Voice of Dominion (The Spoken Mage Book 3)

by Melanie Cellier

  The general rolled out a large map of the border region, covering it with small colored stones as reports of soldier movements came in. It was a raiding party—far larger than the usual ones.

  Five squads were sent out to intercept the raiders, with three more in reserve to assist if needed. A further two took up positions between the attackers and the river, to mop up any who attempted to retreat.

  I had been relieved when Matthis didn’t order me to head out with a squad, but it turned out waiting safely in headquarters wasn’t too pleasant either. Everyone else in the large room seemed to have a purpose and raced to and fro, while the twelve of us had nothing to do but watch. Lucas was invited to join Lorcan and the general at the table, but the rest of us were edged slowly further and further to the side until we ranged along one wall, out of everyone’s way.

  It seemed the longest afternoon of my life before the general finally received word that the raiders had been defeated before they made it across the Wall to any of our farms. But the elated mood that followed didn’t last long.

  A nervous-looking lieutenant appeared from the room next door.

  “None of the enemy mages were captured, sir.”

  “What?” bellowed Griffith. “None! But there were five mages with them. Don’t tell me they needed to kill them all! I ordered for as many as possible to be captured alive.”

  The man shifted uncomfortably. “None were killed either, General. I’m afraid the report is that they escaped back across the river.”

  “Escaped?” The general’s anger radiated off every line of his body. “And the squads I placed before the river to prevent just such an eventuality?”

  “There was a small skirmish, but all five mages were together, cloaked in invisibility and strong shielding spells. Our two squads weren’t expecting them and couldn’t stop them.”

  Another lieutenant arrived from the reports room.

  “The main defensive squads are reporting they left behind illusions of themselves to cover their escape. They must have left as soon as they recognized their troops’ imminent defeat, and our forces didn’t recognize the deception soon enough to sound an alarm for the squads at the river. It’s chance as much as anything that they tried to cross close enough for one of our offices to sense their compositions.”

  General Griffith turned and smashed his fist onto the table in front of him, muttering curses.

  “So they abandoned their men and ran like cowards. I should have seen it coming.”

  I tried to read his face. I didn’t know enough about war to know if he spoke the truth. Should he have seen it coming? And, if so, was his frustration with himself now all an act to cover his purposeful omission?”

  “You were right about one thing, General,” said Captain Matthis from the doorway. He looked tired and disheveled, his appearance suggesting he had only just arrived at headquarters. “A second, smaller team were sent over the river further south. We caught up to them, but they had already made it across the Wall. Their mage must have carried an arsenal of compositions to get all twelve of them through. They razed two farms to the ground.”

  The general cursed long and fluently.

  “Carson?” he called into the subsequent silence.

  The captain appeared from the mass of officers.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Gather up any lieutenants who haven’t seen action today and take them down south with you. I want the section of the Wall where they crossed shored up before nightfall.”

  “Yes, sir.” Carson disappeared from the room.

  “Was the larger team just a diversion then?” I asked of no one in particular. Dismay washed over me at the idea. So many soldiers sacrificed for such a purpose. Did the Kallorwegians have so many to spare?

  The escape of their mages seemed to confirm the idea, though. The mages, at least, they were unwilling to sacrifice.

  Lorcan crossed over to us. “Perhaps. Or they may have thought it was early enough in the season we wouldn’t be expecting it. They may have hoped to break through with the main party and sent the second merely as back up.”

  “But Captain Matthis said the general predicted the second party.” I examined him from my position at the side of the room.

  “He has been doing his job for a long time,” said Lorcan. “Few understand the Kallorwegians as well as he does.”

  I bit my lip to keep my further thoughts inside. Shouldn’t the general have anticipated the mages’ retreat then? Did he hope to avert suspicion from his lapse with this second correct move?

  At dinner everyone was quiet and subdued, and drinks were raised to multiple absent comrades. Leila appeared to have taken a batch of new arrivals under her wing at the next table over and was explaining the situation to them. When her squad had been disbanded, the remaining members reassigned after the attack in the gully, she had managed to get herself assigned to headquarters. So, as always, she seemed to know more about what was going on than most soldiers.

  “Why was it the smaller attack that got through?” a fresh-faced young man asked.

  “They’re harder to spot,” said Tobias, jumping in. “An obvious answer, really,” he muttered.

  Leila ignored him. “First the raiding parties have to slip through our patrols, and then the Wall makes it hard for them. Those rocks have been there for so many years, the king himself couldn’t compose a working to sort through the layers and tangles of workings attached to them.”

  “Aye,” added a veteran further down the table. “And every section is different. One of the first tasks the new mage recruits are given each year is to ride up and down the full length, adding whatever workings they can think of anywhere they want. It takes them weeks, and no one even tries to keep track of what nasties are hiding in it anymore.”

  “The old hands do it sometimes just for fun. And when they discharge?” He gave a bark of laughter. “We soldiers give a drop o’ blood, but them mages?” He shook his head. “They leave the nastiest old piece of working they can come up with. Spend their whole two years coming up with it, some of ’em. Try to outdo each other.” He chuckled again, as if imagining Kallorwegians falling afoul of whatever horrors the mage recruits conjured.

