Havemercy Read online

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said Adamo, speaking for all of us. After a moment everyone set to nodding, like they’d all been waiting for their neighbor to go first. It was like not knowing what had happened to the girls had cut off our balls and we had to behave neat as students in case th’Esar had any information that would lead to fixing them.

  A strange look passed over th’Esar’s face. He might’ve been worried, for all I knew, though it sure looked all wrong on him. He probably wasn’t much used to it.

  For a second I thought he was going to kick us all out of the room. He put a hand over his face for composure, and when he removed it his expression was back to normal, the way it looked in all his portraits.

  “We have faith in your ability to weather out this disobedience as best you can,” he said at last. “In addition, we will have someone sent to inspect the mechanics of the dragons should they continue to give you trouble.”

  “My men,” said Adamo, straightening up—and he wasn’t that tall to begin with, but he could look fucking impressive when he wanted to, “won’t fly under these conditions.”

  I felt something unfamiliar, pervasive, and kind of warm in my chest, though whether it’d come from the others or something else I didn’t know. It was a little like being proud, I’d’ve guessed if I’d been forced to name it, though I’d never had it directed at anyone besides Havemercy when she’d done really fine.

  “Is that so?” asked th’Esar, though somewhere deep in the back of his expression I could tell something was shaken loose. “We regret that it has come to this.”

  “We’re fighting your war,” said Adamo, and I didn’t need to look at the professor’s face to know he’d gone stupid with shock; he must’ve been figuring it was all over for us now that he’d lost his one sane ally in all this. “I think we’ve got a right to know what’s going on, and I say we ain’t—aren’t—leaving the ground until we do.”

  The threat settled into the middle of the room like a flag torn from the pole. For a moment things were impossibly silent, like maybe we were all holding our breath and waiting to see whether th’Esar would snap and order us all executed for treason, or whether he’d smarten up quick and remember who it was’d been winning this war all along.

  It was th’Esar that looked away first, head bent to examine the ring on his finger again, but we all knew what it meant.

  Just because a man was th’Esar didn’t mean he didn’t give signs of surrender the same as all the rest.

  “If any of you sees fit to spread this about the city,” he began, “we will see to it that the only place you’ll ever fly again is off of the cliffs at Howl’s End, do you understand? If there is word of this anywhere—if our Provost thinks the people have been given so much as an inkling—we will hold the lot of you personally responsible, and we will not hear otherwise on the subject.”

  I thought I understood what he was saying, and it was pretty clever, because anyone could claim accidents happened, but here he was telling us right up front that even if accidents happened, it would still be our fault. That had us fucked, good and proper. Yet as much as I hated it, if he could see a way toward fixing Havemercy, then I guessed I’d have to stand it.

  Leastways, I had to stand it until she was fixed, then I could think of a way to repay th’Esar for all his kindness.

  Some of the others were grumbling quietly, but I knew they were all just as stuck as I was, keen to get the information th’Esar had even if it meant he’d caught us in his net.

  “We understand,” said Adamo, in a tone of voice that held dark things for those of us who didn’t.

  Th’Esar paused for a moment. “Who is that?” he asked finally, looking toward the tagalong. “He isn’t one of our corps.”

  “Margrave Royston’s assistant, Your Majesty,” Adamo answered, so smooth it was like he’d been expecting it all along. He was smarter than his smashed-up face let him look. “If he leaves this room, then so do we.”

  There could’ve been a standoff there and then, only we’d already postured long enough, and it seemed th’Esar’d grown tired of it. Good; better not to waste all our time and get the fuck on with it.

  “There is a sickness,” said th’Esar. “It began shortly after you were called upon to resume your services to our realm, and it began with some of our oldest and most treasured families of great Talent. With the information that we have been able to gather to this date, we can state that the illness manifests with similarly minor symptoms across the board. All the cases began with headaches, small fevers, and an aching of the joints. This later progressed to dizziness among the subjects we observed, leading to a general state of disorientation and nausea. It is after an afflicted person’s attempt to use his or her Talent that the illness hits hardest, often disabling the patients in question almost immediately.”

