Queenmaker V1

Prologue

It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.  It was a piece of shameless plagiarism ...

But I like to think Charles Dickens would have approved.

My name is Elliot Richardson, US Army.  I came home from base one night to discover my wife, Cleo, in bed with the neighbour.  The ensuring shouting match ended poorly, with me driving away into the unknown.  I didn’t know where I was going, nor did I really care.  I just wanted to get as far away from her, and the ruins of my former life, as I could.

I got my wish, in the strangest way possible.  The world lit up so brightly I thought the country had been nuked.  Instead, my car crashed through a gap in the fabric of reality and crashed in a ditch in broad daylight.  The interstate was gone.  Instead, I was on a road in the middle of nowhere.  It wasn’t until I encountered the Diddakoi Travellers that I realised I hadn’t fallen through space and time, but right outside existence as I knew it.  You see, they had magic.  You will, perhaps, understand my shock. Magic was real.  

The Diddakoi let me stay with them long enough to get my bearings and, with the aid of magic, start learning the local language.  It was an interesting time, although so different from my past life that I found it hard to adapt.  My new world was very strange.  I wanted to go home, to my kids, but there was no way back.  You see, I was in a world of magic, but I had no magic myself.  What was I going to do?

It got stranger as I started to learn more about the new world.  It was clear that someone, perhaps from Earth - my Earth - had been introducing new concepts and technologies that had seemingly come out of nowhere.  Primitive muskets, steam engines and printing presses co-existed with magic, farmers who worked the fields by hand and an aristocracy so determined to maintain its own position that it was unable to save itself from internal or external threats.  I was frustrating.  I could have introduced those concepts myself, but how?  I was alone.  No money, no status, no nothing.  Why would anyone listen to me long enough to let me prove what I could do?

One thing led to another and, after a wrongheaded attempt to defend the Diddakoi from a warlord’s man, I found myself in Damansara, a city that was - in theory - politically neutral.  In reality, the warlords could tighten the screws any time they chose and the city would have no choice but to bend the knee.  I made a mistake - I tripped a street rat who’d stolen a loaf of bread - and found myself inducted into the City Guard.  It was a good way to learn more about the city, but the guard was a deeply corrupt organisation.  I made a powerful enemy in Harbin Galley, an aristocratic teenage brat, when I stopped him from raping Gayle Drache.  It wasn’t until much later I realised I’d also made a handful of allies.

It didn’t take long for me to run into trouble.  I was American, with a sense of morals to match; I couldn’t tolerate the blatant corruption and unfairness of the city indefinitely.  I nearly got myself sold into slavery after attempting to free captured serfs, only to be intercepted by Rupert Drache, Gayle’s brother.  Rupert had just been appointed Commander of the Garrison, the city’s makeshift defence force, and he needed an advisor.  Or, more accurately, he needed someone to do the job for him.  His political enemies had set him up to fail, to be the scapegoat when the warlords started applying pressure again.  And I saw my opportunity to finally make a mark on this world.

I grasped the chance with both hands and started to build a proper army, complete with the latest - as far as the locals knew - in military technology.  My troops weren’t pretty-boy cavalry or household troops who looked good but ran at the first hint of actual violence.  I taught tactics to the infantry, to fight as an organised force rather than a mob.  It worked.  The warlord tried applying pressure, once again, and we gave him a bloody nose.  Rupert’s enemies were shocked.  The world shifted on its axis.

The warlord didn’t seem inclined to accept his defeat with good grace.  I worked frantically to expand the army, all too aware the warlord was doing the same.  I learned how to use small magics in combat and how to take advantage of magicians with very slight gifts; I worked with refugee serfs to build spy and rebel networks deep within enemy territory.  I started, with Rupert’s help, to build a patronage network of my own.  Our time ran out, however, when the warlord finally started to pressure us again.

I drew up a plan and convinced Rupert to go along with it.  Instead of waiting to be hit, as we were expected to do, we went on the offensive instead.  The warlord and his men never saw us coming, not until it was far too late.  We smashed his troops in open combat, shattering once and for all the myth of his invincibility.  His own people, downtrodden serfs who hated him and now no longer feared him, rose in his rear.  We kept moving, punching through his defences and eventually smashing his castle, breaking his power beyond repair.  It was a stunning victory, capped by the rescue of Princess Helen - daughter of the powerless King Jacob of Johor - from the forces of Warlord Cuthbert.  We had changed the world.

