It was a large, charcoal gray seeker – he thought it might be the same bird he’d noticed in the barn the day of his incident in the barn with Raeyan. It rested on the ground for a minute, its shiny black eyes shifting back and forth between Dorian and Zander. Dorian held out his arm to invite the creature on, but when the bird stretched its wings to fly up, it landed carefully on Ember’s neck. Though the bird was enormous, Ember remained calm and still.
Zander had never been this close to one of the birds. He stretched his hand tentatively toward it, more than a little nervous about its razor-sharp beak at as he reached for the little metal cylinder attached to its leg.
The bird tipped its head sideways so far it nearly went upside down, and if Zander hadn’t known better, he would have sworn it sighed. Then, while his hand was still several inches away, the animal picked up its leg and set it down right in the middle of his palm.
“All right,” he said, chuckling and reaching for the lid to the container.
The bird looked up at him – not making eye contact, but staring at the top of his head. Now he knew it was the bird from the barn.
“I’m sorry! Give me a chance to learn here, would you?”
When he finally had the folded piece of paper in his hand, he held it out to Dorian.
The older guard shook his head. “I would say the bird knew who she was aiming for, Sir Zander.”
He wasn’t sure he agreed, but he unfolded the note anyway.
The situation is mostly contained. Instruct your troops to come in together
and finish securing the area. Search for any stragglers. We’ll need transport
for prisoners and our wounded if possible. Please
respond with ETA for your troops.
The note ended with numbers and letters he couldn’t decode, though he knew they were coordinates – yet another thing he needed to learn. “I think this message may have been intended for Her Majesty,” he told Dorian, handing it over.
The bird pecked at his hand.
“Hey!”
Dorian chuckled. “She’s offended that you’d doubt her intentions – and she’d like a treat.”
“Really?” Zander said as he dug around inside his saddle bag until he found a sandwich. He ripped off the corner so he could offer her the bread and the meat. “You take a message to the wrong person, and you still expect a tip?”
Stopping in the middle of a bite, the bird looked right at him and bobbed her head once.
“Did she just nod at me?”
“Yes. I think she likes you.”
“Guess I won’t complain about that. So what do we do with this?” He gestured toward the note.
“It sounds like we take all of our men into the scene. We should be running into them just over that next hill there.” Dorian pointed. “I think Prince Maxwell sent this bird within the last half hour – probably even sooner – and she spotted us on her way to the queen.”
The bird chirped.
“Okay then,” Zander said. He reached into his bag again and pulled out another piece of meat for the bird. When he held it out, she blinked at him, took a small hop toward him and rubbed her head right against the underside of his hand. A little thrill of surprise raced up his arm at her touch, making him smile. Then she yanked the meat from between his fingers.
He cleared his throat, concentrating on the bird in front of him. “Do you think we should send this note to Her Majesty, along with our own note about our plans?”
“Yes. You can go ahead and write it as soon as we decide exactly how to go about this.”
“We?” He’d been expecting Dorian to give him orders, not to include him in the process.
“What do you think is the best process for securing the area, in case there are any stragglers?” Dorian didn’t even seem to notice the doubt in his voice.
Zander’s hands suddenly felt unsteady, like he might lose his grip on Ember’s reins. The bird took another step toward him, the ends of her folded wings resting right against the inside of his leg. He took a deep breath. “If we’re dealing with an army under Tolliver’s control, we should be worrying about any kind of second wave in the trees,” he said. “I think we should send some men wide around the perimeter to search – and then I think we need to get in and out quickly in case anyone managed to communicate to reinforcements anywhere.”
Dorian nodded. “I think that’s a good plan. The prisoners and wounded?”
“We assess the situation when we get there, and then do what we can with what we have at the site, and we hope to hear back from Qu – from Her Majesty with further instructions.”
“All right.” Dorian already had a pencil and paper in his hand.
“Not that I have any idea what I’m talking about, you know. I’m making this up as I go along.”
Dorian shrugged with one shoulder as he wrote; a slight grin lifting the corner of his mouth. “So are the rest of us, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I think you might be a bit more qualified than I am.”
“Well, I might ask you to refrain from swinging your sword anywhere near me when we get in there, Sir Zander, and I’m rather grateful you’re riding a horse that knows how to control you, but when it comes to the rest of it, I’m honored to be doing this beside you.”
Warmth pooled in his chest, and for a minute he couldn’t look at Dorian. This time the ridiculous bird climbed all the way onto his leg and made a soft warbling sound deep in her throat.
“Just don’t get killed in there, okay?” Dorian said, before making a clicking sound that called the bird over to him so he could put the rolled-up notes in her carrier.
“Don’t you, either.”
“I’ll do my best not to, Sir Zander.”
Dorian’s map skills were thankfully much stronger than Zander’s. After a short ride to the top of the next hill, Zander could see the smoke and movement between the trees down in the valley below them. He didn’t like how easy it was to see from here, actually, and he and Dorian stopped earlier than they’d planned to send ten of the men in a wide loop around the whole gully.
