by Erin Beaty
Quinn released her and stepped forward. “Excellent. How do we make that happen in a large room?”
The pair looked doubtful. “You need t’ get it in th’ air, sir,” the shorter man said. “You could throw in a couple bottles like this t’ break and scatter it around.”
“But it vapors quickly, right?” said Casseck.
The man shook his head “It would take a while still, sir, t’ get that effect. But maybe that’d be enough—flames would spread like a flowing river, jest not like this.” He waved the bottle in the air.
The discussion turned to that possibility, but Sage found herself stuck on the memory of a fire-breather she’d seen as a child. The man would spit a fine cloud of alcohol into the air and touch it off with a torch. One time he created a ring of mist, stepped back, and lit it as it hung in the air in front of him. She smiled.
“I have an idea,” she said.
“You always do.” Quinn was looking at her, and the room fell silent. “Tell us.”
“Well,” she said, conscious that everyone was watching her. The captain nodded encouragingly. “I was thinking of bellows.”
“Bellows?” he echoed, forehead creasing. “Like to build up a fire?”
Sage twisted her hands. “Yes, well, a few summers ago, it was really hot, and my cousins and I took bellows and put water in them and sprayed one another. If—if there’s only a little water inside, it comes out not as a stream, but a mist.…”
Quinn’s eyes widened. “A flammable mist.” She nodded, and grins spread on every face.
“That’s brilliant,” said the taller enlisted man. He gaped at her. “Who are you?”
“Private Stiller, this is Sage Fowler,” said Quinn—Alex—with a smile that sent warmth through her veins. “Our secret weapon.”
65
D’AMIRAN SHADED HIS eyes against the sun and took a few minutes to observe the girl before approaching. She looked so innocent, sitting on the bench under a budding tree in the garden, a heavy book open on her lap. Not overly pretty, though, and rather skinny. What was it Quinn saw in this commoner? He shrugged to himself. Perhaps she simply gave him what young men wanted; as a false bride, she didn’t have to preserve her virtue.
Geddes was of the opinion that Quinn’s attachment was not superficial, though. All the better that the boy-captain was gone for this conversation. D’Amiran had granted Quinn’s request to take a team to the river to collect fresh water that morning—accompanied by his own guards, of course. The fool expressed concern about the low level of the cistern and whined about how his hunting dogs felt cooped up, but it served the duke to have him out of the way for a few hours.
When his shadow fell over her, she looked up and started to her feet, but he motioned for her to stay seated. “May I join you, my lady?” he asked.
“You honor me, Your Grace,” she said, her pale eyes wide in awe.
“I was merely curious what you were reading,” D’Amiran said, easing himself down onto the warm stone seat and leaning in. “It’s not often I see a lady so absorbed in such a large volume.”
“It’s from your magnificent library, Your Grace,” she said shyly. The girl shifted her knees toward him so he couldn’t scoot closer. She probably had that dagger Geddes had seen Quinn give her tucked up her skirt. “I hope you’re not upset I removed it. It’s so much nicer out here for reading.”
“Not for long, though.” D’Amiran pointed to the gathering clouds over the eastern peaks. “We’ll have our rains at last, and the pass will clear. In a few days you can continue your travels.”
She gave a dreamy sigh. “I shall miss this place, I think. Coming from the open fields of Crescera, I always imagined mountains would be dark and forbidding, but they’re not. Tegann nestles within their arms like a lover, and I’ve never felt so safe.”
The little fowler was good. D’Amiran felt charmed in spite of himself. He turned his attention to a page approaching from the keep.
“Your Grace,” the boy said with a bow. His face was pale and he didn’t stand up quite straight, like his stomach hurt. “You wanted to be informed when Captain Quinn was returning from the river.”
Next to D’Amiran, the girl’s head went up. The duke smiled to himself as he addressed the boy. “Very good. Tell Captain Geddes to meet me on the south wall.”
