In the far corner, a group had clustered around the radio for the local news; voices rose, each offering strident suggestions as to how to get it to stop squawking out ear-piercing whines and deliver sounds understandable to more than the local dogs. Ellis had no idea why they thought it might work today when it hadn’t for as long as he’d been patronizing the inn. The reception in this part of Wellech was utter shite.
“Unless it didn’t come from Taraverde.” Ellis had read the paper over tea before he’d left the Croft this morning, so he’d had time to ruminate.
“Of course it came from Taraverde.” Petra rattled the paper. “It says right here the plane was—”
“I know what it says.” Ellis twirled a greasy sausage on the end of his fork. “Frankly, it’s what it doesn’t say that worries me.” When Petra merely gave him an impatient glare, Ellis shrugged and leaned over the table. He lowered his voice. “It wasn’t only a plane—it was a biplane. One of those two-seaters that have no range to speak of because they can’t carry the weight of two people plus the petrol necessary to get them anywhere far.”
Petra gave him a squinty little frown, skeptical. “How would you know?”
“That’s the funny thing. I wouldn’t normally. Except Milo was telling me about strange things going on with dragons on the central migration paths—the ones over Colorat and Ostlich-Sztym—and how there’d been an incident a couple years ago with a collision between a small plane and a dragon. One dead pilot, one crashed plane, and one annoyed dragon, is what Milo told me. But it made him start paying attention to the sorts of planes that were being built, where they were being tested, and the like. Were they minding the flight paths, were they putting dragons in danger, were dragonkin going to have to start protesting to their respective governments—that sort of thing. And I remember him getting blindingly tamping when he learned the planes in question barely had enough range to cover a trip from Preidyn to Werrdig.”
“It’s what the bloody ferries are for!” Milo had raged, pale face gone red and dark, and blue eyes blazing. “They’re putting dragons in danger for nothing! Save a bit of time getting from one place to another, sure, but for what? Take a train! Take a bloody airship if you’re that impatient! What could be that bloody important they’d risk crippling or even killing a dragon for it? They can’t fit more than two people in the biplanes, and those don’t even have the range the smaller ones do!”
And then he’d found out Preidyn was building and testing her own planes—“What d’you want to bet me that’s where all the ores are going? No bloody wonder Howell’s gnashing his teeth over the rations!”—though they had the sense to do it on Werrdig’s west coast, well out of any flight paths. Milo had only been slightly mollified.
Ellis couldn’t help the fond smile, remembering, and then the slight frown when he realized it had been a bit too long since he’d heard from Milo. Ellis had wired last week about a date for their next trip to Brookings, and so far, nothing.
“So you’re saying it couldn’t have come from Taraverde.” Petra’s brow drew down, bemused. “Except it was Verdish. The wreckage—”
“It could’ve come from Taraverde. It did come from Taraverde. Originally.” Ellis shot his glance around the inn, checking for eavesdroppers, but everyone but for those arguing with the radio was doing the same thing he and Petra were—debating over the newspaper and looking worried.
…Except.
There was that man again, the one with the scar, a mug of what was likely tea on the table in front of him, newspaper ignored by his elbow. Watching Ellis again, and not even trying to look like he wasn’t. Ellis had been seeing him around for the past week. Turning up at the mercantile when Ellis went to pick up a pair of boots he’d ordered over the winter. The teashop when Ellis dropped by to check if they’d managed to procure any of the Eretian blend they hadn’t been able to get since the blockades went into effect, but it never hurt to ask. It was strange, though, enough for Ellis to notice, because he’d never seen the man before last week, and now he seemed to be everywhere.
One of Folant’s gofers, maybe? Trying to figure out if Ellis had the backing from the council he was hoping for when he sued them for Pennaeth in only a few days? Not if the man was a refugee, though maybe Ellis had been wrong about that. It still didn’t explain where the man had come from or why Ellis couldn’t seem to stop not-really-running-into him.
Ellis scowled, annoyed, and turned back to Petra. “The waters around all the Preidynīg Isles are bloody lousy with the Royal Navy. You’re right, that plane couldn’t possibly have flown over any of the blockades without being spotted.”
