Kingmaker (29 page)

She willed herself to stay relaxed, not to let the pain of her decision show on her face. She liked Arnold. She'd liked kissing him, even. And killing him because he stood in the way of her political goals was far too close to what the Duke of Harrison had done to her parents. But there was no way the Free Lubica Army could hold him captive. If he escaped and warned the guards that she was in Harrison, she'd be betraying everyone who had believed in her—and the ideals that she'd fought for and had lost so many soldiers for.

"You'd really kill me, Ellie?” He didn't look scared, just sad.

That shouldn't have surprised her, of course. Arnold might not be the brightest candle in the chandelier, but he wasn't a coward. And he'd been brought up with ideals of loyalty that ran as deeply as her own.

"If I have to, I'll do it, Arnold."

"Then you'll have to try. Because I pledged fealty to Sergius. If I turn against him now, I'll be foresworn, and damned.

Arnold stayed seated, but he moved his right hand to the hilt of his sword. If she didn't kill him on her first strike, he would kill her.

"You swore your allegiance to an oathbreaker, Arnold. To a king unworthy of you."

He shrugged. “I believe you, Ellie. And I wish now I were free of my pledge, that I could throw my support behind you. But my oath binds me. How would I be different from Sergius if I abandoned my fealty for the sake of convenience or of my life?"

Ellie could think of several differences, starting with the fact that Sergius had broken his promises first. None of them would convince Arnold.

"You're an honorable man,” she told him. “More honorable than Sergius deserves. I'd truly hate to kill you. If I captured you, would you give your parole, your word that you'd keep our secrets and stay our prisoner?"

He looked sad. “You can't capture me, Ellie."

"I'm speaking hypothetically, of course,” she lied.

Arnold sighed. “Sure, Ellie. If you captured me, I would give you my parole."

She sighed too, but in relief, not frustration. Then she gave the sign for the drugged blowguns.

The two soft puffs sounded loud to her because she was expecting them.

Arnold slapped at his cheek, spun around, his sword already drawn, and advanced on the shadowy figures who had come up behind him while he and Ellie had talked.

Micael and Alys split up, backing away quickly, waiting for the magically enhance drug to take effect.

In an effort of pure will, Arnold almost reached Micael before he finally collapsed.

"He has to die. Nobles don't keep their word to common people,” Micael warned her as he picked up Arnold's limp body and tossed it over his shoulders. “I know he was your friend. Let me kill him and you'll never have to think about it again."

Ellie shook her head. “Arnold will keep his promise. He's the most honorable guy I know. I just wish we could get him on our side. Right now, Sergius can portray us as disaffected peasants and uppity bandits. If we can win the support of even a minority of the nobility and merchants, we'll be unstoppable."

"If wishes were cannon, we'd knock the keep down. As it is, we're wasting time."

"Not completely. This old stable looks like a decent meeting point. Let's haul in the wagon and get started.

Getting started meant cutting open the tubers and pulling out the coin that had been inserted into each one. They were going to have to deal with thieves and the corrupt. Everything they'd plundered during the months of their rebellion had been gathered for the bribes they anticipated paying.

After a couple of hours of that, Ellie took a break. They'd given enough time for more of the proto-ninja to infiltrate the city, to begin to make their contacts with the underworld. Most of them had brought some money, but they'd need more.

Ellie made her way through the city locating each of the meeting places they'd agreed on, then used Micael's sign language to soundlessly tell the other ninja where they'd gone to ground. Some rebels signaled back to her and she slipped them small bags of gold to pay bribes to anyone who could help them infiltrate more men, who could provide a distraction when their attack finally came.

She searched out the local blacksmiths and had the few ninja who'd used mercenary disguises buy what weapons they could find.

It was easy for a dozen disguised ninja to infiltrate the city. At harvest season, there was always a fair amount of traffic. But even complacent guards would become curious if thousands of people, no matter how convincing their disguises, suddenly appeared at the gates of the city.

