Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twelve days later the declaration of war arrived in a letter with a purple seal.
As soon as Verna read it, she wrote to the nine houses. She was halfway through when Kalen appeared in the doorway. She held up the declaration for her to read.
After Kalen scanned it, she shook her head. "He's declared war on nine houses with no money and a guard he can't pay."
"He has."
"This isn’t the act of a clever ruler. It’s a desperate man knocking the board over because he's losing."
"Exactly," Verna said and went back to her letter. He’s declared war on us. Hold your positions.
She sent nine riders before the morning bell had finished ringing.
For two weeks the palace made noise but didn't move. More letters arrived at the estate, each more emphatic and less coherent than the last, the language escalating from imperial command to something that was beginning to read more like personal grievance than governance. Verna read each one, filed it in the locked drawer, and didn’t respond.
The other houses did the same, sending her notes that said essentially that they’d received another one and were ignoring it as per instructions. Carlton said it with a dry humour that told her the collective mood of the nine houses had changed from anxious to approaching impatience.
Carlton's contact in the palace administrative staff sent word that three more advisers had been dismissed in a single morning and replaced with men whose primary qualification appeared to be their willingness to agree that problems weren't problems. She also reported that the garrison's most recent pay had arrived eight days late and at two thirds of the expected amount, and that the mood among the soldiers was getting ugly.
Kalen read this report over Verna's shoulder one evening, then said, "When soldiers start doing their sums and find themselves short-changed, they lose the will to fight.
"I know," Verna said. "Which is why I need the network to hold for another month at most. After that, he won't have the forces to do anything even if he wanted to."
"You think he'll try something before then?" Kalen said.
"He's Borgine," Verna said. "He's spent twenty-five years doing whatever he wanted because nobody stopped him. He doesn't know how to sit still and accept a loss. He'll try something."
She was right, though the something came sooner than she anticipated.
On a grey morning in the fourth week, one of her coastal riders came up the track at a pace that meant important news.
Verna was in the vineyard inspecting the winter pruning when she heard the horse.
The rider was one of the women from the northern stretch of the network, a farmer's daughter from the village above the headland who could ride faster than anyone else on the coast. She also had the additional advantage of looking, on a horse, like someone going about ordinary business rather than carrying urgent intelligence.
She pulled up in a spray of mud and said as soon as she dismounted, "The palace guard left Castine before dawn this morning. Three companies. They split at the southern crossroads. One went to Carlton, one to Hardy and the other to Stellan."
Verna looked at her steadily. "How far ahead of them are we?"
"Two hours. Maybe a little more. The roads are muddy from last night's rain. It'll slow them down."
"Good," Verna said. "Go back to your post and keep watching. Send word if anything else moves out of the city."
After the rider had galloped off, Verna pocketed her pruning shears as she hurried back up toward the house.
She found Kalen in the training yard working with two of the younger guards, a session that by the look of the guards' flushed faces and stiff movements had been going on for some time.
Kalen looked up when she came through the gate.
Verna said, "The emperor’s troops are on their way to Carlton, Hardy and Stellan."
Kalen set down the practice weapon she was holding without any change of expression, said something brief to the guards that dismissed them, and walked to Verna. "Your network. Is it ready?"
"It's been ready for three weeks. Riders will have reached the three houses to warn them by now."
Then Verna went back to the house to wait, which would be the hardest part.
Kalen came in ten minutes later and sat in the chair across the desk.
"Talk me through the network," she said.
Not because she didn't know it. She had heard most of it assembled over the preceding weeks, but she knew that talking through it would help Verna’s nerves.
This was the kind of thing Kalen did, the quiet practical care of a woman who understood people without making a performance of understanding them.
"Riders on the coast road at six points between here and Castine," Verna said, keeping her hands busy with the correspondence on the desk, because she needed something to do.
"Each one is in sight of the next. A message can travel the full length in under two hours even in bad weather.
" She signed a letter without reading it, which she would normally never do, and set it aside.
"At each of the three targeted estates, the household has been warned.
Carlton has his own soldiers and whatever the villages can send.
Hardy the same. Stellan has fewer soldiers than the others but the two fishing villages on his coast have been reliable and they'll have had the warning by now. "
"And the palace guard won't know any of this," Kalen said.
"They'll know the gates are shut when they arrive at them," Verna said. "That's all they'll know until they look at the walls."
Kalen nodded slowly. "You built this in three weeks."
"I've been thinking about it since before the Trials," Verna said. "The network was always going to be necessary. I just didn't know which form the threat would take."
Kalen looked at her with the expression she sometimes wore when she was reassessing something. "You planned for this before you knew whether the Trials would even go badly."
"I planned for it because I knew Borgine," Verna said. "Win or lose, he was always going to come for me eventually. The Trials just accelerated the timeline."
