The Guns of Empire (22 page)

“Duke Orlanko certainly does.”

“At the moment he doesn't seem to be making the decisions.” Sothe shrugged. “It'd be just too easy for us to turn Whaler over to Janus once he gives us a location for the meeting. I'm sure Dorsay will take precautions, but I think this is a genuine offer to negotiate.”

“To negotiate with
me
,” Raesinia said. “Not with Janus.”

“Dorsay told you he thought Janus was mad,” Sothe said. “You don't negotiate with madmen.”

Raesinia pursed her lips. “What if Janus finds out?”

“You're the queen,” Sothe said. “Entering into negotiations with foreign representatives is your prerogative.”

“He may not agree, with the army in the field, but it hardly matters. If I do this, he'll say I'm actively working to undermine him.” Raesinia paced, turned, and shook her head. “He won't necessarily be wrong. Can we risk that division, this far from Vordan?”

“I don't know,” Sothe said.

Raesinia glanced at her. Sothe didn't often simply admit to not knowing something. Unknowns were calculated risks for her, with evidence carefully weighed in the balance.

“It depends on Janus,” Sothe said, at Raesinia's look. “And I have observed him long enough to know that I don't understand him. Most men and women are, at the very center, not terribly complex. They want power, or comfort, or sex; it's only the way they go about attaining these desires that distinguishes them.”

“Did Duke Orlanko teach you that?”

“It's the first lesson we learn in the Concordat. Find out a person's deepest desire, and you have a lever to control them. But Janus . . .” Sothe shook her head. “He accumulates power as naturally as breathing, but he doesn't seem to want it for its own sake. He appears to have no vices, no romantic entanglements, no great cause or ideology. And yet he has pushed himself to extraordinary heights at no small risk. Why?”

“He told me it was all for my sake,” Raesinia said. “Because my father had asked him to.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No.” Raesinia shook her head. “Janus must have begun acquiring knowledge about the supernatural before he knew about my difficulty, or why would my father have contacted him at all? There has to be something else.”

“That's the basic question, then,” Sothe said. “Going behind his back is a risk. Whether it's worthwhile depends on what you think he'll do if you don't.”

Raesinia closed her eyes for a moment.

Be wary of Vhalnich
, the Steel Ghost had said.
He plans deep.
But how deep?
Back to the very beginning? Was helping me only an excuse to go to Khandar and get the Thousand Names, in order to get . . . where?

“Queen of whores.”
For a moment she was back in the tent with Lidiya, the woman's blood spattering the table between them.
“We will build a mountain of your heretic corpses . . .”

She opened her eyes and let out a breath.

“Tell Whaler to arrange the meeting.”

—

The trick was getting out of the camp without attracting any attention. As usual, though, Sothe had the answer. Even with the partisans dogging the army's heels, there was still a certain amount of clandestine traffic with the locals, villagers smuggling in liquor, tobacco, and occasionally girls with the supply convoys that trundled nonstop up the road from Vantzolk. Those peasants went back out the same way, and the guards who'd agreed to turn a blind eye weren't overly concerned if there were more of them going out than coming in.

In addition to Raesinia and Sothe, dressed in nondescript traveling clothes and hooded raincoats, Barely and Joanna had accompanied them. Sothe had reluctantly agreed that the two Girls' Own soldiers were probably trustworthy, and evading them would be more trouble than it was worth. One of the
servants remaining behind had instructions to tell everyone that the queen was ill and resting in her wagon.

The army had crossed the Norilia the day before, filing across the ugly but functional bridge after one day's welcome rest camped out on the south bank of the river. It took most of the day for the long column to wind past, minus the garrison that would be left there to safeguard the line of supply back to Vantzolk and the south, and wagons had continued rumbling and rattling over the torchlit bridge long into the night. The following morning, as the camp began to break up, Raesinia and her small party took advantage of the confusion to meet Whaler and slip away, following a riverside road to the west.

“Thank you for your trust, Your Majesty,” Whaler said. “The duke will be very pleased.”

