The Daughters' War (Blacktongue, #0)

by Christopher Buehlman

I saw my first goblin the same day I saw my first shipwreck. I was under sail, on my way to war. On my way to fall in love with death, and with a queen. On my way to lose all of my friends, and two of my brothers. I would see a great city fall in blood and fire, betrayed by a false god. Later, I would be commanded to die on a high stone bridge, but I would fail in this. The rest of the First Lanza of His Majesty’s Corvid Knights would not fail. This is not a happy story, but it is a true one. I have no time for lies, or for liars.

I had seen goblins dead before, we all had. They do not rot, they just shrink and dry and harden. Flies want nothing to do with them, and only birds with great hunger will peck at them. Sharks will eat them, of course, but a shark will eat a wooden oar, I have seen this. Because they do not rot, everyone was bringing home dead goblins from the last two wars. They were popular exhibits in circuses. We have used many dead goblins in training, especially to make the war corvids hate them. And they hate them much. But on this day, I saw my first one living. It clung to an island of wreckage that was sinking. One thing I can say for goblins, they look as awful as they are. They look like they want to eat the meat from your thighs, and they do. Kynd are not always so easy to read—many of us hide cruel natures behind fair faces, or have our kindnesses overlooked because our flesh is twisted. Goblins are honest killers. And they are fucked-ugly.

Things had not yet reached that point, but I did not see how to avoid conflict with her. I wanted this not because I feared to be punched, though of course I did not wish to be. I simply did not care. It is tiring to deal with someone who has made an enemy of you when you do not think of them at all. But, of course, this is often why they hate you.

I did not know what to say to this, so I grunted, which made him laugh one quiet ha, which in turn made me smile. To love someone well is to know their small noises, and to hear home in them. This is not a small thing on foreign soil.

It would be a day of events. But before I speak of that day, I will tell you how I spent the night before, and many others besides. This has some bearing on the larger story, though it is not my habit to discuss private matters. I have mentioned Inocenta a great deal already, and you may have already begun to think that she was something more than a friend to me. This is true, though I will also say that she was not my lover, not in the way she might have been. I will even say, not in the way that she should have been, for it is possible to regret a thing not done as bitterly as any false step. No, in Ispanthia there is a path between mere warmth and fire, and Inocenta and I walked this path.

I begrudge no one their superstitions—we climb out of despair by whatever rungs we have at hand.

A small glass with a bit of golden liquid in it was placed in my hand, and I smelled it. Brandy.

As if summoned by the smell of liquor, my brother Migaéd now arrived in the garden with two of his bravos of the Scarlet Company of Sword and Horse. Still I saw no horses. Migaéd dom Braga was announced, and walked to the table with care, as those will who know they are less sober than they should be. He had his fine armor, and, on his back, the shield of our grandfather. His eyes grew wide at the sight of me, and he smiled broadly. “Galvicha!” he said, coming over to embrace me. “When did you get to Espalle?” I did not tell him of his seeing me on the street, and even less of how I found him passed out when I called on him later. Drink stalks all of us in my household, but it seemed to have marked Migaéd, as a wolf marks a sick deer.

I think now that I acted pridefully, that I was showing off. But I would forgive another twenty-year-old this, and so I forgive myself. This has been a hard skill to learn, the forgiving of self, and it is not always easy to know when it is good and when it is indulgent. But there is not so much time in life that we should spend it being sorry. It was a glorious hour or so, in a time of fear and horror, and I would not trade the memory of it for a feeling that I had behaved more properly. Such things are good, in moderation. Moderation, too, is good in moderation.

Nouva held the document in her hands, looking at it in disbelief. “He just gave you this?” “He trusts me.” “Yes, but it is me he’s authorizing to assume the privilege of his rank when I want to commandeer food.” “He said not to abuse it.” “This document was made for abuse.” “I trust you, Lanzamachur.” “Well, perhaps there will be a lesson in this for you, Daguera. Read it aloud to me so I can be sure I understand it.” “‘By the let of His Majesty King Kalith the Second of the Illuminated Kingdom of Ispanthia, and by the hand of his agent, Terce-General Pol Finat dom Braga, undersigned below and with this seal as witness to his pleasure, Lanzamachur Nouva Livias Monçera of His Majesty’s First Experimental Lanza of Raven Knights shall have all authority exercised by the terce-general aforementioned in matters touching the supply of food and fresh water for her command. The reader of this military writ is commanded to honor any request she may make touching on provision, and to supply her with such necessaries as her animals and kynd shall require to perform their duties to the King. Witnessed and signed this sixteenth day of Highgrass, 1224 Years Marked.’” “Yes,” Nouva said, “I believe that is clear.” “I believe so too, Lanzamachur.” “This is nepotism, is it not, dom Braga?” “I cannot think of a clearer example of nepotism, as I understand it, Lanzamachur.” “Well. Good, then. Let us get these big, hungry fuckers fed.” What happened next is not one of the proudest moments of m...

Many men do not like to be told what to do by a woman and will act against their own interests to defy her.

I cut my eyes to Inocenta, expecting to see a face as desperate as mine must look, but, and I will never forget this, she was smiling. “Today might be the day,” she said, as one might speak of taking a long-anticipated lover, and I knew that she meant her death. She was saying that she might die now and she felt glad about it. I did not understand, but I took strength from this. “Die with me, sister,” she said to me. “I would be honored,” I said, though my voice shook.

The fool had sad, smart eyes, though, and I liked him. Perhaps people who heard his funny words missed this sadness, and I only noticed because I could not understand him.

