The Price of Valor Page 9

  Winter shook her head. Jane had still not really gotten the hang of the military mentality. “They had orders. You can’t blame them.”

  “Orders.” Jane spit the word. “I think you were a soldier too long.”

  Winter took a deep breath and rallied to try again. “Look. You had men helping the Leatherbacks. We didn’t capture Bloody Cecil or take the Vendre with just your girls.”

  “I’m not saying they can’t help,” Jane said. “But there are good reasons I didn’t let them into the building.” Her eyes were flashing with anger. “You have no idea what can happen—”

  “I do,” Winter said quietly. “I saw what happened when we overran a camp full of Khandarai civilians. I know what happens when soldiers get . . . out of hand. But that’s not going to happen here, understand? Because we’re on the same side.” And, she added privately, because I’m not going to let it. No soldiers under her command were going to engage in that kind of pillage and destruction, of allies or enemies. “Everyone will be safe. We’ve still got the Girls’ Own in companies, a hundred altogether. They can take care of themselves.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Jane said. “I won’t do it.”

  And there it was, the line Winter had been dreading. She took another long breath and blew it out.

  “I’m not asking you to do it,” she said slowly. “I’m giving orders.”

  Jane stared at her for a long, silent moment, her green eyes hooded.

  “And what are you going to do if I refuse?” she said after a moment. “Shoot me?”

  In theory, Winter knew, she could. Balking at a direct order, in the field, could be declared summary treason. But that was out of the question, and they both knew it. Fortunately, Winter had thought this through ahead of time.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I love you, Jane. You know that. But . . .” She swallowed. “If you can’t take orders you don’t like, you can’t be in command. It’s as simple as that.”

  “So you’ll bust me down to ranker?” Jane sneered. “Fine. Go ahead—”

  “I’ll send you home.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Jane said. “Half the battalion would come with me.”

  “I doubt it,” Winter said. “As I said before, they’re not here for you, or for me. They’re here because they think this is the right thing to do.”

  Jane stared, her face rigid. A muscle twitched in her cheek.

  “Please don’t make me do that,” Winter said, throat clenching. “I need you for the Girls’ Own. I need you. But everyone in this regiment is my responsibility now, and I need to do what will keep as many of them alive as possible.”

  Another, longer silence. Then, finally, Jane saluted, without changing her expression.

  “Yes, sir,” she said through gritted teeth. “I had better go and find where your new orders have placed my tent, sir.”

  She pulled her horse around, sawing viciously on the reins, and kicked him into motion. Winter stifled an urge to call after her, and closed her eyes until her heart slowed down. Then, suddenly weary, she turned in search of her own tent.

  Chapter Four

  MARCUS

  The blindfold was heavy black linen, scratchy and awkward. Marcus resisted the urge to tug it into a more comfortable position, for fear one of the guards in the carriage would take it as an attempt to peek. Janus’ Mierantai had been ordered to preserve absolute secrecy, and they took their orders very seriously.

  Marcus had dispatched his report shortly after the queen departed, along with an urgent request for instructions. This involved leaving a folded message in a certain cubbyhole at a certain wine shop, one of several clandestine drop-offs that he’d been forced to memorize. He’d spent the rest of the evening and all of the following day trying to puzzle out what answer might possibly come back. It was a fruitless endeavor, as Marcus would be the first to admit. Unlike Janus, he had no head for politics. He’d watched the increasingly heavy-handed rule of the Directory and the Patriot Guard with a vague distaste, but it didn’t seem relevant to his own mission, so he hadn’t paid any particular attention.

  Truthfully, Marcus wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to be doing in Vordan City. It had all sounded very logical when Janus explained it before leaving for the front, but Janus’ explanations had a habit of evaporating in the morning light like demon gold, leaving nothing behind but vague memories of something very convincing. He was intended to be Janus’ representative in the city, but so far that involved little more than sending back reports on the state of affairs.