“And it couldn’t have gone ’round over Desgaul. They cut ties with Taraverde before we did. They wouldn’t have stood for it.”
“Yeah, but when did they cut ties? And what did they allow before they did?”
Petra huffed and rolled her eyes. “For pity’s sake, Ellis, just say it, would you? It’s too early in the morning for guessing and political intrigue, especially when my brain is otherwise occupied with how I’m meant to get to Wastings Brook and back with the seed you want before dark if this conversation gets any longer.”
“You get the seed by making Cai do his job and make the trip for you. But fine.” Ellis quit playing with his breakfast and bit the sausage in half. “I’m only saying—a Verdish plane showed up where it didn’t have the range to be. Desgaul hadn’t closed their trade or their borders to Taraverde until last year, and Vistosa right after, well after the plane-versus-dragon business Milo was telling me about. So who knows when that plane made the trip that brought it so close to Preidyn’s waters? It could’ve been ages ago.” He paused to gulp some tea. “And if it was, if that plane—and who knows how many others—slid down and over the continent without Preidyn noticing, but couldn’t just sit and wait somewhere in Vistosa for the opportunity to try it on with our navy, where, in all the Blackson between Vistosa and Kymbrygh, could it have taken off from?”
Petra narrowed her eyes. “The only thing there is the Surgebreaks.” A small island chain south of Preidyn’s outer isles, largely unclaimed but ostensibly controlled by Vistosa because they were an ally. Preidyn never saw the point in fighting over a scattering of rocks in the ocean that couldn’t even support a vegetable patch. Petra shook her head. “Except there’s nothing there. It’s all rocks and cliffs.”
“Yeah.” Ellis nodded and chomped a bite of bread. “So nobody pays it much mind.” He lifted his eyebrows. “I wonder when’s the last time Vistosa even remembered it was there. And I wonder if the big island is perhaps long and flat enough to serve as, maybe, a runway.”
A chuckle came from a few tables over, loud enough it made Ellis look—that man again. Not looking at Ellis this time, but quietly snorting down at his newspaper, shaking his head, as though he’d read something amusing.
It annoyed Ellis all over again. There was nothing in the paper today that was the least bit funny. He was going to have to make a point of introducing himself sometime soon, figure out who the man was and why he kept popping up when Ellis wasn’t looking.
Not today. There was too much to get done before Ellis met with Ioan over in Gwynedd to try to get him to break with Folant.
Ellis stacked his tomatoes on top of what was left of his bread, shoved it all in his mouth, and washed it down with the last of his tea. He stood.
“You ready?”
Petra glared up at Ellis then down at the cockles she’d barely had a chance to touch. She sighed the sigh of the tragically long-suffering and dropped her fork to her plate.
“I hate you.”
Ellis merely grinned, obnoxious, and with a full mouth. “You love me. Everyone does.”
“Everyone also loves kelp cakes and blood sausage.” Petra took her time making a messy pocket with her bread and dumping her cockles in to take with her. She lifted an eyebrow at Ellis. “Doesn’t stop me chundering just looking at them.”
“Petra!” Ellis set a hand ove
r his breastbone and took a staggering step back. “My poor heart.”
“Fie.” Petra brushed past Ellis and made for the door. “That’s been living in Whitpool for years. Along with… other things.” She smirked as she opened the door and waved Ellis through. “Well done, you, keeping the brain, though.”
“Yeah, well.” Ellis waved a farewell to the room in general, spared one last bemused glance for the stranger, and quit the inn. He huffed at Petra as she followed. “I’ve still got Ioan tonight. I’ll be needing it.”
ELLIS DIDN’T get a chance to try to twist Ioan’s arm. He barely had a chance to buy him a drink. Ioan hadn’t even sat down and taken his first sip when a young boy, white-faced and panting, burst through the doors of the shabby pub that was Ioan’s local.
“Her Majesty…” The boy gulped a breath and waved a telegram. “It’s war.”
