28. Strategy Management #2
“Except for the part where Magicians were turning into rotsbane in Keldori.”
“Only fools let themselves gorge on enough Skal to turn rotsbane. Those who do, deserve it.”
“And the Nightmares that Ferrin forces to transform? They deserve it too?”
“They got to spend their lives in Keldori. They should be grateful they at least got that much.”
Ciarán nudged at the back of my head, and I let the room and Caitria flicker from view.
I stared instead at a line of canvas tents pitched between trees of opal.
Soldiers milled in the light of green lanterns, swirling tankards of drink and singing at the sky while I crouched in the shadows of the petrified forest.
“It’s working. Their guard is down and most of them are drunk,” Ciarán whispered in my head. His cowled nose was visible in the bottom frame of my vision. “And I think I know where the Skal is.”
I snapped back into my seat in front of Caitria as she finished her letter with an overly aggressive flourish of her pen.
“Johann,” she called absently and looked up to stare at me. A short man with mousy hair and a long nose scurried into the tent and bowed. With eyes still trained on me, Caitria flicked her wrist and held the letter out. “Take this to Vanderfall.”
He bowed again, took the letter, and hurried away.
“Was that for the Baron?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Were you apologizing for bombing her big tree?”
“I don’t apologize. I simply explained the circumstances of the attack. I’m sure she’ll understand. She’s not very fond of Saergrims lately.”
“Which I personally don’t understand,” a familiar voice called from outside the tent. The canvas flap moved to the side, and Ferrin strode in. “Saergrims are some of my favorite people!”
He walked with confidence and bore no sign of injury despite the flood. I tried to straighten up in my seat the best I could with my hands still bound behind me.
“Bravo, Just-Wren!” He beamed. “I didn’t think you had it in you, trying to drown a canyon full of people. It’s the sort of thing the Baron might do, but you? Who knew you had the bite?”
“Sorry it didn’t work.” I sneered, but Ferrin shrugged off the retort.
“Although, one thing has me concerned. Did my niece agree to that plan?” His brow furrowed as he crouched in front of my chair to be at my eye level. “I can’t imagine her agreeing to something so underhanded.”
“You’re not going to win her back.”
“No, I think I’m right to assume she had nothing to do with that plot.” He smirked. “She saved my life in the mountain, after all. She still loves her uncle. I know it. You know it. And she knows it.”
“She loves the man she thought you were,” I conceded. “But he never existed.”
“Neither did you.” Ferrin laughed. “She built a friendship on a version of you that wasn’t real.”
“I was a Nightmare, not a liar.”
“Has she figured out you lured us to the canyon on purpose yet?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not the one who killed her parents.”
Ferrin gave an amicable chuckle and retreated to a chest. He threw it open and rummaged around, clinking glasses together as he went.
“No, that was me I’m afraid, and I don’t regret it. But haven’t we talked enough about Bryony and Oren? I’m starting to get bored rehashing that night. Drink?” He straightened up and turned back towards me with a glass of red liquid. I recoiled in my seat. “I promise it’s not poison.”
He took a swig to prove its safety, but I turned my chin away.
“I’m only trying to be a good host,” he said, sipping on the drink. “Though I suppose it would be difficult for you to drink with your hands tied like that.”
“I’m good.”
“We’ll head back to the Rift in the morning. I’m sure dear old Gams will be a bit more receptive to negotiations with you around. And I’m dying to hear more about this secret door into Keldori that Cade mentioned.”
“Cade doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” I snapped.
“No? So you aren’t on a quest to enter Keldori through some secret means so you can reseal precious Gams from the other side?
” He paused to give me a chance to reply, but I remained silent.
He laughed. “And if you succeed, what do you think happens then? Everything goes back to normal? What makes you think I won’t pry the Rift back open? ”
“Because you’ll be dead.”
“By whose hand?” he sneered. “Yours? You had an entire lake at your disposal, and you still couldn’t kill me.”
“Then next time,” I hissed through gritted teeth, “I won’t use a lake.”
“Yes! I like this new Wren! She’s fun! Skalterra is changing you. Making you full of fire and vengeance.”
“Skalterra’s not doing that. You are.”
“Then you’re very welcome, and I’m so sorry. Because, unfortunately I do need the information you have about this secret door into Keldori, and I feel like that is not information you’re going to willingly give. So, this new, fun Wren, I’m going to have to break her.”
“Wren.” Ciarán’s voice in my head had a tight edge to it.
“I’ve got this,” I promised. “Have you found the Skal yet?”
“Maybe. Just keep him busy, but if he starts to hurt you—”
“I said I’m fine.”
