“Don’t you care for anything finer, sir?” John asked.
“Not me.” Bart turned back to the waiter. “Make sure the cook does it up gray all the way through. No pink, or I’ll send it back.” The blond nodded, and hurried away. To John, Bart said, “I can’t abide the sight of blood. I never have been able to.”
“Uh, yes, sir,” John said, reflecting that that was an odd quirk for a man who’d commanded most of the bloodiest fights in Detinan history.
As if thinking along with him, Bart remarked, “I’ve seen too much blood already. I don’t need to look at more on my plate.”
“Yes, sir,” John said again. The waiter brought the wine and filled his goblet, then set the bottle on the table between the two officers. John reached for it. “Shall I pour you some?”
“No, thanks,” Marshal Bart answered. “I will take a drink every now and again, but only every now and again. I used to like it too well-I daresay you’ll have heard about that-so now I’m very careful about how much I pour down.”
John felt self-conscious about drinking when the Marshal of Detina wouldn’t, but Bart waved for him to go on. His first taste of the wine removed his lingering hesitation. The House of the Rat had an excellent cellar. The cooks worked fast, too. The waiter fetched John’s stew and a beefsteak that looked as if it had just come from a long stay in the hottest of the seven hells.
Bart attacked the beefsteak with gusto, though it was so thoroughly cooked, he had to do some serious work with his knife to hack through it. He said, “You’ll know Joseph the Gamecock is operating against General Hesmucet in Palmetto Province. Operating as best he can, I should say, because Hesmucet outnumbers him at least three to one. Your job will be to go up to Croatoan by sea, hit Joseph in the rear or in the flank as opportunity arises, and join forces with Hesmucet. Then, if the war has not ended before you get there, you will come up to Pierreville and help me finish off Duke Edward of Arlington.”
That made John take another big sip of wine. “Finish off Duke Edward of Arlington,” he echoed, awe in his voice. “That hardly seems real.”
“Oh, it is real, all right,” Bart said. “Real as horseradish. We are going to whip the traitors, and we are going to do it pretty quick. I have no doubts about that, none at all.”
He’d never had any doubts about that, which made him unique among King Avram’s officers. And he’d been right. Time and time again, he’d been right. He didn’t look like much. He didn’t sound like much. But he won. That was why Avram had made him Marshal of Detina. And he’d kept hammering till even Duke Edward and the Army of Southern Parthenia were visibly coming to the end of their tether.
Doubts, John thought. Then he heard himself saying, “Doubting George isn’t very happy with you, you know.”
“Yes, I do know that.” Bart paused to take another bite of his leathery beefsteak. Once he’d choked it down, he went on, “I am sorry about it, too. George is a good man, a sound man. When it comes to holding off the foe, there is not a better man in all of Detina. But when it comes to going after him… When it comes to going after him, George is too gods-damned slow. That is the truth. I am sad to say it, but it is the truth. There at Ramblerton, he should have struck Bell two weeks before he did. He would have won.”
Since John the Lister thought the same, he could only nod. That sufficed, anyhow. If he said unkind things about Doubting George, Bart would see it as backbiting. Instead, he spooned up a plump, juicy oyster. Better this than burnt meat, he thought.
At a table not far away, a good-looking young man began cursing King Avram, careless of the many gray-clad soldiers in the dining room. John the Lister scowled. “Who is that noisy fool?” he asked.
To his surprise, Bart seemed unconcerned. “That is Barre the actor,” he answered. “He is Handsome Edwin’s younger brother. He loves lost causes, so naturally he adores false King Geoffrey.”
“Does he?” John the Lister said in a voice as neutral as he could make it. “How serious is he about adoring Geoffrey? Should he be doing it inside a cell somewhere instead of in the dining room of the House of the Rat?”
“Folks who know him better than I do say he is nothing but wind and air, and that he would not harm a fly,” Bart answered. “Putting him in prison would stir up more trouble than he is likely to cause, so he stays loose.”
“I see,” said John, who liked none of what he saw or heard.
Barre went on ranting. He didn’t sound like an actor. He sounded like a crazy man. “Thus always to tyrants!” he shouted, and thumped his fist down on the table in front of him.
“Maybe they could lock him up for being a lunatic,” John said hopefully.
Marshal Bart shook his head with just the hint of a smile. “You have been in the east a long time, John. Things are… different here in Georgetown. It took me a while to get used to it, too. A lot of men here favor Geoffrey. King Avram does not get upset about it as long as they keep it to talk, and they mostly do. There were serfs on the estates hereabouts till the war started, you know. In a lot of ways, this is more a northern town than one full of southrons.”
John had heard that. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. Evidently, it was true no matter what he wanted. He said, “They ought to clean out all those traitors, and crucify the worst of ’em.”
Now Marshal Bart gave him an odd look. “I said something not much different from that when I first got here, too, Brigadier. But King Avram would not-will not-hear of it. He says victory will cure what ails them. After we whip false King Geoffrey, we will all be Detinans together again, and we will have to live with one another. When you look at it that way, it is hard to say he is wrong.”
“Maybe.” But John the Lister cocked his head to one side and listened to young Barre a little longer. “To the hells with me, though, if I think that mouthy son of a bitch has any business running loose.”
“Well, I would be harder than Avram is myself,” Bart allowed. “But he is the King of Detina. We have fought this whole war to show the northerners that that is what he is. If he gives an order to let people like that alone, what can we do but leave them alone? Without turning into traitors ourselves, I mean?”
John thought that over. With a scowl, he said, “You know what, sir? I’m gods-damned glad I’m just a soldier. I don’t have to worry about things like that.”
“Some soldiers do,” Bart said. “When Fighting Joseph was head general here, he talked about seizing the throne after he won some victories.”
“It’s a wonder Avram didn’t take his head,” John said.
“Avram heard about it, but he only laughed,” Bart replied. “He said that if Fighting Joseph gave him the victories, he would take his chances with the usurpation. Then Duke Edward whipped the stuffing out of Joseph at Viziersville, and that was the end of that kind of talk. Our job is to make sure the traitors do not pull off any more little stunts like Viziersville, and we are strong enough to do it. That is why I brought your wing west. We will manage.”
We will manage. It wasn’t a flashy motto, nothing for soldiers to cry as they charged into battle. But it was a belief that Marshal Bart had turned into a truth, and a truth none of King Avram’s other generals had ever been able to find. John the Lister nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.
However much Lieutenant General Bell didn’t want to admit it even to himself-perhaps especially to himself-General Peegeetee had been right about how things were in Nonesuch. Like most Detinans (and all the more because he was a healer’s son), Bell had spent time in sickrooms that held people who were going to die. Walk into such a room and you could see death brooding there, sometimes even before the bedridden patient knew the end drew near. Nonesuch was like that now.