  It was a lot of talk to explain something that th’Esar had been keeping a secret all this time, and parts of it sounded real nasty in particular, like keeping the magicians under observation as some kind of medical experiment instead of invalids needing proper care. Considering how th’Esar did things, I wasn’t much surprised.

  I took that to mean that whatever was going on with this magicians’ plague, it’d begun just after the air raids started up again. That was a long fucking time to keep us in the dark about things, though it explained why he’d been so keen on calling back them that’d wronged him bad enough to be exiled in the first place. He needed them pretty bad, since all his good little soldiers had been hit with this “sickness.” I felt anger snap through me clean like a whip, knew that I couldn’t release it ’til we’d heard the whole story—but th’Esar was going to have to see a way toward explaining why he’d kept his own counsel about something as fucking serious as whatever plague had hit the city while we fought to defend his own precious self.

  No one spoke, and so he continued.

  “We do not know the cause, only that it has thus far afflicted only our magicians. As you can imagine,” he added, suddenly sharp again, like he had any right to be intimidating when he was such a liar it made the rest of us look like the purest saints of Regina, “it has been a crippling blow to our efforts in the war.”

  Abruptly—the way it felt when Have turned a perfect arc or we dove with the wind singing around us—everything fell into place. Why the Ke-Han had been rolling over, getting us real nice and sure of our victory. The Ke-Han’d had another move planned all along, the way Adamo always did in chess, and right when you thought you were about to take the king, he’d come in from behind and destroy everything you’d worked for. The raids had all been one hell of a distraction, and if Have’d been flying right, I’d’ve left the room to get on her right then and teach the hordes a thing or two about how much I hated feeling like I’d been tricked. They’d done us over real nice.

  “There’s magic in the dragons.” That was the professor this time, and I don’t think he realized right away that he was addressing the fucking Esar because he’d got that tone in his voice, like when he argued with me even when he knew it was suicide, and hadn’t said “Your Majesty” even once. “That’s why they aren’t working. You knew there was something wrong with the magicians, it’s the simplest connection to make between them and the dragons. It’s obvious. Whatever’s attacked the magicians is also affecting the—” His voice caught on something, like maybe the realization that he was as good as telling th’Esar he’d fucked up bad. “It’s affecting the dragons,” he said quickly, with a trace of whatever iron it was he had in him that had kept him standing after the ride with Havemercy.

  Maybe he was also realizing what it meant to be standing with us when th’Esar had marked him out real private as his own spy. That part of my plan, at least, had gone over without a hitch. It was easy to see what side the professor was really on, and whatever satisfaction I felt over it was just because I’d planned things exactly that way.

  “We had hoped that it would not come to this,” said th’Esar, neither
acknowledging nor discounting what the professor had said. I thought he might faint with relief, but he went on standing. He was stubborn like that. “The corps is our best hope in the war to come, and with the magicians—disabled, as it were—perhaps the corps is our only hope.”

  Big fucking surprise there, I thought, but I only sneered a little.

  “Your Majesty,” Adamo started again, real placating like. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what sort of a help we can be with things going wrong the way they are all over.”

  Th’Esar lifted his head, serene as you please, like he hadn’t spent the last months lying to us, like we wouldn’t have all got killed for no proper reason if we’d been a bit unluckier and not so good at our jobs.

  “We are greatly in need of time,” he said. “Time to figure out what we can do to counteract this ailment, that we might beat our enemies across the border for good.”

  “You want us to keep them occupied,” said Adamo, and it wasn’t a question so much as something he’d only just figured out.

  “Yes, Chief Sergeant. That is exactly what we are asking of you.”

