The car is hot, and close, and stinks of beasts and Blemish. Most of its interior space is occupied by the cambions; five humans have found themselves places in the gaps. The only light or fresh air comes from stingy vents near the ceiling, which let in flies as well. Hjan doesn’t know how the vile things can find their way in at the speed they are going, but they can, and they do, and they bite. There is little to do but squat in place—sweating and slapping at stings, swaying with every bump and curve in the track, wishing in vain that they could go faster. Fortunately, cambions don’t make any kind of waste. The trip would be unendurable if they did.
They are behind schedule. It can’t be helped. There are always delays, with a complex plan. First they had to steam down the length of the Nistrale, then disembark at a secluded point, secure the boats, and quick-march to the junction at Camnenia. The High Queen had paid agents there, manning the station, but the raid team arrived at the worst possible time, and waited half an hour for the next train to arrive. Then they had to drive out its passengers, and load on their own men and cargo. Now it is almost noon.
They cut the telegraph line before they left Camnenia; nobody can warn Tefeia they are coming. In theory, the rearguard at the station will keep word from spreading for as long as possible. But that is not very long. The return limb has always been the weak point in Eyanna’s plan. There is a fair chance that there will be a battalion of Dewrose regulars waiting to reclaim their plunder the moment they step off the train—
And there is no use in worrying about that. Success and survival depend on speed now, and speed depends on focus. Hjan takes the map out again, though he has memorized most of it, and centers it in a quavering rectangle of sunlight on the unswept floor. The Acropolis of Tefeia is a classic bastion fortress, a pentagon turned into a fat star by an arrow jutting out of every corner. Concentric shards of angled moats and outworks frame it; on paper, it is a pretty exercise in geometry, a dewrose drawn by a mathematician.
It would take at least a full corps from the old days a month to pluck that rose. They would have artillery and engineers, and still take heavy losses. Eyanna has one passenger car of elite highland volunteers armed with proper repeating rifles, another full of conscripts with flintlocks, and Hjan’s Beardogs in the baggage car. The High Queen is gambling that they can break through the fortress (as currently defended) in under an hour, and Hjan believes she is right. Fundamentally, the plan is sound.
Tatzine, seeing the map, picks her way over C4’s giant forepaws to join him. He wishes she wouldn’t, but she does, and soon she is pressed up against him, adding her body heat to his misery. For some reason, she put on perfume before boarding. The flowery scent only adds a fresh dimension to the invincible reek, masking nothing. “Having second thoughts?” she says in his ear.
He folds the paper up in a hurry. “Passing the time.”
“They can’t resist us,” she reminds him. “They don’t even know we’re coming. They have no reason to dream we would come so far. They won’t even want to believe it, that we would have the nerve to try this. Because we never have.”
“I know.” Tatzine’s presence is oppressive, in more ways than one. Her blonde hair is dark and lank with sweat, her breathing heavy. It puts him in mind of more pleasant times, fills him with a mad desire to take her here and now, on the floor of this filthy rolling stable on its way to war with Prid and the twins watching. The tight-coiled spring in his chest demands it.
It must show on his face, because her expression falters, then lightens to a teasing smile. She leans in a little further to kiss him on the cheek. “Later,” she breathes, and pats him on the shoulder. Mercifully she backs away on her rump, and each studies the other’s face a while. She is not truly frightened, of course, only excited. She is twenty-three, and third in line for the throne; she has never known real want or fear. More than that, she has her mother’s blood in her.
Hjan reminds himself that she does not love him, that she is here to look over his shoulder. It is a usefully painful distraction from his doubts, though if he is being honest he cannot be certain what she feels for him. After five—no, six—years, she might not know the truth of that herself. Abruptly he stands up, so as not to look at her any longer. “Prid. How are they doing?”
The boy leans down to sniff the nearest—C5—and issues his judgment in the broad Thrimmish accent he has never bothered to expunge. “’e’ll ‘hold, but ‘ill be a near thing, see? Twenny-two hours runnin’ full-grown, ‘s a lot t’ask. Goin’ stale, they is.”
