The Burning Kingdoms Read online

  “It was a dream, a bad dream. You have a fever, my darling. Please lie back. I’m safe. But I want you to be safe too.”

  Catherine sat beside the bed holding Tzsayn’s hand while Doctor Savage poured a cup of milky medicine, but, as he held it out toward his patient’s lips, Tzsayn knocked the cup away.

  “No more of that stuff. Let me go, dammit.”

  But Davyon just shook his head, and the doctor’s assistants held Tzsayn’s shoulders while Savage poured the medicine down his throat. Tzsayn spat and swore but eventually fell back into his pillows, still clutching Catherine’s hand.

  When the king was still again, Savage pulled back the sheets to check Tzsayn’s wounded leg. Whenever he did this, Catherine usually focused on the good side of Tzsayn’s face—his smooth cheekbone and arching eyebrow—but this time she made herself glance down as Savage unwound the bandages.

  A glimpse was all she could stand. Below the knee, Tzsayn’s leg was a raw length of bloody meat and pus, his foot swollen like a pumpkin.

  She turned to Savage and Davyon.

  “What’s happening to him? It’s getting worse!”

  Savage shook his head. “The childhood burns mean the new burns take longer to heal.”

  Immediately after the battle of Hawks Field, Tzsayn had seemed to recover, but after only two days, an infection had swollen his leg and delirium swamped his mind. Catherine had recovered quickly from her own ordeals before and during the battle. She had a deep scar on her hand from the metal skewer that had held her in chains, but the demon smoke she’d inhaled had healed her instantly.

  If only it worked for Tzsayn, she thought. But he was too old for the purple smoke to have any useful effect.

  Catherine had physical scars but few mental ones. She had come to terms with her actions—she had killed her own brother. She wasn’t proud of it, but neither was she ashamed. It was a fact, a necessity. Men killed all the time, with little thought, but she had examined her actions with all the logic of a judge and had no doubt that what she had done was right.

  Boris was evil, and their father had made him that way. Aloysius himself had probably been made that way by his own father, and no doubt his father could also be blamed in turn, and on back through the royal line. But the rot had to stop. And if the men couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do it themselves, Catherine would do it. She had begun by killing Boris, but she had to do more. This was now her certainty. She would do all she could to stop her father from causing more death, destruction, and misery. That was her grand ambition, and it didn’t weigh her down but carried her on.

  And “on” meant acting—no, being—a queen: Queen Catherine of Pitoria. She’d lied about being married to Tzsayn while he was a prisoner of Aloysius, but he’d gone along with the lie upon his release. So had Davyon, Tanya, and even Ambrose, so now, for all intents and purposes, she was queen—with all the responsibilities that brought.

  Thankfully everyone who had been involved in the treacherous plan to hand Catherine over to her father in exchange for Tzsayn had been swiftly dealt with. Lord Farrow, along with his generals and supporters, had been arrested and imprisoned immediately after the battle. In the few days that Tzsayn was lucid, he had made it clear that Lord Farrow would be tried for his treason, and few doubted he would be found guilty and executed.

  But then Tzsayn’s fever had taken hold and the responsibility for running the army, and indeed, the country, had fallen to his queen. These responsibilities—some small, some huge—filled Catherine’s mind. Decisions needed to be made over the army, the navy, the food, the horses, the weapons, and the money.

  The money . . .

  Most of Pitoria’s wealth had gone to paying Tzsayn’s ransom, which was now in the hands of the Brigantines. The people had already been taxed to the hilt. Money—or lack of it—was a serious threat; money and war.

  Not enough of one and far too much of the other.

  Catherine stroked Tzsayn’s forehead. He was sleeping now, and looked peaceful, but Catherine knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep again. She could take some demon smoke, which had the wonderful ability to make her both more relaxed and stronger, but Tanya was awake too, and would make her displeasure felt if she saw her mistress taking smoke. Being a queen, Catherine had discovered, meant even less privacy than being a princess. The idea of time to herself, unobserved, seemed an unimaginable luxury. She went outside, shadowed by Tanya. Davyon, grim-faced as ever, was there, staring into the distance. The sky was clear and beginning to lighten in the east.

