by Radu Aldea
Unna didn’t ask the next logical question: what happened to the body? Aleyna was curious about that too. The old woman obviously recognized her and although she signaled she wouldn’t reveal Aleyna’s identity, she did want to know what happened to Amelia. The family should have the body; they were entitled to it. She couldn’t blame the old woman for trying to get some answers. Unna was risking her life by asking those questions and she knew it and continued anyway just to get some closure for people who were probably her friends.
“You should leave now,” Aleyna told the followers. “Senators might be here shortly. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of the patrons hasn’t already turned you in.”
“What about you? You are not safe either,” Marcel told her.
“I’ll be fine. I know how to evade senators.” Which was true. All you had to do was focus your thoughts in a direction that wouldn’t raise suspicion and as long as senators didn’t have a reason to dig deeper you were fine. The way she discovered to drive Kara nuts was to sing in her mind the same song over and over again. That was highly effective. Of course, she wasn’t worried about senators. She just wanted to get rid of the devotees in order to have an open conversation with Unna. Marianna always looked at her with suspicion, that was not new, what was new was Maeve’s disbelief. Still, they didn’t argue and just left.
“If you know who I am you must realize it isn’t a good idea to play games with me, which is what you have been doing,” Aleyna told Unna.
“Mother, you should stay away from her. She is a senator,” Unna’s son joined in. After Aleyna had just kicked his ass he had reason to worry, but this was the second time she had been mistaken for a senator. That, in a way, was very satisfying.
“This one is not a senator. Her friend might be, though,” Unna answered her son. It was the first time someone rightfully suspected Thea of being exactly what she was. They didn’t even suspect Sarah and that was a far more likely possibility.
“I haven’t seen anyone fight like that in a very long time. It’s specific to senators.”
“Bah! She’s not a senator, she was just trained by them.”
“Mother, senators don’t ever train humans. It’s not in their interest.”
“Well, they taught this one. You’re right, I recognized you as soon as I saw you. We were told of the human companion of the young senator living in that fortress. Imagine my surprise when I realized not everyone residing there had died. In a way you are as striking as your friend and I know you are not someone I would want to make my enemy. I have not interfered with whatever you are planning to do to those lunatics, but that girl’s family needs answers.”
“There are no answers!”
“You mean you don’t know who did this?” Faced with Aleyna’s silence the old woman knew she wouldn’t get anything else. “At least return the body to the family.”
“There is no body!”
“Are you saying that girl might be alive?” Unna sounded doubtful.
“What I’m saying is that there is a slight, very, very slight chance that Amelia might be alive, but it is so small, in fact, it’s not worth giving her mother hope only to be taken away. It is up to you what you are going to tell them. If I were you I would say that the people who did this, their families, their friends will all pay. This will never be forgotten. If it takes fifty years or a hundred years, everyone responsible will be punished, I promise you that.”
That was enough to convince Unna. She kept trying to find out what had happened at the lake, though, and even speculated there might be a lot of bodies buried there. Which was close enough to the truth, except the corpses had been turned to ashes. Digging there would get them nothing. Aleyna was sure some people would try, hoping they would find valuables. If they found something it would be because someone else put it there, not them.
When they returned home, another set of problems arose. Sarah and Christian reacted to Maya’s games pretty much the way she expected. Thea told them what happened in minute details. The diviner still had control of Maeve and she wasn’t letting go. They all agreed that Maya had an ulterior reason for saving the humans, which was cynical in a very realistic way of them. Why Maya invited them in Riffland, and she did extend an invitation through Maeve, necessitated a debate. As usual, when they didn’t agree they really didn’t agree.
Nobody doubted that Maya’s arrogance had to be answered and they needed to get a clue of what the girl was planning. Maybe she was just a messenger setting the scene for an invasion of Riffland. That was a possibility they would not allow to happen. They didn’t have any intelligence to suggest that Cuttland soldiers were preparing to cross the Tarit, quite the opposite, all the troops were heading toward Ornulf’s Gap, but they could be the subjects of an elaborate deception. Nestor’s insolence couldn’t be ignored either.
Next they discussed who should go. They could send an emissary, but it would have to be someone with some weight, who could make decisions. That was the moment when the word trap was spoken, although they had all thought it. Then it occurred to them they could use the same justification as Julia. They could move in force because they wanted to investigate the connection between the priests of the Sun God and Kara’s death. There wasn’t any as far as Aleyna knew, but Riffland senators were not aware of that. Besides, they had allies there, Felix being one of them, and his villa was not far from the border. “I guess we are invading Riffland too,” Christian concluded the conversation.
Chapter thirty-five
“Remember when you told me you didn’t go to your clients because you didn’t want to lead ten thousand soldiers into Essland?” Michael was joking, but this was not a joke.
