by Spurrier, Jo
Aleksar recoiled at the sight of it.
‘The fact that you hate them makes me think you do have a trainable talent,’ Delphine said. ‘But until it’s safe to reveal it, you must wear this at all times.’
‘Madame —’ he protested.
‘Just put it on! If you’re found out, you’ll be handed back to the Battle-Mages, and if they find out that I concealed this, I’ll … Well, I don’t even know what they’ll do to me: I don’t think this has ever happened before. Aleksar, if you slip up we’ll both pay for it, so by the Good Goddess herself, wear the cursed stone!’
With a hiss he took the cord from her and pulled it over his head, but he couldn’t quite suppress his shudder as the stone brushed against his skin. ‘Madame, I won’t be able to use the lantern-stones while wearing this wretched thing.’
‘That’s an inconvenience we’ll have to bear. You will be able to take it off from time to time, when I need your skills as a Sensitive. I know you’ll be tempted to be rid of it the moment I leave you alone, but if I find you without it, Aleksar, I will be very displeased. I don’t wish to force you to wear it, but I will if I have to.’ Once again, this was a cruelty that meant kindness in the long run, and this time she couldn’t let sympathy sway her. As she watched, Aleksar clenched his left hand around the edge of the table once again. He was drawing deep, steady breaths, calming himself as he always did when memories of his torment rose up to trouble him.
‘Aleksar, tell me,’ she said, ‘have you given much thought to your future?’
The question surprised him. ‘I try not to think about it, madame.’
‘With your mind, you could be a great scholar,’ Delphine said. ‘In ten years’ time, who knows — you could have a wife, a family, perhaps. Your children could be Akharian citizens.’
He gave a weary sigh, and bowed his head. ‘You want me to forget about Ricalan, and leave behind everything I know.’
‘I know it’s a harsh fate, but the Collegium council will never grant your freedom if they think your loyalty still lies with the north. Could you even survive here now, wounded as you are? I know it seems impossible, but Akhara truly isn’t a bad place. You could be happy there, I promise.’
He rubbed his eyes. ‘I suppose time will tell, madame.’
Delphine scowled. One of his black moods was settling over him again. This was why she hadn’t wanted him to speak to the wretched girl. ‘You need to rest,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you back to Harwin’s tent.’
He bowed his head and reached for the satchel she’d given him, stuffed full of papers and waxed tablets that stretched the seams. One of them was giving way, she noticed. ‘That needs mending,’ she said. ‘Give it to me tomorrow and I’ll have the new girl fix it.’
His hand tensed around the strap of the bag. ‘You haven’t given her a name yet, madame?’
He must know the name the girl had borne as a free woman, but he also knew that Delphine couldn’t allow the girl to keep it. Only Mirasada had been permitted to keep her name, and that was solely because the general was still toying with the idea of ransoming her back to her kin. ‘I’m too cursed weary to think of one tonight. I’ll get to it tomorrow. Now, my lad, you need to get some sleep. We have a great deal of work ahead of us.’
Chapter 3
Cam sat in Mira’s folding chair, turning the stone over and over in his palm. With every turn came an odd tug in his chest, where the thread of power had bitten when Sierra bound the enchantment to him weeks earlier.
He should give up and retreat to his furs. The hour was past late, and if she hadn’t contacted him by now, she probably wasn’t going to. She was two days late to make contact, but it wouldn’t be the first time their communication had been delayed. There was no reason to think that it all had gone horribly wrong.
Cam clenched his fingers around the chair’s carved armrests. The last words he’d said to Isidro were a promise to look after Sierra. If she came to harm, if she was raped by the soldiers who regarded the Ricalani women as nothing more than the spoils of war … By the Twin Suns, he said to himself. I’m sick to death of not being able to protect the people around me. Bright Sun, if you bring them back safe, I’ll … There the thought petered out. What could he promise? He may have been born a prince, but the title had been taken from him more than ten years before, and he didn’t miss it. All he owned, his weapons and armour, his winter gear, blankets and a half-decent horse, all had been given to him by Mira for his service to her clan. He couldn’t serve in a temple to show his thanks — even if they did succeed in pulling off this mad scheme, freeing Isidro, Mira and Sierra would not be the end of it. Thousands of Ricalanis had been enslaved, and the Akharian invaders marched through the north with impunity … and then there were Kell and Rasten to reckon with. It would be years before Ricalan saw anything like peace again. Please just keep them safe, Cam concluded the rough prayer. He wasn’t sure why he bothered when he was half-convinced that the Gods didn’t exist and never had.
