Sentence
That was how Captain Nuhzar found him: staring into the distance, contemplating inscrutable motives. Math didn’t notice until a hand clapped down on his shoulder—he spun, edgy and tense, instinctively ready to defend himself.
Captain Nuhzar raised an eyebrow. “Nobody’s attacking you here, Kaven.”
Math exhaled. “No. Sorry. I’m just … jumpy.” He paused. “What did they say? No one’s told me.”
“I’m a captain now,” Nuhzar reminded him. “You should show more respect.”
Nuhzar’s fingers locked around Math’s arm as the captain steered him into the courtyard. “They’ve decided on an all-out assault. Two battalions. Over two hundred knights. We leave tomorrow and you’re riding with me.”
He didn’t stop walking. “Tonight, we’ll check the armory to make sure they can kit you out. You should get something to eat and a full night’s sleep.”
Math pried the man’s hand off his arm. “A full-on assault on who?”
They couldn’t possibly mean to attack Lomar. It was an entire continent away. Two battalions might overwhelm local forces, but that wasn’t nearly enough to invade another country. Were they starting a war with Kaliri? Possible, but it would also be ignoring the real threat.
It had to be that or …
Math shook his head, dreading the answer. “Please tell me they’re not attacking the Parnathi.”
Nuhzar grimaced and looked away. “If I did, I’d be lying.”
“Gravefucker,” Math muttered, ignoring Nuhzar’s disapproving look. “They have the reports. You were at two of the battles. You know how this ends.”
With a lot of deaths. He wasn’t a giant fan of fighting the Kaliri, but at least in that instance, the dead didn’t return fighting for the other side.
Admittedly, given that the Kaliri were ultimately being led by a grim lord, maybe that was a bad example.
Nuhzar grabbed his arm again, steering him farther aside, eyes scanning for eavesdroppers. “I’m not supposed to discuss this with anyone but my lieutenant. We have our orders.”
Math dropped his voice to an angry whisper. “How do the most powerful leaders in the Order look at what happened to Isofal and think they have enough information to fight that?”
When Nuhzar’s temper visibly spiked, Math added, “That’s not sarcasm. Did they explain themselves?”
The captain scowled. “What choice do we have? Isofal isn’t the only place those monsters have attacked.
” He took a breath, steadying himself. “Yes, the commanders gave their reasons. They’ve been tracking strange incidents and disappearances.
Only two Queens remain, with maybe a dozen knights—fifty people, counting civilians—under their control.
Two hundred knights should be more than enough. ”
“Fifty?”
Nuhzar scowled. “You’ve picked up some bad habits gallivanting with that woman—namely, questioning orders.”
“You of all people should know I’ve always questioned orders.” Math wrinkled his nose. “How do they know it’s only fifty? That number’s too low.”
Nuhzar raised an eyebrow. “I should think that’s obvious. That’s how many people are missing.”
“Are they counting the dead in that number?”
Nuhzar hesitated.
“I told you what the Queens can do with corpses. I told them.”
Nuhzar’s jaw clenched. “I know.”
“We didn’t burn our dead, did we?”
“No one does that anymore.”
“The Souna do. We should seriously consider following their lead. Because we won’t be facing fifty people tomorrow,” Math said grimly.
“We’ll be fighting everyone who died at Kegomar, Isofal, during the ambush on the road, and the train attack.
I’m not even sure the bodies need to be fresh.
I’m just hoping. Because if I’m wrong, then Tri-Mother help us if those Queens find a cemetery. ”
Nuhzar backed up until he hit the stone wall of the chapter house, then slowly slid to the ground. He’d never had the most expressive face, but the emotion was clear enough: despair.
“I know,” Nuhzar whispered.
“Then why are we doing this?”
He shook his head, eyes glassy, unfocused. “I believe you—but they didn’t.”
Math recoiled. “What? What do you mean?”
“They believe the trees exist, obviously. They’re dangerous grimmocks that need to be destroyed. But they think those dangerous grimmocks are under the control of one or more grim witches. Anything else is unreliable testimony witnessed while under the effects of hallucinogens.”
“The spores are more than hallucinogens!”
“They leave their victims in a heightened state of suggestibility, which won’t be a problem if we get to any infected knights and cure them quickly enough.”
Math could’ve cried. “You really can’t. You can cure the part that makes you see things, sure, but that isn’t what makes them so dangerous.”
Nuhzar frowned then. “The Queens’ control doesn’t go away if they’re purged?”
“No! Do you really think that Rabu and Yihura wouldn’t try to cure themselves?” Math clenched his fists. “What happened after I left?”
Nuhzar wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“What happened?” A sharper dread prickled up Math’s spine. “What did Talu say?”
He’d looked so damn smug.
Instead of answering, Nuhzar asked: “Is there anyone else who can corroborate your story about Huraiik? Another witness?”
