And so we braved the brightness of day, taking advantage of the light to move as fast as possible, alternating between periods of walking and periods of jogging. The mages searching for us must have assumed that we made for the border after freeing Felice because we saw no sign of them in the immediate vicinity.
We barely talked, pausing only briefly to eat the cold rations Mabel had sent. Tension radiated off Lucas, and I could tell he had to constantly restrain himself from setting a faster pace. He wanted to be in Corrin already, but he knew we couldn’t maintain greater speed for long.
“I keep running over and over it in my mind,” I burst out eventually. “All the little things I didn’t see. The way Walden kept secrets from Lorcan and the other instructors. I appreciated it at the time, I thought he was doing it for me, but I feel so naive now. Why would he keep secrets from the head of his discipline for me—a first year trainee he barely knew?”
My pace increased, my frustration lending me speed, and Lucas matched it without comment.
“For a long time I was convinced General Griffith was the traitor,” I said. “You tried to tell me he wouldn’t betray you and neither would the Stantorns. But Walden, on the other hand, pointed me straight in the general’s direction. And even when I discovered for a fact it wasn’t the general, I didn’t suspect Walden. And the Sekalis! Your parents wanted to keep me away from them, and who introduced me? Walden!”
“I never liked him,” said Lucas quietly.
“I knew you weren’t happy I was considering training with him with my energy ability,” I said. “You talked me out of continuing, in fact. Why didn’t you say anything more specific?”
Lucas shrugged. “Because I didn’t have anything more specific to say. I didn’t think he was in league with Kallorway or heading up a conspiracy to overthrow Ardann. I just didn’t like how friendly he was to you from the moment you arrived.”
My brows drew together, and despite everything, I couldn’t resist a wry smile. “You thought he should have been more like you? Cold, arrogant, and suspicious?”
Lucas winced slightly. “What they claimed about you was impossible. I was convinced you were a Kallorwegian agent, skilled enough to fool Lorcan and worm your way into the Academy. I was in class and didn’t hear the briefing Lorcan gave my parents. I didn’t know how hard he’d tested you. It was only when I witnessed the truth composition and then saw your power for myself that I really believed you could be who you said you were.”
I had never thought to ask him what he had been thinking when I first arrived at the Academy. So much of his behavior then made sense now. But it didn’t explain why he had suspected Walden just because of his kindness.
“Coralie was kind to me when I arrived,” I said. “Do you suspect her of being a traitor as well?”
“Of course not. But…she’s a Cygnet. And a trainee. Walden, on the other hand, is a member of one of the great families and a senior mage in the Academy discipline. It never sat well with me how well he wore his jovial mask—not for someone I knew had the cunning to keep up with the power plays of the top mages. He acted as if he had no agenda of his own—but in the world I’m used to, everyone has an agenda.”
I extended my arm across his middle, forcing him to a sudden halt along with me.
“There’s someone there,” I whispered. “In that group of trees.”
We had crossed the main road some time ago, aiming to hit the Abneris just south of the main conflict zone. We were relying on the Kallorwegian side being much less heavily patrolled, since Ardann had no interest in pushing the fight across to them.
“I feel them too,” Lucas said. “They’re using power for something. Probably shields. Soldiers, do you think?”
“Could be. But there are only two of them.”
“Let’s go see.”
We circled around and approached the trees from the far side to the other people, moving as quietly as we could across the mostly level ground. Once among the trees, we could hear quiet words, the conversation covering the small sounds we made.
To my astonishment, I recognized one of the voices. I looked wide-eyed at Lucas, but his focus didn’t leave the two mages in front of us.
“I still think your father is right,” said the one who had stood behind Cassius when he captured us. “They’ll be back over the border by now easily.”
“Perhaps.” Cassius sounded dismissive. “But as I’ve told you already, I’m not so convinced. They came here in the first place, didn’t they?”
“Because they thought you were going to help them,” his companion muttered, clearly a fellow trainee from the Academy by his age. Perhaps even the cousin Declan had mentioned.
“What was that?” Cassius asked coldly.
“Nothing,” the other trainee said quickly. “I’m just not sure what my father will think if he hears I went against the king’s orders. Even for you. I heard the duke telling his men that His Majesty didn’t want us alerting the Ardannians that anything unusual was going on.”
“We’ll keep searching until we find them. They were like a beacon last time. And when we do, and I drag them before my father, he’ll be grateful,” Cassius said. “He’ll forget all about the failed attempt at Bronton last year.”
“They’re shielded, but they might not have activated strong ones yet,” I whispered. “I could—”
Before I could finish the thought, Lucas erupted from the trees, launching himself at the Kallorwegian prince. He took me by surprise, but them more so. By the time Cassius’s friend reacted, and attempted to go to his prince’s rescue, I had caught up. The dagger Declan had supplied slid free of its sheath in my boot. I swung it, hilt downward, and connected with his head. He crumpled to the ground.
When I looked up, Lucas stood over a prone Cassius, his fists clasped and his chest heaving with ragged breaths.
