The Price of Valor (6 page)

Sothe pursed her lips but didn't argue. Raesinia murmured something indistinct and polite-sounding in Claudia's direction, nodded at the fat arms merchant, and pushed her way back through the box. Her guards, after a moment of surprise, trailed behind her. Raesinia hopped down the two steps at the back of the box and onto the cobblestones as another cheer rose from the crowd, indicating that the Spike had claimed another traitorous victim.

Maurisk.
The thought of him made her want to spit. When they'd worked together, she thought of him as an idealist, full of bold but impractical ideas. Once he'd gotten into the thick of the politics of the Deputies-General, though, he set some kind of speed record for selling out his high-minded ideals in pursuit of power. The complicated dance of parties, forming and re-forming like bits of
foam in a bubbling soup pot, had somehow conspired to elevate Raesinia's old companion to the very height of power.

The war had done wonders for his authority, of course. The deputies had been content to endlessly debate the proper formula for a constitution when things had been going well. Once word got out that Vordan was at war with three of the great powers—including Imperial Murnsk, seat of the Sworn Church itself—the deputies had been running scared. They'd heaped powers on Maurisk's Directory of National Defense, and what they hadn't given him he'd taken for himself when he found that no one was willing to object. Only Durenne, new Minister of War and the one Radical member of the Directory, acted as a counterweight, and not a very effective one. While the war went on in the north, the east, and the west, Maurisk was busy trawling the capital for enemy spies, devising new methods of execution, and monitoring sure every publisher and pamphleteer published only what was “appropriate and beneficial to a modern state.”

“Well?” Raesinia said to Sothe as they walked toward the north end of the square where the royal carriage waited.

“Well what?”

“What do you think?” Raesinia jerked her head over her shoulder, at the spectacle unfolding behind them.

Sothe shrugged. “One way of killing a person is much like another.”

“Maurisk's always hated the Borels. Now he's got people seeing them on every corner.”

“I wouldn't be so certain he's wrong. The Concordat certainly intercepted quite a few Borelgai spies, and I can't imagine they've relaxed their efforts now that we're at war.”

“I don't doubt that they're there. I question whether Maurisk's crowd could find them.” The Directory had wasted no time building the Patriot Guard into a considerable force, much larger than the old Armsmen, but so far they seemed more interested in prestige than in fighting. Certainly Maurisk had no well-oiled intelligence service to match the peerless machine run by Duke Orlanko, the spymaster who'd so nearly seized the throne. Raesinia sighed. “Maybe we ought to rebuild the Ministry of Information.”

Sothe raised an eyebrow. “I'm not sure that would go over well.”

“We'd call it something else, of course. But we need
some
way of getting information without—”

For a moment, the world went white. A sound like a hundred-gun cannonade slammed into Raesinia with physical force, pulling at the lace of her dress before
rushing on to shatter the glass in the shop windows ahead of her. The ground shook, a single pulse, as though a giant hammer had come slamming down.

Sothe reacted first, knives appearing in her hands as if by magic, stepping between Raesinia and the source of the blast. Her two guards belatedly began to fumble with their muskets, still disoriented from the concussion. Raesinia, her own head ringing like a bell, turned and saw a tower of ugly black smoke rising into the sky.

“What—” she managed to say.

“This way,” Sothe said, disappearing one of her daggers and grabbing Raesinia's arm. She pulled her to the edge of the square, into an alley between two shops, and shoved her up against the wall. The entrance was barely wide enough for one person to squeeze into, and Sothe stood athwart it, daring anyone to try and push past her.

The screams began, and the clatter of boots on flagstones as the crowd gathered for the execution rushed to escape whatever had happened. Most of the commoners would flee south; here at the north end of the square, the fleeing mass was more distinguished, deputies and merchants, Conservatives and Radicals alike pushing and shoving in their haste to get away. There were a fair number of Patriot Guards mixed in as well, tossing their halberds aside to speed their flight.

“Could something have gone wrong with Sarton's machine?” Raesinia said.

