Soul of the World Read online

  Voices buzzed behind her as she ducked down an alley, with a glance up and down the street to ensure she was alone. Zi swelled up, his scales pulsing as his head darted about, eyes wide and hungering.

  “What do you think?” she whispered to him. “Want to have a look?”

  Yes. The thought dripped with anticipation.

  Well, that settled that. But this time it was her choice to empower herself, and she’d do it without Zi making her heart beat in her throat.

  She took a deep breath, sliding her eyes shut.

  In the darkness behind her eyelids, lines of power emanated from the ground in all directions, a grid of interconnecting strands of light. Colors and shapes surrounded the lines, fed by energy from the shops, the houses, the people of the city. Overwhelmingly she saw the green pods of Life, abundant wherever people lived and worked. But at the edge of her vision she saw the red motes of Body, a relic of a bar fight or something of that sort. And, in the center of the city square, a shallow pool of Faith. Nothing like an execution to bring out belief and hope in the Gods and the unknown.

  She opened herself to the leylines, binding strands of light between her body and the sources of the energy she needed.

  Her eyes snapped open as Body energy surged through her. Her muscles became more responsive, her pack light as a feather. At the same time, she twisted a Faith tether around herself, fading from view.

  By reflex she checked her stores. Plenty of Faith. Not much Body. She’d have to be quick. She took a step back, then bounded forward, leaping onto the side of the building. She twisted away as she kicked off the wall, spiraling out toward the roof’s overhang. Grabbing hold of the edge, she vaulted herself up onto the top of the tavern in one smooth motion.

  Very nice, Zi thought to her. She bowed her head in a flourish, ignoring his sarcasm.

  Now, can we go?

  Urgency flooded her mind. Best not to keep Zi waiting when he got like this. She let Body dissipate but maintained her shroud of Faith as she walked along the roof of the tavern. Reaching the edge, she lowered herself to have a seat atop a window’s overhang as she looked down into the square. With luck she’d avoid catching the attention of any more priests or other binders in the area, and that meant she’d have the best seat in the house for these grisly proceedings.

  She set her pack down beside her and pulled out her sketching materials. Might as well make a few silvers for her time.

  2

  ERRIS

  14th Light Cavalry

  Gand Territory

  Over there, you see it?” one of her lance-corporals whispered.

  “There, in front of the trees.” A soldier beside him pointed.

  More excited whispers.

  Erris snapped her fist up, signaling quiet in the ranks. She saw it. At the base of the forested hill she’d managed to sneak her men up during the night: a faint shimmer in the air, facing away from her soldiers, toward where she’d camped the night before. It meant the enemy had a binder skilled enough with Shelter to weave a shield against her attack.

  And it meant their commander was a fool.

  This flanking maneuver was far from her finest work. Simple. A child should have seen it. Anger flared, to think those poor soldiers at the base of the hill had to suffer under the command of an imbecile. Well, they wouldn’t have to suffer much longer.

  “Draw sabers,” she whispered. “One volley with sidearms, then give them steel. Keep it quiet. Pass the order.”

  Her command flew from soldier to soldier down their line, accompanied by the muted shink of cavalry sabers. She signaled to the horse-sergeants to stay in the rear with their mounts. The hill’s sloped angle and thick foliage wouldn’t allow a charge on horseback. Was that why the enemy commander was such a buffoon? Was he one of those who thought cavalry must stay mounted, that putting his soldiers’ backs to terrain impassable to horse rendered them impervious to her attack?

  She spat.

  A raised saber served to give the order, and she wheeled it forward to indicate a charge. As one her men surged over the brush and rocks they’d hidden behind.

  A light rain began to fall, mixing with blood and gunfire as the sounds of battle rang through the trees.

  “Hold still, damn you,” one of her sergeants cursed. “The brigade-colonel is on her way.”

  “She’s arrived, Sergeant,” Erris replied, dropping to a knee. The soldier being held down by his squad commander stared through them both as he moaned. Young. Fresh-faced and clean-shaven, with eyes like saucer plates, filled with the horror of coming face-to-face with death for the first time.

