“Thank you, we accept,” Willow said.
“It may not be much, as I think our kitchen is unsettled from having to feed all those soldiers and the Ascendants, but we hope our hospitality is sufficient,” said Lord Frazier.
“We’re used to camp kitchens, so a meal seated around an actual table will be wonderful.” Willow bowed, and the Fraziers returned the gesture, even the daughter, who had to be nudged. Willow thought she might still be in shock after being assaulted the previous night. She watched them walk away and said, once they were out of earshot, “I never knew nobles could be so attached to their families. I thought they saw them as rivals.”
“Ascendants, maybe, but the noble class in general is as human as anyone,” Kerish said, “and most of them love their families just as anyone would.”
“Guess I still have a few things to learn.”
“Yes, because you’re noble now, and I certainly hope you still love me.”
“More than anything. Kerish, I’m sorry.”
“For being tortured?” Kerish took her arm above the splint. “I’m not angry with you.”
“Yes, but I never want to hurt you, and I know how you feel—”
“I can’t protect you from everything. I’m coming to terms with that. But it doesn’t stop me wishing I had my hands around that woman’s throat.”
“I know.” Willow leaned against his shoulder. “Let’s find Felix, and make sure he’s cleaned up for tonight’s supper. I never realized how filthy little boys can get just standing still.”
***
The half-moon sailed through a cloudless sky, lighting the path to the camp. Silver light played over the rumps and flanks of the horses riding before and behind the wagon. Willow glanced over her shoulder into the wagon bed. “He’s asleep,” she said.
“I wish I knew how he did that,” Kerish said. He flicked the reins and the horses stepped out a little more rapidly. “Of course, if he stays asleep, that opens up all sorts of possibilities for us.”
“Mmm,” Willow said, putting her hand on his thigh. “I like the sound of that.” A chill wind blew out of nowhere, and she huddled into her coat, not her fancy noble’s coat but a good, sturdy, serviceable one with sleeves slightly too long. She tucked her splinted hand inside the coat to warm her fingers and pulled the sleeve down over her other hand. “Are you cold?”
“A little, but…that’s odd.”
“What is?”
“The camp looks unusually busy. And Soltighan’s signaled us to advance. Something’s wrong.”
Willow could barely see Soltighan at the head of the line, but he was definitely moving faster. She sat up and checked on Felix again; still asleep. The wagon jounced along the road, which was rutted from the rain that had churned it into mud days before. She thought about drawing her knife, then decided to wait. There were no screams coming from the camp, nothing that might indicate an attack, just an increase in busyness, torches moving rapidly between the tents and the dark forms of people running and clustering at one side.
Kerish drew the wagon up in its accustomed spot near the picket line. “I’ll take care of Felix. You find out what’s happening.”
Willow nodded and broke into a trot, following the movement of the crowd. “What’s going on?” she said, collaring one of the soldiers who wasn’t moving quite so quickly.
“Don’t know, my lady. Heard the Ascendants tried to escape.”
A chill that had nothing to do with the wind ran down her spine. She ran to the Ascendants’ tent. It was unguarded. She ducked inside and found the tent empty and dark, the beds unmade. Willow backed out. Where were they? Where were the guards, for that matter?
A couple of soldiers ran past, and Willow followed them, hoping they’d lead her to somewhere all of this would begin to make sense. She was starting to feel lightheaded, not from running but from confusion. If the Ascendants had made a break for it, their guards would have gone after them, leaving the empty tent unguarded. But when would they have had a chance to run? They were guarded constantly, and…all right, so Lady Godfrey went to the privy tent with one of the female insurgents, Eskandel not believing in women soldiers, but the insurgents weren’t weak and Willow had chosen Mabel as Lady Godfrey’s guard herself. It made no sense.
They left the camp behind and kept running, through a small grove of trees through which ran a narrow but rapidly-flowing stream. People stood near the stream, clumped together the way people do when something interesting is happening. Willow shoved her way through the crowd, keeping her injured hand cradled close to her chest, until she made it to the front.
