River Secrets (17 page)
Enna rubbed his head and left to return to the ambassador. Razo took another decent look at Dasha. She had said she did not know the pale-haired soldier, yet she and Victar seemed friendly enough now. But why would she lie? And if they were friends, perhaps Victar had told Dasha that Razo was just a Forest boy and how that meant that he was poor and lowly and should not be dangling himself around a noble girl’s shoulders.
A clack of wood drew Razo’s attention to the training ring. Ledel was practicing sword with his secondman, and his eyes looked hollow and bruised with sleeplessness. Razo rubbed a self-conscious hand through his hair to check for forgotten bits of hay and thought,
Four days left.
The next day, Razo wore his plain white clothes and skulked around Thousand Years. Once, Ledel left the palace grounds alone, and with a dry mouth and antsy heartbeat, Razo followed the captain from a respectable distance. He lost sight of him just west of the heart and skittered around side streets for hours, anxious at the sound of his own footsteps and wishing he’d asked Enna and Finn to help spy.
But I can’t get her any closer to the danger,
he reminded himself,
or she might burn again.
After lugging himself back to Thousand Years, he skipped dinner to collapse on his cot for a quick snooze.
When he woke, feeling tumbled and giddy and half-dead, he found he’d slept through both evening and night. In the distance, the bell tolled dawn with a mockingly happy
ping.
Razo lurched out of bed, still in clothes and sandals, and rubbed his eyes fiercely, in the way his mother used to say would wake up his brain. The assembly would vote for war in two days.
Half-asleep, he jumped back into his routine of walking a broad circle around Ledel’s barracks. It had rained in the night, and the fat worms lay gasping on the paving stones. Razo was hopping around, trying not to squash them, when he saw Tumas prowling the early morning.
Razo slid between two bushes, earning a mouthful of cedar greens. Far ahead, Tumas entered the abandoned barracks where Razo had taught Dasha slinging. He stayed inside just a few moments before leaving again. He was coming awfully near Razo’s hiding spot. Nearer still. Razo held his breath and tried to look like a tree.
Tumas veered, heading in the direction of the Thousand Years west gate. Razo spat green and waited until the porkchopeared soldier had gone a good distance before bustling out to follow.
And then he jumped right back between the trees.
There was another of Ledel’s men entering those same empty barracks. He stayed a bit longer than Tumas, then left again, also empty-handed, and took Tumas’s path toward the west gate.
Razo made sure no one else paraded down the path, then slid from tree to tree, behind buildings, moving in the flow of early-morning errand runners, and came at the building from the back side.
He stole a look through a window. Nobody home.
The stale odor accosted him, cots rotting where they stood, all silent in mourning the dead. The floor was dusty, and he could see footprints muddling around a cot near the opposite door. So as not to leave his own marks, Razo leaped from cot to cot until he came to that spot. He sat down, heard a crinkle, and leaned over the edge. Between the thin straw mattress and the slats, someone had stuck a parchment. Razo pulled it out.
There was a crude drawing but also a lot of script. He cursed, wishing not for the first time that he knew his letters. He’d have to get some help.
Then voices. Razo skipped across a few more bunks and slid beneath one. Dust stirred around his face, and a fat brown spider ambled out of his way. He pinched his nose, stifling a sneeze, then heard people enter.
A rustle at the lifting of a straw mattress, a sigh of old wood.
“It’s supposed to be here. The captain said Tumas would leave it under the third cot.”
“Captain hinted the new place would be downriver from the old. Maybe we can just sniff around and find it.”
“On all that riverbank? Not a chance. I’m certain he said the third cot, but we had better check them all.”
Razo swallowed.
“No, don’t bother. That dunce Malroy probably took it with him. Maybe he’ll show it to Lord Belvan and ask for directions.”
The men laughed.
“Well, the captain will be busy enough without us today. He’s invited half the company. Why so many? I asked him. He wouldn’t say, but Tumas whispered to me that the captain’s getting impatient with just a body here, a body there. Plans an all-out attack, wants as many warriors as he can trust. Tumas hinted it had something to do with the assembly, but I don’t…”
The voices moved away. Razo whined with another strangled sneeze.
He waited, hurting his brain with the effort of trying to hear new voices or footsteps, and glared at the fleas dropping from the filthy mattress onto his arms. His thoughts drifted, tangled in the skittish movements of a spider.
