A Vow of Vengeance (Vows of Unity #2)

Prologue

Krujha

Someone was following him.

Krujha could feel the weight of their eyes on his back as he made his usual rounds through the camp. Being watched was hardly surprising, but being followed was something else entirely.

A host on the move had endless tasks day in and day out, and camp was always being broken down, set up, or maintained.

But the leadership had kept him assigned as a woodworker for months now, mostly fixing broken supply carts and carving tent poles out of the lumber the hunters and foragers brought in, which he liked well enough.

It meant he saw a lot of the comings and goings of the camp; though the exact location was still a mystery, he at least managed to determine that Zesh, leader of the rebellion, was somewhere in the northwest.

In his six months as part of this rebel camp, Krujha had never met or even seen the runner who took his correspondence.

When he had first gone undercover, he had been told to leave his missives in a cunningly marked crate behind a certain tent; every few weeks he would get a note slipped into his own tent telling him the new drop location.

So far, it seemed his letters were making it back to the Silvertongue in Drol Kuggradh successfully.

He liked this job. It was a lot of watching, listening, noticing things—he was good at being an observer, and even though he was deep in the rebel camp, it somehow felt safer than the kinds of jobs he had back in Drol Kuggradh.

More than that, it made use of all the charm and charisma he’d trained up over years.

He’d made friends with just about every orc who had any major part in keeping the camp running, and it felt like he was getting close to making connections with those in direct contact with the rebel warlord himself.

It would be a shame to have to flee the camp if his cover had finally been blown—and that would be the best-case scenario.

As he was walking to lunch in the late afternoon, he finally spotted the one who’d been following him. The orc was older, bald, and dressed in plain traveling clothes. To Krujha’s eyes, he was pointedly, conspicuously unremarkable in appearance.

Then he saw the man’s cloak pin; the silver was dull, but the visage of the magpie was familiar to him.

Relief flooded him as he recognized it, tension draining from his shoulders.

He was not about to be captured, but given a message; and to take the risk of delivering it in person, he knew it must be important.

“Strapping young lad, aren’t you?” the stranger said as he tottered toward Krujha, sounding for all the world like a feeble old man. “I’m a little mixed up. Toss this in the fire for me, won’t you?”

He pressed a crumpled piece of parchment into Krujha’s hand, stumbling as he did so.

“Careful, elder,” Krujha said, placing a hand on his back. Despite his voice weathered with age, he certainly didn’t feel frail beneath his thick cloak. “Where’s your tent? I can help you get back to where you belong.”

But the older orc waved him off, mumbling something under his breath as he ambled back the way he’d come.

Krujha watched him go with a raised eyebrow and an incredulous smile, stifling a laugh as he finally turned away.

When he unraveled the crumpled parchment, it was marked in a shaky scrawl—a list of ingredients for leek soup.

Krujha shoved it into a pocket of his cloak. He went and got his lunch—a small bowl of wild rice and stewed greens today—then headed back to his tent to eat in private before his next job.

The brazier in his tent was low, so he added some charcoal before holding the letter over the glowing embers. The hidden ink slowly came to life as the paper heated up.

K -

A storm is building in the north. The silver tongue calls you home.

Krujha bit back a curse. Six months of work—and he was so close to being sent to the seat of Zesh’s power, he just knew it—only to be called away before he could harvest the fruit of his labor.

But it couldn’t be helped; a summons from Gorza herself, sister to King Zorvut and the one who led his network of spies and assassins from the shadows, was too important to ignore.

In the two years since King Zorvut had married the elf prince, sole heir to the throne of Aefraya—slaying the former warlord and bringing the orc wildlands under his rule—Gorza’s role had only grown more critical to maintaining the tentative peace that had finally replaced decades of war and conflict between elves and orcs.

Zorvut had bested their oldest brother, Zesh, when he’d tried to make a claim for the throne himself.

But the new orc king hadn’t killed his brother, only maimed him—something he surely regretted now, as Zesh had started gathering allies a year ago, now on the verge of mounting a full-on rebellion.

Just his luck that all his hard work would come to naught. Though if the Silvertongue was calling him back to include him in some greater plot—something that would end with Zesh’s death—then that was all the better. He could only hope.

Krujha dropped the paper into the brazier, watching as the parchment began to smolder and disappear. When it had burned away to ash, he turned and started packing his things. It would be a long journey back to Drol Kuggradh alone.