“Christ protect us,” she said.
“Archangel Michael,” Jamie said. He stepped between her and the stone and drew the short rondel dagger at his waist with practiced ease.
“Tight against my back,” he said.
She crushed herself against him.
He began to back up. One of his arms moved.
“Back up now,” he said. “Oh my God,” he moaned.
Pippa had a number of sins, but cowardice was not among them. She turned and put her back against his. She was tempted to call out; to scream. But all the stones had writhing shapes on them in the dull orange darkness, and she was damned if she, Pippa de Roen, would summon good people to their deaths.
“I’m the eyes in the back of your head, Jamie,” she said with her mother’s crisis voice exactly.
“With you,” he said, and when she stepped, he backed. Their spines touched, and sometimes their hips, and one more time, at the edge of the stone circle, by the outlier they called “The Forlorn Lover,” he moved away—a sudden lunge, and she was alone.
She looked back, and he was grappling something with both hands.
“Run!” he shouted. One of the worms was going for his face; he grappled it, but seemed off balance …
Pippa turned on her heel and whipped the sickle off her purse hook. Her arm was strong and her aim true despite the bad light, and she cut the writhing thing just under Jamie’s hands and her knife went through it as if it had been smoke, and Jamie stumbled. She caught his shoulders and pulled him back and they both fell in the soft turf, and the worms, barely visible in the ashy air, still stretched obscenely toward them.
Pippa got her bare feet back and rolled.
Jamie gave a great spasm and got his feet under him, caught her, and leapt.
“Holy Saint Michael and all the saints,” Jamie said in awe. “What the fuck was that?”
Pippa hit him. “I’ve never heard you swear before.”
Then, hand in hand, they ran the long way, around the standing stones, to warn the others.
Chapter Two
Arles—The Red Knight
Gabriel awoke. Blanche was lying on his arm and his hermetical hand, and her hair seemed to glitter gold in the darkness. Gabriel smiled, and lay content for a moment gazing at her. He could hear Anne Woodstock moving, and he realized with a nearly hermetical impulse that he was in the castle of Arles.
In almost the same tendril of time he saw with revulsion that it was not Blanche’s hair that was glittering with gold in the darkness. Or rather, it was her hair, catching the light from his nonhermetical hand, which was glowing very faintly with gold.
Gabriel Muriens, the Red Knight, Duke of Thrake, Emperor of Man, cursed.
Blanche stirred. She turned her face to him, and snuggled gently but insistently against his side.
Arles.
The dragon Rhun was … dead seemed the wrong word.
Destroyed?
Arles was liberated, and on the plains under the high town, thirty thousand former bondspeople, the not-dead, now living, wandered at the point of starvation. Thousands of men and beasts had already died. More would die.
Gabriel lay and looked at Blanche by the light cast by his own skin, and just for a moment, the words formed in his mind.
Fuck you, God.
He smiled.
Or, be it according to thy will, he mused. Annoying as that might seem.
Blanche awoke. She looked at him, leaned to kiss him, flinched, and gasped.
“Oh, by the Blessed Virgin! You are glowing!” She sat up.
Gabriel was still gazing at her. He managed a smile.
“What happened?” Blanche asked very quietly. When you are empress, everything you do must be quiet; servants and friends and allies and enemies are always at your elbow; conversation, lovemaking, defecation, all very, very quiet.
Gabriel sighed. “An angel visited me and said, ‘Ave, Gabriel,’ and …”
She hit him.
He held out his right hand, his sword hand, in the darkness, and the glow was barely perceptible. “Really,” he said. “I have no idea.”
“I don’t see you as a saint,” she said.
“No one sees me as a saint. It’s a secret role and I relish it.” He had begun to stroke her shoulders and back.
“Ssssh!” Blanche said a moment later. “Everyone is getting up!” she giggled. “Damn. I walked into that.”
There was some rustling.
Anne Woodstock closed the door to the bedroom, as if by accident, and went back to laying out clothes. Cheeks burning.
Toby came in with a steaming mug of hippocras.
