But he paused and listened to the aethereal as often as he could, and then, while he was listening, he heard not the tinkle of his beloved’s magical bells, but the sharper sounds of dying creatures and weapons striking shields. It was close, but not close; almost due east.
There was no one to ask but his own knights, and their eagerness told him what he wanted to know, so he turned, looking south for a moment. The Flow, the largest pool on the Lily Burn, lay just south of him, covering his flank. He turned east into open spruce trees, a veritable cathedral of magnificent straight trunks stripped by generations of foresters of their dead lower branches, rows and rows, with little underbrush and only a dusting of snow.
His knights began to spread out in an open line, and behind him, Aneas brought on the Galles and the rangers, and Blizzard brought the bears, silent and purposeful in the sudden snowfall. The mounted Galles, only a handful, pressed forward and joined Tapio’s knights, and the two dozen of them made more noise than all the irks, but there was no foe to contest the woods, and they began to cross their second thousand paces since they had left the trail, a long line that glittered in the pale moonlight like steel-clad ghosts crossing the snow under the ancient trees, the breath of the horses and elk like the smoke of a hundred dragons, the starlight on the golden fur of the bears and their sharp axes.
And then he could see the enemy: hundreds of irks in a shield wall, and a wash of bogglins and other creatures. They were calling to each other, and there was a golden helmet gleaming in the moonlight.
For a heartbeat, Tapio’s eyes had a feral beauty, and his features transformed in the moonlight, and his elk seemed to grow, and every spike on the great animal’s magnificent rack began to glitter with its sharpness.
Tapio reined in with nothing but his mind and the weight of his body, and his elk reared, pawing the air, and all along the line of Faery Knights, they raised their silver and ivory oliphants, and the cold night air was filled with the hunting horns of Faery, and the irks facing the scarecrows were suddenly filled with fear.
Almost five miles away, Gabriel was just embracing his brother on the top of the Albin Ridge when he heard the low, eldritch music. He looked off into the darkness a long time.
“Penrith is no longer the axis of our lines,” he said. “Tapio has entered the field.”
And Tamsin began to cry, for joy.
Gabriel looked at her. “Stop that, or I’ll be doing it in a minute,” he said.
“I’ve never seen you grin like that,” Gavin said.
Gabriel embraced him again. “We did it!” Gabriel said.
Gavin was still trying to adjust to this. “Christ. We almost lost everything yesterday. We … I …”
Gabriel was walking around the fire, shaking hands, and embracing Tamsin, and in the background, Ariosto was slurping down the entrails of a sheep, his beak raised to the heavens.
Tastes like home, he sent.
And then the reality of it struck Gavin. And then he threw his arms around his brother again, and said “God damn it, Gabriel, I thought you weren’t coming. I thought … I thought this was one of your stupid schemes; that we’d have to hold it ourselves.”
Gabriel nodded. “Good,” he said. “You almost did have to. And God helps those who help themselves.” He put his hands together, and his grin was almost demonic. “Now let’s put it all together,” he said. “I intend to win this in the real, with as few casualties as can be managed. But first …”
Tamsin was quivering, and Gabriel put a hand on her arm.
“You want to find him in the aethereal?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “But we cannot reveal our position to Ash …”
Gabriel nodded. “That’s over now,” he said. “Who else do you have here? The Patriarch?”
“Yes,” she said.
The emperor went to the Patriarch and knelt in the snow and kissed his ring. Then he rose and took their hands, and he reached into the aethereal, and he took the hand of Queen Desiderata, and Magister Petrarcha, of Tancreda and Mortirmir, of Master Grammarian Nikos and of Kwoqwethogan. There were dozens of others; there was the entirety of the choir of the abbey; there was the new Archbishop of Lorica on the floor of his cathedral in Albinkirk, and there was Tapio. And there was Desiderata.
And Gabriel held them all in his mind, and he threw open the gate outside his memory palace, and he said, ASH.