  The sergeant edged forward to make room for her at the boy’s side, losing his grip on an arm. She had to duck backward to avoid being taken across the side of her face as the wounded soldier flailed.

  “Easy, son,” she said, moving to place her hands on his chest as she pulled off her gloves, exposing the binder’s marks on the backs of her hands. “I’ve seen worse than you this morning.” She had. The boy’s wound was among the least severe to be judged worthy of her attention. A musket ball that, from the thin streams of blood, had missed his major arteries. He might have been fine in due time without her, though Gods be damned if she’d let her men roll the dice and recover without her intervention.

  The boy seemed not to hear, his rapid breathing punctuated by gasps and unintelligible muttering. She inhaled deep, closing her eyes. The green pods of Life energy were abundant in the wild, pooling in clouds beneath the elms and oaks, where fallen leaves and broken brush gave refuge to wildlife hiding from the sounds of battle. She tethered a strand between the boy and one of the nearby leylines. Not half so effective as if he could hold a binding on his own, and the barest sliver of what a fullbinder like Erris could do. But it would suffice.

  “There you go,” she said. “Easy.” The boy sucked in air as energy coursed through him, giving his body strength to deal with the pain. For the first time since her arrival his eyes came into focus. He was one of the new recruits, freshly conscripted from the southern colonies before they crossed the Gand border. Seventeen if he was a day, tempted by the glory of honorable battle against the enemies of the crown. Six months ago he might have had a season’s training, drilling under the watchful eye of foul-mouthed instructors, before they put him in the saddle. But they were at war now, and the army took what it could get.

  “Thank you,” the boy whispered hoarsely.

  “You’ll be fine, son.” She patted his shoulder as she stood. “Listen to your squad commander and you’ll be riding again within a day or two.” He sputtered a cough, nodding as he closed his eyes.

  The sergeant laid the boy down and rose to his feet with a hasty salute, fist to chest.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Shudder to think what we’d do without you.”

  “Feed the worms, I expect, Sergeant,” she said with a smile, eliciting a nervous laugh from the man. A fullbinder with Erris’s strength was a rare thing. The medics did their best with the supplies available to the army, but her gifts had kept the 14th Light Cavalry on its horses throughout this campaign, and her men knew it as well as she did.

  She returned the sergeant’s salute and left him to tend to his squad. One never got used to the smell of blood on this scale, the sounds men made as they lay dying. Lines of prisoners marched beside her, prodded by saber or carbine toward the field where her men had started to gather, away from the carnage of the fight. A skirmish, really. Two brigades colliding away from the trade roads. Little chance of any glory, or of seeing the battle named in the colonial papers. Such was the lot of the cavalry. Men with noble titles and fat purses declared wars for the glory of king and country, and her men did most of the dying, far away from medals, in backwoods and countryside left untouched in better times.

  Six months, now, since the crown had declared its war on Gand, and expected its colonies across the sea to follow suit. A means to check the enemy’s expansion, according to the pamphlets circulated
to justify the invasion, though Gand had not been alone in its drive to empire. Conquest and colonies brought the great powers gold and trade, but more important, discoveries of new bindings. The academics had argued larger claims of territory led to a stronger leyline grid, able to retain a broader spectrum of energies and bolster the gifts of those who could tether them. It had proven true enough, even in her lifetime. The Thellan War, five years before, had resulted in a select few of Sarresant’s binders gaining access to Entropy. No way of telling what a successful campaign against Gand would bring. And not her place to speculate. It was for men two hundred leagues north, in the palaces and manors of New Sarresant, Rasailles, and Villecours, or two thousand leagues across the sea, to dream up reasons to fight. Enough for her that the red-coated soldiers wanted her men dead, and it took killing them to keep her boys alive.

  Her aide stood a few paces up the hill, waiting for her to finish reviewing the wounded. Sadrelle was a good man, a veteran of the autumn campaign who’d proven himself as a scout. Newly promoted to his lieutenant’s stripe, but that was the way of things during war. Her last aide had run afoul of a Gand sharpshooter, so now she had Sadrelle.

  He made a salute as he fell into step beside her.

