Chapter 4 #3
Mr. Caphree did not respond. Nova gave Cutter a barely perceptible nod as she moved on to the next soldier.
If a captain was involved, chances were the others were in his order.
And if it was, in fact, all of them who’d been compromised, Nova considered herself in danger to walk among them.
Cutter signaled a trio of armed officers standing on the edge of the drill pad to attend him.
They positioned themselves on the outer edge of the order, effectively breathing down Mr. Caphree’s neck.
The arrival of the officers triggered nervous glances, and Nova knew she’d found them.
She moved through the rest of the order, signaling the quartermaster to jot down half a dozen names as their faces lit in her memory.
Every time she did so, the named soldier before her signaled their awareness, a readiness or defiance.
A set jaw, a clenched fist, a moment’s flickering eye contact.
They understood each other and that arrest was imminent.
But whomever their leader ultimately was didn’t seem to want a spectacle, because not one of them moved to strike her.
Nova made her way through the remaining orders for the sake of being thorough, but did so quickly enough that the usurpers she’d found wouldn’t have the time to organize retaliation.
Thankfully, they seemed confined to the one order.
Somewhat relieved, she made her way back to the center of the drill pad.
“The following names in Her Majesty’s Twelfth Order, step forward: Caphree, Silkwood, G. Grey, Wall, Tenerive,” she ordered. Some shuffled forward; some stood boldly out of their lines. That a Grey was among them was disappointing.
“The five of you, in your uniform, sat at the feet of a usurper yesterday, entertaining treason. You will be made accountable for—”
Wall, a visibly surly and small man with a damp bush of dark curls, burst forth from the order, knocking the other startled soldiers aside.
He looked Nova in the eye as he pushed forward, froth-mouthed and with a short blade raised in a tight fist overhead.
She squinted at him and assessed his target by the angle of his knife: a downward plunge into her neck, perhaps. Messy, if he could land it.
He lunged and Nova pivoted, allowing the blade to come down and slice empty air in front of her. In that instant, Cutter stepped forward and palmed the back of the soldier’s head, driving his face into the ground and sending the blade clattering.
“Whore!” Wall spat, Cutter’s boot on his face as the guards bound and collected him. “Fish and their bedwenches are the only traitors here. No masters but Men!”
Nova eyed the other usurpers, none of whom seemed inspired to aide him. On their faces just fright and embarrassment. Every fringe element had their extremists, she supposed.
“Gods willing, this one’s the most intelligent of you,” Nova told them, and then launched her voice across the drill pad. “The rest of the Twelfth Order is confined to quarters until our investigation is complete.”
The quartermaster took over the dismissal amid confused murmurs. Nova felt Cutter’s eyes on her and glanced upward to find a glimmer of approval on his otherwise serious face.
“We haven’t had cause to do much interrogation work,” he said. “But you seem ready.”
Nova nodded. She was always ready for anything. But then she sighed. “Cutter, Stoney was there.”
Cutter gave her a confused look as if he hadn’t heard her correctly, then looked to Stoney and back as if to ask if she was sure.
He also knew she was. In tutoring her in her queensguard role, he’d made it a point to make sure she knew she was trusted, and the burden of trust meant certainty of judgment.
The consequence of uncertainty would inevitably mean someone’s death.
She knew it hurt. She didn’t claim to know these people intimately, but for Cutter, someone who’d fought wars beside his generation and lost a good number of them…
well, this had to feel like another loss.
But an elder in the rebel ranks was a unique danger for the information they possessed and the connections they’d made by virtue of seniority.
“I can sort it for you,” she offered. He shook his head before she could get it all out and signaled to another set of guards to follow him to collect his friend.
He paused and gave her a meaningful look. “Your interrogation experience… it would be best pursued some other time.”
Nova frowned, somewhat startled, but Cutter turned away instead of explaining. Was he protecting Stoney?
No. She cursed herself silently for even thinking it. He was protecting her from witnessing what he felt he had to do.
Nova watched as her military dispersed around her, and she swallowed her doubts before joining Cutter and the escorts to the dungeons.
