CHAPTER 12
Cap
Margit limped toward Rouge’s tent with Adrien. Pretending disinterest, Cap returned his attention to his breakfast. The sooner she was gone, the better.
Too bad his confounded compassion meant she would be here for weeks.
Some part of him whispered that she was pleasant to look at, but Cap shoved it aside. She was twenty-something and pouting like a child. Pretty wrappings couldn’t outweigh such an attitude.
“She’s as delightful as the first time, isn’t she?” Jean-haut said cheerfully, dropping into the spot next to Cap. “Really makes you glad that we ran into her, doesn’t she?”
Cap sighed and took another bite of bread, chewing slowly while he gazed after her. “How did Marielle come to be friends with someone like her?”
“Friends don’t have to be identical personalities.” Jean-haut shrugged before elbowing Cap lightly in the ribs. “Just look at us.”
“Yes, but we grew up together,” Cap pointed out. “You’ve had years to wear me down. But Marielle doesn’t spend much time in Ralnor; how did she befriend someone as cantankerous as Margit?”
“Friend of a friend?” Jean-haut suggested as Cap rose to return his bowl. “If someone else brought them together, that could explain it.”
Tapping a finger against the bowl in thought, Cap replied, “But I’ve never seen her before, and I don’t remember a Margit in the Ralnoran nobility.”
“Maybe Marielle lied,” Rouge interjected. When they both looked at her, she raised an eyebrow. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone caved under pressure. Didn’t you say her parents are in the capital? Maybe the General threatened them harm if Marielle didn’t support Margit’s ruse.”
“But why?” Jean-haut protested. “Who did he think Marielle was going to tell?”
An uneasy feeling settled in Cap’s stomach. “Me. If he’s figured out that Marielle is helping us, he could have sent Margit to keep an eye on her.” His eyes darted toward Jean-haut. “She might tell that lie to protect her parents.”
“No. She wouldn’t put us in danger,” the forester insisted. His face looked like his sister’s when preparing to burst into flames. “If Margit was working for the General, Marielle would have found a way to let us know.”
“Maybe she did,” Cap said slowly. “After all, how much did she tell us about her friend?”
Jean-haut’s eyebrows lowered. “Not much. A first name. A promise not to say more.”
“Sounds like a warning to me,” Rouge commented with a shrug. “What are you going to do about her?”
Cap ran his fingers over the fletching of his arrows.
He couldn’t believe Marielle would lie, but nor could he risk the lives of his friends.
“We learn who she really is,” he finally stated.
“Get to know her, see if we can catch her in a lie or else find the truth. Rouge,” he ordered, “let her have today and tomorrow to rest and heal. After that, put her to work.”
~
She was glaring at him again.
Turning his head to put his hood between them, Cap continued toward the edge of camp. He didn’t have time to deal with Margit right now.
Farrell neighed a gentle greeting as he passed. Cap gave him a quick pat and continued into the trees.
He needed to find a winter home for the horses. Marielle might take them, but six new horses in her stables might draw unwanted attention. If she wasn’t already compromised.
He needed to plan something to keep the General on his toes. But stopping guards and random travelers was risky when they could only escape on foot. And that was without a potential spy in the camp.
The heavens knew how she would make reports with a broken ankle, but her presence still made him wary.
He needed to—
An arrow buried itself in the tree just past his head. Whirling, Cap scrambled to bring his own bow up as he scoured his surroundings.
A tree branch shifted in his peripheral vision. As soon as he looked, it moved faster, stretching toward his arm. He dropped and rolled away, then popped back up with a dagger in his hand, scanning the treetops for the magic’s source.
Another branch twitched. Cap took a hasty step back—
And froze when he felt something thin and solid prick his back.
“I win this round,” Jean-haut said with smug satisfaction. “Something – or someone – on your mind?”
Fighting the urge to growl, Cap re-sheathed his dagger. “I sometimes think you have a death wish. One of these days, I’m going to loose my arrow before I realize it’s you.”