When the page was gone, D’Amiran turned back to the girl. “I’ve enjoyed our chat, however brief it was, but you must excuse me, my lady. I have matters to attend to.”
She put out her hand to touch his arm. “May I ask why our escort went to the river?”
“It seems your captain doesn’t trust I can provide enough water for everyone here,” he said. “Or perhaps he just doesn’t like the taste.”
“From your cistern? Oh, I saw that wonderful system, Your Grace. The captain is no doubt overreacting. How silly.”
Her expression was a mixture of fear and resentment, which puzzled him, but perhaps she was afraid someone would discover her connection to Quinn. D’Amiran bowed and kissed her hand before departing for the outer ward and the south wall. Captain Geddes waited in a spot where they could watch the approach to the rear gate.
Quinn hadn’t objected to not being allowed to carry weapons, but it looked like a few of the hunting dogs they’d taken had caught some rabbits. None of the dogs looked eager to return to the confines of the fortress, as they danced around the escort soldiers, burning off energy. For a few minutes the duke and his captain watched the wagons make their way up the slope.
“Did Your Grace speak with the girl?” Geddes asked.
D’Amiran nodded. “Not to my taste, but I see some of the appeal. She’s positively enchanting when she wants to be.” The duke smiled. “I imagine the little slut plans to seduce him so he’ll do the honorable thing and marry her, but I don’t think she has yet. It would ruin his career and create a huge scandal, which would’ve been amusing to watch. My question is, would it be more soul crushing to take her from him before or after he gets a taste? Each has its own poetry, don’t you think?”
Geddes tugged his ravaged ear. “I don’t think you should wait any longer, Your Grace.”
“Yes, I agree.” D’Amiran sighed. “With this sickness, though, we’ll have a hard time marching anytime soon.” He brooded for a moment. “I thought it was a sign the Spirit blessed my cause when the rains were late. I felt sure of it when we learned the prince was coming right to us, but now I’m plagued with problems. Robert escaped, this wretched illness delays my allies, and my idiot brother keeps coming up with excuses not to march yet.”
“All will be in place tomorrow, Your Grace,” the captain soothed. “A few delays were inevitable.”
“Eliminating the escort could be messy. Their vigilance is irksome, and we can’t challenge them head-on without risking some of the lives I need.” The duke inclined his head toward the party now entering the gate below. “We probably should’ve taken them just now, while so many were at the river, but that moment has passed. Can we take them during one of the musters?”
“Not without losing a number of our own men, Your Grace. They chose the location well,” the captain admitted.
D’Amiran waved his hand. “It wouldn’t have been much fun anyway. I don’t know how Quinn managed to get the prince out, but that little shit has caused a great deal of complication. I want him to suffer, and I want to tell his father all about it. So that leaves the girl.”
Geddes cleared his throat. “She visits him in the barracks in the evening, dressed as a man, but he accompanies her to and from those trysts. Perhaps we can separate them and then grab her. Being that she’s not a lady, what else could we assume but that she’s a spy?”
“And hang her?” D’Amiran smirked. “It would certainly provoke him, but it’s a little too prosaic.” He gazed wistfully into the distance. “I need poetry in my life to combat this drab place.”
“Then use her as you wish, Your Grace; she’s only a commoner. Nothing would bring
Quinn to her aid faster. And raising arms against you would be treason, punishable by death.”
“Yes.” The duke dragged out the syllable. “That is positively a ballad.”
The page from earlier came running up the nearest steps, crouching even more than before as he approached. “Your Grace!” he gasped, clutching his stomach.
D’Amiran backed a step away from the boy. He smelled like sewage. “What is it?”
“You have a visitor. From the forest.”
Huzar. The duke grimaced and looked to Geddes. “Meet him and bring him to my chambers. I’ll receive him there.”
“He’s already there by now, Your Grace!” the page blurted out.
D’Amiran narrowed his eyes, and Geddes stepped in. “How long ago did he arrive, boy?”