In the cold darkness, Ash was watching victory and the taste was remarkable—like food after aeons of hunger. His enemies thought the day was over; he was preparing to show them how many of his slaves could fight in the dark. If he traded twenty for one …
ASH
In that moment, Ash felt the full weight of his error. It was as if he had been blind, and suddenly was able to see.
What he could see was the power of the choir facing him, which he had only ever known as a divided set of individuals, and the leader of the choir burned a solid gold in the aethereal, and Ash quailed.
“Lot? Is that you?” he asked.
And Gabriel laughed. “Ash. I have crossed seven worlds and won the gates. Your cause is lost. Surrender to our mercy.”
Ash looked at them, from one to another. He was looking for weakness; for division; for hatred or contempt or any flaw. But when he looked at them, he saw nothing but the walls of golden bricks that Desiderata had taught them, and they showed him his lone image reflected back twenty, thirty times.
“Surrender?” He laughed. He was silent a long time, and then he spoke carefully, as if considering them all. “You are nothing. In a generation you will done, and nothing will be left of you but the wind. The gates will be open for years, and I will be here waiting for your alliance to collapse. The irks will fight the men, and the men will hunt the bears, and the Outwallers will rise to old grievances, and I will be here to make sure you all drown in your own blood for daring to impede me.”
And Gabriel said, “All that may be. All that you say is my greatest fear, so I thank you for threatening it; men’s memories are helped by such terrible words. But today, I have a great army; the greatest army that any being has assembled here since the Empress Livia passed the gates. And I have a choir of magisters who are your match. And I say to you: Dragon, surrender, or we will end you. I offer no other choice; no condition, no bargain, no truce. Surrender to our mercy, and allow us into your mind. Or we will make an end of you.”
“I cannot die. At best, you will force me into the immaterium.” The dragon’s voice betrayed his fear.
In a pocket of the real, the word mind keyed something. Gabriel had an odd sensation, so that he looked around, as if he’d heard a hail, or a call for help, or a woman’s scream.
He went back into the aethereal. He made his avatar’s face take on a lazy smile. “Are you sure?” he asked. “If I were you, I would wonder how this all came to be. How I came, as a being that can transcend reality, to have lost a war so thoroughly to a mob of mortal rag pickers.” Gabriel nodded. “Perhaps you are losing your mind,” he said.
(Again, the word mind. Again, a call; this time he felt it in the aethereal, a sort of substrate under the voice of the dragon.)
“I am the lord of this world,” Ash said. “I will do with it as I please, and no mortal hand will keep me from the least of my desires. And I have subsumed the Odine, and you have no idea of my power. I could break this world and kill you all.”
Desiderata laughed. “You dream dark dreams,” she said. “You can no more break this world than I can.”
“I spit on your pitiful offer of surrender,” Ash said.
Gabriel nodded. “I knew you would,” he said.
(He knew that note now. It was Harmodius. The instinct to aid him was stronger than revulsion or fear, and he extended a tendril of his thought …
The non-moment seemed to stretch into an eternity of possibilities. The aethereal was, at best, a chaotic place full of paradox and ambiguity and immeasurable essence; now, Gabriel, standing on a hill in the
real, was simultaneously on the featureless plane with his allies, and sitting in the firelit sitting room of his own memory palace, where there was now a tall, fit young man in hunting clothes. And he was also inside the mind of the dragon, Ash, and also outside it, looking at it from the point of view of Desiderata, and he was also aware of another presence, a strong light at the edge of his vision.
Harmodius laughed, clearly shaken. “Well. I’m here.” In one instant, all his nightmare experience in the mind of the dragon was laid bare.
Gabriel bowed. “You are in his mind?”
“We are,” Harmodius said. “Ah. Thanks for the rest.” He stretched. “Do not trust Lot. That’s my last word to you.”
“Who is we?” Gabriel asked into the timelessness.
“I am the lion,” Harmodius said. “And my former mentor is now the Thorn.”
And then he was gone.
Gabriel, who did not fully understand, sighed in the timelessness and returned to the immediate reality of the aethereal.)
“Who are you?” Ash asked.
“I am your nemesis,” Gabriel said. Even in the aethereal, his voice was resonant with grim humour. “That is all I am. Surrender, Ash.”
