The Price of Valor (56 page)

“Having an army in the capital seems like a pretty good first step.”

Janus shook his head. “Not in the long run. The Borelgai defeated our armies in the War of the Princes, but they weren't stupid enough to try and install a new king. If I'd used the Colonials to take over after the revolution, I would have been as bad as Maurisk. I would have
had
to be, in order to stay in power, and in due time some hero would have come along to defeat me.”

“But you can go back now?”

“Oh yes.” He spread his hands, gray eyes sparkling. “Now
I'm
the hero, come to overthrow the vicious tyrant. That puts things on a very different footing.”

Winter stared for a moment, not sure what to say. Janus lowered his arms.

“Liberators are always more popular than conquerors. And a return to law and order is more welcome once people have gotten a taste for what life is like without it.” He cocked his head. “What's the matter, Colonel? You look shocked.”

“You . . . really planned all this? That far in advance?”

“I believe I told you once that it's not about planning. It's about putting the pieces in the right places, and reacting to whatever opportunities come up.”

“But
why
?” Winter blurted. “Just for the power? To make yourself king?”

“I don't want to be king. I think Raesinia will be a good queen, if she gets the chance. And I don't want the power, in the end. But . . .”

Janus looked away, at the column marching past. Evening was beginning to fall, and the light had turned soft and buttery, painting the brown grass of the hillside so it looked as if it were cast from gold. The silence stretched on, until Winter thought she'd offended the general. When he spoke, though, it was not the dismissal she expected.

“Someone had to do it,” he said.

There was another pause. Winter blinked. “That's it?”

Janus shrugged. “Anyone could see the crisis was coming. The king dying, the princess too young, Orlanko too powerful, and the Black Priests . . . It was going to explode, one way or another. The wrong ruler, at the wrong time, can mean decades of poverty and war. Farus the Third, the Wastrel King, let the nobles steal the kingdom from under his nose. Farus the Fifth, Farus the Great,
was so in love with his own face that he bankrupted the state building grand monuments. Only the right person could keep us from disaster.”

“And you're the right person?” Winter said.

Janus smiled, and fixed her with his fathomless gaze. His eyes blazed in the soft light.

“Of course,” he said.

“You didn't believe him?” Abby said.

They were in Winter's tent, after dinner. The camp was in a pasture by the side of the road, and the outer pickets had to fend off determined attempts by inquisitive cows to breach the perimeter. Whoever was supposed to be minding the animals had apparently fled at the army's approach.
He's lucky Janus is so restrained, or we'd all be eating beefsteak.

Abby had slipped into the tent, quietly, as she had done every night since the confrontation at Antova. In what might have been an effort to delay the main business of the evening, Winter found herself recounting her conversation with Janus, and her impression that, somehow, he'd been lying to her.

“I don't know,” Winter said. “Not telling the whole truth, anyway.”

“You don't think he's really doing it for the good of Vordan?”

Winter shook her head. “That may be
part
of it, but there's something else. What he told me sounded . . . too pat. Like it was something he told himself, to try and get himself to believe it.”

“We've got no choice now but to trust him,” Abby said.

“No.” Winter let her awareness sink through the layers of her mind, down to the level where she could feel the slow movement of the Infernivore. “It's been a long time since I had a choice.”

There was a long pause.

“Jane was wrong,” Abby said. “She was wrong, and she's still wrong. You did the right thing.”

Winter sighed. “Thanks.” Then, steeling herself, she asked the question she'd asked every night. “Any sign of her?”

The forward scouts, some from the Girls' Own and others from Give-Em-Hell's cavalry, had been given quiet instructions to ask the folk they met about others who might have come this way. Winter wasn't sure what she expected to find—traffic on the River Road was heavy enough that a small group of young women wouldn't have attracted much notice—but she had to
try
.
I'll find her. She
wants
me to find her.

“No,” Abby said. She looked at the table, on which was spread a map, and
put her finger near the spot where they were camped. “We'll make Orlan tomorrow. That's our best chance to pick up the trail, assuming she came this way at all.”

“She came this way,” Winter said. “This is the way back to Vordan City. Where else does she have to go?”

Abby nodded. “We'll find her. If not before we get to the city, then after.”

After . . .
Winter hadn't let herself think too much about
after
. What might happen after everything played out, after Janus confronted Maurisk. It seemed like a distant fantasy world, the other side of an endless river with no bridge in sight.
The end of the war.

“Cyte needs to talk to you,” Abby said, seeing the distant look in Winter's eyes. “She's got orders to go over for tomorrow. And I think there were some disciplinary issues Bobby wanted you to look at.”