Ledel did not have fire-speaking.
One of his men did, but he was not the fire-speaker from the festival.
That soldier had said,
The captain invited half the company …
Weeks ago after a feast day, Belvan’s men had found an empty warehouse littered with burned wood.
Two men were missing from Ledel’s company, supposedly to join Manifest Tira, but Razo recalled that Ledel was the one who had claimed that. So where were they, really?
And that first day, when Ledel’s and Talone’s companies sparred on the training ground, Ledel had said,
…we’ll see
how well they perform as soldiers without the fire fighting for them.
Initially, Razo had taken the comment as an insult, an insinuation that the Bayern were just the lackeys of a fire-witch. But as he heard it now in memory, he realized there had been jealousy, a twinge of sadness on the word
soldiers,
of longing with
fire.
So, two of Ledel’s men were gone, and Enna said the corpses had most likely burned themselves to death. Razo shuddered. That captain was up to something very, very bad.
Razo poked his head out, slithered from under the cot, and stepped from bunk to bunk to the door. When the area seemed clear, he ran to the palace. The parchment crackled under his tunic.
Enna was gone. Conrad was guarding the ambassador’s chambers, and he reminded Razo that today was yet another feast day, the day of apple cakes.
“For women only. From what I gathered, Enna and Lady Megina joined the assemblywomen and others at the heart, making apple cakes and griping about men, no doubt. Finn and Talone will be hovering nearby and wishing they could have some cake. Maybe they’ll toss ’em a core. As it was, they had to get special permission from Lord Belvan to let the men go at all. There was some rather intriguing talk of dressing Finn and Talone in skirts….”
Conrad laughed. Razo disappointed himself by not being able to get his own laugh past the rock in his throat. Another feast day. A thought shocked him like touching static metal.
The bodies have been appearing after feast days. Ledel
must go someplace that’s emptied because of the day off and teach his men
to burn.
“Any idea when they’ll be back?” asked Razo.
“Evening or night. Enna’s sour expression told me that it promised to be a long day.”
“Conrad, do you know your letters?”
Conrad snorted. “Not likely.”
Razo thought of going to the prince for help—surely the man knew how to read—but no, he would not allow suspicion of Dasha to squash and squeeze him.
She had not joined the feast day celebrants yet and was still in her rooms, breakfasting on bread dipped in a greenish oil, olives, and cold ham. Razo gave her the parchment, sat on the floor, and took over the meal. He could not help whimpering a bit as he ate. It was a cruel, cruel mission that denied him his five meals a day.
“It’s a map,” she said.
Razo had figured that. He winced as he bit into an intensely sour olive. There was something satisfying about food too bitter or spicy to eat without a grimace, making him feel as though he’d accomplished some difficult physical feat.
“You really never learned to read? Well, the scribbles are directions to the Rosewater River, west side, lower docks near the river mouth. It’s all shipping warehouses that far down the Rosewater. One of my father’s warehouses is in that area. So, when do we go?”
She smiled, her eyebrows up.
He swallowed his bite of ham. “We?”
“Come on. I shared my breakfast with you.”
“Dasha, I don’t think…I’m just going to scout it out, and scouting’s better with one…. I’m not even going to ask Conrad to come because…I mean, we could be seen, and there’re fire-speakers on the loose … um, no.”
“Hm.” She pursed her mouth, looked at her fingernails. “You know the assembly court requires two witnesses to support an accusation. I suppose you have some other Tiran to go with you?”
“Oh.”
By the time Razo had finished the breakfast platter, she was ready. He had insisted she wear something drab and unassuming, so she replaced her Bayern-dyed blue lummas for a quiet peach one and took the silver butterfly pins out of her hair. She combed it and plaited it on each side, and he watched, as mesmerized as though his gaze were caught in the melting gold of a campfire.
“Something wrong?”
Razo blinked. “Huh? Uh, no, let’s go.”
He thought of trying to get to Enna, Finn, and Talone, but he knew how the heart was during other feast days. During one festival, he’d not been able to actually walk through and had moved by leaning into the crowd, traveling slug slow as the people adjusted around him. That would waste hours—Ledel might move locations by then. No, he had to go now, before someone else died. He would not try anything foolish, just peep a bit, like his old scouting missions during the war.
In and out, nobody hurt.
