The Price of Valor (13 page)

“His name's Marcus,” Raesinia said. “He's a friend of mine.”

“Fair enough,” Mrs. Felda said. “And these two lads?”

“Protection,” Marcus said, feeling as though he ought to hold up his end of the conversation a bit. “The streets aren't safe.”

“The good Lord knows it,” Mrs. Felda said. “Cora's over at the back. Look for the stacks of books. Help yourself to a bowl if you're hungry.”

She moved off without waiting for an answer, attracted by someone shouting her name on the other side of the room.

“She runs some kind of charity?” Marcus said.

“More or less.” Raesinia scanned the room, her mouth set in a frown. “Come on.”

“Stay here,” Marcus told the two guards, and hurried to keep up with Raesinia. They had to step carefully, since every flat surface was occupied, and Marcus had to
stop himself from apologizing for nearly treading on people. Eventually, they made it to the vicinity of the big table, and he saw that in the corner beyond it there was what he could only think of as a small fortress made of books. Two haphazard stacks made the walls, with a narrow gap between them. A lantern glowed inside, and by its light Marcus could see a pale teenager bent over a stack of papers.

“Cora?” Raesinia said when they were close enough that the noise from the hall wouldn't drown her out. “It's me.”

The girl, Cora, looked up. Her round, freckled face showed signs of many nights without enough sleep, with dark crescents under her eyes that made her look as though she'd been in a boxing match. When she saw Raesinia, though, she lit up, and shot to her feet as if she'd been mounted on a spring.

“Raes!” She ran forward, kicking several books out of her way, and wrapped Raesinia in a hug. Raesinia seemed to take this act of
lesse majeste
in stride, and ran her fingers affectionately through the girl's short, spiky hair.

“Cora,” Raesinia said. “This is Marcus.”

Cora looked up and blinked. “You're Captain d'Ivoire.”

Marcus frowned. “Have we met?”

“Not exactly. I was in the Vendre,” Cora said matter-of-factly. “The night of the siege. The guards were beating a woman because she didn't want to . . . service them. You came and stopped them, then sent the Concordat men away and put your own in their place.”

“Oh.” Sometimes that awful night blurred together in Marcus' memory into the roar of the crowd and pools of blood on the stone steps of the ancient fortress. “I'm sorry we had to keep you there.”

“It's not your fault. It was Orlanko who had us arrested. And you probably saved a lot of us from having a . . . a bad night.” Cora dipped her head. “Thank you.”

Marcus returned the nod, feeling himself blush a little.

“Cora,” Raesinia broke in, keeping her voice low. “What is going on here?”

Cora suddenly looked guilty. “Just the usual. Mrs. Felda—”

“Don't give me that. You've got a hall full of Borels and Murnskai!”

Marcus, surprised, looked around the room again. Borelgai men were usually easy to spot by their full black beards and side whiskers, but there were only a few men in the room. On the street, Marcus might have identified Borelgai women by the fur-collared cloaks they wore, but here everyone was dressed in castoffs and rags. Even so, he did see a lot of pale, blond northerners, and the babble of voices, now that he was paying attention, had a distinctly polyglot air. There were
a fair number of Vordanai, many of them maimed or otherwise unhealthy, but most of the room was full of women and children. They huddled together in small, nervous groups, mothers keeping their sons and daughters close.

“They didn't have anywhere else to go,” Cora said.

“Where did they come from?” Marcus said. “I wouldn't have thought there were many Borels left in the city.” What the mobs had begun, the Patriot Guard had finished. Even Vordanai with Borelgai ancestry had to fend off suspicion.

“That's the problem,” Cora said. “After the revolution, all the Borel merchants and traders who could got out of town. The Murnskai did the same once the war started. But they left in a hurry, and they didn't all bother to make arrangements for the staff they'd brought with them.”

“But how did
you
get involved?” Raesinia said.

Cora blushed. “A lot of them were on my payroll. You'd be amazed what you can do in the market with a little belowstairs gossip. A few of them came to me for help, and then . . . word spread, I guess.” She stared up at Raesinia, cheeks burning but eyes defiant. “Mrs. Felda said it was all right. She told me I ought to help them.”

“Cora . . .” Raesinia hugged the girl again, then pulled away and looked her firmly in the eye. “I know you want to help people, but this is dangerous. If the Patriot Guard find out, you know what they'll say. A whole nest of Borelgai and Murnskai?”

“That's why I couldn't turn them away!” Cora lowered her voice. “You haven't
listened
to them, Raes. It's not just the Guard. If you're Borel and you're caught on the streets, anyone who wants can just drag you away, and nobody will lift a finger to stop them now that the Armsmen are gone.”