  “At least the rain has stopped,” Catherine said.

  “Yes, we have that,” Davyon replied.

  Catherine thought of the piles of papers she had on her desk. But she couldn’t quite face them yet.

  “I want to go for a walk.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty. Within the royal compound? Or—”

  “No, a real walk—in the fresh air, among trees.”

  In the past, Catherine would have happily ridden out with only Ambrose as her guard, and she’d have loved to do that now. But what she wanted to do and what she was able to do were very different things. The last thing she needed was to rekindle the rumors about her relationship with her bodyguard, and besides that, Ambrose was still recovering from wounds received in the battle. At the thought of that, she felt guilty. Many of her soldiers had been wounded; she should support them. “I’ll go through the camp; I’d like to see my soldiers.”

  Davyon frowned. “You’ll need some of the Royal Guard to accompany you.”

  “In my own army’s camp?”

  “You’re the queen. There might be assassins,” Tanya muttered loudly, as only Tanya could. “And in case you’ve forgotten, there is definitely a hostile army just over that hillside.”

  “Very well,” Catherine said. “Summon the Royal Guard.”

  Davyon bowed. “I too will accompany you, Your Majesty.”

  “Will you require your armor, Your Majesty?” asked Tanya.

  “Why not?” Catherine sighed. “I’m sure the extra protection will please Davyon. Let’s dazzle.”

  Though she felt not at all dazzling.

  As the sun rose over the camp, Catherine, in a white dress under her shining armor, part of her hair plaited round her crown and the rest loose down her back, set out with Davyon (a fixed smile on his face), Tanya (dark-eyed, wearing a blue dress with a white fitted jacket that Catherine hadn’t seen before), and ten of the Royal Guard, all with dyed white hair.

  Catherine felt her mood brighten as she greeted the guards by name and stopped to ask one, “How’s your brother, Gaspar?”

  “Improving, Your Majesty. Thank you for sending the doctor to him.”

  “I’m glad he was of help.”

  Catherine hadn’t set foot outside the protected enclosure since the battle of Hawks Field. She’d been in meetings, nursing Tzsayn, or sleeping. Now, as she stepped out past the high wall of royal tents, she saw the Pitorian army. Her army.

  The camp stretched as far as she could see, and although it hadn’t moved since the battle, it was completely unrecog-nizable. It had always been slightly haphazard, full of tents, horses, and people, even chickens and goats, but it had been set in pleasant, open fields of grass. Seven days of rain and thousands of pounding boots had changed all that. There was no grass to be seen, only thick mud interspersed with pools of brown water, above which clouds of tiny flies hung like smoke in the morning light.

  “Midges,” Tanya complained, slapping her neck. “I got bitten all over my arm yesterday.”

  Davyon picked a route through the camp that was as dry as possible, but as they moved among the tents, there was something else hanging in the air besides the midges: a smell—no, a stench—of human and animal waste.

  Catherine put her hand over her face. “This aroma is rather overpowering.”

  “I’ve been
in farmyards that smell sweeter,” Tanya said.

  Farther down the field, some of the tents were entirely waterlogged. Soldiers were walking ankle-deep in mud, clouds of midges around them.

  “Why haven’t they moved their tents?” Catherine asked Davyon.

  “They’re the king’s men. They need to be near the king.”

  “They need to be dry.”

  “We didn’t expect the rains to last so long, but the men are hardy. It’s only water, Your Majesty, and as you said yourself, the rains seem to have passed.”

  Catherine splashed over to a group of soldiers standing on a small island of relatively dry ground, their boots thick with mud. The men saluted and smiled.

  “How are you handling the rain?” she asked.

  “We can handle anything, Your Majesty.”

  “Well, I can feel the water soaking through my boots, and I’ve only been out here a short time. Aren’t your feet wet through?”

