“Leo—”
“What if my mother was right? What if I’m a warrior but no general? What if—”
She wished she did not always have to be the strong one. The Fates knew, she could have used some comfort. But some people need to be held up. Which means some people need to do the holding.
She clapped a hand to his head, twisted her fingers in his hair and dragged his face towards her. “Stop. You’re not just a warrior, or a leader, or a general, you’re a hero.” Heroes are defined not by what they do, after all, or why, but by what people think they have done. “The cause is just.” She would be a wonderful queen. “We have strong allies beside us.” A circle of self-serving snakes. “We are going to win.” They had fucking better. “And the people of the Union will win with us. They need us. They need you.” It did not matter whether she believed it, only that she made him believe. She had to blow him up with hot air until he towered over the battlefield. “I need you,” and she pulled him close, and gave him the softest kiss.
It had been meant just to shut him up, but it lasted longer than she had expected. When she broke away, they stared at each other in the darkness, quick breath hissing between them.
She licked her lips and went back for another. Hungrier now, and deeper, wriggling half on top of him. The constant ache between her legs had already sharpened to a pleasurable throbbing. It wasn’t just her hands that were endlessly swollen. She slipped one leg over his and started to rub herself against it. Subtly at first. Then not subtly at all. Humping him like an overeager puppy.
“Are you sure?” he whispered.
“We’re all awake now.” And she caught his head and pushed her tongue into his mouth.
This was one thing she had not expected about carrying a child. She had never felt less capable of coupling. Never wanted to more. Even now, with everything she had at stake. Especially now, maybe.
He was half-hard by the time she got his nightshirt up. She kept kissing him, one hand between her legs, one hand between his. Someone has to do the work, after all.
When she gave birth to this bloody thing it would be heir to the throne of the Union. That decision was made already. She would never be caught defenceless again, as she had been in Valbeck. Never be scared, never be vulnerable. If Orso had to lose, and her father, and Rikke, so be it. She would be safe. She would be powerful. If the world had to lose so she could win, so be it. The dice were already rolling.
She grunted as she heaved herself over onto her hands and knees, squirmed as she dragged her nightdress clumsily up over her hips. He knelt there, staring at her bare arse, nightshirt draped over his cock like a theatre curtain caught on a rogue piece of the set.
Ridiculous. But there it was.
She slid her elbows forward so the mattress could give some support to her over-heavy chest and pushed the side of her face into the pillow.
“Get it done, then,” she hissed.
Tallow stood with his hands wedged in his armpits as the wind bent the tall grass, shivering. He never seemed to have the right clothes for the weather. Exactly like her brother in that regard. The thought made Vick feel decidedly uncomfortable, and she drew her coat tight about her. A black Inquisitor’s coat. Not something she wore often. She spent most of her time trying to look as little like a member of the Inquisition as possible. But if you didn’t wear your uniform to a battle, when would you?
From up here on the bluff, the dark valley was dusted with thousands of pinprick lights. Campfires, wagon lamps, sentries’ torches. You could pick out the roads, the cluster of Stoffenbeck’s windows, the long battle lines cutting crooked across the hills and fields in dots of fire, a gulf of darkness lying between the two sides.
“Not often you get seats like this at the show everyone’s talking about,” muttered Vick. “Imagine how much it cost to put on.”
“Think what you could buy with it,” said Tallow, firelight glinting in the corners of his big, sad eyes. “The folk that could be fed, and clothed, and housed. Spend it wisely, you might avoid the fight in the first place.”
“There’s something wrong with the world all right,” said Vick, watching Arch Lector Pike step over to the closest cannon and sight down its barrel into the darkened valley.
He’d positioned them with the care of an emperor’s butler setting table for a state dinner. Eighteen darkly gleaming, tapering tubes, set on heavy wooden trestles in a long row just below the brow of the hill. Leather-aproned engineers from the Siege School followed His Eminence down the line, cranking, adjusting, checking instruments, pointing excitedly towards the river where water glimmered faintly in the darkness.
“This one a little to the left, I think,” said Pike, then walked up to the summit of the hill to stand beside Vick, staring out at the valley. “We have been experimenting in the Far Country for several years now.” He watched the crews drag brush around the maws of the great iron tubes to hide them from sight. “And have found that cannons are like birthday presents. Best kept as a surprise.”
“I’ve never liked surprises,” said Vick.
“I suspect the enemy will feel the same.”
“Your Eminence!”
Two dark figures came across the hillside. One had a torch and a mask. The other was a boy, stumbling along with hands tied behind him. A Practical and a prisoner.
“Caught him trying to run.” The Practical shoved the lad down on his knees in front of Pike, the wind ruffling his curly hair. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Looked younger. Tallow swallowed and slowly shrank back into the darkness.
“Dear, dear.” Pike took a long breath and squatted beside the boy, torchlight glistening on the shiny burned skin on the side of his face. “Do you know who I am?”
The lad nodded, mouth hanging dumbly open. He looked up at Vick, and took a long sniff, then looked down at the ground between his knees. He must’ve known what was coming. And yet he just sat there.
“Which unit are you with?”
“Lord Crant’s regiment,” he croaked out. “I’m a loader. I load flatbows. Well, I just crank ’em.” Once he’d started talking he couldn’t seem to stop. “My friend Gert puts the bolts in, then hands ’em back to—”
“Shush,” said Pike, softly. There was silence then, and the wind stirred the grass, and Vick found she was wincing. The boy would make a good example, to keep the others at their posts. There was a tree near the summit with a low bough that would be just right. If they’ll hang a boy for running, who won’t they hang?
“Gert stayed,” whispered the boy, “but I… I don’t want to die.”
Pike turned towards those thousands of pinprick lights, twinkling in the valley. “Faced with something on this scale, there could be no more rational response than to run away. But sometimes… we must do things that are not rational. Sometimes we must act on faith.” Pike stared at the lad and the lad stared back, the Practical looming dark over both. “Sometimes… even as the world goes mad… we must crouch next to Gert and load flatbows.”
Another silence. Then the lad’s knobbly throat shifted as he swallowed. “I’d like to do that.”
“Good.” Pike set his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Go back to Lord Crant’s regiment, then.” He nodded to the Practical, and the Practical cut the ropes on the boy’s wrists.