A Kiss for Queens

CHAPTER FIVE

From the steps of the Masked Goddess’s temple, standing poised at their summit as he waited for the start of his mother’s funeral, Rupert watched the sunset. It spread in shades of red, hues that reminded him too much of the blood he’d shed. It shouldn’t bother him. He was stronger than that, better than that. Even so, every look down at his hands brought with it memories of the way his mother’s blood had stained them, every moment of silence brought back the memory of her gasps as he’d stabbed her.

“You!” Rupert said, pointing to one of the augers and minor priests who crowded around the entrance. “What does this sunset portend?”

“Blood, your highness. A sunset like this means blood.”

Rupert took a half step forward, planning to strike the man for his insolence, but Angelica was there to catch him, her hand brushing across his skin in a promise he wished there was more time to make good on.

“Ignore him,” she said. “He knows nothing. No one knows anything, unless you tell them.”

“He said blood,” Rupert complained. His mother’s blood. The pain of that flickered through him. He’d lost his mother, the grief of it almost a surprise to him. He’d expected to feel nothing but relief at her death, or perhaps joy that the throne was finally his. Instead… Rupert felt broken inside, empty and guilty in a way he’d never felt before.

“Of course he said blood,” Angelica replied. “There’s to be a battle tomorrow. Any fool could see blood in a sunset with enemy ships moored offshore.”

“Plenty have,” Rupert said. He pointed at another man, an auger who seemed to be using some complex clockwork device to scrawl calculations on a scrap of parchment. “You, tell me how the battle will go tomorrow!”

The man looked up, a wild look in his eyes. “The signs are not good for the kingdom, your majesty. The gears—”

This time, Rupert did strike out, sending the man sprawling with a booted foot. If Angelica hadn’t been there to pull him back, he might have kept kicking until there was nothing left but a pile of broken bones.

“Consider how it would look, doing that at the funeral,” Angelica said.

It was enough to get Rupert to hold back, at least. “I don’t see why the priests even let the likes of those onto the steps of their temple. I thought they killed witches.”

“Maybe it’s a sign that these have no talent,” Angelica suggested, “and that you shouldn’t listen to them.”

“Maybe,” Rupert said, but there had been others. It seemed that everyone had an opinion on the battle to come. There had been augers enough back at the palace, both real and merely nobles who liked to guess at sunsets or the flight of birds.

Right then, though, this funeral, his mother’s funeral, was the only thing that mattered.

Apparently, there were those who didn’t understand that. “Your highness, your highness!”

Rupert spun toward the man who came running. He wore a soldier’s uniform, bowing low.

“The correct form of address for a king is ‘your majesty,’” Rupert said.

“Your majesty, forgive me,” the man said. He rose from his bow. “But I have an urgent message!”

“What is it?” Rupert demanded. “Can’t you see that I am attending my mother’s funeral?”

“Forgive me, your… majesty,” the man said, obviously only just catching himself in time. “But our generals request your presence.”

Of course they did. Fools who had not seen the route to defeating the New Army now wanted to gain his favor by showing how many ideas they had for dealing with the threat that had come to them.

“I will come, or not, after the funeral,” Rupert said.

“They said to stress the importance of the threat,” the man said, as if those words would somehow move Rupert to action. To some kind of obedience.

“I will decide its importance,” Rupert said. At the moment, nothing felt important compared to the funeral that was about to happen. Let Ashton burn for all he cared; he would bury his mother.

“Yes, your majesty, but—”

Rupert stopped the man with a look. “The generals want to pretend that everything must happen now,” he said. “That there is no plan without me. That I’m needed if we are to defend the city. I have a reply for them: do your jobs.”

“Your majesty?” the messenger said, in a tone that made Rupert want to punch him.

“Do your jobs, soldier,” he said. “These men claim to be our finest generals, but they can’t organize the defense of one city? Tell them that I will come to them when I am ready to. In the meantime, they will see to it. Now go, before I lose my temper.”

The man hesitated a moment, then bowed again. “Yes, your majesty.”

He hurried off. Rupert watched him go, then turned back to Angelica.

“You’re being quiet,” he said. Her expression was perfectly neutral. “You don’t agree with me burying my mother either?”

