Queenmaker 5-6
Sorry for the delay – real life intervened.
Chapter Five
“She told you, then?” Violet shot me a mischievous look. “I knew it!”
I stared at her. “You knew?”
Violet smirked “You didn’t?”
Her face fell a second later. I felt a twinge of pity. I’d thought I’d had a hard childhood, but compared to Violet I’d grown up in the lap of luxury. Her mother had been a whore, from what little she’d told me, and she’d fled onto the streets when her mother’s pimp – a man I intended to kill if I ever met him – had started implying she could take her mother’s place. And even though she’d dressed as a young man, she’d been in constant danger. If I’d been a regular nobleman when she tried to rob me, I’d have cut her down in a moment and left her to bleed out in the gutter.
“No,” I said. I’d assumed it wasn’t going to happen. Careless of me. I’d had two kids already. I knew I wasn’t infertile. I knew men who’d had kids in their eighties and I was nowhere near that old. “It never crossed my mind.”
Violet looked pained. I could guess what she was thinking. A man who fathered a child out of wedlock could pretend the child didn’t exist, if he wished. She probably knew hundreds of women who’d been knocked up and then abandoned, left to raise their children in poverty or sell them into slavery or something even worse. I wouldn’t do that – I wouldn’t – but who knew? I could name a dozen politicians who’d railed against abortion on grounds of moral principles, only to secretly pay for abortions when unexpected pregnancies threatened to torpedo their lives and campaigns. Bastards. It wasn’t as if most political leaders couldn’t afford to raise an additional child.
“I’m going to marry her,” I said, unsure why I was justifying myself to her. “Anyway … what is the mood on the streets?”
Violet straightened. I smiled inwardly. Violet hadn’t had any education at all, at least until I’d taken her into my service, but she was smart. Street-smart. If there was anyone who could put their finger on the pulse of public mood, it was her. She and her ring of spies could go anywhere, unseen and unremarked, and listen to the people as they spoke over beers or in the workplaces or everywhere else. I paid them well too, giving them half the money to use as they saw fit and spending the other half on shelters and schools. Given time, I told myself, life would become better for all the street children. Besides, it was more than anyone else had ever done for them.
“There is a sense of cautious optimism,” Violet said, clasping her hands behind her back. “The average man on the streets has a great deal of faith in you, after you returned from exile and kicked out the aristos who wanted to sell us out to the warlords. They think you’ll win again, even though the warlords are powerful. And there’s very little support for seeking any sort of peace.”
I nodded, stiffly. The warlords had had a stranglehold on the kingdom for decades. They’d been hated and feared … now, they were merely hated. I’d taken a small army deep into Warlord Aldred’s lands and destroyed him; I’d crushed his armies, shattered his castles and freed his serfs. The warlord had been unprepared for me – and I knew his peers had been working desperately to build up their armies ever since I turned their world upside down – but it had still been a decisive victory. The balance of power had shifted. The warlords knew they could no longer rely on raw numbers and brutality to maintain their supremacy.
And the numbers might well be on our side, I thought, wryly. It’s astonishing how few of their serfs actually want to fight for them.
I leaned forward. “How is this affecting recruiting?”
Violet smiled. “A vast number of men say they’d join up in a heartbeat,” she told me. “I’d say around a third of them actually will.”
I snorted. It was easy to say one would go to war, but harder to do it. The traditions that had shamed young Americans who’d refused to fight for their country didn’t exist here. There was no sense the people had any real stake in their world, or that there would be any significant reward for serving their monarch. Most of the population preferred to hide, or to stand on the sidelines and be a reward for the victor, rather than risk their own skins. That was changing – it had already changed in some places – but it would be a long time before military service became a respectable occupation for commoners. No matter how hard I worked to improve things, I feared it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime.
“We should have the numbers soon,” I said, shortly. “It’s harder for the warlords now.”