Sothe glared at him. Now that Raesinia had made her decision, Sothe had reverted to her usual paranoia, and rode at the head of the group as though she expected to be ambushed at any moment. She wore two pistols and a long knife, in addition to whatever weapons she had concealed under her coat. Barely and Joanna had also donned plain clothes, but they still carried their muskets.

“Might I ask where we're going?” Raesinia said.

“Of course. A small fishing village called Lyzk, perhaps ten miles up the river. The duke will arrive by boat.”

Not a bad setup,
Raesinia mused. It would be easy for Dorsay to arrange to have a signal set, in the event the meeting was a trap, in which case he could simply retreat to the other side of the river.
Assuming, of course, the whole thing isn't
his
trap to begin with.

The ride passed in silence. By the time Lyzk came into sight, the sun was well up, and Raesinia's long coat was feeling warm for what promised to be a genuinely hot day. The village was even smaller than Tsivny, without a bridge to bring traffic, just a small cluster of shacks and a pier with a few elderly boats tied up. It didn't look like there was room to hide much of an ambush, but Raesinia nevertheless reined up alongside Whaler while Sothe, Barely, and Joanna rode ahead to scout. After a few minutes' search, they reported that the place was abandoned, the villagers no doubt having fled rumors of the advancing Vordanai army.

“If you're satisfied,” Whaler said, “I should send a signal to indicate to the duke that it's safe to land.”

Sothe crossed her arms and looked unhappy, but nodded. Whaler lit a torch
and waved it over his head in wide circles, until he caught an answering movement from the opposite bank of the river. He doused the torch and smiled at Raesinia.

“Shouldn't be long to wait now,” he said.

“Thank you,” Raesinia said, then cocked her head. “Out of curiosity, how well do you know Dorsay?”

“I wouldn't be so bold as to say I
know
him,” Whaler said. “But I've served His Grace personally for more than a decade. That's why he chose me for this assignment.”

“I'm not sure I follow.”

“He was sure of my loyalty.” Whaler frowned. “Of late, too many at court have been . . . uncertain. I do not pretend to understand why, but your Duke Orlanko has considerable influence. His Grace did not want to entrust such a delicate task to someone who might be tempted.”

“I see.”

A boat was approaching, crawling like a bug across the broad river on two pairs of oars. Raesinia retreated to the high ground outside the village proper, since the shacks and the pier smelled of many lifetimes' use gutting fish. When the boat docked, she was surprised to see that Dorsay was accompanied only by a single pair of soldiers, who stayed behind as Whaler led him through the village. Raesinia motioned Sothe and the two Girls' Own soldiers to take a few steps back.

“Your Majesty,” Dorsay said, bowing. He looked much the same as the last time they'd met, though he was in an ordinary Borelgai uniform instead of the gaudy dress uniform he'd worn to the conference. Raesinia offered a nod in return, uncomfortably aware that she hardly looked like much a queen in a dirty coat and trousers. “You honor me with your trust.”

“Duke Dorsay,” she said. “Likewise, I'm sure. I'm most curious to hear what you have to say and why it's so important the First Consul not be aware of it.”

“When we last met, I must admit I hadn't taken the measure of the man,” Dorsay said. “I suspected that his victories over the Hamveltai had been the product of good luck, or incompetence on the part of his enemies. Needless to say, I have discovered he is every bit as formidable as his reputation.”

“I could have told you that,” Raesinia said with a slight smile.

“I thought his threats against Elysium were saber rattling,” Dorsay went on. “Terms that were certain to keep the war going, because he knew the Murnskai
would be unable to accept them. Imagine my surprise, then, when he abandoned pursuit of my army after Gilphaite, and turned north along the Pilgrim's Road.” Dorsay rubbed his famous nose, then shook his head. “He really intends to do it, doesn't he? To attack Elysium.”

“If you asked me here to try to get the details of Janus' plans, Duke Dorsay, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed,” Raesinia said. “But that certainly seems to be his goal.”

