Heroes of the Empire, page 5
part #3 of Unari Empire Trilogy Series
Mostly what she found was women talking to each other, as she expected. It was all she could do to avoid looking like she was eavesdropping, especially since that’s what she was doing. She had little trouble blocking out small gossip or tales of homes longed for. She was listening for talk about what they were doing here and now, about what should happen next. When she heard something like that, she slowed her pace, trying to take in just a little bit more.
What she heard gave her strength, for the most part. One group of women had procured a map of Cye, perhaps from the rolling library, and were studying so they’d know where things were when it came time to enter the city. Belwyn stopped and talked with them briefly, pointing out a few places on the map that had meant something to her in what seemed like another life. Another group was reading—aloud, given that a large portion of this army could not read—a tract from the Unari Pan Democracy League, taking breaks to debate its finer points. She didn’t stop to listen or take part. This was something they needed to do for themselves, without her butting in. Even though few used the title “Lady” for her anymore, she knew that among some, she had a reputation as elite and a bit out of touch. It was a fair observation, given that she used to live in the Imperial palace. Who she once was could shut down people sometimes, even if it wasn’t who she was now.
The farther she went, the more talk of Cye Belwyn heard. She wondered if word had spread that she was out and among them, like how a worker knows the boss is coming and warns her coworkers to look particularly busy. It was all she could do to tamp down that kind of low-grade paranoia. If she needed these women’s trust, she had to be willing to trust them first. Besides, why should it be surprising that they were mostly talking about Cye and when and whether they were going there? It had been the question on everyone’s mind since they settled in the Valley of the Queens.
But Valpari hadn’t been wrong. She heard some dissent here and there, made all the more notable by the fact that the women hadn’t stopped or changed topics as she passed by. At the far edge of the camp, Belwyn found a group of about a dozen women. Most were sitting on a ring of stones around a pair of women who were arguing back and forth.
“We’ve come this far because of her leadership. What makes you think Belwyn suddenly is unable to carry us any further?” asked one, an older woman with streaks of auburn in her gray hair.
“Because it’s clear she has run out of ideas,” said the other, lean and tall, with the certainty of youth. “Is it that obvious? We let ourselves be driven here like cattle to market and now all we do is sit and wait.”
The women around the circle either nodded their heads in agreement or murmured objections.
“What does that even mean?” the older woman asked. “Do you think we can just walk right into the city and then right to the palace?”
“We could at least try!” The younger woman threw up her hands in frustration and turned her back.
This time, Belwyn decided to jump in. “And what should we do then?” She stepped out of the shadow of one of the trees, between a pair of seated women, and into the stone circle. “Since I’m out of ideas, perhaps I need to get them from someone else.”
The young woman spun to face her and took a few deep breaths. “Belwyn, I meant no disrespect . . .”
Belwyn waved the apology away. “You’re worried about what we’re doing, passionately so. No need to apologize. Just explain things to me. What happens next?”
Regaining her composure, the woman said, “We do what we’ve done up to this point. We march, to the city, through the city, and confront anyone who would try to stop us.”
“And then what?” This was the question in Belwyn’s head that always stopped her planning. She wanted to pose it to someone else for a change. “We get into the city, and then? What if getting that far requires a showdown with Chakat’s Imperial Guard? I’m not talking about young men drawn to fight for some vague cause of empire, I’m talking about battle-hardened soldiers loyal only to the Emperor?”
The woman stood, silent, without any answer.
Belwyn decided to jump into the silence. “Those are the questions I’m still trying to answer. I know it’s frustrating to sit here day after day. I know that we accomplished so much to get here and that it seems like now we’re letting momentum slip away. But we have a chance to really change our world, our Empire. Rushing into things only gives Chakat what he wants, which is a movement that doesn’t know where it’s going or how it’s going to get there.”
There was a long pause that the older woman finally broke. “Are we waiting for him? For Coleman? For a man?”
Belwyn remembered what Valpari had said about others worrying she was letting him run things. She chose her words carefully. “I am not waiting for him to tell us what to do, if that’s what you mean. But part of the process of figuring out our next move is deciding who our allies are and how we might work together to best achieve mutual goals.”
“Are they mutual?” the younger woman asked. They were on the same side now. “This Coleman and the group he’s with”—she snatched the flyer out of her sparring partner’s hands and shook it at Belwyn—“they want revolution.”
“Not necessarily,” Belwyn said, putting up her hands. She tried to make herself sound like she believed it. “They want change, but they’re not locked in to how that change should come about. We can all agree that things need to change, right?”
This led to some nods around the circle, but the older woman spoke up. “I’m not here to see the Empire fall. My son died fighting for it. I want to know why and how, but I don’t want his death to have been in vain.”
Belwyn felt like she had boxed herself in. “Nobody wants that. But the very fact that you’re here, in the woods, with all these other women who want the same thing you do, isn’t that proof that the Empire as it exists now isn’t working? Would the Empire you want send its young men off to die without reason?”