“Is he still alive?” I rushed over to check on the Kallorwegian prince.
“Yes. Although it’s more than he deserves.”
I looked up at him. “How did you know that would work? How did you know they didn’t have a physical shield as well as their shields against compositions?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t. Not for sure. But I guessed it. You heard what they said. This wasn’t a sanctioned mission, like the last one. And I was betting they were saving their strongest compositions until they had eyes on you.”
I shook my head. “That was a big risk to take.”
He didn’t say anything, but I could see from the way he held himself that he had exploded out of anger and frustration as much as instinct and strategy. He had needed an outlet, a way to express his rage and betrayal, and Cassius had provided one.
“You showed me their strategy, yesterday,” he said, speaking a little more calmly, “putting all their strength into their magical shields. I was just relying on their not having had enough time to change strategies after it failed to stop you last night.”
Perhaps there had been a little more thought than I had given him credit for.
“Well, it worked,” I said. “But what are we going to do with them now?”
“Can you break through their shields and drain them?” he asked.
I nodded. With only the two of them, and without attacks coming at me as well, I was confident I could break through.
“Attack,” I said, and my power poured out, slamming against their shield. It kept going, burning through it, until at last it collapsed. I drained them both, leaving just enough to keep them alive. The same fury that had driven Lucas gave me the nerve I needed to push my working to the edge.
“They won’t die,” I said when I was finished. “But they’ll sleep for a very long time.”
“Good.” Lucas said. “From the sound of it no one knows they’re out here. But we can soon change that. I suspect when we get across the river your adoptive father might be interested to hear that Kallorway’s crown prince is lying just across the water, unconscious and unguarded.”
Chapter 23
The worst part of crossing the river was the cold. We easily evaded the few Kallorwegian patrols, but when we emerged from the water, we must have triggered an Ardannian alarm composition.
A patrol converged on us with commendable speed. When they saw there were only two of us, and that we looked more bedraggled than dangerous, they hesitated, and the extra second gave the young lieutenant a chance to see our faces. I vaguely recognized him as a trainee from two years above us. He told his soldiers to stand down, approaching us with caution.
“Your Highness? Spoken Mage?”
I frowned at his wary posture and then realized he must be wondering if we were some sort of Kallorwegian ruse.
“Yes, it’s us,” I said. “Would you like a demonstration as proof? Dry,” I said clearly, pointing my finger at my own clothes and then Lucas’s. The water evaporated off us, steam rising from our now pleasantly heated clothes since I had added a layer of warmth to the composition.
The lieutenant’s face relaxed.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Never mind that,” Lucas said. “We need to speak to the general. Now.”
The patrol formed up around us without prompting from their supposed leader, and we jogged the whole way into Bronton. It all looked so strange—on the one hand familiar from the many months we had spent here, and on the other startling and different. The front was its own world, and I had gotten used to no longer being part of it.
A mage tried to accost us at the doors to headquarters, but Leila was passing through the entranceway and roundly took him to task. He accepted her reprimand and stood aside. I hid a smile as I greeted her. She had clearly only solidified her position here. Seeing a commonborn berating a mage was beyond unusual, and yet somehow she managed to carry it off. Either that or she knew that Lucas’s presence would protect her.
She bowed extra low to him, murmuring his title before grinning cheekily at me.
“The general’s in the main room.” She pointed down the corridor.
We hurried off toward him, and she followed unabashedly behind. Her curiosity would have to wait, though, because the general took one look at us and cleared the room.
“What are you—”
“We need two horses,” Lucas said with authority. “And for you to send a message ahead of us to Corrin.”
“What’s going on?” Griffith asked, looking between us. “I could have wrung Julian’s neck when I heard he had helped you both break out of the Empire and run for Kallorway of all places.”
“We don’t have time for explanations,” Lucas said. “We need two of your strongest horses. And you need to prepare for an attack. We’re hoping it won’t come, but best to be prepared. Send one company after us to Corrin, though. We might need the extra back up before this is all over.”
“I don’t understand,” the general began.
“Do you need to?” Lucas asked sharply.
“Father,” I said, using the term for the first time. “This isn’t the time to show disrespect to the crown.”
His eyes latched onto me, and to my relief he accepted the warning I was trying to signal.
“Of course, daughter,” he said with a respectful bow. “No disrespect was intended. Devoras loyalty is absolute, as always.”
“Excellent,” Lucas said. “Those horses, then, and the soldiers to follow behind. And I need a message composition, one directed to the palace.”
General Griffith sorted through a pile of parchments that had been left on the large table in the middle of the room.
“Here,” he said, ripping one and holding the resulting ball of power out to Lucas.
“This is Prince Lucas,” he said into it.
“Your Highness?” The disembodied voice that replied didn’t need facial expressions to communicate its owner’s astonishment.
The general leaned in.
“It’s him, soldier. Be ready to take a message.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Tell my parents to stay away from the Academy at all costs,” Lucas said.
“The Academy, Your Highness? But they’re already there.”
Lucas and I exchanged a panicked look.
“Already there? For the gala?” Lucas asked.
