“I am,” the General’s son says evenly, and I want to spit at him through the screen. “Our Safire forces conducted a raid near Hady,” he continues, unaffected by the rising controversy before him. “It was carried out with the approval of General Windom, and there we discovered proof of transactions between Rahian and Seath. Money, weapons, all of it. We’ve also secured evidence of arms exchanges on the Black Sea, done under cover of the Resyan flag.”
All eyes turn to the Resyan speakers again. The two men appear shocked, wordless.
“You’re sure this isn’t a ruse?” the Landorian man asks. He appears more concerned now than vexed.
The Commander nods. “We extracted confessions, have signed documents. The League will be provided with these. There’s no doubt in our minds, nor should there be any in yours, that Rahian is guilty. And when you agree to our campaign, we will overthrow this corruption that encourages unrest. We’ll see how strong the Nahir truly are without their allies.”
“We haven’t given consent to war,” the speaker from Landore reminds him, eyes narrowed again. “There are questions which must be answered first.”
Dakar’s son narrows his eyes right back. “I’m not asking for your consent to war. I’m asking for your consent to victory,” he announces, opening his arms to the entire League. “If you don’t choose to act now, your children will carry the burden and live their days in fear. I swear to you, I will defend Savient and the North. I will avenge my mother’s death, and to hell with any of you here who choose the coward’s way out!”
That elicits further shock from the room. Even the General raises his brow.
Then the Commander gives a perfectly winning smile and says, “Thank you,” as if he hasn’t just offended every leader in the North.
The film ends, jumping to scratchy darkness.
I want to leap into the screen and undo everything I’ve heard. I feel frantic, tormented between hating the Commander for daring to bring Resya into this and realizing he’s made a very compelling case, and what if it’s true? What if Rahian isn’t neutral? Here I am, presented, at last, with evidence which could condemn Havis for good, banish him from my life forever, but now his downfall is my downfall. And also, I have a cousin and ally in the Nahir.
I’m desperately confused by the world.
“Lark,” I say urgently, “do you believe King Rahian has aided … your cause? I’m asking you as your cousin, not as a princess.” He says nothing, and I grip his arm. “Please, Lark. Whatever you know, you must tell me.”
My desperation works and he shrugs. “Truthfully, who am I to say what one man would do when pushed? Seath doesn’t always request help kindly.”
“Then you believe Rahian’s been threatened into helping?”
Lark shrugs again, as if it’s beyond him, but I wonder if it’s actually a polite way to avoid revealing a thing he can’t, not as Nahir or as my cousin.
“Nothing will happen,” he assures me instead. “The League won’t approve a war against a sovereign kingdom. They leave their guns for the likes of us.”
His distaste is clear, but I’m not as convinced.
Seeing my expression, he says, “This damned General has at last stepped too far, Aurelia. He can’t wage war against a king without the League’s approval. They’d turn against him—and he’s worked too hard to earn their blessing.”
“But it was a persuasive speech,” I fret.
Lark snorts, gesturing at the blank screen, where the Commander was. “That one I trust less than the General. He changes with the hour, and that’s dangerous.”
“I’m sure it would make him a good warrior, though.”
“A good warrior?” Lark’s laughter is more a hiss. “I doubt you’d say that if you knew the truth.”
As always, my cousin knows how to hook me. “Really?” I lean back, uncertain. “What do you know about him?”
“Things that wouldn’t make him look this pretty before the League.”
A residual of hope returns. “Enough to undo what’s just been said?”
“Possibly.”
“Lark!” I’m so delighted, I’m nearly grinning with relief, but his expression is entirely grave, and I calm myself, trying to match his practical frown. “Well, what is it?”
He glances at the door, calculating a long moment, then comes to a decision and disappears into his adjacent bedroom. I wait, a bit uncertain now. When he returns, there’s a leather briefcase in his hands, his expression familiar—rapidly earnest when wrestling with something big, trying to find its centre. He sifts through papers while I wait.
“My sister served as translator with the Landorian forces in Beraya,” he explains. “The city isn’t far from the Resyan border, and she speaks the local dialect there. When the revolt happened a month ago, she was called upon to help negotiate a ceasefire.” Lark pulls two photographs from a crisp envelope and pushes them before me. “She took these in secret. Now she’s distraught, unsure what to do with them, convinced she’s cursed herself for not saying a thing.”
I look down. The photographs are black and white, slightly blurry, indicating either an older camera or that they were taken in a hurry. In the first, there’s a line of men standing against a wall. They’re blindfolded, their shoulders hunched. Some are young, some are old, but the ones at the farthest end, nearest the camera, are thin and tiny, no more than thirteen. One child holds the hand of a man. My own hand begins to tremble. I slide the first photograph to the left and reveal the second. The bodies are sprawled on the earth.
Even the boys.
I hear a strange sound in my throat.
“This was only one of many executions in Beraya,” Lark continues quietly. “They slaughtered any boy who seemed old enough to carry a gun, then they starved the city. And it wasn’t the Landorian general who ordered it. It was Dakar’s son.”
Fresh revulsion threatens to make me sick. “He couldn’t…”
“They say he did the same in Karkev, Aurelia. And we know who raised him. I doubt the apple falls far from the tree, as you Northerners like to say.”
I stare at the crumpled bodies—an inky black snaking around them, spattered on the wall, on their pale, empty faces staring at the sky—and all of this feels suddenly much darker and more evil than any common war. This doesn’t look like a battle should. It looks like murder.
“This is the scourge of the Safire,” Lark says plainly. “The Landorians? They do what they must to keep the world functioning as they like it, permitting us to live in peace beneath them but never allowing us to rise too high. They like things easy and manageable. But the Safire? They’ll destroy our world and rebuild it again as they see fit. They’ll do to us what they did in Savient, removing anyone who’s against their code, until only the faithful are left. Forging their own version of a perfect nation. Well, it’s not. It’s simply not, and I won’t stand by and watch it happen.”
“This can’t be real,” I say.
“It is real,” Lark replies, sharp.
“You have no proof it was the Safire commander.”
“These photographs speak for themselves. He was there. He knows it.”
“But how can any of this be? It’s quiet down there. No fighting at all yet!”
Lark gives me a skeptical glance. “How do you know that?”
I open my mouth, then realize it’s an answer I can’t give. I stare at the photographs, a fierce new anger flowering in my chest, rotten and thorned, strangling me—anger at this injustice, at the world, at all the people who let this happen without objection. Whether it was the Commander or the Landorians, it doesn’t matter. Someone did this. They did this while a whole war was fermenting in the Southern heat, with real bullets, real attacks, and I had no clue.
Not a hint.
Furious, I stand and flee for my room.
* * *
“Good heavens.”
Heathwyn steps through my doorway, a hand to her mouth, staring at me on the bed. I’ve opened every letter from Athan, every single damn letter sent to me since the beginning of summer, and now they’re tossed across the coverlet in a righteous storm. Drawings of cities and sea birds and aeroplanes. Stories of drunken pilots and swimming in the sea and insects larger than my hand.
But nothing of war.