Chapter 13
“I need to gather my team,” Vannesh said.
“No, we need to follow these tracks,” Carissa hissed. “They won’t last. By morning, the grass will have bounced back, and they’ll be lost forever.”
Vannesh’s face shifted into an almost pained expression, and he pressed his lips together.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “Carissa is very skilled. Anders and I will go with her, and you can go do whatever it is you need to do.”
Vannesh didn’t immediately relax, and I could practically see his mind churning over that. He must have seen the sense in what I’d said because he nodded.
“Be careful, my king,” he implored me.
“Send Reggie and Francis over,” Anders said.
“Good idea,” Vannesh said, and he reached out and put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “Take care of our king.”
“Always.” Anders returned the gesture.
Vannesh turned and stalked off without another word, and I looked at Carissa.
“Show us,” I said.
She nodded, and her dark curls bounced in their ponytail. Then she crouched down to inspect the tracks once more before she started to duckwalk away from the encampment.
Carissa led us in the direction Zall’s soldiers had come from with the black horse. She moved slowly through the grass, and I couldn’t tell what she was following, but I also had no idea how to track anything, let alone boots in lush grass like this.
She was an expert in these kinds of things, and I trusted her. Plus, Anders occasionally pointed in front of her and nodded like he could see the tracks as well, and that was more than good enough for me.
We headed in a generally straight direction away from the encampment and to the west. It wasn’t anything concrete, not even in the slightest, but I couldn’t help but think about the fact that the Silver Coast border was directly east of the encampment.
Carissa suddenly stopped when we were somewhere around three hundred yards outside the circle of tents.
“What?” I whispered.
“I don’t…” Carissa shook her head and looked up at Anders. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Yes.” Anders crouched low beside her.
I couldn’t help myself, and I stooped down with them.
Carissa pointed at a small patch of grass that looked vaguely different than the rest around it.
There was something almost squished-looking about the blades of grass, and I assumed that’s what a boot print looked like.
It made me think of crop circles, and how part of what made them fascinating was that the corn was never cut.
The crop circles that were most believable were only bent over at the base of the stalks.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The tracks turn suddenly,” Anders whispered.
“They were heading in a mostly straight line,” Carissa explained. “But here, they turn that way sharply.”
Carissa pointed northeast in a totally different direction than where we’d been heading.
“So…” I looked between them. “Do we keep following them?”
“Yes,” they both replied.
“Right.” I grinned down at them. “Lead the way.”
Neither of them needed to be told twice, but Anders let Carissa take the lead once more. We headed northeast for maybe another sixty yards before they turned straight north. After another five minutes, the tracks made another sharp turn that pointed straight back toward camp.
From where we were, the camp was a distant set of flickering lanterns and shadowy silhouettes of tents. I couldn’t even make out the shape of any patrolling guards, and I guessed we were at least a good five hundred yards from the outer edge.
We walked in silence, and as we drew closer, I tried to identify each of the largest tents by their country’s colors. By the time we were about a hundred yards away, I’d identified that we were heading directly toward the Silver Coast’s tent.
Carissa looked back at me as we moved closer and closer, and the tension in Anders’ shoulders grew with each step.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Carissa whispered.
I nodded silently. It wasn’t looking good, and our suspicions proved correct when the tracks led us straight to the back of the Silver Coast’s section of tents.
“Fuck,” I mouthed without making a sound.
Anders looked at me with his lips pressed so tightly together, they’d basically disappeared, and Carissa’s eyes were filled with anxiety.
The largest, silver-and-purple tent was so long that its backside reached all the way to the outer edges of the encampment, and the servants’ and soldiers’ tents were located on either side instead of behind like the other leaders’ tents.
It seemed like a serious lapse in security to have the royals’ accommodations exposed at the rear like that, but then I had another thought.
If the queen were conspiring with someone, it would be hugely beneficial to her to have an unobstructed section of her private quarters. There was a lot of evidence stacking up against Queen Sybil, but we still needed something concrete before we could make a move on her.
It was all circumstantial, and that wasn’t good enough.
Anders suddenly tapped Carissa and me on the shoulder, and he gestured frantically to squat down out of sight. As we ducked behind some stacked crates behind the tent, Anders tapped his right ear and strained his neck toward the canvas panels.
We settled in behind the crates, and I tuned my ears toward the inside of the tent.
