Chapter 33 #2
She was losing control of her features and could feel her face twisting in pain. “They didn’t care about us. I lost my mother because of it; they drove her away. And once my father died, once I was all alone, they still didn’t care.”
The words felt sick and sour on her tongue, but she couldn’t stop them. “I will never forgive them for that.”
“Then they made a grave mistake.” Karvek swiped his thumb across her cheek, and she realized she was crying. “You didn’t betray me, then.”
She shook her head, afraid to open her mouth again.
“I need you to look into my brother.”
“What?” she blurted out, brow furrowed.
Karvek leaned against his large desk, stretching out. “I think he’s the mole. I want you to find out for me. I will arrange for you to go on a two-man mission with him, to see if you have what it takes to train as a Specialist. You’ll have him alone. Show me how useful you are to me.”
Pyetar. He thought Pyetar was betraying him.
Karvek was right, but this had been her fault. She wanted to protest, say Pyetar wouldn’t dare, but she had to give Karvek what he wanted; it was the only way to stay in his graces long enough to damage his standing. Besides, she needed to protect herself, too.
The thought of her report being what caused Karvek to destroy his brother for good… her stomach clenched again. That worried her more than being alone again with Pyetar.
“I will find out if he’s your mole,” Iryana promised.
Karvek’s eyes turned dark the way a beast’s did before tasting blood. “Good.”
Iryana tensed, summoning an arrow and nocking it against the string of her bow forging. In the direction she’d heard the rustle, the forest was now quiet. Pyetar lowered his pack to the ground, sword at the ready. They stood like that for a few minutes, waiting. Listening.
The forest was the deep green of summer, full of critters and birds scurrying around. It was alive. She finally relaxed and loosened her draw. It was a false alarm, but the last two hadn’t been.
When Karvek had said he’d send her on a mission with Pyetar, she hadn’t realized it would mean venturing so far from the fort. She knew Pyetar normally went alone, and he was gone for days on end, but these days just slipping away to the Dovaki Post felt dangerous enough.
This felt reckless.
When Pyetar started moving again, leading the way, he didn’t lose any of the tension lining his body. But that said little because he’d looked on edge since they were summoned for the mission only a few hours before they had to leave.
He had said little to her either.
Pyetar had told her to wear only half-armor for stealth and ease of movement, and to bring a warm cloak for the nights that were starting to gain a chill. Thankfully any real cold was far off; she didn’t want to imagine having to huddle together with Pyetar for warmth.
They had large packs on their backs, enough supplies to keep them warm at night and to supplement what they could forage for food.
It was hard to go hungry in the valleys during the summer.
Tart, red lingonberries. Shiny red clusters of hawthorn berries.
Even some early pine nuts. One only need walk a few paces to discover a new bounty.
They made it almost a whole day before Pyetar finally asked the question she’d been waiting for.
“Are you going to tell me what we’re really doing?”
Iryana gave him an unamused glance, one brow raised.
As a captain, he was technically no longer a Specialist and had only gone on a few missions on his own since his promotion. Still, she’d assumed it was an easy enough sell to ask him to try out a potential Specialist for training.
“Oh, come on. There’s a reason my brother sends me on these trips alone, and I know he talked to you a couple of days ago. He would never promote you to Specialist; he has been far too possessive to let his golden strategist go so far away.”
She sighed. In truth, she had never really considered not telling Pyetar, just debated the finer aspects of how to tell him. Finding a way to satisfy Karvek, use it to her advantage, and not throw Pyetar to the wolves had always been the plan. She just didn’t know what the plan actually was yet.
“Karvek thinks you might be a mole, and he wants me to find out.” A weight seemed to lift off her chest. She couldn’t take it back now.
Pyetar turned to her suddenly, his face a mask of confusion. “My brother would reward you considerably if you told him I was moving against him. You would earn his trust, his respect. Isn’t that what you’re trying to do here?”
She just shrugged, climbing over a fallen tree. “I have enough of his trust that he asked me to do this.”
Hopefully, before the time came, Karvek would ask for her help to move on the river brigades. On Nenad and Jesha. He had to be getting close, Myura River was close to bursting. Though perhaps he’d wait until spring.