Hell.
Marcus frowned. “It's really that bad?”

Cora nodded.

“You still can't keep them all
here
,” Raesinia said. “Someone is going to notice. You and Mrs. Felda could get
spiked
for harboring enemies of the state.”

“I had some ideas,” Cora said. “We might be able to get them out of the city—”

“And then what?”

“I haven't gotten that far,” Cora said. “What do you want me to do? Tell them to clear out?”

“I . . .” Raesinia looked around the room, then shook her head. “No, of course not. You were right. But I don't know what we're going to do now.”

Marcus cleared his throat. “I might be able to offer some assistance.”

The two young women looked up at him in surprise, as if they'd forgotten he was there.

“Supply trains leave for the Army of the East every couple of days,” he said. “I may be able to arrange to start sending people with them.”

Cora frowned. “Would the soldiers stay quiet about it?”

“They will if Janus orders them to. I'll speak to him about it. It may take a while to move everybody, though.”

“I think we've got time,” Cora said. “Everyone knows Mrs. Felda keeps a charity here, so nobody asks questions when we have food brought in. And the Patriot Guard hardly ever come into Oldtown anyway.”

Raesinia nodded. “It could work. Thank you, Marcus. And I'm sorry I blew up at you, Cora.”

“It's all right.” Cora sighed and ran her hands through her hair, further mussing it. “I've been a bit frantic myself. You have no idea what the war is doing to the markets.”

The markets?
Marcus shot Raesinia an inquisitive look.

“Cora is a genius at anything involving money or commerce,” Raesinia explained.

“I wouldn't say that,” Cora said, blushing furiously. “I just keep my eyes open.”

Looking down at the frazzled teenager, Marcus had a hard time believing it. “So she's the one you wanted to talk to?”

“Right,” Raesinia said. “I'd nearly forgotten about that. Cora, we need your help with something. How many major powder mills are there within easy overland shipment range of Vordan City?”

“Five,” Cora said immediately. “The di Bartolo in the south, the Neffoy east of the Thieves Island, the—”

“How many of them can manufacture flash powder?” Raesinia said.

Cora blinked. “Flash powder?”

“It's a sort of very fine gunpowder,” Marcus explained. “It takes special equipment to make.”

“There must not be much trade in it,” Cora said. “I don't recall off the top of my head. Hold on.”

She turned and dove into one of the piles of books, delicately shifting volumes in a way that kept the whole structure barely standing while she excavated the one she wanted. All of the books were thick, leather-bound tomes, marked only with
numerical codes that meant nothing to Marcus, though Cora apparently knew them intimately. She had one particular book open in a matter of moments, and flipped rapidly back and forth through the pages.

“Ah,” she said. “Got it. Flash powder. Local sales only, no long-range trade. That's a bit odd.”

“It doesn't travel well, I'm told,” Marcus said.

Cora nodded absently, her finger tracing a line in the book. “Last year . . . it looks like there are a couple of bespoke places producing it a pound or so at a time . . .”

“It would have to be more than that,” Raesinia said.

“Dozens of pounds at the least,” Marcus agreed. “Maybe hundreds.”

“Then it has to be the Halverson Mill. They're on the north bank, up the river a way. As far as I can tell from this, they're the only ones who make it in bulk.”

“Does it say how much they've made recently? Or who buys it?”

Cora shook her head. “These are compilations of last year's stock books. There's nothing that detailed.”

“It's still something,” Marcus said. “We can find the owner and ask him.”

“I'm not sure that would be a wise idea,” Raesinia said. “If he's involved, then he'll just deny everything, and then they'll know we're looking for them.”

“Ah,” Marcus said.

For a moment he'd been thinking as though he were still Captain of Armsmen, or at least the second in command of the First Colonials, with a regiment of musketeers at his back. Here and now, he had no official authority to investigate whatsoever, and all he had to back him was a single squad of riflemen. If Maurisk really was involved in the bombing, then he had thousands of Patriot Guard he could call on against anyone he could plausibly accuse of being a traitor.
If Raesinia is serious about this, we're going to need more men.
He resolved to write to the Preacher when he got back to Twin Turrets and see if he could scrounge up a few more reliable bodies.

“This is about the bomb at Farus' Triumph, isn't it?” Cora said, breaking in on his thoughts like a bucket of cold water. “The day they unveiled the Spike. They said you were nearly killed.”

“Wait,” Marcus said. “She
knows
you're the queen?”

Raesinia nodded. “My old . . . identity is supposed to have died at the Vendre. There's only a couple of people who know the truth. Cora, Sothe . . .” She hesitated. “And Maurisk.”

