"Never," he said brusquely, only having known the appropriate opening from the plays his sister-in-law, Lupitera, was always dragging him to at the Iglesia Mendoza, Cockspar's only decent theater. Confessional scenes were an easy way to get information to the audience, according to Lupitera. "I didn't come here to play altar boy, Your Grace, so-"

The Black Pope hissed at him through the grate, and Domingo checked himself. Whatever his feelings on her pagan customs, she was the only one who had reached out to him, the only one who had offered him something other than a red candle to burn at Efrain's tomb. What kind of a military man was he, driving his only allies away with stubbornness?

"Mother, forgive me, for I am unclean," Domingo murmured, starting fresh. "I come here a stranger to your ways, a sinner seeking succor from the balm of the Burnished Chain. Forgive a pilgrim his weakness."

"Overselling it is even more insulting, Baron," said Pope Y'Homa III, but she sounded impish rather than irate. "I sympathize with your weakness, and have from the first. That is why I reached out to you-a good man of little faith is far worthier than a woman of the cloth who betrays her vows."

"On that we are agreed," said Domingo, though not without a twinge of guilt at what he'd done in the name of goodness that very morning, what he was conspiring to do this very moment. It was not only the clergy who could play fast and loose with their vows. "It may interest you to learn that I am once more an active colonel of the Crimson Empire and agent of the queen."

"Did she make much noise about it?" Domingo didn't like how eager for gossip about their queen the pope was, but it certainly hammered home her humanity-Y'Homa didn't speak with the confidence of a vessel of the divine; she sounded like a teenager thirsting for canard. Which was all she was, really, but try telling that to the so-called civilized world who worshipped her as a god herself.

"Questions were put to me, alternates suggested," he said. "But the wise general never leaves the battlefield, and I am a nimble fencer with tongue and saber alike. Besides, what choice did she have but to accept my pledge? The Fifteenth is worth more to the Empire than every regiment from the Serpent's Circle to Diadem, and she wants Azgaroth's soldiers active, not twiddling their thumbs while the appointment process drags out for a new colonel."

It went without saying here as it had in the throne room that Chain-worship had broken out like a bad rash in Azgaroth, and if Queen Indsorith declined Hjortt's offer she might end up with some born-again noble leading the Fifteenth instead of an open heretic. And yet here he was, conspiring with the Black Pope-it was almost funny.

"Had my uncle enticed you into breaking your oaths sooner, the civil war would have ended faster, and to far happier result."

"I've broken no oaths," said Domingo testily. "This morn I swore to protect the Crimson Empire, the same oath I swore fifty years ago, the same oath my son... the same oath my son gave when he took over command of the Fifteenth last summer. The same oath my mother swore before me. In the hundred years we've been a part of the Crimson Empire, no colonel of Azgaroth has betrayed their duty to the Crown."

"Not to the Crown, just to the fool who wears it, eh?" Y'Homa's snide timbre grated almost as much as the truth behind her insult. "As I recall, you bucked the reign of the Stricken Queen more than any pony in the Crimson stable."

"I doubt you recall any such thing, considering you but were a twinkle in some cardinal's eye when Indsorith cast the pretender down. The vows I swore were to King Kaldruut, long before that Cobalt witch ever took up arms against him. And I rebuked her rabble at every pass until she snuck into Diadem and murdered her way into the Crown. But I'm not here to discuss her history; it's her future that interests me. Did you pry anything more out of Portoles? I saw her leaving the booth."

"Not as much as I had hoped, but her silence is just as damning as an outright confession," said Y'Homa. "She is definitely a double agent of Indsorith's, I'm sure of that now. And the anathema let slip that she's being sent out of the city... which can only mean that the queen has ordered her to finish the assignment your son left uncompleted in the mountains-to track down and assassinate Zosia before the rest of the Star discovers that the Stricken Queen is still alive. Indsorith must want her killed quietly in her tent, rather than risk martyring Zosia a second time on some battlefield with countless witnesses."

The hated name sent unwelcome images flashing through Domingo's mind. Bloody memories of bloody times: the rout at Yennek where the Fifteenth had stampeded over a mob of peasants, hooves and spears stained red as the riders' standards; the forest outside Eyvind, where every tree was strung with hanged soldiers captured by the Cobalts; the madness at Nattop that could only be explained by deviltry; and the worse business at Windhand that he had only heard rumors of, but the rumors were bad enough. And now Cold Cobalt had risen from her grave to murder Domingo's only child...