The ninja had been trained to blend in, to wear disguises, and trained and spelled to stand up to enemy questioning. The rest of the army would have to be snuck in and hidden. And for that, they'd need local help. Getting local help required two things: lots of money; and the force to appear even more threatening than the city guards. Because the smugglers and thieves they'd be dealing with would almost certainly be willing to take their gold and cheerfully sell them out to the guards.

By the time she got back to her base, Arnold was up.

She expected him to be unhappy and wasn't disappointed.

"Allowing others to strike from behind is not chivalrous, Ellie."

"We're trying to win, Arnold, not play a game."

"The laws of chivalry aren't a game. They're what keeps warfare civilized."

Ellie closed her eyes and tried to force back the mental images of her parents’ bodies, of the thousands of bodies in farmhouses outside of Dinan. “Sometimes, I think you get it, but then you go and say something like that. War isn't civilized. It's brutal and ugly."

He nodded. “I'm not blind, Ellie. My eyes have been opened these past months. Any naive and romantic notions I once had about war are gone. But that's because the rules have been broken. Breaking them again and saying Sergius or Sullivan or Harrison did it first doesn't help bring things back. It only invites greater cruelty."

She nodded. She agreed with him. Even good ends do not justify every means. In this case, though, she felt justified. She'd let Micael and Alys strike from behind because she'd wanted to save his life.

"I'm sorry I don't live up to your expectations, Arnold. But I wasn't raised a princess. I was raised a fighter. And that's what I do. Now, will you tell us about the keep? I need guard schedules, a complete map, armory sites, insight into the commander's personality."

He shrugged. “You know I can't help you. It would be unethical."

Sometimes the man was so honorable she wanted to strangle him.

"Sooner or later, Sergius is going to turn against you,” she warned. “When he does, you'll be sorry you didn't play your part in bringing him under control."

His dark eyes seemed to peer into her soul. “I believe you, princess. But that doesn't mean I can help you."

She gave up. “All right, then. Why don't you see if you can turn some of these tubers into something to eat then? I'm going to see what I can discover with magic."

"And I'll see what I can find out from the whores and chambermaids,” Alys cackled. “Because if anyone knows the guards’ schedules, it will be the women whose livelihoods depend on it."

Ellie spent two hours with her stones, tracing out the patterns of the three dimensional structure that was the city's keep while Alys vanished into the female underworld of Harrison. Incredibly, Arnold decided that cooking wouldn't violate his honor and went to work.

When Ellie finally stumbled away from the stones, her eyes blurry and her head throbbing from energy blowback, she discovered why. Arnold had turned fresh tubers into a watery mass of starch devoid of any flavor beyond that of charred vegetable.

"I've cooked before,” he admitted, “but only around a fire. And only meat. Or fish."

If sticking meat on a stick and holding it into a fire could be called cooking. Still, at least Arnold ate what they ate and didn't complain about it.

She waited until she'd eaten as much as she could stand, and then turned back to him. “Is anyone likely to come looking for you?"

He considered. “Probably not. Sergius sent the nobles who supported him from the first throughout the kingdom. He said he wanted to have loyal people everywhere. But..."

But neither Arnold nor Ellie really believed that. It was more likely that he'd decided, or been encouraged by his uncles, to disperse the young nobles to where they would be unlikely to conspire, unlikely to ask for favors in return for their contributions, and where they would be distant from their relatives and, therefore, hostages.

"What about your sisters?"

"I made sure they went back home to my father. It's a strange time in Moray."

She caught herself yawning and grinned at him. “Right. I'm going to sleep now. I'm relying on your pledge not to escape."

"
My
word is good."

She gathered a bit of relatively clean straw, draped her blanket over it, and lay down.

According to the schedule that she, Mark, Lawgrave, and Lart had laid out, they had forty-eight hours before the attack.

The next morning, Ellie woke up early to make her rounds, cheering up the soldiers who had been smuggled in that first night and locating more places to hide. Inns were too obvious. Guards patrolled them, looking for anyone out of place. But hiding a thousand soldiers in a city with a total population of less than twenty thousand wasn't easy. Especially when the city was built on a medieval scale, with narrow roads, overhanging buildings, and multiple families crammed into a space that an American would have thought small for a playhouse.

