The Price of Valor (54 page)

The men at the table might not have been well educated, but they weren't fools. They'd all been through the rioting and the skirmishes around the Vendre
during the revolution, and she could see they were all only too aware of what it would mean to have a real army going up against a dug-in defender in the streets around their homes. Everyone was silent for a moment.

“I
thought
the Patriots had been busier than usual,” John said. “They've been bringing wagons over the Span and down the Green Road the last couple of days.”

“Doing what?” George said.

Jack shrugged.

“Defensive positions,” Raesinia said. “Ammunition stores. Cannon.”

“Saints and martyrs,” Walnut muttered.

“Fucking bastards,” John said.

“Marcus wants to do something about it.” This wasn't
quite
the truth, Raesinia was aware, but Marcus was too focused on keeping
her
safe and not worried enough about the city that was in her charge.
It's what he
would
want, if he were thinking straight.
“But we need help. We need whatever Leatherbacks are left, and anyone else you can gather.”

Walnut looked at Andy, who nodded encouragingly, then at his two companions. His brow furrowed.

“If—
if
, mind you—we were of a mind to help, what would you want us to do?”

“Help us keep the seedies from hurting people.” Raesinia leaned forward. “Mrs. Felda's is full of people who've run away from the militia and the Patriots. We need safe places for them, food, extra hands. And . . .” She hesitated. “Maybe a bit of poking around. Nothing dangerous. But if we can send Janus information, maps of where the Patriots are and what they're up to, it will make the fighting shorter.”

George was frowning. John said, “Listen. You mean well, but you have to understand what you're asking. It's all well and good if Janus wins, but what if he loses? The Patriots will ask who helped him, and people will talk. Every one of us could be on the Spike by the end of the year. I've got a wife and kids to think about.”

“What makes you think they'll leave you alone if Janus loses?” Andy said. “We fought the tax farmers, we fought the fucking black-coats, and we took the
Vendre
. If the goddamned Directory thinks they can push us around, they've got another think coming.”

“You all know what the Patriot Guard are like,” Raesinia said. “A bunch of bullies and cowards. If it comes down to them against Janus bet Vhalnich and Mad Jane, which side are you going to bet on?”

Walnut looked at John, then back at Raesinia. Slowly, he nodded, and his huge hands tightened into fists.

*   *   *

“I am supposed to keep you safe,” Marcus said. “
That
is what Janus ordered me to do. And I can't do it if you keep running off every time a thought pops into your head!”

They were in the attic of the church, a windowless, claustrophobic space stuffed with forgotten boxes of holiday ornaments and stacks of unused prayer books. Linen and bedding that hadn't been disturbed in decades had been hauled out to deal with the influx of refugees, disturbing the dust of decades and leaving the air thick and choking. With the number of people now in Mrs. Felda's care, it was about the only place left they could talk without being overheard.

“It had to be done,” Raesinia said. “We
need
the Leatherbacks. And they agreed to help!”

“Ionkovo can
walk through walls
,” Marcus said. “And that monster from Willowbrook shrugged off musket balls like they were champagne corks. Either one of them could come back at any time!”

“If they do, what makes you think I'd be safe
here
?”

“I've organized watches,” Marcus muttered, but the question clearly cut him to the quick. He could see as well as Raesinia that a few half-starved refugees standing guard with cudgels were not going to do much to stop the Penitent Damned. He and Lieutenant Uhlan were the only proper soldiers in the place, and they had only one musket between them and a couple of pistols.

“But you're right,” Marcus went on, rallying. “Our only hope is keeping it absolutely quiet that we're here at all. And going out to talk to people isn't going to help!”

Now it was Raesinia's turn to wince, but she had an answer ready. “Word is going to get out about Mrs. Felda's sooner or later. If the Leatherbacks are operating again, then nobody will immediately associate it with us.”

“So you're using them as cover?”

“I'm helping people.”

“It's not part of our mission,” Marcus said. “Janus ordered me to take care of you, not to defend the city.”