He tossed the stone up and caught it, and then tucked it away in the pouch around his neck. She wasn’t going to reach him tonight, so he might as well get some sleep.
Cam was just settling into his furs when he heard muffled footsteps outside the tent; a messenger called through the door. ‘My Lord Cammarian? Sir, are you there?’
With a sigh, Cam went to the door, while Ardamon snorted in his furs and Rhia turned her head of tawny curls towards the sound. He opened the tent flap and leant out, shivering in the chill. It was so early in the spring that it might as well still be winter, and if he stayed out bareheaded for long he was risking frostbite.
The messenger, wrapped in coat, cowl, hood and mittens, was wearing a white war-coat over his winter fur. He’d just returned from sentry duty, Cam judged. ‘My lord, the watch captain wishes to see you urgently. He’s received a message, sir, but … Well, it’s rather odd. The captain asks if Miss Rhia would attend as well.’
‘They need a physician?’ Cam asked. ‘We’ll come at once. What’s this about, soldier?’
‘I think you’d best see for yourself, my lord,’ the sentry said.
Ten minutes later, Cam, Rhia and Ardamon tramped through the snow to the watch-tent at the edge of camp. Ardamon, woken by the discussion, had been too curious to go back to sleep, and Cam was glad to have him along. He had no standing among the Wolf’s men, but as a son of the clan Ardamon could command all but the highest ranks.
The tent was noisy for the late hour, full of men reporting for duty, or returning from their shift and taking a hot meal before going back to their furs.
Cam ducked inside, casting about the dimly lit interior. The first thing he noticed was the smell of old sweat and unwashed bodies. The tent was more crowded than usual, and half the folk inside were women, unkempt, bedraggled and clearly exhausted. A number of women travelled with the army, but it made no sense that a score of them would gather here at this time of night, and in this state.
He was still taking stock of the scene when the watch captain strode across to greet them. ‘My lords, Miss Rhia,’ he said with a brief bow. ‘Forgive the interruption, but I thought this should not wait for morning.’
‘Captain, who are these women?’ Ardamon asked. ‘They’re not from our camp.’
‘They turned up at the perimeter about half an hour ago, my lord. They say they were slaves of the Akharians.’
‘They escaped?’
‘Not exactly, my lord. They say they were freed.’
‘Sierra?’ Cam asked.
The captain looked troubled. ‘No, sir. They say it was the apprentice, Lord Rasten, sir.’
Speechless, for a moment Cam could only stare at the man. ‘Rasten?’ he coughed at last. ‘Freed them and sent them here?’
‘They swear it’s true, my lord. One of them has something for you, sir. She says she’ll give it to you and no other. She’s over here.’
Cam’s stomach shrank into a cold knot as the captain led them to the
back of the tent, afraid to imagine what sort of gift Rasten would choose to send him when the people he cared about most were far nearer to his reach than they were to Cam’s.
At the back of the tent a woman sat on a bench with a coat draped around her shoulders and tangled black hair spilling over the slack hood. She looked up as the captain returned, and Cam saw her right arm was bound across her chest in a sling torn from an Akharian soldier’s red tunic.
‘Are you Cammarian?’ she asked.
‘I am.’ Cam sat on the bench facing her.
The woman peered at him owlishly. ‘He said you’d look like a southerner, except for the eyes. He said I had to give this to you and no one else. All the way here I’ve been thinking, how’s he to know if I don’t? But he’s a sorcerer, isn’t he? Maybe he’s got some way of finding out. I thought I’d best do as he said.’ She reached into her shirt and pulled out a wad of folded paper.
