“I know we’re looking for cannon, Ranker Servus,” he said, “but you have to realize that not everything that looks like a cannon is, in fact, a cannon. This, for instance, is a statue.”
“But it’s got wheels, look! And it looks old!”
“Look at the barrel, Ranker. A cannon needs a hole in the barrel. Otherwise where are we going to put the balls?”
Servus looked crestfallen. He rapped the solid muzzle of the little gun with his knuckle, and sighed.
“Right,” Val said. “Where next?”
“Fellow I talked to said he thought there were two or three down on the riverfront,” one of the rankers said. “He said he used to eat his lunch there, and they were so covered in pigeon shit he didn’t realize they were cannon for years.”
“I hope you’re up for scraping off some pigeon shit, then.” Val turned around, and his eyes widened at the sight of his long-absent senior captain. “Balls of the Beast! Is that really you, Marcus?”
“Last I checked.” Marcus grinned, and Val grabbed his hand and shook it with unnecessary force, slapping him on the shoulder with his other hand for good measure. He had quite a grip. Captain Valiant Solwen had been one of Marcus’ longest-serving companions in Khandar, and probably his best friend after the dead Adrecht Roston. He had the florid face of a serious drinker and a pencil-thin mustache of which he was inordinately proud. “Good to see you, Val.”
“And damned good to see you,” Val said. “Damned good to see the old city, too. Though truth be told, I was just happy to see solid ground after all those months with nothing to look at but blue. I’m never getting on another ship as long as I live, I swear it by Karis the Savior.”
“That bad?”
Val rolled his eyes. One of the rankers sniggered and said, “The captain gets seasick.”
“That’s enough of that,” Val said. “Archer, take them down to the waterfront and see if those are guns or stones under all the guano. I’ll catch up after I have a word with the senior captain.”
Archer nodded and started barking orders. The wagoneers got on the bed of their vehicle and rumbled off, followed by the soldiers.
“Have you seen the others?” Val said.
“Briefly,” Marcus said. “Fitz and the Preacher, anyway.”
“Mor’s tearing the city apart looking for muskets,” Val said. “And Give-Em-Hell has been culling out anyone who says he can ride from the recruits, and trying to turn them into cavalry.”
“Small hope there,” Marcus said. “It takes more than a few days to make a trooper.”
“What about you?” Val said. “The way I hear it, you’re the colonel’s right-hand man now. Has he got you on some secret errand?”
“Just checking up on the guns. Are you getting anywhere?”
“There’s some siege pieces in the water batteries,” Val said. “And so far we’ve pulled maybe a dozen smaller guns from places like this.” He gave the little gun sculpture a kick. “A lot of banks have them out front, for some reason. Popular decorations, or at least they were a hundred years ago. Some of the pieces we’ve got have to date back to the Civil War.”
“Are they still serviceable?”
“That’s the big question.” Val pulled absently at his mustache, first one end and then the other. “Preacher says he’s going to scour them, load them up, then set them off with a torch on the end of a long pole. Anything that doesn’t explode, we’ll keep.”
Marcus chuckled and shook his head. The ingenuity of the Preacher and his men when it came to cannons and explosives was notorious; he trusted they’d come up with something.
“Is it true the colonel made you captain of Armsmen?” Val said abruptly. “Before all this started up, I mean.”
Marcus nodded. “He landed me right in the thick of it. I don’t know if you’ve heard what happened at the Vendre.”
“Only rumors. You were there?”
“I’ll tell you the story, when we’ve got more time.”
“Right.” Val sighed. “Hell of a thing, to spend three months at sea and then pitch back into it as soon as we get here.”
“You think the men are up for it?”
“Oh, they’re up for it, just a little ticked off. I feel sorry for whoever gets in their way. Some of them aren’t crazy about fighting Vordanai, but after Khandar. .” He shrugged. “I think every man of them would follow the colonel if he told ’em to march into the river.”
“Does that include you?” Marcus said. Of all the Colonial officers, Val was the one who had retained the most connection to home. He was a nobleman of sorts, the younger son of a lesser branch, but those kinds of ties went deep. He probably has cousins on the other side.
“I don’t know about the colonel,” Val said, “but I’d follow you if you said we were going to storm the moon. If you say this is the right side to be on, then it is.” He coughed to cover this moment of unexpected candor. “Besides, I hear we have the queen with us, so that makes it all right.”
“We’ve got her,” Marcus confirmed. “I saw her at breakfast this morning, in fact.”
Val blinked. “You’re staying with the queen?”
“Actually, she’s staying with me. Or we’re both staying with the colonel, I suppose.” He didn’t mention that he’d helped the queen escape her own chambers and led her personal guard into an ambush. Val might have fainted.
“Now, there’s something I never thought I’d hear. What’s she like?”
“A bit odd. She looks younger than she is. Smart, pretty in an awkward sort of way. I’ll introduce you when we get the chance.”
“After the battle, please,” Val said. “If we’re getting ready to fight, the last thing I need to worry about is a royal interview.”
He spent a bit longer with Val, catching up on the regimental gossip and relating a few choice tidbits from his time in the city. At first they were able to banter as though nothing had changed, but something uncomfortable gradually crept into the conversation. It took a moment for Marcus to realize what it was. Val had work to do, and Marcus was keeping him from it. When Marcus had been in command, whatever he’d had to say to his subordinates was by definition the most important thing in their lives at that moment, at least as far as their duties were concerned. Now he could sense Val’s nagging feeling that he ought to be off with Lieutenant Archer looking for cannon. Marcus eventually let him off the hook with a promise that they’d finish their catching up sometime later, and rustle up Mor and Fitz for cards as they had done in the Ashe-Katarion days.
What the hell has Janus done to me? Marcus walked, hands in his pockets, back toward Cathedral Square. If the Colonials were a single living thing-and Marcus often thought of them as one-then Marcus was a tiny piece of that creature excised by a surgeon and carried across the sea. The regiment had survived, and even thrived, but the place where he’d been had scabbed over and turned to scar tissue, and he didn’t fit back into it anymore.
It’ll be different, once we win. If they lost, of course, none of it would matter. At best they’d be fugitives, on the run from Orlanko’s secret police. And at worst. . well, that was always a risk on a battlefield. But if we win. . then what? He couldn’t picture it. But the queen would find something for him to do, wouldn’t she?
It was well into the afternoon by now, and he decided his aching legs weren’t up to the long walk back to the Twin Turrets. Instead he hailed a cab, which turned out to be occupied by two other men also headed north across the bridges.