Hjan nods. It is nothing he didn’t know already, but it’s good to have Prid confirm it. This batch have more blood than ichor in them, a ratio of seven to three, as high as he dared to chance it. Longevity and stability, at the expense of power. Even so, he has never kept one alive for so long. One way or another, all five of the ugly brutes in this car will disintegrate to nothing by nightfall. But they had no choice. The High Queen’s strategy, and Hjan’s life, will both be immeasurably complicated on the day Siocaea finally realizes she has not simply learned to control turned or taken men. That day must be delayed as long as possible.
The train’s brakes squeal; in the corner, Nengse and Magho look up from the conversation that has occupied them for the whole ride. “Not yet,” Hjan announces, “but close.” He and Prid are the only two of the Beardogs who have ever been on a train before, and Prid was nine at the time. “Rouse them now. Gently.” He leads by example, rubbing C4 on the back and humming until it pushes itself upright on its stumpy legs.
Hjan still has a sizable volume of ichor in his flask, and a case of syringes. He draws back a few drops and injects them into Four’s hind leg; the cambion flinches but does not complain. The dose will give it a last burst of strength, at a cost in lifespan. Prid takes syringe and flask to do the rest while Hjan delivers his traditional address.
“You all know we’re not doing this for Her Royal Highness Eyanna Vogh.” The twins nod; Tatzine takes the slight on her mother calmly. He always opens this way. “We’re fighting for at least a million men and women who never had a fair chance at anything. And never will, if we don’t buy a place for them with blood. Ours, the Union’s, the Republic’s, whoever’s.” They all look impatient, except for Prid who is working on Three and doesn’t look up. “I know, you’ve heard all this before.” The brakes screech again, harder, and the train lurches. “But I’m going to keep on saying it, until there’s no need to say it anymore.”
Prid returns his tools, which Hjan carefully stows against future need. Once more the brakes complain, much longer and harder this time. For the first time he wonders if the drivers would derail on purpose, to thwart the attack at the cost of their own lives. But they stay on the track, shaking and shuddering to a controlled halt. Then they wait, as the other cars disgorge their troops and panic consumes the station’s crowds. There are, at least, no shots fired yet.
As one they suck down the last drops of water in their canteens, then cast them to the floor. Steel helmets go on heads, buff coats are laced tight. His Tatzine comes to him, and he kisses her fiercely. She is only a noose around his neck, one he asked for himself in his pride and his fear, and put on with his own two hands. But she is a very fine noose, made of exquisite golden chain.
“Watch yourselves out there, all of you,” he says when she breaks away. “Let the beasts and the boys take the blows. Nengse, remember what we’re here for. Kill the ones in the way, leave the rest. Magho, eyes open, there’s a lot of battlefield to watch. Prid, stick with me, I need you in earshot, just in case. Your Highness?” His wife smiles. “You have nothing to prove here. Stay safe. I can’t run this mission if I’m worrying about you.”
They are working with the door-release outside the car now. It won’t be long. He uses the last moment before they step out to consecrate the mission to the memory of Hjan Dük the Elder.
So far as Marransheel knows, the Acropolis of Tefeia is redundant; no power on the continent has built up a force sufficient to overwhelm its defenses, if it were fully manned and equipped. Nor could His Royal Majesty afford to keep it active at that level if he wanted to. Instead he uses it as a secure facility for manufacturing goods on which he would prefer to keep a monopoly. The immense walls of packed earth, faced in stone, are only needed to keep out thieves and spies. The winding causeway around the moat—intended to force attackers into a thin line, then expose them to flank fire for a fifth of a mile—has been rendered useless by a second bridge from its turning point just outside the gate. Crates of finished goods or raw materials can be moved to or from the last terminal on the railway, conveniently located two hundred feet from that bridge’s end. Would-be brigands will have no chance to make anything of value disappear before it is sealed into the car.
Unless, that is, the brigands have cambions.