The thought made me smile. There were limits to how many serfs the warlords could pull from the fields and arm without risking revolt. No one really liked the idea of bullying their own friends and families, let alone being forced to work their asses off for a warlord who barely left them enough to keep them alive. One might as well expect black slaves to willingly fight for the CSA! Giving serfs weapons was always risky and the warlords would have to be desperate to do it in large numbers … and if they did, there was a very strong prospect of revolts in their rear. I’d certainly done all I could to encourage them. The warlords had tried to block communications between our lines and theirs, but no one could keep peasants and serfs from talking. They knew Warlord Aldred had been crushed so completely his bloodline would never recover.
And we promised that anyone who rose against their master could keep their lands afterwards, I reminded myself. They have to be aware of the danger from their own people,
My smile grew wider. They were doing everything they could to build up their stockpiles of modern weaponry, or whatever passed for modern in this strange world, but their mindsets were still trapped in the 14th century. They were used to small forces, armies that would vanish without trace in the vast hosts that had fought the American Civil War, the First World War and even the Iraq War. The bigger their armies, the harder it would be to exercise any kind of real control. They’d have to trust their commanders – and their mercenaries – and they wouldn’t find it very easy. Hell, if they gave me a couple of years, I’d steamroll them so efficiently half my armies wouldn’t even know they’d been in a fight.
Violet took a breath. “There’s also a great deal of respect for your other improvements,” she said, slowly. “The fresh water alone has done wonders for them.”
I nodded, curtly. I still didn’t understand how a world could be aware of germs and yet not tell their population to boil water before they drank it. Everyone drank beer – even the children – because the water simply wasn’t safe to drink, unless you were a magician or extremely wealthy magician. I’d insisted on boiling water, washing hands and a hundred other simple precautions that saved lives, if they were carried out religiously. It would be several years, at best, before the plumbing reached 1900 standards, but we were improving that too. There’d be one hell of a population boom in the next fifty years or so.
“I guess they love me,” I said, dryly. “What’s the bad news?”
Violet tensed. I felt a pang of pity, then guilt. She’d grown up in a world where shooting – or beheading – the messenger was regarded as a perfectly reasonable reaction to bad news. It wasn’t safe to be the one bringing bad news to a man who could kill you in a heartbeat – and would, if he wanted to take his anger out on the nearest target. I’d read the reports from the team assigned to work out what had happened, in the final days of Saddam’s regime, and they’d all agreed that no one had dared bring bad news to their dictator. They’d been lying about everything, even as American tanks probed into Baghdad. Idiots. If the dictator had actually had a realistic idea of what his forces could do, he might have been able to make the invasion a great deal harder.
“I don’t punish people for telling me bad news, as long as it’s the truth,” I said, as reassuringly as possible. I owed it to myself to try. Violet would probably never trust me completely – she’d been kicked so many times she’d spend the rest of her life bracing herself for more kicks – but the more I showed myself a reasonable person, the more she’d be willing to tell me things I didn’t want to hear. “What’s the bad news?”
I leaned back, trying to look unthreatening as she frowned. “They don’t like the Black Roses,” she said, finally. “They’re poking their noses into everything.”
I grimaced. “In what way?”
“They come into shops, sometimes, and demand to know who is buying what,” Violet said, slowly. “Or they ask about taxes and insist on seeing the accounts. Other times … they break into bars and ask pointed questions, or simply march the streets in force. The people don’t like it.”
I made a face. I understood Helen’s determination to coup-proof her regime after the aristos had come very close to taking control, then marrying her off to some poor sucker, but if it was starting to cause resentment … I cursed under my breath. The city’s tax system was a mess – it desperately needed reform – and fixing it would take years. If the middle classes started to resent paying their taxes …
No taxation without representation, I thought, crossly. And there’s very little representation here.
“It could be worse,” I said, finally. “Have they found anything important? Or dangerous?”
“Not as far as I know,” Violet said. “But they did lock up a couple of men for saying they wouldn’t fight for the queen.”