Dasha was chatty at first, and Razo tried to follow her conversation, but his thoughts were looping, his muscles twitching for action. By the time they had skirted the chaotic stirrings in the heart, he realized she had been silent for some time.
“Why didn’t you go with the other women this morning?” he asked as they hurried down a side street.
“I was in no rush to arrive.” She shrugged. “I’ve had apple cakes before.”
A doubt tickled him, a flea bite in his mind. He ignored it.
The morning was dirty gray, the sky musty with clouds. All the women were in the heart, the men and children home, and business on hold for the sake of the feast day, leaving the streets sad and empty. The mood was lashing around Razo, and he felt tethered by anticipation.
They crossed the last bridge over the Rosewater and continued south, civilization beginning to thin out. For long stretches, the west bank of the Rosewater was weedy and desolate, dotted with isolated shacks. The mouth of the river widened toward the peculiar flatness of the gray sea, and the banks became messy with docks in different phases of newness and decay. Warehouses crammed together, elbowing for a bit of river side.
In case of an unexpected plunging into the river or other mishap that could damage parchment, Razo had left the map with Conrad, so Dasha was looking for landmarks from memory.
“That one…No, wait, that’s it. That’s the one.”
They hunkered behind some crates at an adjacent building and watched for guards before moving in closer. The wooden docks scraped the banks as the water heaved up and down in a tired rhythm, the wet breath of river sloshed against the shore, an open door clacked in the wind. No human sounds. Then the wind blowing off the ocean shifted, swooping between them and the warehouse. Razo smelled smoke.
They dashed from their hiding place and crouched beneath the warehouse window. Razo inched up to peer through the slats and felt Dasha move beside him.
There was Ledel, sitting at a table in the nearly empty building, looking over a book. Two soldiers stood behind him, one his secondman, the other the young soldier Dasha and Enna had identified as a fire-speaker. Crates in various stages of ash were stacked and flung in every corner. Ledel pointed at an empty crate in the center of the room. The young soldier’s squinty-eyed expression became even more crooked in his concentration, and a hiss of smoke puttered from the crate’s corner. Ledel shook his head and gave some command to his secondman. Now the crate ruptured with flames.
Razo turned his back to the wall and slid down to sit. Dasha was beside him.
“Did you see?” he whispered.
She nodded.
“My bet is Ledel tried to learn fire-speaking himself and failed, and so enlisted others,” said Razo, thoughts pulling through him like a tug-of-war he was winning. “He must’ve read about fire-speaking in one of those books and is training some of his men, but not doing such a great job of it. They burn themselves up while trying to learn fire-speaking, and then he makes use of their deaths by planting the bodies near the Bayern to increase public suspicion. Ingridan will believe there’s a Bayern fire-witch running rampant, increasing the desire for war, and after the assembly votes for war, Ledel will have half his crew to offer up as flame-tossing warriors.”
Razo’s grin at his own cleverness shifted into a grimace, and his voice croaked. “He’s making an army of fire-witches, Dasha. He’ll set Bayern blazing.”
Dasha’s eyes were gray-blue today. “We need to tell Lord Belvan and the chief of assembly.”
“Right.” Tell Lord Belvan, let someone else take care of it. Razo wished he were armed with fire-speaking or wind-speaking, could swing a sword like Finn, could rush in right now and end it. What was he doing here, anyway? A Forest lad, the weakest member of the Own?
You’re a slinger and a spy,
he reminded himself.
Your job is to
find, war scout, not to fight.
He looked at Dasha, her ear cupped to the wall, and felt glad, at least, not to be alone.
With a warehouse full of danger pressed to their backs, Razo’s thoughts jumped to a tiny shack, rain seething outside, his arm around her shoulders. He thought it would feel awfully nice to hold her again like that but reminded himself that she was the prince’s intended bride. He tugged playfully on her lummas.
“You were right about coming along. They might not believe a Bayern boy, but a noble Tiran witness…”
“And a pretty one at that,” she said.
“I didn’t say that. I mean, but I will, if you want.”
She considered. “Let’s get out of here first.”
They crept away, testing the quietness of their own toes against stone, and huddled outside the next warehouse.
“I heard something,” whispered Dasha.
“I did, too, coming from the way we want to go.”
“Let’s go back and skirt around….”
“But if we get caught, there’s no way out except the river.”
“Oh. Well, if we need to, I could make the river a way out for us.” She clenched her hands. “If we have to.”
Razo nodded. “Only if we have to.”
