A Conspiracy of Whispers

by Ada Harper

  Admiration for his enemy was the last thing he needed.

  Right now, everything about you interests me, he’d said. At the time, he’d meant the words. Now he felt them.

  Chapter Five

  The pill was chalky and cloying on her tongue. Olivia swallowed down the bitterness with a swig of water. As she stowed her tin again, she was aware of Galen’s eyes on her. Had been on her since the wraicath incident two days ago. She could feel the curiosity skittering over her shoulders, but when she challenged his gaze he turned away to inspect the featureless woods. Olivia didn’t believe the disinterest for a minute. She’d decided it wasn’t his strength or senses she should worry about; it was his damn curiosity. She would have to be careful.

  Just to the border. It had become her mantra as they pressed on. The whispering sound of a nearby brook, coupled with the languid afternoon sun, lulled her into her thoughts as they began walking again. Just to the border. And then, well, she’d be rid of him.

  The problem was that it was impossible to stay on guard for prolonged durations. Proximity bred familiarity and familiarity bred a whole host of problems she was not going to deal with. She’d already picked up on his small mannerisms. The way he thumbed soil between his fingers whenever they stopped, as if even the dirt of this damned place spoke to him. The way his brow pressed into fine, irritated lines whenever he glanced at her. The way he rubbed his neck when he was embarrassed, the way it left his hair a soft, rumpled mess.

  Galen’s sudden movement shocked her out of that contemplation. He jerked back and threw his hand out. He turned the aborted reach into a silent gesture. Olivia wasn’t military, but she knew “Get the hell down” when she saw it. She dropped into the bush next to Galen.

  “What is it?” They were unfortunately close. It flooded Olivia’s senses with him again. Stone and sunlight. She subtly dropped her nose into her scarf to clear her head as she scanned the woods.

  “A scout,” Galen whispered and pointed down the rise. A shift of movement registered amid the trees and Olivia picked out the distinct shuffle of feet over the babble of water. Otherwise, she might have walked right into it.

  Olivia was really beginning to hate nature. Her fingers inched toward her holster. “Yours?”

  “Should be, but no.” Galen’s brow furrowed. “The movement is all wrong. Too many, not holding formation. Lyre would never send such a shoddy unit, I—”

  Olivia only half listened to his explanation. Her remaining senses turned toward the forest. It was too quiet now, no more chatter and birdsong coming from the trees. She strained to listen for the steps of patrols. She heard something else, this time to the exposed clearing to their right.

  She could say, later, it was simple logistics. A straightforward matter of needing to move and the bloody Imperial being in her way. Physics, really. But there was no thought behind it as she shoulder-checked Galen into the bushes. It didn’t precisely register when she shoved him down the rise to roll under a sheltering thicket. Her mind didn’t bother itself with thinking, only reacting, until she stared into a set of wide, burnished brown eyes, intimately close. And Olivia realized she’d landed, if not precisely on top of him, then close enough to feel his sharp intake of breath.

  Galen was frozen, breath short and shallow where it rippled against her cheek. A fast, steady thrum of his heartbeat that rummaged, quick and steady under her hand. The heat radiating off him enveloped her and muffled her panic. He had gold flecks in his brown eyes, she’d never been close enough to notice—

  Too close, too close. This was just the kind of problem the suppressant was supposed to prevent, but it seemed to be fighting a losing battle on her senses. Her gut tightened and Olivia wasn’t sure whether the urge she was fighting was to lean in or away. She shifted to peel herself back but a feather touch brought her short. Galen shook his head.

  He craned to look back over her shoulder. Olivia tilted her head, rather than turn it, to avoid any ill-advised contact with his cheek. A flag of color caught her eye, an Imperial soldier striding aimlessly through the bush, headed this way. There was no time to find a better hiding spot. They would be pinned between two patrols in a matter of moments. She eased her hand back toward the pistol on her leg.

  Galen’s hand closed on her wrist, firm this time. He made a reassuring sound that sounded suspiciously like a hush and made Olivia narrow her eyes.