  “Flying our dragons the way they are now,” said Adamo, careful and clear, “is simple madness. If it isn’t suicide yet, it soon will be.” He left out the part I knew he wanted to add: that it was something th’Esar couldn’t ask us to do, ’cause nothing got a man riled up like telling him what he couldn’t do, and Adamo knew it. There was no sense in provoking him—he was a man already on the edge of something too big for him to handle and something he had to handle nonetheless.

  Much as I hated th’Esar right then, I didn’t fancy being in his boots, either, and not just ’cause of the color of them.

  “Your Majesty,” Jeannot spoke up, stepping past Ace and Ghislain and making his way to the front to stand by me, “allow me to presume so much as to see if I am completely clear as to your royal plan.”

  There was something snide in the way he said it, but it was perfectly politic. Jeannot was fucking clever, make no mistake. Th’Esar nodded and waved his hand in a gesture that seemed to indicate he was done wasting words on us and just wanted us to get all our cards on the table at once. Maybe then he’d sweep us from underneath. Maybe not.

  “The reason we weren’t informed of the present situation was that we would continue to keep the Ke-Han busy at the pass,” Jeannot explained, neat and simple as you’d like, “during which period the corps could buy vital time for some . . . cure to be discovered.”

  Th’Esar’s mouth went a little white and his cheeks a little red, since his complexion was the sort that betrayed too much emotion—not enough of the old Ramanthe in him any way you cut it. “In a manner of speaking,” he said at length, “that was indeed our plan. We hope, Airman Jeannot, that you are not insinuating your displeasure for this plan?”

  “I hope I’m not insinuating anything at all, Your Majesty,” Jeannot replied, and melted back into the crowd, having made his point loud and clear enough even for the deaf, dumb, and blind.

  We were all silent for a while, mulling that one over, since it was pretty obvious to all of us by now that we’d been used as bait, flying targets, a forlorn fucking hope they called it in romans or in melodramatic theatre, and I was so mad right then seven shades of red had come down over my eyes. It was only the professor’s fingers digging into my elbow that kept me locked into place, and even that wasn’t going to be enough real soon.

  “I take it that no cure has yet been found,” the tagalong suddenly said. We all must’ve forgotten he was even there because suddenly everyone in the room was looking at him, even me, and we could all see clear as day that he was crying.

  “The illness is a peculiar one,” th’Esar said, not out of pity for him, just stating the facts. “It seems to have affected first and most seriously those of purest Talent, and has worked onward from there to those with Talents more and more diluted.”

  “So basically,” I said, “for the first time, you’re lucky if you’re a mutt.”

  The left corner of th’Esar’s mouth twisted, sort of like a mirroring of my own sneer. “I suppose that is one way of phrasing it,” he conceded at last.

  “Your Majesty will beg my pardon,” Adamo said, in a voice that didn’t sound as how that was what he wanted th’Esar to be begging for in particular. “But I can’t let my men fly under such circumstances. At this point—with the rate of deterioration—flying any one of the dragons out to the Cobalts and back would be enough of a risk, much less trying to use them for battle.”

  “We have no other recourse,” th’Esar replied.

  “Then we’re going to be overrun by the Ke-Han,” Adamo said, squaring his jaw. “Without anything but the Cobalts standing between us and them.”

  Now there was real trouble. To be honest? I thought th’Esar was going to sentence Adamo to death right away, and his face turned purple like a dragon’d set his head on fire. It was ludicrous enough to be funny, only there wasn’t a single man jack of us who could see their way around to laughing—not even Compagnon. We weren’t the only poor fucks who were screwed seven ways, both up and down. Everyone in Volstov was going to be smoking opium and having twelve wives pretty soon, that is if the Ke-Han didn’t just decide to fucking kill us all. It was only a matter of time—which was why th’Esar’d been so careful with it—before the Ke-Han rode on over here across the plains and took what they’d been wanting since it had belonged to the Ramanthines, because we didn’t have a way to defend it.