There was no name written on it, nothing at all but a dab of black wax, pressed with a blank seal. ‘Rasten gave you this?’ he said.
‘Mistress Sinika,’ the captain said in gentle tones. ‘Perhaps you’d best tell him what you told me.’
The woman nodded and picked up a bowl, holding it somewhat awkwardly in her left hand in a way that reminded him of Isidro. ‘What happened to your arm?’ he asked her. ‘Did Rasten do that?’
‘No.’ She shook her head emphatically. ‘I’d best start at the beginning, my lord. We were camped just outside the valley of Earthblood, right at the foot of Demon’s Spire. Me and the rest of the girls here, we were sent out to cut wood for the camp, this morning that was. Or I suppose it was yesterday morning now.
‘Just before noon, the Slavers were attacked. We were all spread out and we didn’t know what was happening; all we could hear was people screaming through the trees. First the Slavers made us lie down on the ground, but then one of them pulled me up and tried to use me as a shield …’ Sinika laid a hand on her bandaged arm. ‘That’s when my arm got broken. Next thing I knew there were soldiers everywhere — Mesentreians, I mean — and he was standing right in front of me, only I didn’t know who he was then. He hit the slave-master holding me, and tore him apart.
‘When the Slavers were dead he had his men round up the girls. I thought we were in for more of the same as we had in the slave camps, but Lord Rasten didn’t let them touch us. He marched us back to his camp, and he let us all eat and he wrapped up my arm.’ Once again she gently touched the torn bindings. ‘Then he gave me those papers and said I had to give them to you and no one else. He sent us out with some of his men for guides. They turned back a few hours ago, but they told us to keep marching straight and we’d find the Wolf Lord’s army here.’
‘You’ve been walking all night?’ Cam said.
‘He said I had to get it to you quickly. I don’t care about the walking. I’d walk for a year if it meant I was free of those cursed Slavers.’
‘How is your arm?’ Rhia asked. ‘You look like you are in pain.’
‘I tripped over, a while ago. It’s been hurting bad ever since.’
Rhia set her bag down on the table. ‘I will make you something for the pain, and then we can see what’s to be done. Captain, are any of the other women injured?’
‘Just sore and weary for the most part, miss. I’ll detail a lad to help you …’ As the captain called over one of his men, Cam turned his attention to the letter.
Ardamon leant closer and lowered his voice. ‘What game is the bastard playing now?’
‘Only one way to find out,’ Cam said. He broke the seal with his thumb and spread the pages out on the table.
‘What in the Fires Below …?’ Ardamon snatched up one of the pages. ‘What is this gibberish?’
Cam frowned at the pages full of unintelligible script. ‘It’s a code of some sort …’ He trailed off as he recognised the pattern in the letters. He and Isidro had used one particular code so often that he knew some words without deciphering them. The words and the code that obscured them were Isidro’s, but the handwriting was not. It gave him a peculiar sense of dislocation to see something at once so familiar and yet completely foreign. When Cam thought too long about Rasten’s hands holding these pages and shaping those letters, he began to shake with anger. He had to lay the sheets down and calm himself before he could look at them again. ‘Rhia,’ he said, ‘do you have anything to write on in that bag?’
‘Wax tablets,’ she said with a nod, hands busy mixing herbs in a mortar. Cam pulled them out and began to transcribe the code.
Cam, the message began. Sierra has not been harmed, but it’s not safe for her to reach you now. From this point our communication must be through Rasten. I don’t know how he intends to get this to you —
Cam glanced up at the women huddled in the tent. Rasten had done it well, he had to admit. He’d placed the message in Cam’s hands at little cost or danger to himself.
— but he assures me he has a way. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we have no choice.
The Akharians have taken control of Earthblood, and we have found an entrance into Demon’s Spire. An expedition is being assembled to find Vasant’s cache, and though I don’t know much about numbers, it will certainly include Battle-Mages as well as academics and ordinary soldiers. Even so, I believe this will be our best opportunity to strike at the Akharians, so long as Sierra and Rasten are present to neutralise the mages.
