I nudged Aber. “He’s been fighting hell-creatures,” I whispered.
Aber looked suddenly terrified. “Here?” he whispered back. “Then it’s begun?”
“What is it?” Locke demanded of our father and the soldier. “What’s happened?”
“Tell them, Captain,” Dworkin said.
“Yes, Prince.” Slowly, in strangely accented tones, the officer began his report. “We were on the dawn patrol—”
“That’s ten men on foot walking the forest line,” I overheard Davin whisper to Blaise.
“—and there was a wind blowing from the forest. I smelled fresh horse manure and knew it could not have come from our camp. No horse patrols go there. I ordered everyone to spread out, and we entered the trees to investigate. Almost immediately we came upon a small campsite, well hidden. Three devils were waiting for us with their fire-breathing mounts. They attacked and killed four of my men. We killed one, and when that happened, the other two fled. We could not catch them on foot. They seemed to vanish into the trees. Men are searching for them now, but . . . ” He shrugged. “I do not have much hope for the finding.”
“Hell-creatures come and go like that,” I said, half to myself. “You never see their raiders—or their spies—until it’s too late, and you never find them when they run.”
Davin shot me a curious glance. “You know them?” he demanded. “How?”
“They tried to kill Dad and me the day before yesterday. I’ve been fighting them for the last year in Ilerium.”
“How can we be sure it’s them?” Aber said.
I shrugged. “How many other armies have fire-breathing horses?”
Locke said to the captain, “How long had they been there?”
“No more than two or three days, General.”
Locke turned to our father. “I must see that campsite. They fled quickly. Perhaps they left something behind.”
“A good idea,” Dworkin said, nodding. “Take Davin with you . . . and Oberon.”
“Oberon?” Locke asked. I heard doubt in his voice. “Are you sure—?”
I stepped forward, “As I just said, I’ve been fighting hell-creatures for more than a year now. I think I know them better than anyone else here.” Or almost anyone else, I thought, looking around the circle of faces. We still had a traitor in our midst.
“Very well,” he said with a shrug of acceptance, no taunting or baiting now, when it really mattered.
I had half expected a childish display of temper, and my opinion of him as a soldier went up a notch. A very small notch.
“Get your wounds looked after, Captain,” Locke said. “Meet us at the stables in twenty minutes. We’ll have a fresh horse ready for you.”
“Yes, General,” he said. He gave Locke a raised-palm salute, then hurried from the hall.
“The time is here,” Dworkin said softly, brow creased. “They will move against us shortly, if they are sending watchers. We must be prepared.” He looked up at us, at Locke, Davin, and me. “Be on your guard. They will kill you if they have a chance. Do not give them one!”
I trailed Locke and Davin to the stables. Now that we had a task to do, Locke moved with the deftness and speed of an experienced commander, calling for horses and a mounted squad. Grooms hurried to obey, and guards went running to the camp outside to summon the men he wanted to accompany us.
“Better add more guards to Juniper’s walls,” I suggested in a quiet voice as we waited for our horses. “Put more guards at the gates, too. Have everyone searched coming in . . . and going out. The hell-creatures are shape-shifters. No telling what they might try to smuggle in . . . or out.”
“Shape-shifters? You’re certain?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking of Ivinius, so well disguised as a human barber that he had gotten close enough to slit my throat.
“Very well. I’ll take your word on it,”
With a frown, he waved over the Captain of the Guard and gave him instructions. The man took off running a moment later.
“Extra guards,” Locke told me, “at the gate. Extra patrols on the walls. Anything else you’d suggest?”
“Just . . . after this, trust no one.”
He raised his eyebrows at that, but made no reply.
“Aren’t you going to ask . . . ?” I said.
“No. I recognize Freda’s words.”
Instead of denying it, I chuckled. “Yes. But she’s right, at least in this particular instance. A hell-creature almost killed me once by impersonating a barber. I’d hate to have the same thing happen to you.”
Locke gave me another odd look. “You aren’t what I expected,” he admitted. “You surprise me, brother.”
“This is the second time I’ve been told that since I got here.”
“Freda—?” He hesitated.
“No. If you must know, it was Aber. He expected me to be just like you, from Dad’s tales, and apparently you two don’t always see eye to eye.”
Locke shrugged. “Such is life,” he said philosophically. “There are only sheep and wolves. I have never much wanted to be a sheep.”
“As for me . . . I simply don’t care about our family’s politics,” I told him. “You’re all strangers . . . except, of course, our father.” I’d almost said Dworkin. “My only concern is keeping alive—and the best way for me to do that is to keep the rest of you alive, too. We all want the same thing, so we might as well work together.”
“Well spoken.” He hesitated. “Later, tonight perhaps, we must have a talk . . . just you and me, alone.”
“I’d welcome it.”
He gave a curt nod and looked away.
A private talk . . . I took his invitation as something akin to an apology—or at least as an admission that I wasn’t as horrible as he’d thought. Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
Our horses had been saddled and were now being led into the courtyard. He stepped over to a handsome black stallion, about sixteen hands high, who nuzzled his palms looking for sugar. I felt a pang of envy—the stallion was a magnificent animal, and Locke patted his neck affectionately.
