The Price of Valor (52 page)

“She sees you pulling away from her,” Abby had said. “Into this world of flags and drums and cannon, and she doesn't think she can follow.”

“You've fallen in love with Janus bet fucking Vhalnich.”

You don't have to care.

But I can't help it, can I?

“I can't,” Winter said in a very small voice.

“Sir?” Bobby said again.

Jane stood up, rubbing furiously at her eyes. Winter held out a hand, but she batted it aside as she stalked past, out through the tent flap and past the startled group outside. Winter's hand dropped to the table and lay there like a dead thing.

“Sir?” Bobby said hesitantly. “Winter?”

Winter swallowed, and found her voice.

“I'd be grateful,” she managed, “if you'd give me a minute or two. In fact, go and find Colonel Warus as well. Tell him it's an emergency, but don't let anyone else know.” She looked down at herself.
Jane was right about one thing, at least. I know what I need to do. I just didn't want to admit it.
“We're going to need him.”

*   *   *

The perfect victory,
Winter thought,
is the battle you don't have to fight.

She remembered Janus in Khandar, facing down the mutinous Colonials led by Adrecht Roston, and how the colonel had turned the whole situation to his own advantage with nothing more than a little guile.
And a bit of help from me, I suppose.
She'd thought about calling a similar meeting, but after her conversation with Jane she wasn't at all sure she could pull it off, and in any case the Army of the East was too large to gather that way.

Instead she'd gone to a few commanders she knew she could rely on. Fitz Warus and Give-Em-Hell, of course, had agreed eagerly, but their very eagerness
had shaken her.
Is Jane right? Will we just do anything for Janus, and damn the consequences?
She'd expected Sevran to be more difficult, but he'd promised to get the support of the Royals and make sure his lieutenants were on board.

Last, and most critically, she'd gone to Abby. As Winter had feared, Jane had already been there, and Abby looked as shaken as Winter herself felt. Abby's expression was firm, however, and her voice steady.

“Jane's being an idiot,” she said. “Which is hardly unprecedented. She's gone to sulk with some of the old Leatherbacks.” Abby took a deep breath, steadying herself. “What do you need us to do?”

That, and some hasty planning, had led to this rocky hillside, a few miles outside the camp and well beyond the view of the outlying pickets. This was the road that led up to the pass; with the fall of Antova, the direct route back to Vordan City was open, as opposed to the roundabout trip through Desland and Essyle. A few days' travel through the gap in the Keth Range and a quick downstream river journey would see the Patriot Guards and their prisoner back in the capital.

Give-Em-Hell had volunteered to seize the carriage by force, vaulting from horseback to the driver's seat, but Winter had vetoed the idea. Instead she'd borrow a squadron of light cavalry, hard-riding men who'd mostly seen service in Khandar, equipped with stubby-looking carbines and fast horses. They'd left Give-Em-Hell with Fitz Warus, to execute the other half of the plan, and set off just before sunset through the Colonials' pickets.

There was still a great deal that could go wrong, and Winter chewed her lip as she waited. De Ferre might have been lying, or he could have been tipped off by their preparations.
If they send the carriage by another route, tonight is going to be bloody chaos.
She therefore felt a knot in her chest loosen when the sound of hoofbeats and rattling wheels reached her around the bend in the road.

She had her back to a huge pine tree, felled by the cavalry and dragged across the road to create a barricade. It smelled of needles and sap, and scratchy pine needles brushed against her every time she moved. Winter raised her head enough to see the road, and waited until the lanterns of the carriage came into view. Then she stood up, uniformed but unarmed, and waited.

They'd picked a stretch of road where the carriage would have plenty of time to brake—it wouldn't help anybody if the whole thing toppled over the hillside. The vehicle slewed to a halt in front of the barrier, horses sidestepping nervously as far as their harness would allow. The driver had the reins in one hand and a long-barreled shotgun in the other, and four escorting Patriot Guards
rode alongside with muskets. They gathered in front of the pine and leveled their weapons when Winter stepped up to stand on the trunk.

“What's this? Who're you?” one of the escorts, a lieutenant, barked. He was obviously on edge, and his finger was already on the trigger of his long, unwieldy weapon.

“Colonel Winter Ihernglass, of the Third Infantry,” Winter said. She held up her hands. “As you can see, the road is blocked.”

“Not for long,” the lieutenant said. “Ferrer, Gunter, hitch your horses to that mess and drag it out of the way.” To Winter, he added, “
You
, get down and don't move.”

