Chapter 8
JO
I’m annoyed but not surprised to find the general waiting outside my billet when I return from dinner.
It’s been days since our last skirmish against the Strou and he’s dressed in his cleanest uniform, which tells me he visited my mother.
I give him a look that conveys my lack of enthusiasm for whatever it is he’s here to relay, before dipping inside the opening of my tent. He follows behind me uninvited.
I strike a match and light the oil lamp on the desk. “Just be out with it,” I tell him.
He adjusts the hand braced on the hilt of his sword at his waist. “You’re returning home tomorrow.”
I expected the order, but his words ring hollow in the small space.
Home.
I haven’t felt I had such a place in the years since I left Alaha. They’re not thoughts I voice as I take a seat at the desk.
I straighten a peg on the map. “I will not,” I say, looking up at him. “And you damn well know you have no place to give me any orders.”
He sighs. “Jo—”
“Unless you have any actual news to report, you can leave.”
Judging by the stern expression on Sam’s face, that was not the thing to say if I truly wanted him to obey. “You’ve done your due diligence,” he says, voice leaving no room for argument. “The men respect you. The people of Maile honor you. What else are you striving for?”
Absolution.
The thought occurs before I can stop it, and I hurry to shove it to the back of my mind. I remove one boot, then the other before looking up at the general. Concern shines back at me, and I reel in the anger that has lived on the tip of my tongue lately.
I lean back in my chair. It takes me a moment to choose my words.
And when I do, I hate the waver in my voice.
“You know, I never believed Kai when he would talk about the possibility of me being this … lost princess.” I struggle to swallow past the knot in my throat.
“And now I have an entire army behind me just because of a title.”
Sam leans further into the lamplight. “They follow you because you’re worthy of being followed.”
I wonder if he knows he’s lying.
There’s an entire faction of this battalion who resents me. I’m the very reason their brothers, fathers, and sons have died. All because I didn’t kill Edmond. So few have got close enough for even a chance to try before, and I squandered my opportunity.
Sensing my mood, Sam changes tactics. “Your mother wants to see you.” It’s his last card to pull and he knows it’s a good one. “She’s worried.”
“I wonder why,” I say, dryly.
He at least has the audacity to appear sheepish. “I haven’t told her anything she isn’t already familiar with. She knows what war looks like.”
My leaving for the border so soon after my return to Maile only served to rub salt in all of the unhealed wounds from my childhood disappearance. I hated to do it, but I had little choice. She knew it too, as much as it pained her to admit it.
“It wouldn’t hurt to check in with Drake and the status of the armada,” I concede.
He tries and fails to quash his enthusiasm. “I can have a wagon ready first thing in the morning—”
“No,” I cut him off. “I’ll leave in a fortnight.”
He must see the finality of my decision. “I’ll let Evelyn know.”
Muttering under his breath about rabbits, he disappears altogether. There one second, gone the next, like he never existed here in the first place.
Magic will never cease to amaze me.
I prop my chin on the heel of my hand as my eyes fall on the map.
The part of the border we’re currently guarding sits in an area between Mount Zallis and the rocky hillside of Strou.
I run my fingertips over the expanse of low-lying planes that have become our routine battleground before moving them up into Strou’s hills.
Today was one of the rare respites from their aggression, and despite spending the day closely monitoring for movement, there’s been none from what we can tell.
Their numerous campsites sit nestled within the many caverns dotting the hillside, protected from the elements while maintaining a perfect view of us. They’re impossible to ambush and we’re basically sitting ducks, waiting day and night for them to move in for the attack. It’s beyond frustrating.
My finger stalls on one of the largest caverns.
It sits the highest on the east side of a rocky outcropping.
We’ve frequently watched the Strou soldiers tote in their wild game kills.
They hunt in the heavily forested terrain over the hills and hang the animals at the cave entrance for gutting and skinning, letting the blood mark their location in bright red spatters.
It’s undoubtedly an arrogant display, knowing we are unable to scale the terrain without them having the upper hand.
My eyes catch on the thin ledge to the left of the cave’s opening for what feels like the hundredth time and—
Wait.