  “Just a bit, Your Majesty,” one admitted.

  But another, braver man added, “Sodden and have been for days. My boots are rotting, Josh’s feet have turned black, and Aryn’s got the red fever, so we might not see him again.”

  Catherine turned to Davyon. “The red fever?”

  Davyon grimaced. “It’s a sickness. The doctors are doing what they can.”

  Catherine thanked the men for their honesty and set off again. When they were out of earshot of the soldiers, she hissed at Davyon.

  “Men dying of fever? General, this isn’t what I expected from you. How many are sick?”

  Davyon rarely showed emotion and his voice now was more tired than angry. “One man in ten is showing some signs. I didn’t want to trouble you with it.”

  Catherine almost swore. “These are my men, my sol-diers. I want to know how they are. You should have informed me. You should have moved the camp. Do it today, General. We can’t assume the rains won’t return. And even if they don’t, this place is already a wasteland of flies and filth.”

  Davyon bowed. “As soon as you’re safely back in the royal compound, I will begin the process—”

  “You’ll begin the process now. I’ve got ten guards with me, Davyon; I don’t need you too. And it seems to me I’m more likely to die of drowning or fever than an assassin’s arrow.”

  Davyon’s lips were tight as he bowed again and left without another word. Catherine continued her tour, making a point of stopping and talking to both her white-hairs and Tzsayn’s blue-hairs. Most of the men seemed happy to see her, and all of them asked after their king.

  “We knew he’d escape the Brigantines. If anyone could, he could.”

  Catherine smiled and said how proud Tzsayn was of his men for their loyalty and courage. It was clear that none knew Tzsayn was ill, and it was probably best to keep it that way.

  She came to a halt at the northerly end of the camp that overlooked Hawks Field. It too was unrecognizable as the place where the Pitorians had fought and beaten the Brigantines. The river had burst its banks and flooded everything. The only feature that remained was a crooked wooden pole poking up at an angle from the brown water—the remains of the cart Catherine had been chained to, which had somehow survived both fire and flood. On the far bank, where her father’s troops had gathered, there was nothing but grass. In the days since the battle, the Brigantines had fallen back to the outskirts of Rossarb, half a day’s ride north. No one knew when, or if, they would attack again, but while her father made up his mind, it seemed he had more sense than to stay put in a swamp.

  As Catherine surveyed the ground, she felt her stomach tighten. On the maps in the war meetings, it had all seemed somehow remote, but here the true extent of their plight felt uncomfortably real.

  Even if Catherine had escaped his clutches, Aloysius had got almost everything else he wanted from his invasion—gold from Tzsayn’s ransom to finance his army and access to the demon smoke on the Northern Plateau. His army had retreated, but he wasn’t beaten, while her own men were knee-deep in mud and riddled with fever.

  Catherine set her jaw. She wished Tzsayn was able to help her, but for now she’d have to work alone.

  AMBROSE

  ARMY CAMP, NORTHERN PITORIA

  THE INFIRMARY was cool in the morning light. The dawn chorus of groans, coughs, and snores had given way to quiet talk peppered with curses and weak cries for help. Ambrose lay on his side in his rickety camp bed looking to the door, willing the next person to enter to be Catherine. She would smile at him as she approached, walking quickly, leaving her maids well behind, as she used to do when she saw him in the stable yard at Brigant Castle. She’d take his hand, and he’d bend and kiss hers. He’d touch her skin with his lips, breathe on her skin, and breathe in her smell.

  The man behind Ambrose coughed wheezily, then spat.

  Ambrose had been here a week, sure at first that Catherine would visit him, now not so sure. He’d filled each day with thoughts of her, remembering the days he’d spent with her, from the early days in Brigant, when he rode with her along the beach, to the glorious days in Donnafon, where he’d held her in his arms, caressed her smooth skin, kissed her hand, her fingers, her lips.

  A cry of pain came from a man at the far end of the room.