Perhaps it was payback for the difficult time Domingo had given Zosia's peasant army during the Cobalt War, or perhaps it was just a coincidence that Efrain had been the one Indsorith had sent to Kypck. It scarcely mattered. What did, what mattered more than Efrain's murder or Queen Indsorith's shielding that Chainwitch Portoles from justice, what mattered even more than the games the Crimson Queen and the Black Pope were playing with one another, was the simple fact that if Zosia had truly returned, all the Crimson Empire was in danger.

"Have your spies delivered any more news?" Domingo asked.

"My informants tell me they are close to a breakthrough," said the Black Pope. "Queen Indsorith is playing this hand so close to her chest she might lose a card down her cleavage, but she is running out of time. Everyone already knows this rebel army terrorizing the south calls itself the Cobalt Company, and word is spreading that Zosia herself leads them."

"I return to Azgaroth tonight," said Domingo. "I'll have the Fifteenth ready to move before the summer's out, and then we'll run the Cobalt Company to ground and execute every single one of them. The Second Cobalt War will end before it starts."

"I thought you wanted to wait for more evidence before proceeding!"

"Consider me convinced that these rebels need to be stopped," said Domingo, not pleased to have his words parroted back at him by this girl. "I had assumed the queen's reluctance to bring the full might of the Empire down on this new Cobalt Company was a calculated move, that she was conserving our strength to take Linkensterne back from those thieving Immaculates. That explanation makes less and less sense as the Cobalts grow bolder and bolder in their attacks, and still no royal order is given for the northern regiments to free Linkensterne before the Immaculates complete their wall."

"Don't even get me started on the Immaculates," said Y'Homa. "I've received intelligence that some important princess of theirs has supposedly been kidnapped by one of my missionaries. Every isle in the Norwest Arm is frothing mad about it. I have yet to work out if Zosia took the girl to leverage the Immaculates into aiding her rebellion, or if Indsorith is behind it for her own ends."

The third possibility was that Y'Homa had stolen the noble and would use her to bring the Immaculates to her cause when the Burnished Chain made another grab for the Carnelian Crown, but that went without saying. Domingo hardly expected the Black Pope to bring him in on every scheme; no, he was already far more deeply embroiled in her plots than he was comfortable with. The Fifteenth Colonel of the Crimson Empire, conspiring with the Burnished Chain-what would Domingo's mother have said about such a scandal? Nothing appropriate for church, certainly.

"Immaculates business aside, I am glad we are in agreement on your course," said Y'Homa.

"What kind of a father would I be if I didn't consider your information?" said Domingo, flinching as he relived the pain it had brought him to hear that Efrain had been killed by none other than Cobalt Zosia, and that the Crimson Queen whom both father and son had faithfully served had known it all along. That sham interrogation of Sister Portoles in the Crimson Throne Room had only confirmed the truth-nobody else knew who had given Efrain the order to attack Zosia's village, because the order must have come directly from Queen Indsorith herself, and she would risk the entire Empire to preserve the secret that Zosia had never actually died.

"What kind of a colonel would you be?" said Y'Homa, clearly thinking he was every bit as pliable as he pretended to be when forced to attend court. "With the aid of the weapon I offer you, the Fifteenth alone could slaughter the Cobalts before their ranks swell any further. And with the Ninth and Third Regiments already harrying the rebels, I doubt you'll have any trouble at all. What could be better for the continued peace of the Empire than an army of thugs eradicated without mercy, rather than awaiting the machinations of the queen to allow for their fall?"

Remembering all the engagements he had taken part in over the years, Domingo could think of quite a few things better than open combat against well-armed, well-trained rebels led by the cagiest opponent he had ever faced, but he kept them to himself. Whatever her motivation, the Black Pope was right that the Cobalt Company had already quaffed barrels' worth of Imperial blood, and their thirst was unlikely to slacken as they grew in ranks and reputation. Better to kill them all, as fast as possible, for the good of the Empire. For the satisfaction it would bring him, to go deaf from their screams as his Fifteenth took them apart by inches. If all was as it seemed, and the Stricken Queen truly led this new Cobalt Company, there was the chance, however slim, to meet her on the field before the battle. And if that happened, if he had the chance to avenge his son and his old king and all the dreams of the Crimson Empire that Zosia had cast down into shit twenty-odd years ago, well, then his oath never to strike an enemy before the horns of combat have sounded might just be forgotten for a moment or two.