“In all fairness, they invaded Cuttland too.” That was not much of a consolation. Kara was still not sure what Julia was doing, but right now she had a pretty good idea. The slow movement of Suttland soldiers gave it away. The Dove was drawing as many of Essland’s troops as possible into Ornulf’s Gap, which would leave Lucian vulnerable. Kara knew her former lover well enough to be fairly certain he wouldn’t go there himself. And even if he went he could be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, which Suttland had at the moment. This strategy was new and Kara was pretty sure the attack on her served as inspiration. She was also sure there was a force hidden somewhere ready to strike very quickly if Lucian left himself open. It was unlikely, but as pressure mounted and more troops poured into the Gap he might make a mistake. Nobody is infallible, she was clear proof of that.
“Instead of fighting one enemy, you fight two. That’s an interesting strategy.”
Kara shrugged. It was a strategy and it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that great either. Cuttland would have difficulty moving troops quickly to the theater of war and it would make itself vulnerable in other places. Having such a huge border to defend had its drawbacks. Although there was little chance the riders would decide this was the moment to pour through the passes of the Aldurians in the east, or the Conclave would become suddenly belligerent in the west, Suttland, Cuttland’s nemesis and neighbor in the south, could use that opportunity to launch a campaign and the goddess only knew what dwelled in the Northern Forest and what they would do. Cuttland senators had to consider everything and that the abrupt departure of many soldiers from the territory could foster civil unrest. Not the greatest problem, but a nuisance nevertheless that would have to be dealt with before it grew into something bigger. And solving even something minor would take away resources from somewhere else.
In Essland, Lucian would be facing a different problem: the reluctance to fight of the other two families. Aaron and Dana would be hesitant to engage Julia and would attempt to negotiate a compromise. The third family would wait and see which way the wind was blowing because they didn’t want to side with the losers. If she were Julia, and unfortunately she wasn’t, she would go after Aaron and not Lucian because nobody would expect it, least of all the siblings who thought of the blonde as a friend. The problem was that Julia thought the sa
me and would not attack them without a very good reason. And there wasn’t one.
“It’s not such a bad plan, really. It is mostly soldiers controlled by weak senators that Suttland has sent across the mountains,” Kara told him.
She knew that because during their difficult journey through the Gap she had had the opportunity to test a lot of them. Having Michael proved useful too. It told her there were few to none senators from Suttland there, but there were some, not many, from Essland and Cuttland. Yet Suttland’s armies still outnumbered those of the other two provinces combined so if they wanted to balance the situation they would have to send in more senators.
It had been a hellish crossing of Ornulf’s Gap. At first she thought they were going to travel exclusively by night. The first days, they did. But as armies moved in, people moved out. It was an exodus of massive proportions. Kara knew they happened during the Great War. There had been nowhere to flee back then, the whole empire being engulfed in the struggle, no province or region left untouched. Right now, only a small region was affected, no matter how important strategically it was, and people still had somewhere to run.
Some headed for Cuttland, some for Essland, whichever was closer she guessed, but some tried to flee to Suttland. Kara wasn’t sure they would be allowed to cross. The passes were guarded by senators and they would check thoroughly every one of the people who wanted to get through. Most of them were going to be denied entry, so it would probably have been better for them if they had chosen another direction.
The exodus, however, gave Kara the opportunity to send a message to Julia. She hoped the Dove would listen this time. So she had taken over a family heading for Suttland. They had no idea she had done that. They didn’t even see her. Oddly enough, the family composed of father, mother and daughter, was not running from senatorial armies. Say what you want about senators, but their armies were disciplined and only plundered when they were given the orders. That did not hold true for the human lords who lived in Ornulf’s Gap, and there were plenty of them. They raided the lands around them so they could have enough supplies to withstand a siege. The fools had no idea that when the senators would actually come, and it was inevitable at this stage, there wasn’t going to be a siege. They would just take over any defender standing on the ramparts trying to stop their armies. Why those foolish lords attempted to defend their castles and didn’t run with the rest of the humans when faced with a far superior opponent, she had no idea. She guessed people were silly like that sometimes.
And it was not only the barons, but the commoners too. She had seen them refuse to abandon their villages even after their food and animals that were supposed to last them through the winter had been taken. Perhaps they thought this would end quickly and they could weather this storm. Even if this current crisis would end, and she would make sure that it did, war was not over and the Gap was too important. The armies would not go away.
That was days ago. Now she was almost on Lucian’s doorstep. Dressed as a commoner, she attracted less attention. They changed their clothes as soon as they noticed the exodus. She still had the gold and armor hidden on the back of their horses, which would’ve been taken away or at least sounded some serious alarms if they had met any soldiers. Thanks to Michael they had managed to avoid the armies. Sure, they had been seen, and if a senator were to investigate, he or she might pick up her tracks. Kara and Michael had been careful, but it had been impossible to avoid everyone. She was confident that if a senator found a memory of her in the mind of a human she wouldn’t be recognized. As long as nobody saw her anywhere near Lucian’s they’d be fine. Right now they were damn close and night would offer the best cover.
“Why aren’t you more concerned? Losing ten thousand men might leave you open to a counterattack. You can’t possibly have so many soldiers you can afford sacrificing those?”