A canvas-covered lump that looked uncomfortably like a person lay on the bank of the stream. Next to it, Lady Godfrey lay on her back, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging slack. Willow knelt next to her. Dead. “Who killed her?” She stood and turned on her heel slowly, searching the crowd. “Who?”
“It was me,” Rafferty said, his voice deeper than usual. A bloody gash ran the length of his cheekbone, filling his blond beard with gore. “They tried to escape. That one—” he pointed at Lady Godfrey—“was armed. I got it away from her and stabbed her, but not before she did this.”
“How was she armed? Where were their guards? What happened to Lord Smythe?”
“I tried to keep him from running, but I struck his head too hard.”
Willow pinched the bridge of her nose. “Stop. Just…stop. I need to hear this from the beginning. And I want to see those guards in front of me now.”
Two familiar men approached, then a third. They looked impassive in a way that concealed fear. At least someone was behaving normally tonight. “Why weren’t you with them?” she asked.
“That one, is he say, take them,” said one of the men, pointing at Rafferty. “Is he known, is.”
Startled, Willow said, “You took them, Giles?”
“Yes, as your messenger said,” Rafferty said.
“What messenger?”
“One of the soldiers. I didn’t know him. He said you wanted me to bring them for interrogation.”
“What?” The three soldiers in front of her cringed, though she hadn’t directed her anger at them. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, Willow. I didn’t think you wanted me to argue with you.”
“I didn’t send a messenger.” Willow closed her eyes briefly. “So the two of you let Giles take the Ascendants away because you knew him. All right. We’ll let that go for the moment. Giles, why didn’t you take them to my tent, or the command tent?”
“The messenger said to bring them here. I thought it was strange, but…” He shrugged. “Again, who am I to argue with my commanding officer?”
“I’m not your commanding officer, Giles. So you brought them here, just you—weren’t you afraid of being overwhelmed?”
“By an old man and a skinny woman? Of course not.”
“Of course not. Then what happened?”
“The old man pretended to stumble, and when I went to help him, the woman attacked me. With that knife.” Rafferty pointed at a long blade, almost a short sword, lying on the ground next to Lady Godfrey’s body. “I fought her off, the old man ran, and I tripped him. I think he hit his head on a stone. Then the woman slashed my face, I took the knife from her, and I stabbed her.”
“You couldn’t have subdued her?”
“She was an Ascendant, Willow.” Rafferty’s eyes were hard, his jaw clenched. “For all I knew, she’d regained her powers and would turn them on me next. I’m not going to apologize for doing what we came to Tremontane to do.”
“We needed her.”
“Not at that cost.”
Willow swore and turned away. A couple of soldiers approached, carrying a length of canvas they spread over Lady Godfrey, covering her face. Willow knelt beside her, feeling tears come to her eyes and not sure why. It wasn’t as if they’d been friends; she was an Ascendant, for heaven’s sake, someone Willow had spent her entire adult life fighting. Yet she co
uldn’t help feeling she’d failed her.
She moved to Lord Smythe’s side and lifted the canvas to look at him, then wished she hadn’t. The back of his skull was caved in, bloody, with bits of gray matter squeezing out of the dent. She managed not to vomit and dropped the canvas over his body. “Take them to the field for burial,” she said. “You soldiers, stay here. Giles, get your people under control.” They weren’t being any more disruptive than usual, but there was a gleefulness about them that made Willow angry. “And find the soldier who brought you that message. I want to have a word with him.”
She waited for the crowd to disperse before addressing the three guards. “You’re not to blame,” she said, and was surprised at how relieved they looked. “We’ve been too careless about security, but I encouraged it, so I’m taking responsibility. In the future, though, no more letting people do what they want just because they’re in charge, or look familiar, or whatever. Do you understand?”
The three men nodded.
“Weren’t there four of you?”
The man who’d spoken before said, “Is to sickness, he. A…replacement to find, but is to call us first.”
