He grimaced. “Pity, I was quite fond of it.”
The tent flap curled back and Dinah looked up as Wardley stomped in carrying a dusty bag. He looked battered, but more than that, he looked exhausted. Blood and brains were splashed across his sharp uniform. He had killed so many. She had seen it. Dinah reached around her wrist for the red ribbon hidden there and quickly tied her hair back.
“Do you have them?”
Wardley nodded and emptied the bag. The brown shapeless garments favored by the poor hit the floor with a thump. The smell of fish hit their noses hard.
“Are you sure this plan is necessary?” Dinah said sharply to Cheshire, who was loftily holding his nose.
“Not anymore,” he answered with a shake of his head. “But I’ll ponder the repercussions of this decision at a later time.” He turned to Wardley as Dinah pulled the brown linen over her white tunic and black pants. The men in the tent followed suit.
“Is the Fergal boy on the south side?” Cheshire asked. Wardley was trying to scrub the blood off his cheeks with a rag, his face drawn.
Dinah answered for him. “Yes. He’s there. I saw him.”
When Morte had first ridden into battle, she had seen Derwin atop the turrets, his signature silver vest easy to spot as he fired arrow after arrow at the Yurkei from just inside the gates. Even with the white cranes’ defensive maneuverings, he had managed to kill, at her count, probably fifty Yurkei and more than a few Spades. Dinah had watched both of Derwin’s brothers get riddled with Yurkei arrows, and found herself wondering if he would stay the course, now that her army had killed his family. She watched him running up and down the turrets, a man most comfortable off the ground, a man who loved the whoosh of a shaft flying by his cheek. And now their fate was in his hands.
Dinah’s breath pushed painfully out of her bruised lungs as she walked forward in her brown sack. At the back of the tent, a young Yurkei woman named Napayshi was being dressed in Dinah’s armor—minus the breastplate. The Rebel Queen rested her hand against the girl’s short black hair, unsure of how to feel and what to say.
“You don’t have to do this,” she muttered. “We can find another way.”
“Damned hells she does,” snapped Bah-kan, his entrance into the tent going unnoticed.
Napayshi took Dinah’s hand in her own, running her smooth brown skin over Dinah’s bloodstained palm. “It is my pleasure to die for my people, for Mundoo.”
Her black eyes met Dinah’s, and the look in them told Dinah that this woman’s love for Mundoo was about more than just loyalty.
The woman leaned forward. “Do not mistake this as a gift for you. I will watch from the valley of the cranes as my people rise, watch as they take back their land. I will gladly die a weapon for the Yurkei.” A small curl of blue smoke escaped from her lips.
Dinah bit down, trying not to inhale. Damn the Caterpillar and Cheshire and their wicked, wicked plan.
She remembered Cheshire’s words as they had argued this plan, Dinah pleading against it until she could see no other way. She is both a distraction and a weapon.
Napayshi stood and squared her shoulders in the same way Dinah did. It felt strange watching this young thing become the fearful queen, the armor on her body bloodstained and dented. Blood that Dinah had drawn. Dents that Dinah had earned. The high collar of the armor shadowed the girl’s face, and between the blood being splattered on her cheeks and her short black hair, even Dinah was impressed at how successful the transformation had been.
She turned to her motley group of supporters. “Let’s get ready. We have to move quickly.” Dinah, Cheshire, Wardley, Bah-kan, Ki-ershan, and Sir Gorrann all huddled together in their brown sacks.
“Ah, ah, ah.” Cheshire reached down and plucked the crown from her head with a chuckle. Dinah’s hands flew to her hair. “You forgot this.”
She felt naked without it, her hands absentmindedly tracing over her hair.
“You’ll get it back,” Cheshire hissed. “I swear on my life that a better crown than this will grace your head.” Their eyes met.
Everyone was waiting for her, and so Dinah closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, once again steeling herself for battle. “The king waits for us.”
All at once the two groups emerged from the tent, Napayshi out of the front, and a handful of brown-clothed paupers making their way out of the back. The fake queen climbed up on a black horse, tiny compared to the steed that Dinah had actually ridden. As Dinah watched, she felt a shard of pain twist in her heart. Was Morte all right? Was he in pain somewhere, wondering where she was? Even as she asked the questions, she knew that there was no way to answer them before this hellish day was over.
Dinah let her eyes rise up to the palace, past the pile of bodies and the carrion-eaters that circled above them, the shadows of vultures already upon the forms of the dead, past the iron gates and past the walls to the turrets. A silver flash was moving now, up and down the stairs that linked various turrets and walkways at the front of the palace. Derwin.
Underneath the turrets, the Spades, once called traitors, now conquerors, were moving through the outskirts of the palace. Below Dinah, hordes of frightened women and children cried in the courtyard as they desperately clung to each other, searching for their fathers, their sons. Members of the court were taking up arms, standing in front of their homes that lay just outside the main palace walls. Dinah barely glanced at them. She could not linger on what would happen to them, not now. She could only save them one way, by getting into the palace without killing thousands more on the way in.