Team One has already taken the waiting crowd of civilians in the departure lounge hostage; the station is thus immune to fire from the fort, or a frontal assault. Unfortunately, there was no way to rehearse all this, and so the fools in Team Two opened the baggage car on its left side—the side facing the civilian-access area and the town of Tefeia proper. Hjan loses a minute, and a bit of his temper, working out the quickest way to undo that little oversight; he sends a few men running around the train to open the correct side, then changes his mind and looses C1.
C1 is a shock-troop, a bat-winged horror meant to overwhelm the front gate. Hjan gave it a set of long, powerful legs as well, so it could take off even in constricted spaces. Now he sends it running through the crowded civilian side of the station. Several hostages break away, shrieking in terror. The beast ignores them to squeeze through the double-wide front doors, then climb up onto the station’s roof and launch into the air. The men over the fort’s gate open fire, but Hjan is not concerned. It doesn’t have to fly far, and he made it strong enough to absorb a few hits from small-caliber fire.
The latches on the right side clank, and the door slides open at last. C2 breaks free and charges for the gate, head lowered. The bridge across the moat, built to handle carts full of coal and iron ingots, can easily bear its weight, and the guards are too busy with C1 to handle a second threat. Its giant horn splinters the front door with its first impact; it rears back, charges again twice more, and breaks through. Hjan sees it pause a moment, shaking its head, before continuing on. He didn’t make C2 very clever, but it has his blood and knows his will. It will rampage through the fort, breaking down every door it sees, killing anyone who tries to stop it.
To this point, all five Beardogs have remained in the car, spectators. But C1 has landed now, lunging and lurching among the men on the roof like a heron among frogs; the way into the Acropolis is open and undefended. Nengse and Magho are lashed together back-to-back on C3, both of them armed and ready. Hjan gives them the nod, and Nengse drives in his heels. Three has mostly their blood in it, and obeys perfectly; it creeps through the door on its belly, only standing up straight on its ten-foot legs once it has space. In seconds it is running full-tilt, reaching the fort in seconds. Again it drops to its belly to crawl through the front gate, and the twins are lost to sight.
Hjan is not concerned. The twins know their business, and besides, in the last analysis, they are in the vanguard for a reason. Cold as it may sound, they are expendable. They will secure the bastion’s inner perimeter, racing in circles behind the walls and disposing of whoever might be feeling heroic. This is certainly the single most dangerous task anyone will need to perform for Eyanna Vogh today—but it was their own idea. Hjan suspects they are enjoying it. A few desultory rifle-cracks sound from inside the fortress. They might be suppressing the defenders, or possibly firing into the air for fun.
Next phase: he waves to Team Two’s commander, and the “elite” force runs for the gate. Their men on the inside will be preparing the carts now; Team Two is only needed to neutralize the rest of the factory workers and supervisors while their loyal professionals load the equipment for transport. It falls to Hjan to ensure that none of them has anything more complicated to worry about. C4 is hard on their heels, trundling along at the fastest pace its fat legs can manage. Hjan watches and waits; two minutes later the wall to the right of the gate starts shaking, and C4’s enormous claws break through, followed by its head. It goes straight for the outworks, to tear them all down. As it happens, they are all unmanned at present, but they are made to mount cannon, and Hjan didn’t come so far to have their train blown off the tracks as they retreat.
The fifth cambion is purely a reserve, and strolls out of the car in a leisurely way, looking bored. Reluctantly Hjan follows it, holding Tatzine’s hand. Prid is the last to leave; the boy stands with his hands in his pockets, watching C4 make short work of a bastion that has stood for centuries. Now that the train is empty, the engineers can work on getting it turned around for the return trip.
At the same time, Team Two has to help the insiders load up several pieces of heavy equipment onto carts and wheel it out of the fort. If need be, C2 has enough muscle to assist with the process, provided they can get it calm, but this part will still take an aggravating amount of time. He squints at the roof above the gate, but all is still, including a dark lump which he assumes is the dead C1. Provided the twins do their job right—and he is sure they will—there will be no reinforcements.