“Would you shut up about your orders?” Raesinia said. “
I
don't answer to Janus, and I can't stand by and watch.” She shook her head. “Besides, if we can get a good map of the Patriot Guards' defenses, that will help when the Army of the East gets here. It'll save lives.”

“If he'd wanted me to make maps, he would have said so,” Marcus said, but that was weak, and they both knew it. They'd had no contact with Giforte or the flik-flik team, and had no idea if the line linking them to Janus' army was still in operation.

Raesinia let out a long breath. “Look, it's done. We'll have them come here from now on. Will you at least talk to them? Cora and I can handle setting up safe houses for the refugees, but if we
are
going to be of any use to Janus, you're the one who knows what kind of information we should be looking for.”

“All right, all
right
.” Marcus looked up at Raesinia, as though considering her in a new light, and she felt herself blush slightly.

“What?” she said. “Am I failing to live up to your expectations for a queen again?”

“In a way,” Marcus said. “I was just thinking that maybe this is what I
ought
to have expected a queen to be like.”

Raesinia snorted, but her cheeks reddened further. She turned away to hide them.
I don't need his approval.
“I'm glad you've learned something—”

There was a knock on the trapdoor, and she fell silent. Marcus, sitting beside it, said, “Yes?”

“Raes?” Cora said. “There's someone down here asking to talk to you.”

“One of the refugees?” Raesinia said. “Or someone from the Leatherbacks?”

“Neither.” Cora lowered her voice. “I think it's your friend Rose.”

Rose . . .
Raesinia shot to her feet after a moment's thought, cursing herself for not getting it faster. Sothe had used that name when Cora met her, during the fall of the Vendre.
She's here!
She rushed to the trapdoor and pulled it up. Cora was already backing down the ladder, too slowly for Raesinia's taste—she nearly jumped, twenty-five-foot drop be damned.
I've fallen a lot farther.

But there were people watching, so she followed Cora down, carefully. The church didn't have a true second floor, just a balcony that ran along one wall, where seats had once been positioned for distinguished guests to watch the service. Mrs. Felda had used it for storage before the crisis; now the food stocks had mostly been eaten, and bedding laid out on the creaking wooden floor so that refugees could sleep in shifts. This area had been allocated to later arrivals, which meant they were almost all Vordanai—mothers with young children, for the most part, along with quite a few old men and women who'd been forced from their homes by the seedies and left with nowhere to go. Men of fighting age found looking shiftless were liable to be dragged into service in the Patriot Guard, while unaccompanied young women disappeared to even worse fates.

Raesinia picked her way through the makeshift beds, full of exhausted people sleeping in spite of the early hour, and down the rickety switchback stair that led to the main floor. The church smelled mostly of the huge pots of soup Mrs. Felda and her assistants churned out, but with a strong undertone of unwashed bodies and overflowing privies. Filthy children ran about, chasing one another with sticks.

Sothe looked like any other refugee, wrapped in gray, fraying homespun, the dirt of several nights on the road obvious on her face. A thick bandage wrapped her side, and she walked with a limp, favoring one ankle. Raesinia pushed her way through the crowd and wrapped her arms around her maidservant, carefully avoiding her wounded side.

“Thank God,” she said. “I was so worried about you.”

Sothe, as always uncomfortable with such displays of emotion, patted Raesinia awkwardly on the shoulder. “I'm glad you're well. My mission was successful, I think, until . . .” She lowered her voice. “We were attacked. One man, but he was . . . exceptional. I believe he may have been a Penitent Damned. By now they certainly know that you were never there, and they may know you never left the city. I'm sorry.”

“It's all right,” Raesinia whispered. “It was never going to hold up indefinitely.” Ionkovo had seen her, in any case, so the word was out. “I'm just glad to have you back. We tried to send you a warning, but . . .”

Marcus, a bit slower down the ladder, pushed his way through the crowd and stopped facing the two of them. Raesinia disentangled herself from Sothe and put on a more dignified face.