“Are you ready?” Dorian asked him once the guards had left.
“No.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
For all of his preparation to be shocked and terrified, actually riding into the clearing felt far too mundane. The only thing that surprised him was the sheer number of guards in purple waiting there. Though Max’s note had indicated fatalities and injuries, there was no immediate indication of any of that. In fact, the first thing he saw was guards gathered around two campfires, cooking something that smelled a lot better than the sandwiches tucked in his saddlebags.
Max saw them coming long before they made it to the site, and he was ready when they arrived, standing next to a fully uniformed guard Zander recognized from Eirentheos, but didn’t know well, Davis Jones.
“That was faster than we expected you,” Max said as Dorian and Zander dismounted.
“Your last message came to us before continuing on to Queen Quinn,” Dorian said. “What happened here?”
“We arrived early this morning,” Max said. “We were intending to stop here and wait while I sent communication to Quinn about our arrival and to ask her where would be the best place to concentrate our efforts. Before I got a message to her, though, we were attacked by a small patrol. We thought we were isolated here, but they must have seen the smoke from our cook fires.”
“How many men?” Dorian asked.
“They had twenty.”
“And now?”
“Three are still alive. We’re holding them for now. As far as we can tell, none escaped. We’ve swept the area several times for more men, and we haven’t found any so far, but there’s no way to be sure; it’s too wooded here.”
“Who was leading them?”
“A castle guard.” Davis’ voice was filled with bitter contempt. “He’s alive if you’d like to speak with him.”
A large part of Zander h
oped desperately that the responsibility of speaking to that guard wouldn’t fall on him, but a small – and vicious – part of him hoped that it would.
“What information are you hoping to get out of him?” he asked Max.
Max gave him a sideways look. “Are you asking why we didn’t just kill him?”
“Yes.” Zander wondered if he should feel remorse for that, but right now he couldn’t feel anything except anger that a guard Quinn had trusted – probably one Ben had trusted – was helping Tolliver.
Max’s eyes slid between Zander and Dorian, and then out toward the other guards who’d come with them.
Zander felt his own eyes narrow. “There’s nobody higher-ranking than me and Dorian here, Prince Maxwell. You can keep hold of whatever it is until we get all the way back to Quinn, or you can tell us what’s going on so we can actually secure this area.”
“All right, Sir Zander. I didn’t kill the baseborn myself because I’m hoping he’ll be persuaded to tell me how he found us – and how many are backing him up.”
“What makes you think it wasn’t just your fires, and that they’re not alone?”
Max looked down. “This wasn’t our first incident since entering Philotheum.” Taking his arm out of his cloak, he pulled back the sleeve of his sweater, revealing a nasty cut that was still red and raw, but too scabbed over to have happened today. “The border was better guarded than we anticipated.”
Zander whistled. “Tolliver has already managed to secure the borders?”
“Not quite. These were regular border guards, still stationed there under Quinn’s rule. Several of them were – are – even Friends of Philip. They’d heard rumors of the coup, but hadn’t received new orders. So they just continued patrolling the area around their station. Only some of them were apparently awaiting new orders from someone other than Quinn.”
“How many casualties there?”
“Eight. And we acquired eight more soldiers for our side there. As far as I can determine, nobody got away from that battle, they all either died or came with us. And it’s a long ride from here.”
“But you think someone might have followed you?”
“I don’t know. I’m almost certain someone sent the soldiers who attacked us today. But we can’t get anything out of these men, not even under threat of death.”
“It’s pretty stupid to send twenty men into battle against – what? A hundred? More?”
“One fifty-eight, counting those who joined us yesterday. And, yes, that bothers me, too. It means there could be a strong second wave, but we can’t find any evidence of one. We searched for hours before even sending the message to Quinn.”
“Then I say we get out of here as quickly as possible.”
Max nodded. “And where are we going?”
Zander considered the question. They couldn’t risk traveling with this large a group all the way back to Tobias’, especially if there were more troops ready to follow them. He wasn’t sure how much longer they could keep Quinn’s location secret, but it was still a bad idea to lead someone right to her.
“We have a base camp established about an hour away from the queen,” Dorian said. “The captains there are well prepared to defend, and they’re in desperate need of supplies.”
Zander looked around at the trees again. “This patrol that attacked you – what direction did they come from?”
“Same direction as you.” Davis nodded over Zander’s shoulder.
Suddenly, he felt ice-cold and a little sick to his stomach. “What can we do to help you and your troops prepare to travel?”
~ Twenty-Six ~
War
ZANDER HAD HAD A bad feeling about this trek with Maxwell’s army from the get-go. He’d known the peace felt suspicious and that there was something strange about twenty soldiers attacking a battalion the size of the one Max was leading. The whole time they rode he was on edge, his back straight, his eyes constantly combing the trees on either side of the path they were forging.