Anne glanced at him and turned away.
Toby shrugged and walked to the door. “They up?” he asked.
“I don’t think …” Anne said.
Toby smiled. “Ahh,” he said. He put the cup down on a tile and went to the fireplace, a fine hearth with a separate chimney, as was all the fashion in the Antica Terra. He mulled a cup of cider poured from a fine creamy ceramic flagon.
“Cider?” he asked his page.
She blushed.
“Anne,” he began, and then smiled. “Cup of cider?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s to be shaved today.”
Toby nodded.
“Only I can’t find anything. His razors are with the army baggage.” She started at a sort of sighing sound from the next room. And blushed again.
Toby nodded. “Probably my fault. I’ll ask the staff.”
“He’ll want to shave as soon as he …” At a loss for words, the page shrugged and looked away.
“Gets up?” Toby asked. He laughed.
Master Julius, now the emperor’s private secretary and no longer merely the notary to a company of mercenaries, laughed aloud from the next room.
Toby finished fussing. “Ser Michael’s here. Does Robin have razors?”
Anne glanced at him. “Didn’t ask.”
“I’ll ask him.” Toby started for the door and there was the notary, pen in hand.
“Ser Pavalo is here to see the emperor as soon as he receives,” he called softly. “And Ser Alison.” He pointed at the door to the scriptorum. “Lord Pavalo appears to have ridden all night.”
Toby handed Anne a cup of steaming cider and walked out through the solar, where Master Julius settled back down. He and two clerks were already writing, by candlelight, and a third man was cutting hides of vellum into strips.
Toby stepped out into the narrow and labyrinthine halls of the mighty fortress of Arles. The emperor was in the northeast tower. Toby had no time to search the towers for Ser Michael. He had to go down to the hall before he found one of Duchess Clarissa’s officers.
He bowed.
The officer made a full reverence. The men who had saved Arles from the Odine were being treated to a level of worship and courtesy that they all enjoyed very much.
“My lord,” Toby said, pleased and embarrassed. He bowed deeply again. “I am the emperor’s body-squire. We’ve left all the emperor’s shaving gear in camp. I need to find Michael; that is, Ser Michael …”
The marshal sported a beard and mustache that were the envy of many younger men, despite the iron grey colour. He rubbed his grizzled cheeks absently. “I am Pierre La Porte, the marshal of this fortress. I will find you something, monsieur,” he said.
And he was as good as his word.
Toby climbed back to the tower, where he found Anne pressing a shirt of fine lawn, her iron as deft as her sword.
“Don’t do that yerself,” Toby said. “Get the new kid to do it. The Hillman.”
“He’s too useless to iron,” she said.
She had two more irons heating on the fire and the great man’s linen and hose laid over a towel rack. She was wearing her arming coat and hose, but had an apron wrapped around her hips and a linen towel on her head.
She had no idea how much Toby loved her. Which, Toby felt, was probably better for everyone.
He
smiled, she raised her cider, and before he could take up some task, there was a knock at the outer door and a page in the duchess’s livery handed over a pair of razors with Umroth ivory handles and a leather box of shaving equipage.
Toby thanked the page, who blushed like Anne. “You saved us all,” he said. “Can I see the emperor? Just … see him?”
“Well,” Toby said, “not me personally. But thanks. And no. Sorry. You can’t see the emperor.” He tried to close the door. “Cully? Guard the door, for a friend?”
The master archer was up and dressed, neat and professional in his scarlet padded coat and matching scarlet hose, a heavy gold earring in his ear. He had on a heavy arming sword with a hilt in the Venike fashion. He looked far more like a noble knight than like an archer, until you looked into his eyes.
“Will the … emperor … take us with him? To fight the Necromancer?” the page asked.
Toby relented at the hero-worship and, feeling older than dirt, asked, “How old are you?”
“Thirteen,” said the wide-eyed page.
Cully smiled to Toby and used his hip to slam the door on the page. “I’ll hold the door,” he said.