She shrugged again. Michael was right in a way, losing the soldiers would be a serious loss, but by no means a fatal one. They could be replaced. New armies were probably trained right now in Suttland. “As long as we control the passes we’ll be fine, trust me. Armies that at one moment seemed invincible were mowed down when they tried to push their way through them. We could hold off the combined armies of Cuttland and Riffland there. Besides, Julia has no intention of sacrificing those men. She has other uses from them.”
“How did you manage to gain control of them? The other families didn’t object?”
“Oh, they did, but we have the bad habit that once we take something we keep it. Towards the end of the Great War we had the passes and no amount of negotiating would’ve made us give them up. Besides, we deserved them and we paid a heavy price for that honor. In the end, I think that mattered and everyone got to keep what they acquired.”
“How would you conquer Suttland if you were from Cuttland or Essland?”
“If I were a commander of Cuttland’s armies I would do it through Riffland. There’s no other way. If I were from Essland I would try my luck by sea. But if I were me, not just some random commander, and had all my powers, I would force the passes. I would be at the forefront of my troops taking fortress after fortress. I would probably send other columns through Riffland or by sea, depending on where I am.”
“So what’s stopping Lucian from doing the same?”
“Nothing! However, Julia’s fleet at Wennfort is larger than that of Arenguard. Still, you have a better chance than through the passes. Leading from the front is an incredible risk. Once your enemies know you are there they would do everything in their power to kill you. Lucian won’t like those odds and remember, Julia is probably somewhere in those mountains and if Lucian is smart he would do well to avoid facing her in a decisive battle.”
“Tell me about Lucian!”
That was one request she had dreaded and managed to avoid so far. What Michael wanted to know was what had happened between the two of them. She had been hinting there had been something there, but hadn’t offered any details. Of course she would have to tell Michael she and Lucian had been lovers. It was not a big secret, yet she postponed it. Kara knew very well why she was delaying.
“This is not the time. We are getting close and we might be overheard.” Another delaying tactic. Yes, noise traveled at night and there were patrols all over the place, but she still couldn’t force herself to tell the words. She had to say something now. When they were in Lucian’s villa it would be too late and she wasn’t going to get another chance.
“Noise travels through air. I made sure that any sound we make doesn’t carry farther than a few feet from us. It’s a trick us wizards learned while running from senators.”
She had been bested. Any excuses she had were gone. “There’s not much to tell. I was almost sixteen, he twenty-four. We were lovers. It lasted for two years and then it ended. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it would never work. There was something in him I knew I could never trust. To this day, I still don’t know how my mother and father made it work. I’m sure I could never marry a senator who could match my power. And Lucian is less powerful but also Circle, which makes him somewhat of an equal. He was older, attractive, charming, powerful, everything a sixteen-year-old girl would find seductive. He taught me things, not those you are thinking about, but how to use my power. I do not regret our affair.”
“And you think you can trust him?”
“I trust him to want to fuck me one last time before he kills me.” That was the ugliest definition of trust Michael had ever heard, probably. Yet it was very accurate.
“We are going to die here, aren’t we?”
Kara couldn’t believe Michael joked about something like this. There was the distinct possibility they were going to die if her plans didn’t work. Yes, she had more than one of those. “I hope we aren’t, but you are going to have to trust me.”
Trust was earned, apparently, because Michael asked. “What happened between you?”
Nothing had happened. She just ended it. At least that was all the facts suppor
ted. How could she make Michael understand what she had glimpsed? Kara had known there was darkness in Lucian, there was some in everyone, including her. She had known he was ambitious, but until then she hadn’t realized it would make him want to get rid of her. Lucian hadn’t understood how much of a threat she really was. “We decided to play a game. I was a little arrogant, young people often are, and he decided to teach me a lesson. The game was drastically skewed in his favor. He didn’t think he could lose.”
“But he did.”
It sounded so simple the way Michael said it. That’s not what she remembered. It had been difficult, and messy, and complicated and colored by her desire to prove herself to him. She had actually thought that if she won she would be proud of her. “Yes! In hindsight, I should’ve let him win. It was so stupid. I played a lot of these games with Julia and she had never reacted like that when she lost. That day I saw it in his eyes. He truly wanted me dead. I don’t know what stopped him. I don’t think it was the guest law. Lucian doesn’t have much respect for it. He thinks it an antiquated piece of legislation that has no relevance in today’s world. What probably worried him was the way other senators would react to his violation. Breaking the law is one thing, getting caught quite another. That’s what he always said. I definitely should’ve known better, I was taught better, but I was a foolish eighteen-year-old.”
“As opposed to now, when you are so much older and more mature.”
Kara couldn’t stop the laughter. Michael made her feel better and that was one of the many reasons she liked him so much. But it was also true she was a different person. The last weeks had changed her. “You jest, but I am so much wiser now.”
“Wise enough to just get close to this bastard and kill him?”
“Well, maybe not that wise. I don’t think we can sneak close enough to kill him. His villa is fortified too and I don’t see a way in. And we don’t have time to wait until he leaves. If he does leave, he would probably be surrounded by a lot of soldiers, anyway. He has to be expecting an ambush from Julia and he will be more than a little cautious.”