38 Rhona
Rhona
Cleaning up after the Corisian attack on the city was easier than Rhona had expected. She’d spearheaded the cleanup, prioritizing
the damage to the barracks outside of the palace gates. The people of Astra needed to understand that this was nothing special,
that the attack was quick and easily overcome—even if it had been completely unexpected by the Iron Retinue itself.
Rhona’s only disappointment was that they hadn’t taken anyone alive, so there was no way for them to use the fight as leverage
against Corisia. The Corisians would deny the attack ever happened, and without a prisoner, a truth-sense witch couldn’t prove
Corisia was the source of the attack . . . it left Astra in a dangerous position. To start a war, or not to start a war—that
was Lord General Kerrigan’s next choice.
Rhona walked through the palace, aimlessly fiddling with the leather ties on her clothing.
She was free for the remainder of the day, and she felt undressed without her plate armor on.
She was supposed to have been meeting with Sir Jack today over breakfast and had wanted to discuss taking him to Corisia with her, but he hadn’t joined Rhona.
When she asked around his regiment, they had said they hadn’t seen him since the fight with the Corisian spies.
Rhona didn’t want to worry about him, but something about it was plaguing her mind.
Without thinking of a particular path, and lost in her own thoughts, Rhona found herself at the broad stone archway that led
directly to the cliffside gardens. Within moments of recognizing her surroundings, she realized that she had been subconsciously
searching for Maeve the entire time. Rhona found herself craving a discussion with the witch, if only to get the lady’s perspective.
A perspective that she had grown to trust.
She scanned the walkway ahead of her as she wound down the path, mist from the sea below washing over her on a cold breeze.
The winter chill was settling in and while Rhona was preparing, she hoped to be in Corisia for it. Though, she wondered if
she’d miss her discussions with Maeve if she did go all that way.
In the distance, she finally spotted Lady Maeve sitting alone at a bench, watching her approach. As she strode toward her,
Rhona saw Maeve gently tap the seat next to her.
“Good afternoon, Sir Rhona,” Maeve said, smiling.
“How long have you been waiting here for me?” Rhona asked as she sat.
Maeve chuckled, dainty and airily. “I was actually just enjoying the gardens and happened to see you,” she said as she elbowed
Rhona playfully. “I don’t actually see everything coming.”
Rhona squinted in disbelief, trying to assess if Maeve was telling her the truth or not. “Did you know about the attack?”
Rhona asked quietly. “Like, ahead of time?”
“I saw visions of an attack, but I couldn’t figure out where it was,” Maeve answered, staring into the distance before snapping
out of it and looking at Rhona again. “That’s why working with you is useful . . . it helps me put names to faces when we
talk.”
“There’s something I can’t get out of my head,” Rhona said, unable to stop herself from diving straight into everything that had been weighing on her the past few days.
“One of the Corisian attackers, they talked about . . . strange people. People with no breath, but who were walking. It made me remember some rumors that my old commander had mentioned before he left. Something about what Dr. Balet was working on . . . Have you seen anything about that?”
Maeve thought about it for longer than Rhona expected, a glassy look in her eyes as she reflected on the visions she’d had.
“The vision I told you about, with the golden bull’s head . . . it had a feeling of cold, of iciness. It’s the only thing
I can think of. I know that’s not helpful.”
It was more helpful than anything Rhona had had before, except she had no idea where this stone archway was.
“Can I ask you . . .” Maeve said cautiously. “What about this gives you such pause?”
Rhona pondered, wondering what the answer was. When Commander Hugo had left, he’d been different from who he was when he’d
first taken Rhona into his regiment. He’d become paranoid, arguing with Lord General Kerrigan almost every time Rhona had
seen them together. She had brushed him off at the time, assuming he was just vying for more power. But now, now she wondered if his anger had been for something.
She remembered one specific instance, a moment where Commander Hugo had taken her aside and told her that the Iron Empire
wasn’t as shiny as she thought it was. There was a nagging voice in her head now that he’d found something, been on to something.
“Something just feels wrong . . .” Rhona trailed off, an idea popping into her head. “I have a thought, come with me.” Rhona
held out her hand to Lady Maeve and the noblewoman twined their fingers together effortlessly as Rhona headed back to the
barracks. Her hand felt on fire where the lady’s fingers touched hers, and Rhona spent much of the walk trying to keep her
heart rate normal. What had this witch done to her?
It took the two of them nearly ten minutes to get to the barracks, which, in the middle of the afternoon, were all but empty as Rhona led Maeve over to the commanders’ quarters. The rooms here were bigger, brighter, and overall better—Rhona had dreamed about having one someday.
Thankfully, the Iron Retinue hadn’t chosen Commander Hugo’s replacement yet, so Rhona assumed that his room had been kept
as it had been. She slowly opened the familiar door; one she’d met Commander Hugo at hundreds of times over the years.
