishes for you,” the boy said.
Petite Moulin and Long Paw looked at each other. Multilingual gears ground in tired brains. Then they both grinned.
“Sauce,” they said together.
Desiderata stood in her chamber, looking at her bed linens and thinking of Blanche. She was hardly a delicate flower; she did not actually need her pillowcases ironed to go to sleep, but Blanche was gone, and Desiderata knew every day how much she had relied on the young woman. And on Diota, executed, her head put on the gate like a traitor.
Desiderata went to the window and looked over the city. Almost at her feet, there were cranes, huge assemblies of wood, driven by enormous wooden wheels, by horses and oxen and even men. Forty cranes towered above the lower town; three on the former Episcopal Palace alone.
“We are rebuilding,” she said to the city. “We are not beaten.”
She wished that she could see hermetically into the workshops where Master Pye and all his guild allies were building their secret weapon. She wished that she could understand the progress of the plague. She wished that she could leave the responsibilities of being
queen, and go north to save what could be saved, as a potent user of magik.
She wished her husband were alive.
She walked from the window to her son’s cradle and she watched him for a long time. He lay sleeping; a small being who was intensely curious, who surprised her every day. She had never expected a baby to have so much personality, but he had; jolly, joyous, inquisitive, eyes so wide he almost expected her son to speak.
She wanted to crush the small form to her breast, but she was an experienced mother by then and she had no intention of waking him. Delightful as he was, his demands were endless.
She sighed. Everyone’s demands were endless.
She walked to the door of her solar and there was Ser Ranald, with his axe.
“Your Grace,” he said. “She’s here.”
“No one is to come in,” she said. “I mean it, Ranald.”
“Yes, Your Grace. May I say …”
“No,” the queen snapped. “You may not.”
Ranald bowed.
The queen nodded. She walked down the passage, to where her guards had taken Lady Jane.
She opened the oak door. It was a good room, and had once been her husband’s library and his private study. The tapestries were gone, but the scrolls and books remained. She thought, briefly, of helping him with his armour in this very room, so long ago that it seemed a different world. She was so lost in the moment; the warmth of his response …
“Your Grace,” Lady Jane said. She curtsyed.
She was quite young—perhaps seventeen—and very pregnant. She had long, straight blond hair, and she looked more than a little like Blanche Gold.
Desiderata looked at the woman who had been her husband’s mistress and tried to imagine what had happened. She could not, really.
“You sent for me?” Lady Jane asked. She was terrified, but she bore it well enough, although her beautiful skin was splotchy with fear, as if a cat had left footprints on her cheeks.
“I sent for you and you ran,” the queen said.
“My father …” the lady began.
The queen shook her head. “Never mind your father,” she said, suddenly resolute. “Listen to me, Jane. Did you love him?”
“Oh God,” Jane said, and she burst into tears so suddenly that she startled both of them.
Desiderata felt a strange urge to weep with her.
“Tell your father,” Desiderata said when the sobs had died back into the woman’s fear, “that you and your child will be welcome at my court. Tell him that his grandson will be a Fitzroy; that I will see he is raised with Constantine, and knighted, and treated in every way as the king’s son.” She went forward and put a kiss on Jane’s cheek. “Come,” she said. “We have other enemies. Let us be kind to each other. And no one should be punished for love.”
Lady Jane, unbelieving, fell into the queen’s arms. Then, Desiderata found herself weeping. But when they were both done, the queen felt a weight lift from her, as if, in facing this one task, she had begun well on all of them.
She dried her eyes with a fine lawn handkerchief—pressed, folded, but without the scent of rosewater that Blanche would have added—and then she dried Lady Jane’s. She passed the door again, and Ser Ranald stood rigidly on the other side.
“Take Lady Jane wherever she wishes to go,” the queen said. “I didn’t rip out her throat with my fangs, if that’s what you were imagining.”
Ranald gave her a wary smile.
“And then bring me my council. I need to plan to take the army north.”
“Now ye’r talkin’,” Ranald said.
“And bring me Lady Mary in private, please. In my solar.” She was thinking clearly, for the first time in a week. Maybe it was just sleep. She could see exactly how she could be in two places at one time.
Sauce was standing with the duchess and two men Long Paw had not seen before: a nondescript man like an Etruscan foot soldier, and a well-dressed man with a horribly maimed face and one eye gone, half his hair lost under a tangle of angry scar tissue.
The scarred man bowed to Long Paw when he was introduced as “Ser Roberto.”
“Paw, this is Fernando Lucca. He was Kronmir’s …” She looked at the man.
“Friend?” the scarred man asked. “Squire?” He frowned; the expression was normal on one side of his face and vanished into the caricature of ruined flesh on the other side.
Long Paw looked at the second man. “And this?”
The man answered him with a very slight smile. “Most people don’t notice me,” he said quietly.