For a long time, the only threat was the fact that the weather was cooling again; it had dropped a good ten degrees from the time they left Maxwell’s camp, and a thick line of bluish-gray clouds was building on the far northern horizon, but Zander knew that wasn’t why he was so sensitive, why even the hair on the back of his neck stood at constant attention.
He was beyond prepared for an encounter with something bad. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise to him when he one of his sweeps caught a glimpse of unfamiliar crimson buried deep in the woods, tucked so far behind a hill that he was lucky to have seen it at all, before whoever it was saw him.
He whistled in two short, low notes – the signal for danger. Nobody stopped; everyone here was too well trained to even appear as if they’d heard. But a dark shape swooped down from the trees, coming to rest on Ember’s mane again. That bird.
“That wasn’t for you,” he whispered so quietly that he couldn’t even hear himself over the noise of the horses.
If birds could shrug, this one would have. She took two steps closer to Zander and then sat down, settling in for the ride.
Not that they rode far. Dorian and Davis moved to the head of the line and turned as quickly as they could, leading the whole group steeply uphill. Zander followed them as far up as they went, and so did Max, but he noticed that the rest of the line broke off and went in front of and behind them, forming a tight circle of protection. As soon as they stopped, every soldier drew his sword. He wondered what the other guards would think of him – if he’d made another huge mistake putting himself in the middle like this.
Max pulled out a set of binoculars so high-tech that Zander wondered how he managed to explain them to his soldiers – there was only one place he could have gotten them.
Zander tried to make himself as unobtrusive as possible as he waited impatiently for Max to finish looking and report his findings to Dorian and Davis.
So when Max pulled the binoculars away from his eyes and held them out to Zander, he was so startled it took him a minute to reach for them.
That was when he remembered that he, too, was an officer now.
His hands were a little shaky as he held them up to his eyes; he took deep breaths as he prepared himself to see just how much trouble they were actually in.
When he finally looked, it wasn’t as bad as he’d been worried about – he’d feared a massive number, but there were only maybe thirty or so, some in green, some in that strange red, all circling a man with long, graying brown hair under whose red cloak Zander could see the tell-tale sash of a high-level officer.
Still, at the first sight of them, his legs grew weak and he had trouble catching his breath as he passed the glasses to Davis. The sensations only grew worse when Davis took one look before he pushed quickly past him, hissing, “Callum Haddon!” to Max.
He might not have recognized the man, but the name he placed immediately. Callum Haddon, the man they’d been searching for, who’d been involved in Thomas’ torture, who’d been bold enough to show up at Samuel’s Naming Ceremony before betraying them all, was an officer in King Ivan’s army.
He grabbed the binoculars from Dorian to get a better look.
“Twenty-seven,” he said to Max, after counting twice. “I don’t see signs of any more anywhere.”
“I’ll bet their numbers are why they didn’t ambush,” Max said. “They probably hid back there hoping we wouldn’t notice them.”
“They could be waiting for more to back them up.”
“Possibly,” Davis said. “It’s more likely they intended to see where we lead them – and then they’ll bring the numbers.”
“Well, we have the numbers to take care of the threat.” Zander wasn’t sure where his words were coming from. They poured out on their own as he stared through the binoculars at Callum Haddon.
“We need to do it quickly, in case more are coming.” There wasn’t even a note of dissent in Dorian’s voice.
“And we need to push th
em off our course, move in the opposite direction of the queen and the rest of the soldiers,” Zander said.
“All right,” Max agreed. “Let’s do it. But I think we need to send a message to Quinn and to our other troops. Give them our location, but tell them to come the long way around so they don’t tip off what direction they’re coming from. Can you do that, Zander?”
“Me? I don’t have a bird.”
Max raised an eyebrow at the creature still nestled tightly in Ember’s mane. As soon as Zander looked down at her, she stood, turning the leg with her cylinder toward him. “Looks like one has you.”
He shook his head a little, to clear it. “Um, how do these things work, anyway?”
“Write a note and tell her you want her to take it to Quinn.”
“But how does she know who Quinn is and how to get it to her?”
“How? It’s hard to say. They seem to track people they know and other birds they know. They’re almost always in range of “their” person, unless they’re carrying a message or otherwise separated, so they work it out somehow.”
There was no paper inside the bird’s cylinder, so Zander dug through his saddle bag for his notebook. “You mean I could just send this bird to find Quinn anywhere, as long as she knows her?”
Max grimaced. “Not exactly. They can track people to a certain extent, but they won’t usually go somewhere they’ve never been, especially if there’s not a bird they know to guide them, and if they perceive any danger at all, it’s hard to convince them to land for anyone except their own companion.”
“What is our location, by the way?” he asked, pulling two pieces of paper out of his notebook and ripping each of them into quarters before scribbling a note on one of the smaller scraps as Max read numbers to him from a map. “They can find someone en route though, right? They’ve been finding you.”
“The ones who have a good idea of where I might be can track me, sure. They’re ridiculously intelligent. And I have a bird they can search out. It’s a little harder to find people who don’t have seekers, though they manage a lot of the time.”
Leaves of Revolution Page 21