But my victory led to a more personal defeat.  My sudden rise had discomfited the city fathers, including some of Rupert’s family.  The rebellions I’d seeded, and the tactics I’d introduced, could easily be turned against them and they knew it.  They planned to quietly kill me, before my power base grew to the point I could crush them.  Princess Helen warned me of the plot, then offered to take me into her service.  It would mean leaving everything I’d built behind, but ... it was the best of a bad set of options.  I didn’t want to launch a coup and I didn’t want to leave everything and run.

And so, nearly a year after I arrived in the Kingdom of Johor, I finally found myself in the capital of a powerless king.  And that king’s daughter wanted me to make him powerful once again.

I got to work at once.  I took the decorative – and completely useless – army they gave me and turned it into a decent fighting force.  I took the wealth they gave me and invested it, funding the development of printing presses and factories as well as guns and weapons.  I took the estates they gave me and handed them over to the farmers, giving them incentive to produce all the food they could instead of the bare minimum.  I made all sorts of contacts with the city underground that saved my life.  And I started to fall in love with Fallon, a sorceress-in-training.

But I had made enemies, powerful enemies.  The local nobility was threatened by my arrival and my success.  The thought of the king and his daughter wielding a powerful army was enough to convince the bastards that something had to be done – and quickly.  They started by slandering Helen, telling the world I’d deflowered her – lying shitheads – but they rapidly moved on to outright treason.  The coup – I’ll give them that much – was well-planned.  Fallon and I were kidnapped by a sorcerer, while the nobility took control of the city and murdered the king.  They told themselves that all they had to do, to win, was marry Helen off to their chosen monarch.

They should have killed me.  It was their first mistake.  And their last.

We escaped – you don’t want to know how – and made our way to my estates.  My private army – I was allowed to recruit armsmen – marched on the city, while I and a handful of allies sneaked through the defences, liberated the prisoners and retook the castle, saving Helen’s life.  She was crowned Queen – the first Ruling Queen Johor had ever known – while I, now the mightiest of her aristocrats, readied myself for the wars to come.  

I did not have long to wait.

Chapter One

The day war broke out, I said to Lord Brock, “You fool.”

Alright, I didn’t say it.  But I thought it.  Lord Brock was Queen Helen’s strongest supporter amongst what remained of the city’s aristocracy, a man so old he seemed to think he was serving her grandfather ... personally, I thought he was a little senile.  It wasn’t clear quite what he’d been doing when the Traitors, as Helen insisted the coup plotters be called by everyone, had taken over the city, but I suspected he was too slow to realise anything had happened until it had been too late for him to do much of anything.  And it had worked out for him.  Helen had so few aristocrats willing to support her that the ones who did come forward were guaranteed high positions and heavy responsibilities.

I sighed inwardly as I surveyed Lord Brock’s work.  Roxanna, as a city, had never been particularly well defended – the warlords wanted to make sure they could kick the king’s ass whenever he tried to stand up to them – and there just hadn’t been time to built more than a handful of thin and fragile walls before the Traitors made their move.  The fact they hadn’t tried to make the defences even stronger when my army had been breathing down their neck was telling, at least in my opinion.  They might have told themselves they were standing up for tradition and a rightly ordered society, but the truth was they were serving the warlords.  I wondered, nastily, if Lord Brock was doing it too.  Or if he really was senile.

The walls in front of me would have been daunting, once upon a time.  They were built of solid stone, with guardposts at regular intervals and plenty of room for soldiers to man the battlements and rain death on anyone stupid enough to try to clamber over and force their way into the city itself.  Before me – before the mysterious Emily – the walls would have forced the attackers to either lay siege to the city, a time-consuming process that might easily have led to disaster, or accept horrendous losses in a bid to storm the walls and take the buildings beyond.  Now ... the attackers could batter the walls down with cannons, dig mines under the city, cram them with gunpowder and blow the walls to hell, or even – if some of the stories were true, fly over the walls and land within the city itself.  Lord Brock’s defences were worse than useless.  They’d make the defenders think they could hold out indefinitely when they’d barely protect the city for a few days if the defenders were lucky.  I shuddered to think what modern guns and bombs would do.

I tried to be diplomatic.  Really, I did. 

“My Lord” – I used his title in a bid to soften the blow, even though I technically took aristocratic precedence – “the defences need to be deepened.  The enemy will break through and we have to be ready to cut them off and throw them back.”