She went ‘guy’ again. She felt naked without her sword so she'd hacked off her hair which had finally grown long enough to be useful and let her feel like a woman again, tied down her breasts, and put on the attire of a squire. Which meant she could wear her sword, assuming it had successfully made it through the city's security.

She found Mark, along with about twenty of his men, in an ancient crypt outside a deteriorating church.

They had taken over the massive structure, home to a Harrison family that had once been hugely wealthy and had bought a quarter of the churchyard to build a massive funeral structure celebrating their dead relatives. None of the bodies inside looked new, which was good. They just hoped that nobody in the family who owned it died in the next two days.

"Thought you might want this.” Mark handed over her katana.

It didn't send off magical shock waves the way it had when Lawgrave had first presented it to her, but it still felt wonderful.

"How many made it in last night?” she asked. They'd been hoping for five hundred.

"Fewer than a hundred,” Mark admitted. “The usual late-night fog never appeared. And the guards on the wall aren't suspicious, exactly, but they're on higher alert than we had hoped."

Their mages might have felt the probing that Ellie and their other mages had done and sent a warning. It was unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped.

"We can gather some men near the gate,” she suggested.

"It's too late to change the plan now. Besides, that would only increase the risk of discovery. Oh, by the way, I like your new do. Cut it yourself?” He brushed a hand against the close-shorn stubble that was all that was left of her hair.

"Arnold did it for me."

"Baronet Arnold? He's here?"

"We captured him. He's given us his parole."

Mark shook his head. It took Ellie a moment to place the emotion in her friend's eyes. When she finally did, she could have collapsed in surprise. Jealousy? Mark was jealous because Arnold had cut her hair? It wasn't like Mark had shown any signs of interest in her. He'd been the one all over Arnold's sisters, after all.

"Too bad he won't fight on our side,” Mark said. “Strategically, he's an idiot. But he's almost as good a swordsman as you or Dafed. We could use him."

"I haven't given up on that,” she said. “But he's got his honor thing going. I don't think he'll be able to abandon his fealty to Sergius until Sergius betrays him or his family. He didn't like what Sergius had done to me, but he didn't see it as any reason to abandon his promise."

"Be careful of him,” Mark warned. “He may be caught up in honor, but he's from a noble family that goes way back. He's got as much royal blood in him as Sergius, Harrison, or Sullivan. And you know what snakes those guys are."

She nodded. But Arnold wasn't like those guys. He truly believed in the notions of chivalry and honor that Sergius might give lip service to but used only when convenient. Besides, she'd liked that kiss Arnold had given her.

"Considering that we're invading a strongly held enemy city, I'm being as careful as I can be.” She stepped out of the crypt, then turned. “I'll see you day after tomorrow. Look for the liberty flag on the citadel at dawn."

She was worrying about how few rebels they'd managed to get into the city, distracted by Mark's jealousy over Arnold, and definitely not paying attention when she was attacked.

"What's the meaning of this? Guards."

A hard strike from a stick of some kind knocked Ellie to her knees.

The pain of the strike brought her back to the present in a hurry. She dove, tumbling away from the strike and drawing her katana as she rolled to a kneeling position.

The ancient priest was still screaming his lungs out as he yanked back on his crosier for another swing. He might be old, but that staff-like priest device weighed a ton and had all sorts of sharp protuberances. Getting hit by it hurt.

The sound of running feet told her that the priest was the least of her problems. She'd just run out of luck. A careless moment, the bad luck of stumbling over a priest who looked like he was barely strong enough to shuffle out of his church, and the nearby guards meant that she had just exposed their attack to their enemies.

Still, the best defense is often a strong offense. “Idiot priest,” she shouted. “Can't a man pray over his family's tomb in peace?"

"Praying? Why, you gutter snake. I'll teach you to p—"