Sunlight poured in from the large window on the far side of the room, close to where his desk sat. Rhona remembered meeting
with him in this office, Commander Hugo backlit by the window, and he had looked the picture of an Iron Retinue commander . . .
until one day he hadn’t.
The room was more disheveled than she’d ever seen it, sheets crumpled into a ball on the bed and papers strewed across the
desk. Rhona headed straight to the desk, watching Maeve take in the space.
“Whose room is this?” she whispered.
“My old commander’s,” Rhona answered, perusing the writing on each of the papers for trigger words like lifeless, not breathing, anything she could think of that might fit.
“Why are we here?” Maeve asked, stepping toward Rhona.
“Commander Hugo abandoned the Iron Empire a few months ago, and he seemed distraught before he left. I assumed it was because
he was angry about a lack of power, but after what we’ve talked about, I’m wondering if there’s more to it.”
“You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for,” Maeve said quietly as she looked up at Rhona.
Rhona paused, looking down at Maeve, papers frozen in her hands, unable to process another compliment from the fair lady. “I have learned everything I know from soldiers better than I,” Rhona answered honestly, a blush creeping onto her cheeks. “But we must search quickly.”
Maeve nodded and began searching a small bookcase Commander Hugo had beside his desk. The two worked in silence, nothing but
the sounds of pages rifling and trinkets being moved.
“What’s this?” Rhona whispered, picking up a torn piece of paper that had fallen under the desk. Whoever had searched Commander
Hugo’s quarters must have missed it. The note wasn’t originally written by the commander, but Rhona could see the familiar
scratches of Hugo’s handwriting in the margins. The note looked like it was from Dr. Balet to Lord General Kerrigan, the doctor’s
letterhead stamped at the top of the thick paper.
Lord General, I have managed to extract the poison from the Rot and will be searching for my first test subject. Please provide
approval for where I should pull from now. Are we continuing to pull from the prison, or am I clear to take one of the knights?
I think it will be important to—
Rhona dived under the desk, searching for the second piece of the letter and hoping desperately that it had fallen somewhere
else hidden, but it was gone. She hoped it was in Commander Hugo’s hands; she worried it was in someone else’s.
Commander Hugo’s notes were a frantic scrawl: Who are they taking? What is the Rot? Does this have to do with the farmland being destroyed in the midlands? Is this where
Saoirse went?
Rhona’s mouth went dry at Saoirse’s name—one of the few other women in the Iron Retinue, she had disappeared before the commander
had left. No one had seen her.
“Does that say Saoirse?” Maeve said, peeking around Rhona’s arm to read the note.
“Do you know Sir Saoirse?” Rhona said, looking at Maeve, a feeling not far from jealousy rippling through her and settling
in her stomach. Maeve had reacted the last time Rhona had mentioned Saoirse too . . .
Maeve looked up at her, dark eyes questioning if she should answer. “Saoirse was my other . . . friend,” she finally said.
Rhona stepped back—Saoirse had been harboring a witch? Under all of their noses? She supposed it was hypocritical to be upset
about the very thing she was doing right now, but she found herself reacting as if she’d been betrayed nonetheless.
“The one who just . . . disappeared from your visions, like she died, but different?” Rhona asked.
“Yes,” Maeve answered, her voice thick with concern. “Rhona, we absolutely need to find that gilded bull archway. Being in
here . . . seeing this letter. I think these were all flashes of one of my visions. The gilded bull archway has to be the next thing we find.”
“What happens after the archway?” Rhona asked. Why couldn’t Maeve give more solid clues?
“It’s . . . nothingness. I have no idea why.” Maeve shook her head in clear frustration.
Just as Rhona was about to voice her confusion, she heard the familiar sound of plate-armored soldiers walking down the hallway.
She quickly grabbed Maeve, pulling her tight to her chest before pressing them both against the wall behind the door.
Rhona squeezed her eyes shut, hands pressed to the hard stone walls behind her. Don’t make a sound. She willed the witch to hear her thoughts, though she was fairly certain that wasn’t at all how Maeve’s magic worked. The
voices grew louder and then faded as the knights walked through the hallway without even pausing to look at the ajar door
that was meant to be fully closed.
Rhona slowly opened her eyes to see Maeve with her full and bouncy curls spread around her face as her head pressed back against
the wall, looking up at her. Rhona felt the urge to brush her fingers over the lady’s soft lips, to sink her hands into those
curls, to maybe even . . . No.
“Quick thinking,” Maeve smiled, pecking Rhona on the cheek quickly before ducking under her arm. “But we should go. You have an archway to search for, and I have a gossip session to get to.”
Rhona wasn’t entirely sure how Maeve managed to recover from stressful situations like the one they’d just been in so terrifyingly
quickly, but she was in awe of the woman as they walked out of the hallway with as much care and quiet as they could muster.