  “Sir. Lance-Captain d’Guile has the prisoner you asked for. And the medics sent the bill.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Fourteen dead. Six more critical beyond your aid. Thirty-six wounded and recovering.”

  She cursed under her breath. A light toll, considering the forces had been almost evenly matched. But even a light toll weighed heavy on her shoulders. The soldiers trusted her with their lives; every mistake was paid in blood. Twenty dead, or would be soon enough.

  “Thank you, Aide-Lieutenant. See to it the supply wagons arrive on the double. I need our wounded ready to travel within the half hour.”

  “I’ve already sent word, sir.”

  “Good.”

  They walked on in silence, making their way back to the impromptu command post where her officers had placed her flag. Let the men see her, poised and outwardly confident, the very image of a brigade-colonel in her moment of victory. Inside her stomach roiled. Five hundred and seventeen souls in the 14th now. The Nameless take the butcher and his bills.

  At the base of the hill, a double line of empty-saddled horses trotted into view. The horse-sergeants must have led them around the back of the approach as soon as she gave the order to charge. A confident move, approaching hubris. What if it had been a trap? She made a mental note to dress the handlers down that evening. She was not infallible as a commander, no matter what her men liked to think.

  The men around the command post saluted her approach, all save a slumped figure at their center.

  “What do we have, Lance-Captain?” she asked. Lance-Captain d’Guile had command of one of her four fighting companies, five hundred horse at full strength, though the 14th hadn’t been close to full strength in some time.

  “A lieutenant, sir. Second in command of a company of infantry. Says they were with the Second Army, under Duke Dunweir.”

  She raised an eyebrow. A lieutenant, the highest-ranking officer among those who hadn’t fled or been slain in the fighting. And 2nd Army. That was damned curious. The prisoner had lines under his eyes, dust smeared in ink-black patches on his skin as only a forced march could do. He’d been driven hard, perhaps a week or more of dawn-to-dusk marches without the benefit of a horse or a binder to spell his fatigue. What was the Gand 2nd Army doing so far north?

  “Let’s see what he has to say.” She nodded to Sadrelle, who among his other talents had a near-perfect command of the Gand tongue. Her own ability with the language was not poor, but it wouldn’t do to have a Sarresant commander stutter over simple questions when interrogating a prisoner. “Ask him to repeat his rank and designation, for my sake.”

  Sadrelle relayed her question in the harsh, chopped speech of the Gandsmen and the prisoner raised his head, looking her in the eyes as he responded. She gave the lieutenant full marks for bravery. Enemy he may be, but this man was no coward.

  “Lieutenant Alistair Radford,” the prisoner said in the Gand tongue, voice straining with a mix of pride, fatigue, and resignation. “Second to Major Stuart, third company of Colonel Hansus’s regiment, Second Army under his excellency the Duke of Dunweir.”

  “And what were your orders on this march, Lieutenant? Why was your regiment split from the main body of the Second Army?” Sadrelle relayed the message.

  The prisoner stared at her.

  She held his gaze, maintaining calm in her eyes as she spoke. “Tell the lieutenant his cooperation will determine whether he dines with Colonel Hansus in a fortnight or I put him and his fellow soldiers to the sword. He knows a cavalry unit isn’t going to march prisoners behind our supply wagons.”

  Silence hung in the air after Sadrelle finished the translation. At last, the prisoner spoke. “Colonel Hansus is dead,” he said bitterly. “I stood beside him as he fell.”

  She dropped to a knee and replied in Gand tongue herself. “Then you know what to do. Your men need you. Don’t fail them.”

  The prisoner held his silence for a few more moments, then hung his head as he began to talk.

  Half an hour later, she sat astride Jiri, issuing her final commands before they moved. A blessing from the Gods to be with her mount once more. Jiri whickered, bobbing her head up and down, and she patted the white mare’s neck in a calming gesture. Just as Erris worried for her soldiers, she knew Jiri worried for her. They were a pair; such was the nature of the bondsteed’s training, though no few of the prisoners cast dubious glances toward the figure she cut on Jiri’s back. Erris was not a tall woman, nor thickly built. Her blue cavalry uniform had to be specially sized for her frame, as did the long steel saber she wore on her belt. Jiri on the other hand would never be mistaken for anything other than what she was. Nineteen hands high and finely muscled despite her size, Jiri towered over any other horse on the 14th’s rope lines. Her training as a bondsteed—the formal name for mounts accustomed to bindings from their riders—only added to a strength and grace that would have made her an armored charger a few centuries before.

