Anya managed not to bump into anything this time on her way around, and sure enough, she encountered something low and wooden in between the bed and the wall. Fumbling around on top, she touched a tall stack of books. Apparently Captain Almanian liked to read in bed too. She wondered where he had gotten so many and what their titles were, and then her spirits soared. Beside the stack, a candle!
Anya seized it by the handle on its little metal stand and felt her way carefully back out into the office and then the corridor, which now seemed so bright she had to squint after the darkness of the bedroom. She stood on tiptoe to light the candle from one of the torches, and then, shielding the flame with her hand, hurried back into the office to see what was on the captain’s desk.
A map of Alasia lay spread out on it, just as she remembered, with a stack of parchment nearby. Anya set the candle carefully down and picked up the parchment, holding each sheet to the light, but they were all blank. There was nothing else on the desk except an inkwell and a mug half full of cold coffee.
Nothing helpful here. Anya paused, and then, seized by curiosity, took up the candle again and ventured back into the bedroom. What did a man like Captain Almanian like to read? Bending over the nightstand, she picked the books up one by one and scanned the titles. An Illustrated History of Almar. Alasian Law and Government. Great Battles in Alasian History. The next four were nearly identical: Lessons in Leadership from the Lives of Alasia’s Monarchs, Volumes I, II, III, and IV. They all sounded pretty boring to Anya, except maybe the one about the battles; but she could see how they might be interesting to someone like Almanian. Perhaps he wanted to learn more about this land he and his people had invaded. She wondered if he had found the books lying around the palace, perhaps in King Jaymin’s room; or there might be a library here somewhere. She should ask Tonnis. Maybe she would be allowed to go there sometime and choose a book to read, assuming there were some more interesting than these.
Abruptly, Anya remembered her mission. She restacked the books, careful to replace them in the same order in which she had found them, and brought the candle back out into the office.
Scooting round behind the desk, Anya eyed the drawers, of which there were three on each side. Perhaps the captain kept old letters in them. Maybe she could find the one that mentioned her father.
“Anya!” came Tonnis’s voice, low but urgent, from down the hall.
Anya jumped. Already? But I haven’t found anything useful yet! Why had she taken the time to examine the books? Will I ever have another chance like this to look around the captain’s office? Probably not. But maybe she could still find something if she was quick. Hastily, she jerked open the top drawer on the right. Pens, pencils, sealing wax, an extra bottle of ink, and a short-bladed sharpening knife. Oh, and two candles. I should have checked in here first! But no useful information, so she tried the next drawer down. Aha! Parchment! At least a dozen sheets, all covered with writing and creased as though they had once been folded. Letters.
“Anya!” Tonnis called for the second time. His voice was so quiet now that she could barely hear him, but the urgency in it was unmistakable.
She hesitated once again, scanning the letter on top for her father’s name. Could she at least take some of them with her to read later? No, the captain would be sure to notice they were missing. She would just have to hope she’d have another chance.
“Anya, hurry! They’re coming!” Tonnis’s voice sounded frantic.
Anya replaced the letter, slid the drawer shut, and scurried toward the door. Just as she got to it, she remembered the candle and ran back to blow it out, darting into the bedroom to replace it where she had found it. Bashing her knee into the bedpost again in the sudden darkness, she realized belatedly that she shouldn’t have blown it out quite yet. She limped over to the nightstand, her heart pounding, only to misjudge the angle. Her left elbow bumped the stack of books and sent them toppling onto the bed and the floor. Quickly, Anya set the candle down and groped in the darkness for the books, piling them back up. Did she have them all? How many were there supposed to be? One about battles, one about the history of Almar with illustrations, and four about leadership. Was that it? It must be. Six was all she could find, and she piled them back where she thought they had been in the first place, hoping the captain wouldn’t remember exactly how he had left them.