Minutes pass. Tatzine squeezes his hand. He looks at his watch. Damn it. “Prid.” The boy looks up from his rapt contemplation of the dirt at his feet. “Get in there, see if you can help them harness C2.” He sets off without a word.
Tatzine lets go of his hand so she can wrap her arms around him. “Everything is going beautifully. You’ll see.” Fifteen seconds of silence, then C2 appears in the ruin of the gate, easily pulling a sturdy cart loaded with … some machine or other. Hjan never bothered to learn the details, they were someone else’s concern. Something that can be used to make better gun parts. Prid turns back with a shrug. “There! Didn’t I tell you?”
“Yes. Yes, you did.” He bends over slightly to kiss the top of his wife’s head, sees the helmet in the way, and kisses the helmet. He will have her out of it, and everything else, by nightfall—on the ride back up the river, maybe. Inside of three days they will be back in Nehmpegyin, and Grenia will be waiting for them, and then there will be days, weeks, maybe a month before they are needed again.
The train comes rumbling back down the line, pointed the right direction. Team One has released its hostages—minus any valuables they were carrying—to help load the machines onto the freshly-empty baggage car. C4 has vanished around the curve of the Acropolis, destroying bastions and outworks more or less at random now. C5 takes up a vigilant perch on the station’s roof, preening its wings as it enjoys the afternoon sun. C2 unloads its burden, and turns around for the next load. Unasked, Prid clambers onto its back to steer it. The twins are still inside, but they were always meant to be the last to leave.
C2 hauls out a second cart; five men from Team One are hard at work pushing a second cart behind it. Hjan feels himself relax, just slightly. This stage, at least, is almost complete, with no reported human casualties, a nearly flawless execution, and the enemy has yet to—
The sound is almost, but not quite, like a distant roll of thunder. Several of the more experienced men among the soldiery stop in their tracks, turning about to stare. Atop the station, C5 screams and flaps its wings irritably. “What the hell was that?” Hjan demands. It didn’t come from the fort.
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“Explosives, I’d say,” offers a sergeant. “They got good explosives in the Republic, sir.”
“I know they do. What were they—“ He cuts himself off, and looks to C5. They are close enough for it to be responsive to his whims, and the beast flaps down to the yard beside the carts. He didn’t have enough fine control to make the thing easy or comfortable to mount, and very likely he shouldn’t be taking such a risk in the first place. But he needs to know now. With Prid’s help he is able to make it into a more or less stable riding posture, and someone finds rope to lash him in place without too much delay.
The beast takes off slowly, prioritizing his safety. He still feels himself slide down almost instantly, the ropes digging into his underarms and thighs, and there is nothing to grasp at; its hide is all smooth scales. Nor is it as simple as expected to view the city from its back; the flapping wings block half his view no matter how it turns, and it struggles to hold position. It is an old, tired thing now.
In the end, the telltale he is looking for is not on the ground but in the air: there is a faint haze of smoke and lingering dust to the east. He leans over as far as he dares—the brute still squawks, and fights to keep balance—but he has a glance, then another, and after a moment a third, and he puts it together. There is a place, perhaps two miles out from the Acropolis, where the railway crosses a minor river. Or rather, where it used to. Some very quick-thinking person has done some very clever work on very short notice, and now perhaps a hundred feet of their route back to Nehmpegyin is lying in pieces in a shallow riverbed.
He yearns for the liberating comfort of panic. He starts to submit to it, is forced to stop when the cambion catches his fear and the need to descend at non-fatal speed forces all other considerations from his mind. Then they land, and his next concern is keeping the men—most of them boys younger than Tatzine—from losing their minds with fear when he tells them what he saw. “We can still salvage the plan,” he insists over their shouting, and hopes it is true. “Get the damn train loaded! We can make it two miles at least.”
Tatzine puts her hand on his arm. “How are we going to get the train across—“
He shakes the arm free. “Maybe we aren’t. Let me think. Prid! To me.”