I groaned, inwardly. Nothing gave such ideas more credence than punishing people for saying them. Nothing. The more punishment was meted out, the more people believed in them even if they were unwilling to say it out loud. And then … even if they didn’t believe, they still resented such treatment and it coloured their later attitudes to the world …
“I’ll have to do something about it,” I said, tiredly. “Is it likely to cause problems?”
“I don’t know,” Violet said. “It might.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It might.”
I rubbed my forehead as I stared down at my desk – and the piles of paperwork that required my personal attention. Someone – I forgot who – had said the French Revolution had been both the most predictable and unpredictable event in history. On one hand, the French had been so badly mistreated by their government revolt was inevitable; on the other, government repression had been so effective it was impossible to predict when the revolt would take place, let alone when it would buy the rebels enough time to put together a government of their own. And the hatreds had grown so intense – in France and Russia and many others – that there’d been no hope of a peaceful solution.
But the half-hearted attempts at reform only made things worse, I reminded myself. Do our reforms go far enough?
I sighed, inwardly. People without hope didn’t revolt. People who had no sense things could get better saw no reason to risk their lives battering their heads against a brick wall. But if they started to feel that things really were changing … I groaned. Helen had signed an entire bunch of reforms into law, in the first days after she’d been restored to power, and the city’s aristocracy were no longer in any state to oppose them. It was quite possible she’d whetted the people’s appetite for reform, to the point nothing she could reasonably give them would match the expectations she’d raised …
“We’ll just have to hope we can stay ahead of matters until we win the war,” I said, finally. There was no longer any large pro-warlord faction in the city … and anyone who did support them would be keeping it very quiet, not when it was unlikely they’d survive long enough to face trial and execution. Helen might or might not be that popular, but compared to the warlords she was as popular as the average overpaid celebrity. “Afterwards, we can deal with the Black Roses.”
Violet raised her eyebrows. “Will the Queen let you deal with them?”
I sighed, again. The problem with wartime security measures was that they had a habit of lingering, like a bad stench, when the war was over. Governments could be relied upon to take advantage of any emergency to increase their powers and make lives harder for anyone who opposed them, branding any dissent as treachery. I didn’t blame Helen for wanting to secure her throne, yet it was only a matter of time before her security measures started turning people against her. The TSA had been popular once, after 9/11, but that hadn’t lasted very long. The only reason it wasn’t the most hatred and loathed agency in the states was because it was up against some very stiff competition.
“I can try to talk her into disbanding them,” I said, finally. “Or, at least, cutting back on their excesses.”
Violet didn’t look convinced. I wasn’t convinced either. Government agencies tended to grow and grow, no matter how many people demanded cuts. It wasn’t easy to trim the fat when the agency’s leadership was fighting desperately to maintain their empires … hell, it was damn near impossible to reform an agency that was losing its way. And then …
“We’ll see,” I said. “But first we have to win the war.”
“The people are betting on you,” Violet said. “They don’t want the old days to come back.”
“No one does,” I said. “And we can’t afford to let ourselves get bogged down now.”
Violet nodded, then curtsied. “Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes,” I said. “Keep an eye out for enemy agents. They’ll be sneaking into the city if they’re not already here.”
Violet curtsied again and left the room. I sighed, once again, as I looked down at the small mountain of paperwork. One wouldn’t expect a primitive army – and city – to produce quite so much, but … I shook my head in quiet amusement as I started to flip through the sheets of parchment and papers. I’d been training new clerks and yet, it would take time to train up enough to satisfy demand. There just hadn’t been anything like enough educated people to handle the work when I’d arrived. I’d had to start training the trainers before I could start training clerks.
It’ll be fixed in time, I told myself. I’d been planning to rotate army officers between the front lines and the rear, to make sure they never lost track of what was important, but I didn’t have time to do that either. Given time, we can fix everything.