  Erris maintained a simple binding of Life energy to keep their senses sharp. Her men had made quick work of preparing for the day’s ride, and if the weather permitted they would cover thirty leagues before sundown. A hard ride made harder for having started the day with bloodshed, and another fifty leagues tomorrow, Gods and the weather permitting. Enough to reach the main body of the Sarresant army, to deliver the prisoner’s information with time to act, if the bloody fools at high command took it for what it was.

  The captured subcommander of an infantry company couldn’t know the gravity of what he’d revealed. But if Duke Dunweir’s 2nd Army was committed to a march into the Sarresant colonies, it could only mean the Gandsmen were trying a desperate gambit, leveraging their superior numbers for a hammer strike at New Sarresant itself. A gambit that might have gone undetected if Colonel Hansus’s regiment hadn’t taken the wrong fork two days past and stumbled into her patrol sweep.

  Dumb luck. Or a trap. She couldn’t rule out either, in the military. Amusing just how thin the line could be between genius and idiocy.

  She nudged Jiri forward with her knees, riding to the front of the column.

  “Sure we can’t talk you out of this, sir?” d’Guile asked, a wry grin on his face.

  She heeled Jiri to a stop beside them. “No, Captain; the order stands. You are to ride for the main body of the army in all haste. Relay what we’ve learned to high command. I’ll be along within a few days to confirm with a visual report.”

  Lance-Captain Pourrain coughed politely beside her. “Colonel, with respect, didn’t Vicomte-General Carailles reprimand you quite severely the last time you led a squad to do reconnaissance?” Pourrain was her most veteran commander, a former enlisted soldier who’d been promoted to a captaincy despite having never attended an ac
ademy. He kept his expression level, but she knew him well enough to recognize the dry humor behind his comment. Vicomte-General Carailles could bugger himself on the Exarch’s longblade for all she cared what the man thought of her command performance, or her personal risk-taking.

  All four of the lance-captains chuckled.

  “Take care of yourself, sir,” Lance-Captain d’Guile said.

  “And you take care of the men,” she said. “D’Guile, you have the Fourteenth until I return.”

  He saluted, followed by the other three captains. She saluted back, dismissing them.

  The 14th Light Cavalry split into two columns. One long, sinuous line of horse and wagons followed behind d’Guile’s banner as it turned northward, back toward the Sarresant border. The other, a squad of six led by the brigade commander, turned east toward the last reported position of the enemy army.

  3

  SARINE

  Sacre-Lin Chapel

  Maw District, New Sarresant

  Rays of purple and orange streamed through the chapel’s stained glass, making a mask of bright color over her eyes. She might have appreciated it more had she not been soaring over a field of freshly bloomed flowers, taking in the spring scents as she glided on a soft breeze. Or something like that. The dream haze faded and she sat up with a long stretch and a yawn.

  Her loft at the top of the chapel was small, an alcove made for the glass workers to tend to the stained-glass relief that dominated the central nave. Three panes of glass in rectangular slats, depicting each of the three Trithetic Gods: two smaller panes depicting the Oracle and the Veil, with a centerpiece showing the stern, armored figure of the Exarch. She offered a quick prayer of thanks to all three as she rose from her makeshift mattress of piled blankets. Her devotion to the virtuous paths had never been as sincere as her adoptive uncle might have liked, but she had a warm place to sleep now, and plenty of space to display her sketches. Being awoken by sunlight through a stained-glass masterwork was a far sight better than feral cats scratching at her, hoping she’d died in the night and gifted them an easy meal. Or worse. The Maw district was not a kind place. Whatever perverse notion inspired the priests to build a chapel in the slums she could hardly fathom. It saw little enough use, for all the love her uncle put toward its upkeep.