“Excuse us a moment.” Marcus grabbed Raesinia's shoulder and pulled her away from Cora, his voice a hiss. “You did
not
tell me about Maurisk.”

“It didn't seem relevant,” Raesinia said, with a note in her voice that said she'd known exactly what she was doing.

“Not
relevant
? That the top suspect in your attempted assassination knows you have a tendency to wander around incognito and will recognize your former identity? You might as well paint a target on yourself!”

“Only if he knows I'm here!”

Marcus scowled. “That won't take long, if you keep visiting old friends.”

“Cora's the only old friend I have left,” Raesinia said, a bit of pain in her voice. She took hold of Marcus' hand and pushed it aside irritably. “Anyway, are you supposed to be manhandling your monarch?”

Marcus looked down at his hand as though it had caught fire, and swallowed hard. “Sorry.”

Raesinia waved his apology away. “I hardly think Mrs. Felda or the people here will tell the Patriot Guard we've been by. And we need Cora's help.”

“If there's anything else I ought to know,” Marcus grated, “please bring it to my attention.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” Raesinia walked back to Cora. “Sorry. Yes, it's about the bombing. I wasn't nearly killed, though. I wasn't even there. But some other people
were
.”

“You're trying to figure out who did it?” Cora said.

Raesinia nodded.

“What we'd really like to know,” Marcus said, “is who bought the flash powder from Halverson, and what happened to it after that.”

“If they're in on the plot, they're not likely to have kept records,” Raesinia said.

“They'll have to write
something
down,” Cora said. “Powder production is tightly monitored by the army. You couldn't just take hundreds of pounds away from a mill without fudging the books
somewhere
. The mill's capacity is a constant. The raw materials are recorded. From there it'd just be a matter of math to figure it out.”

Raesinia and Marcus looked at each other.

A genius, eh?
“If we could get you those records,” he said slowly, “you could tell us where the powder went?”

“Probably,” Cora said.

“Then we might be able to track down where they assembled the bomb,” Marcus said. “That would be a start.”

“Where would the records be kept?” Raesinia said.

“At the Exchange Central Office. There's a military post there to handle war supplies.”

A grin spread across Raesinia's face. Marcus looked from her to Cora, and stifled a groan.

WINTER

T
he game known as “handball” had ancient origins, though nobody was quite certain
how
ancient. It went back at least as far as the reign of Farus the Conqueror, who was supposed to have won the allegiance of one recalcitrant noble by his prodigious feats on the field. According to Cyte, there was some evidence it was much older, being descended from the ceremonial contests of the Mithradacii Children of the Sun thousands of years before the birth of Karis.

Whatever its origins, handball had been played throughout the history of Vordan, in many forms and under many names. It had been called “grand melee,” “pushers,” and, confusingly, “football”—not because it involved the feet, but to differentiate it from other popular ball games played on horseback. It always involved two teams, a hard leather ball about the size of a man's head, and two scoring areas some distance apart, but details like the number of players, the permissible ways of advancing the ball, the dimensions of the playing field, and the rules governing the use of weapons had gone through every imaginable permutation over the years.

Winter had learned a version of the game growing up, not under any explicit set of rules but following a vague consensus of the participants. At Mrs. Wilmore's, ball games were restricted to children under the age of eleven, at which point girls were expected to limit themselves to more ladylike pursuits such as gardening, shoveling animal dung, and preparation for childbearing. Watching the opposing squads square off gave her an unexpected feeling of nostalgia; it had been a long time since she looked back on Mrs. Wilmore's with any good feeling, but a few
buried memories of glorious rough-and-tumble merriment in golden summer afternoons wormed their way to the surface, like bubbles escaping from muck.

According to the fairly simple rules of this variant, teams could be of any number of people, provided they were roughly equal. The ball could be thrown, carried, or indeed used as a bludgeon as the players saw fit. Pressing the ball to the ground within the opposing team's scoring area was worth one point. Shoving, grappling, or tackling opposing players was of course permitted, although punching, kicking, biting, or jumping on them was frowned upon.

Each team was made up of a section of Royals and a section from the Girls' Own, for about forty players to a side, evenly split between men and women. Winter had chosen the sections that would play by lot, picking scraps of paper from a cauldron. On the first day, there had been quite a bit of grumbling from both sides. This was the third day, and the chosen sections had erupted in cheers when their number was called.

A light rain was falling, just enough to mist the air and turn the dark earth of the fields into thick black mud. The stuff clung like molasses to every inch of clothing and skin, turning men and women alike into earthy golems as they ran, slipped, struggled, and floundered in the mess. One team wore blue bands wrapped around their foreheads, but they were becoming hard to see in the morass, making it hard to distinguish “blues” from “skins” as well as Royals from volunteers.