“Not unless it was packed full of powder,” Sothe said shortly, eyes never leaving the crowd. “That was a bomb.”

“I thought so.” Raesinia shook her head, trying to clear the daze that had swept over her. “I have to get out there.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Sothe said. “That could be exactly what they're planning on. A bomb to panic the crowd, and another assassin ready to strike in the confusion. An old trick.”

Raesinia lowered her voice. “
You
know we don't have to worry about that.”

“
I
know that if you get shot in the head in public, and get back up again, people are going to
comment
.” Sothe's tone was grim. “It'd be either a miracle or sorcery, and in my experience demonic intervention is usually more believable than divine.”

Four years ago, Princess Raesinia Orboan had been on her deathbed, coughing her lungs to bloody pieces. With the king already suffering from the illness that would eventually kill him, and Prince Dominic dead two years previously at Vansfeldt, the Last Duke had acted to make certain the succession remained under his control. The Priests of the Black, the secret order of the Sworn
Church that wielded sorcery in order to suppress knowledge of the supernatural, had guided Raesinia through the ritual of invoking the true name of a demon.

The creature had settled deep inside her, binding itself to her body and soul. Its power restored her to perfect health, repairing her flesh almost as soon as it was injured. As best Raesinia could tell, she couldn't be killed. She hadn't aged a day since—something that was becoming increasingly problematic now that she was approaching her twentieth birthday—and she could no longer even sleep. While she was, technically, still alive, she had come to believe that she was no longer human.

Only a tiny handful of people knew the truth. Orlanko, of course, who'd once thought to use the knowledge to control her. His allies in the Priests of the Black, and Sothe, who'd once been his top agent. And Janus bet Vhalnich, who had been tasked by king with finding a way to free his daughter from the supernatural trap.

The crowd was thinning out. There was no sign of the two Grenadier Guards, and Raesinia hoped they'd only been swept away in the confusion and not trampled underfoot. Screams and shouting continued near the base of the pillar of smoke, which she could now see rose from the where the royal box had been. A ring of Patriot Guards stood around it, halberds unshrouded, looking nervous as other men milled around behind them.

“I have to go,” Raesinia said. “I have to see what's happening.”

“Your Majesty,” Sothe hissed, “please—”

But Raesinia was already squeezing past her, out the mouth of the alley and back into the square. Sothe swore softly and hurried after her as she dodged a few stragglers and reached the ring of guards. Clearly, no instructions had been issued, and the Patriot Guards were not clear on whether they were supposed to be keeping people out or protecting them, but in either case none of them were prepared to bar the queen's way.

Raesinia passed through their circle and nearly gagged at the thick stench of powder. Clouds of evil black smoke still billowed upward, but she could tell the explosion had indeed been centered on the royal box, where she'd been standing only minutes earlier. Guards and deputies rushed around in the murk, helping the injured or shouting unintelligible orders.

“Help!” The voice was high and terrified, a boy's.
Emil.
“Someone
help
!”

Raesinia darted forward and caught sight of him amid the billowing smoke. He was limping across the cratered flagstones, desperately tugging a limp body by one arm. Tears streamed from his eyes, cutting channels through a layer of soot.

“Please help,” he said, voice going faint. “Mama won't get up. I think she's hurt.”

Emil's right hand was fastened tight around his mother's, and a patter of blood dripped from a gash on his calf. His skin was milk white under the gray soot. Raesinia took one look at Claudia and averted her eyes; the ground beneath her was a slick of red, as though someone had spilled a bucket of paint.

“Your Majesty!”

Sothe appeared at Raesinia's side, with a trio of Patriot Guards behind her.
She's always had a gift for taking charge in desperate situations
. “Help the boy!” Raesinia barked.

Emil screamed as one of the guards pulled Claudia's limp hand from his grasp, then sagged into a dead faint. The guard caught him, looking uncertain.

“Up the street,” Sothe said. “There's an aid station forming. He needs bandaging.” The guard snapped to obey, and Sothe turned to Raesinia. “Your Majesty. You have to come with me.”

