“Not without losing a number of our own men, Your Grace. They chose the location well,” the captain admitted.
D’Amiran waved his hand. “It wouldn’t have been much fun anyway. I don’t know how Quinn managed to get the prince out, but that little shit has caused a great deal of complication. I want him to suffer, and I want to tell his father all about it. So that leaves the girl.”
Geddes cleared his throat. “She visits him in the barracks in the evening, dressed as a man, but he accompanies her to and from those trysts. Perhaps we can separate them and then grab her. Being that she’s not a lady, what else could we assume but that she’s a spy?”
“And hang her?” D’Amiran smirked. “It would certainly provoke him, but it’s a little too prosaic.” He gazed wistfully into the distance. “I need poetry in my life to combat this drab place.”
“Then use her as you wish, Your Grace; she’s only a commoner. Nothing would bring Quinn to her aid faster. And raising arms against you would be treason, punishable by death.”
“Yes.” The duke dragged out the syllable. “That is positively a ballad.”
The page from earlier came running up the nearest steps, crouching even more than before as he approached. “Your Grace!” he gasped, clutching his stomach.
D’Amiran backed a step away from the boy. He smelled like sewage. “What is it?”
“You have a visitor. From the forest.”
Huzar. The duke grimaced and looked to Geddes. “Meet him and bring him to my chambers. I’ll receive him there.”
“He’s already there by now, Your Grace!” the page blurted out.
D’Amiran narrowed his eyes, and Geddes stepped in. “How long ago did he arrive, boy?”
“Perhaps thirty minutes ago, sir.”
“And we’re just now learning this?” roared Geddes, cuffing the boy with an open hand.
“Begging Your Grace’s pardon, but I had to use the privy before I could tell you! It was urgent.”
Geddes raised his arm to strike the boy again, but D’Amiran lifted his hand to stop him. The captain froze. “Why was no other messenger sent in your place?” the duke asked.
The page cringed away from Geddes. “All the other boys are sick, Your Grace. Worse than me.”
“All of them?” The boy nodded.
D’Amiran made a disgusted sound and turned away. Geddes trailed him as he headed down the steps and around the ward to the inner gate. As they passed the gardens, the duke caught sight of the Fowler girl and Lady Clare walking together. The former watched him as he walked up the steps to the keep, and he knew in that moment she wasn’t Quinn’s target of affection—she was his spy. He would enjoy making them both pay.
When he reached his chambers, pausing outside to catch his breath from the climb, he realized Captain Huzar had dispatched an underling this time. D’Amiran seated himself and studied the emotionless face before him.
“I have a message from my commander.” The Kimisar soldier enunciated consonants and dragged the soft g as Huzar did. He’d given no greeting.
Annoyed, the duke gestured for him to continue. The Kimisar would be enlightened on how to properly address a nobleman once things were settled.
“The Kimisar are returning home.”
“WHAT IS THIS?” roared D’Amiran, leaping to his feet.
The young man continued without flinching. “The agreement is broken. We keep our side, but you do not. Your army does not march. There is no prince. We wait no longer for other promises. We return home, taking payment along the way.”
“I will hunt you down and hang every one of you by your entrails along the border—”
“You will not. We will be beyond your reach before your sick soldiers can mount their sick horses.”
The truth of the statement enraged the duke, and he seized a knife from his nearest guard and advanced on the Kimisar, who up close he could see was little more than a boy. “You are wrong about one thing,” D’Amiran said. “There is no ‘we.’”
The youth reacted with only the slightest grimace as the blade cut deep into his neck. He held himself upright even as his blood sprayed across the hearth rug. D’Amiran stayed close until the soldier collapsed in a heap, relishing the small victory of a Kimisar groveling at his feet as was proper. D’Amiran smirked as he wiped his face and handed the knife back to the guard.
“Have this mess cleaned up and hang him over the side of the keep so they know not to wait up for him.” He turned and headed for the bedchamber to change his ruined shirt and wash the blood out of his beard. “And bring me the girl. Tonight.”
66
QUINN—ALEX, SAGE reminded herself—came to fetch Sage as soon as it was dark. She let him in the room, and he immediately started pacing. “Everything’s changed twice today.”
“I heard you went to the river,” she said.
He nodded. “We got some clean water and managed to make contact with our scouts. They’ve found Robert and also a courier from the main army, which now occupies Jovan. It seems the general decided to set up his headquarters there, though I don’t know why.”
“Sounds like good news.”
“Yes and no,” he said. “Now that the rains have started, most of the army will be stuck on the wrong side of the Nai River as it floods. But there’s a battalion just on the other side of the pass here. They could get here in five or six days, once they know to come. The pickets want to cross the pass and call for help, but without red blaze, it will take twice as long.”
“Red blaze?” asked Sage.
“Special packets sealed with wax,” he explained. “When burned they make red flames and lots of red smoke. They’re only used for absolute emergency to call all forces within sight. I have five.”
She remembered a detail from her tour with Clare. “They have some of that in the keep so Tegann can call for help. Theirs is green, though.”
Alex nodded. “Green is for local militias. Red is for the royal army, though supposedly anyone loyal to the crown should show up. I’m debating using one ourselves tomorrow. If nothing else, it may frighten D’Amiran’s allies if they think the army is headed this way.”
“So how will you get some to the scouts?”
“I can’t,” he said, kicking the bedpost in frustration. “Even if we could get out of this rock, there’s that ring of Kimisar around us, and according to the scouts, they’re on the move again.”
Sage recalled what she needed to tell him. “I saw a man escorted into the keep. He looked Kimisar to me.”
He stopped pacing. “When?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Is he still here?”
“I … I don’t know.”
Alex waved his hand. “I’ll ask my patrols what they’ve seen. Are you ready to go?”
“Yes. Clare is telling everyone I’m ill.”