War Room #2
“Skip is also right that permanent night patrols outside the walls are unsustainable.”
Skip’s expression did not change. I felt something adjacent to amusement.
“You are both correct,” I said. “The question is not which approach to choose. The question is what third approach addresses both problems simultaneously.”
Cato looked at the map. Then at me.
“And you have one.”
“I have a starting point,” I said.
The room had gone very still.
“You need early warning without permanent depletion. Watchtowers cannot see everything at night. Agreed. Permanent patrols deplete your capacity. Agreed. But what about the villages themselves?”
I pointed to the settlements behind the line.
“Every village behind the outposts has people who grew up there. People who know the terrain, who know their neighbors, who would know something was wrong before any patrol from this garrison would. You do not need to patrol the villages constantly. You need to communicate with them.”
I touched one of the pale wooden village markers.
“A signal system. Something simple enough that a farmer can use it while terrified and fast enough that a garrison can answer.”
Fen leaned closer to the map.
“Signal keepers,” I said. “Designated people. Two per village at minimum, preferably more. A fixed signal point. A protected fire position. A pattern simple enough that no one has to think under pressure.”
I looked at Skip.
“You keep the watchtowers manned. You don’t thin the patrols. Instead, the villages signal you. Beacon to tower. Horn to wall. Something clear and visible, with a secondary sound signal for weather. You answer the signal, not a fixed route. That way, you keep your strength where it matters.”
I gestured slightly, laying it out as plainly as I could.
“The villages get an early warning system and the certainty that someone is watching for it. And if Morvanna slips the line and reaches a village, you send a force to intercept, not a constant patrol that is already spread too thin.”
I felt Skip’s focus sharpen. The steady intensity of him testing the idea from every angle, the full weight of his attention turning toward the problem.
Beneath that focus, something else stirred.
Pride.
“The signal system would need to be simple,” Aldis said.
He was the older of the two male High Commanders, and he had been silent since I entered. Not the silence of someone waiting to speak. The silence of someone listening.
“Something that cannot be mistaken for an accident.”
“A fire,” Fen said. “A specific configuration. Two fires mean contact. Three means turning in progress.”
“That works in clear weather,” Cato said. “Not in the mountain fog.”
“Then we add a secondary system,” I said. “Something auditory. A horn pattern. Simple enough to remember, distinct enough not to be confused with anything else.”
I moved one of the pale village markers closer to the nearest watchtower.
“I can write out the protocol. It does not need to be complicated. The best systems are not complicated.”
Cato looked at the map for a long moment. At the markers. At the villages.
“It does not solve everything,” he said.
“No,” I agreed. “But it makes quiet infiltration significantly harder, and it does not cost you the capacity you need for direct defense. You buy time. Time is what you need right now.”
He was quiet for another moment.
Then he looked at Skip.
Cato met Skip’s eyes—the wordless communication of two soldiers who had worked together long enough to need very little spoken aloud.
Cato studied the map for a long moment. The incursions. The villages. The pattern I had traced.
“The analysis is sound,” he said finally.
He said the words like he was paying a debt, in full, on time, and without enjoying the transaction.
“The signal system is worth developing. It is also worth saying what it is not. Farmers are not soldiers. Terrified people forget patterns. Half these villages will light a beacon for a loose cow in the first month, and every false alarm will cost a response we cannot spare.”
“Probably,” I said. “False alarms are a cost. A turned village is a catastrophe. I know which one I would rather budget for.”
“It is worth developing,” he repeated, to Skip this time, as though routing the concession through the chain of command made it easier to issue.
Skip’s attention remained on the map.
“Then we develop it across the line,” he said. “Not only for Ely.”
He looked to the other High Commanders.
“Each outpost reviews its own attack pattern against this one. Same intervals. Same changes in force size, frequency, and direction.”
Then his gaze moved to Cato.
“Begin drafting the protocol. Signal points, response routes, horn patterns, beacon configurations. I want something we can test before nightfall.”
Cato gave a short nod.
Then Skip looked around the table again.
