The Price of Valor (41 page)

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RAESINIA

“You're the queen,” Andy said.

“Yes,” Raesinia said.

“The Queen of
Vordan
.”

“Yes.”

“
The
Queen of Vordan.”

“Last I checked, there was only one.”

“But . . .”

Raesinia sighed. “Let me guess. I'm not what you expected?”

She set off down the street at a determined walk, leaving Andy staring after her. The ranker shook her head and jogged to catch up, and they walked in silence for a moment. Even here, only a block from Farus' Triumph, pedestrian traffic was scarce. An older man hurried past, eyes down.

“Sorry,” Andy said. “I just . . . I mean, that's a hell of a thing to drop on someone.”

“I thought it would be better to get it out of the way.” She and Marcus had decided last night that Andy deserved to be brought into their confidence, at least partly. Raesinia wasn't about to tell her about her own condition. “I'm surprised that you believe me.”

“I . . .” Andy frowned. “I guess people wouldn't, would they?”

“I haven't really been in a position to tell many people, but I would imagine not.”

“It just seems like the sort of thing that might happen these days,” Andy said. “I mean, why not?”

“Solid reasoning.”

“Well, excuse me for being gullible.” Andy cocked her head. “You're not joking, though. Are you?”

“No.” Raesinia closed her eyes for a moment. She was angry, and a little frightened, but it was unfair to take it out on Andy. “If we go over to the palace, I could show you some portraits.”

“Does Marcus know?”

Raesinia nodded. “That's why I was staying at Twin Turrets.”

“That explains a lot.”

“It does? Like what?”

“I was starting to think he was in love with you.”

Raesinia missed a step, stumbling slightly over a loose flagstone.

“But in a creepy, worshipping sort of way, you know?” Andy went on, without pausing. “The way he treats you so carefully. But this makes more sense.”

“I suppose it does.” First Viera, now Andy.
Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with Marcus' love life?

“What about Uhlan?” Andy said.

“I
think
he knows, but he's never mentioned anything.” The Mierantai lieutenant was still abed, but according to Mrs. Felda wasn't in serious danger. They'd had to haul him to the church on two lengths of board after ditching the carriage in an empty yard. “Cora knows, too. But no one else. Obviously, I'm going to need you to keep quiet about it.”

“Obviously. Your Majesty.” Andy grinned at Raesinia's warning glance. “Sorry. But you really lived up in the palace?”

“All my life.”

“That must have been a nice life,” Andy said, with a wistful sigh. “Good food, people waiting on you hand and foot, nothing to do but . . . what
do
princesses do all day?”

“Not a lot, it turns out. I spent a lot of time reading, or studying with my father when he wasn't ill.”

“Your father . . .” Andy paused. “Oh. I'm sorry.”

“It's all right.”

“It's so strange to think of the king as . . . well, as a man. With a family. As opposed to just a beard with a crown that gets stamped on coins.”

“I wish more people could have known him like that,” Raesinia said, a lump forming in her throat. “I don't know if he was a good king. I suppose not, given how things have turned out. But he was always a good father. After my brother died . . . it took a lot out of him.”

There was another awkward pause. Andy pointed to a café, its colorful banner showing a crane in flight against a setting sun. The cloth snapped in the stiff, chilly breeze.

“Is that the place?” she said.

“Looks like it,” Raesinia said.

“I don't understand why Janus wouldn't tell Marcus where this
Willowbrook place is. Or tell
you
, for that matter. If he can't trust
you
, then what's the point?”

“Operational security,” Raesinia said, parroting Sothe. “People should know only what they need to. Less chance of someone giving something away by accident, or under torture.”

“Under
torture
?” Andy shook her head. “Janus must be a cheery guy.”

“He takes things seriously.”

They reached the front door of the café. It was nearly empty; a trio of old men huddled against a long wooden counter were the only customers. Raesinia looked over the abandoned tables, all bare and gleaming with chairs neatly pushed in.