“Right.” Winter pulled herself back to the here and now. Since Jane had left, that seemed to be getting harder and harder. “Tell them I'm ready for them.”

“And try to get more sleep,” Abby said, getting to her feet. “You look exhausted.”

*   *   *

“Take the knife,” Jane said, as though instructing a friend in how to carve a roast. “Put the point of it about here”—she raised her head and put the tip of the dagger on her throat, just under her chin—“and press in, upward, as hard as you can.”

I did it already.
Winter could feel the soft flesh of Sergeant Davis' throat parting under her blade, the stunned, stupid look on his face as his blood gushed over her hands.

“
Fuck
the army,” Jane said. “Fuck the Directory. Fuck all of them. It is
not your responsibility
, don't you understand? You don't have to care.”

I can't help it.
Winter let her hands fall, the knife slipping through her fingers.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I can't help it.

“Just because you weren't brave enough to save me doesn't mean you have to save the whole world to make up for it.”

How can you say that?
Winter squeezed her eyes shut, tears falling.
I came back for you. You never came looking for me.

“We're together.” Jane leaned close to her. “Now, and always.”

Her lips touched Winter's. The kiss was sweet, as sweet as it had ever been, as sweet as the first time. Then Winter felt something rising within her, the demon that lived in the pit of her soul, rushing forth and flooding into Jane. She screamed at it, swore at it, but it went on unbidden. As it had when she'd used
it on Jen Alhundt, the thing
spread
, transforming Jane into more of itself, down to her feet and the tips of her fingers. Then, hunger satisfied at last, the demon dove back inside Winter, leaving nothing behind but the fading image of a crooked smile and green eyes full of pain.

I did this to her. I drove her away.

“I'm sorry,” Winter said into the darkness. There was no answer.

MARCUS

T
he wagon, pulled by a quartet of straining, panting mules, rattled slowly down one of the innumerable alleys that branched off the Green Road north of the Lower Market. The buildings on either side were two or three stories high, not the towering tenements of Newtown but the more modest, ramshackle brick-and-timber architecture of the Docks. Overhead, clotheslines ran between upper-story windows, with a few lonely sheets flapping in the chilly breeze.

Two Patriot Guards, wearing their blue-and-black sashes, escorted the wagon, one on the box beside the driver and the other perched uncomfortably on the roof. Both had muskets, with bayonets fixed. A half dozen big men walked beside the vehicle, too, with the ragged blue armbands that had been adopted by the Civic Defense militia. Seedies, the Leatherbacks called them, and as far as Marcus could see the name fit. They looked like ordinary street toughs, dressed in leather and homespun, with cudgels and long knives at their belts.
No pistols, though.
That was a blessing.
I don't want to kill any more of them than we have to.

He waited until they'd passed his position, behind the rag curtain of a second-story window. Once he was satisfied none of them were paying particular attention, he leveled Lieutenant Uhlan's long rifle, the barrel poking through the gap in the curtain. It was heavier than a musket, and the balance was different, but Marcus had spent an evening practicing and felt he grasped the basics. He was no marksman, but the target was barely ten yards off.

The kick against his shoulder when he pulled the trigger felt harder than a musket's, and the sound was different, a high-pitched
crack
instead of the
smoothbore's
bang
. Clouds of acrid smoke billowed from the lock and the end of the barrel, momentarily obscuring his vision as shouting erupted from the street below. Marcus leaned forward and saw that the man he'd been aiming for, the Patriot Guard beside the driver, had slumped from his seat and tumbled into the road. The man on top of the wagon was aiming his musket, sighting on the window gushing powder smoke, and Marcus hurriedly jerked his head back. Two more reports sounded, almost simultaneously, and there was a crash of falling plaster from the rear wall of the abandoned apartment he was holed up in. When he risked another look, the second Patriot was down, swearing and clutching his gut.

With both musketeers out of action, a loud whistle sounded, and attackers appeared at both ends of the alley. Walnut, eschewing weapons in favor of a pair of huge, iron-studded gauntlets and bracers, led one crew while Andy headed the other, waving a long wooden club. Their “troops” were a mix of Leatherbacks and refugee volunteers: Dockmen and women, some of the older boys and old men still hearty enough to swing a cudgel.

Not much of an army.
Marcus set the rifle aside and swung out the window. Iron bars hammered into the splintering brick made a kind of ladder, and he climbed down a few rungs before letting go and dropping the rest of the way to the street, yanking his sword free of its scabbard. Just ahead, a white-haired, heavily whiskered man and a boy who could have been his grandson were dodging the wild sweeps of a swearing, club-wielding seedie, trying to get in close enough to land a blow. Marcus stepped up behind the militiaman and smashed him over the back of the head with the hilt of his saber, dropping him like a sack of rocks.

