She turned to face me. “These are the men you gave sanctuary to, the ones who promised to make you weapons. What did you want them for, Jase? To protect Hell’s Mouth? The arena? I can assure you, they had much bigger plans. You’ll see just how big later today. I heard them reveling in the fact that they would have the kingdoms under their thumbs soon. That the Great Battle would look like a spring picnic. The captain’s plans were for domination. The Ballengers were a lucky stepping stone for them, their means to an end.
“They laughed about it. They mocked you. I’m guessing they planned to kill your whole family once you gave them everything they needed—which apparently was supplies for weapons. Who better to acquire the raw materials than a wealthy family who has access to everything through the arena? I heard them laugh about the arsenal that they’d soon have. Them, not you. It wouldn’t be the first time Captain Illarion has done something like this—but you knew when you hid a fugitive in order to get what you wanted that you were taking a risk.”
She stopped pacing and stared at me as if she was waiting for something. “Well?”
“Oh? I have permission to speak now?”
She nodded.
My gaze locked onto hers and I spoke slowly, so each word had time to sink in. “Let me see if I have this straight. What you’re telling me is they infiltrated Tor’s Watch under false pretenses. They violated my family’s trust. They put them at risk. Ate our food. Slept in our beds. They used us. They made promises they had no intention of keeping. They betrayed us.”
She swallowed, my point made.
“So tell me, how are they different from you?”
She looked at me like I had slapped her face. “I wouldn’t have killed you, Jase. I wouldn’t have butchered your family. Can you say the same for them?”
“You intended to poison my family! You thought you were putting birchwings in our food!”
“It’s not a poison and you know it! It’s only a sedative.”
“Nash and Lydia are children! I don’t care what it is!”
“We didn’t put it in their food!”
“And yet, Beaufort and his men never even did that much to us.”
“Yet.”
“We’re an independent realm, the first country, and you violated our sovereignty. Who am I supposed to believe? A Rahtan soldier who dishonored my family’s trust? Who mocked me? Or the word of a queen I’ve never met who seized land that was ours?”
“You have no borders, Jase. The land was in the Cam Lanteux. She chose it based on what the king told her. How was she to know?”
“So that excuse works for her, but not for me? I didn’t know what Beaufort’s crimes were beyond a tattered bill that he refuted.”
“All you had to do was ask.”
“We did! My father asked the king’s magistrate, who said he had no information about him.”
“Then you should have asked the queen!”
“The queen who doesn’t answer our letters? The queen who doesn’t even know we exist?”
“You hid him, Jase. That says everything.” She paused, her eyes drilling into mine. “You hid a lot of things.”
“Which crime am I really here for, Kazi? Hiding Beaufort, or hiding Zane?”
Her lip quivered. She turned and walked away, saying over her shoulder, “Wren and Synové will come back to get you.” I strained against the ropes, crazy thoughts running through my head, thoughts that made no sense.
“Kazi, wait!” I called.
She stopped and for long seconds looked down at the ground.
“I was going to tell you about Zane,” I said. “I swear I was.”
She spun to face me. “When, Jase? When I took your ring, I gave it back to you when it mattered. When it helped you save everything you cared about. You had the chance to tell me about Zane—when it mattered to me. But you didn’t.”
She left, and I wished there had been anger in her voice or misery in her eyes or something. Instead, there was nothing, vast empty plains of nothing, and it hit me harder than if she had struck me in the jaw again.
The wind, time,
They circle, repeat,
Teaching us to be ever watchful,
For freedoms are never won,
Once and for all,
But must be won over and over again.
—Song of Jezelia
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
KAZI
Take a good, long look and remember the lives lost. Real people that someone loved. Before you go about the task I have given you, see the devastation and remember what they did. What could happen again. Know what is at stake. Dragons eventually wake and crawl from their dark dens.
We stood at the mouth of Sentinel Valley, and I knew. I had done at least one right thing. Even justice couldn’t erase scars—it only delivered on a promise to the living that evil would not go unpunished. And maybe it also delivered hope that evil could be stopped for good.
That promise bloomed now, in the sky, the soil, the wind. The spirits whispered to me. My mother whispered to me. Shhh, Kazi. Listen. Hear the language that isn’t spoken, for everyone can hear spoken words, but only a few can hear the heart that beats behind them.
I heard the heart of the valley, the beat that still swelled through it.
“No!” Bahr cried. “I’m not going down there! No!” As soon as he spotted our destination, he began yanking against his chains.
Sarva and Kardos blustered similar protests. Some soldiers believed deserters could be sucked into the underworld, the dead recognizing their footfalls and reaching up through the earth to pull them under.
“You’ll go and you’ll walk the whole length—if you make it that far,” Synové said, wanting to add to his suffering. It would slow us down, but we’d promised Synové that the long ride would be the best torture she could inflict, and this much agony Bahr was owed.
Even the captain, who had no such Vendan superstitions, seemed to pale at the prospect of returning to the site of the infamous battle he had helped orchestrate. Phineas bent over and puked, and he hadn’t even seen anything yet.
Jase alone looked on with curiosity. He had never been here before. His eyes skimmed the towering cliffs, the ruins that sat upon them, and the peculiar green mounds of grass that rose up in the distance.
Eben drove the wagon behind us, and Natiya and Wren rode beside him, ready to shoot or cut down anyone who made an errant move other than walking straight ahead. Synové and I walked on either side of the prisoners.
For at least a mile in, no one spoke. For some of us, the valley demanded reverence, but for others, like Bahr, I was sure they feared a noise might wake the dead. A shadow passed overhead and Bahr fell to the ground, frantically looking up, his nerves unraveling. Circling high above us were two racaa, probably wishing we were antelope. Synové smiled when she saw them. “Move along,” she ordered, motioning with her sword. Kardos eyed a decaying wagon, looking desperate, ready to pry anything loose to use as a weapon. Maybe he heard the voices too, or maybe he felt the dead clawing at his feet.
The wind rustled, the grass moving in waves, like a message being passed. They’re coming.
Jase stopped at the bones of a brezalot, its giant bleached ribs pointing like spears to the sky. “What is it?” he asked.
Brezalots were not found on this part of the continent. “Similar to horses,” I explained. “Majestic, giant creatures, for the most part wild and unstoppable, but the Komizar managed to subvert their beauty and turn them into weapons. Hundreds of them died here too.”
Halfway in, we saw a rock memorial, a tattered white shirt on top of it, waving in the breeze. I watched Jase take it all in, the mass graves, the scattered human bones dug up by beasts, the rusted and abandoned weapons thick with grass, the occasional skull, grinning up at the cliffs. His eyes were dark clouds, sweeping from one side to the other. “How many died?” he asked.
“Twenty thousand. In one day. But as Sarva mentioned, this was just a spring picnic compared with what they had planned.”
He didn’t say anything, but his jaw was rigid. He turned, looking long and hard at Sarva, the same kind of hunger in his eyes as I saw in Synové’s when she looked at Bahr.