  “Wait,” Galen muttered even as steps grew louder. Olivia resisted the urge to shout in his ear. She restrained herself to a barely breathed argument.

  “If we’re surrounded, we’ll be—”

  “We won’t.”

  “How in blue hell would you know—”

  “We’re trusting each other,” Galen reminded her, his whisper nearly lost against her ear. Olivia twitched. He made a placating motion, hand drifting along her arm that could be read as either soothing or warning. It came to a stop at her shoulder, making Olivia’s tension ratchet higher. Too close to her nape. Just too close in general. Olivia marshaled another attempt to move, but the sound of footfalls made her stop.

  “Halt! Identify yourself.”

  Her heart spiked into her throat. She was going to be shot. She was going to be shot because she certainly wasn’t about to be captured. But before either of those things occurred she would throttle the ever-loving life out of the man beneath her and—

  “What’s it to you?” A second voice cut through her visions of murder. Olivia couldn’t see anything, but the uneasy shuffle of boots in the bush told her the patrols hadn’t encountered them—they’d encountered each other.

  The first voice was hostile. “You’re interfering with an official military operation.”

  “Huh, is that why your uniform’s got its ugly-ass flags removed?” The second voice was laced with loathing, a low, bitter drawl that Olivia identified as pure Syndicate-born. “I got a legal chit. Don’t need to identify myself to dogshit whelps like you.”

  The voices escalated, threats and insults that Olivia recognized as the timeless song of impotent male posturing. One of them drew their weapon—who was uncertain, but Olivia placed her bets on the twitchy rebel peon—and the voices moved off, escalating the encounter to higher-ups who probably knew advanced levels of chest-beating.

  Olivia let out a trapped breath. She belatedly realized that her fist had bunched into Galen’s collar. Worse, Galen’s palm hadn’t stopped its gentling, drifting in a slow, soothing circle at her shoulder. It was soothing, which was what drove her irritated fist into his chest.

  She pushed up, bracketing her knees to either side of his waist to better glare down at him, but the snarl died in her throat. Galen’s face was static stupor, muddled with indecipherable emotion. Inches away, his eyes were shock-wide, but his gaze was pale, dazed. His lips were soft and slightly parted, breath still. As if he’d just stumbled across something unexpected.

  It looked a bit too much like awe.

  The voices had faded. It was safe enough. If she pushed off him with a bit more force than was necessary, it at least shook him out of it. Galen scrubbed his face and slowly rolled to his feet. He gave an enigmatic, sheepish smile and motioned for them to withdraw.

  Olivia clamped down on her annoyance until they were far enough that their voices wouldn’t carry. “What the hell just happened?”

  The smile on Galen’s face eased into something warier. “I thought we just successfully avoided a firefight.”

  That wasn’t precisely what Olivia was asking, but it was the more comfortable topic of conversation than the way he’d been looking at her. “How did you know that was going to happen? They were headed right toward us.”

  Galen’s breath escaped him in a long, weak sigh. “Still don’t trust me, Olivia?”

  “How, Galen?”

  His eyes swept over her face, as if trying to pick out an answer to his question. “The river.
If the rebels were following military protocol, they’d be following a grid system to search. All our scouts use them. Mainly by using landmarks to maintain a clear line of sight. I estimated that they may be irregulars but they would still follow basic scouting maneuvers.” He shrugged. “Once I saw the other patrol was dressed in a Syn long-coat, it was a safe enough guess that they’d not pass each other without a bit of patriotic posturing.”

  “A guess. You asked me to trust my life on a guess.”

  “I asked you to trust your life on me. We’re partners, after all.”

  “Allies. Temporary allies.”

  “A team.” And Galen appeared to think this was a compromise. The idiot.