“Perhaps thirty minutes ago, sir.”
“And we’re just now learning this?” roared Geddes, cuffing the boy with an open hand.
“Begging Your Grace’s pardon, but I had to use the privy before I could tell you! It was urgent.”
Geddes raised his arm to strike the boy again, but D’Amiran lifted his hand to stop him. The captain froze. “Why was no other messenger sent in your place?” the duke asked.
The page cringed away from Geddes. “All the other boys are sick, Your Grace. Worse than me.”
“All of them?” The boy nodded.
D’Amiran made a disgusted sound and turned away. Geddes trailed him as he headed down the steps and around the ward to the inner gate. As they passed the gardens, the duke caught sight of the Fowler girl and Lady Clare walking together. The former watched him as he walked up the steps to the keep, and he knew in that moment she wasn’t Quinn’s target of affection—she was his spy. He would enjoy making them both pay.
When he reached his chambers, pausing outside to catch his breath from the climb, he realized Captain Huzar had dispatched an underling this time. D’Amiran seated himself and studied the emotionless face before him.
“I have a message from my commander.” The Kimisar soldier enunciated consonants and dragged the soft g as Huzar did. He’d given no greeting.
Annoyed, the duke gestured for him to continue. The Kimisar would be enlightened on how to properly address a nobleman once things were settled.
“The Kimisar are returning home.”
“WHAT IS THIS?” roared D’Amiran, leaping to his feet.
The young man continued without flinching. “The agreement is broken. We keep our side, but you do not. Your army does not march. There is no prince. We wait no longer for other promises. We return home, taking payment along the way.”
“I will hunt you down and hang every one of you by your entrails along the border—”
“You will not. We will be beyond your reach before your sick soldiers can mount their sick horses.”
The truth of the statement enraged the duke, and he seized a knife from his nearest guard and advanced on the Kimisar, who up close he could see was little more than a boy. “You are wrong about one thing,” D’Amiran said. “There is no ‘we.’”
The youth reacted with only the slightest grimace as the blade cut deep into his neck. He held himself upright even as his blood sprayed across the hearth rug. D’Amiran stayed close until the soldier collapsed in a heap, relishing the small victory of a Kimisar groveling at his feet as was proper. D’Amiran smirked as he wiped his face and handed the knife back to the guard.
“Have this mess cleaned up and hang him over the side of the keep so they know not to wait up for him.” He turned and headed for the bedchamber to change his ruined shirt and wash the blood out of his beard. “And bring me the girl. Tonight.”
66
QUINN—ALEX, SAGE reminded herself—came to fetch Sage as soon as it was dark. She let him in the room, and he immediately started pacing. “Everything’s changed twice today.”
“I heard you went to the river,” she said.
He nodded. “We got some clean water and managed to make contact with our scouts. They’ve found Robert and also a courier from the main army, which now occupies Jovan. It seems the general decided to set up his headquarters there, though I don’t know why.”
“Sounds like good news.”
“Yes and no,” he said. “Now that the rains have started, most of the army will be stuck on the wrong side of the Nai River as it floods. But there’s a battalion just on the other side of the pass here. They could get here in five or six days, once they know to come. The pickets want to cross the pass and call for help, but without red blaze, it will take twice as long.”
“Red blaze?” asked Sage.
“Special packets sealed with wax,” he explained. “When burned they make red flames and lots of red smoke. They’re only used for absolute emergency to call all forces within sight. I have five.”
She remembered a detail from her tour with Clare. “They have some of that in the keep so Tegann can call for help. Theirs is green, though.”
Alex nodded. “Green is for local militias. Red is for the royal army, though supposedly anyone loyal to the crown should show up. I’m debating using one ourselves tomorrow. If nothing else, it may frighten D’Amiran’s allies if they think the army is headed this way.”
“So how will you get some to the scouts?”