The melee was just about over. One of the seedies had climbed up to the top of the wagon, brandishing a long knife, a crazed look on his face. Walnut tried to grab hold of the edge and pull himself up, then hastily stepped back as the militiaman swiped at his face.

“You're all going to the Spike for this!” the man shouted. “We're official, damn you! We work for the Directory!”

“We know,” Marcus said, pulling himself up onto the box.

The seedie spun, knife thrusting, but Marcus interposed his saber in a lazy parry that sent the smaller blade spinning across the alley and left the militiaman cradling a gash on his fingers.

“Now,” Marcus said. “What's in the wagon, and where's it going?”

The man blinked. He had deep-set, piggy eyes, and a scraggly beard that didn't fully hide his sagging jowls.

“I don't know what's in it,” he said.

“Fine,” Marcus said. “How about we set it on fire?”

“No!”
the seedie screamed. “No fire. Please. It's . . . it's powder.”

Marcus found Andy in the group near the rear of the wagon and met her eye. She nodded grimly.
Just like the others.

“And where is it going?” Marcus said, raising the tip of his sword until it was level with the man's eyes.

All the fight had gone out of the militiaman. “Over to Kara Doulson's place, just up the road. I don't know why. I really don't!”

“I believe you.” None of the other Patriots or seedies had known the purpose of their cargoes.
Maurisk is playing this one close to the chest.
“Walnut, can you handle dumping this in the river?”

“No problem,” the big man said. “What about this lot?” He indicated the unconscious and captive seedies.

“Take their weapons and turn them loose, unless they need a cutter.”

Marcus looked at the wounded Patriot Guard, who had subsided into a sobbing ball.
Gut wound like that, he's a dead man.
He caught Walnut's eye and jerked his head in the dying man's direction, and Walnut nodded, his expression souring.

“These seedies aren't much in a fight,” Andy said as Marcus hopped down from the wagon and the other volunteers gathered around them. “Boys and fat old men.”

“That makes us just about even,” Marcus said, grinning at his little squad. They laughed, including the boys and the old men.

One of the women sniffed. “Hardly
even
,” she said, provoking another round of laughter.

Marcus had to admit that without the Docks' women, they'd be dangerously undermanned—
outnumbered
, he corrected ruefully. The Borelgai refugees were no fighters, being mostly domestic servants accustomed to a quiet life, but the Docks seemed to have an extensive supply of stocky, muscular matrons who were used to hard labor beside their husbands and not averse to cracking skulls when necessary. At Raesinia's insistence, he'd taken on any who volunteered, along with men older than his father and boys who'd never needed a razor. So far, their confrontations with the seedies had been extremely one-sided, but that wouldn't last.
Maurisk will send more Patriots, with better weapons.

It didn't have to last, though. Not long. Janus was coming.
We just have to figure out what the hell Maurisk is planning to do when he gets here.

“More powder?” Viera said.

“More powder,” Marcus confirmed, setting the long rifle down on the table. Viera was working in the church's ever-busy kitchen, chopping vegetables for the endlessly boiled cauldrons.

“Flash powder, or ordinary gunpowder?”

“I wouldn't be able to tell by looking,” Marcus said, “but the barrels looked the same as all the others.”

“Flash powder, then.” Viera's faced twisted in thought, and Marcus found himself watching her hands to make sure she didn't remove a finger. “What is he going to do with that much flash powder?”

This was the third convoy they'd ambushed, with the same result. The Patriots had taken possession of nearly all the larger buildings along the Green Road, but they weren't fortifying them as Marcus had expected.
They ought to be blocking up the entrances, loopholing the walls, that sort of thing.
Instead the actual defenses seemed to have been delegated to the seedies, who were throwing up barricades in the streets with a great deal of enthusiasm but little actual military skill.

And flash powder was flowing, from the mills north of the city through a seemingly endless chain of wagons, all destined for one building or another along the road.

“Presumably he wants to blow something up,” Marcus said.

“It doesn't make sense,” Viera said.

“I don't know.” Marcus shrugged. “Hide barrels of powder in the buildings by the side of the road, wait until the army is marching up it, then set them off.”

Viera rolled her eyes in a way that was becoming depressingly familiar. “How much would that actually accomplish? You'd collapse a few buildings, maybe hurt some people with flying bricks, but he hasn't got
that
much powder. As a trap, it's not worth much, not the way he's setting it. If he
really
wanted to do some damage, he could bury it under the road—with as much as we've seen, that would leave quite a crater when it went off.”

