“We need proof.”
“We have it.” I nod to the death certificates. “For anyone who cares to look. If we can get these certificates into the hands of just a few trusted Paters, the rest won’t need to see them. Think of how she’s handled what happened in Navium. It didn’t matter that she lied. All that mattered is that people believed it.”
“We should start with Pater Sissellius and Pater Rufius,” Harper says. “They’re her closest allies. The other Paters trust them.”
For three days, Harper and I seed the rumors. And then, when I am in court listening to Marcus arguing with a Tribal envoy—
“—Illustrians from her own year! Over a Plebeian! Can you imagine—”
“But there’s no proof—”
“Not enough to jail her, but Sissellius saw the death certificates. The link is obvious. You know how that man loathes idle gossip. Besides, the proof is on her body—that vile tattoo—”
After a few more days, I sense the change in the air. I feel the Paters distancing themselves from Keris. Some are even outright opposed to her. When she does return to Antium, she will find it a far less welcoming city than she expects.
* * *
Captain Alistar sends me a message letting me know he has information on the same day Dex returns to Antium, and I call them both to me in the training yard.
“Keris will be here within the week.” Dex is fresh from the road, splattered with mud, exhausted. But he spars with me anyway, keeping his helm low so that his lips cannot be read. It’s nearly impossible to hear him over the clash of weapons and grunts of men training.
“She knows you’ve spread the truth about the tattoo and the murders. She sent two assassins; I dispatched them before they could get here, but skies know what she’ll do when she arrives. You’d best start cooking your food yourself. Farming your own grain too.”
“Did she ride straight for Antium?”
“She stopped at the Roost,” Dex says. “I followed her in, but her men nearly caught me. By then I thought it best to get back here. I’ll check in with my spies—” Dex’s gaze shifts over my shoulder, and he frowns.
At the entrance to the barracks, across the training field, a group of Black Guards crowds together. I think at first that a fight has broken out. I hurry toward them, war hammer still in hand.
One of the men calls out: “Get the bleeding physician!”
“No point, that’s karka snake venom—”
They are clustered around a fellow guard who bucks as he vomits black bile onto the ground. I recognize him instantly: Captain Alistar.
“Bleeding hells.” I crouch down next to him. “Get the barracks physician. Get him now!”
But the man could already be here and it would be too late. The black bile, the red mottling around Alistar’s nose and ears. It is karka snake venom. He’s done for.
Harper pushes through the crowd and kneels beside me. “Shrike, what—”
“Nothing—” Alistar grabs the front of my fatigues with one hand and pulls me close. His voice is little more than a death rattle. “Nothing—no attacks—nothing—Shrike—they’re nowhere—”
His grip goes slack, and he slumps to the ground, dead.
Burning skies. “As you were,” I say to the men. “Go on.” The men scatter, except for Dex and Harper, who stare down in horror at the dead soldier.
I lean down and wrest a pile of papers from Alistar’s stiff hand. I expect it to be information on Corporal Favrus. Instead I find reports from the garrisons across the north—straight from the garrison commanders.
“The Karkauns have disappeared.” Harper, reading over my shoulder, sounds as mystified as I feel. “Not a single attack near Tiborum. Nothing in the deep north, not for months. Corporal Favrus lied. The Karkauns were quiet.”
“The Karkauns are never quiet,” I say. “This time last year, they were conquering the Wildmen clans. We stopped them in Tiborum. We stopped them in Navium. They lost their fleet. There’s a bleeding famine in their southern territories, and a warlock priest whipping them into righteous fury. They should be harassing every village from here to the sea.”
“Look at this, Shrike.” Harper has searched Alistar’s body, and he pulls out another scroll. “He must have found it in Favrus’s things,” Harper says. “It’s in code.”
“Break the code,” I snap. Something is wrong—very wrong. “Find me Favrus. Alistar’s death can’t be a coincidence. The corporal is involved. Get messages to the northwestern garrisons. Have them send scouts to check in on the closest Karkaun clans. Find out where they are, what they are doing. I want answers by nightfall, Harper. If those bastards are planning an assault on Tiborum, the city may fall. It might already be too late. Dex . . .”
My old friend sighs, already knowing that he’s about to head back on the road.
“Head north,” I say. “Check the passes around the Nevennes. They might be pushing for Delphinium. They won’t have enough men to hold it, but that doesn’t mean they’re not stupid enough to try.”
“I’ll send a message through the drums as soon as I know anything, Shrike.”
By nightfall, we’ve had word from even the most far-flung of the western garrisons. The Karkauns have completely abandoned their camps in the west. Their caves are empty, their grazing animals gone, their few fields and gardens are fallow. They can’t possibly be planning an attack on Tiborum.
Which means they are gathering elsewhere. But where? And to what end?
XXXVI: Laia
Musa offers no explanation as we leave the palace, the only sign of his frustration the swift clip of his stride.
“Excuse me.” I poke him in the ribs as he winds through streets unfamiliar to me. “Your Highness—”
“Not now,” he grinds out. As much as I want to question him, we have a bigger problem, which is how the hells we’re going to get rid of Captain Eleiba. The Mariner spoke briefly to the king before escorting us from the throne room and hasn’t been more than a foot away from us since. When Musa enters a neighborhood where the houses are densely packed, I prepare to pull on my invisibility, expecting him to attack our chaperone. But instead, he just stops in an alley. “Well?” he says.
Eleiba clears her throat and turns to me. “His Royal Highness King Irmand thanks you for your warning, Laia, and wishes to assure you that he does not take lightly the interference of the fey creatures in his domain. He accepts Darin of Serra’s offer for weapons and vows that he will provide shelter for the Scholars in the city until more permanent accommodations can be made. And he wishes you to have this.” Eleiba places in my hand a silver signet ring emblazoned with a trident. “Show it to any Mariner, and they are honor bound to aid you.”
Musa smiles. “I knew you’d get to him.”
“But, the crown princess, she—”
“King Irmand has been ruler in Marinn for sixty years,” Eleiba says. “Princess Nikla . . . was not always as she is now. The king has no other heir, and he does not wish to undermine her by disagreeing with her outright. But he knows what is best for his people.”
All I can manage is a nod. “Good luck, Laia of Serra,” Eleiba says quietly. “Perhaps we will meet again.”
“Prepare your city.” I say it before I lose my courage. Eleiba raises perfectly arched brows, and I rush on, feeling like an idiot for giving advice to a woman twenty years older and far wiser than I am. “You’re the captain of the guard. You have power. Please do what you can. And if you have friends elsewhere in the Free Lands who can do the same, tell them.”
When she is long gone, Musa answers my unspoken question. “Nikla and I eloped ten years ago,” he says. “We were only a little older than you, but much more foolish. She had an older brother who was supposed to be king. But he died, she was named crown princess, and we grew apart.”
I wince at the perfunctory nature of his recitation, a decade of history in four sentences.
“I didn’t mention it before because there was no point. We’ve been separated for years. She took my lands, my titles, my fortune—”