They had brought me a dappled gray mare, who seemed good tempered and fit. She would do, I decided, looking her over. Davin had a chestnut gelding with white socks on both front feet, full of nervous energy. The extra-jointed captain who would be leading us had another dappled gray mare like enough to mine that I couldn’t have told them apart.
“Mount up!” Locke called.
I swung into the mare’s saddle and followed Locke and the others out through Juniper’s gate. Twenty more horsemen waited outside for us, and they fell in behind, two side-by-side columns, as we turned left and cut through the army camp. Ahead, perhaps five or six miles away, I could see the dark line of trees that marked the edge of a dense forest. The land had been cleared for farming all the way to its edge, but no crops had been planted and the military camp didn’t extend all the way to its edge. It seemed an ideal place from which to spy on us.
When I glanced over my shoulder, I spotted extra guards just now coming out onto the castle battlements, and the two men normally stationed at the gates had grown to eight.
I caught up with the captain who’d found the hell-creatures. His wounds had been cleaned and dressed, and the minor burns on his face gleamed with ointment.
“I’m Oberon,” I told him.
“I am called d’Darjan, Lord.” He inclined his head. “If it pleases you.”
“These spies you found . . . had you ever seen their like before?”
He hesitated. “No, Lord.”
I had the impression he knew more than that, but didn’t want to speak too openly to me. After all, he had never seen me before today and didn’t know my loyalties. And who knew what rumors were circulating among the guards about me . . . one overheard insulting remark between Davin and Locke might well fuel a dozen stories among the guards and soldiers of my treachery, cowardice, or worse.
I let my mare fall back, and he spurred
his to catch up with Locke. They talked in low voices, with Captain d’Darjan pointing ahead. Then Locke glanced back at me and nodded, and I guessed d’Darjan had asked what he could safely tell me. Nothing to do but wait, I thought with growing impatience.
A thirty-minute ride brought us to the edge of an ancient forest. A thick hedge of gorse bushes and blackberry brambles, threaded with trails, grew along its edge.
I studied the tall oaks and maples, many with trunks as wide around as my arms could reach, that towered a hundred feet over us. They would provide ample vantage points for spying, I thought.
I rode forward to join d’Darjan and my brothers. The rest of the soldiers reined in behind us.
“This is it, General,” Captain d’Darjan said, indicating what looked like a deer track that wound between the gorse bushes and circled out of sight. It would be a prickly, uncomfortable ride, but I thought a horse could make it through. “There is another path on the other side, but it is no larger.”
“Fan out into the forest and keep watch,” Locke called to the soldiers behind us. He dismounted. Davin and I did the same. “Be on your guard. Shout if you see anything unusual. If you spot the enemy, fall back at once.”
His men wheeled their horses and began moving slowly into the forest down various trails, sharp-eyed and ready for battle. I didn’t think anything or anyone would be able to sneak up on us.
“Let’s take a look at their camp,” Locke said. He tethered his horse, drew his sword, took a deep breath, and marched into the thicket.
Davin followed him, and I followed Davin. Captain d’Darjan brought up the rear.
I had to admit the hell-creatures had chosen their hiding spot well. From the outside, you would never have guessed their camp lay hidden within the thicket. The trail, little bigger than a deer track, widened after a few paces and a turn, and only there did I spot the impressions of horse hooves in the soft earth.
We circled in toward the center of the thicket. There, an area perhaps twenty feet across, with a tall oak at its center, had been cleared with small axes.
The hell-creatures had clearly left in haste, abandoning three bedrolls, a small coil of rope, and a wickedly barbed knife. They had even dug a small firepit and rimmed it with large rocks to hide the flames.
I found a stick and stirred the ashes, uncovering the well-gnawed bones of what looked to be rats or squirrels. A few embers still gleamed faintly orange-red.
Rising, I looked at the tree. A broken branch at eye level still oozed sap, I found. From the evidence, they probably hadn’t been here more than a day or two, as captain d’Darjan had said.
“Here’s where they tethered their horses,” Davin said, squatting and examining the markings. “Three of them, all right.”
I turned slowly, looking for anything else out of the ordinary. The oak tree at the center of the thicket had several more broken branches about twenty feet off the ground.
“They climbed up to spy on us,” I said, pointing.
“Take a look,” Locke said.
I grabbed a sturdy looking limb and pulled myself up. It was an easy climb, and sure enough, when I reached the broken limbs I discovered I could see both the military camp and the castle with an unobstructed view.
“Well?” Locke called up.
“I can see everything,” I said, squinting. “Troops, horse pens, even Juniper.”
“So they know how many we are,” Davin said, “and where we’re placed.”
I began to climb down, then dropped the last five feet. “And they know the lay of the land now,” I added. “They were scouting for an attack.”
“They may come back,” Locke said. He hesitated, looking up the tree, then down the trail. “We’re going to have to clear out all the brush at the edge of the forest and post sentries. This can’t happen again.”
“Burn it off?” Davin asked.
I left them and went to the abandoned bedrolls. When I picked the first one up, something small fluttered down from its folds . . . a Trump, I realized from its blue back, complete with gold lion. I glanced at Locke and Davin, but they hadn’t noticed.