“Before you do that, I suggest you look up at the hill,” Winter said. “Carefully.”

“Sir!” One of the Patriot Guards gestured wildly with his musket, making Winter wince.

On the hill, above the road, two dozen men in blue had risen to their knees, short-barreled weapons trained on the guards. Carbines might be less accurate at range, but the distance was barely twenty-five yards. The other side of the road was a steep drop, impassable to horses. The lieutenant's eyes went up to the cavalrymen and then back to Winter.

“You wouldn't dare,” he said. “This is treason.”

“Probably,” Winter said agreeably. “But that's not
your
problem, is it?”

Sweat gleamed on the man's face. “General de Ferre instructed me to break through any resistance.”

“You could try that,” Winter said, trying to keep her tone calm. “And then some people are going to end up dead. That might include me, but it will
definitely
include you, because the men up there had instructions to leave no survivors once the shooting starts.”

“I . . .” The musket wobbled.

“Think of it this way,” Winter said. “If it's treason, I'll be punished for it in the end. No need for
you
to die, right here, if that's inevitable anyway. Why don't you and your men drop your weapons?”

There was a long, strained moment before the lieutenant uncocked his musket and tossed it on the ground. His men hastily followed suit.

Winter breathed out. “Lieutenant Corder? You can come down and secure the carriage.”

Half of the cavalrymen put their weapons away and descended the slope, while the other half kept watch. Winter let them deal with the Patriot Guards.
She went to the carriage door and opened it, to find Janus sitting calmly on a cushioned seat, reading from a thin volume. He marked his place with a ribbon as she entered, shut the book with a snap, and looked up.

“Colonel,” he said. “Nicely executed, as always.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, wishing he'd chosen another word. “Execution” was not something she wanted to think about at the moment.

“May I ask as to your next step?”

“The cavalry will get the carriage turned around, and we'll head back to the camp. By the time we get there, Fitz and Give-Em-Hell will have disarmed the rest of the Patriot Guards and taken de Ferre into custody.”

“And after that?”

Winter shrugged. “After that I was hoping to leave it up to you. Sir.”

“I see.” Janus paused, looking briefly at the ceiling, and then turned back to Winter. “What about the rest of the army? What will they do?”

“If I'd tried to get them to come after you, I think there might have been a lot of arguments, and maybe some fighting. But if we can get you back and de Ferre under guard before they realize what's going on . . .” Winter shrugged. “They'll follow.”

“Like most soldiers, I suspect.” He patted the cushion opposite him. “You might as well have a seat, then.”

Winter sat. Janus leaned back and closed his eyes, and she remained silent while the cavalrymen led the horses around and went through the tricky operation of turning the carriage on the narrow road. Before long they were heading back the way they had come, toward the river and Antova, with their Patriot Guard prisoners in tow.

“Sir?” Winter said.

“Hmm?” Janus said without opening his eyes.

“Was this the right thing to do?”

“Are you really expecting me to have an answer to that question, Colonel?”

Winter considered. “No. I suppose not.”

“Well, then.”

“May I ask another?”

“Of course,” he said.

“You hid me in your tent on purpose, didn't you?”

Janus opened his huge gray eyes and stared at Winter in the semidarkness. “Yes.”

“Why? If this is what you wanted, why didn't you just tell me?”

“He's using you, Winter, and he's got you so wrapped up you'd hang for him and smile while you put your own head through the noose . . .”

“It's . . .” Janus paused. “It is difficult to explain.”

Winter said nothing.

“There is a way,” he said eventually, “in which you are a better officer than I will ever be. I can lead an army, but I can never be a
part
of it. I am too . . . different.” He sighed. “I think I see the way forward, and to me it seems so
obvious
, but somehow others fail to grasp it. It is something I have struggled with all my life.

“I think I know what to do now, and I thought that the army might support me. But if I was wrong, if I failed—as I have often failed—to understand the thoughts of other men, then the Army of the East would tear itself apart. I could not allow that.

“So I left the decision to you. You understand the . . . the
feelings
of the men and women in the ranks, in a way I do not. I presented the opportunity, confident that you would be able to exploit it if you felt it was the correct decision.”

“What if I'd decided the other way?” Winter said.

Janus closed his eyes again. “Then they would have taken me to Vordan, and I'd probably have been executed in due course. I sent appropriate instructions to Colonel d'Ivoire against that eventuality.”

There was another long silence.

“You said you know what to do,” Winter said quietly. “So what happens next?”

Janus grinned, his smile there and gone again like summer lightning.