  What are you thinking? Catherine shouldn’t come here. The place was full of misery and disease. He had to get out and go to her. But for that, he’d have to walk. He’d been injured in the shoulder and leg in the battle of Hawks Field. He’d seen soldiers heal from worse injuries than his, and he’d seen men give up and die from less serious wounds. There had been a moment, after the battle, when he thought he couldn’t go on, but that feeling of despair had left him, and he knew now he would never give up. He’d fight on for himself and for Catherine.

  Ambrose sat up in his bed and began his exercises, slowly bending and straightening his right arm as the doctor had instructed. He moved on to the next exercise: rotating his bandaged shoulder. This was more painful, and he had to do it slowly.

  The battle of Hawks Field was won, but the war was far from over. And as for Ambrose’s part in the battle . . . well, he’d tried to save Catherine, but killing Lang was all he had managed. He’d wanted to fight Boris, but the Brigantines had overpowered Ambrose, and it was Catherine, fueled by demon smoke, who had sent a spear into Boris’s chest. She’d saved Ambrose and killed her own brother. How must it feel? To kill your own brother? It was impossible for Ambrose to imagine; his own brother, Tarquin, had been the complete opposite of Boris. Though now they were both dead. And Ambrose had no idea how Catherine felt about anything. Why hadn’t she come? Was she herself ill? So many questions and no answers at all.

  “Shits!” He cried out at a sharp pain as he swung his arm too fast.

  He had to get out of this bed. He had to get out of this infirmary! The place was miserable. Every bed had a man in it, but few were casualties from the fighting; most had the fever that had swept through the camp. The red fever, they called it, for the color your face turned as you coughed up your guts. Several more had died in the night, their beds lying empty, though Ambrose knew it would only be a short time before another shivering body was laid in the grubby sheets. It was a miracle he hadn’t caught the fever already.

  Ambrose swiveled round until both feet were planted firmly on the floor. With the help of a chair back, he could just stand, wincing and wobbling slightly as he put more weight on his left leg. It was weak, but the pain was bearable; he could walk out of here if he tried. The doctors had removed the arrow from his calf and had sewn him up neatly. Most doctors would have amputated for such an injury, but the doctors had operated carefully, given him herbal treatments, liquors, and compresses.

  Ambrose had the best doctors—sent by Tzsayn.

  He had the best medicine—sent by Tzsayn.

  The best food—sent by Tzsayn.

  The best clo
thes and bedding and . . . everything.

  Everything except any word from or about Catherine. Was Tzsayn keeping her from him? That had to be the explanation.

  “You’re looking well, Sir Ambrose.”

  Ambrose had been so caught up in his thoughts that he’d missed seeing Tanya enter the room. He looked to the door, hoping Catherine would appear.

  “One of the doctors asked me to give you this. For strength or something.” Tanya held out a bowl of porridge and saw the direction of his gaze. “It’s all I bring. There’s no one else with me.”

  Ambrose nodded, trying to hide his disappointment. “It’s good to see you, Tanya.” He reached for the bowl but lost his balance and grabbed the back of the chair to hold himself upright. But this shocked his arm, and he grunted in surprise at the pain. He lowered himself to the side of the bed as casually as he could manage.

  Tanya stifled a laugh.

  Ambrose glared up at her. “Do you always laugh at the injured?”

  She shook her head. “Not always, just when their hair is a strange green color.”

  “Oh that. We were infiltrating Farrow’s men,” he started to explain, reaching for his unfamiliarly short locks, but Tanya was merely grinning more. “Anyway, it won’t wash out.”

  “You’ll have to dye it a different color; that’s the only way.” She sat next to him on the bed and leaned toward him, her voice lower, “But which will you choose? White for the queen? Or blue for the king?”

  “Blue? The old king had purple as his color. Won’t Tzsayn have to change all his blasted clothes and body paint now his father is dead?”

  “No, the royal colors alternate with each king. So Tzsayn’s color will remain blue. When he has a son, that son will have purple as his color, just as Tzsayn’s father did. Anyway, I expect you’ll go with white. Or will you go with nothing at all?”