  It was a sobering thought. It made a man feel helpless, and if there was one thing I hated more than anything else, it was knowing someone’d tied my hands behind my back. But no matter which way I turned the problem to the light, I couldn’t see my way clear toward solving it. The whole thing blew like a Hapenny whore.

  “Are you refusing to do your duty, Chief Sergeant Adamo?” th’Esar asked.

  Adamo didn’t back down for even a second. “The way I see my duty, Your Majesty, is this,” he said. “We signed up to die for our country. In the past, some of us have done exactly that. But part of our code is to protect our dragons before anything else—and if we fly them as you wish us to, there’s no doubt in my mind that they will be destroyed. If that’s what you’re thinking is best for our country—to let them fall into the Ke-Han’s hands, to let the Ke-Han have at what they want so badly—then I’m ready, as a soldier and as a man loyal to my country, to hear your reasoning.”

  Th’Esar made another one of those bird-wing motions with his hands. “We are working tirelessly even now to find a cure for the illness,” he said. “Yet we must have time to think—to incorporate into our actions this troubling new knowledge you have brought before us. It changes a great many things.” Adamo nodded once, curt, like the fucking perfect soldier he was. “We will call for you this evening, once we have considered the evidence before us, and, hopefully, have come to an arrangement that is more agreeable for all of us. But understand this, Chief Sergeant Adamo—if I say that the dragons must be sacrificed, then they must be sacrificed.”

  There was this terrible silence, and I felt it deep down as my bones and blood and even further. Right then, if I’d been allowed to keep my knives on me before stepping foot inside the palace, I would’ve split His Majesty apart before he had a chance to spew out platitudes and horseshit as fucked up as all that. He might’ve paid for her, but Have was mine, and I’d’ve staked my life on how the other boys felt pretty damn close to the way I did.

  Adamo just nodded; and then he bowed, stiff and formal, like we’d all been dismissed without us noticing, and turned to leave.

  “Your Majesty,” the professor said, clearing his throat, and I had to give him points for how brave he was—even though it didn’t matter much for how stupid he was at the same time as that. “There is one other matter, if I may presume to address it.”

  Th’Esar lifted an eyebrow. “You’ve presumed many things today,” he said, leaning forward in his chair. Then, against all fucking
odds, he nodded. “Be quick. Our time is quite precious, as you are well aware.”

  The professor swallowed and came forward. “As for the situation with the magicians being kept in confinement at the Basquiat,” he said, “since this young apprentice has already learned of this private matter—and as the reason for the magicians’ confinement is not, in fact, due to the quarantine of disease but rather to prevent the spread of panic alone—then I should think there is little reason at present for this young man to be kept from his mentor. It may also prove somewhat useful—though of course Your Highness is far better versed in these matters than I could ever hope to be—to allow a fresh young mind to work on the problem in tandem with a man I believe to be one of Your Majesty’s most talented magicians.”

  “The Margrave Royston,” th’Esar said. He obviously thought it was worse than being bled to death, being given a good idea he hadn’t thought of himself, but he wasn’t a fool, and I could see right away he liked it. “Very well,” he said after a long pause. “The young man shall be taken to the Basquiat. The rest of you, however, must return to the Airman and await our summons.”

  Things happened after that sort of all at once: Adamo barking out orders, and the tagalong thanking the professor as though he was some kind of saint or something, and then there were servants being let in, some to show us out and the rest, I figured, there to show the tagalong the secret way of getting inside the Basquiat. I almost wanted to go with him, to get some answer about how to fix Have, but that wouldn’t’ve done anyone a lick of good. Besides that, I was too busy watching the strange look that came over the professor and made him glow all over, almost like he’d stepped into a shaft of sunlight—only we were deep inside the palace, and so he couldn’t have done.

  I guess it must have been pride or maybe even happiness, but in any case it wasn’t the sort of expression I’d ever seen the professor wear before that minute. Not during all his time at the Airman. Not even once.