“What do you think, Colonel?” he said. “We're going home. All of us.”

The carriage rattled to a halt beside the sentry line, where in spite of their efforts at secrecy a small crowd had gathered. Janus emerged first, and the sight of him drew cheers. Muskets waved in the air, fixed bayonets glinting dangerously.

They have no idea what the politics are,
Winter thought, looking at the excited men.
They don't care about the Directory or the Deputies-General. All they know is that this man has always brought them victory.
With him to lead them, they'd smashed the vaunted armies of the Free Cities League and captured the impenetrable bastion of Antova without firing a shot.

Framed in the carriage doorway, Janus looked back at Winter and gave a slight nod, as if in thanks. Then he hopped down and, flanked by cheering Colonials, rejoined his army. It was only once most of the crowd had moved off that Winter saw Abby waiting, with a set to her jaw that meant that something had gone badly wrong.

She hopped down herself, stomach tight. Abby gave her a tight salute, which Winter waved away.

“I'm sorry, sir,” Abby said. “I couldn't stop her.”

“What's wrong?” Winter said. “Did de Ferre get warning? Is there fighting?”

“What?” Abby blinked. “Oh no. Nothing like that. The Patriot Guards practically fell over themselves to surrender. I think someone's been telling tall tales about the Girls' Own, because they looked like they expected us to rip their throats out with our teeth. De Ferre swears a lot, but Graff stuck a sock in his mouth and that shut him up.” She swallowed. “No, it's Jane.”

“Oh, saints and martyrs,” Winter said. “Where is she? I'll talk to her.”

“She's gone,” Abby said. “Along with a dozen of the Leatherbacks, and as many horses. In the confusion, nobody thought to stop her.”

“Gone?” Winter shook her head, as though trying to make the statement fit better. “Where would she go?”

“Away from the army,” Abby said.

Away from Janus,
Winter thought.
Away from
me.

THE GRAY ROSE

T
he grounds of Clover-by-Ost stretched from the house itself—a four-story, multiturreted thing—down toward the river, widening as they went to encompass a considerable stretch of bank. There were rolling, gently sloped meadows, cobbled lanes that snaked back and forth to take in the most breathtaking views, and little clumps of carefully tended trees surrounded by artfully deployed “wild” flowers. Most of the plants were brown and dead now, of course, and the picnic umbrellas had been stored for the season, but it was still warm enough to make for a pleasant evening walk when it wasn't raining.

Sothe didn't walk because it was pleasant, obviously, any more than she neglected her duty when it was raining. She had men posted at strategic points all along the vast, sloping estate, covering all the major approaches and a few more imaginative possibilities. They were supposed to stay awake and alert throughout their shift, and Sothe liked to encourage this by visiting them unexpectedly. This had the added bonus of letting her practice her stealth, which had grown dangerously lax in Raesinia's service. She considered it a personal failure whenever one of the guards failed to jump in surprise at her discreet cough.

Soft
, she said, working her way along a fold in the ground that covered her from the (hopefully) watchful eyes at the next guard post.
I'm getting soft.

And old, of course. This was a young woman's game, and Sothe could smell age stalking her like an invisible, infinitely patient predator. She could still sneak up on a stray cat, or hang from her fingertips, but she wasn't as
fast
as she'd been at eighteen. Some of that was natural—no one could stay at their peak forever—but Sothe was convinced that some of it was the result of getting too comfortable.

The girl who'd done Orlanko's dirty work for so many years, who'd flitted from shadow to shadow like a breeze and spent hours waiting for a single unguarded moment, that girl would never have let the queen come so close to disaster. Just thinking about it brought bile to the back of Sothe's throat, the
thump
of the explosion and the rush of realizing how close they'd come.
Soft.

So she stalked through the grounds of Clover-by-Ost, sneaking up on her own men, trying to approach as an intruder might. A smart, patient, knowledgeable intruder, someone who knew the security inside and out and wasn't afraid of dying if it meant success. Herself, in other words.

She'd chosen Clover-by-Ost, an estate that had been gifted to the crown by the late queen's family, because its remote location and rambling, enormous size meant that the illusion she planned to create was that much more plausible. The staff was as big as the house, and Sothe had taken care to give the various branches contradictory instructions in the matter of cleaning, meals, and laundry. The resulting confusion, with bedding regularly changed twice or not at all, feasts delivered to the wrong room, and garments ruined from overwashing, meant that it was easy to conceal the fact that meals went uneaten and beds unslept in.

