distance; Rodrigo spins it, sending the barrels rattling in a circle.
Now he understands the box on top, or almost: he feels like a child exploring a hidden passageway as he climbs inside the cart and looks into the angled box; into the hopper that will feed bullets into a half-dozen barrels. His heartbeat is so fast his vision swims, and it's all he can do to stop from crowing as he spins the crank again and listens to the empty barrels chatter. “How quickly does it fire?” Oh, God is listening, God is concerned for the Ecumenic army's fate after all, and has sent an angel of war to Gallin in the form of this rickety inventor and his drunken donkey.
“Six hundred rounds in a minute,” the old man says, “and there are five more like it. The trouble is making enough bullets, king's man. Set your men to it, if you want to win this war. A single man can only do so much.”
“We'll need a whole new way of making them.” Rodrigo kneels by his terrible gun, smoothing a hand down one of its long thick barrels, and when he looks along its line, he sees a future that didn't exist only minutes ago. He feels as though his mind's been opened, as if curtains he never knew were there have been drawn back to let sunlight in, and it makes him giddy. He's an embarrassment to himself, and he doesn't care. “Men can't keep up with that rate. Perhaps if we build a line to pour moulds, to quench the shells in water and have men pour gunpowder in at the end. The line could be run on a waterwheel and by men with bellows to heat the metal. Yes.”
He might have done as much to make any bullet: that thought strikes him, and fades away without rancour. This opening of his mind is a gift, and if he looks backward there's no shame in having only thought as ordinary men did. But now, faced with a mechanised gun, the possibility of its components being created with the same efficiency as it would fire them seemed vivid and obvious. “How did you think of it?” he whispers.
The old man snorts dismissively and in so doing shows his plea sure. “Old doesn't mean foolish, king's man. A cannon's slow to load and gets too hot to use, and pistols are worse. But the two together, and put on a crank to keep the barrels cool, now that was a bit of cleverness.” He leans on his staff, age-lumped hands wrapped around it, and looks satisfied. “A forge and patience in the mountains, that's what it took, and a few dead cattle when I was wrong about how far the bullets would go.”
“I'll make reparations,” Rodrigo says drily, and straightens from his inspection of the gun to smile at the old man. “So? Will you show us how it's used?”
C.E. Murphy
The Pretender's Crown
BELINDA WALTER
4 July 1588 † Brittany; the Aulunian camp
In the last weeks Belinda had become, if not enured to, at least accustomed to the sounds of warfare: the screams of men and horses alike, the thunderous crash of bodies and metal; the louder-yet roar of cannon and the reports of muskets and pistols. Those last were the rarest of the cacophony, too unpredictable in comparison to sword and arrow and cannon.
But what she heard now, what she had been hearing an hour or more since, was a different thing entirely. Gunfire shattered the night repeatedly, manifesting as bursts of white fire in the distance when she peeled back the tent door to search for the sound's source. She'd closed the door again and settled back into her place, trying to let the noise disappear into the night while she focused on her preparations, but it invaded her hearing time and again. If a hundred men could be taught to shoot a hundred muskets in succession, no misfires ever heard, it might sound a little like what tore from the Ecumenic camp. Men, though, would never be so precise, each rattle snapping off in flawless succession, and when it would briefly stop she found herself straining to hear it again, waiting for whatever portents it brought to come clear.
It was easier, perhaps, to concentrate on that than to let stillness take her and make herself face the necessary choices she'd made. Without the stillness, without her usual certainty, she felt adrift. If an overwhelming love would take her, a compulsion to do whatever she must in order to preserve her child's life, then she might act more freely, but she had no softening of her heart, no dewy-eyed romance to hold herself to. The babe had to survive, not from love, but from pragmaticism. Robert's alien war was coming, and a witchpower child of her own birthing meant a small hope that there would be aspects of that war beyond Robert's control, aspects that might do her world some good. So the child must be preserved at any cost, even giving it up to Javier de Castille. She had no other choice, and the woman Belinda Primrose had been a year ago would not recognise that decision or the woman who made it at all.
A year. Gregori Kapnist had died barely more than a twelvemonth past, and Belinda's world had come unmoored in the time since. She would cut her last lashings today, and wondered what would be made of her in future days. Robert and Lorraine would never trust her again, and she might well pay for her decisions with the loss of her throne.
Dry humour curved her lips. So be it: she'd never sought the throne to begin with. Witchpower ambition itched with dismay at that, but settled again; it seemed that part of her was inclined to protect the unborn babe as well, and could ignore the middling detail of a throne until later.
“Belinda?” Ivanova spoke from her corner, quiet but fully alert. Belinda paused in collecting a soldier's uniform. She couldn't be ready to ride with the dawn, for fear Robert would visit before the battle began. Wisdom might have sent her from the tent an hour since, prepared to hide amongst the troops, but the sounds from the Gallic camp and her own need to sit a while and face the decisions she'd made had held her in place.
She turned to Irina Durova's daughter. “I'm about to cast myself to the wolves, and when I return I think I'll no longer be the favoured daughter. I wonder: will Khazar grant sanctuary should I require it?” The words were very soft, soft enough that listening ears wouldn't hear them, but she feared Robert's witchpower might reach forth to pluck her intentions from her thoughts. No quiet voice could stop him from doing that.
“Aulun and Khazar are allied,” Ivanova said after a long moment. “We would be pleased to offer you a place in our home should you require it.” She waited a moment, then sat up in the darkness. “Has something gone awry?”
“Robert intends on drawing this war out,” Belinda said steadily. “My thought to bring victory by leading the troops today has been refused.”
Ivanova caught her breath and Belinda lifted a hand against her concerns. “I'll ride, regardless. But Robert will know then that he doesn't control me, and-”
A new burst of gunfire rattled, drowning Belinda's voice even from the distance. Ivanova frowned, looking through the greying light as if she could see through the tent walls. “What is that? It woke me a while ago.”
“It's the changing of our plans.” The tent door flew open to admit an invigorated Robert, his eyes bright and actions full of energy. “Primrose, I'd almost dream you knew of this, with your plan for the morning. No,” he said almost instantly, as a confused frown marred Belinda's forehead. “No, I see you didn't. It's Seolfor,” he said with admiration. “It must be, after all this time. Forty years. He might have built enough to change the tide in that time, even without automation. They'll be enough to terrify the troops, at the least. Our men will run all the way back to Aulun without some kind of bolstering, and so you'll ride with them today after all, Primrose. You'll become the banner that denies their fear and drives them forward to capture the guns and win the day.”
For all his fine words, Robert didn't release Belinda to the battle until the sun reached its zenith. By then the new Cordulan weapons were clearly visible: half cannon, half gun, they rained devastation and men fell under their onslaught like bits of straw. Even the Khazarians, with so many men to throw against the rapid-fire guns, cowered and then finally refused orders, falling back in disarray.
Panic shot through the Aulunian troops as the Khazarians retreated. Belinda, still a far and safe distance from the front lines, knotted her fingers over a twisting stomach, her throat tight against the need to disgorge fear in sickness. Half a day: half a day's battle, and the Ecumenic army was wiping away the difference in numbers. More than two thousand men were newly dead, and easily twice that number injured or dying.
This, Belinda reminded herself with crystal precision, this was just the beginning of the future she intended to create. The part of her that was the assassin trained from childhood wanted to stand and watch and feel nothing, to envelop herself in stillness and become remote from death and destruction. For all its horror, it was a necessary