I turned my attention to the map and frowned. I’d hundreds of projects in mind – sewers, aqueducts and canals, factories – that would improve lives, if I ever managed to get them off the ground. It wasn’t going to be easy to get any of them done, at least until I trained up more craftsmen and workers. And yet … given time, the reforms would attain a momentum that would make them impossible to stop. If the warlords gave me the time …
They won’t, I reminded myself. They wouldn’t have sent that ultimatum if they hadn’t been sure they could best us in the field.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought. They had problems understanding me, but I had problems understanding them. Their mindsets were … practically alien. Keeping one’s property for the next generation was one thing, but keeping humans as property was quite another. It was unthinkable and yet, I knew generations of humans had considered it very thinkable indeed. There was no way I could talk them into letting their serfs go …
It might be worth mounting long-range raids into their territory, I thought. The warlords patrolled the borderlines, making sure serfs couldn’t sneak out of their lands and hide in the cities. If we can take out a few of their patrols, their population might desert completely.
My mind started to wander. I was going to be a father. Again. How would I cope? There was no way in hell I was going to turn my child over to the staff, not when I was determined to be a good father. And yet … raising Martin and Jack had been difficult, not least because I’d been on deployment on a regular basis. I’d left Cleo alone … the pain of coming home to discover she was cheating still stung, but now it was dulled by the grim awareness she really had been alone. Would Fallon feel I’d left her behind too?
There was a knock at the door. I looked up. “Come.”
A messenger entered, looking as conceited as only a fool of a young man could look. “My Lord, Her Majesty demands your presence.”
My earlier thoughts mocked me. The messenger was annoying. Sure, he was doing his duty, but … I shook my head. It didn’t matter. He was nothing more than a messenger, carrying messages for his mistress. The locals thought of them as the organ-grinder’s tame monkey, with all the unpleasantness that implied.
“Thank you for informing me,” I said, calmly. There was nothing to be gained by snapping at him. He was only following orders. “Please let Her Majesty know I’ll be along as soon as possible.”
Chapter Six
“You’re looking remarkably happy,” Helen said, once I was shown into her private reception room. We weren’t entirely alone, I was sure, but her guards and servants knew to keep their mouths closed these days. “Should I be concerned?”
I hesitated, unsure what to say. Helen was remarkably perceptive when it came to reading people. She’d had no choice, but to learn. The Royal Court had been a snake pit even before her father’s death and the purge of the untrustworthy aristos who had committed the dread sin of launching a coup and then losing. She knew how to tell what a person was really thinking and … I honestly wasn’t sure what to say. I wasn’t even sure of my own feelings. But there was no point in trying to deny it.
“Fallon and I are expecting a child,” I said, finally. “And she has agreed to marry me.”
Helen’s face became a blank mask. I suspected that was a bad sign. She was very good at presenting the image she wanted to present, to the point she was also the most capable liar I’d ever met. I’d seen her embrace men I knew she wanted dead and offer no support to people she wanted on her side. That she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say – or think – now … I didn’t know what it meant. I doubted she wanted to marry me. Even if she did, she had a duty to marry someone who would strengthen her throne.
And someone who won’t try to take it from her, my thoughts mocked. Such a paragon will not be easy to find.
“You should have told me,” Helen said, finally. “Your private life is not your own.”
I frowned. “It’s my private life,” I said. “Does it matter …?”
“You are one of the most powerful noblemen in the kingdom,” Helen pointed out, sharply. I could have kicked myself. “Your marriage is a matter of public concern. Your wedding day is – will be – the social event of the year. And whoever you marry will enter society at a very high level indeed.”
“I’m not that important,” I said. Helen was deluding herself if she thought the aristos would ever see me as anything other than a jumped-up mercenary. They’d hatred me from the moment she made me her warlord, looking down on me as someone who’d lucked into a post that should have been theirs by right. I doubted any of them would willingly attend my wedding. And they’d had few qualms about spreading the worst sort of lies about our relationship. “And our wedding will be simple …”
Helen shook her head. “You cannot afford not to invite everyone with a title,” she said, curtly. “If you don’t, they’ll see it as an insult.”