  Janus had a habit, though, of putting the people he trusted into positions where he thought they might prove useful, even if he wasn’t exactly sure how. When the courier had arrived—dressed in plainclothes, but in possession of the prearranged password—Marcus had a strong suspicion it was his turn, like an actor waiting in the wings receiving a cue. Being treated like a game piece would have been more grating if he hadn’t long ago accepted that this was simply how Janus bet Vhalnich treated everyone.

  He’d climbed into a battered carriage with FOR HIRE signs on the sides and found it occupied by two more young men, with the keen look and mountain accents of Janus’ Mierantai Volunteers. They’d given him the blindfold, and he’d tied it with a resigned sigh. There was a point, he thought, where security passed into paranoia, but he wasn’t confident in his ability to identify the boundary.

  They drove for perhaps a half hour, changing direction frequently, the carriage’s poor suspension bumping and rattling over the cobblestones. When it finally came to a halt, one of the guards opened the door and took Marcus’ hand, leading him across a gravel drive. A gate squealed open.

  “You can take the blindfold off now, sir,” the guard said. “My apologies. Welcome to Willowbrook.”

  Marcus pulled the cloth away from his eyes and blinked in the sun. He stood on the grounds of a small estate, shielded from the road by a tall hedge and a thick wood-and-iron gate. A number of men in plain leathers stood around the grounds, ostensibly tending the plants. They were rather more observant than the typical gardener, however, and Marcus suspected that if he’d tried talking to them he’d hear the gravelly Mierantai accent again. He also suspected their long rifles were not far away.

  The courier knocked at the door, and a liveried servant opened it. Once Marcus stepped inside, the guards became more obvious; they still didn’t wear their red uniforms, but they did carry the long rifles of the First Mierantai Volunteers, and wore swords at their belts. The pair nearest the door saluted smartly.

  Willowbrook was a simple dwelling, as such things went, with the hall, dining room, receiving rooms, and servants’ quarters on the first floor and bedrooms on the second. Its only architectural oddity was a four-story tower topped by a broad solar, built for someone who wanted to soak up the sun unimpeded by trees or other buildings. From that perch, Marcus imagined one could not only keep an eye on the streets for a good distance in any direction, but see all the way to the edge of the city and the forested hills to the north.

  Captain Alek Giforte waited at the end of the hall. Like the guards, he was out of uniform, though Janus had appointed him an army captain when the Armsmen were dissolved. Marcus had had to coax Giforte into accepting, ashamed as the former vice captain had been over his former accommodation with Orlanko. Marcus was still surprised Janus had trusted the ex-traitor so quickly, but he had to admit the gesture had brought out the best in Giforte. He snapped a brisk salute.

  “Sir!” Giforte said. “Welcome to Willowbrook.”

  “Thanks,” Marcus said. “I can see you’ve settled in.”

  “Yes, sir.” Like Twin Turrets, the house was showing the wear and tear of being used as a barracks. Furniture was shoved out of the way, floors were muddy, and stacks of soiled linens were everywhere. Giforte gestured to the stairs. “If you’ll come upstairs?”

  “Has s
omething gone wrong?” His messages from Janus originated here, he knew, but usually they were brought to Twin Turrets, disguised as ordinary post.

  “No, sir. But our instructions were that the message not leave the room.”

  That did seemed paranoid, even for Janus, but Marcus was curious to see the station in any case. He followed Giforte up the stairs to the second floor, then into a winding tower staircase that curved up another forty feet to a broad room at the very top. Here, the comfortable furniture and decorative touches had all been trundled out of the way, to make room for desks, chairs, and stacks of file folders. Enormous open windows—so big that glassing them in would have cost a small fortune—looked in every direction, all blocked to cracks by wooden shutters.

  Five or six young men were hard at work, scribbling in books or doing calculations with small metal counters. They all had the pasty look of fellows who didn’t get out in the sun enough, and from the state of their hair and clothes, they didn’t even manage to get downstairs for a wash very often. Trays of half-eaten food were piled by the stairwell.