“I told you I didn’t need you to protect me,” Pyetar growled.
Iryana summoned one of her arrow forgings and threw it at him sideways. Pyetar grunted softly as he swatted it away, and Iryana couldn’t help but smirk. He always seemed to bring out a part of her that was unguarded and reckless.
“Stop whining,” she ordered. “Do you believe in me so little that you think I need to sacrifice you to help my family?”
He shook his head at her, but his expression softened.
“Since you are not planning to interrogate me on my brother’s behalf, can I ask you something?”
“No.”
“Iryana.” Her name was a plea.
The sound of her name. A slight shiver trickled up from the base of her spine.
“Fine.”
“What happened between you and your family? You weren’t living with them, and didn’t seem to be close. But you clearly care deeply about them,” he trailed off.
Iryana didn’t know if she wanted to answer, if she even could. After dredging it all up for her forging, she wasn’t keen to touch those wounds inside her. They were still raw.
His expression darkened, and Pyetar turned away, seeming to draw his own conclusions.
She couldn’t stand seeing that look on his face again. Suddenly, she didn’t want to push him away again. For one moment, perhaps she could pretend she was someone else, someone for whom opening up was easy.
“Those years after the dakii came,” she started, but her throat tightened.
It took a few shaky breaths before she could continue.
She could feel Pyetar’s eyes on her, but she kept her own diverted to the trees.
“Those years, we were fleeing for our lives, losing each other and losing our homes over and over again.
It was the hardest thing I think anyone in my family had ever gone through.
But the years after that, once we were settled and had a home, a great wall to hide behind, were even harder for me.
“Seeing what the fighting had done to us, how some of us were permanently changed. Sometimes people can be so twisted and warped they don’t fit together anymore, not without hurting each other.
It changed me, I think. And I didn’t fit in; I couldn’t breathe around them.
I just kept messing up, and they couldn’t understand why.
“I wasn’t alone the whole time we lived at the post. For a while, I lived with my parents. And then my mom left. And then my dad passed.” It was such a gentle word for how he was at the end.
“And you were alone?”
“So were my sisters.” Iryana squeezed her bow tighter. “But they fit in at the main house; they had the rest of the family to lean on.”
He looked like he had swallowed his first response, a conflicted look crossing his face. But he just said, “You have sisters?”
“Two.”
“Do you miss them?”
Iryana wasn’t sure how to answer. It wasn’t just that she missed them; there was a place in her heart that ached for them constantly. That struggled with the years she had missed, especially with Misha and how fast she was growing up. Did they even consider her their sister anymore?
“Yeah,” she breathed. “I miss them.”
They walked quietly for a few minutes, listening for anything other than the soft crunch beneath their feet and the occasional light-footed scamper from in the trees. Iryana felt raw, like she had agitated a barely healing wound.
“I know what you mean about the dakii changing people.”
Iryana looked over at him. “Yeah?”
“My father was already general of the 18th Brigade when the dakii came, stationed in the hills between the great rivers. My brother was sixteen, a man in the army’s eyes, stationed with the 18th as part of his final training.
But I was far too young to have enlisted yet.
I was at home with my mother when it all began.
I had started some training with private instructors my father had hired, but mostly I studied with my tutors, read books and played with the other children where we lived. Gave my mother plenty of trouble.”
He smiled slightly at that, though his eyes were sad.
She couldn’t picture it, Pyetar as a small child running around playing tag and being a nuisance to his mother.
It was nice being able to talk about, though. Nice to not be avoiding each other.
“My mother knew we wouldn’t survive on our own.
” Pyetar sighed regretfully. “So before things got too bad, she brought us to where the 18th were stationed. It was bad. Terrible, really. The brigade used to be far bigger—a vast army of soldiers you couldn’t help but feel safe with.
Yet their numbers bled from the army as if it had an open wound.
It was like a siege, except there was no one left to maintain the supply line, no troops to replace those that were injured, nowhere to retreat to. ”
“I’ve never heard you or your brother mention your mother. Is she…”