A thought forms, and I can’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me before. I jolt from my chair, quickly blowing out the lamp and yanking the map off the desk, sending the pegs scattering all over the ground once again. Rolling it up, I shove it under my arm as I rush out of my billet.
The camp is unusually lively tonight. Rejuvenated by the last few days of ease, the men and women congregate around fires as they drink ale and play cards and dice.
They greet me with cheers. A few even try to recruit me to join in their hijinks, which I politely decline as I hurry to get to the far side of the camp.
The billets become more dispersed as I reach the edge.
The atmosphere is more subdued, less boisterous.
Instead of smiles and waves, I’m greeted with polite nods and cautious eyes.
Most of these soldiers come from smaller communities outside of Maile’s capital.
Even here, in camp, they choose to post their tents away from the fray.
My mother never held favor with the rural farmlands and villages.
They’re still angry with the mess from the last war and have been the least accepting of my return.
They were fearful of what my reappearance would bring.
Rightfully so, considering war followed within a couple of years.
While I’ve done everything I can to keep the fighting off their farmlands, it’s done little to appease the naysayers.
I can’t say I blame them either.
I know which tent I need from the last and only time I’ve hunted Fredrich down.
Soldiers linger around a fire roaring. Voices dim to a whisper before stopping altogether at my approach.
I fight the urge to avoid their stares. These soldiers left their families, their homes, to fight in a war that has nothing to do with them.
The least I can do is look them in the eyes.
The slight head dips are purely out of courtesy, but it’s a courtesy I return in kind before ducking inside Fredrich’s tent.
Whatever the two occupants are discussing comes to an abrupt halt when I enter.
The younger soldier leaps from where he was lounging on his cot, discarding the book in his hands and reaching for the shirt tossed at the end of his bed to pull it on.
Fredrich is thankfully dressed. Judging by his stance and the belt swaying from a hook on the support beam, I arrived just in time to avoid seeing more than I needed to.
There’s a long moment where I’m staring at him, and he’s staring at me, eyes falling to the rolled parchment under my arm, and the soldier is staring at the both of us, frozen in place, dumbfounded.
Finally, Fredrich looks over at the other man, dismissing him with a jerk of his head toward the billet’s opening. The young man grabs his boots from under his cot and dips his head in a tight nod before scurrying out, and Fredrich reaches around me to ensure the entrance closes.
I waste no time in shoving the bedding from the opposite cot, assuming it’s Fredrich’s, and kneel as I smooth the map out flat.
Fredrich looms behind me. “This is very uncouth of you—”
I stop him with a singular question. “How many men do you think the Strou have in the hills?”
It takes a moment, but he eventually unfreezes from his position, moving closer to look at the map. “Five thousand,” he states. “Maybe six.”
“How many do you think are stationed per cave?”
He shrugs. “A couple hundred, maybe a thousand at most in the bigger ones. Why?”
I point to the ledge I’ve been fixated on. “This is their weakest point.” When I’m only met with silence, I look up to find his expression carefully blank and continue: “A man or two could easily ascend the southern face without detection. Smoke them out.”
A twitch—there—in the corner of his eye is his only tell. “It would need to be someone skilled.”
“Of course. And when they least expect it.” I reach over and turn the flame down on the lantern sitting on the small table nestled beside the bed, deepening the shadows in the tent. “And no one would see us at night.”
“Your mother would kill me if I aided you in such a reckless endeavor.”
We both know he’d have to tell her first. “I’m going to do it with or without you,” I warn. “And you know my mother would want you to protect me. That’s why you were sent here, is it not?”
His gaze drops to the base of my neck. “Your stones—”
“I wear the gyve for assurance,” I tell him. “I have a necklace. It’s smaller.” Not as effective, but the likelihood of my Match removing his own is … unlikely.
I await his answer, knowing he could easily turn around and tell General Samasu of my plans, which would undoubtedly get back to my mother. Something tells me he won’t, however.
“I’ll need to acclimatize my magic around them,” he says, eyes flicking up from my throat.
I nod, trying to reel in my excitement. “Is that a yes?” Anticipation already has the blood roaring in my veins.
There’s a flash of teeth when the shielder smiles. “Yes.”