The King Slayer Part 22

John offers a grim smile. "They'll take care of themselves. In six hours or so, they'll be nothing but bones."

We keep a quick pace back toward camp, our heads swiveling right to left and back again, searching the meadow, the forest, watching for more archers in black lurking behind trees.

I barely see Rochester as we approach, hazy and blurry behind what must be a new barrier. I almost don't see the man standing just behind it, either; a figure in cloudy gray, a blaze of orange triangle on the lapel, a man of the Watch. He sees us coming and waves his hand; the air around us turns opaque, like fog, a clear opening in the center.

"Were there more behind you?" He waves us through. "Theirs, or ours?"

"Theirs, yes," John says. "But we took care of them. There was one of ours, too, but he didn't make it. He told us there were people missing. Have they been found?"

"Two of them have." The guard nods at us. "Best be off so they know you're safe."

We continue down the road into Rochester, across the bridge into madness. Horses, men, soldiers, pages running everywhere; voices shouting orders. John and I push through it all, looking for Peter, for Fitzroy, for Nicholas, for anyone we fear has gone missing, for anyone who could tell us what's happening.

Soon enough there's a roar and Peter appears, wrinkled and disheveled. He tackles John, pulls him into a rough embrace, ruffling his hair. He mutters in his ear; I can't make out the words but I can hear the tenderness behind them. Then he turns and does the same to me.

"I thought the worst." Peter pulls back, his dark brows furrowed. "Blackwell's men, they got in again. We rounded up all of Harrow, but people are still missing. I thought you among them."

"We know," John says. He fills Peter in on the archers, on the man they killed, on the poison and what happened afterward.

"G.o.d's blood," Peter exclaims. "You were at the apothecary? I went there myself after I couldn't find either of you here. The lights were off and the doors were locked. I didn't have a key, but when I knocked, no one answered."

"We were there," John says. "We just... didn't hear you." I flush a little at this and so does he, but he doesn't look away.

"But why-oh. Ah. I see. Ah." Peter swipes a hand across his beard, looking discomfited.

"You mentioned people were missing." John swiftly changes the subject. "Who?"

"A few soldiers. A woman and her son from the Mudchute. From what you saw in town, we can add the cobbler to the list. And Gareth."

"Gareth?" John and I exchange a rapid glance. "Was he taken against his will? Or were Blackwell's men meant to be his escort out of Harrow?"

"There's no way to know for certain," Peter says. "But Nicholas believes he was abducted. Fitzroy went to Gareth's home and his door was unlocked, his belongings where he left them."

"Why would they take him?" John asks.

"Hard to say," Peter says. "Could be because Blackwell discovered we know he's the spy, could be because Gareth had a change of heart about defecting, and we know what Blackwell does to traitors." A pause. "It doesn't much matter. He's gone, and though it's a small consolation, it saves us from having to arrest him ourselves. At any rate, we've got a larger issue at hand. A few members of the Order of the Rose arrived last night. Said Blackwell's men were beginning to mobilize in Upminster, earlier than expected. We believe they'll be here sometime tomorrow."

"How many?" John asks.

"A conservative estimate is ten thousand."

Ten thousand. Against our four thousand.

"Some of Blackwell's army-perhaps as many as half-are fighting under duress," Peter continues. "They will defect the moment battle begins. They'll either escape, or Blackwell will waste his troops to hunt them down. Even if this leaves us more evenly matched, he's still got his revenants. The strength of one is equal to that of ten ordinary men, and they'll be loyal to him."

I think of Schuyler's words and wonder if that's not entirely true.

"Let's get you to your tents," Peter says finally. "You'll need to pick up your uniforms, and your weapons, and we're doing a last rally tonight. Tomorrow will be-" He breaks off. "Tomorrow will be here soon enough."

John places his hand on Peter's shoulder, but there's nothing he can say that will ease the worry on his father's face. Peter knows there's a chance John won't make it through this battle. I know it, too, despite everything I will do to make sure he does.