‘As simple as that, is it?’ Cam muttered. ‘Just attack them in the heart of Demon’s Spire? We have to get there first.’
You’ll need Rasten’s help — it’s the only way to coordinate an attack. I don’t believe he’ll strike against you. He needs Sierra’s cooperation and I doubt he’ll risk angering her by betraying you to the king. But keep a close watch on him, and surround yourself with trusted men.
Be assured that Mira is well and unharmed, and she will be with us when we set out for the Spire. My mistress here has claimed her to help go through the records we have found, and she is well protected.
‘Thank the Gods for that,’ Cam said. ‘If only we could say the same for Sirri.’
Vasant created multiple entrances to the Spire, and we found a map that shows their locations — if you can clear one, you can lead men in to strike while Sierra attacks from within.
You must act quickly. We are setting out through the caves in the morning, and the Akharian scouts are already exploring the route.
Underneath there was another short paragraph in Mesentreian, written in the same hand. Rasten had added a note of his own to the missive. I’ve seen Balorica’s map, and by the time this reaches you I will have found an entrance. Bring your men to the following location as soon as you can. There is no time to waste on this, Prince. I doubt Sierra will manage to keep herself hidden for long in such close quarters.
The last page was a rough map with the meeting-place marked along with the two encampments and the slope of Demon’s Spire.
Cam slid the map across to Ardamon, but he took only one glance before folding the papers up. ‘We ought to discuss this in private.’
‘I agree,’ said Cam.
Across the table, Rhia looked up from examining Sinika’s swollen forearm. ‘Is it good news or bad?’ she asked Cam.
Cam paused. ‘Good,’ he said at last, and in that moment he could truly believe it. Isidro, clever sod that he was, would find the cache, and he and Mira could watch each other’s backs. Rasten was a problem, but with Akharian soldiers trapped like goats in a pen, Sierra could deal with him. After all the long weeks, Cam finally began to believe that he would see his brother again soon, and Mira as well. He could feel himself grinning. ‘Come back to the tent when you’re finished,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you everything.’
The watch captain returned when they stood. ‘Sir, may I ask what news?’
‘It’s a sensitive matter, Captain,’ Ardamon said as Cam gathered up the tablets. ‘There’s much to be discussed before we can make it
known.’
‘Captain … Sandrin, isn’t it?’ Cam said.
‘Yessir. One of my daughters was in Terundel, sir, she’d have been taken as a slave if it weren’t for Miss Sierra. But my sisters were in the west, and all of them are missing. I know War-Leader Dremman doesn’t dare attack the Akharian mages, but if there’s something else afoot … My lord, I’ll assist in any way I can.’
‘We’ll need friends in camp if we’re to move quickly,’ Cam said to Ardamon. ‘How much longer will you be on duty, Captain?’
‘Till daybreak, my lord, but you may call on me at any time.’
Back in Mira’s tent, Cam and Ardamon read through it all again. ‘I can’t say I like the thought of trusting so much to that beast Rasten,’ Ardamon said. ‘But it’s a price worth paying, if Mira and the others are freed.’
‘What choice do we have?’ Cam asked. The fire of hope was still burning within him, but he forced himself to take a step back from it and think. ‘What if he’s playing us?’
‘If Rasten’s just drawing us into a trap, what’s to stop him making a deal with Father? For that matter, what’s to stop him from marching in here and taking us all?’
‘You have a point,’ Cam said. ‘I doubt Dremman would stoop to selling his own son, though he’d be happy to see the back of me.’
‘Isidro thinks this is our best chance,’ Ardamon said, ‘and he’s in a better position to know than we are.’
‘Indeed,’ Cam said. ‘I think we’ll have to trust him. But let’s say we do this, let’s say it works … what then? We’ll have freed our three, but what about the other slaves? Taking Demon’s Spire won’t do a thing for the rest.’