Lord Brock looked mutinous as I went on and on, outlining the need for trenches, makeshift minefields and a hundred other tricks more suited to the Western Front than a world barely nosing its way into the gunpowder age.  I understood his feelings – he’d grown up in a world where strong walls made good neighbours – but I had no time for them.  Warlord Cuthbert had made his hostility very clear, the day he’d tried to kidnap Helen, and nothing he’d done since had suggested he’d changed his mind.  He’d bankrolled the Traitors and the sorcerer who’d kidnapped me, all the while building up a modern army.  I doubted he was my match when it came to training men for the new style of warfare – I had the advantage of hindsight, of knowing what had worked for Lee, Grant, Pershing and so many others – but quantity had a quality all its own.  What did it matter if each of my soldiers was worth two of his, I asked myself, if we were outnumbered three to one?

“I’ll send out more workers and advisors,” I told him finally, reminding myself to make sure I put someone capable of being both firm and diplomatic in command.  I’d had commanding officers who’d hidden away, leaving command in the hands of their NCOs ... funny, I’d never thought I’d miss the lazy bastards.  It would be better for all concerned if Lord Brock stayed in nominal command while someone else did all the work, but he was too stubborn to go to his tent and claim the credit afterwards.  “We have to be ready to stand off a major offensive.”

“We’ll bleed him white if he tries,” Lord Brock assured me.  “The walls will stop an army.”

They won’t stop a modern army – or what passes for a modern army in this place – for long, I thought, tiredly.  Perhaps it was time for Lord Brock to suffer an accident.  The man was old enough to be my grandfather.  It was a minor miracle he’d lasted long enough to declare for the queen.  No one would think much of it if he passed away peacefully one day.  The sooner he’s removed, the better.

I sighed, again, as I took my leave.  Lord Brock seemed to be loyal enough.  His son had vanished under mysterious circumstances – personally, I suspected he’d backed the Traitors to make sure the family would have a foot in both camps – and he had no other heirs, nor did he have much to leave anyone.  I had no qualms about assassinating snooty assholes who sneered at me and my men for being commoners – or, worse, mercenaries – but it went against the grain to kill someone for being a bit limited in his thinking.  Armies had a nasty habit of training for the last war, rather than the next, and it wasn’t easy to break them of that.  The fighting in Iraq would have gone better, I thought, if we’d realised we’d be fighting a multi-sided insurgency from the very start.

My bodyguards kept their distance as I walked around the city, my keen eye surveying the small army of soldiers, labourers and – unfortunately – slaves as they trained for war or built the defences.  Helen had freed all the old slaves, but a surprising number of aristocratic retainers and mercenaries had survived the purge and promptly found themselves enslaved and put to work.  My stomach churned in disgust.  I’d done everything in my power to eradicate slavery, but now I was forced to use slave labour?  I knew I didn’t have a choice – if we killed the bastards, their guilds would ally against us; if we kicked them out, we’d just be sending the warlords free reinforcements – but it still gnawed at me.  It felt like a betrayal of everything my ancestors had undergone when they’d been sold into slavery and put to work in the fields.

The mercenaries will be freed once the fighting is over, I told myself.  And the retainers will have a chance to earn their freedom.

I kept my face under control as we passed one of the mustering points outside the city, where the new recruits were drilling under the experienced eye of my slightly more experienced soldiers.  Helen had seized ultimate power, which meant she could mobilise the entire city for war – and God help anyone who dared defy her – and thousands of young men had flocked to the colours, but it wasn’t all good.  I didn’t have anywhere near enough training sergeants, let alone an entire infrastructure to support them.  I was doing my best to supervise, but I was uneasily aware there were all sorts of opportunities for abuse, graft and all the other problems that exploded into the light when an army expanded too far too fast.  It was just a matter of time before something really serious happened, something I’d have to punish harshly to make sure everyone drew the right lessons.  I wasn’t looking forward to it.

And we won’t know how the city-folk will react, when they face the elephant for the first time, I thought, as we neared the factories.  How many will run, when they hear the sound of guns?

“Wait outside,” I ordered.  There was no threat to me inside the factories.  “I’ll be back in a moment.”

Craftsman Amman met me with a sweeping bow as I stepped into his fortress.  I nodded back to him, silently relieved I’d managed to convince him not to prostrate himself before me whenever I entered the room.  I’d saved him and his family from a fate worse than death and I knew he was grateful, but there were limits.  No wonder so many aristocrats were entitled brats, if they grew up with everyone grovelling before them.  My children, if I ever had anymore, wouldn’t be allowed to think themselves better than anyone else.  They’d be cleaning their own damned rooms and making their own damned beds.

