The Queen of the Tearling (31 page)

Kelsea had spent the past day thinking hard about this turn of events. The stronghold had been a gift to the youngest Lord Graham upon his christening; it was difficult to reconcile that baby with the man in the black mask who'd tried to steal her sapphire and cut her throat. An assassination attempt on the Queen rendered all of the assassin's lands forfeit, but there had been men and women in that fortress, noncombatants, and with no warning given, several of them had burned along with the garrison. Kelsea had no doubt that the fire was Mace's doing, no doubt at all, and now she knew that a part of him was essentially beyond her control. It was a new thought, like living with a rogue dog that might slip its lead at any moment, and she wasn't sure what to do about it.

Mace's map of the border lay open on the table in front of them, along with a copy of the Mort Treaty. The latter offered no options, so Kelsea focused on the map. It was very old, drawn and inked in a careful hand long before Kelsea was born. The thickness of the paper, perhaps an eighth of an inch, betrayed an earlier stage in the pulping process of Mortmesne's mills. But the land was fundamentally the same, and Kelsea found her attention drawn to the Mort Road, the route the shipment had taken for the past seventeen years. The Mort Road led almost directly to the Argive Pass. Beyond the Tear border, the Argive Pass ended and sank in a steep decline, the Mort Road turning into the Pike Road, a wide boulevard, surrounded by forest, which led all the way to the walls of Demesne.

Just as I dreamed it
, Kelsea thought, rubbing her forehead. But it hadn't been a dream. It had been too clear, too real, for that. When Coryn and Mace had rushed out to join Pen on the balcony, they found her unconscious. They couldn't wake her up; Coryn had tried every trick he knew. The rise and fall of her stomach was the only real sign of life. They thought she was dying.

But I wasn't.

Pen told her that before she fell, her sapphire had been glowing so brightly that it lit the entire balcony in the night. Kelsea still had no idea what had happened. Somehow the jewel had shown her something she needed to see. She slept for several hours, then woke up ravenous, and if that was the price of seeing, she could live with it.

“Majesty?” Bermond was still waiting for a response.

“There will be no peace, General. I've made my decision.”

“I'm not sure you understand the consequences of your decision, Majesty.” Bermond turned to Mace. “Certainly, sir, you can advise the Queen on this matter.”

Mace held up his hands. “I guard the Queen's life, Bermond. I don't make her decisions.”

Bermond looked shocked. “But surely, Captain, you see that there can be no victory here! You can tell her! The Mort army is—”

“I'm right here, General. Why don't you talk to
me
?”

“Forgive me, Majesty. But as I told your mother many times, women haven't the gift for military planning. She always left these matters to us.”

“I'm sure she did.” Kelsea glanced left and found Colonel Hall watching her, measuring. “But you'll find I'm a very different queen.”

Bermond's eyes glinted with anger. “Then, once again, I think your best option is to send emissaries to Mortmesne. Genot's no fool; he knows this would be a difficult kingdom to hold. He won't be anxious to invade, but believe me, if he chooses to do so, he will succeed.”

“General Genot is not the king of Mortmesne, any more than you are the king of the Tearling, Bermond. What makes you think he's the one I would have to convince?”

“Offer a reduced shipment, Majesty. Buy them off.”

“You are very anxious to offer other people as collateral, Bermond. What if I offered them you?”

“The Tear
are
collateral now, Lady. I would consider that a great service to my country.”

Kelsea gritted her teeth, feeling her headache deepen. “I will ship no more slaves, not even you. Resign yourself to that fact, and let's move forward.”

“Then I return to what I said before. You've put us in an impossible position. The Tear cannot repel the Mort army. And if, as you seem to think, they've somehow rediscovered gunpowder and mounted cannons, the situation becomes even more hopeless. You open the door to wholesale slaughter.”

“Be careful, Bermond,” Mace said quietly. Bermond swallowed and looked away, his jaw flexing.

“If the Mort had recovered the secret of gunpowder, surely we would've seen it flood the black market,” Colonel Hall mused.

“Probably,” Mace agreed. “I've heard no such report.”

