“Even if we win,” I said, “what does life look like after a civil war?”
“Sweet hell, none of us know that!” Annette drew her knees toward her chest. “I know I’ll be in it with Viola, and that helps a bit. And you lot, too, of course.”
“Will we?” There was a fear, deep and bitter and usually buried, but I gave voice to it now. “What if—there are Red Caps whose hatred of the nobility runs deep. The institution, the people themselves. What if winning means…”
“Some sort of culling? Well, that’s an unpleasant thought.” Annette frowned. “But I think most of the Galatine people agree on that—it’s unpleasant. That shiny new Council of Country will come up with a solution no one quite likes but everyone accepts, I’m quite confident. I don’t anticipate being allowed to keep our lands or assets or any of that. But I can’t imagine most Galatines would be keen on not letting us keep our heads.”
“I hope so,” I said. “I came through this with Theodor. That’s the only thing I see clearly, when I look ahead.”
“Oh, come now.” Annette waved her hand like a vapid old countess at tea. “You’re going to be the famed Galatine Sorceress Sophie Balstrade, Heroine of the Great Revolution, and there will be ballads and epic poems and portraits of you. You’ll be invited to all the best parties.”
“That’s precisely what I do not want,” I said with a reluctant grin.
“Speaking of things you don’t want.” Annette hopped up. “Viola wanted me to keep these as a surprise, but—well, I think now is a good time.” She dragged me into her cabin, a spare, sleek little room with a bunk and shelves built into the walls. She tugged on a length of canvas, and it fell to the polished floor, revealing four petite portraits.
“Viola! She didn’t!” I smiled, looking at perfect renderings of Kristos, Theodor, Sianh, and me. We each wore gray and red, though Viola hadn’t known what our uniforms looked like. She had improvised, with Sianh in a gray-and-red imitation of proper Serafan military dress, Kristos in a workman’s set of trousers and a bright red wool cap, Theodor in a dove-gray suit like a sober politician, and me—
“I don’t live up to this.” I laughed. I looked like an image of one of the Galatine Natures personified, as I’d seen in religious works in the cathedral. She had painted me swathed in pale gray fabric like a cloud, red woven through my dark hair, holding a bright red poppy. “It’s ludicrous, is what it is.”
“She made sketches as soon as you’d left Port Triumph. She said she wanted to be the first to paint the official portraits of the heroes of the Galatine Civil War,” Annette said. “She didn’t know what that Niko fellow looks like, and she wasn’t quite sure if the nun was an official member of the cabal or not.”
“Alba is—well, she’s Alba.” I had no doubt that she would one day have an official portrait of her own, hanging in a Kvys convent or basilica somewhere. “And Niko would be properly horrified at being excluded.” I laughed again. “Which suits me fine, his head is too big already. But this. Please don’t show the one of me around to too many people?”
“Can’t promise that, sorry. It’s going to hang in the National Gallery someday, just you see.”
“We don’t have a National Gallery.”
“Well, that’s something for Viola and me to do, once we get this war won.” She grinned. “And by tomorrow we’ll be one step closer.”
32
SIANH AND A COMPLEMENT OF SOLDIERS WERE ALREADY WAITING AT the small inlet Annette navigated us toward. As we approached, another trio of our ships hailed us, signaling briefly that they had left several loads of supplies already.
“Now you can tell Theodor ‘told you so,’” Annette said with a grin as we said goodbye on the deck. The longboat waited to row me to shore, where I could see Sianh’s impatient foot tapping the sand already.
“I’ll try to refrain,” I said. “This suits you well. Even if I hope we’re all settled on dry land again soon,” I added.
“Viola hopes so, too,” Annette said with a wry laugh. “I’ll send a message to her, to join me soon whether she likes it or not. She can’t stay shut up in a Pellian countinghouse forever.”
“Certainly not,” I said. “Good luck.”
“Fair winds,” Annette replied.
I joined Sianh on the beach a short row later. “I do not care for being exposed like this, with all these supplies,” he said by way of greeting. “Even if Annette’s Nightingale could protect us in a fight.”
“You can be confident she could,” I asserted, allowing the feminine pronoun to stand for both.
Sianh assessed me. “Very well,” he said slowly. “Her leadership has yielded fruit thus far. Three ships captured and many crates of supplies.”
“Did she send the wine with us?” I asked.
Sianh raised an eyebrow. “I do not believe that she did. Was it worth mentioning?”
“Oh, I’m sure it was common swill, not southern Pyraglen or oak-aged Norta or anything special.” I suppressed a smile that told him the truth.
“Damn her eyes, the little thief!” Sianh laughed. “Ah, well. We could not enjoy it properly on campaign, and more is to the point, she earned it.”
And Annette and the small navy she had delivered to us had certainly proven their value. Three wagons were already loaded, most with barrels of black powder. Sianh was nervous, if the speed with which he worked was any indication. The remaining crates and barrels were swiftly sorted, counted, and transported up the shore. I perched on one of the wagons, settled between a bolt of very ugly green wool and a barrel of black powder. I felt quite sure the wool was the more hazardous of the two.
“We have made swifter progress through the midlands than I would have expected,” Sianh said, riding beside me on his favored mount, a cinnamon-bright bay with a lopsided ear. “But Rock’s Ford still lies ahead. I believe the Royalists have determined it not worth holding these southern outposts.”
“Is that bad?” I asked, confused.
“It is not bad. But it means they have shored up their men and their attention on Rock’s Ford. It will not be an easy fight.”
We stopped near a grove of trees, a thin trickle of an ice-cold creek running nearby and the full complement of the northbound Reformist army bivouacked in the open. I found Theodor overseeing the disbursement of firewood.
“Thank the Divine,” he sighed as he gathered me into a swift embrace. “I had the worst nightmares about you sinking or being captured.”
“I had a fine adventure instead,” I told him. He raised an eyebrow. “And I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“I take it Annette’s patrolling worked out in our favor, then.” His shoulders relaxed a bit when I nodded. “There will be frost tonight,” he said. “And the baggage train won’t reach us.”
“A cold night, then,” I said. “Ah, I miss our moldy bed already.”
“You joke, but you will miss it,” Sianh said, dismounting and beginning to survey the site and direct the officers where to make their camp. “Welcome to campaign—it is uncomfortable.”