Queen Amid Ashes by Christopher Ruocchio

Author:Christopher Ruocchio [Ruocchio, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Christopher Ruocchio
Published: 2022-06-27T23:00:00+00:00

When at last we landed and returned along the path Maro led us down to the dungeon and the office of the castellan, it was with another hundred men. The other soldiers—a full chiliad—waited in their ships in a line above the descent to the lower levels and the hidden gate. A new sun was rising over lost Pseldona as we went down, and the dorsal fins of our shuttles rose like black sails against the blushing sky, a solitary line like a row of funeral monuments. Many of the people in Malyan’s bunker were only servants; courtiers like the cup-bearer, Ravi Vyasa—not soldiers. We must have outnumbered the Baroness’s guards ten to one.

Valka had not liked being left behind a second time, but when I had explained my plan to her, she relented. It would not be easy to extract the woman from her hole without bloodshed, and indeed I half-expected to find the Baroness locked in her paradise, and had ordered a plasma bore and breaching team be deployed from the Tamerlane at the earliest opportunity.

So much nearer the equator, the wreck of the battle still smoldered in the skies, its traces visible in the tongues and streaks of acrid black staining the heavens. But where before the effect was strangely beautiful, I could then only think of the smoke of thuribles in Chantry, the scents of frankincense, benzoin, and myrrh.

But Maro’s guards did not resist us when we returned. Quite the contrary. We were ushered back down the hidden stair and along the corridors below to the inner door, where Pallino and the men of my guard I’d left behind remained with Maro’s men. Between them they had swept the path clean of onlookers.

My lictor greeted me as I rounded the last corner, my helmet again firmly in place. He and my men saluted—Maro’s, too—and waited for me to speak. “Is the Baroness still inside?” I asked.

Pallino must have blinked, judging by the pause and the faint shift of his head. “Yes, my lord. She and her captain. Some others. They had word of your return.”

I had not ordered word be sent, but I supposed they had yet some access to the surface, some lookouts in bolt-holes throughout the ruined city, and some way of running messages through other doors and tunnels. I paused for only a moment, wondering if I should have sent word, if my silence implied cause for alarm on the Baroness’s part. Had I erred?

If I had, it was too late to change. For the plan to work, I needed Malyan to trust me. To come willingly. I had no wish to fight with Captain Maro or his men, or to make of the bunker a charnel house to rival the polar camp. If she was innocent, no harm would be done, and if she was not innocent, then it was better to win the battle before it even began.

“Survivors?” Pallino asked.

“Yes,” I answered him. “Not so many as I hoped. But the planet is ours.

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