“I will destroy you,” Ash said.
“You are already defeated,” Gabriel said. “You were done in the moment the gates opened. I offer you the preservation of your self, and the ability, perhaps, to wait out the aeons of our supremacy and perhaps effect your own restoration. I offer this freely, because I offer mercy, in hopes that you might change.”
Ash laughed. “This is hubris, personified. You, an insect, offer me, a god, your mercy?”
Gabriel nodded. “We, the allied insects, offer you our mercy.”
“I still spit on it,” Ash said.
“Good,” said Gabriel. “You are better dead. And tomorrow we will defeat you utterly. Once more! Spare the thousands who will die tomorrow. Surrender to our mercy.”
“They are insects, as you are an insect. Why would I spare them? It is the way of the worlds, that the insects serve the will of the mighty.” Ash laughed.
Gabriel nodded. “Then tomorrow, you will be killed and eaten by insects,” he said. “So be it.”
In his sitting room, there was Desiderata, and there was Gabriel.
“Harmodius is Ash’s mind,” Gabriel said. “Do you think he has another body stored somewhere?”
“No. If Askepiles’s body was destroyed yesterday, he has nowhere to go,” Desiderata said sadly. “He has nowhere else to go.”
“I thought of offering him sanctuary,” Gabriel said. “He did not seem to want it, and he is a puissant ally, placed where he is. And I may very shortly be nowhere myself.” Gabriel thought he ought to be appalled, but actually, he found the old wizard’s placement a comfort.
“It is clear to me that you are at the very edge of transformation,” Desiderata said. “I … don’t know what to say.”
“Imagine what I think,” Gabriel said with an aethereal smile.
Desiderata met his smile. “To me, it is fitting. Perhaps God has a sense of humour.”
They both laughed. But then Gabriel spoke bitterly.
“I’d like people to stop saying that it is fitting,” Gabriel spat. “I would happily live a long time, raise a lot of babies, and indulge in a host of the sins of the flesh. I am no saint; I lack any of Amicia’s qualities. I am a killer. Why is this happening to me?”
“Ask a priest,” Desiderata said. “That it is happening is beyond doubt. I would be sorry for you, but in this space it seems I ought to be sorrier for Blanche. What will she do? I cannot imagine.”
“I have made arrangements for her,” Gabriel snapped. And then, relenting, “She will be a very powerful woman,” Gabriel said. “Enough of my personal life. Are you ready?”
“I have the well and the choir,” Desiderata said. “With the knights around me in the real, Lissen Carak is invincible.”
“The last few days have made me doubt that anything is invincible,” Gabriel said. “Very well. Go with God, as they say.”
And Desiderata came and kissed him, in the aethereal. “My, my,” she said.
Gabriel laughed.
Ash’s rage shot into the aethereal and into the sky above the ruins of the inn.
A forest of shields snapped into place over the alliance, showing their army in an arc from Helewise’s manor house, to Penrith, to the Albin Ridge and across to Albinkirk; green and gold and sometimes deep blue or red. There was a sudden cheer from the soldiers; men and women, freezing in the snow, saw the solid shields and knew that there had been a profound change in the battle.
“What now?” Gavin asked.
“Now we rest. And move troops. And in the morning, we go in and get him.” Gabriel nodded.
“What are you not telling me?” Gavin asked.
“Quite a bit, Gavin. But none of it matters.” Gabriel glanced at his hand to make sure that Morgon’s protections were holding, but the hand appeared merely human and so did his face, when he looked at his distorted reflection in his light steel vambrace.
“Won’t he attack in the dark?” Gavin asked.
Gabriel shrugged. “He can. But now we have the hermetical edge. He’ll be better off in the morning.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Gavin, with something of his old, brotherly annoyance.
Gabriel was looking north. “Do you remember my sword master’s definition of a battle?”
Gavin nodded. “When two commanders both think they can win, and only one of them is right,” he said.
