Serpent and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #1)

24. Red Shield, White Guard

twenty-four

Red Shield, White Guard

Sofia grabbed the refractor, a mounted star gazer, from the observatory and carried the heavy equipment, tripod and all, up the Custodian tower standing over a hundred feet tall. The bells were ringing because the Shields had arrived.

Eight in the morning, the sun should be high in the sky but the day was grey with looming rain. Good, because there would be no glare in the refractor’s lenses.

The tower was narrow with winding steps to the top where the gold alchemy gears turned. She wasn’t supposed to be here. No one was supposed to be here, but she had to see if Aleksei had come. Of course he had come, but she wanted to see.

With the naked eye she could see the imperial black line on the hill, two banners flying, not just the Shields. Opening the brass legs she secured them to the wooden boards, then set the refractor atop it and turned the brass dials, trying to focus on the hill. That took some time because Papa used the instrument to gaze at the night sky to find his wife’s star.

Red and gold, the second banner was Durnov, and Sofia spotted Elyena’s father immediately by his fiery hair. The loss of his daughter had aged him much and the lord had a spark of insanity in his sunken eyes. Their magic tainted the eyes yellow as well, Sofia saw, and Lord Durnov in his blood red armor had brought his alchemists, puppeteers they were called in his house. Wearing long red robes brushing the grass tops, all their eyes were yellow as well.

Hearing footsteps behind her, Sofia threw a look over her shoulder. It was Lev, out of breath, and he had binoculars in his hand.

“Is she here? Did you see her?” Lev asked. He meant Queen Kseniya. The men had been saying the queen had arrived herself, but Sofia hadn’t seen her yet.

Lev didn’t wait for her reply, which would have been useless anyway, and stood beside her lifting the binoculars to his eyes. They were military glasses which they wouldn’t lend Sofia, so she returned to her single-eye refractor. She wasn’t looking for the queen, though.

Yet she found her. The queen was mounted on a white horse and the alchemy on her tall black kokoshnik glowed. Dressed in black, she was wearing armor, her lips blood red like her eyes, and she had her watchmen with her, their red capes flapping like the Durnov banner.

“Oh fuck, she’s actually here,” Lev breathed.

“Prince Nikolas too,” Sofia said.

Mounted on a white steed also, Niko was in all black, the tall ruffled collar of his shirt coming up just under the chin. Eugene was with him, of course, but Aleksei as well. Eugene was mounted and by the prince’s side, while Aleksei was on foot, bent by Niko’s horse, adjusting his brother’s stirrup. His head tipped, he was speaking to Niko.

“There’s your Aleksei,” Lev said, trying to make light of the situation, but he was right. There was her Aleksei, and this fight would be to the death. The damned queen had come herself.

“If you can kill her, this war is over,” Sofia said.

“Then tell Aleksei to stand down and get out of my way.”

“Uncle used a memory spell on him. I don’t think he remembers me,” Sofia said.

“I’m joking, Soful. He doesn’t give a fuck about you or any other Guard,” Lev said, but she wouldn’t believe that, not at all.

Sofia followed Aleksei around the field as he spoke to his men, told Eugene something, checked his tack and gear, and though she hadn’t been watching the Durnov at all, their machines, when they came over the hill, were hard to miss.

“Those are not theater dolls,” she whispered.

Appearing as enormous black spiders, fifty times larger than the red cloaked puppeteer standing beside it, though they were made of darksteel, the alchemy that moved them glowed red and was Durnov even to Sofia’s untrained eyes.

She straightened from peering through the refractor and turned to Lev, but he didn’t know what to do either and was frowning. Sofia didn’t have to wonder what the machines did for long as the first line of spiders grew a sting and burrowed themselves into the ground, folding their walking legs back.

“Lev!”

“I see it, Soful.”

Leaving black lines of upturned earth through the greening valley, they serpentined toward the wall of elms. The branches of the green giants shook and the gears of alchemy behind Sofia and Lev whirred alive, lighting up and turning, pulsing veins of life to fallen trees, making them rise again like a stubborn fighter.

One by one, the Durnov machines died inside the marsh, the underground disturbance stalling then stopping altogether. One surfaced covered in vines, struggled to get back to the imperial lines as though it had been a living thing, then eventually gave out as the vines claimed it.

The Custodian’s gears hummed steadily behind her as Sofia moved the eye of the refractor to search for Aleksei. The queen was displeased and sneered from her saddle. Niko frowned. Aleksei was speaking to Lord Durnov, then he turned straight at her, studying the tower, and she saw how not all right he was. She could tell when he hadn’t slept and he’d lost much weight, making his features sharper. Even then she couldn’t take her eyes off him, a part of her foolishly hopeful he might somehow recognize her, remember he loved her, and stop the battle—somehow.

When Lord Durnov nodded, Aleksei tapped his temple and the face armor came down. He strode to a sentinel who had his horse, Charger, that foul tempered creature had found his way home, and mounted.

