The Price of Valor (12 page)

Raesinia waved a hand dismissively. She held up a pamphlet, which to Marcus' horror bore the same cartoon he'd seen earlier, with Maurisk defending a weeping Vordan.

“Is this supposed to be me, do you think?” she said.

Marcus kept his face wooden. “I really couldn't say.”

“I think it is. The hair's about right.” She frowned. “Not much of a likeness, really. I haven't got that much . . . chest.”

The woodcutter, Marcus had to admit, had used a bit of artistic license where Raesinia's feminine endowments were concerned. He shook his head, trying to banish the disrespectful thoughts, and said, “Where did you get those?”

“Oh, I sent one of the guards to pick them up,” Raesinia said. “I hope that's all right. I didn't think I should go wandering off by myself. Sothe usually brings me the lot every morning, but obviously she's not here.”

“There's really no need for you to concern yourself with filth,” Marcus said. “I—”

Raesinia laughed aloud, until she caught his expression. Then she frowned. “You're serious?” She waved at the pile. “How else am I supposed to know what's going on?”

“I wouldn't trust
those
things to give me an accurate picture of events in the city,” Marcus said stiffly.

“They tell me what people are
saying
about events in the city,” Raesinia said. “That's better.” She shook her head when his face remained grave. “Come and sit down, would you? And get something to eat if you're hungry.”

Feeling as if he were on a parade ground, with every senior officer in the College watching him, Marcus went to the serving table at the other end of the room. Metal army plates and trays looked out of place against the elegant wooden furniture, which needed silver and dainty pastries instead of piles of fried eggs, strips of roast beef, and a stack of rough bread. Marcus took a modest portion and turned back to Raesinia. To his horror, she'd pulled out the seat beside her and was gesturing for him to take it.

“Your—” He swallowed. “I couldn't. I mean, I was going to take this to my room. I thought—”

“You are really going to have to get over this,” Raesinia said. “Would it help if I ordered you to treat me like a scullery maid?”

Marcus blinked.

“I don't think I will,” Raesinia muttered. “Your head might explode. But if I'm supposed to be incognito, you're going to have to unbend a little bit.”

“Yes, Your—” Marcus took a deep breath. “Yes, Raes. I'll try.”

“Sorry,” she said as he sat down. “I know this is hard for you. I spent the better part of a year disguised as a commoner. I've gotten used to it.”

Marcus had spent only a little time around Raesinia before the bombing, but her manner had definitely changed. Going through her official functions as queen, she'd seemed—dignified, possibly, or even a bit morose. Now she had the bubbling cheerfulness of someone who'd sloughed off a great weight. Combined with her change of costume, it made it difficult to see her as anything but a pretty young girl, intelligent eyes alive with humor as she flipped through the day's crop of scandals and diatribes.

She is the
Queen of Vordan
, for God's sake. It is not appropriate to be contemplating her bosom or lack thereof.
Marcus addressed himself to his plate. The food was actually quite good, though the combination of spices was unfamiliar. Presumably it was in the Mierantai style, whatever that was. The mountain folk had been unfailingly polite and obedient, but something about their manner discouraged casual questions.

“So,” Raesinia said, flipping over another broadsheet and squinting to read the fine print on the back, “we need to discuss where to begin our investigation in the bombing.”

Marcus paused, fork halfway to his mouth. He'd been hoping the queen hadn't been serious in her desire to take an active role. “Yes.” He took a bit of sausage and chewed slowly, buying time. “Actually, I believe I may have a place to start. I asked Captain Vahkerson from the new artillery school to have a look at the site and see if there was anything he could tell me.”

“A friend of yours?”

Marcus nodded. “He was our artillery commander in Khandar. He knows his business.”

“And did he find anything useful?”

“I think so.” Marcus related the Preacher's description of flash powder and why he thought it must have been employed in the bombing. “He says that transporting it long distances is difficult,” he concluded, “and I would think that's doubly true now, with army agents requisitioning every bit of powder they can get their hands on. So if we can figure out where there might have been a store of flash powder, that could give us a lead.”