“My Lord,” Craftsman Amman said.  “Thank you for coming.”

I nodded, impatiently.  I’d freed him and his family and yet he’d stuck with me.  I supposed it spoke well of him, if badly of the world outside.  “Your message said you’d made progress?”

“Of a sort,” Craftsman Amman said.  “Not as much as I had hoped, but progress.”

I kept my face blank.  It wouldn’t do to let him think I was disappointed, let alone angry, at the lack of progress.  Craftsman Amman had grown up in a world where satisfying his patron – me – was all-important and failure would be harshly punished, even if it wasn’t his fault.  I was within my legal rights to whip him or toss him onto the streets or do horrible things to his family ... I told myself, grimly, that he and everyone else would eventually grow out of those attitudes.  But until then, it was just something I’d have to tolerate.  Besides, it wasn’t as if I’d given him an easy job.

I’d read hundreds of books where the time traveller had invented modern technology in the past, books that had made it seem easy.  Real life was rarely so obliging, even without someone who appeared to have taken all the low-hanging fruit.  I would have killed for a book explaining how things worked – hell, I would happily have worked with one of General Lee’s engineers, if it meant having access to his knowledge and skills.  Railroads, telegraph wires, ironclads ...

It hadn’t been easy to design a very basic electric generator.  The army had taught me a lot – the less said about public education the better – but there’d never been any lessons in rebuilding civilisation from scratch.  I’d had a friend who’d been deeply into survivalist dogma and, as much as I hated to admit it, he would probably have done better than me.  The knowledge in my head wasn’t anywhere near as useful as I’d hoped.  And yet, I had been able to reason out the basics.

Craftsman Amman pointed to the device on his workbench.  “This produces very faint flickers of electric power, My Lord,” he said.  He’d been doubtful when I’d explained the concept to him, even though he’d been one of the first craftsmen to embrace the New Learning when it reached Roxanna.  “But it doesn’t produce a steady stream of current.”

“Not yet,” I said.  It would be years, if not decades, before we could build anything resembling a modern tech base, but we’d get eventually.  “You can flicker a light bulb or send a signal through the wire, right?”

Craftsman Amman looked worried.  “Yes, but ...”

I nodded in understanding.  We’d had to invent light bulbs too.  Craftsman Amman had had to resort to sorcery to make the first bulbs work, something that worried me.  My smartphone hadn’t survived whatever had brought me to my new world, which meant ... what?  There was magic in the air, literally.  I vaguely recalled some gibberish from Harry Potter about modern tech not working in magical environments.  If the air was saturated with high-energy fields or something along those lines – I was no sorcerer – there might be a hard cap on just how much technology we could develop.  The idea of developing our very own internet might be a non-starter.

We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I told myself.

“Share what you’ve developed,” I told him.  “And see who picks up your work and runs with it.”

“My Lord,” Craftsman Amman said.  “The more people who know about this ...”

“The more minds working on a given problem, the greater the chance of someone figuring out a solution,” I told him.  I’d told him that before, I was sure, but ... I understood, better than I cared to admit.  Trade secrets were the key to a better life, for the craftsman who devised them.  What sort of fool would give away his edge so quickly?  And yet, my mystery counterpart had done that and more.  “You’ll still be in the lead.”

And have first call on everything I remember from Earth, I added, silently.  You really will have an edge.

“I’ll write it up now,” he said.  “And ... what do we do about the light bulb?”

“We need to be able to produce a vacuum without magic,” I mused.  It could be done – there was no magic on Earth – but I had no idea how.  “Offer a reward to the craftsman who figures it out, on the usual terms.”

“Yes, My Lord,” Craftsman Amman said, reluctantly.  “I’ll see to it personally.”

“You did well,” I told him.  “I ...”

Someone banged on the door.  I cursed, one hand dropping to the flintlock pistol I wore on my belt.  I still missed the modern firearm I’d brought with me, but that was lost somewhere in the countryside.  The sorcerer who had taken it ... it unmanned me to even think of what he’d done – had been sitting on a treasure trove and tossed it away, as casually as one as one might discard a cigarette butt.  I rested my hand on the pistol as the door opened, bracing myself.  It was probably bad news.  My bodyguards wouldn’t have let him through unless he was a messenger.

“My Lord!”  The messenger threw himself to the ground.  “I come with ...”