“He’s awake,” Anne called from the solar. “Or what have you,” she added. Her sarcasm was in Sauce’s intonation, mostly because Anne Woodstock was sixteen and she all but worshipped the older woman and imitated almost everything she did. Or said.
They both grinned, and then Toby picked up the still-warm hippocras and pushed through the door into the bedroom with his hip against the heavy oak door.
“Good morning, Majesty,” he said without a trace of irony.
Gabriel stretched, found that his leather case with his linens was nowhere to hand, and casually stripped a silk veil off the bed-rail and passed it into the closed bed. “No towels for the emperor,” he said with mock severity.
Blanche stretched, took the veil, and snarled.
“That’s my silk veil,” she said. “I asked for a towel.”
“Good morning, Majesty,” Toby said, pushing through the door. “Hippocras is warm. Cider for Her Majesty is on the way.”
“Toby, we need a towel.” Gabriel shrugged.
Toby nodded. “Majesty, we need Master Nicodemus.” Master Nicodemus was Gabriel’s Morean steward, and he was with the army.
Gabriel nodded. “Right, and I didn’t list him. My apologies, Toby, you must be buried.”
Toby met his master’s eye. “Yes,” he said.
Gabriel bowed slightly. “Noted. Towel.”
Toby vanished.
“Damn,” Blanche said from the bed. “I forgot Nicodemus, too, when I read your list.”
Gabriel stood naked at the window, looking out over the sun-drenched fields and the thousands of near-starving wretches who had been rudely seized back from the Necromancer and inconveniently continued to need food. “Everything … every damned thing is going to depend on systems. I need people to wait on me efficiently so I can help make good decisions and make them stick. Toby needs to be knighted.”
“Kronmir,” Blanche said.
Gabriel went over, opened the bed, and leaned down to kiss her. “You are not just a pretty face.”
Toby leaned in and tossed a beautifully embroidered linen towel to the empress. He vanished.
“Absolutely, Toby must be knighted.” She laughed. “When?”
“This morning, after I bathe. No joke. The gates open, or whatever you want to call it, in twenty-five days. We don’t have time for ceremony.” He sighed.
“People like ceremony,” she said. She wondered if making love when you knew you were pregnant was a sin.
It didn’t seem like much of a sin compared to the world she lived in.
He paused and looked at her.
“Penny for your thoughts, miss?” he asked.
“What will the world be like, when this is over?” she asked.
The door opened again, and Anne Woodstock and Cully, the emperor’s personal archer, entered with a huge, steaming wooden tub of water.
“Majesty,” Anne said with a bow.
“Good morning, Anne.” Blanche put on her public face, which was already different from “Blanche, trustworthy maid of the queen” or “Blanche, mistress of laundry.” She almost never allowed herself any display but humour and helpfulness.
“Shave when you are washed, my lord.” Anne directed this to the emperor.
The new rules—unofficial but widely understood—were that the emperor did not want to be “majestied” more than once a day by anyone unless in formal situations, which would be defined later. “My lord” was less formal than “Majesty” and many of the company still called him “Ser Gabriel” or just “Cap’n” to the delight of some and astonishment of others.
“Excellent,” Gabriel said. He sank into the tub, which forced him into an odd, knees-up position. Anne poured water over his head, and he sputtered, and Blanche laughed.
“We have your bath coming up the stairs,” Anne said to her naked empress. “Majesty,” she added. Anne had known Blanche when she was the queen’s laundress.
“I could just use his, if he didn’t get it all on the floor,” Blanche said.
Anne clucked.
She handed the water-ewer to Cully, who poured the hot water ruthlessly over his emperor despite faint protests and some screams.
“Majesty,” he said in a tone that suggested something other than reverence.
Anne moved back to the solar and began to lay out razors, soap, a towel …
The empress’s water arrived. The emperor emerged from his bath clean and as red as his epithet and put on a clean shirt and braes without any help. They were short on servants, and he was not to be waited on by any but members of his military household.