“This is Master Brown, who helped save my life once,” the duchess said.
Long Paw held out his hand, and the nondescript man took it. Very close, he was easier to describe; his face had a forgettable roundness to it, and his clothes were the frayed-hem wools of the lowest order of agricultural workers. He smelled a little bad.
“Just to catch you up,” Sauce said, “they came in on the convoy.”
The duchess looked tired, but not distraught. Long Paw doubted she’d ever been distraught in her life.
She smiled at Long Paw as if reading his mind. “I want to get the Patriarch,” she said.
Long Paw said nothing.
Brown nodded. “Me, too.” He looked at the man who’d been named Lucca, the man with the ruined face. “Lucca and I have some … experience.”
“Working together,” Lucca said, forming his words carefully.
“The three of you can get the Patriarch,” the duchess said. “I’m sure of it. And be light enough on your feet to make it to the rendezvous at Arles.”
Lucca shrugged. “Emperor is my employer,” he said. “A job is a job. Kronmir was my mentor. I owe him. He comes first.”
Brown nodded. “What he said,” he muttered.
“As to that,” the duchess said, “I am not yet decided whether I will accompany the emperor or remain.”
Long Paw frowned. “Sauce, I’m not one to gripe, but …”
Sauce nodded. “I’ll see you right. You’ll be at Arles in time.”
Long Paw tried a different tack. “Who’s keeping watch on the Duke o’ Mitla, then?” he asked.
Brown managed his half-smile.
“Apparently the Duke of Mitla will not be troubling us this autumn,” Sauce said. “He was assassinated two days ago. Just about the time the battle was fought.”
The silence was palpable.
“His brother has already sent us a pair of heralds and tomorrow I’ll ride north to meet an embassy.” Sauce shrugged. “An embassy for which I’ll need the Duchess of Venike.”
The green-clad woman nodded. “Ah, duty,” she said. “Will you get him?”
Brown and Lucca bowed.
Long Paw nodded to them. “Am I the guide?” he asked.
Brown sniffed. “Yes,” he said.
Lucca nodded. “This could take months. You know that, right? But there’s more, Donna. The Venikans have prisoners; they’ve put them to the question. I didn’t know Master Jules was dead; I came to tell him, and you, that there’s evidence of a third player. The Patriarch is just an ally.” Lucca leaned close. “Or the Patriarch is something very nasty indeed.”
Sauce tapped her nose. “We’ve got our own suspicions. Very well—Long Paw is our go-between. For fifteen days. After that …”
Brown shook his head. “Don’t tell us,” he said fiercely. “I won’t die to protect your secrets.”
Sauce nodded. “We can pay you for this,” she said. “I’m a professional.”
Brown nodded. “I heard. Good on you. But this is on the house.” He bowed. Looked at Lucca. “I need access to Master Jules’s effects.”
Sauce nodded.
“And we need a caster. A good one.”
“Of course,” Sauce said.
Later that afternoon D.13 landed on Syr Christos’s outstretched arm and delivered a message straight from the emperor’s own hand. Sauce read it aloud to the company; it praised them for their victory and annou
nced the destruction of the Necromancer.
By midnight, six hundred wagons had passed through the army and headed west to the passes. The company folded its tents in the very early morning and marched in behind them as a strong rear guard, and found supplies left in prepared camps.
Long Paw and Brown and Lucca and M’bub Ali were long gone. In fact, all four were asleep while a middle-aged woman named Beatrice watched their horses in a merchant tavern’s barn just north of the Mitla Gate of Firensi.
Beatrice had never even contemplated a life of violence. She’d been a capable farm wife until the duke took her daughter as a concubine. A year later, everyone in her family was dead.
And so was the duke.
She watched the darkness, listened to men snore, and tried to imagine herself as a hard-faced mercenary killer, or one of their sluts.
She said some prayers.
They were terrifying men, every one of them, and she knew they were on their way to kill the Patriarch, and it all horrified her.
She said more prayers, and then she woke one of the infidels to take his watch. The man was now in Etruscan clothing; his swarthy good looks were not very different from the men of Rhum, and he grinned at her in the one candlelight of the barn’s lower half.
Brown, who had lain awake watching her, now watched her crawl into her blankets, and then let his eyes close. He didn’t trust her; he had enough trouble trusting Lucca.
“People,” he said to himself.
Arles—Empress Blanche
Two hundred leagues and a mountain range to the north, the empress rose early and read the night’s dispatches with Master Julius. She noted in the messages that the Venikans had drovers gathering cattle in the lands that had formerly been the Darkness and she read with interest about the assassination of the Duke of Mitla, although some reports claimed he’d died of the sudden onset of a disease.
She sipped quaveh from a small porcelain cup and wished she still had Jules Kronmir.
“Majesty?” said a Hillman voice. “Miss Kaitlin. An’ the Queen o’ Arles.”