We start across the crowded field, weaving through the circle of white tents toward mine when I hear it. A shout, a laugh, and then I see him, bounding toward us in a streak of stripes and feathers and smiles: George.

"Oi!"

He bounds across the gra.s.s toward us, bright as the afternoon sun in a green-and-blue-striped coat, blue hat with a yellow feather, and matching yellow cape. He hurtles into John, nearly knocking him over. They're both laughing and shoving each other; then finally George steps back and looks us both over, a smirk on his face.

"Well, well. If it isn't my favorite star-crossed couple." He looks from John to me, then back to John again. "Though it looks like the stars have finally aligned, conspiring now to blind us all."

George steps forward and pulls me into a tight embrace.

"I really am glad to see you." He looks me over carefully, his smile faltering for a moment. "Fifer's been writing me, telling me what's been going on. All of it. You..." George trails off, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. "You're going to be all right. I think we all are."

He falls into step beside us as we thread through the crowds.

"When did you get back?" John asks him.

"Last night, late. It was a bit rough crossing the channel. But we're here now, and just in time, too. They came for a fight; it seems they're going to get one."

John nods, then turns to his father. "What's the plan for those not fighting?"

"After midnight tonight, the women and children will be inside." Peter waves his hand at Rochester Hall. "George has been placed in charge of them, and of their evacuation into Cambria, should it come to that. Regardless, they'll be safe. Nicholas and some councilmen are working on the spells now. No one will be allowed out until the council-minus Gareth, of course-gives the instruction."

I don't ask what will happen if none of the council is left to give that instruction; I know I don't have to.

We look around the grounds at the thousands of Gallic men, their tents decorated with a fluttering flag of Gaul in stripes of red, blue, and white, chatting and laughing, some sparring, others reclining on the gra.s.s smoking pipes or drinking deeply from crystal goblets.

"I see they're making themselves comfortable," John notes wryly. "By the looks of it, you'd never know they were going to war."

"They brought their own wine and their own gla.s.ses," George says. "They're the d.a.m.nedest. Deadly as h.e.l.l, but terribly high-maintenance. I can't tell you how many of them asked me where the ladies' tent is. We're at war, and they want a ladies' tent."

I roll my eyes. John and George laugh.

"Not that it would be difficult to do," George continues. "Anglian women always did have a thing for Gallic men, and the women of Harrow are no different. So later tonight there'll be music, wine, food, no doubt as much flirting since I was at court. And speaking of court..."

I look up just as Malcolm comes striding in our direction. He's dressed in Reformist colors: black tunic, black trousers, the orange-and-red Reformist symbol blazing in a crest along the front, a sword at his side. To see him dressed this way, free and armed and walking through the camp as if he owns it, is both a shock and an expectation.

George steps forward, sketches a quick bow. "Sir."

Malcolm waves it off, a smile crossing his face. "I told you to call me Malcolm. I think we're well beyond formalities now."

George turns to us. "He's a rounder, this one, as I discovered last night. He took all my money in a single game of cards. Then, after ensuring I was thoroughly distraught, lost it all in one hand. A hand I do believe was skillfully thrown."

"The skill was not mine but yours," Malcolm says graciously. "But I'm happy to arrange a rematch, if you'd like to test your theory."

"I've got no plans tomorrow evening," George says.

"You do now," Malcolm says.

George laughs and extends his hand; Malcolm takes it, grinning. His eyes flick to me then.

"Glad you're back. We were worried." He looks at John and nods. "For both of you." The silence hangs a moment. "Elizabeth, may I speak to you?"

John turns to George. "You seen Fifer?"

George nods. "Last I saw her, she was terrorizing some poor Gallic soldier. Cursing at him before actually cursing him. She gave him some kind of rash and now it's spread. All over the man's face and lips and tongue."

John laughs. "Why, what did he do?"

"He called her 'un peu fig mignon.'"

A cute little fig.

John rolls his eyes. "Mind leading me to them both? I want to let her know we're all right. And it sounds like I've got a pox to treat." He turns to me. "I'll find you later?"