Kronmir had made that rule. Kronmir, who was that moment out in the scriptorium, copying maps of northern Etrusca for his staff. Who had, just yesterday, caught a patriarchal assassin, a young woman from Mitla who had come with a “diplomatic” party who were currently all under arrest. Kronmir …
The emperor walked out into the solar. Anne snapped, “His Majesty,” and the roomful of secretaries, servants, and seamstresses all rose and bowed deeply.
The emperor looked at Anne for a moment, as if he suspected he was being mocked.
“Castle people,” she said quietly.
He sat, and she wrapped a hot towel around his face. She was just seventeen years old; in fact, the day before had been her birth day, or so he thought. Blanche would know.
“The blessings of your birth day,” he said.
Anne grinned. “Thanks, er, my lord.”
“We were busy,” he said.
“So we were,” she agreed. “My lord.” Two years before, she had been a well-born farm girl in the Brogat. Now she was laying a razor to the throat of the Emperor of Man, in a castle in the Arelat. She tried not to think about it too much.
She began to lather him.
He ignored her, as was his right. “Toby?” he asked.
“Duchess Clarissa when you are dressed. Ser Pavalo and Ser Alison are waiting outside and taking breakfast. There are no new messenger birds. The army has passed the morning signal.”
They had a simple smoke signal. All it conveyed was “We’re alright,” but both Arles and the army passed it with variations three times a day. With the enemy known as the Necromancer still at large and other enemies, palpable or secret, all around them, signals had become vital.
“Pavalo?” Gabriel asked. “He must have ridden hard. Bring him. Bring Sauce, too.”
“Sir,” Toby said with a slight bow.
Gabriel couldn’t turn his head. Anne had begun to shave him, and the razor was outlining his mustaches. Scrape, scrape. The particular feel of the sharp blade on his skin.
“Majesty!” Ser Pavalo said.
Ten feet away, Gabriel could smell the horse on the man.
“Long ride?” he asked.
“Nothing compared to yours!” Ser Pavalo Paya
m, known to most of the company as Payamides because they found his names difficult, was tall, heavily muscled, and black. As Anne lifted the razor, Gabriel turned his head to smile at the man who’d saved both his and Blanche’s life (twice) and Amicia’s.
Payam smiled back. He was dressed in emerald silk minutely embroidered, and even covered in dust, he looked magnificent.
“I’m guessing this isn’t a social visit,” Gabriel said.
Sauce appeared in his peripheral vision and blew a kiss.
“We’re moving north and we need to make a general … plan of attack,” Payam said. Toby brought him a chair and he sat, carefully keeping his robes out of the water coming under the bedroom door. “How is Lady Blanche?”
“Wet,” Gabriel said. “Your timing is, as ever, impeccable, as there’s too much to discuss by bird. After breakfast, a brief council. You, too, Sauce. You will be taking the army.”
Sauce choked.
Gabriel smiled inwardly. “You and the Duchess of Venike.”
“Ooh,” Sauce said. “Good. I like her.” She paused. “Why me?”
“I have Tom and Michael on other missions. You’ve never held the command and now’s the moment. Have fun. Don’t break the army.”
She sighed audibly.
“Messenger bird,” said Toby.
Toby was leaning out the solar door. Gabriel could hear Kronmir on the other side. And another voice, quickly hushed.
“What was that?” he asked, and Anne pulled the razor off his carotid artery when it moved.
Payam was unrolling a chart. Sauce was already looking at it, her dagger holding a corner. Jock MacGilly, the Hillman who’d just joined the casa on Bad Tom’s recommendation, was trying to pretend that he was not ironing a woman’s shift, a job he clearly felt beneath him. Morgon Mortirmir pushed into the solar, carving an apple with a silver knife.
“… but the duchess!” said a shrill voice and then there was a little silence.
Toby reappeared. “My lord, the Duchess of Arles has sent you a basket of fruit.” He rolled his eyes.
Gabriel nodded. “Kronmir?” he asked, without moving his face.
“My lord, your brother the earl has fought a third action near N’gara. He has retreated, and N’gara is abandoned to the enemy. The Lords Kerak and Flint were killed. Harmodius …”