Angelica put a hand on his arm. “I think that if you need to do this, you should, but we can’t neglect the dangers, either.”

“What dangers?” Rupert demanded. “We have generals, don’t we?”

“Generals from a dozen different forces stitched together to form an army,” Angelica pointed out. “No two of whom will agree on who is in charge without someone there to set an overall strategy. Our fleet sits too close to the city, our walls are relics rather than defenses, and our enemy is a dangerous one.”

“Be careful,” Rupert warned her. His grief was closing around him like a fist, and the only way Rupert knew to respond to it was with anger.

Angelica moved forward to kiss him. “I am being careful, my love, my king. We’ll take the time to do this, but soon, you’ll need to give them direction, so that you have a kingdom to rule.”

“Let it burn,” Rupert said on reflex. “Let it all burn.”

“You might mean that now,” Angelica said, “but soon, you’ll want it. And then, well, there’s a danger that they won’t let you have it.”

“Let me have my crown?” Rupert said. “I am king!”

“You are the heir,” Angelica said, “and we have built you support in the Assembly of Nobles, but that support could fade if you are not careful. The generals you are ignoring will wonder if one of them should rule. The nobles will ask questions about a king who puts his grief before their safety.”

“And you, Angelica?” Rupert asked. “What do you think? Are you loyal?”

His fingers went to the hilt of a knife almost automatically, feeling its comforting presence. Angelica’s covered them.

“I think that I have chosen my place in this,” she said, “and it is alongside you. I’ve sent someone to deal with some of the threat of the fleet. If a death can slow us, it can slow them just as easily. Afterwards, we can do everything that needs to be done, together.”

“Together,” Rupert said, taking Angelica’s hand.

“Are you ready?” Angelica asked him.

Rupert nodded, even though right then the ache inside him was too great to ever be subdued. He would never be ready for the moment to let his mother go.

They stepped into the temple together. It had been dressed for a state funeral with a haste that was almost unseemly, rich drapes in dark hues filling the space within, cut through here and there by the royal crest. The pews of the temple were full of mourners, every noble in Ashton and for miles around turning out, along with merchants and soldiers, clergy and more. Rupert had made sure of that.

“They’re all here,” he said, looking around.

“All who could come,” Angelica replied.

“The ones who didn’t are traitors,” Rupert snapped back. “I’ll have them killed.”

“Of course,” Angelica said. “After the invasion, though.”

It was strange that he’d found someone so ready to agree to all the things that needed doing. She was as ruthless as he was in her way, beautiful and intelligent. She was there for this, too, standing beside him and managing to make even funeral black look exquisite, there to support Rupert as he made his way through the temple, toward the spot where his mother’s coffin sat waiting for interment, her crown set atop it.

A choir started to sing a requiem as they proceeded, the high priestess droning her prayers to the goddess. None of it would be original. There had been no time for that. Still Rupert would have a composer employed once all this was done. He would raise statues to his mother. He would—

“We’re here, Rupert,” Angelica said, guiding him to his seat on the front row. There was more than enough space there, in spite of the crowded building. Perhaps the guardsmen standing there to enforce it had something to do with that.

“We are gathered to bear witness to the passing of a great figure among us,” the high priestess droned as Rupert took his place. “Dowager Queen Mary of the House of Flamberg is gone behind the mask of death, into the arms of the goddess there. We mourn her passing.”

Rupert mourned it, the grief rising up through him as the priestess spoke about what a great ruler his mother had been, how important her role had been in unifying the kingdom. The old priestess gave a long sermon about the virtues found in the holy texts that his mother had embodied, and then men and women started to come up to speak about her greatness, her kindness, her humility.

“It’s like they’re talking about someone else,” Rupert whispered across to Angelica.

“It’s the sort of thing that they’re expected to say at a funeral,” she replied.

Rupert shook his head. “No, it isn’t right. It isn’t right.”

He stood, moving to the front of the temple, not caring that some lord was still busy spinning out the one time he’d met the Dowager into a eulogy. The man backed away as Rupert approached, falling silent.

“You’re all talking nonsense,” Rupert said, his voice carrying easily. “You’re talking about my mother and ignoring the real her! You say that she was good, and kind, and generous? She was none of those things! She was hard. She was ruthless. She could be cruel.” His hand swept around. “Is there anyone here she didn’t hurt? She hurt me often enough. She treated me like I was barely worthy to be her son.”