“No, the gala’s not for two weeks,” the voice said. “But they’re holding some sort of…dress rehearsal, or something, for it. No one told me the details, but I saw them leaving the palace myself just before my shift started.”
“Send a messenger after them,” Lucas said.
“The Academy is shielded against—”
“Not a composition,” Lucas said. “An actual messenger. Have him warn them to get back to the palace immediately. And send two squads of royal guards with him.”
“Two squads? Could you confirm that? Their Majesties already have their usual guards with them.”
Lucas hesitated. “All right, scratch that. Just send the messenger. Move fast.”
He squeezed his fist together, as if he could snuff out the ball of power, and it responded to his signal, shrinking and then disappearing. He looked at me.
“Their guards know what they’re doing, we’ll have to trust in them. Sending more risks creating chaos that will only play into the assassins’ hands.”
“Assassins?” The general sounded alarmed.
“Not if we can get to them first,” said Lucas.
“Go to the stables attached to this estate,” Griffith said. “Ask for my two personal mounts. They can carry me into battle and ride all day. They’re the strongest we have.”
Lucas nodded acknowledgement. “And General? I recommend you find and detain Lieutenant Martin as soon as possible. Probably best to do the same to any other Ellingtons you have in your ranks, just to be sure.”
Shock crossed the general’s face. “The Ellingtons?”
Lucas didn’t take the time to answer, heading straight out the door, but I paused on the way. The general’s eyes latched onto me, clearly hoping for an explanation, but I had remembered something else.
“Oh, one other thing. If you send a squad quietly across the river, you’ll find someone interesting waiting for you on the other side.” I quickly outlined where he could find Cassius.
The shock on his face grew, only to be replaced by a spreading grin as he grasped the opportunity I was offering him. Hopefully acquiring the enemy’s crown prince would soften the sting of his officer’s betrayal.
As soon as he had grasped the information, I took off after Lucas.
When we stood in front of the horses, I gulped. I had never ridden before, and now didn’t seem like a great time to learn.
“Don’t worry,” Lucas said. “You’ll be riding in front of me.”
I almost melted with relief. “Why two horses, then?”
“You don’t weigh much compared to the general, but two adults is a heavy burden for a horse, and we’ll be pushing them hard. The second one is for when the first one tires.”
He vaulted onto the horse’s back, and a groom threw me up and helped me position myself. Lucas’s strong arms encircled me, gripping the reins. He spurred the horse forward, and it leaped into motion, nearly unseating me but for Lucas’s steadying hold. The second horse followed behind on a lead rein.
Both Bronton and the camp around it quickly fell away. Lucas slowed for no one, and those who found themselves in our path threw themselves aside rather than be run down. We soon settled into a rhythm, Lucas’s close steadying presence the only thing keeping me from giving in to fear and panic about my friends and his family. But as many times as my mind leaped ahead to the Academy, it kept circling back to the past.
“Duke Lennox must be in on it, too,” I said into an extended silence. “The more I think about it, the more foolish I feel that I didn’t put it together. My attackers in first year were all killed in prison or managed to escape. I got a glimpse of one in a crowd of Stantorns and was sure he must be working for them, but it never occurred to me
to question that the Head of Law Enforcement is an Ellington.”
I paused and shook my head. “That attacker was probably never a Stantorn at all. And no wonder the Ellingtons felt free to attack me at will, knowing Lennox could clean up their mess. I was training with Walden at the time, too, and he knew I wasn’t making progress. I think both those early attacks were them. They wanted to see how I would respond to a dangerous situation, if it would bring out my powers as it did that first time.”
“And it worked,” Lucas said quietly. “So I guess you could say he was a good teacher.”
I didn’t bother replying to such an obviously facetious remark.
“And Dariela,” I said. “She’s an Ellington. I can’t make much sense of her behavior, but I suppose we were never friends at all.”
Lucas’s arms tightened around me.
“I’m sorry, Elena. I wanted you to be more suspicious of others, more reticent, but now that you’ve learned the lesson, I wish I could wipe it away for you.”
Lucas pushed the horses as hard as he dared, and the road flew past at a pace that made our previous journeys on it in carriages seem ludicrously slow. But it still took us hours to reach Corrin. I had been skimming drops of energy from everyone we encountered and held so much that I almost wondered if it would come bursting out of me as uncontrolled power.
So when we reached the city streets, I didn’t hesitate to compose a working that swept the streets clear in front of us, allowing us to keep up the headlong pace. The city didn’t seem to be in the type of chaos that an assassination of the king and queen would create, but it was possible word just hadn’t gotten out yet.
As we made the final approach toward the Academy, we could see something, at least, was wrong. A mass of people milled in the streets outside the gates, a mix of red and gold, gray and silver, as commonborn guards and soldiers crowded in close around their mage officers.
A shout went up as soon as we drew close enough to be recognized.
“The prince! The prince!” sounded on many voices, but almost as many cried, “The Spoken Mage has returned!”
Voice of Life (The Spoken Mage Book 4) Page 27