“Get to the point,” I growled.  I wasn’t dumb enough to shoot the messenger, literally or figuratively.  Unfortunately, too many local aristocrats thought blaming the messenger for bringing bad news was somehow a good idea.  Idiots.  Bad news didn’t go away if you kicked the messenger in the nuts and threw him out the window.  It just ensured you didn’t get the bad news until it was far too late.  “What happened?”

“My Lord, an envoy has arrived from Warlord Cuthbert,” the messenger said.  “He requested an immediate audience with Her Majesty.  She requests your urgent presence.”

“Understood,” I said.  It wasn’t a short walk from the walls to the palace, but it was better to walk than take a horse.  Too many aristos wouldn’t give a damn who got crushed under their hooves ... I shuddered.  There was no way I could allow myself that attitude.  I needed the support of the people and it was terrifyingly easy to lose.  “I’ll be on my way at once.”

I nodded to the craftsman – he was already mentally back at work, trying to solve the problem I’d given him before other minds started to compete – and hurried out, leading my bodyguards in a swift jog through the gates.  The guards checked my credentials – they looked nervous, but at least they did it – before waving me through.  I made a mental note to commend them as we broke into a run, heading the streets towards the palace.  If I knew Helen, and I did, she’d stall as long as possible.  The aristos might say that any insult to their ambassadors was an insult to them, but the truth was there was nothing we could reasonably offer – including Helen’s hand in marriage, the throne and my head on a pike – that would satisfy the warlords.  War was coming.  Everyone knew it, even the people who normally had their heads firmly buried in the sand.

The stench wafted across my nostrils as we jogged over the bridge and into the palace.  I grimaced.  Helen had put the heads of her enemies on pikes and left them there to rot, a grim reminder of just what had happened to the men who’d killed her father and tried to force her into marriage to a useless fop.  I’d tried to talk her out of it – the rotting heads were breeding grounds for disease – but she’d been adamant.  Helen was a Ruling Queen in a world where women rarely held power in their own right.  She had to make it clear she could be twice as ruthless as any man.

“My Lord.”  Chamberlain Arnett bowed.  “Her Majesty is waiting in the Throne Room.”

I nodded, silently relieved there was no time to change.  I looked like a soldier returning from the wars, not an aristocrat or an officer with more gold braid than brains.  The old court would have been shocked.  The new was more jingoist than the idiots Rhett Butler had scolded for having nothing but cotton, slaves and arrogance.  I put the thought out of my head as I stepped through the rear curtains and took my place beside Helen, just as the herald announced the envoy’s arrival.  He looked just as I’d expected, an aristocrat wearing his master’s livery.  I didn’t need to look at Helen to feel her bristle.  He was the living representative of everything she hated, of the men who’d constantly humiliated her father and tried to force her into marriage.

The envoy didn’t bow or prostrate himself.  It was a calculated insult.  Luckily, we’d planned what to do.

I stepped forward, looked him in the eye, and smiled.  “We accept your surrender.”

Chris Hemsworth said it better, I think.  But the effect was much the same.

Chapter Two

The envoy goggled.  The court laughed.

I didn’t blame them.  I hadn’t seen a man gape like that outside a bad cartoon.  The envoy looked as if he’d been punched in the face and yet, couldn’t quite wrap his head around what had happened.  I supposed he had a point.  If you were prancing around, being all Mouth of Sauron, you’d be surprised if someone flipped the script on you too.

“You jest,” he managed finally.  “My master ...”

“Has sent you here with a message, we presume,” Helen said.  Her tone was calculated to get on the envoy’s nerves.  The reminder he was just an envoy probably didn’t help.  “Let us hear you out, before we throw you out.”

The envoy spluttered.  I hid my amusement with an effort.  It was very far from diplomatic, and I’d tried to argue in favour of more diplomacy when Helen and I had discussed our plans for the envoy’s arrival, but she’d insisted.  I understood her thinking.  There was nothing we could reasonably offer the warlords, certainly nothing they’d accept.  They were little better than gangsters, taking everything they could and then demanding more.  And if the monarchy had stood up to them, decades ago, the kingdom would be in a far better state.

It is always easy to try to appease the unappeasable, I thought.  How many times had that lesson been learned and forgotten, only to be learned again?  But once you pay the Danegeld you never get rid of the Dane.

“My master is greatly concerned with your preparations for war,” the envoy said.  His voice dripped honey and battery acid.  I felt my fist clench with a burning desire to punch the envoy in the face.  “He and his peers see them as a direct threat, and a stark renunciation of agreements signed by your father and grandfather.  They demand you meet their terms at once or face war.”