“You have not told us what to call you, sister of two generals,” Mireya said. “I am … only Galva.” “Only Galva,” the queen said, “I cannot help feeling that you are discomfited. I know that you saw hard action, and that all of this must seem frivolous to you. But it is the Gallard way to seek pleasure even in extremity. As a born Spanth, this took some getting used to. Tell me what I may do to help you be at ease.” I looked into her eyes, which were of a very pleasing shape, and said, “Let me go.” She held up a closed hand, palm up, and then opened it as if releasing a bird. Her smile had waned, though not from anger, as it might have been with a man. She was merely sad to see me leave.

When I stumbled drunkenly from that boat, smelling of our joined sweat and perfumes, I found my world much altered. Later, I would lie with men, for reasons that are my own, but not many, and each encounter further showed me that I am not made for men. Their tongues are too thick in their heads, and their smell is like something from a barn. Worse, that buffoon between their legs demands too much attention, and for as much as it can grant pleasure, it does so in a way that feels anonymous. To be loved by a man is to be issued a decree he has written in advance, and has presented to others; to receive a woman’s love is to have a very personal letter written on one’s body.

I felt her fill her lungs with a long, slow breath in and a long, slow breath out. “I have taken lovers as well, waiting for you. But that was scratching an itch. This is more than that, I think.” “Yes,” I said. That breath again. “Do you know, I prayed to Sornia,” I told her. “About you.” “Yes?” she said, her voice brightening. “I asked her to be patient with me while I tried to discover what I wanted. Not to hate me for hesitating before such a gift.” “I am no fucking gift,” she said, in a way to make laughter. “Be serious with me,” I said, “just for a moment. This is important.” “Is it?” she said, using her freer arm to indicate the birds, our weapons, the camp. “As important as anything else is. I have been thinking about this. If we say that nothing matters, then what is there to fight for? Why not just be eaten by them, watch them burn everything down?” She breathed out long, into my hair, last night’s wine on her breath. “Yes, I have thought that as well. In my better moments,” she said. “And I prayed to Sornia about you too.” “Your love is a gift,” I said. “A greater one than carnal love, I think, because it feels as if it is not breakable, at least not in this form. I would not be your lover not because I do not see you in that way. I do. You are beautiful, and you have stirred want in me. But I could not bear it if the beautiful, irreplaceable thing between us turned sour over a want of the flesh. I pray that it has not.” “And to whom do you pray that prayer?” sh...

Now once and long ago, there was a man who feared to die. This is quite commonplace. But this man was particular in that he was a wizard and had thus prolonged his years to keep him out of any grave, and unburned on the pyres of the dead. This Durgash, as they called him, had his home in northern Kesh where poppies multiply. And in the town he traveled to betimes, the essence of the poppy would be smoked in parlors where its subjects dreamed awake. To Durgash would the man, Marbaja, cry, who mongered both the poppy and the pipe, “Come, magicker, and taste a paradise no summoner aspires to surpass. I wonder, is today the hoped-for day you’ll bless yourself to tell Marbaja yes?” “That day will never come,” Durgash would say, “for you are full the tenth to beckon me to enter in that door your shadow haunts, for I have lived two hundred years and five, preserved by arcane regimens quite strict whose dictates I must follow to the dot; I may not taste the poppy, or I rot.” And on he walked, until he passed before the pleasure house where women and men are rented for an hour or a night. To Durgash would the fair Amala cry, for so was named the mistress of that place, “Why, Magicker, you walk your ways alone! Will you not try these stairs, and have a bath? And after this, some morsel haply choose between the legs of woman or of man? All you see is offered for your use. I wonder, is today the hoped-for day you bless yourself and tell Amala yes?” “That day will never come, and nor s...

“You are no half sister to me, Galvicha,” he said, his eyes fixed on mine so I knew he spoke in earnest. “Nor you half a brother, Pol,” I said, though quietly. I am unused to such declarations, even when they need to be made. But now he turned his speech back to his heart’s greatest mistress. “You know, you really would have liked her. Samera, I mean. She was a magnificent woman, but for the falseness.” “To me that sounds like ‘It was a fine house, except that it collapsed.’” He laughed bitterly at that. “No, Galvicha, you could never abide a liar. You take it personally.” “It is personal, to abuse someone’s ear with a lie.” “There is where we disagree,” he said. “Dishonesty is rarely personal. Liars by habit lie to everyone, but they get reputations quickly. One can see them coming. Liars by necessity lie when circumstances warrant, but, again, this is about context. As admirable as your honesty may be, thinking someone else owes you theirs is a bad habit. One that leads to disappointment.” “I hear your words and understand their wisdom, but still I hate a liar. Please never deceive me, brother.”

Do not seek to impress hard men with false martiality, for they know their own. Let soldiers scorn or admire you for what you are in truth. Do not be coaxed into rudeness when in the company of the rude. It is better to be thought dull by the vulgar than to be thought vulgar by those of consequence.

He knew he had wronged me, so he redoubled his anger at me, because this is easier for men of his stature than to admit fault or to try to make amends. No one is so furious as a small man caught in a misdeed.

I wondered, in her long empty days up here, did she wish something, anything, would happen, as I had so often wished I could just stand on exactly this hill and do nothing? Had she missed my hand on her flank, or full of apple for her? Was I in her dreams as often as she was in mine? I do not know. I do not need to be loved as deeply as I love, and I do not need to speak of it. All I knew was that she remembered me in this moment. And one moment is all there ever is.