“Perhaps they've been keeping it to themselves?” Kelsea asked.

“The Mort have poor control of their weapons, Lady. After they perfected hawk training, it seemed like there were hundreds of hawks on the market within weeks.”

“But hawks need a handler, food, space,” Pen argued. “Without a handler, they're worthless. Gunpowder would be easier to ship in secret.”

Kelsea turned to Arliss, who had been silent for a few minutes now. He would know, better than anyone, what might have found its way onto the black market. But he had dozed off. The sagging side of his mouth gaped open, a line of drool working its way down his chin. When he had arrived at the Keep that morning, he had a long, thin, papery object clamped in his teeth. Kelsea, who hadn't wanted to look silly for asking, had studied him covertly for a few minutes before she saw him exhale a stream of smoke and realized that he was smoking a cigarette. She hadn't even known that cigarettes existed anymore. They must be another black market item out of Mortmesne, but if there was tobacco production in the Tearling, Kelsea had a whole new set of problems. She arched her back, stretching, and felt her shoulder throb in warning. Today was the first day they'd left off the gauze. “Could they have a supply of old weapons from the pre-Crossing?”

Bermond shook his head. “All of the gunpowder that came over in the Crossing went bad.”

“Even if they found some preserved under ideal conditions,” Hall added, “it would never have lasted more than a century.”

“To power a cannon, they would have had to synthesize it, or some substitute.”

“That's not beyond all possibility, sir. Who knows what the Mort may have dug out of their mines?”

Bermond frowned at Hall, who fell silent. Kelsea considered waking Arliss to ask his opinion, then abandoned the idea. He would only exacerbate the contention at the table. He clearly held the military men in small esteem; before falling into his doze, he'd taken several opportunities to bring up the army's old failures during the Mort invasion, harping on them so gleefully that Kelsea wondered whether he'd lost money on the outcome.

“So what will the Red Queen do first?” she asked.

“Invade our borders.”

“Full invasion?”

“No. A few villages only, at first.”

“What's the point of that?”

Bermond sighed in exasperation. “Majesty, put it this way. You don't throw yourself off a cliff hoping that the water is deep enough. If you're the Red Queen, you throw stones at the water, because you can afford to; you have all the time in the world and no shortage of stones. The Red Queen may not consider you a real threat, but she won't act in ignorance of the facts either.”

“But why raid us? Why not simply send spies?”

“To demoralize the populace, Lady.” Bermond pulled out a small dagger, one of the seemingly infinite number of weapons that hung on his person, and made a slashing motion in the air. “See? I cut off your pinky finger. You don't need your pinky, but I've made you bleed. Moreover, I've shown that I may violate your person at any time.”

Kelsea thought this further evidence that conquering was an incredibly stupid business, but she closed her mouth before she said something regrettable. Beside her, Arliss emitted a light, slurping snore. “Arliss! Do you agree with this assessment?”

“I do, Majesty,” he croaked, jerking to attention. “But don't fool yourself; the Tearling's already infested with spies as well.”

Mace nodded agreement, and Kelsea turned back to Bermond. “Will they invade by the Mort Road?”

“Doubtful, Majesty. The Mort Road sends them through the Argive Pass, and no army wants to come down switchbacks out of the mountains; it leaves them wide open. We will still need to blockade the road, though, to prevent them from using it as a supply route.” Bermond leaned over the map, shaking his head. “It's a pity the Argive Tower is gone.”

Kelsea looked a question at Mace, who replied, “Once, Lady, there was a fortress built at the mouth of the Argive Pass. The Mort army tore it down as part of their retreat, and now it's only a bunch of stones littering the floor of the pass.”

Bermond traced a finger over the northern Mort border, where the mountains fell into hills. “Here is where I'd come, if I were Genot. That's craggy hill country, and the terrain will slow them down, but there's plenty of forest cover, and a sizable force can spread wide, rather than bottlenecking at any one point.”

“What's our best option to repel such an attack?”

“You can't.”

“Your helpful attitude overwhelms me, General.”