All right. Now it was time to get out of here before somebody caught her. Anya darted back through the doorway to the office, where she stumbled against the corner of the sofa in her hurry, barking her shin. She was relieved to see that except for Tonnis at the top of the stairs, the hallway outside was still deserted. But she knew someone must be coming along the downstairs one, perhaps just about to climb the stairs to the second floor and see her here.
Anya sprinted toward the stairway, but halfway there, she remembered the doors. Father was always reminding her not to leave doors open when she came in or out. Forgetting to shut them was a bad habit of hers, and if she left Almanian’s open, he would know for sure that someone had been in there. Skidding to a stop, she dashed back through the office to shut the bedroom door, then out again, careful to avoid the sofa this time. Closing the office door quietly behind her, she tore down the hallway once more.
Tonnis was shooting frantic glances in her direction in between glancing to the left and right as though trying to decide which way they should flee down the other corridor. Anya pulled up beside him, panting. Part of her wanted to take off running again and find somewhere to hide, but maybe she could learn something useful if she saw who was coming and heard whatever they might say.
Ignoring Tonnis’s hand on her arm, Anya leaned over the railing to look down. She could hear footsteps now, and she tried to quiet her breathing. Would whoever it was walk past or come up? Surely they wouldn’t climb the stairs. Unless the captain himself had returned.
“We should go,” Tonnis whispered, tugging at her arm, but Anya raised a hand to stop him.
“No, wait; please. I don’t think they’re coming here. I want to see who it is.” Bending dangerously far over the bannister, she watched as several people appeared. All her muscles were tensed in case she and Tonnis needed to suddenly dash away down the hall, but to her relief, those below kept walking instead of turning to climb the stairs.
Anya caught her breath in alarm as she recognized Sethius the blacksmith, blood streaming down his face from a gash on his forehead, struggling futilely as a soldier with a drawn sword dragged him along. Behind them limped a boy a few years older than Anya, whom she recognized as Sethius’s apprentice, Jommal. His face was swollen and his lip bleeding. She could hear the terror in his breathing as a second soldier dragged him down the hall. After them stumbled two other injured Alasians whose names Anya didn’t know, both escorted by soldiers; and bringing up the rear marched Lieutenant Talifus.
“Did you think you would get away with this?” he bellowed, brandishing his sword from behind. “You pitiful fools. You had to know your little revolt would fail. No one can stand up to the might of the Malornian army.”
“Lieutenant, please,” begged one of the captives, already out of sight now beyond the foot of the stairs. “You’re Alasian. Please don’t let–”
“Shut up,” Talifus bellowed, his voice resounding down the hall. “You’re going to the dungeon, and Almanian will decide what to do with you when he gets back. Serves you right for attacking us.” His voice was growing more distant with every sentence, but Anya could still hear his words. “Did you think your pathetic little sticks and daggers would be any good against our swords? You only managed to kill those three because you took them by surprise, but you won’t get away with it. And I’ll find whoever else was involved and we’ll punish them too. They may have been quick enough not to get caught, but they won’t get away with it either. I know there were more of you.” His voice finally trailed off in the distance, and ominous silence seeped in to take its place.
Anya and Tonnis stared at each ot
her in apprehension. Sethius’s plans had failed. Now at least four people were going to be punished. But punished how? Anya could hardly breathe, remembering the captain’s warning the day she had been brought in. Surely he hadn’t really meant it. Surely.
“We’d better get out of here,” whispered Tonnis, his face pale. “If anyone catches us snooping around….”
Anya nodded, all desire to spy in the captain’s office gone. Her legs felt shaky as she tiptoed down the stairs beside him, clutching the railing for support and hiking up her skirts with her other hand to keep from tripping. Thankful this part of the palace was empty once more, they hurried back out into the morning sunlight. The courtyard was still mostly deserted, but she saw one soldier standing by the gates again, sword in hand and back to the wall as though afraid someone might try to attack him.
“What if he sees us?” she whispered to Tonnis, clutching his hand.