He could hear the whispers among those there. Let them whisper. He was their king now. What they thought didn’t matter.

“But she was strong, though,” Rupert said. “It’s thanks to her that you have a country at all. Thanks to her that traitors to this land have been driven out, their magic suppressed.”

A thought came to him.

“I will be as strong. I will do what is needed.”

He strode over to the coffin, lifting the crown. He thought about what Angelica had said about the Assembly of Nobles, as if Rupert needed their permission. He took it, and he set it on his own brow, ignoring the gasps from those there.

“We will bury my mother as the person she was,” Rupert said, “not as your lies! I command it as your king!”

Angelica stood then, hurrying over to him and taking his hand. “Rupert, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he shot back. Another impulse came to him, and he looked out over the crowd. “You all know Milady d’Angelica,” Rupert said. “Well, I have an announcement for you. Tonight, I will take her as my wife. You are all required to attend. Anyone who does not will be hanged for it.”

There was no gasp this time. Perhaps they could no longer be shocked. Perhaps they’d gone past it all. Rupert walked over to the coffin.

“There, Mother,” he said. “I have your crown. I’m going to marry, and tomorrow, I’m going to save your kingdom. Is that enough for you? Is it?”

A part of Rupert expected some answer, some sign. There was nothing. Nothing but the silence of the watching crowd, and the deep guilt that somehow still wormed its way through him.

CHAPTER SIX

From the balcony of a house in Carrick, the Master of Crows watched the gathering armies, looking out through the eyes of his creatures. He smiled to himself as he did so, a sense of satisfaction creeping over him.

“The pieces are in place,” he said, as his crows showed him the gathering ships, the defenders rushing to build barricades. “Now to watch them fall.”

The bloody sunset matched his mood today, as did the screams coming from the courtyard below his balcony. The day’s executions were proceeding apace: two men caught trying to desert, a would-be thief, a woman who had stabbed her husband. They stood tied to posts while the executioners worked with swords and garroting rope.

The crows descended on them. There were probably those who thought that he enjoyed the violence of such moments. The truth was that it didn’t matter either way to him; only the power that such deaths brought through his pets.

The Master of Crows looked around at the commanders waiting for his instructions, seeing if any flinched or looked away from the scenes below. Most did not, because they’d learned what was expected of them. One younger officer swallowed as he watched though. He would probably need to be watched.

For a moment or two, the Master of Crows slipped his attention back to the creatures wheeling above Ashton. As they gyred and looped, they showed him the spread of the advancing fleet, the branching force that sought to land further up the coast. A rook on a city wall showed him a group of Ishjemme men in merchant clothes opening a hidden chest of weapons by the river. A raven near the city’s graveyard heard men talking of retreating when the attack came, leaving the nobles to fend for themselves.

It seemed like a combination that might leave his pets hungry. He could not have that.

“We have a task to perform,” he said to the waiting men as he brought his attention back to himself. “Follow me.”

He led the way down through the house, taking it for granted that the others would be in his wake. Servants scurried aside, eager not to be in the path of so many powerful men as they descended. The Master of Crows could feel their resentment and their fear, but it didn’t matter. It was only the inevitable consequence of ruling.

In the courtyard, the screams had faded to the silence that only death could bring. Even the quietest of living creatures had the soft sound of breath, the fluttering beating of a heart. Now, only the cawing of the crows cut through the silence as the bodies hung limp against their posts.

“Order must be maintained,” the Master of Crows said, looking over at the officer who had shown a flicker of distaste. “We are a machine of many parts, and each must play its role. Now that they have stepped beyond their bounds, the role of these three is to feed the carrion birds.”

Those were flying down in greater numbers now, settling on the still recent corpses as they started to feast. Already, the Master of Crows could feel the power starting to flow into his flock from the deaths, along with the hundreds more that spread around the New Army’s empire at any one time. There were even a few of his birds feeding in the Dowager’s kingdom.