They listened to the uneasy silence, edged out, and sneaked toward the river.
Then came the unmistakable congested grumble of Tumas. “Where in the blazes is it? Captain, you around here?”
In the narrow alley between two warehouses, there was no place to hide. Tumas rounded the corner, his gaze grabbing them.
Dasha cried out and sprinted toward the dock, Razo right behind. The sound of running feet followed. Razo pushed himself harder, loosing the sling at his side.
Before he could get a stone in his palm, a fist came down on his head. He thudded to the ground as he saw Tumas grab Dasha by her hair.
Razo fumbled for his sword, but another set of arms encircled him, lifting his feet from the ground.
“Almotht got away,” came the voice of Tumas’s friend.
Thick, hairy arms held Razo from behind, pinning his arms to his body. Razo bit into a hand and heard a yelp, but the soldier adjusted to the hangman’s hold—arms under his, hands locked behind his head.
Dasha was screaming and kicking in Tumas’s arms, and he yanked her head back until she whimpered and stilled. Her neck was exposed, and as Tumas reached for his dagger, Razo understood, with a shock that burned as it burst through him, that Tumas would kill them both.
Tumas looked at his captain, who was standing in the doorway of the warehouse. Ledel’s frown was frightening.
“Bring them inside,” he said, and disappeared.
The soldiers threw Razo and Dasha on the floor of the warehouse, tied their hands behind their backs, and bound their ankles. Tumas ripped off Razo’s sword, sling, and pouch of stones, but just like the assembly guards, he mistook the distance sling cinched around Razo’s waist for a common belt.
“Here.” Ledel tossed the short sling to his secondman. The tanned, lean soldier held it between two fingers. The ends began to smoke, and he shook it away as it fizzled and trickled into ash.
“Shame,” Razo breathed. He had made that sling himself, braided it from the black and white hairs of the sheep he used to watch for the king. He looked at Dasha. Her face was down.
Tumas prodded Razo’s gut with his foot. “It’s that Bayern boy, the one that put himself on Hemar’s knife. Captain, I told you he was no good, always sneaking, looking around more than he ought.” He pressed a finger to one nostril and blew out the other. A lump plopped beside Razo’s sandal. “How did he find us here?”
“He followed you, no doubt,” said Ledel. “How long have you been lumbering around, lost?”
“Not long.” Tumas sniffed, embarrassed.
“Look at his girl.” The squinty-eyed soldier was squinting now with purpose, his eyes on Dasha. “Isn’t she—”
“Lady Dasha.” The scar down Ledel’s jaw was as white as teeth.
Dasha tossed her head, flicking her braids behind her shoulders. “Captain Ledel, your men tied me up.”
“Yes, I did not realize—”
“So now that you realize, why don’t you untie me?”
Razo’s stomach felt like a chunk of ice.
Ledel crouched beside Dasha, lifted her chin with his finger, a gentle, mentorlike gesture. The hollows beneath his eyes were purple, as though he had not slept in days. “What are you doing with this Bayern boy?”
“He was looking for you, and I wanted to see what he intended to do.”
Ledel rubbed his scar. “But you ran from my men. You kicked Tumas in the face.”
Dasha’s eyelids lowered and twitched back up, a half blink. Relief burst in Razo’s middle. He could read that expression—she was lying to Ledel, which meant she was not working with the burners. But apparently Ledel caught the lie as well.
“I see. You’re on this boy’s side.” Ledel rubbed his eyes and mumbled to himself behind his hand. “I never wanted it to come to this. I would never harm a daughter of Tira. This is all for Tira … for Tira.” When he looked back at Dasha, the whites of his eyes were veined with red. “If only you understood. Lady, all of Tira aches for what I can provide—a justification for war. The incomplete conflict rankles this nation like a wound left unstitched and seeping.”
“It was a hard loss,” said Dasha. “But—”
“No, you listen to me.” He was on his knees before her, holding her shoulders. “You nobles make the decisions, but you need to listen to those of us who understand war, who do the work. War is the best tool of civilization. Rules must be followed, or the tool of civilization becomes the catalyst of chaos. Do you understand? The Bayern were the ones who twisted battle out of the ancient pattern of man to man and sword to sword, instead exploiting one fire-witch to burn hundreds. The thought even now brings bile to my mouth.”
“Lovely thought,” Razo mumbled.