“Lev.” Sofia turned but her brother was gone. She peered down from the light tower and saw Lev on the lawn, Semyon next to him.

Among their knights the young lords were mounted, waiting for the sentinels to come through. Their relaxed posture said they didn’t expect it soon. Papa was in the watchtower behind his lines where he could observe the battle and give orders. Lev glanced back at the tower to see if an order had come—they would be displayed with flags. She couldn’t see the watchtower from where she was but the silence of the horns told her there was nothing to see.

Sofia turned her attention back toward Aleksei. Mounted, he was in the company of about twenty sentinels, all their steeds uneasy and pawing or shifting, and the queen’s watchmen were with them. A dozen watchmen lined in pairs carried a long metal serpent among them. Its eyes glowing, the machine was alive, another Durnov doll, Sofia assumed.

The second line of machines came forth and Sofia watched as they shifted, linking together into a single thing and burrowing underground, dragging behind it a long tail of spinning metal teeth. She hoped Papa saw that. No horns sounded as the elms went down, making a narrow path for the sentinels to follow. The Custodian whirred behind her but it couldn’t heal the garden faster than the serpent was burrowing, allowing the small number of sentinels led by Aleksei to enter the perimeter on the tail of the machine as the green walls closed up behind them.

Slithering through the marsh and leaving a black trail behind, the machine and sentinels riding behind it were coming straight for the Custodian. If Papa saw it, he was silent.

Sofia waited and waited till she could no longer stand it and dashed down the winding stairs. Twenty sentinels and a dozen watchmen were coming right for Lev and he couldn’t see them. Perhaps Papa wasn’t worried because there were two hundred and fifty mounted knights on the lawn. Perhaps he was right and it wasn’t Lev who Sofia ran for because Aleksei hadn’t seen the knights either. But he must know White Palace would be defended. Did he just want to die? The horn blew as Sofia jumped the last flight of stairs.

A monster roared or it sounded like it. The Durnov machine gave its last yell and fell silent as Sofia pushed open the tower door and ran out onto the lawn. Pum-pum, pum-pum, the horses’ hooves sounded like a heartbeat, echoing through the garden. Dragon’s Breath scorched the tall vines, a wall of blaze, orange and black geysering to the skies. She didn’t know why Lev did that because now the Custodian was loud. Then she saw why the inferno—Aleksei had arrived.

The ground was wet, the fire sizzled but didn’t catch, and Charger flew out through the thin wall of flame. Sentinels and watchmen spilled out after him.

Strobing eruptions of blinding white and a row of explosive bangs made Sofia’s ears ring, disorienting her. It scared the horses, the line of knights disbanding, and Rhytsar reared, exposing his unarmored abdomen to the darksteel spear of the captain of the sentinels. Aleksei had gone right for her brother.

Chaos, carnage, all turned to shapes passing by to the medley of hooves beating, horses whinnying, men screaming, grunting, and blades clashing. Steel bolts flew. A light lasso whipped around a sentinel and his horse, taking down both, and the light blade of a mounted knight took the sentinel’s head off as he was getting up.

A warhammer swung by as a watchman flung a knight from his horse. The line of them, watchmen, the red capes bright against the earth and mud being tossed by the hooves, dropped the wretched thing they carried—the Durnov machine. The serpent slithered past Sofia, making a high pitched grinding noise, and disappeared into the Custodian.

She’d go after it but what was she supposed to do? A knight who attempted it was crushed by a watchman like an empty tin cup. Guts and blood burst out through the armor as the watchman just wrung him—they were not human. Sofia wouldn’t believe it.

No time to scream or cry, Sofia was looking for Aleksei. The steel bolts whizzing by were missing her face by the saints’ grace only. She spotted Lev’s light blinking, or so she thought, but it was a Guard knight. It was bright on the lawn against the dull grey of the morning.

The watchtower horns blew, adding to the loudness only. No one would hear commands now. It was a damn butchery out here. Guards were a house of magic and not war.

“Get out of here!” A hand yanked her out of the way of a charging loose horse, the creature terrified with a bolt through one eye and bleeding down the side.

It was a knight, and Sofia turned to ask where Lev was but a mounted watchman’s teethed hammer bit into the knight’s helmet, and blood sprayed out onto Sofia’s face. The watchman rode off dragging the knight behind because his weapon was stuck in the helmet.

A dead Skuratov. Sofia had tripped on the body being claimed by the marsh and her heart fell out before she could realize it wasn’t Semyon. His armor was different. She heard the Shield charge, the hooves drumming, because the Custodian had fallen silent. The Durnov serpent ate Papa’s alchemy, she supposed.

They were about to get overrun. She didn’t need military expertise to know that. Frantically searching for Lev to tell him to get out of here, she caught a glimpse of his white cape disappearing through the palace doors. Though all knights wore white capes, Lev’s had the golden sun on it, and she chased after it through the ring rooms of the White Palace.

“Lev, you need—”

She grabbed him. He turned. It wasn’t her brother. The eyes behind the visor were green. Her hand fell away from him.