There are too many limiting factors here, but the strictest is time. Ideally he’d do this in some nice, secluded area, but he can’t afford to delay the loading of the car. The secret is dead now anyway. The enemy has won that much. Best not to think of it. His hands are already working without him, drawing the needed supplies out of his pockets. There is plenty of ichor left, and a diverse supply of adjuvants. The last ingredient—he jabs the needle into his left pointer finger, then into Prid’s. He lets exactly three drops from each fall into the retort. No more. The thing will have to be mostly ichor, to grow in time; it will be mean, and stupid. Can’t be helped.
He catches a whiff of perfume, then Tatzine is at his ear: “How can I help?”
“Take over the operation.” He rifles through his adjuvant jars, trying to decide what he wants. “Let me know when the twins are out.” Sample 22 will do. That one is stable. He measures a few grains into the retort, no more. “And tell … anyone you can find who knows what those hunks of metal can do. Tell him to … rank them by value. Most vital to the war effort first. Might not be able to take them all.” He says it quietly.
“What about the men? Will we be able to take all of them?”
“We’d better pretend we can.” A few grains of 34, and bless the old man for ordering his samples in a logical system. Tatzine is still at his elbow, staring at him. She is frightened. He doesn’t know how to fix that. “Get to it. Time is short.” He looks at her until she leaves. She doesn’t do a very good job of showing confidence, but she is a daughter of Eyanna Vogh. That will have to do.
Prid, as always, is simpler to handle. “What ‘ee thinkin’, eh? Ain’t nuffin we make’ll jump th’ gap wi’ a blessed weight like tha’.”
“Of course not.” A hefty dose of six, for muscle. “This one just needs to get us to the river. We’ll make the next en route. We’ve enough ichor to keep us in cambions for days.” At his insistence. The High Queen argued until he told her he wouldn’t get on the boat with less.
Prid looks at the mess in the retort, then at the increasingly frantic gathering of armed men shouting questions at their princess. They might have more confidence if they had the faintest idea what their commander was doing; he must look mad, squatting over a jar and stabbing himself. “Change of plans. The railroad’s too risky. Get the payload off the train, on the biggest and sturdiest cart. Lash it on tight, rig a harness to pull it. Adapt Two’s if you can.” C2 is lying on its side, flanks heaving. It will be dead soon.
C5 will last longer; it hasn’t been exerting itself so much. “Tatzine!” His wife twists around, startled but grateful. The poor child probably hopes he’s going to take back over. No such luck. “Put Five to work. We need a distraction. Kill it if you need to.”
“A distraction?” Her stare is bewildered. Hjan restrains a sigh with difficulty.
“It needs to find something important, and wreck it,” he says, enunciating precisely through gritted teeth. “Give the enemy something to do.” She pouts at him, as only a princess can. He turns his attention back to the retort; they can kiss and make up later, if they both survive. First priority: the Beardogs, and Hjan in particular, must not be killed or captured. That is not just his egotism speaking; Eyanna made as much clear before they left. The machine tools are secondary but obviously still vital. Third goal, maintaining the secret of the cambions. Everything else was sent to be sacrificed if need be. Which suggests a use for the men—but he has no time to tend to that right now.
It is tempting to simply pour the ichor in. Instead he forces himself to measure out—a quick mental conversion—a liquid ounce, and pour it in. He’d do better if he had a moment with pen and paper, but he wouldn’t trust his own math now anyway. This thing will be rotting mush in two hours. The mess at the bottom of the retort is already foaming up. He gives it a few seconds to gel into something like a solid mass, then dumps it out and backs away.
It grows as quickly as expected, and quicker; three-quarters of an ounce might have been better. So long as it doesn’t disintegrate or explode under the strain, he doesn’t care. Prid has kicked C2 to its feet, and wrestled its harness off. Five is gone, hopefully to do something useful. The boys of both teams have given up screaming at Tatzine to point and swear at the bubbling libation her husband has just poured out on the pavement. This is useful; it will keep them from asking more inconvenient questions about anything else.