· YEMI ·
The year after the Bear King’s assassination, a lamp-oil salesman—perhaps grim on the future of his profession—stood in the gravel forecourt of the palace entrance and made a snide remark about women rulers in the absence of their men, and how the dead king must have found relief from his shrew of a queen in his grave.
Yemi, then eleven years old and within earshot, touched her archer’s practice arrow to a brazier.
She loosed it into the merchant’s cart and watched, stoic, as liquid fire consumed him.
The tale of it said she smiled as he melted and palace staff streamed from inside the corridors, at a loss for how to stop it. She didn’t remember smiling, just thinking that he’d deserved it, which may as well have been the same thing.
They’d put her on the spear after that. And the legend of her anger grew. These Senate sessions alongside her mother were designed to give her practice in ruling her own mind, and to show her countrymen that she was capable of leading their future.
Somewhere between signing off on monument commissions for the umpteenth fallen soldier and moderating a heated debate on appropriations for an expanded armory versus the treatment and cleanup of shell-shocked birds wreaking havoc on some formerly pristine balconies, Yemi’s posture began to crumble.
Her arm was asleep from her elbow down, and she’d nearly put out her own eye as her chin slipped off the tingling, tenuous base of the palm she’d been using to hold up her head.
She’d only checked her pocket watch once so as not to seem rude, but the sunlight and shadows shifting in the room told her it was well past midday.
The inspection was likely over, and she had much more interest in the outcome of that than whatever was being discussed in front of her.
“My constituents’ crops are blighted by these creatures blasted out of the sky by military testing, and then by the pests who feast on their carcasses in the fields!
And my gods, the smell!” Senator Robin frowned.
He was a squat man with thinning white hair and a complexion somewhere between tomato and eggplant, depending on his frequently elevated blood pressure. He’d been raving for a while now.
“Now’s the opportunity to replenish Ixia’s stores!
” Senator Loft declared. She was lanky and thin-lipped and perpetually severe in demeanor.
“Invest in readiness, in new weapons technology before our enemies seek us out again. Birds will always do bird things. To allocate even a fraction of our defense budget to something so frivolous—”
“Surely it’s the quality of life that makes it worth defending,” Senator Robin countered.
“Do you hear yourself? I’m talking about preparation for our nation’s next wars, and you’re on about rodents?” Loft huffed as the other senators exchanged wary here we go again glances.
“You’d care if your district was more than holes in the ground,” Senator Robin blustered.
“Yes, Ixia is built by our quarries. Odd of you to find that an insult,” Senator Loft defended.
“And its weapons from your mines, but I’m sure there’s no bias there, either,” Robin scoffed.
Loft glowered. “You aristocrats who can’t—”
“Farmers!” Robin cried, finally a shade shy of aubergine.
“Aristocrats who can’t be bothered to put a little extra energy into cleaning a bit of nature from their homes,” Loft hissed.
Robin crept closer and shook an equally purple finger in Loft’s face. “May every grape some lusty degenerate heathen pops into your mouth be coated entirely in crow shit.”
“That’s enough,” the queen interjected, her tone jovial if tired. She turned to Yemi. “Daughter? A solution?”
“Hmm?” Yemi blinked. “Oh. Well, we’re nowhere near depleted in our armory, but I’d still like the names of engineers pioneering weapons advancement. Funnel funds to them for their development and spend only on what we need without getting gratuitous about it.”
Senator Loft nodded her gruff approval while Senator Robin looked on like a tick about to pop.
“There has to be some other department we can give the bird problem to, though,” Yemi continued.
“It’s a sanitation issue, no? We’ll put it in the hands of Groundworks.
Have them present us with some cost-effective options ahead of the next meeting.
Our farmers are as much a priority as our defense. ”
“I agree,” said the queen.
Senator Robin exhaled loudly through his nose, and his face edged toward its more natural pink. “Of course, My Light.”
The senators began their round of self-congratulations marking what Yemi hoped was the end of their business for the day. She stretched feeling back into her bored bones and made to dismiss herself from their company when her mother leaned forward.
“Senator Lupin,” said the queen. The senator turned. “The Drakes own substantial property in your district?”
“Mine and about half a dozen others, yes, My Light.”
“But they live in yours?”