“The servants are in the chapel. Perhaps you can shelter with them, my lady,” he said.

“I’m not a servant. Where’s my brother?”

“I don’t know, my lady. Forgive me.” He bowed, then turned and walked away.

Wearing her brother’s cape, that had been a deliberate thing. Sofia followed him to where she heard the piano playing a song of maidens, an inappropriate tune Auntie used to sing to make Papa laugh.

In an ivory room with tall arched windows, the molding gilded because they could afford to be, Lady Elena played the piano while Papa stood by her with a cup of wine. His helmet was on the grand piano. Clodt was with him, his greatsword wrapped in gore.

Dead knights littered the floor as though they’d been part of the décor, and one watchman knelt at the center, six or seven spears through but twitching still. His helmet had fallen off. His head was shaved with dark veins raying out from the exposed rod in his skull. The red eyes blinked.

“These things aren’t human, I reckon.” Clodt set his wine cup on the piano and dragged his greatsword to the wretched creature.

Sofia turned away as the knight’s sword came down. The knight with Lev’s cape stood behind his lord, and a sound of dying and killing disturbed the music room when Lady Elena stopped to ask Papa what she should play next.

“Fedosian waltz, of course,” Papa said.

Lady Elena obliged, the grand piano drowning out the awful noise not only from the lawn but inside the palace now. Sofia went to Papa to see if a cup of wine would be spared for her. She was going to ask where Lev was, but a familiar voice beat her to it. Oh, her poor heart. It fluttered wildly, and she was afraid to turn.

“Where is your son, Lord Pyotr?”

“How about I give you this instead?” Papa gestured at his codpiece and Clodt chuckled.

Elena didn’t stop playing. She couldn’t be bothered. Perhaps she’d taken some sort of potion for courage, which Sofia needed so badly. She turned, slowly, the hand that had been reaching for a cup of wine on the piano now steadying her as she grabbed the smooth lacquered ledge.

Aleksei was by the door. His mask up, he studied the bodies on the floor. His scarlet gaze flicked up, saw her, then he frowned. The expression he wore wasn’t recognition. He didn’t remember her, but his eyes were on her still, his head tipping to the side, forgetting where he was, neglecting the two Guard knights in the room.

“Aleksei,” she said, her voice weak compared to the piano, but he heard her still, and it confused him further.

He didn’t know her. He wasn’t trying to place her. It was something else… What are you thinking, darling? She wished she could have asked him but Clodt swung. As Aleksei twisted from the path of the greatsword, his mask came down, the alchemy alight.

Sofia turned away, marched to the piano, and grabbed Papa’s cup. He’d left it behind as he drew his sword—a plain sword. There was no magic left in the old lord of White Guard. Sofia peered out the window. It was raining. The morning was beautiful. She watched the rain flow down the glass like spilled tears. The music stopped. So there was that. She tipped the cup into her mouth. It wouldn’t be poisoned. Despite the ill words Lev spoke of him last night, Papa wasn’t a coward. Crude, sure. Dismissive, sometimes. But never a coward.

“He’d missed his wife much. He’s finally with her, I suppose,” Sofia said, as a man came into her peripheral, his attire black.

“Are you Lady Yelizaveta?” was his question, and that was what it was, the expression. The archmage’s spell had taken all his memory of her, but he’d seen the painting of Lady Yelizaveta when he was a boy and that remained.

“She was my mother. People say I look like her.” Sofia turned her head, and he stood there staring at her as though Papa’s blood wasn’t dripping from his blade. Oddly, she wasn’t angry with him. It was Fedosia, and it had always been cruel.

He came around the piano, looked at her for a while, and his left hand, the one with the exoskeleton because in the other he held his sword, lifted slowly. He touched her hair, her face, and she leaned into his hand.

“You’re…” He was going to say something, but his gaze flicked to the door. He pushed her down under the piano. “Don’t move, don’t make a sound, and they won’t respond to you.”

In the reflection of the window, she saw Aleksei stride for the door as two watchmen marched in, their capes as red as the blood splatter on the glass. One grabbed Aleksei and put him into the wall, the black gauntlet around his throat.

“You lost Lev Guard.” The watchman’s voice was distorted as though two people spoke at once.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty.”

“Bring me his head.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

He dropped Aleksei. “Now.”

The captain of the sentinels hurried out, not looking at Sofia. She held her breath as the watchmen scanned the room, their movements stilted and their image warped in the wet glass. One tossed a potion on the floor, the flame igniting immediately and climbing to the ceiling.

They waited for movement but they were looking at the dead on the floor. They walked out, and Sofia fled through the glass door into the garden. She didn’t look back. Papa would always stand tall in his armor in her memory, Clodt too, and she wouldn’t ruin it by seeing them now.

She knelt in the garden and cried and cried.

Someone draped a cloak over her and it was Papa’s servant. “Try and blend in with us, my lady,” said the old woman. “The saints may spare you the suffering.”