22. The Advocate
Chapter twenty-two
The Advocate
Imalroc forgot to bow. Or salute. Or do anything other than stare at the flesh and blood woman who laid claim to the only title that might deserve a shred of decorum.
“You’re the Advocate?” he asked. It sounded like a child’s question. His fingers curled into his palms. The soldiers around the table eyed him, especially when the woman came closer.
She chuckled. “I’ve been called worse.”
Almatra flourished her hand in the woman’s direction. “Imalroc, I present Feldlady Prentia Tythe. Our Advocate.”
Everyone seemed to wait for him to say something. He cast a glance around the expansive space. He didn’t think a rebellion’s war room normally had quite so many chandeliers. “Your home is very… large.”
Almatra sounded as if she stifled a snicker, and to his surprise, Tythe smiled wryly too. “It is. Big enough to house the seeds of an army.” She cocked her head, which only made her look more like a falcon. “May I have a word with you, Imalroc?”
He nodded stiffly and followed her as led the way across the room. A soldier stopped her before she left the ballroom. “Feldlady Tythe,” the soldier murmured. “Feldlord Calteak has arrived.”
Tythe sighed. “Well. He won’t be happy. Hold him off as long as you can and then bring him to me.”
It wasn’t until they left the ballroom that he realized a trio of green-cloaks followed at a discreet distance. Imalroc turned and scoured them with his gaze, but none of the three looked frightened. One of them touched the hilt of the shortsword hanging at their side.
The guards followed him into the room, where Tythe sank immediately into a high-backed chair. She indicated the matching seat opposite, and Imalroc went to it slowly. The back was high enough that if he sat, it would block a significant portion of the room.
“I’d rather stand,” he said.
Her eyebrows lifted, but she did not protest. “As you like.” She leaned back, lacing her hands. “How much do you know about our aim here?”
He couldn’t see her angle yet, but it was there, like a knife hidden in a sleeve. “Almatra tells me you wish to bring down the queen. And the battleboxes.”
“Quite right. Battleboxing is an abhorrent practice. And you’re correct too, that I’d like to see Kuraya gone.
But that begs the question of who controls Inofar if the monarchy is ended.
It is proving a thorny question for my Southern feld council.
” Her mouth thinned. “They are not convinced an end to the monarchy is required. Some of them believe Kuraya can be reasoned with.”
He waited.
One of her narrow gray eyebrows arched at his silence, but she continued.
“I need feld council votes to formalize this army. The council must be convinced that Kuraya is irredeemable and must be deposed.” Her laced hands flexed.
“I know opinions can be swayed, because I have seen it in a dear friend who was once a staunch defender of the monarchy. Lady Uralta Toriem.”
Imalroc did his best to keep from giving her any reaction, but his mind churned. “She’s missing,” he said at last, because the silence stretched too long. He couldn’t pretend not to have heard of the woman, or Tythe would know straight away that he wasn’t telling the truth.
“You know her?”
“I know of her,” he said cautiously.
“When this was all beginning, Lady Uralta wrote me a most intriguing letter. Insisted she needed to speak to me, that she’d discovered something that changed her view on the way forward.
But I haven’t heard from her since. My eyes and ears in the Kirinoll court have seen nothing of her.
” Tythe leaned toward him, her shrewd gaze fixed on his face.
“We must find her, Imalroc. She is trusted and respected; she could sway the feld council. I’m sure of it. But we need to find her.”
She had called him here because of his connection to the cousins. But if he told her where he’d last seen Uralta, he didn’t trust that Tythe would leave her in Etiana and Rerdas’s care. And then he’d be responsible for taking Rerdas’s beloved aunt from him. It would be a betrayal. Again.
“I don’t understand what you’re asking of me,” he said, trying to buy time.
Maybe he could tell her what he and Rerdas had discovered in Draal.
But there were so many gaps she might prod at if he tried to tell just enough that she could convince the council without revealing Uralta’s condition.
He wasn’t used to this sort of battle. It was either tell the whole thing or nothing at all.
“I know her daughter and nephew are lying about her being in the archipelago,” Tythe said. “When you were with them, did you hear anything about her?”
He frowned across the room, pretending to think hard.
“They argued some about whether she would have tolerated my contract. But they never said anything about where she was.” Looking back at Tythe, he lifted one shoulder ruefully and let it drop.
“They tried to keep up appearances. I don’t think they really know where she is. ”
“That is my concern as well,” Tythe said. One finger tapped swiftly against the top of her knee. “It’s possible she’s trapped somehow.”
He was saved from having to answer by a commotion in the hall. The bodyguards swung around, blocking the door before it could be shoved open.
“Prentia!” someone shouted, trying to force his way through. “Why am I seeing Southland Army uniforms all over your gods-be-damned property!”
Tythe stood and signaled the guards back. “Feldlord Calteak,” she said placidly, as a bulky man, his face crimson above the neat line of his beard, strode into the room. Another soldier followed him in, a woman wearing a green cloak and a grimace.