“… he’s an idiot,” Queen Sybil was saying.
Carissa met my eyes, and we stared at each other as we listened to the queen’s words.
“He could ruin everything,” she said.
“It’s nothing we can’t handle, my queen,” a man said.
I didn’t recognize his voice, and I wondered if he was the man whose tracks we’d been following.
“Even idiots can fumble their way into ruining plans,” Sybil snapped. “He needs to be handled.”
“I agree,” the man said. “But we can’t act too rashly.”
“I know,” Sybil groaned.
She sounded annoyed but resigned to the truth of the man’s words. It wasn’t clear who the “he” they were talking about was, and my mind wandered through possible candidates. They might have been speaking about anyone, and I waited to see if King Giles would join the conversation.
“I don’t understand why it hasn’t taken effect yet,” Sybil said. “It’s been six months. He never should have lasted this long.”
“Yes, it’s very odd,” the man said. “Perhaps the last batch was… different than the previous. Unfortunately, that can happen with these… tinctures.”
“There’s no need to be so cryptic, Drezzen,” Sybil scoffed. “We’re alone.”
Drezzen’s only response was a soft grunting sound.
“Giles has been nothing but a weight around my shoulders since the day I was forced to marry him,” Sybil complained. “I long for the day I will finally be free of him.”
Holy shit.
Carissa’s head whipped around, and her eyes caught mine.
Something was going on with King Giles. That would certainly explain his general pallor and weakness, but I couldn’t tell if he was ill from some kind of disease or if something much more nefarious was at play.
Before I could wander much further down that thought track, Drezzen spoke again.
“It won’t matter much longer, my queen,” he said. “Soon, all your plans will fall into place.”
“Finally,” Sybil sighed. “We’ve had enough mistakes already. We can’t afford any more.”
“I live to serve you, Your Majesty,” Drezzen said.
I pictured a greasy-looking man bowing deeply at the queen’s feet and kissing her bare toes.
“If that were true,” Sybil said, “you would have learned about Dadan’s obsessiveness for his horse.”
“A grave mistake,” Drezzen said in a deeply regretful voice.
“It could have ruined everything, you moron,” Sybil snapped. “Thankfully, they seem to accept that it was a tragic accident.”
Holy hell, was she really so certain of herself?
“You must be more careful if this is to work,” Sybil said.
“I understand, Your Majesty,” Drezzen said, and his voice was muffled like he had his entire face pressed against something soft.
I wondered if he’d dropped to his knees and had his nose pressed to whatever rug covered the bottom of the queen’s tent.
“See that you’re more attentive in the future,” Sybil said in a sharp voice. “Or it will be your head that rolls.”
There was a long moment of silence. I ached to stick my head under the bottom edge of the canvas panel to see what was going on inside, but I rather liked it attached to my shoulders, so I stayed put.
“I’m bored of you,” Sybil said in a lazy voice.
There was a sound of rustling fabric and soft footsteps, followed by the scratching of a quill over parchment. A moment later, there were more footsteps and rustling fabric.
“Take this,” Sybil said. “Go. Now.”
“Yes, my queen,” Drezzen said.
“Shit,” Anders breathed. “Down.”
The three of us flattened ourselves as low to the ground behind the crates as we could manage, and I found myself sandwiched between Carissa and Anders.
His back was pressed against mine, but Carissa was tucked with her face very close to my chest, and her warm breath fanned out over my neck in the most distracting way.
Goosebumps rose up over my back and arms, and I forced my eyes closed to try to block out her presence as the bottom edge of the tent panel lifted away from the ground.
I pried one eye open to look, but the canvas in my line of sight hadn’t moved at all. I kept watching, and a second later, a man who was maybe five and a half feet tall with long dark hair stood up on the other side of the crates.
He paused for a moment, and my heart dropped into my ass. He had to have spotted us, and we were definitely busted. That’s all my brain could think, and the idea just spun through my mind on repeat like a bad pop song for what felt like an hour.
In reality, it was probably only about five seconds, but when adrenaline pumps through the bloodstream, five seconds can stretch on for an eternity.
Carissa clenched her eyes shut beside me, and Anders’ entire body tensed up behind me. They were both as paralyzed by the idea of getting caught as me.
“Get it together, Drezzen,” he muttered to himself.
I didn’t even dare to breathe.