“It is time to place a thumb upon the scales,” he said, drawing on that power and tracing silver lines of consequence within his mind. Each represented a possibility, a choice. The Master of Crows had no way of knowing which would come to pass; he was not the woman of the fountain, or another of the true seers. He could see enough, though, to know where to exert influence. Where to push for the effects he wanted.

He reached out to the fluttering birds around Ashton. His mind sought the spots where a few well-placed words might do the most, and corvids of all kinds came from the sky to croak them.

A raven landed near the commander of Ashton’s city watch at his command, black eyes staring up at him.

“Northerners on the river,” it croaked as the Master of Crows uttered the words. “Northerners on the river, disguised as merchants.”

He didn’t wait to watch the man’s shock as he tried to make sense of what was happening. Instead, the Master of Crows shifted his attention to a rook in the graveyard, having it land on a headstone near the would-be conspirators who planned to flee.

“Be brave,” his bird croaked. “You are watched.”

To balance it, he sent another bird to a man by one of the main walls, having it caw a premonition of death. He sowed courage and cowardice, gave truths and told lies, weaving them into a spell of known and half-known things.

Not all of the birds were successful. He sent a blackbird winging its way to Prince Rupert’s window, only to find it barred. He sent a crow winging out toward the ships that waited in the harbor, circling lower over Ishjemme’s flagship, only to find his attention caught by the sight of a young man looking up. The Master of Crows knew that young man. He was the one who had thrust a blade into him back in Ishjemme. He stared up at the bird now, and his hand went to his belt, coming up with a pistol almost inhumanly fast…

“Damn it all!” the Master of Crows snarled as he jerked his attention back from the bird just in time.

He left the invaders’ fleet alone. Instead, he focused his attention on the city, finding small things that might give men courage or take it, that might fuel their rage or make them careless. He had a magpie steal a wife’s wedding ring as she washed glasses, then drop it at the feet of the soldier she was married to. No doubt the man would spend the battle wondering why it was not on her finger, and if he should be home. He had a raven lift a lit candle, dropping it in a set of abandoned buildings where the flames would lick.

“Let them choose if they want to save their homes from invaders or from fire,” he said.

There were a hundred other birds about a hundred other errands, each one taking a flicker of power, but each one an investment in the chaos that would flow from it. Some spoke to soldiers, others to men and women he’d sent for this moment, who stood to tell stories of the horrors of Ishjemme to those who would listen, or suggested bloody rebellion against the Dowager’s line, or both.

The Master of Crows took a battle that should have been an easy victory for the invaders and wove it into something more complex, more dangerous, and more deadly.

By the time he came back to himself, he was smiling with what he had achieved. Men thought of the great workings of magic and they thought of symbols or ancient tomes, yet he had just worked something far greater, with far less. He looked around at his officers, still watching the crows pecking at the dead with dutiful expressions.

“The enemy will have their battle for Ashton tomorrow,” he said. “It will be a bloody one, with many dead on all sides.”

He couldn’t help a note of satisfaction at that. After all, he was the main reason that so many would die.

“When do we strike, my lord?” one of his fleet’s commanders asked. “Do you have orders for us?”

“You are eager to attack?” the Master of Crows asked.

“I am, my lord,” the man said. He pounded a fist into his palm. “I want to crush them for the humiliation they inflicted last time around.”

“Me too,” a general said. “I want them to know that the New Army is stronger.”

A chorus of assent followed, each man seeming to strive harder than the last to show how committed he was to making up for the failures of the assault on the Dowager’s kingdom. Maybe that was the point. Maybe each wanted to show that they could do better. Maybe they thought that their hides were at stake if they failed again.

They weren’t entirely wrong in that guess. Even so, the Master of Crows held up a hand for calm. “Be patient. Return to your men and your ships. Ensure that all is ready for an attack. I will tell you the moment for it.”

They left as a group, each hurrying to prepare. The Master of Crows let them go. For now, his attention was on the blood red of the sunset and what it portended. There would be blood aplenty in the morning, he had no doubt. Thanks to his creatures’ efforts, there would be carnage on a scale that would make Ashton’s river run red. His creatures would feast.