Helen affected a bored look.  “And what are their terms?”

The envoy steadied himself.  “First, you are to immediately disband your forces and dismiss your troops,” he said.  “Second, you are to banish all foreign mercenaries” – he gave me a nasty look – “from the kingdom.  Third, you are to permit the exiles, unjustly banished from their homes, to reclaim their lands and titles.  Fourth, and most importantly, you are to submit the question of your marriage to a commission who will consider the interests of the kingdom and determine who you will marry.”

I sensed, more than saw, Helen’s flash of anger.  But her voice was studiously calm.  “Is that all?”

“My master and his allies will dispatch troops to enforce the agreement, once you accept it,” the envoy said.  “They will be accompanied by the exiled noblemen and distinguished judges who will consider each case on its merits and determine what level of recompense should be paid to the dispossessed.  You yourself will be taken into protective custody and ...”

“And raped.”  Helen’s voice was suddenly icy.  “That’s what your master has in mind, isn’t it?”

The envoy looked shocked.  “My master has nothing but the greatest respect for you ...”

Helen cut him off.  “Your master attempted to kidnap me, then backed treacherous nobles in a bid to murder my father and unseat me,” she snarled.  “If that is respect …”

She calmed herself with an effort.  “What does he do to people he doesn’t respect?”

My lips twisted.  Warlord Cuthbert was right at the top of Helen’s shit list – and who could blame her?  He really had tried to kidnap her, and then force her into marriage.  I felt a flicker of sympathy for his wife and children, who would be put aside in favour of a woman who could legitimise his bid for the throne.  It made me wonder what sort of agreements the warlords had made between themselves.  The only reason they hadn’t forced Helen into marriage long ago, long before my arrival, was that they hadn’t been able to agree on how to share power amongst themselves.  If they’d come to an agreement ...

We can probably play on their fears, even if they have, I reflected.  They’re not the most trusting of people.  They’ll be watching their allies for betrayal even as they pretend to cooperate with them.

“Your Majesty ...”  The envoy took a breath and started again.  “Your Majesty, I am charged with carrying your reply back to my master.”

“Quite.”  

Helen rose to her feet, looking every inch the warrior queen.  She’d had more training, in magic as well as mundane fighting skills, than the average princess, although it was all too likely her enemies would think her defenceless.  My spies told me too many of her lower-ranking noblemen had received messages from the warlords – some offering wealth and power, some so bizarrely focused on male bonding it was hard to believe anyone could take them seriously – and while I thought none of those offers had been accepted it was impossible to be sure.   Too many high-ranking men had doubts about serving under a woman.  Idiots.  Helen was already shaping up to be a more effective monarch than her father.

“Your master’s terms are rejected,” Helen said.  “There will be no more discussion.  You will go back to your master and inform him he has one week to disband his troops and come to this city – alone and unarmed – to pay homage to me, or he will be crushed, and his family driven from the kingdom. Do you understand me?”

I winced, inwardly.  One week ... it was barely enough time for the envoy to get to his master and make his report, let alone for the warlord to mount a horse and ride back to the city.  And demanding the warlord came alone, without even a handful of escorts ...?  It was the kind of demand one made after beating the enemy army, not before; the kind of demand that would only be accepted by prideful and stubborn men, when resistance was no longer anything but kicking and biting on the way to the gallows.  Warlord Cuthbert was more likely to order his troops to march south immediately than disband his soldiers and bend the knee to the queen. 

If he comes alone, he knows he’ll be imprisoned at the queen’s pleasure, I thought.  And if his son leads troops to free him, the queen might order him executed out of petty spite.

I sighed inwardly.  Johor was a snake pit, a snake pit that made Game of Thrones look positively civilised.  There was no real law and order, certainly no government capable and willing to enforce the law without fear or favour ... it was quite possible, I reflected, that the warlord’s sons would go on the offensive in hopes their father would be executed, allowing them to lay claim to their inheritance.  They’d never say it out loud – sons were supposed to be loyal to their fathers, even though everyone knew their loyalty could be very self-serving indeed – but it was true.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the envoy said.  His face was pale.  I’d heard Warlord Cuthbert had a nasty habit of blaming the messenger.  I didn’t think he could make the message any more palatable either.  No amount of delicate wording could disguise the fact Helen had demanded the warlord’s unconditional surrender.  I wondered, idly, if the messenger would try to lie to his master.  It would cost him his head.  Helen would make sure he took a written copy of the message back too.  “I understand.”