“I can’t stay here forever.”
Belwyn turned on her foot. One of the women sitting on the stone circle looked at her. “My home is in the Knuria. I have to get back to it soon.”
Belwyn stepped to her. “I know none of us want to be here forever. We all want to go home soon, wherever home is. But don’t let the pull of home lead you to forget what brought you here in the first place. The pain of loss. The agony of not knowing. If we give up now, all of that will remain. You’ll never have the answers you seek, the answers you deserve.”
“You’ve got yours,” one of the other women in the circle said.
Belwyn turned again, almost losing her balance. “What?”
“You heard me.” The woman’s face was streaked with creases and crags, her gray hair tied behind her. “You got the answer you were looking for. What else do you need?”
“What is it you think I’ve gotten?” Belwyn took a few steps toward the woman, but didn’t get too close, unsure what she might do to her. To her knowledge, no one outside her small circle knew the truth about the Port Ambs conspiracy. She hadn’t even told Coleman about it yet.
“Word is,” the woman said, “that when you rode off after the assassination attempt in Jido, that you got the answer you were looking for about Port Ambs. Is that true?”
Belwyn could lie. She had a plausible cover story for why she went after Marbin, the man who saved her from the assassin’s bullet. The way the woman was asking the question suggested she didn’t really know the answer. She decided that if building trust was the point, this was not the time to hold back.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s not why I went where I did, not entirely, but I did find some of the answers I was looking for.”
The women around erupted in a circle of whispers and gasps.
“And I will share them with you, the women who got me those answers, before I do anyone else.” She hoped she’d be able to keep that promise. She meant for it to be. “But like everything else, we must wait for the right time. Whatever else you hear, don’t think it true until you hear it from me.”
“And what if Coleman decides marching into Cye isn’t the right thing to do?” the young debater asked, grabbing Belwyn by the arm. “Are you going to decide that since you have an answer, there’s no need for the rest of us to get the same?”
Belwyn stared her down, wrenching her arm free. “If that were the case, why in the name of the gods would I be here?” She held out her arms, taking in the forest and all the people in it. “If all this meant for me was finding out who was responsible for Port Ambs, I would have sent you all home weeks ago. I would have never faced down armed troops in order to keep us together. Haven’t I done enough to show you that I am here, with you, to the end? Whatever that end is?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She stepped out of the circle and walked away briskly, listening to indistinct chatter diminish in her wake. What she’d decided is that they weren’t wrong. The time for waiting was over.
~~~~~
Belwyn returned from her rounds to find Coleman and Granger waiting in line for supper. “We need to talk,” she said, pulling Coleman aside.
Granger started to follow, but Belwyn glared at her. “I just need to speak with Coleman for a moment. Wouldn’t want you to lose your place in line.” She glanced at the dozens of women behind Granger.
Belwyn took Coleman by the hand and led him over behind a large tree, out of eyesight, and hopefully out of earshot.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
She nodded and started pacing back and forth, covering just a yard or two with each pass. “Valpari was right.”
“About?” Coleman said, obviously not following.
“About the mood, the mood of my people.”
“Your people?” Coleman flashed a little half smile.
She stepped to him and got in his face, as best as she could given the height differential. “You’re damned right they’re my people. I was the one that brought them together, at the risk of my own freedom, my life. I’m the one who got them here, as a unit, in a way that they could be useful to you.”
Coleman tried to back away, but found himself stopped by the tree. “I don’t want to take anything away from what you’ve accomplished, Belwyn, but don’t you think you risked your freedom because you were a prisoner?”
He had a point, but Belwyn wasn’t about to concede it. “It was the stories of these women, of Valpari and her daughters, that gave me the resolve and determination to do all this.”
“But they’re not why you’re here,” he said with emphasis. “You’re here to find out what happened at Port Ambs. What good have they been for getting that answer?”
She bit her tongue. Now wasn’t the time to show him how integral the army had been to finding her answers. “They have the same need I do: to get answers about lost loved ones. There’s more power in thousands together than with anyone alone, right? You’d think someone preaching democracy would have realized that.”
He opened his mouth as if to respond but thought better of it. After a long moment, he finally said, “You’d think someone who was leading an army of women seeking answers they can’t hope to get from a fundamentally broken system would realize that the problem is the system itself and that it needs to be brought down.”
She took a step back and put her hands on her hips. “These women don’t want revolution, or at least they don’t require it. How much have you talked to people who didn’t grow up like we did?”
“I beg your pardon?” Coleman smoothed out his jacket, as if he was brushing off offense.
“Come off it, I know your story. You were a lord, right? I was a lady. We didn’t exactly struggle to find food in the Cye slums or toil under the sun in the Knurian fields or deep underground in a mine so that our family had a roof over their heads, did we?”
“All the more reason why they should want to go to the root of the problems,” he said, pausing for a thought. “We have more to lose from any new regime, don’t you think?”