I felt a hot flash of anger, mingled with the grim awareness Helen was as much a creature of her society as her aristocracy, or what remained of them. It was like high school all over again, only worse. If you were invited to all the best parties, you were a winner; if you were never invited at all, you were so much a loser the other losers would look down on you. And here … I wondered, idly, how many aristos would willingly attend my wedding if I invited them. I certainly didn’t want them. They’d be waiting for the chance to lodge an objection to the match.
“Fallon is a magician, which makes her better than a commoner,” Helen continued. “But she comes from commoner stock and they’ll look down on her.”
I placed firm controls on my anger. “Are you saying I shouldn’t marry her?”
Helen met my eyes. “I’m saying you might be better off, politically speaking, to marry someone with better connections.”
I shook my head. There was no way in hell I wanted to marry an aristo’s daughter, particularly one whose father had told her she was going to marry me and bear my children or else. I doubted any candidate would be allowed to say no and that meant, if I married her, I’d be a de facto rapist. I’d hung rapists! And besides … there was no way in hell, either, that I was going to allow my child to grow up without a proper father. I was going to make a honest woman of Fallon and that was all there was to it.
“She’s pregnant,” I said. I didn’t know if Helen knew Fallon was pregnant. She was very perceptive, but … she hadn’t said anything to me about it. “And I won’t let my child grow up without a father.”
Helen looked irked, just for a second. I sighed inwardly. What was she expecting me to do? Marry Fallon off to someone who’d accept the child as his own? Give her a payment and tell her to keep the child out of my life? Or … pretend the child was a distant relative and never acknowledge him as my own? No. I couldn’t do anything of the sort. The child would have a proper father even if that meant taking Fallon and lighting out for somewhere else, leaving my post and property behind. I wondered if Helen truly thought I’d do it. Most aristocrats would sooner die than give up their property and titles.
But then, they were raised to believe the property and titles were theirs by right, I thought, tiredly. I’d realised, the day I arrived in the city, just how easily I could lose everything if the balance of power shifted in the wrong direction. I had contingency plans for leaving without looking back if the alternative was being executed. I never had anything of the sort when I grew up.
“You need to plan for a proper wedding,” Helen said, finally. I wondered, suddenly, if she’d been planning my marriage. No one would have batted an eyelid if I’d married well and kept Fallon as a mistress. Bastards. “But now, we have other matters to concern ourselves.”
She leaned back and held out a scroll, the wax seal dangling uselessly. I felt a tingle as I took the parchment, something that never failed to disturb me at a very primal level. Magic was an integral part of my new world and yet … I shook my head as I scanned the document, parsing out the words one by one. It was written in an archaic manner that was difficult to follow, the tiny handwriting only making it harder to understand. And whoever had written it had spent several paragraphs flattering Helen before coming to the point. I felt a twinge of disgust. The writer was practically leaving a trail of saliva on her boots.
“We received the message only an hour ago,” Helen said, as I parsed out the final words one by one. “Warlord Cuthbert’s forces are on the march, probing south into what remains of Warlord Aldred’s territory and heading towards Damansara. The City Fathers have requested our help as a matter of urgency.”
I nodded, sourly. I knew the City Fathers. They’d used me and discarded me without bothering to praise me. If they were asking for help now … I wondered, sourly, what had happened to the army I’d built for them. It hadn’t been that long since I’d left the city … not long enough, surely, for the army to fall to ruin? The city had experienced military leaders and infantry, to say nothing of factories and workshops churning out newer and better weaponry. I found it hard to believe they were that desperate for help.
But if Cuthbert has better weapons of his own, the city might be vulnerable, I thought. And they’ll have to sell out for the best terms they can get.
“They might have a point,” I conceded, ruefully. “If Cuthbert has cannons, the city’s walls will provide very little protection.”