  “This is the day shift,” Giforte explained. “Mostly coding and decoding. At night we’ve got a few lads with good eyes and quick pens to keep watch. White?”

  One of the men looked up, his spectacles slightly askew. “Sir?”

  “This is Colonel d’Ivoire,” Giforte said. “Colonel, this is Lieutenant White. He’s in charge of this end of the flik-flik line.”

  “Flik-flik?” Marcus said.

  “That’s just what the boys call it,” White said, getting to his feet. He was in his early twenties, with blue eyes and hair the color and general appearance of a haystack. Noticing Marcus’ attention, he ran one hand through it, which produced no notable improvement. “Sir. I mean, that’s what they call it, sir.”

  “Why?”

  White walked to one of the windows, where something a bit like a box lantern was mounted on a tripod. A lever projected from one side of the box. White pressed down on it, and something inside the box slid open with a sound like flik. When it let go, it closed. He did it again. Flik. Flik, flik.

  “This is the . . . device?” Marcus said. “I thought it would be bigger.”

  “It’s not actually terribly complex,” White said. “Not much more than a standard oil lamp with a mirror backing to concentrate the light. They use something similar in the theater, I understand. The shutter is finely balanced, so we can keep up a good speed, but that’s just a little bit of machinery. The real genius of the system is in the coding.”

  “All this?” Marcus said, indicating the books.

  “Yes, sir. The idea’s not a new one, of course. Signal fires have been used since ancient times. But Janus’ system lets us transmit a lot of information very quickly, as long as both sides are working from the same scheme.”

  Marcus hid a smile. Everyone, down to the lowest private, seemed to have caught the habit of saying “Janus” or “the general,” never anything as formal as “General Vhalnich” or “Count Mieran.” “How fast is it?” he asked.

  “We can send a hundred and twenty symbols in five minutes,” White said proudly. “Assuming good weather, the message travels down the line at nearly a hundred miles per hour.”

  Marcus tried to picture it. Through a crack in the shutters, he could see the hills north of Vordan, miles away. Somewhere on that hilltop was another team of men, with another device like this one. When night fell, they would wait for the distant flashes of an incoming message, then work like mad to flash it along to the next hilltop. More men there would send it to the next, and the next, and so on until it reached the Army of the East more than four hundred miles away. A message could get there and back in a single night, where a fast rider might take days.

  It was a fragile connection. Hazy nights could interrupt it, or rain, or even enemy action. The messages it passed along were necessarily brief and often full of ambiguity. Still, it was a tremendous advantage, which was why Janus had been so careful about setting it up. The concept, Marcus knew, had come from the Desoltai of Khandar, whose messages Janus had decoded to lure the desert nomads into a deadly ambush. The general believed in making use of good ideas, regardless of the source.

  “Very good, Lieutenant White,” Marcus said, sensing that the man wanted praise. White inflated visibly. “Very good indeed. Now, I’m told you have something for me?”

  “Oh! Yes, sir. Here.” He handed Marcus a scrap of paper. “This is the expanded version. We use a great deal of abbreviation and substitution, obviously, even within the coding, to keep the messages short.”

  Marcus nodded. The message, in a neat, well-trained hand, said:

  Marcus—

  Yours of last night received. Threat to R. of great concern, agree that M. is a likely suspect. Approve of her plan. Assist R. to obtain evidence, render all possible aid. Trust her judgment. Keep me informed.

  Possible additional threat reported by Downstairs. Have given instructions for you to be briefed. Stay on guard.

  Matters here satisfactory. Aim to capture Antova by end of season, secure our position, return to capital. Await developments.

  —Janus

  Well, Marcus thought, that’s one question answered. He had no idea how Janus expected him to “obtain evidence”—for all that he’d been briefly head of the Armsmen, Marcus had no training in criminal investigation. Maybe Raesinia has some ideas. If the general was uncomfortable with the Queen of Vordan running around playing private investigator, he hadn’t put it in his message.