“I don't suppose you could enlighten me as to
why
?”

That's a deeper question than you know.
“He explained his reasons at the conference,” Raesinia said aloud. “The Church has orchestrated the war against Vordan.”

“But he can't seriously think that taking Elysium will destroy the Sworn Church, any more than seizing Ohnlei Palace would destroy Vordan. I won't believe the man is that naive.”

“I don't pretend to know what Janus does or doesn't believe,” Raesinia said.

“Do
you
believe it?”

Raesinia met his gaze, her expression cool. “Is there a point to this speculation?”

“Only this. If Janus succeeds, if he takes Elysium, the result will be a disaster on a scale to make the war thus far look like a summer festival.”

Raesinia kept her face neutral. “I assume you don't mean in some theological sense.”

Dorsay snorted. “No miracles are required, I assure you.”

“Then why do you say so?”

He paused. “You were, what, ten years old when the War of the Princes began?”

“Old enough to remember,” Raesinia said, allowing a hint of displeasure into her voice.

Dorsay's expression softened. “My apologies. I didn't mean to dredge up bad memories. My point is only this—the War of the Princes is the
only
war you remember.”

“I suppose so.”

“I am sixty-seven years old,” Dorsay said. “I have seen more wars now than I can remember. The Silverback War, on this very ground, more or less. The Six Years War in the east. The Bankbook War, where I was besieged in Antova, which Janus took so easily. And on and on.”

“I'm familiar with your reputation.”

“Did you know that my whole family are soldiers? It's something of a tradition, though I've come farther at it than any of my ancestors. My father died young, on some battlefield or other, and I was raised mostly by my grandfather.
He
fought Vordan, too, in Farus the Fourth's day.”

“Duke Dorsay,” Raesinia said. “Your family history is fascinating, but I don't think you called me out here to discuss your childhood.”

Dorsay chuckled. “Sorry. The older I get, the more I tend to meander in my thoughts. Here's the point, then. Nothing I've seen in all my years of fighting is half as ugly as the stories my grandfather told about his soldiering days, and from what I've read of the history, he understated the case. We live in a gentler age, and our wars are more . . . sporting. There are rules.” He waved at the village behind them. “When my grandfather's company came to a village like this, they would shoot all the men, rape the women, then keep the pretty ones and some of the older children for camp followers. Everyone else they'd impale on wooden stakes, rank after rank of them, along the road. Babies, old people. A warning to whoever came afterward, you see. Then they'd steal anything they could carry and set fire to anything that would burn. And none of them felt a twinge of guilt, because they knew that somewhere the enemy was doing the same thing to one of
their
villages.

“The Wars of Religion were some of the blackest years this continent has gone through since the Fall of the Tyrants. The only reason it all ended is because kings and priests quietly agreed to leave one another alone. Take the War of the Princes. We won, you lost, but no one in Borel suggested converting Vordan to the Sworn Church at the point of a sword. If it had been the other way around, your father would have done the same. A few territories ceded, a few restrictive trade treaties, that sort of thing.
Civilized
war.”

Civilized for the survivors,
Raesinia thought.
Not for my brother, or everyone else who ended up in a shallow grave.
Aloud, she said, “The Grand Army hasn't been uncivil to the Murnskai.”

“Not yet. But if Janus takes Elysium—if he truly means to destroy the Sworn Church—then all bets are off. It'll be the Great Schism all over again, and it won't end until half the continent drowns in blood. All of Murnsk will rise against you. Not on the battlefield, but in the middle of the night, until you fight back by doing everything my grandfather did.” Dorsay shook his head. “The thing about a
civilized
war is it ends when the king says that it's enough. But when one
people
declares war against another, there's no one to call a halt.”

A mountain of corpses.
Raesinia once again heard blood spattering on the
table and the Murnskai woman's defiant scream.
They will fight us all the way to Elysium.
“And what would you do?”

“Me personally? I have no idea. But Borel would be against you. Georg would have no choice.”

“You're very passionate on the subject,” Raesinia said.