It was a thoroughly disturbing thought. Damansara had been impregnable when I’d arrived in the new world, although – given time – the city could have been starved into submission. The walls were just too strong to allow enemy troops to storm the city, not without losing so many lives that the serfs might have risen successfully and freed themselves. But if the walls could be battered down … I shuddered, all too aware the fall would be followed by an orgy of looting, raping and burning that would leave the population slaughtered and the city in ruins. It would be a nightmare that would make the worst atrocities of Islamic State look like nothing.
I turned my eyes to the map. We needed Damansara as a base if we wanted to strike north and take out Cuthbert before his allies could mobilise and threaten us from the south. He knew it too – I assumed he could read a map – and that meant he had to take the city, or at least neutralise it, before we could get there in force. The city wasn’t exactly an easy target – I’d made sure of that – but the City Fathers wouldn’t sell their lives for their queen. If they thought there was no hope of relief, they’d sell out. And then …
They’ll have to disarm, at the very least, I thought. And then they’ll be defenceless when the warlord starts making more and more demands.
“They need help,” Helen said. “And we have to prove we can help them.”
I nodded. Damansara wasn’t the only semi-independent city-state. There were others, arming themselves to stand against their tormentors and yet unsure they could rely on us to come to their aid. If Helen proved she could and would send her troops to protect her allies, they’d be reassured and switch sides … I looked at the map, silently contemplating what would happen if half the cities joined us. The warlords would rapidly find themselves outnumbered and outgunned. And they’d lose.
Helen tapped the map. “Can we help them?”
I nodded. “We were already making preparations to thrust north,” I said. I’d hoped for more time, but it was the one thing the warlords knew not to give me. “I should be able to push out a sizable force …”
My eyes narrowed. The railroad network wasn’t anything like as extensive as I’d wished. We had a single track running north and that was it. I’d hoped to be able to rush troops to the border, as Prussia had done in 1871, but it wasn’t going to happen. Not yet. I’d need to march most of the force north, which would put some very solid limits on just how many men I could send …
I glanced at her. “It should be doable,” I told her. “We could be off in a day or two.”
Helen looked surprised. “So quickly?”
“The faster we move, the less time they’ll have to prepare for us,” I said. I understood her surprise. Most local armies moved like tortoises. The cavalry were faster, of course, but men on horseback couldn’t do that much against an army with modern weapons. I’d shredded Aldred’s first offensive when his cavalry had charged straight into my guns. It had been like shooting fish in a barrel. I would have felt guilty if I hadn’t known exactly what they wanted to do to the people behind me. “And if we can best them in the field, immediately, we might bring his whole edifice tumbling down.”
I smiled. Helen wouldn’t want to know all the details. I didn’t intend to tell her how I’d be sending more and more agents north, making contact with rebels and dissidents and turning them into assets. The warlord wouldn’t be able to cling to power if we destroyed his army in a single terrible blow. His serfs would rise against him, while the lesser nobility would start reassessing their positions … it was unlikely, I thought, we could get them to turn on their master, but it was worth a try. We stood to lose nothing and gain much.
“We have an opportunity we can’t miss,” I said. “At the very least, crushing his army will render him powerless before his allies can intervene.”
Helen nodded. She didn’t lack for nerve. “Do it,” she said. “And don’t let him tie you down.”
I shrugged. That wasn’t going to happy. My men knew how to march at speeds the locals had thought impossible. If I ran into defence lines I couldn’t handle, I could simply march around them and take the enemy in the rear, or pin them down if there was no way to break the lines without heavy losses. My logistics system was a joke, compared to the system back home, but it was so much better than anything local that everyone was delighted. The usual risks of settling down to lay siege to a castle – or a city – simply didn’t apply to us.
“I won’t let you down,” I promised. “Once Cuthbert is gone, we can deal with the others.”
Helen nodded. “I want him dead,” she said. “You understand me? No promises. No deals. No chance for him to come back and regain his powers. I want him dead.”