“That's a definite possibility.” Raesinia tapped her finger on the table. “How many mills near the city can make the stuff, do you think?”

“I have no idea,” Marcus admitted. He congratulated himself for suppressing his desire to add a title. “But there must be a way to find out. I was going to go looking after lunch.”

“Do you have an idea of where to start?”

Marcus had had the vague thought that he should ask the army quartermasters, but since the sources of the Vordanai army's powder might come under the heading of state secrets, he wasn't sure he'd get an answer without a direct appeal to Janus. He shrugged. “Not specifically.”

“I think I might,” Raesinia said thoughtfully. “There's somebody you ought to meet.”

*   *   *

Marcus had spent so much time riding in carriages since his return to the city that he hadn't quite appreciated how
big
the place felt to a pedestrian. By the time they'd recrossed the Saint Dromin Street Bridge to the Island, then walked the length of the Grand Span to the South Bank, he found himself short of breath.
Too much time on horseback, not enough time marching with the troops.
The worst of it was that none of his companions seemed affected; he might have expected that from the two Mierantai guards, but Raesinia kept up easily, clomping along in big, practical, unladylike boots.

On reaching the South Bank, they'd taken a left turn and walked along the river through Newtown toward Oldtown. Looking up at the decaying tenements and around at the teeming streets, Marcus was glad he'd insisted on bringing the guards. The two Mierantai had left their red uniforms and rifles behind in favor of plainclothes, but they carried long walking sticks and, like Marcus, wore swords on their belts.

Newtown was even more crowded than it had been before the revolution. After the declaration of war, people had flocked to the city, mostly from along the League border or from coastal towns threatened by Borelgai raids. Many of the men had been absorbed into the new army, issued blue jackets and antique muskets and sent to the front, but thousands of women, children, and men too old or infirm to fight remained. Those with money fought over increasingly rare rooms at inns and boardinghouses, or rented the estates of nobles who'd fled to their country estates. Those without camped in the streets of Newtown.

Their small party drew a considerable amount of attention, mostly from people desperate to sell whatever they had to make a few coins. Marcus was offered household furnishings, pots and pans, a dented silver cup, and any number of bottles of wine. Having arrived with whatever they could throw into their farm carts, the refugees were now trying to trade those meager belongings for food. They were also trying to trade themselves, at depressingly low prices; the influx of new prostitutes had evidently lowered both prices and standards, and
every few yards Marcus got shockingly direct offers from ragged young women. Some of them were clearly novices at the trade, farm girls tarted up in ratty lace and too much makeup. He saw one girl who couldn't have been more than fifteen staring fixedly at the cobblestones while her father, one arm around her shoulders, solicited offers from the crowd. Marcus forced himself to look away.

Raesinia was getting a fair number of offers herself, usually shouted from a safe distance out of respect for the armed Mierantai. She seemed able to ignore them, but Marcus flinched with every lewd remark.

“I could have done this myself,” he said into her ear. “I'm sorry.”

“No, you couldn't,” Raesinia said. “And I've seen worse, so there's no need to apologize. You should have seen the crowd that stormed the Vendre.”

“I did,” Marcus muttered. Though, admittedly, the view had not been great from his prison cell.

“We'll be fine. Here's the Cut.”

The border between Newtown and Oldtown, where the money had run out for Farus V's grand plan to rebuild the capital along rational lines, was as vivid as a scar in the fabric of the city. On one side, the buildings stood ten stories high, and the streets were a neat grid; across the broad avenue of the Cut, half-timbered buildings leaned drunkenly against one another along winding avenues that followed the tracks of medieval cow paths.

Here the poverty was of a different sort. People might be crowded ten to a room, but no one was sleeping in the streets. When Marcus had been Captain of Armsmen, Giforte had explained that Oldtown was firmly in the grip of a network of gangs nearly as ancient as the monarchy, who ruled their territory with iron fists and sharp knives. Those who wouldn't abide their rules ended up shoved into Newtown, or the even worse shantytowns to the south, where the city faded into the swamps. Those who made trouble were found floating down the river in the morning.