Tatzine, meanwhile, is busy with the twins, who have just come back and not unreasonably want to know what in the hell is going on. They took their time getting out, and very likely Nengse went hunting in spite of orders, but again, this is probably better, under the circumstances. Between them they have Tatzine near tears—less good. Hjan looks back to the new cambion, currently the size of a small dog, and decides he has time to intervene.
“Shut your mouths and listen,” he tells them, as soon as he can say it without shouting. Their loyal steed is vigorously decomposing in the fort’s entrance behind them, as per orders. Good. “New plan. Are you listening?” They nod; they’re still at the phase of fear where orders are a blessing from the gods of hope. Hjan needs to keep them there. He still has the retort in his hand; he slams it to the pavement and gets back to work. “Magho, hand.” Again, six drops of blood. He talks as he mixes. “I’m going to leave you with adjuvants, ichor, and some formulae. We’re bound for the harbor with Team Two. You’ll have Team One and free rein to improvise. Just don’t let them get the supplies. Eat the lot if you have to. Do you understand?”
“Well enough,” is Nengse’s sullen reply. He knows what is happening, and why it is happening, and can see no better alternative. If he can relieve his feelings on the enemy, so much the better. Hjan would feel worse for them if Tefeia were a poorer city. It won’t hurt these city folk to learn how the little people live.
“I’m giving this one a generous dose of 17,” he says as he pours it in. “Follow the tracks back as well you can, and burn anything worth burning. Teach them not to hinder Beardogs when they’ve a mind to leave town. If you find another train past the breach, take it back along the planned route. Brew fresh cambions en route. If you can’t find a train, use your judgment.” Hjan adds the ichor, upends the retort, and goes to find paper for the promised formulae. Prid has sensibly assumed responsibility for the new cart-beast, which is now the size of a horse and trying to bite. Prid’s blood contribution is just enough to keep it from trying to bite him. He is managing to harness it anyway.
Last factor: his wife, the Princess Royal. But he needn’t worry on that score; she is already wiping her eyes, and turning her charms on the men of Team Two. For all her youthful limitations, she can give a fine speech when she wants to, and few soldiers can resist a call to arms from a pretty girl in a helmet who makes it clear she will be beside them sharing the dangers. It doesn’t hurt that she is asking them to stay with the plunder on the most direct route they can contrive back home. The twins are having less luck with their appeal to Team One, but they have no choice. Magho is working the crowd while Nengse manages their new mount. The latter task is slightly more difficult, as the conscripts cannot literally breathe fire.
And Hjan—oh, yes. Paper. So many details. But at least now they have a plan.
They lose part of the load on departure; the boys from Team Two, working in a mad rush, had no way of knowing how ferociously Hjan’s abominable pack-mule would accelerate, and the last machine in the back slips through the ropes to smash in pieces on the ground. That one device might be vital to the war effort, but he knows as it hits that they won’t be going back for it. The brute would revolt, and they’d lose the rest. He gives the boys a look, and they hustle to tighten the knots.
Prid is driving; for all that he never learned theory, he is by far a more skilled and experienced groom than his old master’s son. Hjan and Tatzine are squeezed in on either side of the driver’s seat, and the eight most senior members of Team Two have found places in the back. Four in the bed, two more hanging off the rails on either side. They are still more fortunate than their teammates, who have no choice but to run after it and take any vehicles they spot along the way. Hjan wishes them the best of luck getting a draft-horse to follow a trail that stinks of cambion.
The new beast is at least terrifically strong, hardly seeming to notice the weight behind it. This is its sole virtue. It looks something like a great mass of bread-dough slathered over muscle in the shape of a bear, with perhaps a bit of yellow fungus growing on top. And its temper—well. It roars as it runs, sending civilians flying for their lives. All of Prid’s skill barely suffices to slow it around corners, or to make turns at all. They lose a man from the right side on the last stretch, and barely notice.