“No,” Locke was saying. He had turned to face the other way, toward the heart of the forest. “We can’t risk a fire spreading out of control and reaching the camp. It will have to be done by hand.”
Carefully, trying to avoid attracting my brothers’ attention, I turned my back to them, picked up the card, and flipped it over.
It had Locke’s picture on it.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled with alarm. I glanced over my shoulder, but he and Davin were busy talking and weren’t paying the slightest attention to me. They hadn’t seen my discovery.
And I couldn’t let them see it. I saw the need for great care; in this family, it seemed I could never trust anyone if there was an alternative.
“I’ll get a detachment out as soon as we get back,” Davin said. “It’s going to be a two-day job, possibly three.”
I tucked the card into my sleeve, then rejoined them with a sigh of mock disgust.
“Nothing else here,” I announced.
Locke gave a nod, then turned and led the way back toward our horses. The cool touch of the Trump against my arm was a constant reminder of my discovery.
Locke . . .
Why would the hell-creatures have his Trump . . . unless they needed to contact him?
And why would they contact him . . . unless he was the traitor?
Chapter Sixteen
On the trip back to Juniper, I ranged ahead of the others, leaving Locke and Davin with their men. I rode neither hard nor fast enough to attract undue attention, but managed to get back a good ten minutes ahead of them.
All the way, winding through the tent city of their soldiers, crossing the drawbridge, and into the castle’s courtyard, I kept turning the implications of my discovery over and over in my mind.
We had a traitor in our midst. Ivinius’s presence—and the disappearance of his body—proved it. And the traitor had to be someone capable of using Trumps . . . which meant a family member.
But Locke?
Well, why not Locke?
He had been nothing short of hostile until this morning. And since Dworkin—I still found it hard to call him Dad—trusted him with the defenses of Juniper, his betrayal would be truly disastrous.
Or was I allowing personal dislike to cloud my judgment?
Safely ahead of the others, I pulled out the Trump I’d found, turned it over, and studied it without concentrating too hard on the picture. Locke . . . drawn exactly the same way as Freda’s Trump had been.
In fact, I realized with some dismay, this could be Freda’s Trump. But they couldn’t both be in league with hell-creatures . . . could they?
I knew one fact that might help: Aber had created this card. I’d ask him who it belonged to as soon as we got back to Jumper. If he could identify it . . .
I left my horse with the grooms and went looking for Aber. I found Freda standing in the audience hall with Pella, Blaise, and a couple of women I didn’t recognize. The warning bell must have brought everyone out looking for news or rumors.
I joined them.
“Did you find anything?” Freda asked me, once suitable introductions had been made. As I had suspected, the women I didn’t recognize were the wives of two of Dworkin’s chancellors.
“I’m afraid not,” I said. I didn’t mention the Trump I’d found. “It was just a camp site. They had been spying on us for a couple of days.”
“Too bad. Are you all back now? Safe?”
“I’m a little ahead of the others,” I said, glancing toward the door. “Locke wants to clear the brush at the edge of the forest, and I’m sure he’s going to stop and detail those duties before reporting back. He and Davin shouldn’t be too long.”
She nodded thoughtfully, then took my arm and drew me aside. “And how did you find Locke today?” she asked more softly.
“Less . . . ” I searched for the ri
ght word. “Less upset by my presence. I think he’s begun to accept me. Who knows, we might even end up friends.”
“Davin gave him a complete report about what Father said about you last night.”
I smiled lightly. “Yes, I got the feeling he knew about it. He has nothing to fear from me now. I cannot take his place without the Logrus.”
“Do not place too much trust in him yet. He may not view you as an enemy, but you are still a rival.”
“I won’t,” I promised. What would she think if she knew he wanted a private chat with me tonight? “Trust must be earned. He certainly hasn’t earned any yet.”
And he won’t earn it as long as there’s a chance he’s our traitor, I added silently.
“Good.” She smiled, the small lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth crinkling, “I hope you both make an effort at it. You can be of great help with the army, I know.”
“I hope so,” I said. Deliberately changing the subject, I asked, “Have you seen Aber?”
“Aber? Not since you left. You might look in his rooms. That’s where he spends most afternoons.”
“Thank you,” I said. I gave her and the chancellors’ wives a polite nod, then headed for the stairs. “Until dinner.”
Today I felt more comfortable navigating the castle’s seemingly endless stairs and corridors, and found my way safely to my rooms. I found Horace in my bedroom. My bed was covered with heaps of clothing.
“What’s all this?” I asked, staring.
“Mattus’s clothing, Lord,” Horace said, folding a shirt deftly and placing it in the wardrobe. “Lord Aber said I should bring it in for you.”
‘Thoughtful of him.”
“Yes, Lord.”
I realized I hadn’t had a chance to change yet from my workout, and now I stank not just of sweat, but of horse.
“Pick out new clothes for me,” I said, heading for the washbasin. “Then get the rest of them put away.” I’d clean up before going to see Aber, I decided.
Five minutes later, I went to Aber’s room and knocked sharply.
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