"And what of the weapon you promised me, Your Grace?" said Domingo. "Now that I have fulfilled your terms, it is time you fulfill mine."

"With pleasure," said the Black Pope. "When you leave the confessional pay a visit to the offices of Cardinal Diamond. He is expecting you, and will deliver something more deadly than any army. Now, before you and I never had this conversation, is there anything else I can answer for you?"

How many times had he told himself that he'd been the same way at Efrain's age, a little soft and a little spoiled and more than a little reluctant to ride to war? How many nights had Domingo lain awake telling himself that his son was worthy of his title and station? That he hadn't somehow sired the sort of colonel the grunts would sing mocking songs about, a noble who bought his medals instead of earning them? How different would their lives have been if he'd given Efrain the kitten he'd wanted for his tenth birthday instead of a sword and a library of martial philosophy? But these were not the sorts of questions a deranged poppet with pretensions of divinity could answer, so he simply said, "It's hard to believe the peasants were right all this time, isn't it? They've been chanting it ever since she first fell from Diadem's throne room: Zosia lives."

"Not for much longer, Colonel Hjortt," said Pope Y'Homa III, Shepherdess of the Lost. "Not for much longer at all."

CHAPTER.

22.

Nobody likes to have a knife held to his face, which was why Maroto did what he did to the scout he had captured. The squirrelly little man-more of a boy, really-lay on his back hyperventilating while Maroto squatted beside him in the mossy bole of a maple, his blade nicking his captive's septum and his thumb resting on the bridge of the fellow's nose. They both knew Maroto could pare off the man's twitching, running bit of cartilage as easily as taking a wedge from an oddly shaped cheese, yet still the scout refused to give up the goods. It was almost as if the blighter knew about Maroto's oath, could tell at a glance he'd sooner cut up his own face than torture a sworn servant of Samoth.

Rare was the day where Maroto didn't regret vowing to Queen Indsorith that he'd never again raise weapons against her or her people save in self-defense; he hadn't had much choice in the matter, given the circumstances, but still, it was damned inconvenient that a poor decision made twenty years ago continued to hamstring him. He still had no idea how much use he'd be to his old general once he finally caught up to her, what with that meddlesome oath, but he'd burn that bridge when he got to it-first he had to reach Zosia. Since they had followed the trail of the Cobalt Company here to Myura, it was a safe bet she was barricaded inside the nearby castle that the Imperials were laying siege to. Now if only he could get this fucking scout to open up without opening him up.

"Come on, man," he said, hoping the knife would lend weight to his bluff. "If I have to take it off you'll scream, and if you scream I'll have to cut your throat. Who wants that?"

"I dunno what you're talking 'bout, I swear!" repeated the scout, too loudly, and Maroto sighed. He hated the very idea of taking off bits of people-if you were going to cut, not cutting to the kill was a dark business. As if he knew any other kind.

"I told you I'd give you two chances. That was your first, now your second is going to be whether or not you scream. Being noseless is better than being dead, so I'd hold it in were I you."

The scout whimpered, his bulging eyes big as goose eggs, but still didn't confess. Maroto was stumped-unless he actually cut this kid they weren't getting anything out of him, but Maroto wasn't keen to find out what happened if he broke an oath he'd sworn on the name of his devil.

"Maroto, why-" Purna began from her perch in the tree above them, but he cut her off with a hiss.

"Kiss the devils on their mouths, girl, now you've done it," he said, secretly relieved she'd set him up with the opportunity for one last play. "How many times have I told you not to use my name? I could have let this runt off with a nosing, but now... sorry, lad."

"Maroto." The scout whispered his name as reverently as that of a saint. "You... you're Maroto the Conqueror?"

"Yeah yeah," allowed Maroto. "And you're Noseless the Horribly Dying Scout if you don't-"

"The Cobalt Witch," said the scout quickly. "That's who you're lookin' for, ain't it? Your old queen."

"Your old queen, too," Maroto reminded the boy, trying to rein in his excitement at the scout's use of an epithet he hadn't heard in decades. "Although maybe you weren't born when she... while she... She's not a witch, is the point you've got to come to. Cobalt Zosia is fine, or, what was it she liked..."

"Cold Cobalt," Purna called down. "Oooh, and 'the Banshee with a Blade' is the name of one of Vuntwor of Nin's better ballads about her-that's what I'd go by, I was her. Has a wicked ring to it."

"I always just liked the sound of 'Queen Zosia,' " Maroto mused. "But really, any such title that doesn't denigrate her character will do, and help keep your nose attached for the moment."