“Don’t change the subject,” his friend returned with a laugh. “If you had been paying attention, you would have heard me coming. Admit it: you were distracted.”
“Perhaps a little,” Cap allowed with a huff. Now the danger was past, his worries clamored for his attention again. Shaking his head, he angled himself toward the camp. “I had hoped a walk would clear my head, but you’re right – I shouldn’t wander alone while lost in thought.”
Jean-haut snickered. “And instead of asking me to join you, you return to camp? You aren’t seeking the company of our lovely distraction, are you?”
An image of Margit at the bottom of the cliff, one arm stretched out to the side and her chestnut hair falling over her face, danced before his mind’s eye.
He suppressed a shudder at the memory of the terrified scream that had brought him racing back.
He’d been too worried about the approaching storm, too trusting in the sense of safety at Marielle’s house, to watch for tails.
When he discovered Marielle’s friend in a crumpled heap in the snow—
He shoved the unhelpful memories to the side. “I’ve had my fill of lovely faces.” Snorting, Cap turned his back on the camp and gestured for his friend to follow. “She would need a lovely personality to earn my regard. And to not be a spy.”
“Do you still think she is one?” Jean-haut glanced over his shoulder. “She has a Ralnoran accent, and Rouge says Margit has given every indication of being a useless noblewoman over the last few days.”
“Caretaking skills aren’t necessary for a spy,” Cap observed. “Or she could be a skilled actor. Easier to pretend a lack of skill than to pretend one you don’t have. Besides, she seems confident of her skill with a bow, and she followed us for almost two days.”
“That’s true.” They walked in silence for a minute before the forester continued. “So you think Rouge could be wrong, but you want to know for sure. You’re aware of the solution, aren’t you?”
Cap stared straight ahead, pretending he couldn’t hear his friend.
Jean-haut smirked up at him. “You’ll have to spend time with her yourself.”
How important was it?
“You know you can’t resist,” his friend teased. “The truth—”
He broke off as a breeze swirled around them, lifting the dark hair on his head and drifting through Cap’s beard.
Cap’s scalp prickled. “That’s not a normal breeze.”
“No, it isn’t.” The light-heartedness vanished as Jean-haut spun in a tight circle. He spoke in a soft whisper. “If the user is close enough, the air will carry words back to him.”
“Can we follow it?”
The forester shot him a sharp look. “If it’s the king’s sapphire, your arrows will be useless against its wind.”
But General Valentin claimed that the king’s murderer had stolen the sapphire. If Cap could find it, he would have his culprit.
Jean-haut was right, though; he needed more information, not to mention a plan. If Cap showed up in Laurier with the king’s enchanted sapphire, the powerful wind gryphon, General Valentin would accuse him of the murder unless he had irrefutable proof.
And if Jean-haut was correct that General Valentin was responsible, then Cap would need to be extra careful.
Marielle had confirmed that one of the General’s aides and his maid sweetheart had been responsible for Daphne’s troubles in Castellia.
That meant the General had trusted underlings.
Ones who might not care if he had the wind gryphon, let alone performed a search with it.
A search...
The unnatural wind had died down. Keeping his voice low, Cap leaned toward Jean-haut. “Do you think he was searching for us? Or our unwanted guest?”
“Hard to say.” Jean-haut shrugged uneasily, glancing back toward camp. “To answer your next question: I don’t think he can get a precise location, but if he knows the path he sent the wind on, he would have a route to follow.”
The information sank in as Cap stood there, his mind working. “We should move,” he murmured. “Except that we don’t know the path to avoid.”
“Even if he heard us, we could be any Amitians hunting in the forest.” The forester offered a voice of reason, but his pinched eyebrows suggested that he didn’t believe it.
“But the breeze may also have passed through camp,” Cap observed with a sigh. “And the others may have said anything.”
Including intelligence reports. Perhaps that was how Margit communicated with her employer.
Assuming she really was a spy.
As they hurried back to camp, Cap shoved the matter from his mind. One problem at a time. Right now, he needed a new home for his people.