Math sat on the cold flagstones, heedless of the chill seeping through his clothes. His tongue felt glued to his throat, but he rasped out: “Kai was there.”
“So that’s a no, then.”
He grimaced, but didn’t argue. “What did Talu say, Alik?”
“That you mean well.” Nuhzar wouldn’t meet his eyes. “But also, that he thinks you’re relapsing.”
“Relapsing from what?” A feeling of dread stole over Math.
“The trauma of what happened to your parents.” Nuhzar was still talking to the darkness, voice low, still angled away from Math.
Math’s breath hitched. “How is any of that new? Everyone knows my parents were killed by grimmocks. That’s the whole reason Talu ordered me to go to Kegomar with you in the first place.”
A pause.
“That’s not what Talu told the commanders.” Nuhzar exhaled slowly. “He said you killed your parents.”
“… What.”
Nuhzar’s voice dropped. “You manifested early, although who can say whether your powers provoked your parents’ abuse or were in response to it. When they started beating you, you reached out to the plants, and your parents’ death was the result.”
Math gave a single, shocked exhale. “He told them I was a grim witch.”
“He never used those words.” Nuhzar sniffed. “Several of the commanders even congratulated him on your ‘rehabilitation.’”
Math couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be happening.
But Nuhzar wasn’t done. “Talu says Huraiik is a hallucination. You feel guilty about Huraiik’s death and you’re angry at Talu, so your mind is creating villains to destroy. Thus: the Queens, and Sanistral being a grim lord.”
“I trusted him.” Math’s voice cracked. “I thought he was protecting me. I thought he—” But he couldn’t finish the sentence. The words shattered in his throat. His hands were shaking.
Math scrubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, but his reality stubbornly refused to change from this utter nightmare. “And they believed that?”
“Which one would be easier to believe? That one of our nation’s political rivals has been a grim lord all this time and we just never noticed?
That an entire race of sentient, magic-using killer trees have been living in one of our forests?
Or that you’re a troubled young man with an overactive imagination? ”
Math ground his teeth to keep from screaming.
“What about the Kaliri? What about the weapons?”
Nuhzar waved a hand dismissively. “An intriguing development, but there have been no other attacks, and they really only have your word that matters happened the way you said.”
“The letters—”
“Maybe you wrote them. They were, after all, written on Isofal paper.”
“A truth spell—”
“You believe it, Talu said. You’ll pass any such test, because you believe it’s the truth. So that won’t work. And anyway, they’re not going to war with either Kaliri or Lomar over the deaths of a few Idallik Knights, even if we had evidence.”
Math laughed sourly. “I can’t believe that man has managed to absolutely ruin my life this many times in less than two weeks. A few hours ago, everything was being made right. Now? It’s somehow even worse than when I started.”
“No one is suggesting that you be kicked out of the Order.”
Math scrambled to his feet. “No, they’re just suggesting that I’m insane.
That I cannot be trusted. Damn it, Nuhzar, at least before they let me watch the novitiates.
Do you really think anyone’s going to let me near those children now?
” Math rubbed his eyes. “How many people did we lose at Isofal?”
Nuhzar didn’t answer.
“How many?” Isofal alone typically housed at least three hundred knights. Besides the people the Order had lost at Kegomar, they’d lost still more to that Kaliri ambush. That wasn’t even counting civilians, or what the Queens might have claimed in other cenobium attacks.
“More than we’re bringing,” Nuhzar finally answered. “If you hadn’t woken Kaiataris, we would’ve lost everyone.”
Come day after the next, two hundred knights were going to ride off in the forest and find themselves outnumbered.
Not by grimmocks, although certainly the grimmocks they’d faced back in the grasslands had been proof that even a single grimmock could be lethal.
No, instead they would find themselves outnumbered by people with all the skills and knowledge of Idallik Knights, and any people the Parnathi had taken to be trees, and the Queens themselves.
They weren’t just going to be overwhelmed, they were going to be slaughtered.
Math hadn’t even thought they were prepared to fight the Queens.
His fellow knights had no clue what an immortal sorceress who had mastered wild magic could do.
Math didn’t even know, except he suspected it was something very close to “anything she wanted.” He only knew there would be two of them, plus their newly grown green knights. The Idallik Order was unprepared.
“I need to make preparations,” Nuhzar announced.
“I’m going to go…” Math said, gesturing toward the rest of the cenobium, “see if this place has a room for screaming or something.”
“You do that,” Nuhzar said absently, and walked off himself.
Math watched him go as he wiped at his eyes. He felt inside his coat. His hand closed around the regent’s token. Before this conversation, he’d wondered if he dare use it. Now, he didn’t dare waste it.
Otherwise, two hundred knights—himself included—would ride off to their deaths in the morning.