Prostitution, too, was kept behind closed doors. The Cut was thick with brothels, but there were no girls on display. Every other doorway seemed to boast a pair of toughs, escorting a steady stream of customers inside. Marcus could feel many eyes on him, with more purpose than the casual curiosity of the Newtown residents. Watchmen on the roofs and in the alleys marked their progress. He recalled that Armsmen hadn't patrolled here in squads of less than a dozen, and found himself wishing he'd brought
more
guards.

“You don't see any Patriot Guard here,” Raesinia said. “Not in Newtown, either.”

“What would they do in Newtown?”

“Keep the peace?”

“I think people are taking that into their own hands,” Marcus said grimly. “And there's never been much peace
here
to begin with.”

Raesinia looked around and frowned. At her direction, they turned off the River Road and into the labyrinth that was Oldtown's inner lanes. Fortunately, their destination was visible from some distance away, towering among the ancient, shingle-roofed buildings like a great stone ship. It was an old Sworn Church, complete with a bronze double circle atop its spire, though the windows—which had presumably once borne the mosaics of colored glass so beloved of the Elysians—were now boarded over.

The front doors, ancient, scarred things that looked as though they'd been through a siege, were firmly closed. Iron letters, weeping long stains of rust, proclaimed this to be the Third Church of the Savior Karis' Mercy. Raesinia pulled back the big knocker, which squealed in protest, and slammed it against the door as though she were trying to break it down.

“Mrs. Felda is a bit deaf,” she said to Marcus when he winced at the sound.

“Who's Mrs. Felda?” Marcus' ground-in reticence in the presence of his monarch was warring with his desire to understand what the hell was going on.

“The priest's wife. She runs this place.”

“And she knows something about gunpowder?”

Raesinia laughed. “Not that I know of. But I have to admit I've never asked.”

“Then why—”

The door opened with a drawn-out squeal of desperate hinges, but only wide enough to reveal a frowning face. It was a young man, with a laughably wispy attempt at a mustache on his upper lip, but he was at least half a head taller than Marcus and much broader across the shoulders.

“What?” he said. Then, as he took in his visitors, his big face flickered quickly through expressions. Delight at the sight of Raesinia, replaced immediately by guarded caution at seeing Marcus and the two armed Mierantai. “Raes? Who's this?”

“A friend,” Raesinia said. “We're here to see Cora.”

“I suppose that's all right, then,” the young man said, with the air of someone working out a complicated intellectual puzzle. “Come in.” He opened the door a bit farther, then turned over his shoulder and bellowed,
“Mrs. Felda! Raes is here!”

“I thought,” Marcus said as they slipped inside, “we were keeping a low profile.”

Raesinia shrugged, but Marcus thought she was fighting a grin.

Like most of Vordan's old Sworn Churches, this one had been remodeled considerably. In this case, most of the interior walls had been torn down and the grand altar and rows of pews replaced with a more modest worship space at the far end, beside a grand hearth and a huge table. The rest of the room was full of mismatched bedrolls, with hanging curtains creating smaller semiprivate spaces.

People were everywhere, sleeping on every available inch of floor space, standing around the table eating, or simply slumped against the walls. A flock of old women tended several huge pots suspended above the fire, from which they dispensed bowls of brown stuff that reminded Marcus of the “army soup” of his Khandarai days.

Raesinia was staring around, wide-eyed. Marcus wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but this clearly wasn't it. Before he could ask, a large, heavyset woman bustled over to them, holding up her long black skirt to keep it from dragging on the filthy stone floor.

“Hello, Raes!” she said, her voice loud enough to cut through the babble of many voices.

“Hello, Mrs. Felda,” Raesinia said.

“I heard you were dead,” Mrs. Felda said.

“I'm not.”

“Very good!” With that subject disposed of, Mrs. Felda looked up at Marcus. “Who's this?”