  “Blight this whole place,” Olivia muttered, though she struggled to keep hold of her irritation. It was quickly being overwhelmed by what was blatantly obvious: she was the lost one here. If she hadn’t been with Galen, she could have easily walked into the militia scout, mercenary, or both. She was cautious, but this whole forest was maliciously made to turn her around, muddle her senses. The Syn might chew you up and leave you bleeding in a gutter but at least there were clearly marked gutters to bleed in. You knew when you walked down the wrong alley. Olivia was fluent in those brutalities. Here, there was nothing but blind alleys and dangers speaking in tongues Olivia hadn’t even known existed—

  “They’ll move on, toward the river. We’re safe for now,” Galen interrupted, as if he could hear the panic in her head. He was pointedly studying the trees in front of them. “But another patrol will be by within the half hour, and perhaps not so hotheaded as the previous one.”

  “We should move.” Olivia allowed herself to be led to the conclusion Galen had already reached.

  “I believe there’s a hunter trail to the east that will give us a wide berth around them,” Galen said, as if it was a suggestion he just thought of. “If that lines up with your plans, of course.”

  “Oh, don’t be an ass.” Olivia smacked his shoulder before she could think better of it. But it only put a surprised, delighted smile on Galen’s face. Perhaps he just liked to be hit. He had the face for it.

  Olivia studied the distant uniforms moving through the thick brush. Tried to pick out the sound of footfalls and fabric, but the natural cacophony of the forest had resumed. All she could hear was the buzz of insects and the loud, boorish chatter of the river.

  Olivia wasn’t so stubborn that she would walk herself into chains for the sake of her pride. Almost, but not quite. She looked at Galen and her fingers trailed over her sidearm, but it was more a childish reassurance for herself than a threat. She nodded. “Fine, lead on.”

  * * *

  Galen was a talented guide, much to Olivia’s grievance. Three more days passed in a blur of barely marked trails and an infinite muddle of trees, rock, and gully. Olivia continued to insist on taking watch at night, which meant she operated on the dregs of sleep. It wasn’t enough. Her eyes felt full of sand and her limbs too heavy when she sat. Galen’s long strides and altus stamina didn’t help, but by the second day he began to discreetly find more reasons to cut their days shorter. It forced a vicious cycle. Olivia insisted they keep going, which forced Galen to calmly—maddeningly calmly—refuse.

  The upside was the traps. To supplement Olivia’s dangerously low supply of rations, Galen began an evening ritual of fashioning snares when they stopped to camp. Olivia watched from her perch in a tree, at first. Then across the clearing. Then standing over his shoulder when she couldn’t quite make out the pattern of interconnected knots he worked the rope through, whip-fast and practiced.

  “How do you know where to place it?” Olivia finally asked one night, while Galen studiously pretended she wasn’t shadowing him. They were in a pool of undergrowth, on an animal trail perhaps three minutes from where they’d stopped for the night.

  “Instinct.”

  It was so dark that Olivia could barely make out Galen’s hands, but he moved with his usual confidence. The self-possessed calm of someone who had never lost anything. She sniffed. “Bullshit.”

  “That, too.” He finished with the snare. The faint moonlight was still enough to make his smile bright and sharp when he gestured at the ground. “The droppings. Something small passes through here regularly. Hopefully something tasty.”

  “Hopefully? I thought doglords knew their shit.”

  “Only the kind that falls easily from Syndicate lips,” Galen returned with a slanted look. “I’m not actually a wolf, you know. I can’t track by scent unless Zahira is with me.”

  His missing wolf companion. Olivia compressed her lips on her pity. She crouched down to shine a penlight at the snare installation. “I didn’t have much rope in my bag but you managed.”

  “Doesn’t take much,” Galen said and she could feel his gaze as she straightened. “A trap just needs to delay a creature until you’re ready for it.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  They started walking back in a comfortable quiet. They were nearly to camp before Galen spoke again. “You’re awfully interested in trap-setting. Do you plan to take up hunting?”

  “My country’s kind of hunting requires significantly less shit reading. No...” Olivia stepped away from him as they reached the clearing, picking at her scarf idly as she considered how she wanted to answer. Galen must have assumed she was learning as a hunter, but the knowledge was more useful when you were the prey. “Never hurts to know things. Besides, if I have to kill you later, it’d be a shame to go hungry.”

  “A shame,” Galen repeated, eyes still on her.