“And when they are done,” he said, “we will add what’s left to our empire.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The assassin who went by Rose waited for full dark before she rowed out toward the ships waiting in the harbor, her oars muffled by cloth in the rowlocks. It helped that the moon was bright, and that she’d always seen well in the dark when she needed to. It meant that she didn’t have to risk even a thief’s lantern. Even so, fear ran through her with every stroke, pushed down only with an effort.

“This will be fine,” she said. “You’ve done this a hundred times before.”

Perhaps not a hundred. Even the finest of her profession who ever lived had never killed so many. She was not some butcher’s cleaver, sent to cut down as many in a war as she could. She was a gardener’s knife, sheering only what was necessary from the stem.

“Half the soldiers there will have killed more than me,” she whispered, as if that justified it.

There was always fear as she did it. Fear of discovery. Fear that something would go wrong. Fear that she might acquire the kind of conscience that stopped her from doing what she was best at.

“Not so far,” Rose whispered.

Gently, she guided her boat through the waiting boats. She wasn’t surprised to hear a voice call out into the night.

“Oi, who goes down there? What are you up to?”

Rose saw a soldier leaning over the prow of a nearby ship, a bow in his hands. Perhaps someone stupid would have tried to row to safety, and gotten an arrow in their back for their trouble. Instead, she took a moment to think. Accents were a skill she’d taken the time to work on, so now Rose selected a suitable one, not Ishjemme itself, but the rougher burr of one of the islands between there and the kingdom’s coast. That was better. The soldiers from Ishjemme might know one another. They couldn’t expect to know all their allies.

“Getting ready for a battle, you idiot. What are you doing? Trying to wake up all of Ashton?”

“Aye, well, you could be anyone!” the soldier called out. “It could have been a boat full of the enemy, for all I knew.”

“Do I look like a boat full of the enemy?” Rose shot back. “Now, can I get on with delivering the reports I’m supposed to? I’ve been scouting that excuse for a city for hours now. Can’t even find the flagship.”

She saw the man point.

“Over there,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Rose was good at pretending to be people she wasn’t. Some thought that assassins should be people who could fight their way through an army, or fire an arrow from further than a man could see. She liked stories like that. It meant that they weren’t looking at the innocuous figure next to them who had just put something in their wine.

“No chance of doing that this time though,” she said to herself.

She wasn’t sure that Milady d’Angelica had understood what she was asking when she’d sent her to do this. Frankly, she doubted the noblewoman cared. Yet there was a big difference between poisoning some rival in Ashton and sneaking onto a ship in the middle of a battle fleet.

Especially one where those who led it were rumored to have magic.

That was the part that terrified her in all of this. How was someone supposed to slip aboard a ship when people could read the murderous thoughts in her heart? When they could sense her coming and probably send phantasms shrieking after her soul? It meant that her usual strategy of disguise and lying was out, for one thing.

“I should just row all the way to the continent,” Rose muttered. What kind of idiot put herself in the middle of a battle like this by choice? She kept going in the direction of the flagship, though, for three reasons.

One was that she was being paid well for this. Too well to ignore it. Another was that, whatever her skills with a knife and a poisoned dart, she suspected that Milady d’Angelica would be a dangerous enemy to have. The third… well, the third was simple:

She was good at this.

Rose stopped the small boat well short of the flagship, in the space where it was just one more shadow against the dark. Taking off her Ishjemme colors to reveal black clothes beneath, she slipped into the waters of the bay.

The cold leached heat from her body, while she tried not to think of all the filth that spilled from Ashton’s gutters into its river and then the sea. She ignored the idea of the other things that might be in the waters too, the sharks and other predators that would be gathering to scavenge in the wake of a battle. Maybe their presence would even be a good thing, disguising her murderous intent with their own to any prying minds.

Rose crept forward with silent strokes through the water, ducking her head whenever she thought someone might be glancing in her direction, ignoring the foul taste of the seawater. It seemed to take forever to get close to the flagship, the roll of it pushing out a faint wash that buffeted her as she closed on it.

Finally, her fingers found the wood of the hull, searching for handholds the way someone else might have clambered their way up a rock face. Rose moved slowly, determined not to make any sound, even trying to still her thoughts so that they would not give her away to any of those there with magic.