Helen snapped her fingers.  Two black-clad men emerged from the curtains behind the throne, grabbed hold of the envoy and half-carried, half-dragged him out of the chamber.  A rustle ran through the room, the crowd struggling to come to terms with the latest development.  It was vanishingly rare for anyone to mistreat a messenger, no matter what he’d come to say.  It was a declaration of total war.  

I frowned inwardly.  Helen’s private guardsmen – the Black Roses – had expanded rapidly, after she took the throne, but ... I wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with them.  They reported directly to her, through their commander ... I understood, I really did, that Helen didn’t want to become dependent on anyone, but it still bothered me.  The Black Roses were more than just her guard.  They were expanding into intelligence and counterintelligence and making their presence felt on the streets.  I feared they’d wind up causing a disaster at the worst possible time.

And they look too much like a secret police force, I reflected.  They’re already very unpopular outside the palace.

Helen addressed the crowd.  “For generations, the warlords – my father and grandfather’s overmighty subjects – have terrorised the kingdom, threatening to send us all to rack and ruin.  No more.  There will be no more concessions.  There will be no more submissions.  They will be stopped.  They will be destroyed.”

Her words hung in the air.  “If any of you are afraid to fight, go back to your homes and abandon all hope of a place in the new world.  Or run to the warlords and be destroyed with them.  But if you are ready to fight for the throne, for a kingdom free of overmighty subjects, remain with us now.  Make your choices quickly and well.  There will be no second chances.”

I smiled, inwardly.  Too many of the old aristocracy had a nasty habit of playing both sides of the field.  They sent one of the sons to fight for the king and the other, as the saying went, to fight for the rebels, in hopes of ensuring they’d have someone who could speak for them no matter who won the war.  Helen had done everything she could to make it impossible for someone to sit on the fence, from executing or exiling most of the old nobility to ennobling merchants and craftsmen who could be relied upon to support her.  I scanned the crowd, carefully noting reactions.  The new noblemen were excited and afraid.  They wouldn’t keep their titles if the warlords won the war.  They’d be lucky to keep their lives.

I shuddered, inwardly.  I’d started a wave of land reform, first in my estates and then in estates belonging to executed or exiled aristocracy, that was reshaping the kingdom.  If the peasants were allowed to own their own land ... the warlords would crush the poor bastards if they won the war.  Land reform was a direct threat to their wealth and power, and they knew it.  So too were guns and everything else that levelled the playing field, allowing the commoners a chance to stand up to their supposed betters.  Helen’s supporters knew they were playing for keeps.  If the warlords won, they’d do everything in their power to turn back the clock.

It won’t work, I told myself.  It’ll just lead to newer and bloodier rebellions against the status quo.

My lips twisted.  No one, not even my closest supporters, knew precisely how far I was prepared to go.  I’d practically surrendered my estates to the tillers.  I’d allowed some of our most sensitive technological secrets to be leaked.  I’d ensured the spread of reading and writing and everything else ... whatever happened, the kingdom would never be the same again.  The warlords were just a remnant of a dim and distant past, soon to be completely forgotten.  I wouldn’t be another Andrew Johnson.  I wouldn’t betray the people who trusted me and fought for me and expected me to honour my promises ...

“I cannot promise an easy victory,” Helen said.  “There will be much bloodshed before the warlords are done.  But we will win.  Never doubt we will win.  Dismissed.”

The courtiers bowed or curtseyed, then hurried out.  I wondered how many of the old hands were convinced, given that the meeting with the envoy had been little better than a masterful – and pre-planned – performance.  Helen had to do a surprising amount of her business in public, if only to keep rumourmongering to a dull roar, but there’d still be suspicions she’d made time to have a private chat with the envoy earlier.  There’d be people watching to make sure he really was thrown out of the city, rather than kept in the guardhouse until Helen could meet with him again,

At least Helen keeps a tight grip on these sessions, I thought.  Her father had held audiences where everyone, or at least everyone who thought they were anyone, had insisted on having their say.   It was astonishing how many people could say the exact same thing time and time again, rarely even bothering to vary the words, just so they could tell the world they’d had their say.  And she listens when people bring their concerns to her in private.

“Elliot,” Helen said.  She stood, brushing down her robes.  She’d insisted on wearing her father’s outfits, rather than the dresses that looked as if they’d come out of a Disney princess movie, but I rather thought they suited her.  “Walk with me.”