“Even that wouldn't be enough to
stop
Janus,” Marcus said. “He might wreck a company or two, but that's not going to make a difference in the long run.”

“Exactly.” Viera shook her head. “I don't know what he thinks he's playing at.”

“Maybe he just doesn't know what he's doing?”

“He must have
some
engineers.” She pursed her lips. “If I were him, I'd
think about bringing down the Grand Span. That would keep Janus off the Island for a while.”

Marcus paused for a moment, taken aback. The Grand Span was part of Vordan City, and had been since before he was born. It was a monument to the foresight and perseverance of the builders, a triumph of modern science, bridging a distance long thought to be impossible. The idea that Maurisk might
destroy
it to gain a temporary military advantage seemed almost sacrilegious.

“Do you think he'll do that?” he said after a moment.

“From what you've brought me, there's no evidence that he's going to try. It's a big bridge, and all stone. He'd need a lot of powder, and the preparations would be pretty obvious.”

“He might be worried people wouldn't stand for it. The seedies might turn on him.”

Viera nodded, pushed aside the bits of potato she'd been cutting, and reached for a bunch of slightly wilted-looking carrots. Marcus looked around. The population of the church had thinned out considerably since Raesinia took charge, and Mrs. Felda was taking the opportunity to give it a thorough cleaning. The smell of salts and vinegar was strong in the air, as were the shouts of the apparently tireless old woman as she ran after her charges.

“So what should we do about it?” Marcus said.

“The powder?” Viera paused in her chopping, shrugged, and went back to it. “It depends. It's not going to hinder Janus much, so from that point of view we don't need to do much more than warn them when they get here.”

Marcus nodded, feeling a little relieved, but she went on.

“On the other hand, if they
are
mining the buildings, and they know what they're doing, then they're going to bring down an awful lot of masonry. And I doubt they'll give the game away by warning the people who live there. So from that point of view”—she separated the top of the carrot with a particularly sharp
whack
of the knife—“it might be worth our trying to stop them.”

“Damn,” Marcus said quietly. Janus, if he were in command, might weigh the pros and cons of rescuing the people in the rigged buildings. Raesinia would not.
And Raesinia's in command now.

“One thing we should definitely do is have a firefighting crew ready,” Viera said, starting on another carrot. “It's too cold and wet to get a serious blaze going, but flash powder burns spread a lot of hot sparks around.”

Marcus nodded absently, distracted by a commotion at the front door.
Raesinia had returned. Cora and Walnut went to greet her—the teenager was half a head taller, and the huge man dwarfed the queen, but it was clear nonetheless who was in charge. Marcus had seen it a dozen times now, but he still marveled.
I always wondered how a girl like her managed to put together a conspiracy that toppled the government.
It no longer seemed so mysterious.

It reminded him of Janus, in an odd way. People around Raesinia were drawn into her orbit, the same way the general exerted a palpable force on nearly everyone he met. The difference, Marcus thought, was that where Janus was well aware of the extent of his personal magnetism and used it to his advantage, Raesinia was almost unconscious of hers.
She doesn't plan like Janus. She just keeps moving forward, one step at a time, and we fall in behind her.

Marcus wondered, uncomfortably, what would happen if these two heavenly forces directed their gravities in opposite directions, and shook his head to banish the thought.
Janus would never allow that to happen.
He picked up his rifle again and raised his hand in greeting as the queen's party approached.

*   *   *

RAESINIA

“You convinced him?” Andy said incredulously. “You convinced
Smiling Jack
to help us?”

“Well,” Raesinia said, “I doubt
I
had much to do with it. Cora did all the real work.” She put an arm around Cora's shoulders and squeezed her tight. “I just had to go in and say the magic words.”

“What?” Andy said. “What magic words? They say the last man who asked Smiling Jack for charity was found spiked on the weathercocks of six different buildings!”

“Ah, but we weren't asking for charity. We were making an offer.”

Andy looked from Raesinia's smiling face to Cora's blushing one and gave her a pleading look. Cora shrugged awkwardly.

“Smiling Jack is having . . . liquidity problems,” she said. “A lot of the Oldtown gangs are suffering under the blockade, and now with the seedies cutting down on nightlife. I did some research on where he's been going for coin, and bought an appropriate stake in some of the larger institutions.”

“In other words,” Raesinia said, still grinning, “Smiling Jack is up to his eyeballs in debt, and thanks to Cora a lot of that debt is now owed to
us
.”