  * * *

  The world was a bruise of shadows by the time they found a clearing suitable enough to stop one night, far later than they usually camped. Exhaustion reigned, and Olivia didn’t bother doing more than shucking her bag before dropping to the ground. Galen eased down against a tree across from her with much more grace and energy. The ground had turned soggy and Olivia had spent most of the day taking two strides to every one of his to stay on firm ground.

  Galen said, “I could take first watch tonight.”

  “I’ll pass.” Olivia shifted in the dirt, trying to find a less comfortable seat to keep her awake. Ah—there, rock in the spine, that’d do it.

  “Don’t get me wrong. It was an offer of self-preservation. You look like a merc could knock you over with a feather.”

  Olivia groaned. She did not have the energy for another game of negotiation with him. “Leave me alone, Galen. It’s been a long day.”

  “At least you’re remembering my name regularly now.” There was distinct warmth in his voice. “Come on, Olivia. I couldn’t sneak away if I tried. You sleep little and when you do, you’re wound tighter than a loch-cat.”

  Olivia didn’t like the idea that he’d had a chance to observe her when she slept. “Is that a compliment?”

  Instead of answering, Galen bunched his military coat behind his head before leaning back again. The silence lingered until he tilted his head with a vague smile. “I suppose it is. You’ve got a lot in common with loch-cats actually.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me.”

  “I am.” Galen closed his eyes. “Rare, elusive beasts, though not quite as rare as wraicath. Impossible to get close to. Scrawny, flighty, bloody mean as hell—”

  “I’m so charmed.”

  “—formidable,” Galen continued. “Nothing more dangerous than a loch-cat when cornered. Can give a full-grown royal hound a run for its money. But they’re intelligent and kind to lesser creatures. Even been known to guide lost children out of the woods.”

  “That’s me, protector of all the small woodland creatures.”

  “My point is, you need to sleep. Without sleep you’ll get sloppy.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes to the fading sky. “I won’t get sloppy.” It came out more petulant than she planned.

 
“Would it help if you cuffed me?”

  Olivia’s gaze bounced back to Galen’s face, but it was calm. “I mean it. I’ll put on the restraints again. You can loop them around the tree here if it means you’ll feel at ease enough to rest.”

  “I...” Olivia felt a queer tilting in her chest. He was offering to put himself under her power again. The first time since that initial, horrid day. She knew how uncomfortable it was for an altus, any altus, to submit to anything. She closed her mouth and tried again to dismiss her unease. “I doubt a mere tree branch would give you much trouble.”

  “Maybe not, but you’d hear me if I tried.” Galen’s smile faded. He caught and held Olivia’s gaze with a soft, determined look. “This isn’t a ruse. I gave you my word. I don’t intend to run, or turn against you, but I do intend that you sleep. I’ll stand watch. And I’ll be here in the morning.”

  Shadows softened the hard lines of his face, but Olivia was getting to know that expression well. Collected, unfazed and irrefutable. Placid as a city pond, but firm and unbending as tempered steel. She’d been expending her energy volleying against that for days. She was no stranger to arrogant altus men. But though Galen’s confidence was impressive, it was his flexible mind, like a damned bag of cats, that perplexed her. Every time she thought she’d found a weakness, made a dent, he simply rerouted and dropped her into thin air again.

  And Olivia was tired. Lady, she was tired.

  She pushed away from the tree slowly, watching his shoulders for any sudden movements. There were none. Galen was a statue of teak and dusk in the fading sunset. The only light lingered in his eyes as he calmly offered his wrists.

  “Promise me you’ll sleep,” he said.

  Olivia ratcheted the cuffs until they released enough flexi-wire to go around a sturdy looking trunk. “You’re the one getting locked up and still making demands.”

  “Force of habit. It’s a personal failing, I’ll admit.” Galen didn’t sound at all sorry. “You will sleep.”

  The soft order in his voice chased something chill and alarmingly pleasant up Olivia’s back. She forced herself to calmly focus on affixing the cuffs first to the tree, then around each wrist. “You don’t get to give me orders.”