“So you couldn’t find a replacement before all this happened. All right. Go help with the burial. I’ll explain this to Soltighan.” Where was Soltighan? She’d expected to see him in the middle of this. The three men trudged away, and Willow stood on the bank of the stream, listening to its merry chatter. The world was always so indifferent to human suffering. The moon sailed on, the stream flowed, the night birds cawed—or was that the croaking of frogs? Felix would know. What was she going to tell him?
She took a few steps and kicked a rock, hard, hurting her toes. She hissed with pain and bent to rub her toes through her boot. It should be sturdier than that. Maybe it was time for a new pair.
She picked up the stone, which was the size of her doubled fists, and felt something cold and wet cross her palm. Instinctively, she dropped the stone and wiped her hand on her trousers, then examined it for traces of whatever it was. Black liquid filled the creases of her hand. She sniffed it and smelled a familiar coppery scent. Blood.
She looked at her palm again. Blood looked black in the moonlight. How much of it would there have to be to coat that stone with it? She knelt and picked it up again, more cautiously this time. It was irregularly shaped and had a protrusion on one side that would be perfect for silencing someone permanently. Lord Smythe must have fallen on it just right…
Willow recalled how the wound had looked. The back of his skull, not the front. If he’d been running away and tripped, he would have had to roll over in mid-air for the rock to crush the back of his skull. Willow stood, setting the stone down, and scanned the area, looking closely at the ground. It was mostly packed earth with some grass and tiny shrubs near the riverbank, earth that smelled good, like fresh growing lettuce. There were no loose stones except for a few pebbles the size of her thumbnail. Nothing big enough to bash a man’s brains in.
She considered the stone again. She needed to speak to whoever had sent that false message to Rafferty. That would settle the question of who had done it as well as why. What was the point of getting the Ascendants away from their guards? To give them a chance to escape? If they had Ascendant sympathizers in camp, ones willing to arm an escaping prisoner, she had a bigger problem than two dead people.
But…what had Rafferty said? That he’d struck Lord Smythe too hard? And then that he’d tripped him instead. Willow looked toward the camp, which was far enough away to be quiet now that the furor had passed. This spot was perfect for an ambush. And Rafferty hated Ascendants. It wasn’t at all difficult to imagine him leading those two to their deaths. Willow’s good hand closed into a fist. Now what was she supposed to do? She had no proof of her theory—hell, call it what it was, rank speculation based on a likely hunch—and she gained nothing by accusing him. All she could do was watch him, and pray they didn’t capture any more Ascendants.
She nudged the rock with her foot until it lay in the lee of a low-growing trunk, then trudged back to camp. Maybe the supposed messenger would clear things up, but Willow had a feeling they wouldn’t find the man. Hard to find someone who doesn’t exist.
Chapter Twelve
Willow huddled into her coat and stamped her feet to warm them. Gray skies bulging with clouds said rain was coming, and the light wind blowing in her face told her the rain was coming this way. In the distance, across the fields, trees caught the wind, their yellow and orange leaves dancing like young girls tossing their bright curls in the air. Beyond that, barely at the limit of her vision, the darker gray of the mountains stood stolid and unmoving as the clouds tangled in their tops. It was alien to her city-bred eyes, and she wished she were inside watching the storm rise as heaven intended and not shivering in it outdoors.
“Archers! Ready!” shouted Captain Saunders. The short, narrow-hipped woman stood as if the cold and the wind didn’t discommode her at all.
“Are you sure they can aim properly, with this wind?”
Saunders gave her a crooked smile. Willow had seen a couple of empty sockets where the woman was missing teeth and concluded she preferred to conceal them. “Just watch, Lady North.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Attack!”
Fifty bowstrings hummed, fifty arrows flew hummingbird-swift, making a noise like a giant’s sigh of breath, and a patter of thwocks rose up as the arrows struck their targets. Only a few struck grass; the rest quivered in the straw practice dummies lined up some two hundred yards away. Willow discovered her mouth was hanging open and shut it. “That’s…”
“You didn’t believe me,” Lord Frazier said.
