It wasn’t so deep the bottom looked blurry, but it was deep enough for all that. It looked like a giant’s footprint. “What is this place?”
“An artillery range. This close to the border, it’s the empire showing off.”
Mirian didn’t know if Tomas knew a lot about artillery or just a lot more than she did. The explanation he began seemed thorough. After a while, as they found themselves back under the cover of a second-growth forest, she glanced up at the sun and interrupted, “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”
“We have to swing north to make sure we don’t pass too close to the garrison.”
That made sense. “I should have searched the captain’s pack for a map.”
“To Karis?”
“Good point.” Once in the empire, all roads led to Karis. A captain in the Imperial army wouldn’t need a map to find the capital.
Tomas stepped up and over a fallen tree, waiting for her on the other side. “My grandfather told me once that Earth-mages never get lost.”
Mirian thought of Bernard walking the promenade with her at the opera and hoped he was alive. “Always knowing where you are doesn’t necessarily mean you know where you’re going.”
“Do you…”
“I’m not an Earth-mage.”
She wasn’t an Earth-mage, but she’d grown apples out of season. She wasn’t a Healer-mage, but she’d thrown off the Imperial drug, and the cut she’d got leaving the overhang had already closed. Tomas doubted she’d even noticed. She wasn’t an Air-mage, but she’d flattened a circle of trees.
“Mirian…”
“Yes, I think it would be a good idea for me to practice some mage-craft before we get to Karis.”
“How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”
She grinned, and he had to fight the urge to lean over and kiss the corner of her mouth. “It was all there in the way you said my name.”
“Really?”
“No.” She leaned sideways far enough to bounce her shoulder off his. Like Harry would have.
Reiter settled back against the barely padded seat in the mail coach and braced himself as the driver sprung the horses. Chard, who’d been staring out the window, would’ve fallen to the floor had there been room. As it was, he barely managed to stop himself from landing in Reiter’s lap, legs tangled with his musket.
As Reiter shoved him back to his own side of the coach, he flushed and muttered, “Sorry, Cap.”
“You might want to pay more attention. It’s still a long way to Karis.”
Although, for a while, it had begun to seem like he wouldn’t be leaving the Lyonne garrison. No one had doubted his story, not when they’d backtracked Thunder to the camp and found the two of them still out and a perfect circle of shattered trees, but no one had been too willing to believe it either. The moment Reiter had woken, he’d been pulled from the infirmary into a meeting with the garrison commander who’d tapped the two sets of orders on his desk and informed him that he’d already sent a courier to Major Halyss.
“You’re questioning an Imperial seal, sir?”
The colonel had smiled tightly. “Given the way you were found, I’m questioning every flaming thing about this mess. Your report, Captain.”
The report jumped from “…gave her a little privacy to relieve herself…” to “…opened my eyes in the infirmary with no idea how I’d got there.” but was, otherwise, complete. While the colonel chewed at it, Reiter marveled at how much difference leaving out a single sentence made. A single sentence: I let her go. And a name. Mirian.
“How did she knock those trees down?”
“She’s a mage, sir. Other than that I can’t say. I wasn’t conscious when it happened.”
“Mage-craft is a dying art, Captain. There isn’t a mage in the empire who could do half—no a tenth—that damage.”
Depending on how the battle at Bercarit was going, that might no longer be true. If the empire tried absorbing Aydori, they’d find themselves suddenly in possession of any number of powerful mages. For a while.
“Did she have a weapon?”
“Just her mage-craft, sir.”
“Impossible.”
It hadn’t been difficult to see why the colonel had been left behind in Lyonne rather than given a role in the winter campaign or the spring advance.
Fortunately, Major Halyss had confirmed Reiter’s identity and supported his report as far as he’d been able.
“Can’t say I’m not happy to be leaving,” Chard muttered, finally turning from the window. He pulled his stained and nearly shapeless bicorn down over his forehead, then slapped the barrel of his musket back and forth between his palms. “You get taken out by a girl and they look at you funny, you know?”
“She was a mage.”
“Still a girl, Cap.” Chard grinned across the coach at him as though that, at least, was undeniable.
Reiter didn’t plan on denying it.
He’d tried to leave Chard behind, the way he’d left Armand and Best in Aydori, at least partially because what was waiting for him in Karis was likely to be unpleasant, but Chard been surprisingly stubborn.
“You’re an officer and you can leave me where you like, sir, but I think I need to go with you to Karis. I was there. You might need me to back you up.”
Reiter knew flaming well that Chard’s word would carry no weight at all with the men who’d sent them out chasing prophecy’s tail, but he was selfish enough not to want to face them alone.
Chapter Eleven
THE CEILING OF THE ROOM was too high for Danika to get a good read on the air currents. Words she set loose might go anywhere, so she had to choose those first words carefully. Hands over her face, as though to block the memory of the dangling pelt, she stared up at the piece of wall once again covering Leopald’s rathole and breathed out through the crack between her hands, Talk to me.
To me not to us. Her position meant she’d played more power games than the rest even if some of those games had been against Kirstin.
The wall fit snugly; Leopald might never hear her. He certainly wouldn’t if she didn’t try.
“Why?” Mouth partially covered by a napkin, Kirstin seemed to be listening to Stina’s low murmur of comfort, but her voice brushed past Danika’s ear.
“He likes to talk, we need information. Knowledge is power.”
Kirstin rubbed her thumb over the white lines the net had etched into her fingertips. “Power is power.”
Without the net, the five of them had power enough to free themselves and while they’d never used that power aggressively, Leopald had ensured they’d be willing to. Telling Kirstin to leave the net alone would only annoy her, and, in all honesty, with the lingering headache from her own attempt pressing needles behind her eyes, Danika didn’t feel she had the right. “Remember, we’re terrified.”
Horrified. Furious. Not terrified. Annalyse, still weeping silently in the circle of Jesine’s arms, her knuckles white around a fistful of her skirt, was grieving for the dead, not terrified or submissive. Marrying into the Pack required power, but it also required the ability to stand up to teeth and strength and instincts and face them down. Submitting in Aydori came with more layers of power and politics than Leopald could imagine.