“Galada has been running me all over your bloody grounds trying to prevent me from speaking—”
“I wasn’t preventing anything, sir, only trying to show you the progress we’ve made.” The woman ran a hand over her shorn grey scalp, but when Feldlord Calteak whirled back to face her, she gave him a forced smile.
“Progress towards what? The reintroduction of the Southland Army does not have the council’s support. Kuraya surely has heard of this, and it explains her increasing belligerence!”
Tythe shot a speaking look at Imalroc and then flashed pacifying palms at Calteak.
“You know as well as I do that she’s testing her strength and our resolve.
But come, we’ll discuss it.” Flanked by the bodyguards, she herded the feldlord toward the door and spoke over her shoulder to the remaining soldier.
“Galada, see to Imalroc and Almatra, please.”
“Certainly, my lady.” The soldier waited until the noise of Feldlord Calteak berating Tythe had faded and then popped her head into the hall to call for Almatra.
The battleboxer slunk into the room and stood beside him, all her attention on the green-cloak. Almatra didn’t focus on someone like that unless they were a threat.
“We haven’t been introduced,” the soldier said to Imalroc. “I am Command Medallion Galada. I oversee three of our rally camps.”
“Do we ride for River tonight?” Almatra asked. “Ma’am?” she tacked on, when the woman’s mouth quirked down.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” Galada gave Almatra a severe glance before turning her steely gaze on him. “Imalroc, it’s my understanding that you wish to serve in the rally camps?”
He didn’t much like the sound of the word ‘serve.’ “I am willing to fight.”
“And can you train others?”
“I… can do that, yes.” He’d practiced technique with other battleboxers, but he’d never been responsible for teaching anyone else. It couldn’t be that hard if they had a bit of strength and the will for it.
“He’s needed in River,” Almatra put in. “We can leave now—”
Galada spoke over her. “All the rally camps need trainers, and River already has by far the most battleboxers.” She eyed Imalroc for a long moment and then shook her head. “But that might make you the best trainer for them. Yes to River, no to leaving tonight.”
Imalroc’s interest cooled at the ring of authority in her words. His instinctive reaction to commands issued in that tone was usually somewhere between insults and violence. From Almatra’s expression, she felt similarly.
Galada carried on, either ignoring or unaware of his response. “Your orders are to ride in the morning and report to Medallion Morbank two days hence.” As she swung away, Imalroc heard her mutter, “Eternals know he needs your help.”
Almatra waited until the Command Medallion had disappeared back into the great hall before speaking. “It takes some getting used to,” she said. “The career soldiers are all about rank and honor and all that bullshit. They don’t understand how it sounds to us.”
“What did she mean about the Medallion needing our support?” Imalroc asked.
Almatra rolled her eyes. “She means they need someone down there who the real fighters will actually respect. Medallion Morbank is an ass who doesn’t know shit about combat. You’ll see. Come, I’ll show you where you can rest.”
She led him to another wing, empty of people, and left him alone in an enormous suite of rooms overlooking the gardens. There, he was at last left to himself.
At first, he was glad to be alone. Fleeing Drida felt like a lifetime ago, but it was a lifetime of running on an empty belly and scarce sleep, his skin alive with fear as they followed the long escape route.
He spent a long while in the washroom, watching dust turn the bathwater cloudy, imagining that the fear drained out of him too.
His heart settled in his chest for the first time in ages.
He sat on one of the velvety couches and combed tangles from his wet hair, watching the shadows lengthen.
Someone brought a tray in with a lavish meal, and he forced himself to eat.
They’d be on the move again tomorrow, and he knew Almatra well enough now to ready himself for an impatient knock at his door at dawn.
The bed lay waiting, a massive, four-poster confection covered with thick pillows and blankets, the finest bed he’d ever been offered.
He wanted a mattress sliding from its broken frame, laid out on the floor in an attic room in a city he hated. He wanted, achingly, the man he’d left in that bed.
Imalroc rested his forehead against his knees.
These awful feelings had only crept up for short stretches on his run south, little oil-slicks of wretchedness that he skidded across unexpectedly until more pressing danger distracted him and he found familiar footing again.
There was nothing demanding his attention more now, and he was engulfed.
He’d tried to grasp his future. Tried to run toward it.
But now, every time he reminded himself he’d done it, he’d freed himself, his mind turned to the life ahead of him.
He’d wanted freedom. He had it. Apparently, all he could fucking do with it was long for warm arms around his waist, and soft, coppery curls nudging beneath his chin, and the feeling of Rerdas’s heart beating alongside his.
Maybe he’d chosen wrong.
He shuddered. That couldn’t be. The life he imagined with Rerdas in tantalizing, razor-edged little flashes would never have come to pass.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to climb into the empty bed and sleep. He stayed in a tight curl on the couch, his heart aching and his arms clinging only to himself.