Ferrin stepped closer, finishing off the drink. I settled back into my seat, comfortable in the fact that I knew I wasn’t really trapped there. Ferrin only thought he was in control.
“Try me,” I goaded.
He grinned and glowing dirt swirled at his feet. The Nightmare rose, straightening his tall frame and staring blankly ahead. His lack of awareness to my presence was all too ironic. My father, after all, had spent my entire life pretending I didn’t exist.
“You will tell me what I want to know,” Ferrin warned, a hand on my father’s Nightmare’s shoulder, “or good old Dad here will turn into a rotsbane.”
I forced a smirk. “And did you do your homework on good old Dad?”
“Maxwell Brenton, PhD,” Ferrin recited. “Renowned geophysicist with a concentration in paleomagnetism. Acclaimed Von Leer University alumnus.”
“And not much of a dad,” I sniffed. “He would rather I didn’t exist and spent the last eighteen years pretending that was the case.”
“But you still care enough not to want him to turn rotsbane.”
“Not really. I’ve only met him once.” I looked up at my father. This version of him looked just like his real self, which I found more annoying than anything. He looked too much like me. “Besides, if you turn him into a rotsbane, he’ll tear up your camp and drink up all your Skal.”
“Then I guess the question is do you care about your estranged father more than I care about my Skal.” Ferrin’s grin glinted in the light of the Skal on his belt. “And darling Wren, you were seen crying as you exited Maxwell Brenton’s lecture at Von Leer the night before your interview with me.”
My cheeks burned. Ferrin had done his research then.
“So?”
“So, most of us don’t cry over the people who mean nothing to us.”
The air snapped with electrical magick, and my father’s Nightmare grunted as Ferrin transferred magick into his body.
“Stop!” I cried out. It took everything in me to not break through the Skal that bound my wrists.
“See?” Ferrin simpered. The magick ebbed, and Maxwell straightened up, his face still passive but a green aura shifted on the air around him, and the veins in his wrists looked darker.
“I read your admissions essay. It was good. Better than most the essays I read for work, but girls don’t write so scathingly about daddies they don’t care about. ”
My nostrils flared, and Ferrin forced more magick into my father. Bones snapped, and his form started to shift.
“Stop!”
“Then tell me what I want to know!” Ferrin bellowed.
“You already know everything! There’s a secret way to Keldori. We’re going to use it to reseal the Rift from the other side. I gave myself up to your army before we found out where to go next.”
“And why were you in Willow’s Grave? What brought you here?”
“Convenience. It’s the first major city we came across after leaving the mountains. We needed healers.”
Maxwell grunted at the surge of magick and fell to his knees as more bones and joints splintered.
“Ciarán?” I strained against the Skal bonds around my wrists as I cried out for him along our tether. “Please tell me you’re almost ready.”
“Hold him just a moment more, Wren!”
“He’s going to kill my dad!”
“She’s lying.” Caitria spoke up from her table. “We found them in a library. An old Lyrian named Lysanor ran the place.”
“Lysanor?” Ferrin cackled. “Not Galahad’s cousin Lysanor?”
“The very one,” Caitria purred.
“And what did you want from Lysanor, Just-Wren? What did she know?”
The journal was still there. Ferrin had the resources in Keldori to translate it.
I clamped my mouth shut.
Maxwell roared as magick coursed through him, turning his hands dark and elongating his fingers into claws.
“Come now, Wren!” Ferrin called. “If you let your father turn rotsbane, he’ll definitely never love you!”
“Stop it!”
“Tell me what was so special about the library!”
“No!”
A monstrous bellow formed at the back of my father’s throat. It was now or never. Ciarán’s time was up.
“Tell me!” Ferrin yelled. “Or be eaten by your own father!”
Blood pounded in my ears, and Maxwell screamed a ghastly howl, but through the noise, Ciarán whispered a warning in my head.
“Brace yourself.”
An explosion rocked the camp, and Ferrin stumbled to the side.
My hands were still bound, but it was easy to disintegrate my arms and reform them ahead of myself, bone blades already drawn, and Ciarán’s orange magick glowing in my fists.
Brown hair turned blue and tumbled forth as I grabbed my father by the shoulders. His eyes locked with mine, full of too-Lucid horror, and I rammed my bone blades into his gut.
He fell in a pile of dust across my boots just as a second series of explosions shook the tent.
“Find the Grimguard!” Ferrin bellowed at Caitria, and she bolted between us to exit.
Ferrin squared himself at me, glowering as green magick swelled in his fists.
“I should’ve known the whelp would be around, and I should’ve known you’d try something like this.
Where’s your real body then, Nightmare?”