Except for one, near the front, where a broadsheet had been left behind. It was folded between its corners, to make a triangle. Not the way you'd normally fold something like that, or crumple it in your pocket.

“It's there,” Raesinia said.

“You're sure?”

“Act calm.” Raesinia gestured at the tired-looking woman behind the counter, and pointed to the table. The woman gave a resigned wave, as though to say,
Under the circumstances, just sit wherever you like.
Raesinia and Andy pulled back two chairs and sat, and Raesinia unfolded the paper.

“Now what?” Andy said.

“Now we wait.”

Raesinia's time with Sothe had made her at least minimally conversant in this kind of operation, which everyone at Mrs. Felda's seemed to take to mean that she was some kind of expert. In fact, her time in the conspiracy had included very little cloak-and-dagger stuff, until the very end.
Mostly it was drinking and talking to people.
With Uhlan badly hurt, and the Patriot Guard actively on the lookout for Marcus, it was left to Raesinia and Andy to check for replies for Marcus' message to Willowbrook.

Andy has a point about the secrecy.
She understood why Janus would want to keep the location of the Thousand Names a tightly guarded secret, but she could hardly see how telling
her
was going to cause any problems.
And it would have been helpful in an emergency.

“Should I order something?” Andy said.

“We'd better,” Raesinia said. “Otherwise this will look pretty odd.”

She waved to the woman behind the counter, who reluctantly came over to serve them. Raesinia bought a loaf of fresh bread and butter for a shockingly high price, and a bottle of wine for a startlingly low one. While they waited, she
looked over the broadsheet, which turned out to be
The Patriot
, a solidly Conservative paper and one of the most popular at the moment in the mad whirl that was Vordan's press.

MORE ARRESTS MADE
was the leading article. “Following the shocking revelation of the treason of the Minister of War, Giles Durenne, the Patriot Guards continued their laudable efforts to purge the rottenness from our government. Several more associates of the former deputy were brought into custody, and information he and his cronies provided led to the capture of a number of enemy spies. We trust that the removal of these discordant elements will bring unity to our people, and thus gain for Vordanai arms the laurels of victory that have thus far been lacking . . .”

It went on in that vein, with eloquent praise for the “genius” of the “benevolent President of the Directory” and the salutary effects of his program of public executions. Not mentioned were the arrests among the Radical deputies, except in passing as additional spies and traitors. Or, for that matter, was there any word from the Army of the East, or acknowledgment of its past victories.

That has to mean something.
If she went to the corner pamphlet seller, Raesinia knew, she would find
The Patriot
and its like to be the only things on offer. If the Conservatives had dominated the press before, now they had simply extinguished all other voices. Several Radical printers and writers had been arrested in the general roundup, and now languished in the impromptu cells beside the Hotel Ancerre.
I'm surprised Maurisk hasn't gotten around to reopening the Vendre.

The fact that these government-approved publications said nothing at all about Janus' army, even though—according to Marcus—the news from that corner was good, could only mean that Maurisk was not interested in the general further enhancing his reputation.
With Durenne disposed of, Janus is the only remaining threat.
We have to get in communication with him.
Hence the frantic efforts to contact Willowbrook.

“Can I ask you something?” Andy said.

Raesinia folded the paper—in the more usual way, this time—and looked up. “What about?”

“If you're the queen”—Andy kept her voice low—“what are you
doing
here?”

“It's kind of a long story,” Raesinia said.

“I can imagine,” Andy said. “But I think we've got time.”

The proprietor arrived, bearing a wooden tray of steaming bread, a bottle, and two glasses. When she retreated after a few moments of slicing, uncorking, and pouring, Raesinia looked thoughtfully at Andy.

What the hell? Why not tell her?

So she did. Not everything, obviously—not her death and Orlanko's demon. But the story of how she'd founded the conspiracy against her own rule, in order to fight back against the increasing influence of the Last Duke, and how it had ended in blood and revolution. Andy listened, absorbing everything in silence.