"It's true," said the scout, wonder seeming to have chased off some of the blind terror he'd evidenced ever since Maroto had snatched him from behind the tree and pinned him down. "It's really her, isn't it?"

"Devils lick your bones, that's what I'm asking you," said Maroto. "The mercenary company your regiment's cornered at Myura Castle, who leads them?"

"A woman, I told you, thass all I know for sure," said the scout. "The brass must not have toll us all for fear it'd affect morale. It's got to be her."

"What makes you think that?" Maroto took some of the pressure off his blade.

"I ain't seen her, let 'lone close enough to tell the color of her hair, but the flag she's run up the castle poles is blue, dark blue, with a broken red crown in the center and five silver pentacles circlin' it." The scout gulped. "One for each Villain, right?"

"That's new heraldry, but sure sounds like her style," said Maroto, trying not to grin and failing spectacularly. Five pentacles on her flag! She was expecting him! "That's information to save your nose, if not your life, scout!"

"Scout?" the scout said. "I'm not a scout."

"I told you I didn't think he was," said Purna. "And the only thing I can see from up here are more trees. Can I come down?"

"No," said Maroto, and guffawed almost convincingly. "Not a scout-and just what do you think a scout would say when captured, eh? Why's else would he be skulking around this border wood when there's a siege on in the town below, and with the Crimson sigils on his armor all blacked up? Not a scout!"

"No, Captain Maroto, sir, I'm not," insisted the scout. "Thass what I was tryin' to say when you put the knife to me-I'm not now nor 'ave I ever been a scout. I tried to cover the red on me tabard to blend into the woods, it's true, but if I was a real scout I wouldn't have just walked into your ambushin' me, yeah?"

"Maybe yes and maybe no," said Maroto, considering the boy beneath him. Not a scout? "I've caught plenty of scouts in my day."

"And what would I be scoutin' out here in the forest, miles from Myura, with the sun 'bout to set?"

"Easy," said Maroto, wondering whom he was trying to convince here. "Patrolling the hinterlands to make sure reinforcements aren't sneaking up from behind to break the siege, or deliver supplies."

"Yeah, that makes sense," the scout agreed. "I didn't think 'bout that. But if I was a scout don't you think I'd know that an' be ready with a better excuse?"

"You're talking into my deaf ear," said Maroto-the only good to have come out of taking that damn arrow to the head was getting to use that tired expression as much as he wanted.

"What kind of scout-"

"Shhh," said Maroto, pressing the blade firmer. Even with only one good ear he thought he'd heard- "Someone's coming up the hill behind us," Purna stage-whispered from the maple boughs. "Shall I open fire?"

Hearing the crunch of leaves under several pairs of boots, followed by a tinkling silver bell and a high-pitched giggle, Maroto seriously considered it. Half their running crew had returned to the capital if not their familial houses before Maroto's wounded ear had even stopped oozing lymph, and most of the other nobles had fallen off along the surreptitious trail from the edge of the Panteran Wastes to Agalloch, from Agalloch to Geminides, from Geminides back around to Katheli, and finally from Katheli to here outside the castle of Myura, where the elusive Cobalt Company had been cornered by the local Imperial regiment. Those few fops who remained were the most dedicated to adventure, if not to following orders, a sad point that was made for the umpteenth time as Count Hassan, Duchess Din, and Pasha Diggelby emerged from the underbrush.

Count Hassan was dressed in his dramatically sheer fencing gown and carried an ivory-handled machete in one hand and an enormous drinking horn in the other, the sloshing vessel supposedly carved from a megapotamus tooth. Duchess Din's thigh-high magenta boots were fashionably gartered onto her gleaming scalemail singlet, the prow of her wig skewered with a golden quarrel that shone in contrast to the dull oak of the one nocked in her enormous crossbow. Pasha Diggelby wore the leather vest and skirt he had modeled after Maroto's own garb, a crystal waterpipe in one bony hand and a leash in the other. At the end of the leash was the fluffy white lapdog he insisted was a devil that his father had bought him from a Kravyadian diabolist but that was probably just an Ugrakari spaniel. The bell Maroto had heard announcing their arrival hung not around the pup's ruby-studded collar, but its master's.

"What ho," cried Diggelby. "Maroto's caught us some supper."

"Looks too lean," said the duchess. "I can abide a gamey cut, but never a stringy one."

"Oh, fellows," said Hassan. "I do not know if I can stomach the sight of Maroto sating his appetites, tranquil sylvan backdrop or not. It's all too beastly."