“But what you do here,” said Dasha, “you’re taking up the tool you say disgusts you.”
“I know! And I cannot abide my own face for the thought of it. But I love my country more than myself. I will sacrifice my own honor to redeem Tira.” His hands on her shoulders were shaking. “Will you, Lady Dasha?”
The two locked eyes. Razo stared back and forth, his breath too large to come out of his lungs.
Say what he wants so
you can get out of here!
he thought.
Dasha blinked. “I will do—”
“Stop. You are going to lie to me again.” Ledel stood, turning his back to her.
“Captain.” Ledel’s secondman stood by his shoulder. “What do we do with her? If we—”
“When all of Tira demands the Bayern be punished for burning Lord Kilcad’s daughter alive,” said Ledel, deadly calm, “he will rush home and demand we resume our war.”
“You hypocritical monster!” Dasha’s voice lifted as though she addressed hundreds. “The assembly will find you out. My father will stab you through the neck in the assembly itself, and all of Ingridan will applaud.”
“Tomorrow night, the assembly will be a smoldering clump of ash.”
“Are we going to burn them, Captain?” asked the young soldier.
Ledel stared at Dasha, his eyes vacant, but his forehead tense as though he were in pain. “Yes, you are going to burn them.”
“But tied up like that, Captain? You have always told us—”
“Soldier!” Ledel pressed his lips together and closed his eyes. His voice softened, pleading. “Yes, you are right. But Bayern’s foul play forces us to make exceptions to the rules. We are running short on time to accomplish our goal. That idiotic Manifest Tira is in very real danger of turning the entire city
against
its cause with its clumsy assassination attempts. Besides, rumors abound that the prince will announce an engagement soon, and the timing suggests he means to take sides. At just the moment when our mission becomes even more urgent, we are offered a means to accomplish it with Lady Dasha’s death.
“If you’re not ready to be a man, I’ll give this task to someone else.” Ledel stared at the soldier until the young man took a step back and shut his mouth. “I’m done waiting for the others. You four are my core warriors, and I need your skills perfected. Perhaps having live targets today will motivate you to—”
“Having more trouble making fire-witches than you’d thought, Captain Ledel?” Razo’s voice scraped out of his throat, as dry as week-old bread.
Ledel did not even look at him, just pointed his gloved hand. “You do not speak, prisoner.”
“Had hopes of a whole army, did you, but they just keep burning themselves up? Just like the rest of you will. What, did he use poor folk at first, but they kept dying?” Ledel was crossing the room to Razo now, picking him up by his neck. “So he decided to use his own men. I count two of you gone already; how long do the rest of you have?”
Ledel punched Razo in the gut and dropped him on the ground face-first.
“What ith he talking about, Captain?” asked the large soldier.
“When Bayern talk, they vomit lies,” said Ledel. “Ignore it. Burn them.”
Tumas grinned, and the secondman cracked his knuckles and stepped forward. The young soldier kept staring at Dasha.
“But … but, Captain … she’s a lady, and a Tiran—”
“Tumas? Tumas, I’m here!” A girl entered the warehouse, smiling sheepishly, sashaying her way to Tumas’s side. It was Pela.
“Pela, I told you not to come,” Tumas said through gritted teeth.
Ledel growled. “Tumas, why is this girl here? What have you told her?”
Pela sidled up to Tumas, putting a hand on his chest. “I want to learn the fire witchery, Captain Ledel, for Tira—” She recognized Razo and squealed. “Look! I told you that Bayern boy was trouble. He was always asking questions about Captain Ledel and the rest of you. I tried to take care of him for you, I promise I did. I don’t know how he survived the bloodbane berries I put in his tart, those Bayern aren’t all human. And when I tried to get him caught by Belvan’s men in Lady Dasha’s chamber—”
“Shut up, will you?” said Tumas. “I told you all this was a secret—”
“But I’m tired of waiting.”
Pela and Tumas began talking over each other, and Ledel just stood there and stared at Pela, eyes dark with some thought Razo did not want to guess.
Razo seized the moment to focus around him. No weapon lay within reach. The warehouse doors opened to a gray glimpse of river, too far away to attain at the speed of crawl. He saw that Dasha was staring at the Rosewater, her hands trembling behind her back. In her eyes, Razo saw a little girl running after her grandfather, laughing behind her hand at the marvelous game, then watching as he slouched into the river, facedown.
