Blades #2
The bed was empty. The abrupt emptiness of a fast departure, the sheets disturbed by sudden movement. The oil lamp on the side table had been knocked over, its oil spreading across the floor in a dark, unlit pool.
The guard lay across the threshold, his sword still sheathed. The night orderly lay beside the bed.
I went to the orderly first. He was alive. I found the pulse at his throat and watched his chest rise and fall in the shallow rhythm of unconsciousness.
At his throat: twin punctures.
Clean. Deliberate.
The mark of feeding rather than killing.
I checked the guard. Dead.
The guard had been watching for a monster. Varia had still looked like his lieutenant until she was close enough to kill him.
I sent one soldier to find Caen. The other called for the watch, then remained with me as I went to find Cato.
***
Cato was at the eastern wall. I told him what I had found.
“Where is Skip?” I asked.
“I do not know. He was in the eastern tower at sundown for the watch rotation. After that, he returned to the war room.”
One of the soldiers approached us. “The war room is in disarray. A chair was overturned, and there is blood on the stone beside the hearth. Not much, but enough to suggest someone was struck.”
Skip’s fear remained steady and alive.
I looked back at Cato. “Did you see Varia? Where is she?”
“I saw her briefly. She left shortly after sundown. She took a supply cart through the eastern gate. One large crate, covered and sealed. She said she was carrying provisions to the signal village.”
“Did anyone inspect it?”
His expression changed.
“No. She was Lieutenant Varia.”
There it was.
She had not persuaded Skip to leave the fortress.
She had gone to the war room while every soldier in Ely still trusted her, taken him by surprise, and rendered him unconscious before he could call for help.
Then she had hidden the High Commander inside a supply crate and carried him through his own gate under the authority of her rank.
She had not needed to defeat Ely’s defenses.
Ely had opened them for her.
“Nema,” I said.
Cato stared at me.
“She took him to Nema. Morvanna has him.”
***
While the garrison armed, search parties cleared every building, corridor, storage room, and stable.
They found nothing.
Skip’s fear had not diminished. It was present, steady, and real, and transmitting with total fidelity. The claiming connection was doing what it had been built to do.
He was alive. He was afraid. He was not here.
The garrison assembled in the courtyard.
Every available soldier stood in the courtyard, torches lit against the dark and breath making clouds in the cold air.
The soldiers looked back at me, their faces ones I had been learning for four months. They were uncertain. They were worried. They were waiting to understand what was required of them.
Cato turned to me.
“The village of Nema,” he said. “If it has been fully infiltrated—if Morvanna has been working it the way the signal suggested—then we are looking at an established position. Turned inhabitants. Command layer assets. Defensible position in the dark. We can move in at dawn.”
“That is eight hours,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “I am sorry. Unfortunately, we cannot risk the garrison in a night assault on an established position against unknown numbers. If we go in blind and we are outnumbered and we lose soldiers, we cannot replace them. The line weakens. The outpost weakens. The High Commander would not want…”
“The High Commander,” I said, my voice rising with anger, “is in that village!”
“I know that,” Cato said.
And he did. It was not that he did not care. He had spent years on this line learning the terrible discipline of weighing one life against many.
“I am sorry, Meghan. Truly. But I cannot send these soldiers into Nema in the dark.”
His expression tightened.
“They are turning the villagers now,” I said. “Eight hours gives them enough time to finish the turning and send the newly turned into the surrounding settlements. By sunrise, Nema will not be one occupied village. It will be a dozen moving threats scattered behind the line.”
“That is a possibility,” Cato said. “It does not justify sending the garrison into an established position at night.”
I stepped closer. “If we wait, we give them time. That is not the safer choice. Morvanna chose the night because she believes it belongs to her. I am not willing to give her eight more hours of it.”
Cato said nothing and shook his head.
The courtyard was very quiet.
I continued to feel Skip’s fear. Steady and real and continuous. I felt this with the certainty that the claiming bond provided. He was alive.
The conclusion I had given Cato settled into place with greater clarity. Morvanna had neither killed nor turned him. Turning him would have severed the bond, and a severed bond was useless to her. A dead claimed was a grief, not a lure.
She was keeping him alive and hurting him, allowing the resulting fear to travel to me. The fear was the signal. The signal was designed for one specific receiver. Me.
She was not holding Skip. She was holding the thing that would bring me out of these walls after dark, through the sworn order, past every soldier who had witnessed it.
Morvanna had built a trap specifically shaped for me.
My throat tightened.
The tears arrived without my permission, which was extremely inconvenient because they had no tactical utility whatsoever.
I let them come anyway. I let them come, and I did not manage them, and I did not maintain composure. I felt what I felt. The precipice of loss. Eight hours that he would not survive.
I wiped my face.
Tears were not going to save Skip. I was not going to mourn him while he still had a chance. This was a time for resolve, not sorrow. If Skip’s life was going to be saved, I had to take action.
I climbed the broad stone steps at the base of the keep’s eastern face. The steps that gave height and were visible from the full breadth of the courtyard.
I climbed them, and I turned, and I looked at the assembled garrison directly.
“I am Scipio’s claimed woman.”
They looked up at me.
“I can feel him through the claiming bond right now. He is alive. Everything Varia did—her report from Nema, the supply cart, and her departure through the eastern gate—points to that village.”
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The torches moved in the wind.
“Morvanna is attempting to lure me out of this fortress. Morvanna thinks I am an easy target. Alone, she might be right. But I am not alone. She did not account for the rest of you.”
I looked at the faces. The soldiers I had eaten breakfast with for four months. The soldiers who had started talking to me the way they talked to each other.
“And every one of you knows that if it were you in that village right now, he would already be riding. He would not be standing in a courtyard calculating the odds. He would be coming to save you.”
I paused and made eye contact with several members of the garrison.
“Your High Commander is in that village right now. He is alive, and we still have a chance to save him.”
I swallowed hard and raised my voice even higher.
“But this isn’t only about saving your High Commander.
It is about securing these lands. If Morvanna is allowed to hold Nema until dawn—to fortify it and use it as the foothold she has been trying to establish behind this line—then the road to Newardia opens.
The road opens because the defensive line has been breached from behind. ”
I looked at Cato.
“You know this. You have studied that map longer than I have.”
Cato said nothing.
“The odds tonight are long,” I said. “I am not going to tell you otherwise. We are going into an established position in the dark against unknown numbers and we do not have the sun with us. Line Marshal Cato’s calculation is correct. Going in there is not the safe choice.”
I reached down and drew my sword. The sound of it leaving the scabbard was very clean in the cold air.
“I have been watching this garrison for four months, and safety is not what I have seen optimized for. I have seen something else.”
I looked at the faces in the torchlight.
“I have seen you stand in the dark against something that does not stop. You do this because the alternative is unacceptable. Because behind this wall, there are villages. Farms. Children. Those children are safe because of you. You stand between them and the darkness.”
I held the sword up.
I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“We burn against the darkness! That is what this garrison is! That is what the line is!”
Cato looked at the sword. He drew his own and raised it.
Across the courtyard, blades left their scabbards as one, the metallic sound filling the air. The garrison raised them.
I turned toward the gate.
The garrison followed.