“We found a Merduk army near Berrona, close to the Searil, and destroyed it. They had been ravaging the whole country up around there. They took the women and murdered the men. The entire region is littered with corpses, depopulated. A wilderness. The march back to Torunn was… difficult. The waggons slowed us down and we went short of food. Half the horses are gone, but our casualties were very light, considering. I believe the Torrin Gap is secure again, at least for a while.”
“Well, that is news indeed. I congratulate you, Corfe. Your band of heroes has done it again. How many Merduks did they kill this time?”
He thought of the unbelievable slaughter within the Merduk camp, all order lost, men squirming for their lives in the thick mud, shrieking. Ranafast’s Torunnans had captured two hundred of the enemy as they tumbled out of their tents and cut the throats of every last one. No quarter. No prisoners.
“What news here, in the capital?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“Berza’s fleet has defeated the Nalbenic ships in an action off the Kardikian coast. There will be no more ship-borne supplies for Aurungzeb’s armies. Fournier’s spies tell us that the Sultan has found himself a wife. He demolished Ormann Dyke and married her in the ruins. She is rumoured to be a Ramusian.”
Corfe stirred. “Ormann Dyke is—”
“No more. Yes. Kaile Ormann’s walls have been cast down, and the Merduks are busy rearing up another fortress on the east bank of the river. It would seem they intend to stay.”
“It could be a good sign—a signall that the Sultan is beginning to think defensively.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“This wife of his. Why should he marry a Ramusian? He has a whole harem of Merduk princesses to bed, or so I had always heard.”
“She is supposed to be a great beauty, that is all we know.”
“Maybe she’ll have an influence on him.”
“Perhaps. I would not put too much store in the wiles of women! They are overrated.”
“Coming from you, Your Majesty, that is hard to credit.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. “I am different.”
“That I believe.”
“Come to bed, Corfe. I have missed you.”
“In a moment. I want to feel my feet again, and remember what a chair feels like under my arse.”
She laughed, throwing her head back, and in that moment he loved her. He shunted the feeling aside, swamped by guilt, confusion, even a kind of shame. He did not love her. He would not.
“Fournier has been busy in my absence, I take it.”
“Oh, yes. By the way, did you ever meet a little deformed monk named Albrec?”
Corfe frowned. “I don’t think so. No—wait. Yes, once, outside Torunn. He had no nose.”
“That’s the one. Macrobius has told me that the fellow went out to preach to the Merduks.”
“There is a fool for every season, I suppose. What did they do, crucify him?”
“No. He is something of a fixture in the Merduk court, pontificating about the brotherhood of man and such.”
“We seem very well informed about the doings of the Merduk court.”
“That is what I have been leading up to. Fournier has planted a spy there, God knows how. He may be a weaselly treasonous dastard, but he knows his business. Even I am not allowed to know our agent’s name. Twice in the past month a Merduk deserter has come to the gates with a despatch hidden on him.”
“He uses Merduks? A man for every message? He’ll be caught soon. You can’t keep that kind of thing secret for long. I take it there is no way to get a message to this agent?”
Odelia shrugged. “I fail to see how even Fournier can do that.”
“What about your… abilities? Your—”
“My witchery?” The Queen laughed again. “They run a different road, Corfe. Do you know anything of the Seven Disciplines?”
“I’ve heard of them, that’s all.”
“A true mage must master four of the Seven. I know only two—Cantrimy and True Theurgy. I may be one step better than a common hedge-witch, but I am no wizard.”
“I see. Then I would like to talk to these so-called Merduk deserters.”
“So would I. There is something odd going on at the Merduk court. But Fournier has hidden them away as though they were a miser’s hoard. He may even have disposed of them already.”
“You are the Queen. Order him to produce them, or the despatches they carried at least.”
“That would offend him, and then we might lose his co-operation entirely.”
Corfe’s eyes narrowed and a light kindled in them, red from the hearth glow. When he looked like that, Odelia thought, you could see the violence graven in him. She felt herself shiver, as though someone had walked over her grave.
“You mean to tell me,” Corfe said softly, “that this blue-blooded son of a bitch will deliberately withhold information which could be vital to the conduct of this war, simply out of a fit of pique?”
“He is not one of your soldiers, Corfe. He is a noble, and must be handled with care.”
“Nobles.” His voice was still soft, but the tone of it set the hair rising on the back of her neck. “I have never yet seen one who was worth so much as a bucket of warm spit. These deserters, or whatever they are, their knowledge of what goes on in the Merduk camps could be priceless to us.”
“You cannot touch Fournier,” Odelia snapped. “He is of the nobility. You cannot sweep aside the entire bedrock of a kingdom’s fabric just like that. Leave him to me.”
“All right then; if the kingdom’s fabric is so important I will leave him alone.”
What would he be like as a king? Odelia wondered. Am I mad to consider it? He has so much anger in him. He might save Torunna, and then tear it apart afterwards. If only he could be healed.
She set a hand on his brow. “What are you doing?” he demanded, still angry.
“Stealing your mind. What do you think? Now be quiet.”
Very well, do it. Take that plunge. She was no mind-rhymer, but she was a healer of sorts, and she loved him. That opened the door for her. She stepped through it with a fearful sort of determination.
It was like hearing distant thunder, a baying recklessness of baffled hurt and fury. She dove past scenes of slaughter, ecstasies of boundless murder. Corfe’s trade, his vocation, was the killing of his fellow man, and he was good at it—but he did not enjoy it. That gave her a vast sense of relief. His soul was not that of a bloodthirsty barbarian, but it was savage nonetheless. He was possessed of a deep self-loathing, a desire for redemption that surprised and touched her.
There—that was Aekir, burning like the end of the world. Go back further, to before that. And there was an ordinary young man with kinder eyes and less iron certainty in his heart. Wholly different, it seemed, and unexceptional.
She realised then that he must not be healed—not by her. His suffering had made him what he was, had forged a man out of the boy and rendered him steel-hard. She found herself both in awe of him and pitying his pain. There was nothing to be done here. Nothing.
She came out again, unwilling to look at the happiness there had been before Aekir, the fleeting images of the raven-haired girl who had been and would always be his only love. But the youth who had married the silk merchant’s daughter was no more. Only the general remained. Yes, he could be King. He could be a very great king, one that later centuries would spin legends around. But he would never be truly at ease with himself—and that was the mainspring, the thing that drove him to greatness.
She sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes.
“Well?” he asked.
“Well, nothing. You are a muddle-headed peasant who needs to get drunk more often.”
His smile warmed her. There would never be passion there, not for her, but he esteemed her nonetheless. That would have to be enough.
“I think your magicks are overrated,” he said.