“I understand,” I said. Helen hated all the warlords, but her hatred for Cuthbert was deeply personal. He’d undermined her father, turned her aristocrats against her, plotted to marry her – rape her – and God alone knew what else. There was no way in hell she’d leave him alive, once she had him at her mercy. I just hoped she wouldn’t slaughter his entire family. The warlords would fight harder if they thought their entire existence was at stake. “What about his clients?”
Helen scowled. “If they bend the knee to me, and prove with their words and deeds they are willing to serve me, they can live,” she said. “But they will never be trusted and they will never be allowed enough independence to become a threat.”
I met her eyes. “If you keep the boot on their necks, they will resent it and they will turn against you,” I said. There were limits to how much you could punish someone, even for the worst crimes, even if they understood their guilt, before they started resenting their treatment and plotting revenge. It was the old problem. If you failed to offer the chance of redemption and forgiveness, what was the point of trying for it? “We need to either drive them out for good or offer them a way back into your good graces.”
“They were never in my good graces,” Helen muttered. Her eyes darkened as she studied the map. “But if we drive them out …”
I knew what she was thinking. She did have some aristo supporters, either through genuine faith in her or the awareness she’d take their lands and redistribute them if they didn’t support her. If she set a precedent for destroying entire families … I winced. It would be so much better if the aristocracy was unceremoniously terminated, their lands handed out to their workers and the aristocrats themselves sent into permanent exile, but it wasn’t going to happen. And yet, I knew what would happen if we missed the chance for permanent reform. Jim Crow might never have raised its ugly head if the plantations had been destroyed, the land handed over to the former slaves … how long would it be, I asked myself, before the aristrocracy regained its power?
Not as long as I’m alive, I thought, darkly.
“If they bend the knee to me, they will have a chance,” she said. “But there will be no second chances.”
I carefully didn’t show my relief. I suspected she saw it anyway.
“I can issue the orders now, with the lead elements leaving tonight or tomorrow morning,” I said. I wanted to send the cavalry to sweep the countryside, just to make sure the enemy wasn’t planning to be cute. “Is there anything else we need to address?”
“Just one,” Helen said. “You issued standing orders that mercenaries were to be executed on the spot.”
I nodded. The irony hadn’t escaped me – everything thought I was a mercenary – but I saw no choice. The warlords were hiring every mercenary they could convince to take their money and I wanted to try to convince the mercenaries they would be better off seeking employment elsewhere. It wasn’t that much of a risk. Normal monarchs were reluctant to crack down on mercenaries because they might wind up needing mercenaries themselves, but Helen had plenty of volunteers. She didn’t need to hire outsiders. And besides, a policy of hanging mercenaries wherever we found them would be astonishingly popular. The people would forgive us much, if we killed every last mercenary.
“Cancel the order,” Helen said. “It will cause too many problems.”
I shook my head, without thinking. “We don’t need them,” I said. “And we’ll be undermining the warlords by forcing their mercenaries to go elsewhere.”
“And we don’t need the mercenary guilds joining up against us,” Helen said, sharply. “If they all join the warlords, it could cost us everything.”
I doubted it. There were hundreds of thousands of mercenaries scattered across the Allied Lands, perhaps more, but they weren’t going to unite against us. Mercenaries didn’t want to die for a point of principle, not when they wouldn’t get to live and enjoy their reward. Why go to war against a monarch who would execute you if you were captured, when there were other monarchs who’d treat you with kid gloves? They might need mercenaries themselves one day.
“They won’t march to their deaths,” I told her. “And if they think death is all that awaits them, they won’t march at all.”
“I hope you’re right,” Helen said. “Because if you’re wrong …”
“I will stake my life on it,” I said, unable to escape the awareness that was exactly what I was doing. “We will move fast and break things and then we will return in time for the wedding.”
Helen smiled, rather dryly. “Go issue your orders,” she said. “And tell my secretary to send in Lord Jacob as you pass.”
I nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
