Chapter 28 #3
The magical glass felt cool in her hand, not warm and inviting. Besides, as she’d been thinking earlier, there wasn’t a way for Wreylith to reach her, even if the dragon could be convinced to help.
The door opened with a bang, revealing the rider captain, stone-faced and cold, with a sword pointed toward the interior of the carriage. Toward Syla.
Syla eased the figurine back into the pack, not wanting to draw her enemy’s attention to it, lest she take it, but the sharp-eyed captain caught the movement.
“Throw your pack out, and then, you, follow,” she ordered.
“What happened to the enforcers, Captain… ah?” Syla asked to buy time to think. She knew perfectly well what had happened to the men.
“I’m Captain Lesva of the Moonhunt Tribe, and what happened to them is the same that’s destined to happen to all gardeners who stand in our way and have no use.” The woman smiled coolly, without a hint of compassion in her eyes. “You have a use. For the moment.”
“Glad to hear it,” Syla murmured.
Something about the distaste—and was that hatred?—in the captain’s eyes made Syla wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for her if she hadn’t had a use. Then, presumably, her death would have been swift.
But she had a mission. She couldn’t let herself be killed. At least as long as the rider wanted something, Syla had hope of escaping.
“Throw out the pack,” Lesva repeated.
Syla eased to the door and dropped her belongings to the ground. The bow that Lesva had used to kill so many soldiers hung across her back with a quiver, white-feathered arrows sticking out of it. A lot of them. Maybe she’d already yanked those she’d used out of the bodies of the dead.
“Wouldn’t want to waste,” Syla murmured, climbing out as ordered and keeping her eye on the sword.
She would try to use her magic, she decided, but she had to touch someone to establish a link, whether to heal or to hurt. And Lesva didn’t look touchable at the moment.
“Is there anything you need in that pack to reach the shielder?” Lesva asked.
“I just need to be alive to access it.” Syla held up her moon-mark, knowing she wasn’t giving anything away. The riders already knew it was required to access and use the shielders. “And I’ve got food and water and candles.”
“Open your pack.”
As Syla knelt and did so, Lesva looked up and down the road. Expecting more enforcers to arrive? Or maybe she knew about Fel. But Syla had sent him away. She couldn’t hope that he would come to her rescue.
And Vorik? Syla had no idea where he was. Though she believed he had evaded capture, he had no way to know where she was. He might believe she was still at the temple. Even if he knew she’d left, it wasn’t as if he could ride his dragon over the protected island to look for her from the sky.
Syla suspected she was on her own for finding a way out of her predicament.
“Those candles are huge,” Lesva remarked as Syla pulled items out of her pack to show they were innocuous. Most of them were.
“I think it’ll be dark in the place where the shielder is stored.” Syla couldn’t tell if her captor was suspicious of the candles. Did she recognize the faint scent? “I want to be able to take notes and draw schematics.”
“You’re not going to get to do that.” Lesva waved with her sword to indicate Syla could close the pack with all the items inside. “Put that on, and start walking.”
Glad Lesva hadn’t forced her to cast the candles aside, Syla tied the pack shut and shouldered it, but she was wary, with dread curling through her stomach. “Walking where?”
“To the place where the shielder is stored.” Lesva echoed back the vague words. “You’re taking me there.”
“To what end?”
Eyes closing to slits, Lesva said, “I’m going to destroy it and bring its broken shards to General Jhiton. Then he’ll see my value and promote me. I’ll be his most trusted officer, not Captain Vorik.”
Syla almost asked if Vorik was still the general’s most trusted officer or if Lesva knew anything about his supposed affiliation with the Freeborn Faction.
After all, she’d attacked Vorik. She must have believed him an enemy at the time?
Or… had she? Maybe she’d simply wanted to get him, as a competitor for that general’s favor, out of the way at the same time as she tried to capture Syla.
“Together,” Lesva added, “we’ll destroy all of your shielders and claim these lush islands for our people.”
Together? She and… the general? Jhiton? Did she imagine being more than an officer for him?
“If you destroy all the shielders,” Syla pointed out, “the islands won’t be protected from aerial predators. They’ll end up as ravaged and dangerous as the rest of the world.”
“Not with our dragon allies guarding them. General Jhiton won’t make a foolish mistake. I know he has this all planned out. We will be triumphant.”
Something about the gleam in Lesva’s eyes reminded Syla of Sergeant Tunnok’s face when he’d been contemplating his political future and a son ruling the kingdom. Whatever Lesva wanted, it was probably more than a promotion.
Syla didn’t care about the specifics. All that mattered was that she couldn’t lead the woman to the shielder. If it came to it, she would have to die before doing that.