“I'm not sure the two of you have been formally introduced,” Raesinia said. “Marcus, this is Sothe, my head of household and close personal friend.” Sothe shifted uncomfortably at this description, but Raesinia didn't give her a chance to object. “Sothe, this is Colonel Marcus d'Ivoire, also my friend and Janus' personal representative.”

Marcus, also looking a bit awkward, let courtesy come to the fore and bowed. “Miss Sothe. Last time I saw you, you were fighting a half dozen Noreldrai Grays with admirable efficiency. I regret I was unable to render more effective assistance.”

“I believe the
last
time you saw me, I was lying bleeding on the floor,” Sothe said. “But thank you. You have my gratitude for keeping Raesinia safe.”

“We need to talk,” Raesinia said. “All of us. But—”

“Not here,” Sothe said, looking at the teeming refugees. “And not now. I've
been three days on the road without sleep, so my contributions would likely be . . . minimal.”

“Oh!” Raesinia silently cursed Sothe's stoicism.
She'd probably keep chatting until she dropped from exhaustion.
She pointed across the room. “Use my bed. Or would you rather eat first?”

“Sleep,” Sothe said. “Thank you. If you'll excuse me?”

Raesinia nodded, and Sothe slipped into the crowd, moving like a ghost in spite of the tight quarters and her injuries. Marcus looked after her and shook his head, his expression thoughtful.

“‘Head of household'?” He looked quizzically at Raesinia. “Someday you're going to have to explain to me where you found her.”

“You'll have to ask her yourself,” Raesinia said. “It's not my story to tell.”

*   *   *

MARCUS

Marcus had not been sleeping well.

He was one of a few in Mrs. Felda's with the privilege of an actual bed, rather than a bit of cloth spread over the stone floor, but he was still obliged to share it with two others in shifts. As another nod to his standing, he'd been assigned the night shift, which let him try to sleep during the approximate hours of darkness, but he still had to vacate promptly in the morning to let some other poor soul collapse.

The combination of the ever-noisy church and the enforced schedule meant that Marcus spent quite a lot of time lying down, hoping that exhaustion would finally triumph over the shouting of night-owl children or the clink and scrape of cutlery and carry him off to sleep.
I never thought being on the run from the law would be so
loud. Or, he had to admit, smell quite so bad. The church was developing an odor to rival an army camp.

It gave him plenty of time to think, which was not particularly welcome. The truth was that he felt lost. Ever since he'd first saluted the young colonel at Fort Valor in Khandar, Marcus had found himself swept along in Janus' wake, acting in his name. That was simple enough in battle—executing orders was what an officer was
for
—and even command of the Armsmen had made sense, of a sort. But it bothered him more than he'd realized at the time that Janus had left him behind to go off and fight his war.

Now he had, in any reasonable regard, failed in his mission. The Thousand Names, which he had been assigned to protect, had been taken by the enemy; Raesinia, who had been added to his responsibilities, would have been taken as well if not for the intervention of a Khandarai phantom. He had nothing left—one Mierantai lieutenant, recovering only slowly from a nasty wound, and one girl ranker with little respect for his authority.

More important, he didn't know what to
do
. On the battlefield, if you couldn't accomplish your goals when you'd done all you could, you fell back and asked your superior for further orders. Without the flik-flik line, though, he was out of contact with Janus, and the situation had changed radically.

In the event of my death . . .
That last set of orders was still chilling. Rumor had Janus still very much alive, but how good was rumor? Marcus felt himself instinctively reaching out for reassurance and not finding it.

And then there was Raesinia, with her insistence that they do
something
.
She's probably right, damn it. But what if I do the
wrong
thing?
The last time Marcus had been without a commanding officer had been after Colonel Warus' death, just before the Redeemer rebellion.
All I managed to do was run away.

The time was approaching when he'd have to turn over his bed. He resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going to get any more sleep and opened his eyes. The omnipresent buzz of life in the church went on all around him, laundry and cooking, cleaning and mucking out. Someone had even started a little group to sing prayers in the pulpit, the first time that sacred space had been put to its intended use in centuries.