"Didn't we tell you to wait with the wagons?" said Purna, descending from her roost.

"We? We! Purna, love, that's absolutely adorable," said Diggelby. "Tell us, when are the nuptials, and shall we sit with the bride's side, or the groom's?"

"I really ought to be merciful and cut your throat now," Maroto told the scout.

"Who's your new playmate?" Hassan asked as Purna dropped the last few feet to the ground. "He looks about as old as your last opponent. Good thing we arrived in time to save you another hiding."

"My name's Lukash," said the scout, beginning to squirm out from under Maroto but freezing when the barbarian's blade tapped his face.

"His name's Noseless the Horribly Dying Scout," said Maroto, imagining the looks on these fops' faces when he made that first awful cut. If only he could go back and undo his vows; they needed a reminder this wasn't all some lark, this was war, or close enough, and this poor scout could provide just the- "I'm not a scout," said Lukash, rather peevishly. There was some cheek there you usually didn't get from desperate fuckers.

"What are you, then?" demanded Purna, squatting down beside Maroto and putting one bark-stained thumb directly against the boy's left eye before he could blink. "Tell me now or they'll call you One-eyed Lukash the Noseless Idiot from here on out."

"I'm... a deserter," said Lukash, closing his other eye in shame. "I'm Khymsari, it's against my faith to wage war. I been lookin' for the chance to sneak off ever since the Myuran regiment drafted me."

"Uh-huh," said Purna. "Sure you are. Take off his lying lips, Maroto."

"Oh, let him up already," said Diggelby, leaning over to light his waterpipe on the match Hassan had struck for him. "This is all perfectly barbaric."

"Khymsari, huh?" Maroto reached up and pulled the boy's iron skullcap off as the fop's pipe gurgled in the background. Sure enough, there was the crown of shorn squares in his otherwise thick black hair. If Maroto hadn't stuck to his sacred oath he might have disfigured a pacifist. Wouldn't have been the first time. "Devils' mercy... Let him up, kid, he's telling the truth."

"Bravo," said Duchess Din, juggling the crossbow around in her arms to accept the smoldering waterpipe from Hassan as Diggelby coughed up a lungful of skunky smoke.

"You'll let me go, then?" asked Lukash, not daring to move from his imprint in the rotting leaves.

"Once you tell us everything there is to know about your regiment, the Siege of Myura Castle, and how one might sneak past the former into the latter... well, maybe," said Maroto. "Come on, let's get back to camp. I've got a hankering for balut, and don't expect we'll find any eggs out here."

The merry posse-for they seemed always merry, these few remaining richies, even with the last of their servants having deserted a few days past-picked their way back through the autumn woods, the brilliant topaz, amethyst, and garnet leaves that remained on the maples, oaks, and wild damsons turning the whole wood into an arboreal treasure chest. The nip in the evening air felt like a belated gift from long-absent gods to his ever-sweaty brow, and Maroto hummed an old marching song to himself as they walked. Purna followed, questioning the prisoner and thus giving Maroto a respite from her yammering, and just ahead Diggelby, Din, and Hassan argued over the wording of an anthem Maroto had never heard. Nothing could dampen his mood, not now. Sure, they'd taken a tour of the whole bloody Crimson Empire after leaving the Panteran Wastes, only to end up back here, less than a hundred leagues from where they'd first quit the desert, but that was the way of the world, wasn't it, to forever be winding up just where you'd started? There was a time when Maroto would have resented his cyclical trajectory, but at present he found it hard to complain. The reason for his excellent humor was simple: over the last few months, as they'd picked up more and more scraps of rumor along the trail of the blue-haired mercenary captain, Maroto had finally let himself believe the bartalk he'd overheard that spring night in Niles. Zosia was alive, and if the last twenty years had been him wandering out in a wide circle, wide as the whole Star and then some, now he was coming right back to the beginning. Back to her.

How? Well, she must have been imprisoned instead of killed, as everyone had claimed, and now she had escaped and rallied her old army to take back her rightful due. Impossible as it seemed, his queen, his captain, his one true love yet drew breath. And she was here, just over these hills, holed up in a castle while the forces of her former captors surrounded her.

Maroto couldn't wait to break her out.

CHAPTER.

23.

Come clean, Keun-ju," said Zosia for the hundredth time since they had left the Immaculate Isles, and the fourth or fifth since they'd been seized at the harbor. "You can trust me."