  “What do they mean by a drop of blood? For the commonborn soldiers?” I asked my own table.

  Captain Matthis, who appeared to have managed a wash at some point, looked down the table at me.

  “It’s something of a rite of passage for those who survive their conscription,” he said. “The mages leave a composition, and the commonborns leave a drop of blood.” He paused. “I believe it is partially a celebration that they still live, and partially a mark of respect that only with sacrifice is the war contained behind the Wall. Or something like that.”

  “Better a drop than a gallon,” said an older soldier at the end of our table.

  “Aye,” said several voices around him, and, “Better a drop than a gallon,” echoed from several tables around us.

  Someone brushed against me from behind, and I felt a hand trail across my back. I recognized the touch without needing to turn. I longed to throw myself into Lucas’s arms and cry out all the tears I was hoarding inside at this wasteful loss of life. But for now, all I could do was feel the sensation of his hand against my back as it lingered long after he had passed on to another table.

  I finished my meal more quickly than my friends and hurried to leave, wanting a few moments alone. But my steps faltered as I passed a table of soldiers grimly discussing the day’s action.

  “At least we got every stinking one of the second party—including their mage,” one of them said. “None of this running like rabbits business.”

  “Aye,” agreed another. “I was with the squad that arrived in time to help cut them down. We got every last one of them and pitched them all into the same battleground grave.” He looked across the table at a youthful recruit. “Don’t matter if they’re mageborn or commonborn on the battlefield. Not if they’re Kallorwegian fil
th.” He paused to spit on the floor. “I saw all ten bodies go in myself.”

  I froze. Ten? I distinctly remembered Matthis saying there had been twelve in the smaller raiding party. And yet this soldier sounded certain they had fought and killed only ten. The soldiers for such a mission must have been carefully selected. If they had slipped away before battle was joined, it wouldn’t have been from cowardice.

  An icy feeling gripped me. If this soldier had noted the number of bodies, there was no way his mage officers had failed to do so. Matthis might not have reported to the whole of headquarters that two of the attackers disappeared some time before the final fight, but he would no doubt have done so to the general more privately.

  And if the whole of that second raid—the whole of the entire attack, perhaps—had been a cover to slip two intelligencers past the Wall and into Ardann, what did the general intend to do about it?

  I was about to exit the tent when General Griffith walked in. I had never seen him at the mess before, so I lingered, watching him. He walked up and down the rows of tables, speaking quiet words of congratulations and commiseration. The soldiers straightened in his wake, buoyed by his recognition of their efforts and their sacrifices.

  My forehead wrinkled and my brain hurt as I tried to understand this complex man. Brilliant general or traitor? It was odd to see him respected by the soldiers here. At home those families who still anticipated their conscriptions, or whose child was already at the front, loved to curse his name. Besides the Kallorwegians themselves, he carried the most hatred, a symbol of the conscription system that swallowed their children.

  I felt eyes on me. Lucas’s gaze skipped across to the general as soon as I turned toward him, and our eyes didn’t meet. But I could still read their expression from across the room. He was trying to hide it, but anger burned beneath the prince’s cool exterior. And when the general left the mess, he followed.

  And I followed them. Lucas might be a prince, but he was also human. I didn’t know what had raised his ire, but I didn’t want him making a mistake he might regret. Neither of them paid me the least heed as I trailed along behind them.

  “How long do you mean to keep us here?” Lucas asked abruptly.

  I winced. It wasn’t like Lucas to let his emotion overrule his subtlety.

  The general regarded him for a silent moment. “As long as is necessary.”

  Lucas raised an eyebrow at him. “Necessary for your experiments, or for the war effort?”

  “For the war effort, of course,” said Griffith smoothly. “That’s the only reason I’m conducting any experiments.”

  Lucas looked away into the darkness. “It strikes me that the war effort might be advantaged by a few more experiments.”

  The general looked at him in surprise, and Lucas glanced across at the older man.

  “Different kinds of experiments, I mean.” He looked away again. “Colonel Jennica and Captain Matthis aren’t your only soldiers with experience and strategic sense. I find myself wondering what we might achieve if we properly utilized all our strengths.”

  The general frowned, examining the prince’s face.

  “Jackson has been reassigned after the debacle at the gully, if that is your concern, Your Highness. I will even admit that I should have known better than to give him a patrol squad.”

  “My concern,” said Lucas, his voice icy, “is for the war as a whole, and for the safety of Ardann. Jackson is hardly our only inexperienced officer.”

  “And what would you have me do, Your Highness? These are the mages the crown sees fit to give me. Recent graduates, all of them. You no doubt know the arguments the Mage Council made when the policy was put into place. Mages can only be spared to the Armed Forces before they have developed expertise in other disciplines.”

  He sounded resentful, and I could only imagine he had fought against such a decision. Had a poisonous seed taken root when the crown and his fellow heads overruled him? Had he started to wonder if a change in leadership in Ardann might be called for, after all?

