“How did you manage to send the message, that’s what I don’t understand.”
“I truly,” I repeated, “do not know what’s happened.”
Polly watched me a long moment, and finally made up her mind. “You don’t, do you?” She gestured to the guard. “Come with me.”
54
WE CLIMBED THE LOW HILL AGAIN, OUT OF VIEW OF THE BATTLEFIELD but with eyes on the harbor, and I knew immediately what had infuriated Polly.
Black smoke rose from the harbor, thick and curling, and under it, flames lapped what rigging and sails I could see. I strained to make out the Serafan casters’ ship, but I couldn’t pick it out in the hazy chaos of destruction.
“Mercy,” I whispered. For once, I was thankful I couldn’t see more clearly. Sailors and marines were probably leaping from ships for their lives, caught in a crushing melee of broken hulls and flames.
“No, you didn’t know.” Polly swallowed. “Tell me, is the casting still holding over the city?”
She had no way of knowing. The Serafan casters had all been deployed, on the field and on that ship in the harbor. I answered honestly anyway. “No. It’s gone. It doesn’t last past casting it, not long anyway.”
“So the city is freed from its effects.”
“If my experience with the ‘effects’ are any indication, yes.” I exhaled, still shaky, still very aware of the cruel steel of the bayonet mere yards away from me. “How did it happen?” I ventured to ask.
“How?” Polly’s voice raised a pitch. “Fire ships, that’s how. Whatever pitiful excuse you have for a navy managed—we should have known. It was a dreadful mistake to mass our navy here. Damn it all.” Her voice seethed with anger but her body remained motionless, her face stone, watching the destruction of the strength of the Galatine navy.
Annette. The thought soared, and then crashed into itself, faced with the death and pain surely overtaking Galitha City’s harbor. It didn’t matter that those men would have had me killed in an instant; I couldn’t rejoice over their deaths. But Annette! Against the massed Royalist navy we had held out some hope she could delay or complicate their retreat, but she had managed something far more effective.
A roar rolled from the battlefield and across the Royalist encampment, rising up the hill. Free of the curse casting, Niko’s men within the city had begun their foray from within the walls. That meant—my eyes went wide at the thought—that even without my help, even without the benefit of additional charms hung over the Reformist soldiers or curses disabling the riflemen, we had breached past the midway point on the field.
We had pushed the Royalists back and now the rest of the Reformist army would clamp them in a pincer, between two advancing lines, and we would have our surrender.
“It won’t be long, will it?” I asked.
Polly’s mouth was a hard line. “From what I understand, no. Becoming trapped between the two halves of your army was our worst-case outcome, but even then… even then we anticipated being able to retreat around the city to the harbor. That is now impossible.
“I could have you killed,” she said quite suddenly. My chest constricted around her words. “Perhaps I ought to.”
“I’m not a bargaining chip?”
“Yes, you are.” She turned away, finally, from the burning harbor. There were glints of tears in her eyes, but she blinked them quickly away. “And whatever else, I would rather Galitha—even a perverse Galitha—have you and your abilities than leave us defenseless in the face of the Serafans, should they ever deploy their casting against us.”
I softened slightly. Polly, Lady Apollonia, loved her country. She loved it badly, twisted her love for it to suit her and her desires, but she loved it.
“We are both for Galitha, whatever else might be between us,” I said. “And I—I can’t promise anything, but I will advocate for the right treatment of all prisoners.”
“I know you will.” Polly sighed. “You proved that well enough when, sweet fool that you are, you let me go after I tried to assassinate you.”
“You’re a very bad assassin.”
Polly hiccupped a bitter laugh. “I am. Would that I had succeeded, perhaps this day would have been different.”
“I do not think so,” I said. “What role I played was far less than what the common people of Galitha effected.”
“So you say.” Polly pulled her shoulders back and smoothed her dark blue skirts. “I imagine we have a parlay to attend, and soon.”
I didn’t expect to be included in the parlay that led to the formal surrender of the Royalist troops, but the king decided I was worth at least something as a bit of theater to bluff with, so sent a runner to have me brought to them under guard, with bound hands and, ludicrously, blindfolded. Pageantry, I guessed, for the benefit of anyone who thought I might dare to cast a curse over the proceedings.
Though I couldn’t see where I was shepherded, the shade and the breeze told me we were under a pavilion erected near the battlefield. A marquee top, perhaps. What a ridiculous affectation, I chided whoever had wasted time in putting up a sunshade for the proceedings. As though someone had expected a painting to be done of the great surrender at Galitha City, and the artist was even then sketching from life.
I sobered—it was likely a scene that would be painted and displayed, many times over. And here I was, trussed like a pig at market and with a blindfold.
I heard the arrival of the Reformist contingent. My heart was in my throat, pressing against my breath, waiting to hear a voice, any voice I recognized. Terrified that one might be absent.
“You could take the blindfold off her, you know.” Kristos. Cocky, self-assured, slightly inappropriate even now. I exhaled in shaking relief. “She doesn’t have to see you to curse you.”
“It stays.” The resonant voice of the king himself. “Well. It seems you have bested our efforts here.”
“We have bested your efforts completely.” Theodor. My knees felt suddenly weak, buried fears that he wouldn’t survive the battle resurfacing now that safety gave them voice. Tears dampened the interior of the blindfold. “We demand unequivocal surrender.”
“You demand?” That was Pommerly.
“That is, is it not, the correct term?” Sianh’s careful, clipped diction. I smiled—all three of them, safe.
“No, it’s the correct term,” Kristos said. “He’s hoping he can bluff us out of pressing the fact that they’re completely surrounded and have no means of retreat.”
“Enough.” Regardless of his current tenuous position, the former king of Galitha commanded attention. “We mean to offer surrender. But there are terms.”
“You’re in no position to demand terms,” Kristos said.
“But we will make our requests. We do hold a prisoner of some value.” I stiffened, but I tried my best not to look concerned. Whatever they say, I begged silently, don’t give in. We’ve come this far.
“You’ll give us all safe passage and protection,” a new voice said. Merhaven. “You will not take us prisoner, no executions. And in return for that goodwill, we will return her.”