Chapter 15—Inversion
: a variation technique in which the intervals of a melody are turned upside down
They’d invaded Błodwyl. It wasn’t a surprise. Błodwyl had been screaming for support from the World Court for close to a year now, insisting it was inevitable, and they couldn’t be expected to hold the line against both Taraverde and Ostlich-Sztym by themselves, did no one understand what was happening here?
Everyone did, everyone knew, everyone watched. Some, mostly Preidyn, tried every measure short of war to halt it. Still the onslaught came, and the brutality described in the initial reports was staggering. And the descriptions of the horrifying deaths from magically enhanced gas attacks were sick-making.
Ellis was rereading an article he’d skimmed earlier, looking for mention of the 153rd Kymbrygh, his cousin Matty’s unit that had shipped out last autumn. They’d been headed for the continent, though Matty hadn’t been able to say precisely where. Peacekeeping, he’d said. “Likely only getting to know the locals, eating their food, and keeping an eye on some border somewhere. I’m not worried.” Matty’d shrugged, the shoulders of his dress uniform stiff and straight. “Them Verds’d have to be blind dafties to actually attack when the Royal Forces are on the job.”
Ellis had agreed. Everyone he knew had agreed.
Except “them Verds” had attacked. And the fighting, from what Ellis was hearing and reading, was vicious and horrifying.
“Well, if they do,” Ellis had told Matty, “expect me within the week.”
And he’d meant it. He’d done well in his schooling, and more, he was a Warden. If he did go into the Royal Services, he’d go in as an officer.
The call for enlistment had already grown into a full-out campaign by the time Matty had shipped out, and Ellis had no doubt it was going to turn into a draft any second now. He wasn’t so sure about joining anymore, he realized as he keyed open the backdoor to the Croft and shuffled into the kitchen, still reading. He had to squint through the early evening dusk to make out the words on the broadsheet he’d folded and unfolded countless times through the day, so often the already flimsy paper was beginning to give at the creases.
It was darker in the house, the setting sun on the wrong side. He groped out for the knob on the wall to turn on the light, grateful all over again he’d had electricity installed when he’d taken over the ancient farmhouse that had been his nain’s. Entrusted not to Folant, her son, when she died, but to Lilibet until Ellis was old enough to claim it, and the valuable farm on which it hunkered. Nain had never had any illusions about who and what her son had become, and she’d been determined that her grandson would have at least this much of his inheritance, if not the chunks of it Folant had already squandered or gambled away by then. If the law had allowed it, she’d’ve willed Ellis the title of Pennaeth too.
Which was the crux of Ellis’s current indecision. How, after all, could he enlist like he wanted to, like he should, and leave Wellech in hands that became less capable by the day? As it was, the clean-up Ellis found himself needing to do every time he got back from a trip to see Milo sometimes took longer than the trip itself. That wasn’t even counting the time away on patrols with the Wardens. And it was getting worse.
It took a moment for the light to warm up, the hum low and strangely pleasant just before it bloomed across the kitchen, and lit—
Ellis jerked back, only managing not to actually loose a startled squawk because his throat was abruptly too tight to get a noise through it.
The man—the stranger with the scar—was sitting at Ellis’s kitchen table, calmly staring at Ellis and waiting for him to gather the wits to move, to ask, “Who—?” Nope, too high-pitched and squeaky. Ellis jerked his chin and demanded, “What in the name of every goddess d’you think you’re doing?”
All at once he found himself annoyed that, for the first time since he’d been back in Wellech, Bumble and Bella hadn’t followed him home. Not that they’d do much besides stamp muddy paws on the stranger’s clothes and beg for pets, but they could sometimes at least look like they could possibly be moved to consider violence.
“Please pardon the intrusion, Rhywun Ellis. But you’re a difficult man to get alone. I wouldn’t normally be so… rude.” The man shrugged, unperturbed. “But in light of last night’s declaration, things have become rather more urgent, and I’ve no more time to spend waiting for the entirety of Wellech to leave you be for five minutes.” He shook his head, wondering. “How d’you stand it, anyway? I get more time to myself.”