“I should . . . help.” Raesinia stared at the carnage, feeling hypnotized.

This was meant for me.
If she hadn't decided to leave in a huff, she'd have been standing on the platform when the bomb went off. More people were dead because they had been standing next to her at the wrong time.
Like Ben. Like F
aro.

“Raesinia,” Sothe hissed in her ear. “Come on. The guards can handle things now that I've given them a kick in the ass. We should get you somewhere safe.”

Raesinia looked up at Sothe and felt things snap into focus.

“Where's Maurisk?”

*   *   *

She kept her eyes on his face, from the moment she stepped into the café the Directory had commandeered as shelter from the disaster. Maurisk had always been better at flaunting his passions than concealing them. His reaction wasn't much—a brief indrawn breath, a narrowing of the eyes—but it was enough.

He knew this was coming. He didn't expect to see me alive.

“Your Majesty!” The President of the Directory stood up from the table where he and his colleagues had been arguing over an unrolled map of Vordan City. Patriot Guards were everywhere, standing beside the doorway and along the walls, armed with halberds and army muskets. Clearly, the Directory was taking no chances with its own safety.

“I can't tell you how comforting it is to see you unharmed,” Maurisk went on, with an attempt at a smile. “I had heard reports that you'd left before the . . . event, but things are obviously very confused. We feared the worst.”

“Her Majesty is fine,” Sothe said. “No thanks to the efforts of the Patriot Guard, I might add. But many others are not.”

“I've sent for help,” Maurisk said. “Doctors are on the way from the University. And we've put the city on alert.”

Raesinia kept her eyes on Maurisk, saying nothing. His smile flickered, just briefly.

“Do you think,” she said after a moment, “the president and I could have a moment in private?”

Maurisk looked surprised, but he gestured sharply at the other Directory members. The speed with which they hurried out of the room spoke volumes about where the power in the Directory lay. Only Durenne, a tall, gangly man with a beak of a nose and a queue of long black hair, paused long enough to catch Raesinia's eye before leaving. The Patriot Guards followed, but Sothe lingered.

“Wait outside,” Raesinia told her. “I won't be long.”

Sothe hesitated briefly, then followed the guards out the front door. Maurisk and Raesinia were left alone in the café, its chairs scattered and overturned by fleeing patrons, its front windows shattered by the blast. Glass crunched under Raesinia's heel as she stepped forward.

“I'm not going to ask you if you were responsible for this,” she said. “I'm sure you'd deny it, even just between us.”

“I'm not sure I follow you, Your Majesty,” Maurisk said.

His tone was polite, but there was acid hatred in his eyes. After the death of the king and the upheaval that had created the Deputies-General, he'd discovered Raesinia's double life as revolutionary conspirator and princess royal. He hated her for that, for using the idealistic fervor of his friends as a weapon to topple the Last Duke. The deaths that haunted Raesinia's conscience seemed to matter less to him than the fact that he'd been a tool of the very monarchy he so despised.

Unfortunately for Maurisk, even after the creation of the Deputies-General, the queen was still a potent symbol, and she had the support of the hero-general Janus bet Vhalnich. If he'd been in sole charge, she had no doubt he'd have had her arrested and executed by now, but the deputies and the mob would not allow it.
So now he's resorted to more direct measures, no matter who gets killed in the cross fire.

She met his gaze and refused to flinch. “What do you want from me?”

Maurisk smiled. Not the fake grin he put on for public consumption, but his true smirk. It reminded Raesinia of a lizard.

“I think it would be best,” he said, “if you retired to the country for a time. Vordan City has obviously been heavily infiltrated by enemy agents. I will of
course begin a vigorous campaign to root them out, but in the meantime I regret to say I cannot guarantee your safety. The Crown owns many small estates that would be suitable, and if the Grenadier Guards accompanied you, then I'm sure you would be perfectly secure.”

“I see.”

Maurisk spread his hands, as if nothing could be more reasonable. “I only have the state's interests in mind, of course. Your Majesty.”