Izzi draws the bow, sights, and knocks the boot off the branch easily. Gibran curses.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Izzi says. “I’ll still keep you company while you do all the work.” Izzi slings her bow on her back and gives Gibran a hand up. For all his blustering, he holds on to her a little longer than he needs to, his eyes lingering on her as she walks ahead of him. I hide a smile, thinking of what Izzi said to me a few nights ago as we fell into sleep. “It’s nice to be admired, Laia, by someone who means well. It’s nice to be thought beautiful.”
They pass Afya, who chivvies them along. I clench my jaw and look away from the Tribeswoman. A feeling of impotence seizes me. I want to tell her we should keep going, but I know she won’t listen. I want to tell her she was wrong for letting Elias leave—for not even bothering to wake me until he was well away, but she won’t care. And I want to rage at her for refusing to allow me or Keenan to take a horse and track Elias down, but she’ll just roll her eyes and tell me again what she told me when I learned Elias left: My duty is to get you safely to Kauf. And you haring off after him interferes.
I must admit that she has carried out her duty with remarkable cleverness. Here in the heart of the Empire, the countryside is crawling with Martial soldiers. Afya’s caravan has been searched a dozen times. Only her savvy as a smuggler has kept us alive.
I put the bow down, my focus shattered.
“Help me get dinner going?” Keenan gives me a rueful smile. He knows well the look on my face. He’s patiently suffered my frustration since Elias left, and he’s realized the only cure is distraction. “It’s my turn to cook,” he says. I fall into step beside him, preoccupied enough that I do not notice Izzi running toward us until she calls out.
“Come quickly,” she says. “Scholars—a family—on the run from the Empire.”
Keenan and I follow Izzi back to camp to find Afya speaking rapidly in Sadhese with Riz and Vana. A small group of anxious Scholars looks on, their clothing torn, faces streaked with dirt and tears. Two dark-eyed women who appear to be sisters stand together. One of them has her arm around a girl of perhaps six. The man with them carries a little boy no more than two.
Afya turns away from Riz and Vana, both of whom have similar, glowering expressions. Zehr keeps his distance, but he doesn’t look happy either.
“We can’t help you,” Afya says to the Scholars. “I will not bring down the Martials’ wrath upon my Tribe.”
“They’re killing everyone,” one of the women says. “No survivors, miss. They’re even killing Scholar prisoners, massacring them in their cells—”
It is as if the earth at my feet has dropped away. “What?” I push past Keenan and Afya. “What did you say about Scholar prisoners?”
“The Martials are butchering them.” The woman turns to me. “Every single prisoner. From Serra to Silas to our city, Estium, fifty miles west of here. Antium is next, we hear, and after that, Kauf. That woman—the Mask, the one they call the Commandant—she’s killing them all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Helene
“What are you going to do about Captain Sergius?” Harper asks as we make for Antium’s Black Guard barracks. “Some of the Gens on Marcus’s list are allied with Gens Sergia. He has heavy support within the Black Guard.”
“It’s nothing a few whippings won’t fix.”
“You can’t whip them all. What will you do if there is open dissent?”
“They can bend to my will, Harper, or I can break them. It’s not complicated.”
“Don’t be stupid, Shrike.” The anger in his voice surprises me, and when I glance at him, his green eyes flash. “There are two hundred of them and two of us. If they turn on us en masse, we’re dead. Why else wouldn’t Marcus just order them to take out his enemies himself? He knows he might not be able to control the Black Guard. He can’t risk them directly defying him. But he can risk them defying you. The Commandant must have put him up to it. If you fail, then you’re dead. Which is exactly what she wants.”
“And what you want too.”
“Why would I tell you any of this if I wanted you dead?”
“Bleeding skies, I don’t know, Harper. Why do you do anything? You don’t make sense. You never have.” I frown in irritation. “I don’t have time for this. I need to figure out how I’m going to get to the Paters of ten of the best-guarded Gens in the Empire.”
Harper is about to retort, but we’ve reached the barracks, a great, square building built around a training field. Most of the men within play dice or cards, cups of ale beside them. I clench my teeth in disgust. The old Blood Shrike is gone for a few weeks and discipline has already gone to the hells.
As I pass through the field, some of the men eye me curiously. Others give me blatant once-overs that make me want to rip their eyes out. Most just seem angry.
“We take out Sergius,” I say quietly. “And his closest allies.”
“Force won’t work,” Harper murmurs. “You need to outwit them. You need secrets.”
“Secrets are a snake’s way of doing business.”
“And snakes survive,” Harper says. “The old Blood Shrike traded in secrets—it’s why he was so valuable to Gens Taia.”
“I don’t know any secrets, Harper.” But even as I say it, I realize it’s not true. Sergius, for instance. His son talked about many things that he probably shouldn’t have. Rumors at Blackcliff spread quickly. If anything that Sergius the younger said was true …
“I can deal with his allies,” Harper says. “I’ll get help from the other Plebeians in the Guard. But we need to move swiftly.”
“Get it done,” I say. “I’ll speak with Sergius.”
I find the captain with his feet up in the barracks mess hall, his cronies gathered around him.
“Sergius.” I don’t comment on the fact that he doesn’t stand. “I must solicit your opinion on something. Privately.” I turn my back and make for the Blood Shrike’s quarters, seething when he doesn’t follow immediately.
“Captain,” I begin when he finally walks into my quarters, but he interrupts.
“Miss Aquilla,” he says, and I practically choke on my own saliva. I haven’t been addressed as Miss Aquilla since I was about six.
“Before you ask for advice or favors,” he goes on, “let me explain something. You’ll never control the Black Guard. At best, you’ll be a pretty figurehead. So whatever orders that Plebeian dog of an Emperor gave you—”
“How’s your wife?” I hadn’t planned to be so direct, but if he’s going to be a dog, then I’ll have to crawl down to his level until I get him on a leash.
“My wife knows her place,” Sergius says warily.
“Unlike you,” I say, “sleeping with her sister. And her cousin. How many bastards do you have running around now? Six? Seven?”
“If you’re trying to blackmail me”—the sneer on Sergius’s face is practiced—“it won’t work. My wife knows of my women and my bastards. She smiles and does her duty. You should do the same: Put on a dress, marry for the good of your Gens, and produce heirs. In fact, I have a son—”
Yes, you cretin. I know your son. Cadet Sergius hates his father. I wish someone would just tell her, the boy once said of his mother. She could tell Grandfather. He’d kick my ass of a father out into the cold.
“Maybe your wife does know.” I smile at Sergius. “Or maybe you’ve kept your dalliances a secret and learning of them would devastate her. Maybe she would tell her father, who, in rage at the insult, would offer her shelter and withdraw the money that funds your crumbling Illustrian estate. You can’t very well be Pater of Gens Sergia with no money, can you, Lieutenant Sergius?”
“That’s Captain Sergius!”
“You’ve just been demoted.”
Sergius first turns white, then an unusual shade of purple. When the shock drains from his face, it’s replaced by a helpless rage that I find quite satisfying.