by Kim Wedlock
Rathen's shoulders dropped in understanding. "I'll answer your questions," he assured him, "next time. But for now, I need you to do this." Again he turned away before he could try to argue, but though Ira's eyes were confused and uncomfortable, he placed his hands gently on Aria's shoulders and eased her along to his side, speaking softly and keeping her from hurrying after him as Rathen stepped reluctantly out of her reach. He steeled himself against the lurch of his stomach and the words of the belittling voice in his head, and repeated to himself in as many ways as he could that this was the right thing to do.
Kienza knelt and hugged her for a moment, just as tightly as he had, and whispered something very close to her curl-covered ear. But whatever it was, it had little impact. Her eyes remained red, puffy, damp and torn between defeat and what truly seemed like hatred.
And though it tore holes into him, Rathen didn't permit himself to look away.
"I will come back for you," he assured her again, forcing as much promise into his eyes as he could. "I love you."
But she didn't say it back.
Rathen's teeth clenched together as he braced himself against her heartbreak, but still he didn't look away. Kienza joined him, her plump lips turned down in a perfect crescent, and after sparing him an evaluating moment, noting every thought that tumbled through his eyes, she cast her spell, ending his torment.
And Aria's quiet voice followed them.
Petra and Anthis uneasily watched the spot on the jetty where the three had vanished. They'd asked Garon where they'd gone, what they were doing and, most importantly, if they were coming back, but he hadn't answered. Neither could decide if he knew and was keeping secrets or if he was just as clueless as they were, but whatever the case, he waited silently beside the boat, his arms tightly folded, watching the spot just as intently. Neither of them saw the regret that took the place of their concern.
A few minutes passed and they reappeared without warning, the hum of magic briefly tugging on Eyila's mind just as it had the first, but she spared neither it nor them even a passing glance. But while Garon straightened and turned away, apparently satisfied by their return, there was one detail the others couldn't avoid noticing.
"Where's Aria?" Anthis asked in a restrained panic as Garon finally boarded, but he was given a sharp, silencing gesture in answer. They both looked back out towards the two mages, their alarm reluctantly quietening at Rathen's apparent composure, and realised that it had, of course, been his decision. And though they both found themselves in selfish disagreement with it, they equally knew that it was for the best. And in hindsight, one that should have come much, much sooner.
They stepped back from the bulwark and gave them their privacy, busying themselves with nonsense and pretending not to notice when they eventually made their way aboard. But despite appearances, they were acutely aware of Rathen's silence as he left Kienza's side at the top of the gangplank, and indirectly tracked him as he walked past them with a gaze almost as distant as Eyila's. He secluded himself just as she did, too, leaning against the bulwark at the far end of the boat and staring out over the water towards their heading as if eager to be away.
They cast silent looks towards Kienza, but she simply shook her head, and it took visible strength for her to smile as she sought to move the tension along. "I wish you luck," she said softly, "and remember," her sweeping gaze rested momentarily on the two distant casters, "pay attention. Don't trust in map and compass alone, and you will be fine." She smiled again, this time more easily, warmly and assured, and though the three's doubt remained at the notable lack of direct advice, warnings or instruction, they were at least slightly eased by her certainty.
"Thank you, Miss," said Garon with a formality that belied the curiosity he must surely have held, one which caused the others to equally restrain their questions, and he inclined his head politely, seeming suddenly quite eager to leave, himself.
Whether Kienza saw this and obliged or was simply finished anyway, she returned the gesture and began to issue brief farewells. But as she turned away from Petra, the duelist was struck by a sudden, urgent thought. One she would have expressed had the sorceress not then paused in front of Garon. "Look after him," she said quietly, a demand presented quite prettily as a request. He nodded his assurance, and Petra subdued her urgency as she watched him attempt to tighten his left hand at his side.
Until he shook it away and placed it lightly upon the edge of his scabbard to occupy it, and allowed the forest-clad woman to vanish from in front of him without saying another word.
His eyes passed briefly over her as he turned towards the rest of the ship, but he spared no explanation and quickly disregarded her questioning frown. "Let's go."
"Who's going to sail it?" Anthis asked, peering up at the masts and then back towards the wheel while Petra moved to the bow with an irritated stamp in her step.
"I will," Garon replied, then looked sternly at the historian's hesitance. "I know how to sail a cargo ship, and this isn't a large one. If all of you do as I ask when I ask, we'll be fine." He looked back towards Petra, whom he heard mutter beneath her breath, but she was too far for him to catch it. Again, he did his best to ignore her, as well as the clueless, niggling guilt he'd felt growing within him for the past few days whenever she crossed his sight.
Turning his mind away, he confirmed with a quick look across the deck that the ship had already been prepared. "Rathen, Anthis," he commanded as he took the wheel, "take up the oars. Petra, cast off the lines."
They both sent silent, doubtful looks towards the mage as they obliged, expecting some sharp response or to be simply ignored. But instead, he turned away from the calm, still sea and sat quietly on the rowing bench, his face strangely expressionless despite the increased depth of his lines.