“I can’t,” he said, kicking the bedpost in frustration. “Even if we could get out of this rock, there’s that ring of Kimisar around us, and according to the scouts, they’re on the move again.”
Sage recalled what she needed to tell him. “I saw a man escorted into the keep. He looked Kimisar to me.”
He stopped pacing. “When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Is he still here?”
“I … I don’t know.”
Alex waved his hand. “I’ll ask my patrols what they’ve seen. Are you ready to go?”
“Yes. Clare is telling everyone I’m ill.”
He grinned. “They’re dropping like flies around here, thanks to you.” She blushed, and he took a few steps closer, looking serious. “We owe you so much, Sage.”
Her pulse quickened at the look in his eyes. She’d been terrified when she heard he went to the river, thinking they might be ambushed. Then she remembered what else had happened that day. “The duke came to see me while you were gone.”
Alex froze. “What did he want?”
“Idle talk.” She repeated the conversation for him. “You don’t think it means anything, do you?”
He frowned. “Maybe, maybe not.”
“Normally he chats up Clare, but she’d gone to get some water. Maybe he was just looking for her.”
“You were alone?”
She nodded.
“Dammit, Sage, I told you not to go off alone.”
“I was in plain sight,” she argued. “It was only a few minutes.”
“We’re counting the hours until all hell breaks loose.” He reached for her arm. “A lot can happen in a few minutes.”
He didn’t trust her enough to decide what was too risky. She elbowed his hand away furiously. “Don’t I know a few minutes can change everything!”
The blood drained from his face, leaving his normally dark skin pale. Alex reached for her again, brushing his fingers down her arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps. “Sage, please. I don’t care what he does to me, but you…”
How did he keep doing that? How did he make her want to claw his face one minute and kiss and reassure him in the next?
“What’s that?” The moment ended as his dark eyes snapped to the window. The sound of shouting came from the courtyard. He crossed the room to look out. “Something’s wrong.” He pivoted back to the door. “Stay here.”
Sage ignored his command and made to follow him. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to be alone.”
She expected him to force the issue, but instead he grabbed her hand. “Then for Spirit’s sake, stay close and do what I tell you.”
She barely got the door closed behind them before A
lex rushed her down the passage and outside. All around the inner ward, people were staring up at the keep.
In the pillared bowl atop the tower, a great pyre blazed, casting a golden glow over the granite walls. The bloody body of a man painted with the white four-pointed star of Kimisara hung by his neck below. A soldier in black sidled up to them and said everyone was describing the man as a captured spy.
“I think that Kimisar you saw is still here,” Alex observed dryly.
67
SAGE WATCHED THE officers argue over what it meant.
“If you’re going to make a point with a body, you hang it where everyone can see it,” Casseck insisted. “It’s hanging over the west side, not from a pole over the top. The Kimisar are all to the west. They’ve abandoned D’Amiran.”
“That must have been the unlucky bastard who delivered that news,” said Gramwell. “But why would they leave? Is someone coming from that direction?”
Alex held up a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Now this morning’s report makes more sense. Their absence leaves an opening to get red blaze to the scouts, but it may not be open for long. Now is the time.” Casseck and Gramwell nodded. “Once the scouts have it, a pair of men can get to where the signal can be seen in two days. It’ll be a minimum of five days more for reinforcements to arrive, but let’s assume ten total. We’ll lose the man who goes out, so that leaves us with twenty-nine to take control here.”
“Doable,” said Casseck. “Especially if the remaining scouts can make their way in.”
“Which would bring us up to thirty-three.” Alex crossed his arms. “So now we need to get out. What about the sewer, Gram? You found a drain by the river on the south side.” He indicated the spot on their sketch.
Gramwell shook his head. “The end’s covered with a grate of iron rods—old, but solid. I got one vertical bar loose, but the rest are stuck fast. No way any of us can fit through. Charlie could, but he’d never make it that far in the dark alone, especially if the forest is crawling with D’Amiran’s guards.”