Temper flared hot behind Ellis’s eyes, and he bristled. “Who in the world are you, and how did you get in my house?”
The door had been locked. In a parish where no one had to worry about leaving their doors open, the First Warden of Wellech locked his—and his desk, and his filing drawers, and anything he deemed valuable or sensitive—because the former First Warden couldn’t be trusted not to waltz in and help himself to whatever he pleased. Ellis knew this because he’d had to buy back the bespoke saddle and monogrammed billfold—presents from Bamps once upon a time—after Folant lost them in a game of dice. The door had been locked. Ellis had heard the tumblers roll and give as he’d unlocked it.
The man waved a hand, negligent. “You’ll find I have many talents.” His tone was level, and his mouth was quirked—nothing quite so disrespectful as a smirk, but halfway amused nonetheless. He nodded to the chair across the table. “Sit down.”
Something prideful and insulted joined the temper. “Sorry, did you just invite me to sit down at my own kitchen table?”
The man sighed. “This would go a lot easier and more pleasantly if you did.”
“Easier.” Ellis surreptitiously closed his fingers into a fist and let the shafts of the keys poke through the gaps by his knuckles. He adjusted his stance, ready for a rush if it became necessary, abruptly and for the first time ever regretting that his rifle was locked in the shed with all his other hunting gear. Didn’t matter. The man seemed built well enough, but Ellis was pretty sure he could take him if it came to it. “I’m not certain I’ve any interest in making whatever you’re here for easier. In fact, I may just dedicate myself to making the next few minutes extremely difficult for you.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.” The man turned his hands palm out. “I’m not here for ill, Rhywun Ellis. Though ill has come.” He lifted his eyebrows, hazel eyes intent. “We’re all going to need to do our parts now. A mutual friend in Whitpool told me you’d be the best choice and, more importantly, willing. What I’ve seen and heard the past week has persuaded me to the same opinion.”
Ellis narrowed his eyes. “Friend.”
Milo was the first to come to mind, but… with the way this man had clearly broken into Ellis’s house then proceeded to be vaguely threatening and threateningly vague at the same time, this was quickly seeming a bit cloak-and-dagger. And that suggested Ceri more than Milo. Possibly Eira, Whitpool’s First Warden, but information traveled fast between the Wardens, no matter who was in which parish; if Eira had sent this man, Ellis would’ve heard about it days before the man even showed up in Wellech.
<
br /> Slowly, the man lifted a hand, open and harmless, then tugged out the lapel of his coat. He waited for Ellis to note the white of an envelope sticking out of the inside pocket before he pulled it out and offered it to Ellis.
Frowning, Ellis took it. “This is Milo’s handwriting.” He narrowed his eyes. “It’s unsealed.” Which meant anyone could’ve stuck anything in there and claimed it was from Milo. Paranoid, perhaps, but Ellis had been dealing with Folant for more than two decades.
“Open it, please.”
Ellis did, still frowning, to find another envelope, this one sealed, along with a slip of folded paper.
“Open the other after I’ve gone,” the man said. “Only the note for now, if you would.”
It was short, though Milo’s natural warmth was somehow all over it.
Elly—
I know this is odd. I also know there’s no one else who can do what you’re about to be asked to do. You’re the best person I know. There’s no one I trust more.
Listen to him.
Yours,
Milo
Ellis shook his head, read it again, then peered at the man, bewildered. “Who are you?”
He was as normal-looking as the other times Ellis had seen him—plain heavy jumper, trousers well made but not too spendy, hair neither short nor long but neat and respectably trimmed. Unremarkable. Ellis wondered now if the effect was purposefully unremarkable.
The man all but confirmed it when he said, “My callsign is Mastermind.”
Ellis stared. “…Seriously?”
The corner of the man’s mouth turned up, sardonic. “I wouldn’t judge, if I were you. Yours is Prince.”
“Mine.” Ellis blinked. “Mine?” He skimmed his gaze around the kitchen, as though someone—likely Petra, because she was a smartarse cow—might jump out and yell “Gotcha!” When no one did, Ellis threw his hands out. “What are you even talking about?”
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