“I did. I just didn’t know what it would look like. Is that normal?”
“We do better when it’s not coming on stormy like this, obviously,” Saunders said. “But yes, every man and woman in the militia practices with the bow regularly. When they’re not hunting, there are tournaments, private challenges…it’s a Silverfield tradition.”
“But Ascendants are harder to fight,” Lord Frazier said. “Hard to shoot an arrow at someone who can deflect it with magic.”
“You leave that to us,” Willow said, absently rubbing the back of her hand against her trouser leg. The splint itched more every day.
“I wish I could see those wands in action,” Saunders said. “Not to contradict you, my lady, but it’s hard to believe something so small could remove an Ascendant’s magic.”
“As hard as believing someone could send a pointed stick two hundred yards into an enemy soldier,” Willow said with a wry grin, and Saunders laughed. “Why don’t you come see how they’re made, if you’re interested?”
“I am, thanks. Just a moment.” She ran off to speak to some of her bowmen.
“Have you decided where to go next?” Lord Frazier asked.
“It will have to be Harroden, no matter the Count’s allegiance. The northern baronies are all smaller than Silverfield and won’t have trained soldiers to give us. Plus, I can feel winter approaching, and if we have to fight through the snows…”
“You think you can bring this to an end before Wintersmeet?”
Willow shrugged. “I have to try. It will be hard to feed everyone once winter’s here.”
“You can count on our granaries for that. As much as we’re capable of sharing, that is.”
Saunders came running back. “They’ll practice for half an hour more. The storm should be here in an hour. Now, can we take a look at those wands?”
They crossed the fields back to the main road, which was still soggy from the rain from two days before. Willow’s right foot felt damp. A crack in the leather, maybe? She needed to see about getting new boots. Something to do this afternoon. She was grateful to step from the mud to the paving stones, though the streets weren’t much cleaner than the road had been. Aurilien’s drainage system was more modern—it was the one thing the Valant Kings had accomplished that everyone liked, even when
it backed up and flowed into the streets. Well, maybe nobody liked that, but for the most part people were happy with the sewer system.
Magrette was shutting down for the storm, the householders closing their shutters and bringing brooms and flowerpots inside. Willow eyed the walls, remembering climbing them just over a week ago. Running the roofs, outracing the storm, would be a thrill like no other. Too bad she had company. Lord Frazier, despite his physique, didn’t seem to mind walking instead of riding, and Saunders strode along like she was conquering territory.
Willow led them down some side streets, where they went unrecognized, to a cul-de-sac near the manor. Craftsmen’s shops lined the oval of the street, the shingles announcing their trades clattering in the rising wind. Willow passed a glassblower’s shop and a pottery to approach the smithy at the top of the oval. Two men worked there, one of them tidying up the forge area, the other unclamping a narrow block of wood about a foot and a half long upright from a table nearby.
“I hope you don’t mind that I brought guests,” Willow said.
Kerish raised his head from where he was examining the block of wood. “Not at all. Though we’re not doing anything interesting right now. I’ve just finished threading the heartstrings into the wand blanks and was going to take them up to the manor.”
“What are heartstrings?” Saunders said. She’d stopped next to Willow, seeming reluctant to move forward, though her eyes were fixed avidly on Kerish.
“The core of a wand. Devices can be cased in wood, but they still need metal to contain the source that makes them work. So the cheapest and fastest way to make a wand is to build a wooden shape and fill it with a thread of metal in its heart. Therefore, heartstrings.” Kerish smiled. “The word is somewhat longer in Eskandelic.”
“Thanks for using the short version,” Willow said.
“Do you have to be a dowser to be a Deviser?” Saunders said. Willow thought she sounded disappointed.
“To build Devices, yes, but I think anyone could design them if they understood the principles,” Kerish said. “Would you like to see how a wand is made, Captain Saunders?”
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