Tomorrow's Kingdom (32 page)

“What?” snapped Mordecai.

“Y-Your Grace, the commander told me to bring you this,” stammered the soldier, hastily holding out a bloody scrap of cloth Mordecai had assumed was a bandage or compress.

“What it is?” demanded Mordecai, making no move to reach for it.

“An armband ripped from the sleeve of one of the attackers,” replied the soldier.

Irritably, Mordecai snatched the bloody scrap from the man's hand, spread it flat on his own withered lap and then let out a cry of shock and dismay. It wasn't the sight of the Bartok crest that caused him to cry out thusly, it was the sight of it
entwined
with a bastardized Erok royal crest.

Mordecai fell back in his cushioned chair, his heart clenching so hard that he actually found it difficult to breathe. When the attacks on his army had first begun, he'd assumed they were being perpetrated by landless, homeless malcontents or by the outraged neighbours of some of the farmers and villagers his soldiers had slaughtered along the way. When it became clear that the attacks were impeccably planned and executed, however, Mordecai had begun to suspect some nobleman's trained knights. Still, because the attackers had appeared and vanished too swiftly for anyone to get a good look at their armbands, and since his own idiot soldiers had not managed to kill even a single one of them, it had been impossible to know exactly
which
nobleman had stooped so low as to attack like some lowborn bandit.

Until now, that is.

Now, if the entwined crests were to be believed, it appeared that it was not just that bastard Bartok who'd stooped so low
but Queen Persephone as well
! If the entwined crests were to be believed, she'd not vanished into thin air, after all. On the contrary, the gutter-reared tribal broodmare who'd refused him marriage, sons and her knowledge of the healing pool was back causing him trouble and in league with his mortal enemy.

Nervously wiping his grimy hands on his torn black pants, the soldier said, “Is there any order you'd like me to carry back to—”

“Get out,” said Mordecai softly.

The soldier was gone before Mordecai had finished speaking the words.

Flinging aside the bloody armband, Mordecai let his back bend and his heavy head droop. That he would soon know the whereabouts of the queen excited him almost as much as the knowledge that she was
entwined
with Bartok
enraged him. While he was brooding upon the things he longed to do to each of them—and to the cockroach too, if he was still scuttling about—from a nearby tent came the sound of Lord Atticus shouting and pummelling one of the soldiers who'd been assigned to tend to his needs. As Mordecai listened to the drunken nobleman rant that his supper had been ruined because the sauce that had accompanied his roast pheasant had lacked the hint of mint that he'd
specifically
requested, Mordecai wondered for the thousandth time why he didn't just lop the worm's head off and be done with it. The answer, of course, was that Lord Atticus might yet prove more useful alive than dead but
still
. It was exceedingly tiresome listening to him complain.

When he heard the dreary sound of rain beginning to patter on the roof of the tent, it occurred to Mordecai that
much
about the game of war was tiresome. Suddenly, he was seized by a yearning to be back in the imperial palace, plotting from the comfort of his own chambers. His camp tent was far more sumptuous than anyone else's tent, of course, but it did not come close to rivalling the luxury to which he was accustomed. Being “one of the men” had long since lost its shine and his poor body ached all the time. Running an army was far harder than it looked—not to mention far less glamorous—and he deeply resented the fact that—

“Your Grace?”

“
I
TOLD
YOU
TO
GET
OUT
!” screamed Mordecai.

“I know, Your Grace!” cried the soldier, his knees all but knocking together. “But General Murdock is outside and he requests an audience!”

Mordecai was so surprised by these words that he forgot how enraged he was. “Murdock is alive?” he exclaimed. “Murdock is
here
?”

The soldier bobbed his head. “Yes, Your Grace. Just a few moments ago he—”

“Send him in,” snapped Mordecai.

The soldier departed even
quicker
than he had the last time. The next instant, Murdock crept into the room. He was thinner than he had been and dirtier than Mordecai had ever seen him. He was wearing ill-fitting boots and breeches and a doublet with a bloodstained knife hole in the lapel—no doubt made by the General himself in an effort to eliminate any lingering reluctance the doublet's previous owner had to handing it over.

Mordecai eyed his henchman, trying to decide how to greet him. On the one hand, Murdock had lost control of the imperial capital and for that he richly deserved to be punished. On the other hand, his arrival meant that Mordecai could wash his hands of the day-to-day tedium of running the army.

“Took you long enough to get here,” he finally muttered.

“Yes,” agreed General Murdock, reaching up to carefully smooth back a lock of greasy hair. “But I am here now.”

FORTY

F
OLLOWING THE ARRIVAL
of the Khan, it took eight days for Persephone and her royal Council to ensure that everyone and everything was prepared for the journey south to the imperial capital.