“Ignore him,” Tonnis whispered back. “He has no reason to suspect us of anything.” Following his own advice, her friend set a casual pace as they strolled toward the clinic together, and though Anya’s knee and shin were still throbbing, she made an effort not to limp. The last thing she needed was for someone to ask how she had gotten hurt.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Anya sank onto one of the benches in the front room. She knew it wasn’t really any safer here than outside, but the clinic felt like a refuge, a sanctuary from whatever might happen anywhere else.
Eleya was waiting for them, and she went straight to Tonnis and wrapped her arms around him. Anya could see the relief on her face over her husband’s shoulder as they held each other close for a moment.
Watching them, she couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to see her own parents hugging each other. Though Father and even Arvalon spoke fondly of Mother now and then, Anya could never quite picture what it would have been like to have someone else in their family.
Eleya sat down beside Anya and draped an arm around her shoulders. “I’m glad you’re both safe. So, what happened?” she inquired with concern. “What did you find out?”
“Nothing from the captain’s office,” Anya admitted, slumping back against the wall. Except that I barely got out of there in time. No point in worrying them with the details. “But Sethius and Jommal and two other people got captured. Talifus was taking them to the dungeon.”
Eleya sighed. “I didn’t think what they were trying would work. The Malornians are too well armed. There’ll be trouble when Captain Almanian gets back.”
Yes, but what kind of trouble? Anya was afraid to think about that.
For a while the three of them just sat there, side by side on the bench, not saying anything more. There was no sign of anything else out of the ordinary, and Anya gradually felt her pulse return almost to normal. But she couldn’t stop worrying. She couldn’t really be calm until she knew what was going to happen to the four prisoners.
Finally they heard the distant creak of the palace gates being pulled open, and then the clatter of hooves on cobblestones as dozens of soldiers returned to the palace. “I wonder what happened with that other uprising out in the city?” Eleya murmured, almost to herself.
“It didn’t succeed either,” Tonnis guessed. “It couldn’t have. But we’ll probably have casualties to treat now.” He rose to his feet just as the clinic door burst open.
“Doctor! Get out here!”
Anya hurried after Tonnis into the courtyard, where the returning soldiers were just starting to dismount. Lieutenant Lasden was on the ground already, helping another man off his horse. “Over here, Doctor,” the lieutenant called, and Tonnis ran to help lift the injured man down. The two of them half-carried him into the clinic, and she saw that Lasden himself was limping badly.
“What happened?” she called, but nobody paid her any attention. Half a dozen bleeding soldiers pushed their way past, grimacing in pain as they stumbled toward the clinic.
Anya ran ahead of them to hold the door open and then followed them inside. “Have a seat here on the benches. The doctor will be with you shortly,” she told them, feeling very professional, and then hurried to the back room.
Tonnis and Eleya were bending over the first patient on the examining table, Lasden hovering nearby. “Will he be all right?” the officer demanded.
“I don’t know,” Tonnis replied, dabbing gently at a nasty-looking chest wound with the wet cloth Eleya handed him. “It looks pretty bad. He’ll need stitches for sure.”
“He’d better recover. We lost two out there already.” Lasden’s face was anguished, as though the loss had been his, personally. “Sergeant Morriss fell right next to me. I couldn’t do anything to help him.” He seemed to be talking to himself. “He was a good man. Had a wife and three children back in Sazellia. I couldn’t save him in time.”
Anya wondered what Lasden would say when he discovered that three more soldiers had been killed while he was gone.
“Yes, well, your people aren’t the only ones who’ve lost good family men recently,” Eleya told him bluntly, threading the needle and handing it to her husband. “Now stop distracting us. Seeing as you’re wounded yourself, you should go sit down until we have a chance to get to you next.”
“I’m not going next. Most of my men are hurt worse than I am.” But Lasden pulled up the leg of his breeches, which Anya now saw to be wet with blood, and bent to examine a gash on his calf. “I know how to care for a wound. If you’ll just tell me where you keep the bandages, I’ll bind this up myself and get back to work.”