“If Morvanna is testing the spaces between our walls, we stop thinking like five separate fortresses and start answering like one line.”
No one argued.
Skip caught my eye across the table.
I felt the warmth first. Then the satisfaction, deep and unmistakable.
He had expected me to be clever. I could feel that. But this was something sharper than expectation. This was the pleasure of watching me step into his domain and become more than even he had known to anticipate.
Then the other thing arrived. Wanting. Raw need.
It moved beneath the satisfaction, controlled but unmistakable, a slow heat he was managing with notable effort and not entirely succeeding in hiding from me.
The High Commanders were still talking. Skip was still listening. I knew he was listening because command was too deeply built into him to abandon.
Part of him was entirely with me.
His expression did not change.
He was very good at keeping his expression exactly where he wanted it.
Through the bond, however, the wanting deepened with pronounced clarity.
***
The meeting broke apart slowly, the way these things did. The other High Commanders had outposts to return to and decisions to carry back with them. Cato was the last to leave, bent over the map with Skip for a final exchange about the Stonegate disposition.
After Cato left, the war room held only Skip, me, and the smell of tallow candles burning low.
Skip did not say anything at first. He stood for a moment with his hand flat against the wood.
“Come with me,” he said.
We walked to his quarters without speaking.
I could feel the wanting in him, no longer managed now that there was no room full of commanders requiring his attention. It moved under everything, steady and warm and growing less patient by the step.
He closed the door behind us. The fire had been maintained in our absence, and the room was warm, gold light moving across the stone.
When the door was closed, he looked at me.
“Do you know what you did in that room?” he asked.
“I proposed a signaling system.”
“You walked into a room of five High Commanders and a Line Marshal who did not want you there. By the time you finished, they were seeing the line through your logic.” He stepped closer.
“Cato has not conceded a point in a strategy session in the six years I have known him. He conceded yours. He hated it. He conceded it anyway.”
“He still doesn’t like me.”
“No,” Skip agreed. “But he respects your logic. With Cato, that is an achievement.”
He reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, his hand lingering against my jaw.
“You saw the whole of it,” he said. “The villages, the hunger, the pattern. It was extraordinary.”
I could feel his respect and desire braided together so tightly there was no separating them.
He gripped the back of my neck. The other hand found the small of my back and drew me against him. Then his mouth came down on mine. I caught my breath against him.
I could feel that this was not what he had brought me here intending to do.
There had been some plan in him when we entered the room—praise me, touch me, perhaps take his time with me in the privacy of his bed. Something deliberate. Something measured.
But then I had looked at him. Then he had felt me want him back. And all that careful command began to unravel.
I felt the hard length of him through his leather trousers, already heavy against me, and my body answered.
He knew. He could feel how wet I was before his hand ever reached me. He could feel the heat of it, the ache of it, the way my body had been waiting since the moment his wanting touched mine across the war room table.
His breath changed against my mouth.
“Meghan,” he said, low and rough.
I knew what he was asking. I knew he could feel the answer before I gave it.
“Yes.”
That was all it took.
He bent me over the heavy oak table.
He did it with a decisiveness that made my breath catch.
His hand pressed between my shoulder blades, guiding me forward until my palms met the heavy oak.
I was still in my shirt, still half dressed, my breath coming too fast as his body covered mine from behind.
My fingers spread against the wood.
His hands went to the fastening of my pants. He pulled them down my legs with none of his typical patience, as if the rest of me could wait but this could not.
His own trousers followed only as far as necessary, shoved down over his hips while the rest of him remained dressed, all dark fabric, hard muscle, and restraint coming undone by the second.
Then he was behind me. Close. Hard.
I felt the thick length of him press against me from behind. His hand slid between my thighs, and the sound he made when he found me wet was not controlled.
Neither was mine.
He could feel all of it—the heat, the ache, the slick readiness of my body for him. His other hand gripped my waist, holding me exactly where he wanted me, and for one suspended moment the room narrowed to his breath at my ear and the head of his cock pressing against my pussy.