"Of course," I say.

John nods at Malcolm, squeezes my hand, then he and George walk away, the breeze carrying George's chatter and John's laughter back to me. It makes me smile.

Malcolm turns to me. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," I say. "Had a run-in with some of Blackwell's archers, but they came out of it worse than I did."

"Good. But I didn't mean just that. How are you feeling about tomorrow?"

Tomorrow. It stands on a knife's edge: victory and defeat, life and death, joy and sorrow. It will be one or the other; there will be no half measures.

"I'm ready," I say, and this is the truth. "I've lived beneath the shadow of your uncle's rule for so long, I'll do whatever it takes to overthrow him."

He surveys the field, his eyes squinting against the setting sun in a way that makes the wrinkles around them deepen. I think of how he became heir at twelve after Blackwell killed his parents and unsuccessfully tried to kill him. How at sixteen he became king. Then, at twenty, how he went into a Yuletide masque a king and came out a prisoner, stripped of his t.i.tle, his wife, his country, his life. He's experienced enough life for a man twice his age, and now, for once, he looks it.

Malcolm looks back at me, his mouth curving into a smile as if he knows exactly what I'm thinking. "Did I ever tell you what I did my first day as king of Anglia?"

I shake my head.

"I turned the country over to someone else to rule." He grimaces. "To Uncle. I told him I didn't want to do it, that I couldn't do it. I should have known then, how quickly he agreed, that something wasn't right. He said he'd hand the reins back when I was ready. But drinking, gambling, roistering, hunting, well." Malcolm laughs, a short, derisive sound. "I thought I was doing the right thing, turning my head from whatever Uncle felt was his duty to do. Apathy became a habit; now it's all I'm known for."

"You're here. You're fighting," I say. "You're helping to save the country, and you're putting yourself at risk to do it. That's what you'll be known for."

"If I do this right, I won't be known for anything at all."

"You're the king," I say. "You can't die."

"I can, I might; I will, I won't. That's not what matters. What matters is that I'm ready. Like you, I'm ready to be out from underneath his shadow. I'm going to get Anglia back."

He extends his hand to me. "May I?" he says, and I nod. Then he presses my fingers to his lips; a formal, courtly kiss.

"I'm glad you're here with me," he says. "I don't trust a lot of people; I don't trust anyone. But I always trusted you. And now I need to apologize to you."

I wait.

"I knew you didn't feel about me the way I felt about you. I simply chose not to listen." He lets my hand drop as his expression falls; he looks as vulnerable as a boy. "It was selfish and wrong, and I am sorry. I know they're just words but they're all I have. Can you forgive me?"

And on this, the eve of the final battle from which we may not return, I know that it's too late to withhold forgiveness, too late to hold grudges. Too late to punish him for playing by the rules when the rules were stripped from both of us, turned inside out before being served back to us on a poisoned platter.

"I do," I say, and I'm not at all surprised to find I mean it.

"Now I've got a battle to win." His grin is back; it lights up his face and that's the Malcolm I know: loud, brash, confident, the world at his feet and everything to hope for. "This time tomorrow, we'll be celebrating. Mark my words." He spins on his heel, throws me a wave.

I watch him go. As he walks off into the last of the dying light, it swallows him. And I think he'll come out brighter, untarnished, or the blaze will devour him, as it will all of us.

Night comes. And with it, a celebration. The Gallic soldiers insisted on it-to their way of thinking, it was the only thing to do. If the battle was to go poorly, if we were to fall, if they weren't to return to Harrow tomorrow, at least they'd have had tonight. Better than the alternative, they said: huddled in their tents, alone and afraid.

George was all for it. And no one can organize a celebration better than he: Within the hour we had wine, both from the soldiers who brought their own from Gaul, and from Lord Cranbourne Calthorpe-Gough's private reserve. Someone conjures fairy lights, tiny and white and nestled in the trees surrounding the camp, twinkling in the moonlit night.