“That's . . . wow,” she finally said when Raesinia sat back.

“When I tell it like that, it all seems a little mad,” Raesinia said.

“What happened to the rest of the conspiracy?”

“Cora was one. Maurisk was another.” Raesinia was surprised to find that she still felt a sense of betrayal there. “The others . . . died. One of them was working for Orlanko. Another . . . he was in love with me, and got himself killed trying to keep me safe.”

“Ah.” Andy shook her head. “I think Hayver had . . . feelings for me. He kept trying to work himself up to talking about it. I thought it was cute, stupid tongue-tied boy, but I didn't want to encourage him.” She looked down at the table. Raesinia heard screams in her head, and knew Andy was hearing the same.

Silently, Raesinia picked up the bottle and poured Andy a full glass, followed by a token amount for herself. Alcohol was more or less wasted on her, since the binding didn't allow even a pleasant fuzziness.

“I still don't understand,” Andy said, coming out of her reverie.

“Don't understand what?”

“Why you did it. I mean, Orlanko was going to take over. So what? You'd still get to be queen, even if you didn't actually do anything.”

“He would have married me off to some Borelgai prince and ruled Vordan himself. We got a taste of what that would have been like. Concordat agents at every window, bodies in the river every morning, and anyone who objects gets hauled off to the Vendre or worse. And he was selling the country to the Borels and the Sworn Church, piece by piece. I couldn't just stand by and let it happen.”

“I can think of worse fates,” Andy said. “Swanning about the palace eating off silver plates while other people do the work of running everything. Having to roll with some nasty foreigner from time to time doesn't seem like too high a price, and as for the rest of it . . . what makes it your responsibility?”

“I . . .” Raesinia paused. “It has to be my responsibility. That's what kings and queens are
for
, to take care of their people.”

“Just because you were born to the wrong family, the fate of the whole kingdom is your problem?”

“More or less,” Raesinia said. “That's just the way it is.”

“Color me glad I wasn't born royal, then.”

Raesinia shrugged. She couldn't explain, not completely—her ageless state meant that Orlanko would have had to eliminate her sooner or later, presumably by announcing her “death” and shipping her off to the dungeons of Elysium.

But the truth was that she'd never really considered giving in. Raesinia frowned, trying to sort her feelings into something that would make sense. The luxury of palace life had never mattered to her, but that was because she'd grown up with it as the default.
How can I explain what
that
was like?

She gave up. There was another, truer answer in any event.

“I hate him,” she said. “Orlanko. For what he did to me, for the way he treated my father. I couldn't just lie back, not if it meant letting him win.”

“Ah.” Andy smiled and raised her glass in salute. “Fair enough. If you'd been a Leatherback, I think we'd have made you into a proper scrapper in no time.”

“I'm sure.” Raesinia raised her own glass and took a sip. “Maybe I went looking for revolution in the wrong place.”

Andy laughed, then froze and set her own glass down. A young man in the worn linens of a common laborer approached their table, heedless of the look he drew from the proprietor.

“Hello, ladies,” he said. “Where might you be headed?”

“Somewhere there's willows,” Raesinia said.

He nodded, as if this answer made sense. “Not going my way, then.” As he turned away, his hand passed over the table, and a folded scrap of paper fell from his sleeve. “Best of luck!”

Raesinia put her hand over the note and waited until the courier had gone. She pretended to stare at the broadsheet, engrossed in its hyperpatriotic idiocy, while she unfolded the message. Andy leaned across to get a better look.

The note was written on thin foolscap, in a neat hand, and read:

Your message received and transmitted. Still secure here but not sure for how long. Backup plans under way. Will bring you over here as soon as I can, but may take some time to arrange secure transport. Contact again using usual arrangement. Giforte.

“Well,” Andy said, “that's something.”