Gabriel nodded. “He couldn’t break you yesterday,” the emperor said. “And now you have forty thousand more men, and Mortirmir, and me.” Gabriel glanced at his brother in the firelight, and raised an eyebrow. “It’ll be hard, and bloody. Ash will want to be sure we pay dearly for it. But this time tomorrow, we’ll be done.”
Gavin thought his brother sounded sad.
Then he came over. “Listen, Gavin,” he said. “You performed … a miracle. You kept it together. I can’t believe how many men you got here. You might have held Ash by yourselves.” Gabriel smiled. “Don’t be jealous that I came and stole your victory. I know who the architect of it was.”
Gavin nodded. Then he grinned.
“We did it, didn’t we?” he said. “The plan.”
“The plan. Even Aneas did his bit,” Gabriel said. “It should make a good song.”
When he was gone, Gavin realized that his brother had, as usual, avoided answering his question. What are you not telling me?
Just before dawn, the snow started again. It came in from the west: big flakes, full of ash from the volcanoes, or so some of the old weather women said. Edmund Chevin had marched his hand gonners through the light snow, right along the edge of the Lily Burn woods; their cavalry escort had to fight twice, but the hand gonners had moved on, unimpeded. Well before the first tendrils of dawn, they’d passed behind the ruins of Penrith, and Edmund and his vanguard had shifted the stones of the church steeple, collapsed across the road, so that there was enough of a lane to roll their three falconets through the gap.
And then they marched in the moonlight along the black ribbon of the ancient road toward Albinkirk. Half a mile on, they found hundreds of workmen unloading boats. Edmund heard the voice he was seeking, and he ran past the long line of wheeled tubes to Master Pye, who was directing the swaying up of a great gonne barrel on a heavy oak tripod with a set of pulleys, by torchlight. The tube went up about five feet, and then the gonne’s carriage, a two-wheeled contraption, was pushed by boys too young to be on a battlefield; they grunted, and shouted, and the carriage rolled up over two chocks to stop precisely where Master Pye wanted it; but then he measured, quickly; and then the great tube was lowered by men on the ropes, inch by inch, as Master Pye embraced the young man who had once been the lowliest of his apprentices and was now one of the emperor’s war captains.
The gonne’s cast-bronze trunnions dropped into the
grooves made for them in the carriage.
Two boys leapt up and put the trunnion guards across the trunnions and hammered home iron keys, and the lethal monster, the muzzle cast like a raging dragon, was rolled away into the darkness and snow.
“Thirty-seven,” Master Pye said. “I could only complete thirty-seven of the fifty that were commissioned.” He shrugged. “Mold problems, for the most part, and a certain hesitancy by my brother-in-law to supply the arsenic for my bronze.” He shrugged. “But what was really interesting was how easy it was to change the casting point of the molten bronze by adding—”
“Master?” Edmund had never interrupted his master before, but the world, he was told, hung in the balance. “Master, I’m very interested in how the gonnes were cast, but I have brought you a thousand men and women.”
“A thousand men? Are they intelligent? Are they strong?” Pye smiled.
“Yes,” Edmund said.
“For the shop?” Master Pye asked, and his smile was knowing.
“For the war, master. To serve the gonnes. I trained them; that is, Duke and Tom and I trained them. Just as we said we would.” Edmund bowed, and waved his arm at his gonners, who stood in three ranks on the road.
Master Pye walked over and looked at them.
He looked back at Edmund.
“Master Swynford made the paper,” he said. “And from it we folded cartridges. Master Donne’s shop made the powder from the chemicals Master Gower found for us. Mistress Benn made the ironwork. Master Landry cast the gonnes. Six hundred out-of-work weavers and furriers helped make the carriages.” He shook his head. “It is the largest project I have ever undertaken, on the shortest notice, and I have learned so much …” He was looking over the men and women who stood in the ranks; all in neat black wool cotes and caps, with hose striped; some plain, and some fantastically adorned. The magnificent hose had become a sign of the gonners, a brag, a complement to the sober and powder-stained jackets.
“But you have made the people,” he said. He walked up to a woman, a tall, pretty woman with pouting lips and two heavy gold earrings. “Miss?”