Late on their last night in the bandit camp, Persephone pulled Azriel aside and asked him if he'd mind giving her one final lesson in battle strategy before they set out. Tired though he was, he smiled and followed her up the ladder into the tree shelter in which they'd been residing. Persephone waited quietly while Azriel lit candles, set the map and game pieces out on the desk and sat down on the bench. Then, instead of taking a seat on the bench next to him, she eased herself onto his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a long, hot kiss. Her surprised (and suddenly wide-awake) strategy tutor offered up some extremely feeble protests in the name of the war effort and the standards set forth by the Tutors' Guild, but these were rather suspect given that he had
Persephone halfway out of her dress before he'd finished uttering them.

“By the gods, I find it very difficult to believe that you are going to be somebody's mother,” said Azriel much,
much
later, as he lay sprawled on the mattress trying to catch his breath.

“Believe it,” said Persephone, smiling in the darkness as she, too, tried to catch her breath.

In response, Azriel rolled onto his side and laid his hand against her bare belly. He'd been able to feel the baby's movements for some weeks now, and he seemed to never tire of them—just as Persephone never tired of the sight of his broad, bare shoulders silhouetted above her.

“He's getting stronger,” murmured Azriel, his hand shifting slightly as the concentration of tiny kicks and punches shifted from one side of her belly to the other.

“In spite of my gut feeling, he might be a she,” warned Persephone, putting her hand over his.

“Impossible,” said Azriel. “I've never heard of a girl named Poddrick.”

Persephone chuckled throatily. “Azriel, I have told you many times that we are not naming the baby
Poddrick
,” she said.

Azriel chuckled too. Then he leaned over Persephone, gave her a lingering kiss on the mouth and whispered, “Call the baby what you will, wife—just keep you both safe from harm in the weeks to come.”

“I will,” she whispered.
If I can
, she added to herself.

It didn't take long to get organized the next morning. Everyone's packs had been checked and rechecked the night before, so the only thing left to do was to ready the horses and pack animals. Predictably, Fleet took exception to being saddled even though Persephone stood nearby heaping praise upon him.

As Azriel stalked off in search of a bucket of cut turnips in the hope that this would keep the “infernal bag of horsemeat” occupied for long enough to saddle him, Persephone went to bid a final goodbye to the women and children who were staying behind. She'd just scooped Sabian into her arms when there came from the other side of camp a shrill, horsey squeal followed by a crash and the sound of an irate Gypsy bellowing something about horse steaks.

“Well!” said Persephone brightly as she planted a noisy kiss on Sabian's firm little cheek, set him down and looked around at the others. “It sounds as though we are almost ready to go. I shall think of you often, and if all goes well, when next we meet again, you will be able to call me queen in very truth.”

Instead of heading directly south after emerging from the Great Forest, Persephone and her army spent several days travelling east to avoid Lord Bartok's army. Although reports suggested that the nobleman was doing exactly as Persephone had commanded, she did not yet trust him enough to risk coming face to face with his superior fighting force.

During the march east, they saw almost no one. It was sparsely populated land to begin with and Persephone insisted on giving the few farms and villages they did see a wide berth so as not to frighten the inhabitants. If there were other travellers on the road—and Robert assured them that there were, for the realm was filled with displaced lowborns forced to ever wander in search of a day's work or a scrap of food—they did not show themselves.

At the outset, Persephone rode beside Azriel at the front of the army beneath the fluttering banner bearing her crest. By the end of the third day, however, her back was so sore that Azriel had to lift her out of the saddle. She tried to assure him (and herself) that she'd be fit to ride the next day, but Azriel was having none of it. After entrusting Persephone into Rachel's care, he and Robert pocketed a purse of bandit gold and galloped back to the nearest village. They returned the next morning with a surprisingly fine litter and a disturbing description of villagers left traumatized and starving by Mordecai's New Men, who'd passed through about a week earlier. Persephone immediately ordered men to return to the village with as much food as they could spare. It was not much—just some strips of dried bear meat and a small sack of hard biscuits. However, no one knew better than Persephone that a mouthful of food today could mean the difference between life and death tomorrow—and
that a mouthful of food was often enough to keep hope alive as well.

From that point on, Persephone rode Fleet only infrequently. Since they could not leave the queen's mount rider-less without risking spies and subjects alike—none of whom knew she was pregnant—questioning her fitness to lead her troops, Rachel often donned Persephone's armour and rode the disgruntled Fleet in her stead. Whenever she did, Persephone spent her day fidgeting inside the curtained litter and chatting with Ivan, who'd found her almost as soon as they'd emerged from the forest and who frequently perched on the roof of the litter. Besides listening to Persephone, Ivan spent
his
days glaring at those humans who offended him (all of them) or disembowelling some creature he'd snatched out from under poor Cur's nose.