  The general gave a humorless bark of laughter. “Look around you, Prince. We’ve been fighting this war for thirty year. Thirty years. Armed Forces isn’t exactly the prestigious choice it once was. I consider myself lucky there are any mages at all left with a backbone strong enough to sign up once their two years are done.”

  He shook his head, continuing to speak although Lucas said nothing. “I can only assume you don’t mean that I should put commonborns in charge of patrols. It’s a funny thing, but I don’t have a lot of soldiers eager to go patrolling without a mage. Not when the enemy forces always come with mages in tow—or their compositions come across the river without any escort at all.”

  He narrowed his eyes at Lucas. “And I can only imagine how your father might feel if I started equipping commonborn soldiers with sealed, color-coded compositions like those some of the dead weight mages sell to commonborns back in the capital. Even if I set aside the issue of who was to produce these workings, or the role of a mage in sensing the presence of power, I am not such a fool as to set up an army of commonborn with an arsenal of compositions.”

  “Who said they needed to go without a mage?” Lucas gave the general a level look.

  Griffith’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. “Mages subordinate to commonborn officers, you mean? You must be joking if you think such an arrangement would be acceptable to a single mage of your acquaintance. Perhaps you could tell me who these mythical mages might be?”

  “I can think of one,” said Lucas, his words almost too quiet for me to catch.

  The general stopped abruptly, and the prince turned to face him, meeting his eyes without hesitation. I stumbled as I pulled myself to a halt just behind them. Did he mean himself? Surely the prince of Ardann could not mean such a thing?

  The shock on the general’s face told me I wasn’t the only one unable to process Lucas’s words.

  “We must change our thinking,” Lucas said quietly. “Change or be consumed.”

  “Maybe,” said the general. “Or maybe there’s another way.” He turned and looked straight at me, and I realized he had been aware of my presence the entire time.

  I shivered, and out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Lucas stiffen. The general looked from me to the prince.

  “Interesting,” was all he said, and then he nodded his head respectfully at Lucas. “I will take your words under advisement.” And he strode off into Bronton.

  My eyes met Lucas’s, and the longing in them brought an instant flush to my cheeks. But the two royal guards who had been trailing further back to give the prince and the general privacy stepped forward.

  Lucas and I walked back toward the center of the camp, carefully remaining a hand span apart and talking of nothing personal. I burst to ask him about his words, and if he had truly meant them, but the presence of his guards restrained me.

  When we reached my tent, Lucas looked the other way as he murmured a rushed goodbye. But the hand closest to me reached out, his fingers trailing gently down my wrist to the tips of my fingers.

  He had disappeared from sight before I reminded myself to breathe. And then I crawled into my bed, put my pillow over my head and cried. Because I had seen the general’s face, and he would never change his thinking. Just like he would never let me go.

  Chapter 19

  Spring arrived quickly, and while it couldn’t compare to the Academy, the front improved significantly. We no longer shivered as we warmed up for training, and flowers bloomed everywhere outside the camp.

  We had a string of lessons in the large tent that served as a camp hospital, observing as Beatrice and Reese led the efforts to heal the soldiers injured in the attack. Not all healers were willing to serve at the front lines, and not all had the strength for it. The few who that left rotated through on limited terms. All of which meant Beatrice’s team was far too small for the number of soldiers they served.

  “Reese is composing today, so you’re s
tuck with me, I’m afraid,” Beatrice told us with a smile when we arrived for our second lesson in a row. No one looked disappointed. Even the Devoras and Stantorn trainees liked Beatrice. They might see her sympathy for commonborn as a weakness, but they respected her strength and skill.

  I wasn’t surprised to see that Reese and a couple of the other healers were missing. On an ordinary day at the healing tents, half of the healing team were absent, using their daily energy to prepare compositions against future need. This store of emergency healings—the ones that did just enough to keep the soldiers alive and in some level of comfort—allowed the team to maintain a slower and more manageable pace as they completed the more complex workings often required for full healings. And their stores meant they didn’t have to fear the consequences of an unexpected attack.

  The sun shone brightly, and several flaps along the walls had been rolled up and pinned open, letting in light and fresh air. It made the makeshift hospital a much more pleasant place to be than it had been in winter, when the cold temperatures necessitated the flaps remain down.

  An older soldier, propped up in bed, grinned at the sight of us and winked at Lavinia. She turned away in disgust, but I smiled back at the man. He had been in the hospital tent since not long after our arrival at the front and must be dying of boredom. What did he think of our lessons and the explanations of how the healings worked?

  I took a few steps to stand beside his bed.

  “Your leg is looking almost whole!”

  His smile grew even broader. “Aye, that it is, Spoken Mage. Only me foot left to grow now. Unless you have a mind to speed it up for me.” He gave another wink.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’ve seen me compose in here often enough, Gregor. I might speak my workings, but otherwise the same limitations apply. And I know Beatrice has explained to you why we cannot heal you more quickly.”