“That’s not . . .” Aldo pleads, transfigured into a small child, heartbroken and lost.
But Rosario has already turned his back.
“Conde Juan-Carlos, are you well enough to take these pieces of trash to the prison tower?” Rosario says, indicating Aldo and his mother.
“With pleasure, Your Highness,” he says, retrieving Father Nicandro’s cane. “May my brother accompany me? I seem to have misplaced a kneecap and could use a little help.”
“Of course. You,” Rosario says, indicating Itzal. “Fetch Doctor Enzo and all his staff. We have lots of wounded. And you—it’s Pedrón, right?”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Pedrón’s right arm hangs limp from his shoulder; I can’t tell if it’s out of its socket or broken or worse.
“Inform the monastery that their head priest has fallen.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Rosario crouches beside Father Nicandro’s broken body. He reaches down and brushes his eyelids closed. “Rest well, old friend. You will lie in state, with my true family.”
He looks up at me. “Red?”
He is my brother, but he is also my liege. I snap to attention, the way I’ve been taught. “Your Highness?”
“I need you to . . . please just stay by my side while we clean up this mess.”
26
Now
THE next few days are a blur. Rosario reinstates me to the Guard, but instead of training, we are tasked with cleaning up. In the ballroom, we find two of the Basajuan boys. The Arturos insist on carrying their bodies out to the desert and burying them in the sand. “From sand we come, to sand we return,” they intone.
Only eleven first-year recruits remain.
Next, we retrieve the remaining barrels of dream syrup and destroy them. Pedrón’s right arm was badly injured, and he is forced to carry it in a sling. Doctor Enzo says his upper arm was broken in three places, that it might take a year of care to rehabilitate. Still, Pedrón does the work of ten men, lifting and dragging and tossing with his left arm.
Condes Tristán and Juan-Carlos lead the effort to root out any remaining mercenaries. The General opens an investigation into his army’s recruitment practices to make sure no one like Beto or Sancho remains, who might have been compromised by Conde Astón and Condesa Ariña.
Conde Astón makes good on his word. After he releases the mercenaries from service, and returns to the palace, Rosario holds him in the tower, in a cell far, far away from either Aldo or Aldo’s mother. Rosario tells me that Astón answers questions openly and without reserve, even confesses to poisoning Captain Bolivar and searching his quarters. His execution will wait until the empress returns, so that she and Lord-Commander Dante can question him themselves.
Sergeant DeLuca is also held for questioning. He maintains his innocence, insists that he was acting in good faith, and that if he betrayed his empress at all, he did so because he was deceived by Conde Astón into believing a traitor had infiltrated the first-year recruits. The conde himself verifies the sergeant’s story, confirming that he manipulated DeLuca, playing on his deep desire to win the notice of the empress, along with his intolerance for all things Invierno. The sergeant had no idea who Aldo was, or about their greater plan. He assumed I was the traitor.
Soon after, Sergeant DeLuca is found hanging in his tower cell, his face swollen and blue, his Guard-issue belt cutting into the skin of his neck.
His loss makes me ill. I disliked him, almost as much as he disliked me, but he was still a Royal Guard, and he didn’t need to kill himself. He was a fool, not a traitor, and Elisa would have been merciful. I’m sure of it.
A few days later, I’m in the barracks, running errands for Guardsman Bruno, who is in charge of everyone who remains, when Rosario sends for me. I meet him in his receiving room. He sits behind his desk, regal in satin, a small golden diadem circling his head. As always, Lady Carilla stands at his shoulder. It’s the first I’ve seen her since the chaos ended.
“You’re a warrior,” I say to her, and it sounds more accusatory than I intend. “Trained for it, just like me. Except I think you’re better.”
Carilla smiles. It’s a smile that says, “Much better,” but without rubbing my nose in it. I appreciate her restraint. “You know I fostered in Amalur, yes?”
“Of course. With Queen Alodia.”
“That’s where I trained.”
I blink, understanding dawning. “You were trained to be a guardian, by the warrior priests at the Monastery-at-Amalur.”
“Yes.”
“Elisa had a guardian for many years,” Rosario says. “She thought I ought to have one too. Anyway, that’s not why I called you here. You’re a hero, Red. You saved me. You saved the empire.”
“It would have been really embarrassing if Elisa and Hector returned and we had misplaced it for them.”
Rosario’s look becomes pointed. Like that of a prince instead of a brother. “I do not consider this a humorous matter.”
“It was a group effort,” I say quickly. “Iván . . .” I have no idea what I want to say about Iván. There’s too much, and yet all of it seems inadequate.
“I have already met privately with Iván,” the prince says.
“But it’s not just him. Every single first-year recruit helped, even some who got cut, like Itzal and Valentino. With the exception of DeLuca and Aldo, your Guard remained true down to the last nonfighting man.”
He nods. “I’m glad to know it.”
“Some died in the process. If a single one of them had failed, if a single one of them had not answered the call to duty, we could have—would have—lost.”
“Their contributions are noted and will be recognized. And yet, from my position here, sitting at this desk instead of lying dead on the floor of the ballroom, it appears to me that our entire victory hinged on one moment: when you came to me and asked to activate the Guard recruits. Activating recruits is unprecedented. You pushed beyond tradition and expectation to come up with an idea that could help us, and you pestered me until I gave you permission. Without that one decision, you and I and many others would most certainly be dead by now. And the country would be in the midst of a civil war.”
There is nothing I can say in response to this, so I bow my head. “Your Highness.”
He taps his finger on the desk and stares at me thoughtfully. “Elisa will return in a month or so. I expect she’ll offer you a boon. I wanted to give you time to consider. Think about what you’ll ask of her.”
I inhale sharply through my nose.
“Red?”
I hate asking for anything, but . . . “I already know.”
“Really? I mean, tell me. What do you want?”
I grin, my heart swelling with hope. “Everything. Rosario. I want everything.”
He raises a questioning eyebrow, and I tell him my plan.
We return to training. Master Santiago meets us in the sand one morning, and his face is dejected, his eyes clouded.
“I must explain a thing to you,” he says, pacing along our staggered line. “Sergeant DeLuca hired me to advance your training. He told me to make you strong, but also to withhold knowledge of true swordsmanship. He said there was a spy among the first-year recruits, and he didn’t want to enhance the skills of an enemy until we could suss him out.”