I nodded, following her as she led the way through the curtains and into a long – and private – corridor.  There were people in the kingdom, even in the palace, who would have killed to have a private meeting with the queen ... I felt a twinge of amusement at their probable reactions, if they’d known I didn’t share their awe.  There was nothing special, to me, in spending time with an aristocrat.  Besides, I knew Helen as a person.  She was more than just a monarch to me.

“It should be safe to talk here,” Helen said.  “My maids and guards are loyal.”

I nodded, feeling a twinge of pity.  Helen had next to no privacy.  She’d rarely been alone, from the moment she’d been born ‘til the day she took the throne and became queen ... even now, her ladies were never far away.  We’d searched the aristocratic townhouses, after the coup, and discovered missives from her ladies-in-waiting and maids, reporting on everything from her reading patterns to her menstrual cycles.  It was creepy.  I’d had very little privacy in the army, but ...

And a bunch of maids were executed, to remind the others to keep their mouths thoroughly closed, I thought.  It should keep them quiet and loyal for a few months, although I doubted it would last forever.  The maids might be scared into submission, but her ladies came from prominent families.  They’d face immense pressure to give their impressions of their mistress to their masters.  The poor girls will be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

“There will be no peace now,” Helen added, after a moment.  “Good.”

I nodded, curtly.  I’d seen enough war – here and back home – to know war wasn’t particularly glorious.  I knew men who’d gone to war and come home crippled, despite everything modern medical technology could do.  Here, it was far worse.  A man who lacked the money to pay for a healer would be lucky if he came home with amputated limbs.  I’d done what I could to improve what passed for medical science, but ... I shuddered.  It would be kinder to send a man to be tortured.

“We couldn’t have come to terms with them anyway,” I said.  The warlords were clearly spoiling for a fight.  Helen could give them everything they wanted and they’d have found an excuse to go to war anyway.  Not that she could, even if she wanted to.  The changes had spread too far to be reversed.  “Not after ...”

I sighed.  The kingdom had existed in an uneasy balance of power for decades, the king too weak to put down his overmighty subjects and the warlords reluctant to rock the boat by trying to unseat the king permanently.  I’d changed that, partly by accident, when I’d defeated Warlord Aldred.  The warlords had thought they could just play a waiting game to bring the kingdom to heel.  I’d proven the kingdom could and would take the offensive and slay the warlord beasts in their lairs.  

And now they’re ganging up on us, I thought.  Cuthbert wasn’t the only warlord modernising and mobilising his forces.  The remainder were preparing for war too.  They had no illusions about how deeply Helen hated them, about what she’d do if she had them in her power.  She’d sign their execution warrants with a smile.  They have to hang together or be hanged separately.

Helen touched my arm.  I tensed, despite myself.  We might be alone, but ... we weren’t really.  The rules had changed since she took the throne – she’d effectively had herself declared a man, just to ensure she could attend council meetings – yet there were limits.  If rumours got out ...

“Elliot,” she said.  “Can we win?”

I took a breath.  “Yes,” I said.  It wasn’t an idle boast.  I’d spent the last few weeks planning the war.  It was going to be tight – we had better weapons, the warlords had more experienced men and mercenaries – but we could do it.  “It can be done.”

Helen smiled, humourlessly.  “I believe you once told me nothing is certain in war.”

“It isn’t,” I said.  “But we can stack the deck in our favour if we move fast.”

“Good.”  Helen changed the subject with surprising rapidity.  “And Fallon?  Have you agreed on a date yet?”

I hesitated.  The idea that my marriage was an issue of national security still felt absurd.  Sure, I was one of the most powerful noblemen in the kingdom, but I still felt like a poor boy who’d joined the army to better himself and climbed all the way to the top.  And yet, it was no longer true.  My every word was law for thousands of people who’d never even heard of me a year ago.

“We are making progress,” I said.  Someone – I forgot who – had cautioned me against falling in love with local girls, while on deployment.   It could lead to complications ... not, I supposed, that it mattered here.  I’d never be going home again.  “Why do you ask?”

“The longer before you take her to wed, the harder it will be for her,” Helen said.  Her face was blank.  I couldn’t tell if she was advising me to marry now or forget the whole thing and just keep Fallon as a mistress.  It was not a pleasant thought.  “Make your mind up quickly.”

Her lips twitched.  “And I’ll expect to see you both at the council meeting this afternoon.”

I nodded.  “Yes, Your Majesty.”