The queen had said he was an average swordsman and commander, but he’s an above average deceiver. His skill is in his patience.
Just as he had played two roles at the citadelle in Morrighan, had he played two roles at Tor’s Watch? The role he wanted Jase’s family to see, and his hidden role to benefit himself? I was certain the Ballengers had been duped.
“Let’s be honest, Kazi,” Natiya said when I gathered them at the creek’s edge to tell them my suspicion. “Are you sure you’re not just seeing the things you want to see because you still care for Jase?”
“That’s over,” I answered. “Some betrayals run too deep.” His lie about Zane left me raw, and I saw the bitterness in his eyes too, when he caught me at the enclave. Our mutual betrayals had shattered anything we once had. I shook my head. “This isn’t about Jase and me. It’s about knowing the truth. Setting a trap for the queen? Jase’s dismissal of the accusation was swift and genuine. I know that much about him.”
“You thought other things about him were genuine too,” Wren said.
I sat down on the tumbled wall at the creek’s edge trying to sort it out, what was real and what was false, but I knew what I’d heard and the thirst for revenge against the queen had been thick in Illarion’s voice. Jase would have nothing to gain from it. “Putting a noose around the queen’s neck was the captain’s agenda,” I said. “For him, it’s as much about revenge as riches. When he joined forces with the Komizar, he’d hoped to become a wealthy man, and instead the queen made him a hunted one. And putting all the kingdoms under his thumb? Jase’s world is Hell’s Mouth, Tor’s Watch, the arena, and that’s it. He doesn’t want more than that.” I looked to Wren, Synové for confirmation. “You both know.”
They nodded.
“Even if it was a double cross, that still doesn’t exonerate the Ballengers,” Natiya countered.
Eben agreed. “They were hiding known fugitives for what they thought were their own purposes. Weapons.”
And that was the crux of it, the one thing we couldn’t ignore.
“To be accurate, the Ballengers only hid one fugitive,” Wren corrected. “Even we didn’t know the others were alive, and there was no warrant for them.”
“Harboring just one fugitive is enough to charge him with conspiracy,” Natiya said. “The Alliance of Kingdoms is very clear on that. It’s in the treaties. We’ll have to leave it to the queen to decide his fate.”
Eben and Natiya left to start loading the prisoners back in the wagon. Today we would rendezvous with Griz and the troops who would escort us the rest of the way.
“When are you going to tell Jase?” Wren asked.
“Before we leave. I want him to know before we reach Sentinel Valley.”
Synové frowned, swishing her bare feet through the shallow water. “You can’t let him drive the wagon once he knows. He might drive the whole bunch of them off into a gorge. Bahr will not be going that way.”
Wren and I both eyed her suspiciously. I had seen her watching Bahr, hunger in her expression. She had taunted him to make a run for it more than once. “How will he be going, Synové?” I asked.
She hopped out of the water, splashing us both. “However the queen chooses, of course,” she answered and walked away, saying she was going to help with the prisoners.
“She’s right about the wagon,” Wren said. “He’ll try something. The Ballengers don’t take betrayal well.”
How well I knew that. Priya had already pledged her revenge on me in multiple ugly ways. I was probably the number-one criminal listed on a warrant in Hell’s Mouth by now.
“We’ll chain his leg to the footbed,” I said. “Jase takes his role of Patrei too seriously to take his own life.” And that way he wouldn’t be able to jump over the seat and attack them either. I had seen what his fist was capable of.
“He wouldn’t be here at all if he’d stepped aside like you ordered. And then he all but let you take him down to use as a shield. I’m not sure we’d have gotten out of there otherwise. Every one of those Ballengers had blood in their eyes.”
“What? That’s crazy. I took him by surprise.”
“He knows your tricks by now. I don’t think he was surprised. And I saw him at the settlement, wrestling with his brothers. He’s quick.”
“Even so, I know what happened, and you were behind me where you couldn’t see as well.”
She shrugged. “Maybe so. But some things you can see better from a distance.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
JASE
“Is this the point where I’m supposed to plead for my life?”
While Eben and Natiya loaded the other prisoners into a wagon, Wren and Synové led me into the forest, then tied me to a tree.
“Could be,” Wren said. “Just be quiet and listen.”
Listen to what?
They turned and left, and I wondered if the plan was to leave me here to rot—or be eaten by a Candok. Minutes later, I heard rustling behind me. Human footsteps. Not Candok. I wasn’t sure it worried me any less.
Kazi came into view. She stood in front of me and told me she wanted me to listen and not say a single word. There were things I needed to hear. She’d gag me if she had to.
“You can spare me another lecture on being a thief—”
“I said not a word.”
I fumed. Strained against the rope that held me. “You have a true captive audience.”
I didn’t say another word. She paced in front of me as she spoke, trying to convince me I had been played by Beaufort. Her voice held no emotion, and her eyes were just as detached.
“Let me give you the particulars of his crimes.” She told me Beaufort had been a trusted member of the Morrighese cabinet—a man of wealth and position, but he wanted more, and conspired with the Komizar to get it. She went into great detail, his crimes ranging from infiltrating the Morrighese citadelle with enemy soldiers, to poisoning the king, to planning an attack that killed the crown prince.
My mind ticked over the details she threw at me, taking in her version and Beaufort’s, two scenarios, two possible lies, two possible truths. She continued to pace, her demeanor void of emotion—except for her hands tapping a tense dance against her thighs.
“Did I mention the thirty-two young soldiers who also died in the massacre he orchestrated? He was only warming up at that point. His crimes go on from there. You’ll see soon enough.
“I realize you didn’t know about the other men,” she continued. “Torback and Phineas are Morrighese scholars who are able to decipher the secrets of the Ancients and bring them to life again. They’re traitors too. They made vows to serve the gods, but instead they serve themselves.”
She told me that Sarva, Kardos, and Bahr were Vendan. “Everyone thought they died on the battlefield. There were so many charred bodies it was hard to tell, but some of their personal effects were found. They obviously staged their deaths before they ran.” She said Kardos was a general in the Komizar’s army who used children as young as Lydia and Nash on his front lines. It was his method of unnerving enemy soldiers before he moved his cavalry forward.
“Sarva was the governor of a Vendan province, and Bahr a Sanctum guard.” She said they led an attack against unarmed citizens, butchering them on the streets. Whole families died. Children, parents, grandparents. One of those families was Wren’s. She held her father as he died in her arms. “And Synové watched Bahr behead both of her parents. She had no choice but to run, because he came after her too. She was ten years old.”