Hjan has no hope of even starting to brew a more stable project on route, as he’d planned. No space, no time, no moment in the trip when the cart doesn’t feel ready to shake apart. When they see the sun sparkling on water, Prid hauls on the ropes around the thing’s windpipe till it slows to a half-sane speed. There isn’t a soul in sight around the harbor proper, and few boats that haven’t put out to sea. They spot one in the right dimensions—just big enough to have a deck and a steam engine, Hjan doesn’t know a thing about boats—and strangle the cambion to a stop.
Getting it unhitched is a desperately tricky business; Prid winds up choking it to submission while the men hack its harness loose. Once it is free, Prid lets go, and as it gets its wind back Hjan borrows a gun to shoot it in the arse. It screams, and runs into a fashionable milliner’s shop through its front display window. There is a spectacular noise of devastation and fear, which they all ignore as best they can.
Retort. Blood—Tatzine’s this time, a cut near the elbow where she won’t feel it. Adjuvants. Ichor. He tips it out half-grown and ignores it, sends a man to wash the retort out with sea-water while he picks out a fresh mix; the next one won’t be a cheap throwaway. From the corner of his eye he sees the wretched thing lurch to its feet and take off flapping to raise more hell. Survivors from Team Two straggle in, variously angry, frightened, and exhausted. Tatzine handles them. He concentrates on drying the retort; he’s never tested how contaminated water might affect the process.
More blood this time, less ichor. Sample 23, for aquatic characteristics. A bit of 1 and 3. This one congeals slowly instead of bubbling up; it will be at least half an hour before it’s good for anything. They have that long to get the equipment onto the boat. He already feels tired. As soon as the men have their orders, he slumps against a lamp-post to rest.
Tafeia is a pretty town, now that he has a chance to really look at it. At least, this part is, away from the rougher parts of the harbor with stevedores and warehouses. Here it’s all fresh painted shops and little docks for pleasure-boats. He can picture ladies in nice dresses stepping off, looking forward to a day-trip through town: first a new hat at the shop his cambion just destroyed, then lunch, perhaps a matinee at the theater? Like nothing they ever had in Thrim. Let it burn. Let them know want. It is only Nehm.
Tatzine stands with her arms crossed, watching him. He wonders if he looks weak now. His part of the plan worked well enough, and he is doing all he can to salvage the wreckage. But they lost a part of the prize, and they will lose men, and there is no chance the cambions will remain a secret now. Eyanna will not take any of that kindly. And the men who planned this—including her fool of a brother, whose idea this was to begin with, who could have foreseen sabotage of the rail—they are not here. They will have her ear, uncontested, until the two of them get back; he has sacrificed every friendship he might have made at court over the years, to get things moving the way they must. It would not be remotely rational for the High Queen to make an example of him, but the High Queen is not always rational. Tatzine is his, for now, but she has Grenia to think of. If there really were no other way—
Tatzine shakes her head, marches to his side and snatches his arm. “Look at you. Still bleeding.”
“Eh?” She is right; the bandage on his arm, where he just bled two ounces, is seeping red. “Bugger me.”
“Focus.” She has it off in a trice, casts it to the ground and puts on a new pack, pressing down firmly. They came prepared with five yards of clean linen, pre-cut. “Whatever happens later, I will deal with it. You need your mind on the present, so we live that long. Starting by not bleeding out on the damned street!”
“Yes, Your Highness.” They work well together. That is something. It’s not love, but it’s not nothing. He looks in her bright green eyes, and remembers for the thousandth time the fear and urgency of their wedding night—but she is still watching him closely. They are in enemy territory. He can hear distant gunfire, the screams of horses and men.