Dara appeared in the doorway with a tray of food and set it on the corner of the desk, then left again without a word.
Verna looked at the food, finding she was hungry, and ate without stopping what she was doing, which was pretending to work while actually counting the time in her head.
Two hours for the warning to reach the estates.
Another, perhaps two, for the palace guard to arrive.
Then whatever happened at the gates, the ride back to Castine and however long it took for the report to reach Borgine.
They were looking at evening before they knew anything.
The first rider came back in the late afternoon.
When Verna heard the horse in the courtyard, she was out of her chair and down the corridor before the door had fully opened. Kalen appeared from the barracks right behind her.
The rider, one of Verna’s Abrensian guards, was mud-splattered and breathing hard from the journey.
She said immediately, "Carlton's gates were shut when they arrived.
His soldiers on the walls with the field workers behind them, and half the farming families from the two nearest villages.
" She paused, and a smile broke over her usually stoic face.
"Two women from the olive press were there with the long-handled paddles they use for the vats. They were at the front."
"The company soldiers," Verna said. "What did they do?"
"They looked at the walls for a long time," the rider said.
"Their commander rode up to the gate and called out he had imperial orders.
Carlton looked down at him from the parapet and said nothing, which I think was worse than if he'd argued.
" She paused. "Then the commander returned to his company where they talked for a while.
Finally, they turned around and went back the way they came. "
Verna let out a slow breath.
"Casualties?" Kalen asked.
"None. Nobody even drew a weapon."
"Excellent," Verna said with a smile, then sent the rider to the kitchen to eat while they waited for the next rider.
The Hardy soldier rode in an hour later with the same story. The unpaid soldiers saw the well-defended walls and turned around before the commander had even finished telling them the gate wasn't opening.
Stellan's rider came after dark, riding hard, and said the fishing villages had arrived at the estate before the palace guard.
The sight of the combined force on the walls, which included a significant number of people carrying boat hooks and gutting knives, had stopped them in their tracks and the imperial soldiers had ridden off back to Castine.
Verna stood in the courtyard in the cold evening air and looked up at the sky, at the three moons on the horizon, and felt an enormous sense of achievement.
All three companies had retreated back to Castine in the winter dark to report that the coastal estates were defended and the mission had not been accomplished.
Kalen stood beside her. Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"It held," Verna said.
"It did," Kalen agreed.
They went inside and Verna sat at her desk and wrote to all nine houses, a longer letter than usual, telling them what had happened and what came next.
She wrote it, choosing each word carefully, because this letter would be read by nine house heads and it needed to say the right things in the right order.
She reiterated that it had only been the first round and didn't want anyone relaxing.
Wounded, Borgine was likely to do something irrational.
After she’d despatched a rider to deliver the letters, Verna sat alone in front of the fire, with the sea audible through the window and her hands still for the first time all day.
What happened in the palace when the three companies reported back, she heard over the following two days from Carlton's contact and two other sources, each of them giving her a different fragment that she assembled into a full picture.
Borgine had been furious, ranting and raving, throwing things at the wall and firing his advisers.
Verna thought about an emperor on his throne in an empty room, and felt a measure of pity as well as triumph.
She thought about her mother, who had been forced into a marriage which had made her unhappier every year, until she stopped laughing altogether.
Then she picked up her pen and wrote to Carlton. Hold the course. Don't move yet. Wait for him to speak first.
She was sealing the letter when Kalen came in and set a cup of tea on the desk beside her elbow, which she had taken to doing in the evenings without comment.
"I thought you’d be looking much cheerier," Kalen said.
"I'm thinking about my mother. She never got to do any of this," Verna replied sadly.
"She was clever, capable and she loved this land.
She spent her adult life being demoralised by a man who had legal authority over her simply because she was a woman.
" She looked at the sealed letter on the desk.
"I keep thinking she would have been very good at all of this.
The network, the coordination, the letters.
" She paused. "Better than me probably."
"No," Kalen said simply. "You are your mother's daughter. Whatever she could have been, she put into you."
"He'll send someone tomorrow," Verna said, when she trusted her voice again. "He's had a night on the throne to think, and he’ll know he has to talk with us. He'll reach out. Bain probably, or whoever's left that he trusts."
"And you'll negotiate," Kalen said.
"Yes," Verna said. "On our terms, not his and then I hope it will be finished but he’s unpredictable."
Kalen nodded. "A cornered Borgine will be dangerous."
"I know, but we hold all the cards."
"All the same, don’t underestimate him.
"Stay tonight," Verna said.
"I will," Kalen said. "But we need to talk."
Verna nodded, knowing what was coming. "You’re going after we take control of the throne," she said, not as a question, as a fact.
"I can’t stay, Verna. I must go home."
Verna tilted her head to study her. "You never really told me why you came to kill the emperor."
"Not now. Savour your triumph tonight."