  More alarming, to Marcus’ military mind, was the last line. He plans to take Antova? Antova was the great fortress of the Velt Valley, constructed where a tributary of the Velt reached within fifty miles of the primary passes leading over the mountains from Vordan. No army could debouch from the passes and leave the fortress and its garrison active in their rear. The great seven-sided star of its outer trace was familiar to every graduate of the War College; it was the master work of the great Hamveltai engineer Dreiroede, and its plans were included in military textbooks as the epitome of modern fortifications. Such was its reputation that it had never been besieged, let alone captured.

  And this is what Janus casually says he’ll take by the end of the season? Marcus shook his head. A proper assault, with approaching parallels, breaching batteries, and all the rest, would take months, stretching through the winter with the army strung out at the end of a slow and vulnerable line of supply. He can’t be serious, can he?

  But there was never any arguing with Janus, least of all from the other end of a flik-flik line. Marcus sighed and went to put the message in his pocket, only to be halted by Lieutenant White clearing his throat.

  “Sorry, sir,” White said. “The coding instructions were clear. The message isn’t to leave this room, and we’re to destroy all copies once you’ve seen it.”

  “Ah. Of course.” Marcus handed the paper back to White, who put it with a small stack of others and took it to a small metal bin, already half-full of ashes. A splash of lamp oil and a match later, and the messages were blazing merrily.

  “Thank you, sir,” White said. “It’s good to finally meet you. If you’re interested in the details of our operation here, I can put together a basic overview—”

  “That’s all right,” Marcus said hurriedly. White seemed the type who would go into excruciating detail at the drop of a hat. “Thank you for answering my questions.” He turned to Giforte. “The message said something about Downstairs?”

  “Ah,” Giforte said, looking uncomfortable. “That’s what we call . . . well, Downstairs. I’ll show you. Follow me.”

  “Where did White and the others come from?” Marcus said as they descended the tower stairs.

  “Volunteers, mostly,” Giforte said. “I only know their end of it, but apparently the general had some men sorting through the new recruits for candidates. We nev
er have enough boys who can write and figure. He took some from the old navy, too, signalmen and the like.”

  Marcus nodded. The combination of the revolution and the declaration of war had sent a patriotic thrill through the nation, and while the aristocracy might be unhappy with the new order, the common folk had signed up in huge numbers to help defend Vordan against its foes. Unfortunately, Vordan needed more than bodies—without muskets, training, and leadership, the new soldiers were only extra mouths. Thank God for Murnskai tardiness. The League cities, with their standing armies, were quick to mobilize, but Imperial Murnsk was famous for moving with the agility of a glacier. It would be next year before Vordan had to face the full might of the vast hordes at the emperor’s command.

  “I’ve heard,” Giforte said, “that he also had people looking for recruits for Downstairs. Though what qualifications they needed I have no idea.”

  He led Marcus back to the first floor and into the kitchen, where a low-ceilinged doorway led farther down. Two guards stood beside it, rifles at the ready, and saluted at the two officers’ approach. The stairway beyond had been cut into the bedrock, lit by candles resting in wall nooks crusted over with wax. It went down at least fifteen feet before straightening out into a short tunnel.

  “This was originally a wine cellar,” Giforte said. “Whoever lived here must have had quite a collection.”

  The tunnel ended in a wooden door, caked with dirt and grime. Giforte knocked twice.

  “Yes?” The voice from within was a young woman’s, oddly slurred.

  “It’s Captain Giforte,” Giforte said. “I’ve brought Colonel d’Ivoire.”

  Something opened with a snick, and the door swung inward. The woman beyond was barely out of her teens, wearing a dark robe that pooled around her ankles and hung loose at her wrists. It had a hood, but this was pulled back, and her face in the candlelight was alarming. It was round and pleasant, even beautiful, but the right half hung drooping and slack, like the skin of a corpse. Her right eye was milky and sightless, and even her hair on the right side was coming in stark white at the roots, displacing her natural brown.