The sea-beast—C8—is still growing under Prid’s eyes; he has just decanted the thing. C7, their last diversion, will be spent. Tatzine commands him to draw more royal blood for its replacement, sparing his own. Time is passing, enough has passed for men to run to the authorities and tell them about the madmen brewing demons by the sea. But most of Team Two has reassembled now, and the boat is nearly loaded. The men who aren’t helping with that have been whipped into a defensive position on the cart. One of them sees a man in unfamiliar uniform a hundred yards away, snaps off a shot that sends whoever it is running. They have plenty of bullets, at least, though each one cost their beggar-kingdom dearly. If this goes well, they will be making their own by the year’s end.
C8 has developed rudimentary fins now, enough to move with. He’d hoped to wait longer, but it will do. “To the boat, all of you. Start the engine.” Stares. “Please tell me any of you knows how to start an engine.” Helpless stares from the elite household guard of High Queen Eyanna Vogh. He bites his lip, breathes deep. “Fine. You, you, and you, see if you can work it out—carefully! Coal goes in the grate, turn valves, try not to blow it up. The rest of you, rig up a chain harness with Prid, Number Eight here can tow the damn thing if it needs to.”
They do not, in fact, need to; his three find a half-drunk sailor sleeping off his last night in the boat’s lower parts, and cuff him until he gets the engine running. He also tells them that the boat won’t handle well with heavy equipment on its top deck, and that there is no hatch or door for moving anything so bulky into the hold. They reward him for this advice with kicks, which he accepts with only a little grumbling.
Soon they are underway, with a half-grown friend and protector circling them in the water. Hjan hopes they won’t need it. He glimpses astern, and sees great clouds of smoke rising from the skyline. The twins have been busy. Either the local authorities have been occupied dealing with them, or they have in fact learned not to hinder a departing Beardog; not a shot is fired as they steam out of the harbor.
Two major rivers empty into the Gulf of Tefeia. They need the more northerly of the two—the Nistrale—but go up the other for three-quarters of an hour before they realize their mistake. Their new employee assures them that the boat is moving like a drunk pig with the bad load, and that he dares not move it any faster. Hjan has no idea if he is telling the truth, but yields to his expertise. As long as they are making progress, he doesn’t care; the original plan is long gone, and the vessel that bore them downstream is the twins’ now, if they can reach it in time.
C8 falls behind to die two hours and several miles up the Nistrale. C9, made from the same mix, is already prepared to take its place. Hjan feels very little beyond weariness as he watches it slip into the water. It seems likely that Eyanna Vogh will get the bulk of what she asked for, but their immediate security now feels too far away to care about what comes after. He has been living in fear too long, for a man who never wanted or claimed to be a soldier.
They are back in Syoshen Vukh by nightfall, as near as anyone can tell—borders are soft and uncertain things. Hjan is asleep at the time, following a brief meal from ship’s supplies belowdecks. They wake him in the small hours, to sign for release of their prizes to the High Queen’s lieutenants at the rendezvous. He is less relieved than irritated; it was warm belowdecks, and he was tired enough to sleep in spite of the engine’s roar. Now they have to brave the cold night air. Shedding responsibility for the cursed machines is scant consolation, when the receivers will use them as license to steal the glory and tell his mother-in-law what they like.
Tatzine tells him he has done well enough as they stumble into the carriage. She reminds him that he has lost a great deal of blood over the past two days, and will feel better with rest. He snaps something back that doesn’t even make sense, and he doesn’t remember what it is, but he feels bad for it all the same. The seats are bare hard wood, and the vehicle has no suspension that he can tell. They will feel every bump.
Still Tatzine tries to coax a good mood out of him, tells him Grenia will be waiting for them. True enough. He tries, but can’t quite manage to feel anger about that. If Tatzine is a noose, Grenia is a dead weight around his ankle to keep him from running, but she is still the child of his blood, and an heir to the Dük name. He promised they would make a cambion together, when they came back. She promised she would not cry when the needle stuck her, and she will keep her word. She is brave, like her mother, and canny, as his daughter should be.
Some day, and sooner than he would like, Grenia will inherit all this. He already feels bad for inflicting it on her, but he didn’t ask for it himself, and he can’t trust anyone else with it. Nehm does not offer us what we like. It only demands what must be.
