Before Tristan could think of what to do or say, Elliot burst to the front of the group.
“Was there a girl with them?” he demanded, speaking directly to Sev. He flung himself to the ground and gripped the front of Sev’s shirt, eyes frantic.
When Sev gaped at him, clearly stunned, Elliot’s face contorted with rage, and it looked like he might start shaking him. Tristan had never seen Elliot lose his temper. He was always cool, distant—detached, even. There was usually a stoic rigidity to him, but not anymore.
His shock subsiding, Tristan lurched to his feet and grabbed Elliot’s arm, drawing him back. “What are you doing?” he demanded, but Elliot fought against his grip.
“Did they have a girl? A hostage?” Elliot continued, still speaking to Sev. “Her name is Riella. She’s only thirteen—”
“A hostage?” Tristan repeated sharply, jerking Elliot around to face him. “Your sister was taken hostage? When?”
Elliot blinked, focusing on Tristan for the first time. His eyes bulged, as if he’d only just realized what he’d done. He took a long, shuddering breath.
“It happened right after your father recruited me.” Elliot seemed to deflate, his shoulders slumped and his head drooped. “The man was a captain in the military and said he was working on behalf of one of the empire’s governors—but he never said which one. They were watching my family because of my father’s work with the Office for Border Control. Suspected him of ‘animage sympathies’ and of helping people cross into Pyra undocumented. When they saw Beryk, a known Rider, make contact with my father, they told me I had to go with him. I was actually happy, at first,” he said, his voice hollow. “I didn’t understand what they really wanted until the commander denied my sister. They were going to take our father, but then they took her instead. They said if I didn’t do what they wanted, or if my father or I told anyone, they’d kill her.”
“Why did they take her, Elliot?” Tristan asked, forcing his voice to be smooth and steady despite the jagged edge beneath it. Hostages were taken as a guarantee. . . . What was it that Elliot had promised to deliver?
Elliot looked up, tears rimming his eyes. “They wanted me to tell them about the operation here. Where it was . . . how many Riders . . . procedures and protocols . . .”
“So you were their spy,” Tristan said, his voice cold now, but he could help it no longer. Elliot’s interest in being steward, all the errands and letters supposedly on Beryk’s behalf—all of it had been a lie, a cover, so he could move about the stronghold unquestioned.
“They said they would kill her,” Elliot repeated, tone pleading.
“You should have told us. My father has connections in the empire. We could have gotten—”
“If your father reached out to anyone, they’d know I told. Tristan, please—I tried to back out. The last time Beryk and I went to Vayle . . . I met with him, the captain who had my sister. I told him I needed proof that she was okay before I gave them any more information. But they didn’t bring her,” he said desperately. “Just gave me some letter, could have been written by anyone . . .”
Tristan released Elliot roughly, his voice shaking with frustration. “You never should have done that alone. We could have helped you. We could have given them false leads, invited your sister here, come up with some excuse to extricate her—anything would have been better than this. What did you think would happen here, Elliot? What did you think they were going to do with the intelligence you fed them?”
The tears fell down Elliot’s cheeks now, and they made Tristan’s throat tight. He couldn’t afford to get so emotional, but it was hard to look at the face of the person who had doomed them.
“I didn’t see her,” Sev piped in hoarsely from his place on the ground. “There was no girl with us, no hostage. Maybe they were lying.”
Elliot squeezed his eyes shut, his face crumpling.
Tristan raked a hand through his hair. With a nod, he ordered two guards to escort Elliot away for further questioning.
Low murmurs broke out as he left, and the other apprentices exchanged stricken looks. Nyk stared at Elliot’s retreating back, his expression bleak. Tristan ignored everyone’s reactions and drew a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. He tried to channel his father, his sense of unflappable confidence and infinite capability.
Instead he felt like a child marching around in his father’s oversize Riding boots.
He turned back to Sev. “How many?” he asked. They needed to devise a defense strategy, but to do that, Tristan needed more information.
Sev swallowed, blinking slowly. The brief burst of energy the rockwine had given him was already fading away. “Near four hundred, I think. We had two hundred in my regiment, and we met with a second group last night. But those village attacks . . . they must have come from another group of soldiers, traveling somewhere else on the mountain. There’s no way our party could have gotten there in time. So there could be more . . .”
Tristan closed his eyes, nodding, as if merely confirming the number of guests at a dinner party. At least four hundred armed soldiers, coming here? When all their best fighters were gone?
He opened his eyes again. “How do we know you aren’t a part of the diversion?” he asked, considering the boy before him. Elliot’s betrayal had shaken him, and he did not want any more nasty surprises. “You’re a soldier, aren’t you? And you betrayed them. Why should we trust you?”
Sev stared dully at him, but made no answer. Tristan tried to think of what his father would do.
“Get Morra,” he said, twisting to address a guard behind him.
“Already here,” came Morra’s gruff voice as she moved her way to the front of the crowd. The guards made room for her, and she paused before Sev, propping both hands on her crutch as she considered him.
Tristan’s father trusted Morra implicitly. He said she had an uncanny ability to tell truth from lies, a knack for sniffing out information. Tristan had heard Beryk and the others whisper the term “shadowmage,” but of course his father didn’t hold with superstitions. There was no proof or written record that shadowmages were real, but Tristan knew the stories. If even half of them were true, he had no doubt that Morra was one of them.
It made a chill run down his spine. Tristan was honest by nature—possibly to a fault, given the trouble it had gotten him in with his father—but Morra still made him a bit uneasy. It was the secretiveness of her magic that bothered him, not the magic itself. Shadow magic could be used to sniff out lies, but it did so in a deceitful way—snooping and sneaking around. If people were just truthful, there would be no need for such magic—or for people to keep the fact that they had that magic a secret.
Or maybe Tristan was fooling himself. His fear of fire was something he hid from others, and maybe the threat of exposure was what made him dislike the idea of shadow magic.