Music fills the air: pipes and tabors, harps and drums. People laugh and they dance; they chatter in Gallic and flirt in Anglian. And none of us talks about it at all. The chance we won't return, the chance that this will be it. The very real chance that come tomorrow, there will be nothing left.

At midnight, the music ends. The fairy lights go out; the laughter stops. With little fanfare and even fewer words, the celebration disperses. The women and children are led inside Rochester Hall. The Gallic soldiers retreat to their side of the grounds, drunk with laughter and wine not moments earlier, now sober and stoic.

The armorers retreat to finish the task of preparing weapons for the three thousand that make up our army. We don't have many horses, a few dozen, perhaps. A handful of coursers to lead the initial charge, some palfreys for signaling. But this won't be a cavalry charge; it never was going to be. This will be an infantry battle: face-to-face and hand-to-hand, b.l.o.o.d.y and vicious and personal and deadly.

As abrupt as the others, John steers me back to my tent. Wordlessly, we huddle together on my narrow camp bed, his arms around me tight, my head pressed against his chest. I breathe him in, that same, soothing scent of him: lavender and spice; the same warmth and comfort I always feel around him.

I don't tell him I'm afraid of tomorrow. I'm afraid of what will happen if we lose, what will happen if we win. I'm afraid of the heartache and the loss and the wait, the interminable pause between the start and the finish to know how it ends. I don't tell him any of this. But by the way he holds me and kisses me and says he'll always love me, he tells me he already knows.

IN THE MORNING, THE AIR is cool and still. Muted sunlight filters in through the white canvas, bathing it in a yellow glow. Outside, the rustle of activity has already begun, frantic and loud. The knot, already coiled tight in my belly, turns tighter.

John and I dress in silence, both of us in the same thing: brown trousers, white tunic under a thin layer of mail, blue-and-red color-blocked surcoat-traditional Anglian colors in a battle to restore Anglia-topped with a breastplate of armor. I help him fasten the leather straps at his shoulders and sides. When I'm finished, he does the same for me. And for a moment we stand there, face-to-face. I can read the look of dark finality in his face, hear the men shouting outside the tent, their footsteps and the thundering of hooves, and I know it's time to go.

But still, we don't move.

Finally, I step away from him, reach for my bag stuffed beneath my cot. Pick through it until I unearth it: the dark green length of ribbon I pulled from the bodice of the pale green linen nightgown Fifer gifted me with, the one I wore the night I climbed up the trellis into John's bedroom, the last time we were together before everything went terribly wrong.

I hold it out.

John's eyes skim the length of it, then flick back to me. "I never thought you were one for ribbons," he says. "But I remember this. I remember everything about that night, including what you wore. I wondered why that color. Why green when your best color is easily blue. Then I wondered where you got it, and if you had others like it."

"You thought a lot about it," I say.

"I think a lot about you," he corrects. "Most of the time, though, it's not about ribbons."

That makes me smile, but only for a moment.

"I want you to wear it," I say. "And I want you to think of me when you do. Whether green is my best color, or whether you'd rather be thinking about something else." My words are coming fast, but we're out of time and I need him to hear them. "But however you think of me, I need you to know that I need you. I need you to come back to me."

I hold up the ribbon, and with a shaky hand I tuck it inside his armor. It's something a maid would do, giving a knight her favor as he enters a joust. But this is no joust, and I am no Queen of the May. I am what I am: A killer and a traitor, a sometime liar and a forever troublemaker, but he somehow found a way to love me anyway. "Please think of me," I repeat. "Please come back to me."

John reaches for me, captures my hand in his. There's nothing left for us to say so he kisses me, hard, crushing me against him, maybe forgetting we're wearing armor, maybe not, not caring either way. We kiss to the sound of drums, to the sound of trumpets and hoofbeats and heartbeats, we kiss until there's nothing left but to stop or go on, so we go on. He tugs at my armor, impatient, and before I know it it's on the ground, his hand sliding beneath my tunic as I start to pull on the fastenings of the armor I only just put on him.