Tactics were definitely evolving, though. The first game had been nothing more or less than a giant brawl in the center of the field, won one-to-nothing by the skins when a girl had managed to squirm out of the press with the ball while everyone else was still occupied trying to shove one another into the dirt. Most of the rest of the regiment had turned up to watch out of curiosity, and by the time Winter had called a halt and sent the next set of teams on, she could already hear strategies being plotted on the sidelines.

Today, the blues were from Abby's company in the Girls' Own and Bracht's in the Royals, and both had clearly put some thought into their game plan. Their opponents were doing their best, but they lacked a coherent strategy.

A cheer erupted from the men and women gathered close around the field as a squad of blues, led by a huge woman Winter recognized from the old Leatherbacks, burst through a group of defenders. The largest of the Royals grappled and shoved to keep the gap open while more blues sprinted through, mostly women from Abby's company. One of them, a long-legged recruit whose blond
hair was now an unrecognizable tangle of mud, carried the ball under her arm and dodged the incoming defenders as deftly as the difficult terrain allowed.

“She'll never make it,” Cyte said, eyeing the play with a professional eye as the girl sidestepped a lunge from an older woman. “Can't keep that up forever.”

Winter did her best to remain stone-faced—as the responsible official, she had to appear impartial—but she fought back a smile. Abby had a gift for tactics, and her influence was clearly at work here.

The blond recruit finally ran out of room, slipping in the mud in front of a bull-necked Royal who charged her with his arms spread wide. He grabbed her around the waist, hoisting her bodily off the ground and slamming her with a squelch into the muddy turf, but when he looked around for the ball it was no longer there. The recruit had tossed it straight up, and another woman had snatched it out of the air. Before the skins could react, the blue player skipped lightly into the scoring zone and pushed the ball deep into the mud.

Shouts erupted from the crowd as Winter blew the hunting horn Cyte had cadged from some quartermaster. She raised her voice, though only those closest by could hear her over the din.

“Game over! Three to one to the blues!”

All through the regiment, Royals and volunteers screamed themselves horse or shouted curses, depending on which side they were on. Winter had actively encouraged gambling on these matches, to keep the spectators interested. There wasn't much use for money out in the field, and the amount wagered had grown quickly. A small fortune had probably just changed hands, and the blues would be heroes to those who had taken their side.
And the reverse, of course.

“Time to break camp,” Cyte said.

Winter nodded and waved for attention. When the roar had quieted somewhat, she shouted, “Players, go get yourselves cleaned off! Everybody else, break camp and be ready to march in one hour!” That would give the wagon train time to get well ahead of them. “Well played, everyone!”

Another roar of approval. The mud-covered handballers trooped off in the direction of the stream, and a dozen sergeants began shouting at once to get everyone else in order. The crowd gradually dispersed in the direction of the newly integrated camp, slowly sorting itself out into its component companies and sections.

“It seems to be working,” Cyte said once the volume level had fallen low enough for ordinary speech.

“For the moment,” Winter said. She caught sight of Captain Sevran, on the
other side of the playing field. He gave her a rueful smile and shook his head, then saluted smartly and turned to follow his men. “We'll see what happens when we go back to drill.”

“Still. They aren't getting into brawls anymore.” Cyte cocked her head, reflecting for a moment. “Off the field, anyway.”

*   *   *

Another day's march, another seven miles—hardly a stroll, by the standards of Khandarai campaign. The Deslandai army was pulling back toward the town of Gaafen, where a bridge spanned the river Kos. The Kos was tributary to the mighty Velt, running nearly east-west to where the Velt flowed roughly north-south past Desland on its east bank. North of the junction, there were several good fords the Army of the East could use to get across and invest the city, but south of it the big river widened into an uncrossable gulf nearly as wide as the Tsel in Khandar. Gaafen was therefore a good place for the Deslandai army to make a stand; if things went sour, they could always retreat north of the Kos and blow up the bridge, leaving Janus' army a long detour to find an alternative crossing.

Winter could tell that much by reading a map, so she had to assume that Janus had thought it through. As best she could tell, they had a hard road ahead. An assault on an army with its flanks securely anchored on the river would be a straightforward, bloody affair, with little opportunity for Janus' now-famous strategic talent to express itself. Even if they won—which seemed likely, since the Army of the East was half again the size of the Deslandai force—the enemy's secure line of retreat meant that all they were likely to get for it was a town full of corpses.