She shook her head, just ignoring that last part, given all she’d lost so far. “That’s a fine theory, and I don’t even disagree with it, but there will be chaos and anarchy, at least for a while, if Chakat is deposed. It will hurt most in the outlying towns and villages where these women live. Crisis always finds the poor, Coleman.”
“That’s why we work to minimize the chaos,” he said, not missing a beat. “We work to make sure the pain, of which there will be some, certainly, won’t be undertaken in vain.”
All this left Belwyn more and more frustrated. He had answers for everything. Whatever the UPDL’s long game was, Coleman clearly saw the end of it. She decided to turn it around on him. “If that’s the way it has to be, that’s the way it has to be. How does waiting around in this forest help? I won’t be able to help you hold onto this asset too much longer.”
“Because you’ll tell them to go home?” Coleman crossed his arms.
“Because they’ll start leaving on their own, in trickles of twos and threes, until this army won’t live up to the name.” Belwyn paused and decided. “Or I’m going to lead them into Cye myself, regardless of what you’ve got planned.”
“That’s not very likely,” he said, like it was a universal truth. “Without you, they’re nothing.”
Belwyn fought an urge to smack him. “You went to university, right?”
Coleman nodded.
“Ever study ancient history?” Getting no hint of recognition, she went on. “King Robard? They called him The Phantom.”
After a moment, Coleman said, “Oh, right, some Knurian warlord from before the gods arrived. Military leader of some skill, if I recall.”
“More than some skill,” she said, taking pride in her distant countryman. “He was the ancient equivalent to Haken the Conqueror, established the largest empire in the Knuria.”
“And?”
“All through Robard’s reign there were a series of holy wars. Back before the gods arrived there were countless pointless conflicts over who was more faithful, more pious, more righteous. Robard, for all his talents, was no different, a man of his times. Those wars, you see, were about more than just religion. They were about territory and resources and all the other things we fight wars about today. That wasn’t what motivated the common soldiers, though. That was belief. That was faith.” She felt almost like she was starting a sermon.
Coleman shook his head. “Not sure what this has to do with our situation here.”
“I’m getting to that,” she snapped, still pacing. “Robard’s kingdom had been at war off and on for decades. He’d lost a lot of men and resources. He was able to overcome the shortfalls by sheer force of will, by rallying his men into another holy crusade. The enemy, the Slazars, had occupied a spot in the foothills of the Granite Curtain called the Rock of Vedos, where a holy woman had once ended a pilgrimage. It was holy to both sides, but it had no inherent military value. Robard didn’t want to take it, but knew he could use it to recruit, as a motivational tool. That’s what he did: he cast his new war against the next-door neighbors as a holy war to liberate the Rock of Vedos from infidels.”
“Can I assume that he didn’t?” Coleman smirked, sure of himself.
“Actually, he did!” She savored the surprise. “He lost the war, though. You see, he used his motivated army to strike at all those Slazar outposts that had military value, but not the Rock of Vedos. The problem is that when you bring a bunch of people together with the promise of doing something, that’s what they want to do. Dissention in the ranks got so bad that the only thing Robard could do to quell a mutiny was just what he’d promised: try to retake the Rock of Vedos. They fought a bloody standstill there, but the Slazars were able to regroup and counter Robard’s assault elsewhere.”
“And in this analogy you’re Robard,” Coleman said.
“Exactly. All I’ve done is promise these women that we were going to Cye to get answers. Sooner or later they’re going to do it, whether I want them to or not. Or they’re just going to leave.”
“Point taken,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulder to stop the pacing. “I beg you, just give me a few more days. If this army marches on Cye alone, it will be a bloodbath. If it’s part of a larger uprising, one that happens at the same time in Bolik and Choma and Lillburg and half a dozen others, it will be much better.”
Belwyn knew she had to accept that, like it or not, she was part of something bigger now. So were the rest of the women in the Widows’ Army. They couldn’t get what they wanted if that larger movement didn’t succeed. She didn’t have to admit to him, however. Not yet.
She swept his hands away and started walking back to the line. “Come on. Let’s at least get something to eat.”
Chapter 6
When he stepped off the airship platform back on the solid ground, it occurred to Rossum that he had no idea what to do next. He was supposed to meet with a business associate of Obert but hadn’t gotten anything more than a name, Mercado Lewis. He didn’t know where the man’s office was, much less his home, or even what kind of business he was in. Rossum had money for an autocar to take him into the city—as usual, Obert made sure he was well provisioned for expenses—but what good did that do him if he didn’t know where to go?
He relaxed a little bit when he saw a young man standing under the awning of the arrival building, across the dusty expanse between it and the actual terminal where the airship docked. He was dressed in a light brown suit, with glasses, and had his hat in his hand. He asked something of nearly every person ahead of Rossum as they walked into the arrival building, but hadn’t gotten the answer he needed yet. He was clearly looking for someone.
When Rossum got to the front of the queue, the young man said, “You wouldn’t, by any chance, be Mr. Rossum?”
Rossum nodded. “You work for Mr. Lewis, I’m hoping.”