“Majesty—”

“Colonel Hall, what do you think?” Kelsea asked, turning to the second-in-command.

“I'm forced to agree with the General, Lady. There's no hope for ultimate victory here.”

“Wonderful.”

Hall held up a hand. “But you could slow them down. Considerably.”

“Explain.”

Hall leaned forward, ignoring Bermond's deepening frown beside him. “Our only option seems to be delaying tactics, Lady, a campaign designed to hinder and slow the main bulk of the Mort army. That means guerrilla warfare.”

“To what end?” asked Bermond, throwing up his hands. “They will take the country regardless, quick or slow.”

“Yes, sir, but it extends the time during which the Queen might make peace, or explore other options.”

Kelsea nodded, pleased. Hall, at least, was capable of thinking creatively. Bermond was glaring at him openly now, but Hall seemed determined not to notice as he continued. “The possibilities are even better if they try to move their army as the General has indicated. I grew up in Idyllwild, Majesty. I know that part of the border like the back of my hand.”

“What of the border villages?”

“Evacuate them, Majesty. They're vulnerable, and the Mort army comes for plunder as well as territory. Let them find a bunch of empty villages, and it will at least give them pause.”

“Majesty, that wouldn't be a wise use of resources,” Bermond announced fretfully. “Evacuation takes a lot of manpower. Those soldiers would be better stationed back from the border in case the Mort reach the Almont.”

“Have you heard nothing I've said, Bermond? The Mort army is already assembled, and you yourself just said they'll begin by invading the villages on the border. Those people are in immediate danger.”

“They chose to live on the border, Majesty. They knew the risks.”

Kelsea opened her mouth to snap back, but Mace jumped in ahead of her. “An evacuation would burden the interior with a flood of refugees, Lady. Refugees must be fed and housed.”

“So we feed and house them.”

“Where?”

“I'm sure you'll figure it out, Lazarus.”

“What if they refuse to come?” Bermond asked.

“Then we leave them out there, if that's their choice. We're not talking about internment.” Kelsea smiled pleasantly at Bermond. “But I'm sure you're capable of explaining it to them in just the right way.”

“Me?”

“You, General. You will take a good chunk of the army, as many as you deem necessary, and go out to evacuate and secure the border and the Mort Road.”

Bermond turned to Hall. “Evacuation will be your responsibility.”

“Just a moment,” Kelsea interrupted. She dug in her memory for what Arliss had told her of military structure. “Hall, being a colonel, I assume you command your own battalion?”

“I do, Lady. The left flank.”

“Good. Your battalion will separate from the main army and undertake a guerrilla operation along the lines you mentioned.”

“Majesty!” Bermond snapped, his face reddening. “I deploy my own troops.”

“No, General. This is the Crown's operation, and I'm conscripting a battalion of your army for other work.”

“And my executive officer as well!”

“Yes, him too.”

Arliss snorted. Kelsea glanced at him and found him grinning around a newly lit cigarette. It smelled just as terrible as before, but Kelsea said nothing. It was Arliss who had informed her of the obscure right of the Crown to take direct military action, an old remnant of powers granted to the American executive. When she met his eye, he gave her a wink.

Looking around the table, she found both Pen and Mace glaring at Bermond, who was staring daggers at Hall. But Hall was still watching Kelsea. The flare of ambition in his eyes was easy to see, but there was something more, something she couldn't identify but liked nonetheless.

If this one wasn't built to be a soldier, I'd have him in my Guard tomorrow.

“Of particular concern to me are the cannons,” Kelsea told Hall. “I saw ten of them, but there may be more. I couldn't tell whether they were iron or steel. Your first task will be to disable them.”

“Understood, Majesty.”

“Cannons,” Bermond scoffed, and turned to Mace again. “There's no gunpowder. Are we really to base military strategy on a girl's fever dreams?”

Mace began to reply, but Kelsea cut him off. “That's the second time you've failed to speak directly to me, General. And if you value your career, all your years of service, as much as I do, it'll be the last.”

“This plan is not tenable, Majesty!” Bermond snarled. “It's a waste of good people!”