Janus must have a plan.
The Army of the East had thus far followed passively in the enemy's wake, content to keep a safe distance between the opposing forces.
He's not the sort of commander who would bash his head against a wall if he had any other choice. He knows what he's doing.
Faith in Janus had gotten her this far.
There's nothing to do but follow it through.

Bobby was waiting beside Winter's tent, which stood alone in the midst of the campground. The encampment would grow around it as each company filed in off the road. Winter dismounted and handed Edgar's reins to a waiting soldier—one of the Royals, this time. Cyte was rotating the camp chores more equitably.

“Sir!” Bobby said.

“Come on in.” Winter ducked into her tent, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. Bobby followed. “What have you got for me?”

“Reports.” Bobby flourished a stack of papers.

“Anything major?”

“Just the usual. Sick lists are holding steady, a couple of minor infractions.”

“Drop them off with Cyte, then.” It had become apparent that Cyte had been born to be a staff lieutenant. Her appetite for paperwork and attention to detail was boundless, and she had a deft touch with the military bureaucracy that Winter herself had never been able to develop.
It must come from spending time at the University.
“What's the butcher's bill for this morning?”

Bobby shuffled the papers. “Three broken fingers, two sprained ankles, four pulled teeth. Nothing serious.”

“That's good.” The handball games kept the regimental cutters busy with minor injuries, but so far nothing more than that.
Thankfully. I don't need my soldiers crippling each other before we even get to a battle.
“Anything else?”

“Um . . . possibly, sir. But it's a little bit . . . personal.”

“Trouble with Marsh?” The idea of anyone coming to
her
for relationship advice made Winter want to laugh and cry, both at once. “I'm not sure—”

“Not that kind of personal, sir. The other kind.”

“Oh.” Winter looked around the tent, then moved to stand by the entrance, leaning against the pole, so she could keep an eye out for eavesdroppers. “What is it?”

Bobby took a deep breath. “I'd better show you.”

She shrugged out of her uniform jacket and started undoing the buttons of her shirt.
It's a good thing she gave up her disguise. She wouldn't have been able to keep it up much longer anyway.
Bobby had grown at least an inch taller in the six months or so since they met, and her figure had filled out considerably. Winter did her best to keep her examination clinical.

Bobby's skin had paled a bit since she left the fierce Khandarai sun, but there were still visible tan lines around her neck and at her wrists. Under her shirt, though, she bore other, stranger marks. A small circular patch low on her stomach was from where she'd caught a musket ball at the Battle of Turalin, and a long ragged line that started at her collarbone and ran between her breasts showed where she'd been slashed open by a Desoltai saber, saving Winter's life in the process. These wounds had not scarred or scabbed over; instead the skin had regrown, perfect and smooth, but with the color of polished marble. It was a shiny gray, and flecked with sparking fragments that glittered as Bobby moved.

“They're getting bigger, aren't they?” Winter said.

Bobby nodded, and pointed to the circular patch on her stomach. “I measured this one when we left Khandar, and it was three inches across. It's four and
a half now. And this one”—she traced a finger down the long sword wound—“is getting wider.”

“But you don't
feel
any different?”

“Not exactly.” Bobby poked the gray patch. “It still feels like skin.”

Feor had started the transformation, back in Khandar, when Bobby lay dying in Winter's tent. She'd used her
naath
to turn Bobby into what she called a Heavenly Guardian. Winter was still hazy on the theological details—Feor's
naath
apparently gave her the ability to bestow power on
others
, but not use it herself. However it worked, Feor had made it clear that the transformation was permanent as long as Bobby lived, though she'd never been able to say what ultimate effects it might have. The head priestess of the cult Winter had rescued Feor from, the one they'd called “Mother,” had kept those details to herself.

Winter's own
naath
, the demon that devoured other demons, usually drew her attention at the presence of any other magic, like a sleepy predator raising its head at the scent of prey. Princess Raesinia—now Queen Raesinia, Winter supposed—had one, as had the doomed orator Danton Aurenne. But she didn't feel anything from being near Bobby, possibly because it was Feor who actually bore the
naath
.
Or demon. Or whatever you want to call it.
Winter shook her head. She did her best not to think about the supernatural side of her adventure in Khandar, except when it intruded on her nightmares.

“So it hasn't changed much?” Winter said. “It just grows, slowly.”

“I'm a little worried about what will happen when it gets to my face,” Bobby said. “I won't be able to hide it.”

“What about Marsh? I mean . . . he must know.”

Bobby looked embarrassed, and Winter was able to follow the flush as it rose up her body and ended at her face. She gritted her teeth and kept her eyes firmly on the girl's face.