She raised her head up enough to see a watchman moving along the deck. She ducked down, listening to the rhythm of his steps, letting him pass. Still, she didn’t move. Instead, she waited until he passed twice more, learning the pattern of it. Someone more foolish might have rushed out onto the deck the first time, and been caught for it. Rose had learned when to be patient.

The third time the watcher went past, she slipped into his wake, a length of garroting wire dropping from her sleeve. The man was taller than her, but Rose was used to that. She had the wire around his throat in an instant, jerking it tight and driving her knee into his back to bring him down. There was no time for him to scream as the wire cut deep, only for a brief gasp to escape.

Rose dumped the guard’s body in the water, trying to do it as quietly as possible. It was a shame to have to kill someone who was not her target, but the man’s watch had too few spaces in it, too few gaps into which she might slip when the time came to make her escape. She put her garrote away. She would not be using it for what came next.

“Quietly now,” she whispered to herself as she scurried below decks.

She might not have the magic that those here were said to have, to ferret out the thoughts of others, but she had eyes to pick out the shadows of coiled ropes and stacked weapons in the near dark, ears to seek out the breathing of sleeping men, differentiating carefully between those who were deeply asleep and those who might wake if she got too close. She moved on the balls of her feet, keeping to the shadows as she moved past the spaces where the ordinary soldiers lay, heading for the space where her target would be.

Rose opened doors in silence in the dark, looking at the sleeping figures there, watching for the one she’d been sent for. She found her target in a room marked with Ishjemme’s colors: the room of a leader, the room of a ruler. She pushed open the door in silence.

Ahead of her, a candle flickered into being, revealing Lars Skyddar, sitting on a sea chair, a sword across his lap.

“You’ve come for me,” he said.

Rose considered her options. Could she run? Could she get clear of this ship before this man brought a whole crew to face her?

“How did you know I was coming?” she demanded. “I know I made no sound.”

“A long time ago, I was told that I would face death on the night before our greatest battle, and that I must face it alone. I’ve known this moment was coming since my nieces arrived.”

“Are you going to call for them?” Rose asked, her hands moving down almost imperceptibly to her belt, considering which of the poisoned darts there might do the job best. Their deaths weren’t the plan for tonight, but Milady d’Angelica would probably reward her well if she managed it.

“I will not risk their lives,” Lars Skyddar said. “Yours, on the other hand…”

He leapt forward, almost fast enough that Rose couldn’t do anything. If he’d been twenty years younger, perhaps she wouldn’t have been able to do anything, and the sword would have hacked deep into her. As it was, it still caught her flesh as she dove aside, still left a smear of blood as she rolled back to her feet.

Ishjemme’s duke was already turning to attack her again, but Rose’s hand came up from her belt, flinging a handful of darts without caring which poison was on them, only caring that some, enough, would strike home.

Her foe gasped as they hit him. The darts held everything from sleeping poisons to the quickest of killers, and even the assassin had no clue what so many would do at once. It was enough that they were doing something. Even as she watched, the sword went clattering to the ground.

She slipped in close, drawing a dagger, not wanting to leave it to an uncertain combination of alchemy to finish the job. She pulled back her arm to deliver the fatal thrust…

And Lars Skyddar pulled her close, dragging one of the darts from his flesh and into hers.

Rose stabbed him on reflex, thrusting up into the man’s heart before abandoning her grip on the blade. She stared down at him, then at the dart sticking from her flesh, unable to contain her shock. He’d poisoned her with her own weapon!

Rose all but staggered from the cabin, trying to stay quiet but having no time for it. She didn’t know which poison had been on the weapon, but already she thought she could feel a sluggishness invading her limbs, numbness reaching into her fingertips.

She grabbed an antidote vial from her belt, not knowing if it was the right one, or if it would make things worse. She slipped up onto the deck, moving with graceless steps now, not even sure which way her small boat lay for her escape. She staggered to the railing, turning back briefly, glimpsing sailors looking in other directions, none seeing her.

She toppled from the ship, no art to it, no skill. She imagined that the splash of it would be enough to draw attention from all around if it weren’t for the press of so many ships in such a small space.

As the water closed over her, she had one thought: she’d done what was required of her. She’d killed the leader of the invasion, leaving only the untested and the young to do the job. She’d cleared the way for other plots too, the ones that Milady d’Angelica thought she didn’t know about.