Chapter 11 #4
“Kacha must have figured out we intend to recruit or defeat Namati. In order to confuse him, we need to make him think we are going north.” I raised both of my eyebrows, looking between the people in the room. Sagam nodded, understanding immediately.
“We want him to think we’re going to the Northern Kingdom to rally support,” Tallu said. “He will think we are returning with northern warriors.”
“He will be hesitant to follow us,” Saxu agreed. “The north was the one campaign he never participated in. His only knowledge of it was the cold and the losses.”
“Airón,” Irad?o’s voice was quiet, her next words in Northern. “You wish to lead one of the emperor’s enemies straight to your mother’s door? Straight to the Silver City?”
“He would never go north,” I said, answering her in our mother tongue. “He doesn’t have the ships. He would wait for us here, prepare here to fight northern warriors.”
“You don’t know that,” Irad?o hissed. “You risk our kingdom on this folly. You put the lives of these imperials above the lives of your own people—”
I shook my head once, and Irad?o quieted. I knew Tallu spoke Northern, and I suspected that Saxu had picked up enough during his campaign against the Northern Kingdom.
“At sunset tomorrow, I will swim through the waters, cutting the lines. When all of our ships have passed through in the night, we set off the explosives. Kacha will assume he destroyed at least one of our ships.” I frowned.
“Then we leave behind a map? Or something else, indicating our destination.”
“Letters,” Tallu said, his eyes catching mine. It would not be the first time we used fabricated correspondence to frame a narrative. “Letters from your… father in Northern that indicate his support for my rule.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, letters. That way, we can put enough of them in the water that a few are sure to wash up on shore with the debris.”
“We can use the debris from Kacha’s own ships,” Saxu said. “With debris and evidence, he will believe the story we spin.”
“That still doesn’t mean you should be the one to go, Prince Airón,” Sagam said from the door. His tone was reasonable, and it brought everything into quick focus.
I glared at him. “Can you swim in treacherous waters? Because I can.”
“It is unreasonable to risk the consort’s life on this mission,” Sagam said. He glanced at the door significantly, and I looked as well, realizing Asahi was on the other side. What would the man who had acted as my bodyguard say about me risking my life?
“I don’t think it’s for either of us to decide,” I said finally. I turned to Tallu, hoping that my eyes told him everything he needed to hear.
I couldn’t trust this task to anyone else. There was too much risk, too much chance that they would make a mistake. And if they did, then everything was over.
Kacha was a snake, and if he had set the mines, then he had people nearby who were ready to attack as soon as they went off.
Tallu drummed his finger once on the arm of his chair, his jeweled rings reflecting off his golden skin. “General Saxu, choose your best men. Prince Airón will be leading them.”
Over the next day, the boats at the rear of our convoy collected as much of the shipwrecked wood as they could. Irad?o and I wrote nonstop, fictitious letter after fictitious letter, each different, but with the same undertones.
Yes, King Rimau supported Emperor Tallu’s rule. He was pleased that his son was bringing his new bridegroom home. Yes, the north could supply soldiers, with the understanding that recompense would be paid after the Imperium was conquered again.
When we were alone, no soldiers or Dogs guarding us, Irad?o turned to me and hissed, “I have backed you in this foolishness. I have supported your love for a man you were raised to dispose of. But if you think I am going to let you lead his enemies to the north… Your mother did not simply send me to find out why she is now in possession of imperial nobles and an air mage. She sent me to find out whether you had gone mad. Whether you had lost your sanity or your heart and put our nation in danger.”
“I can already feel the chill of winter on the wind,” I said to Irad?o.
“It comes early in the north, so early that it would be suicide to attempt the voyage now without a northerner to lead the ships. Do you think Kacha has any northerners at his disposal? If Tallu dies now—if Kacha catches him—that means General Kacha coalesces all of the power in the Imperium. You have not met the man, but he is terrible. Our war against him would cost the north the rest of the whales, and a generation of young warriors.”
Irad?o exhaled, the sound nearly a sigh. “You do not ask for much, cousin. Merely that I trust the Emperor of the Southern Imperium.”
“I don’t ask that you trust him. I ask that you trust me.”
Irad?o made a face, but returned to writing the letters.
Before we left, Lerolian reported on the soldiers I was taking with me. He had been observing them for days. There was no choice, and little other entertainment. Most of them were good men, one was a drinker, but none of them had done anything to indicate they would be a danger to me or Tallu.
Then it was time, the sun beginning to set. The other soldiers had already gotten into the small boats. I started toward the latter, but Tallu grabbed my hand tight, pulling me against him, kissing my lips so fiercely that I lost my breath.
When he pulled back his eyes searched my face and he leaned forward, growling into my ear. “I’m letting you do this not because I want you to risk your life, but because I would not trust your life to anyone else.”
I shivered, knowing that it meant he saw me as more competent than his Dogs, more capable than his soldiers, and more deadly than anyone else in the Imperium.
I climbed down the ladder into the small fishing boat that the scouts had taken earlier. One of the scouts was already at the helm.
Looking up, I saw Tallu on deck, staring down at me. His eyes said more than his words had earlier and I licked my lips, feeling the echo of his kiss.
There was a crack of electricity, and I heard the voice of the electro magic urging the boat into motion. With a soft buzz, we headed downriver.