Anthis warily took the seat beside him, but where the mage would usually have grunted, sneered or turned pointedly away from him, now he didn't seem to notice him at all. Anthis found he wasn't comfortable with that, either. "Ready," he declared hesitantly for the both of them, which Petra echoed as she pulled in the mooring line, and upon the inquisitor-captain's order, the men began rowing in perfect time, pushing off from the jetty and making towards open sea.
No one was sorry to see the land shrink behind them. Regardless of what riches the ruined temple had provided, little good had come from the rest. The sands were swollen with blood, tainted by massacre and haunted with mistrust, hatred and loss. It would be forever cursed in their memories.
And as for whatever lay ahead of them, on the treacherous sea or the battlefield that enveloped Kasire, it could surely be no worse than the events of this past tortuous, scorching month. Every one of them silently longed for the cleansing sting of the thick sea air.
Chapter 53
Salus glared down at the perfect golden circle, blinking slowly as his thoughts wandered. A sickening hopefulness lay as a blanket beneath them, and above, the sun that hung over the forest. A sun he could always see, unobscured, regardless of the thick canopy. Regardless of whether he was in the forest or not, or if his office ceiling had simply been replaced by it.
Yes, his dreams had changed again. His nightmares had receded a week ago, the night he'd grasped his magic, but they'd been replaced by those of yearning and desire once more, and the sensations had returned even stronger. They were under his skin, haunting him, taunting him, giving him the time to pick them apart, and he felt he could finally identify them - or perhaps they were merely accentuating his desperation to protect his country in its hour of need. Honestly, though, it didn't really matter. The thought that he finally understood them didn't offer him even a glimmer of comfort.
Instead he felt that the chain around his neck had been shortened. That the wildly barking guard dog had now been given a sharp, spiked collar, only to be staked further out of anyone's reach for fear it may actually frighten someone.
He possessed magic that he could barely use, like a child inheriting his father's greatsword, and
he found that that made him angry - with himself above all else. For being so...normal. That despite his age, despite all the awful and necessary things he'd done in his life, he was just as helpless as anyone else. He needed the same instruction as any adolescent mageling, and his learning was limited, just as theirs was, by his own mental processes. Meanwhile, magic was tearing Turunda apart in the Order's trained hands, and he knew he could use his magic to save it if he only knew how to use it!
With tremendous effort, he forced away the tension in his shoulders. Under such conflicting thoughts, their impending victory over Skilan didn't offer any comfort, either. They were, ultimately, a simple matter. Magic was not. And neither, it seemed, was Doana.
He dragged his eyes away from the fried egg, shaking aside the ridiculous association and the lingering traces of dreams, but confusion gripped him for a moment as he forgot his surroundings. This wasn't his office.
No, thank goodness it wasn't. It was what should have been a drawing room, and he was taking his breakfast in there in a bid to escape his own prison. He practically lived in that office now, and he didn't like it. So he'd taken Taliel's recent suggestion to at least eat his meals somewhere else, and as she'd suggested the drawing room, he'd chosen the drawing room. It was as good a place as any - the morning sun reached in through the large windows to illuminate the expansive space, and he found that that had some kind of curious lifting effect on his mind, too.
But not enough.
His eyes turned sharply back onto Teagan, who waited patiently in the seat indirectly opposite, an untouched cup of tea standing on the small table between them. He made no reaction towards the severity of his stare.
"Kalokh has abandoned Skilan," the keliceran stated needlessly, the fact was no longer a revelation. "They've taken too many losses on their behalf. I'm certain they're relying on our victory to avoid a fallout from disloyalty and make an effort to reclaim their land."
"They have no love for Skilan," Teagan agreed, "but they won't aid us."
Salus sneered. "We don't want their help. How long would it be before they deserted us in turn? No, we're better off without them. Their withdrawal has done enough for us as it is. Skilan are feeling the loss, they were exhausted before this even started, and now that their spy in Moore's ranks has been discovered, each of their advantages have been lost."
Teagan's brow twitched in interest. "I was aware that we'd discovered the spy - was it who Malson suspected?"
He sneered again, though it was edged this time in suspicion. "No, but it was Rackson's subordinate. It's still too close..." But he shook the thought away. He had little mind to spare for Malson.
Salus pushed aside the remains of his breakfast, barely touched, and levelled his gaze. "If we target Skilan's mages, they'll be done for. The Order has severely reduced their numbers already, but I want Aranan mages to finish them off - I don't trust the matter to be left in the Order's hands, they've taken too many prisoners under the pretence of learning new techniques. How many mages do they really need for that? A handful, at best! They would all have been taught the same thing!" He raised his fork and plunged it into his food, bursting the golden egg yolk and crunching into the fried bread beneath it. Again, Teagan didn't react. "I don't want them getting their hands on any more. I don't want them to learn any more, or recruit any more. Our mages will go in from behind, there are too few left in Skilan's ranks to spare the attention to detect them, and they are permitted to use any means to obliterate them."
Teagan's face remained wooden. "'Any means'? They will be seen, of course."
"No," he growled, "mages will be seen. And any 'questionable' spells will be blamed, of course, on the Order. Our mages won't be identified."
"Is the Order not presently too unstable to be used as a scapegoat? It could worsen Turunda's internal situation."