Everyone knew the queen was staying at the house. No one had seen her, of course, but everyone had a
friend
who'd caught a glimpse, or knew someone whose cousin had been scrubbing a window when the royal presence had turned the corner, or—

It was a simple game, almost a childish one. Sothe played it out more from habit than anything else. Gossipy staff worried her less than the watchers the Directory deployed, official and unofficial. She thwarted these spies by layering the house around with elaborate security—easily justified, in the name of protecting the queen—and a great deal of straightforward bribery. Maurisk's agents wrote long, carefully annotated reports, unaware that the couriers they trusted to deliver them instead handed them to Sothe to amend. Their simple ciphers would have made the least of the Last Duke's analysts roll his eyes in contempt.

Standards, Sothe reflected, had certainly fallen since the old days. Orlanko had been a vicious, backstabbing, power-mad bastard, but no one could say a word against the efficiency of his organization. Sothe had always respected efficiency.

The guard she was approaching had his station in the shadow of a huge, spreading oak, whose dried leaves, spread underfoot, made the approach tantalizingly challenging. She padded across them, stepping so slowly and carefully she hardly seemed to move at all. The guard was a silhouette against the tree, leaning
on the trunk and staring out toward the river. Sothe was so absorbed in keeping her progress silent that it took her a few moments to catch the absolute stillness of the shadowed shape, or the scent of fresh blood on the wind.

She stiffened, then ran the last few steps, leaves scattering and crunching underfoot. The guard, a thin, rangy man, had been pinned by the shirt to the trunk of the tree, his throat slit as neatly as a pig at a butcher shop. Sothe looked him over briefly, then turned up the slope toward the house.

None of the Directory's agents had dared do anything so overt, at least not yet. But there were other powers interested in the welfare of the Vordanai queen who might not be so circumspect. Borel, Murnsk, and Hamvelt certainly had their own agents, and the Hamveltai
Kommerzint
in particular was—though overestimated, in Sothe's professional opinion—still worthy of respect.

He killed the guard.
It was the move of someone who didn't plan to stay undetected for long. Bodies had a way of causing alarms, by their presence or their absence.
So either he's testing the defenses or he's here to break in and doesn't much care about getting out again.

She covered the distance to the house at a jog, crunching across the gravel path that separated it from the grounds and heading for the closest door. The illusion had to be maintained at all costs, even in an emergency—if the queen
had
been here, the first thing Sothe would have done on discovering a dead guard would be to make sure she was safe. So that was the first order of business, followed by a quiet alert, and an effort to mousetrap whoever had the temerity—

There were two guards beside the door, day and night. Both were now dead, sprawled in the gravel. Knife wounds, fast and precise. One guard had fumbled a pistol out of his belt, and it lay nearby.

That,
Sothe thought,
makes no sense.
There were far easier ways to gain access to the house itself. Clover-by-Ost was too large to be very secure, and a little climbing would have given the intruder a way in without the chanciness of a fight.
So he's either a lunatic, or . . .

She stepped over the bodies, pushed open the door, and headed through the maze of servants' corridors for the stairs. A few turns on, she encountered the next body, a teenage maid with a single stab wound on the side of her head, just forward of the ear. A silver tea service lay where she'd dropped it, undisturbed.

A lunatic who knows what he's doing.
The young woman hadn't even had a chance to scream. Sothe ghosted past the corpse, up the servants' stairs to the third floor. Another pair of bodies, another maid and a groom, lay atop each other where they'd fallen in a tangle of limbs. The young man's face showed nothing but blank surprise.

The “queen's” chambers were on the fourth floor. Whoever the intruder was, he'd followed the direct route, making no attempt at stealth, and had simply silenced everyone who happened across his path. The door to the royal suite was kept locked, and Sothe was unsurprised to find the latch simply kicked out of the doorframe.
Not subtle.
But efficient, curiously efficient . . .

She crept up to the door, glad she'd been out on her rounds—and thus armed and dressed for stealth—rather than dressed up in her Head of Royal Household guise. Not a floorboard squeaked underfoot, and the deep carpet absorbed her cautious steps without a whisper. She pressed herself against the side of the door and listened.

Footsteps. The intruder was one room beyond, across the sitting room and in the queen's bedchamber. The tone of his steps changed as he entered the washroom, boots clicking on marble, then changed back.
Searching.