“Get him one, Anya,” Eleya ordered, wiping away blood as Tonnis carefully stitched at their groaning patient’s chest.
Anya obeyed. She watched Lasden wrap the bandage she handed him tightly around his leg, wincing at the pain as he tied the knot, and then hobble back out through the door.
It was over an hour later before they had finally finished tending to all the injured soldiers. The uprising in the city had been crushed, they gathered from listening to the men’s conversation, but at a high cost to both Alasian and Malornian lives.
Eventually Lasden limped back into the clinic and sat down on the examining table without a word, unwinding his bandage to let them clean and sew up his injury. Noticing his preoccupied expression, Anya guessed that the officer now knew what had happened in his absence.
“You shouldn’t be walking around with a wound like this, Lieutenant,” Tonnis scolded him, applying a poultice of herbs. “You’re hurt worse than most of those others, in spite of what you said. It should heal fine in time, but you’ll need to stay off your feet for the next few days at least.”
“The next few days!” Lasden echoed incredulously, his tone suggesting the doctor had just ordered him to do something along the lines of quitting the army and running home to Malorn. “That’s ridiculous. I can’t possibly leave my responsibilities for even one day.”
Tonnis shrugged and reached for the clean bandage his wife was holding ready. “There’s a pair of crutches in the closet if you insist on staying on your feet, but I wouldn’t recommend it. That leg isn’t going to heal properly unless you give it some rest.”
“I don’t have time for rest, especially now,” the lieutenant snapped, his voice worried. “And I’m certainly not going around on crutches in front of my men. How would that look? No; just give me something for the pain and I’ll be all right.”
Tonnis, fastening the final knot, shrugged again. “If you’re sure that’s what you want. You’ll probably have to come back for more every few hours.”
As Lasden was downing the brew Eleya had prepared, the outer door opened and another soldier hurried in. “The captain says to bring over some of whatever you sent for his headache last time, only stronger,” the soldier announced to Tonnis. “Judging by the mood he’s in, you’d better make it quick.”
“If he’s injured, he should come here,” Tonnis pointed out, but the messenger had already disappeared.
“I don’t t
hink it’s bad,” Lasden told them, lowering himself to the floor and gingerly trying out his leg. “He got knocked on the head by one of those cobblestones people were throwing, but it was only a glancing blow.” He took a tentative step. “I’d better get back to work. I suppose I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“I’ll take the captain his medicine,” Anya volunteered after the lieutenant had gone. “Maybe I can find out more about what happened out there, or what’s going to happen here now.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Eleya objected. “You’ve taken one big risk today already, and we don’t know how angry Almanian is now that he’s learned about Sethius.”
“But he told me I have to be the one to bring him things from now on,” Anya reminded her reasonably.
Eleya sighed. “True. Well, be careful, and don’t do anything to make him angrier.”
Anya was halfway across the courtyard with the cup of medicine when it suddenly hit her, and she stopped in her tracks with a gasp. Alasian Law and Government. The seventh book. She had only picked up six.
Chapter 8
Would Captain Almanian notice? Perhaps the book had fallen under the bed, out of sight. Perhaps he hadn’t read it yet; would forget which books he had stacked there; would never miss it. Or if he did find it on the floor, perhaps he would assume it had slid off the stack on its own. That could happen, couldn’t it?
Maybe not. What if the captain remembered exactly what books he had and what order he had left them in? Then he would know someone else had been in his room.
But it could have been anyone. He had no reason to suspect Anya. Did he?
In any case, she had better hurry and get over there. Someone was sure to think it suspicious if she lingered in the courtyard for much longer. Besides, the captain might not go into his bedroom until late tonight. He probably wouldn’t have realized anything was wrong yet.
In the Enemy's Service (Annals of Alasia Book 2) Page 12