"We will quell it." Salus sat back in his chair, unconsciously flexing his fingers. "With a sudden attack to wipe out their mages, Skilan will be shocked and scattered. Then Moore can attack them however he sees fit. In the mean time, we make one of our planted 'soldiers' a hero. Send out orders for each agent within the military to kill Skilan's general on the battlefield as soon as the chance presents itself."
"Moore will have issued--"
"And I want to make sure that it happens. Get the orders out."
Teagan passively inclined his head.
"As for the spy, he'll be in our cells within the hour and Nolan himself will rip out any information he has. I want to find out how he got in and what Skilan's status is beyond the war. We will crush them once and for all, and we won't be compromised while doing it. And," his lip twitched distastefully, "what, if anything, he knows about Doana." He shook his head and growled beneath his breath. Doana. Doana. How had this been able to get so far? How had he let it?! They had been nothing more than a trifle in the beginning, striking in small numbers and vanishing into the forests. But there had been something ominous in their last disappearance, and it seemed his unease was justified. In only two days, four substantial war camps had appeared out of nowhere in a variety of locations across Turunda, each sharing the single notable quality of providing a suitable battleground while being dotted with a range of natural landmarks which would certainly provide them with the advantage. Places and landmarks that only people familiar with Turunda's geography would know about. And as if their apparently acute knowledge of the land wasn't bad enough, their numbers had also been made evident. Somehow, they'd moved half of their military force into Turunda!
"How?!" He suddenly bellowed, barely startling the portian. "How?! How did we--how did nobody see?!--No matter, no sodding matter. We can deal with it. We can deal with it."
Salus shoved himself out of his chair, his breakfast finally forgotten, and began pacing around the bright, spacious and richly ornamented room. His thoughts swirled, drawing up his increasing exasperation like a waterspout. "We can deal with it." He forced his feet to stop and his mind to resist its spinning, and he snapped around towards his favoured. "Somehow," he began, his tone suddenly calm and considered despite his wild eyes, "Doana has been able to correctly identify and kill our planted operatives every single time, phaeacian and phidipan alike, and we've been unable to figure out how or find their counterparts because they've been too good at disappearing. Which means that this whole thing is a highly calculated manoeuvre, far more so than we've been giving them credit for. Given how successful they've been in creating chaos and, evidently, moving their sodding forces in undetected, they must have had movements well beyond even this stage planned out before they even began. And we've no doubt played into it with our every response." He clamped his teeth for a moment. "Doana. A land of mountains and terrace farmers, and it's a force to be taken seriously. When did they get so organised? How did we miss it?--And what happened to Voent?! For them to be flooding Turunda like this...!" He shrugged and spread his hands imploringly, lost for the words to make sense of it.
"It is possible," Teagan began calmly, "though unlikely, that they've discovered the identities of our people in both Doana and Voent and have been sending us false reports in their place all this time."
Salus snarled. "'Unlikely'," he snapped. "Everything they've done so far has been 'unlikely'." He shook his head and sighed tightly, fighting to collect himself again. "Then it's safe to assume that we're blind to their activities and to approach them as such. Don't trust any intel that doesn't come from an operative whose continued survival we can't confirm."
Teagan nodded his agreement, and Salus gave the chair a sharp kick without breaking his outward composure. "Once Skilan is dealt with, we can pour more resources into eradicating this infestation. They won't have the chance to reap any results from whatever ill-conceived master plan they've concocted over pipe weed and altitude sickness."
"And in the mean time?"
"In the mean time, we watch them. Closely. And close the borders. No one else gets in. Set a ring of fire all the way around the country if
you have to! Then at least we'll know if someone's passed through it."
"And what about trade?"
A distasteful hiss slipped through his teeth. "This is war. Luxuries have to fall aside. Anything we need, we have." Salus folded his arms as his grimace deepened, emanating a grave darkness throughout the room. "Watch the camps," he said after a thoughtful moment, "work out which of them are real and which aren't - which are being honestly reinforced with men and supplies - then infiltrate and replace them - no more than two individuals. We can magically alter them to match the original soldiers, but no one high-profile. We don't have the intel to pull that off, but personal information can be picked up with only a little observation. It's never so closely guarded. Once Skilan is finished and our resources are opened back up we can provoke them, confirm which are actually prepared for combat and find out how they'll react when they're not in control; we can sabotage their supplies, prevent them from gathering from the surrounding land, and find some way to turn the advantage of their positions against them."
"That's Moore's area. Would we not be better off leaving it to him? He'd handle it quicker and more efficiently than we could."
Salus waved his words away, mumbling his consent, but his mind had clearly already been snatched away by other weighted thoughts. A wistful line drew his brows together. "There must be something I can do..."
"Your orders are well-considered--"
"To hell with 'orders'," he suddenly snapped, "I'm talking about me. There must be something I can do, personally, myself, outside the office!"
"We're not in the office."
Salus blinked. "I'm going to presume that was an attempt at a joke."
"Sir, forgive my bluntness, but you haven't the knowledge to do more than brew tea under a hovering light. At this point, there's nothing you can do."