That the man had to die was now apparent. Sothe would dearly have loved to capture him and find out where he'd come from, but his evident skill was such that she couldn't risk it. She had a half dozen throwing knives tucked into her well-fitted blacks, along with two longer fighting knives in greased sheaths at the small of her back. She drew one of the smaller blades, a carefully balanced steel needle only a little bigger than her palm. The footsteps were coming closer—the intruder was returning to the bedroom door. She heard the door creak, ever so slightly, as he pulled it open—

Without looking, she wound up and whipped the knife around the edge of the door. She aimed it squarely at where the center of an ordinary man's chest would be—without looking, it was too risky trying for a fancy shot. It wouldn't be fatal, but this was in the nature of opening remarks, rather than final arguments, and slowing him down would be helpful.

There was a curious absence of sound, not the thump of blade in flesh but not the wooden
thok
of a miss.
Maybe he ducked and I hit the bed.
She was already making her next move, pushing herself out and spinning across the doorway to the other side. This was reasonably safe; even if he was waiting for her to appear, she'd be moving too fast for him to throw or shoot, and she'd have a quick glimpse of him and the room beyond.

As she cleared the doorframe, she saw a figure in dark clothes, across the sitting room in the doorway to the bedroom, right where she'd expected him. He wore a linen mask over his face, and it glittered darkly, as though covered in shards of black glass. Of more concern to Sothe was his posture, right arm forward, as though just finishing a throw of his own.

Something punched her hard in the midriff, throwing off her momentum. She grabbed the doorframe and pulled herself sideways, out of view, but at the last moment she could see the intruder's
left
hand was still raised in front of his chest. Steel gleamed between his fingers—what looked very much like her knife, as though he'd picked it out of the air.
Which is impossible.

She thumped against the wall, awkwardly, and flattened next to an ornamental table. One hand went to her side, where she found the bare-metal hilt of a throwing knife much like her own, the blade buried deep in her flesh.

Pain was just starting to bloom, and she fought it down with all the ruthlessness of two decades' practice. Her heart wanted to pound, and her breathing to deepen. She denied these requests from her body, keeping her mind clear.
The situation is not what was expected. Reassess.

First step, damage control. She pulled the knife free, took a deep breath, and evaluated the resulting agony dispassionately.
Tolerable.
Judging by the wound depth and location, it wouldn't be seriously hampering, and blood loss would remain within acceptable levels.

Second step, threat assessment.
That throw was impossible.
The flight time of a flung blade was an appreciable fraction of the time it had taken her to spin across the doorway. That meant her opponent had made his move
before
she had, timing the throw so perfectly it had intercepted her in midmovement. Even if she had known someone was going to leap across a doorway, and had been waiting for precisely that moment, she didn't think she could have done that.
Which means that nobody can.

And my knife—
He'd
caught
it. There had always been fanciful stories about men so fast they could catch a blade thrown at their face, but experiments and experience had taught Sothe that no one was
that
fast, except by luck.
He doesn't seem like the lucky type.

The black mask rang alarm bells, too. Not conclusive, of course—anyone could wear a mask; that was the
point
of a mask—but how many people knew about this particular style?

Tentative conclusion:
sorcery
. The man across the way was one of the Penitent Damned, a supernatural assassin.

Course of action: unclear. It was possible that she would be able to defeat him, in spite of his evident advantages. Sothe had beaten many men over the years (and a handful of women), some of whom thought they'd had her in a bad spot. She'd been wounded, starved, tortured, outmuscled, and outgunned. In the end, she'd always come out on top.

Her hands itched to draw the knives at her back, burst through the doorway, and see if the intruder's skill at throwing knives extended to hand-to-hand combat. But she took a long breath, feeling blood drooling down her skin, and waited.

No. Objectives first. Mission first.
Her mission was to make sure the illusion of Raesinia's presence here was maintained. The only chance of success was to kill this man, and even then the secret might get out in the confusion that followed the slaughter.
Secondary objective.
If secrecy could not be maintained, she had to warn Raesinia the ruse had come apart. That would be impossible if the intruder killed
her
.

The right course was apparent.
Retreat.
It hurt her pride, but her pride was not important.
Mission first.

That decided, how to execute? The stairs, behind her, were in full view of the doorway. There was another set, but that would involve going through the sitting room, and the intruder would probably be able to run her down.
Window, then.
The nearest one of
those
was also in the sitting room, but much closer.

Perhaps a second had passed.

She grabbed the ornamental table by its spindly base, tipping china ornaments to shatter on the floor. Raising it in front of her like a shield, she bulled through the doorway. One knife
thocked
into the surface of the table, and Sothe ducked her head when she saw the man in black winding up for another throw. A moment later, the blade whistled an inch over her head.