49
~ LINNA ~
Linna had been angry at Akella at first – very angry – but although she would never say so out-loud, she was glad the pirate captain was with her. It was strange to say, but she trusted Akella. And Akella was a good fighter and a particularly good sneak. Linna had watched Akella get into the iron grate and down the shaft inside the castle right under the noses of the guards on the wall above, and she had to admit she couldn’t have done better herself. Getting in and out of the mountain men’s camp would be dangerous; having Akella with her as backup eased her nerves.
The one thing Linna knew was that the poison must be delivered as the tribesmen broke their fast, well before General Alric arrived. Must. It frightened Linna to think what would happen to the general and all those soldiers if she failed to complete her part of the mission. The general might still win the battle, but the Imperial Army’s numbers and the encampment’s numbers would be close enough that there’d be many Imperial casualties.
Linna and Akella did not speak as they half-jogged, half-marched as best they could through the snow-covered streets of one of the abandoned villages outside Pellon’s walls. Linna had a vague memory that she had been here before, when she’d been a tinkers’ girl, in this very village that sat in the shadow of the great walled Eastern city. Walled cities like Pellon rarely had enough open space within them for tinkers to set up their blivas, so once the day’s business was finished inside the walls, tinkers tended to camp on a village green somewhere just outside the city.
Not that it mattered now if she’d been here before or not. Now all that mattered was that she would deliver the poison that would lead to the death of thousands of enemy soldiers on time. Linna shivered, and not just from the cold.
“Look,” she said to Akella, who jogged just a couple yards behind her. Linna lifted a gloved hand and pointed to the place where the village street dead-ended into a bowl-shaped field. The far end of the bowl’s edge was rimmed with bare-limbed oak trees. “That’s the forest. We cut straight through it and the mountain men’s camp will be on the other side.”
The forest smelled of wet leaves, moss, and pine needles. Most of the trees were twisted old hardwoods whose leaves had fallen with the arrival of winter, but there were also cedars, firs, and pines scattered throughout. Either way, the forest’s canopy had kept enough of the snow off the ground that keeping up a brisk pace was easier than it had been in the treeless village outside Pellon.
As long as they kept up their current pace, she and Akella should still be able to beat General Alric to the X Brother Rennus marked on the map by at least an hour.
As they half-marched, half-ran through the forest, Linna imagined the Empress’s reaction when she learned that Linna had been the one to deliver the poison after all. The Empress would be mad, at least at first, but then she would see that Linna and Brother Rennus had been right all along – Linna was not a child any longer, and she had an important role to play here in the East. Which made sending someone with Linna’s skills back to the Capital Lands a grave mistake. Once the Empress – and, to be honest, the Commander – got past their anger, they would see that, and Linna’s place as a full-fledged member of the palace guard would be secure at last.
But the best part of her current mission was that, once Linna did go home to Port Lorsin and saw Adela again, she would be able to hold her head high. The princess would be rightfully impressed with Linna. And what had arrogant, stupid Darien ever done in his pampered life that could compare to what Linna was about accomplish?
Adela would never have the kind of feelings for Linna that Linna had for her. Unlike Darien, Linna wasn’t stupid. She knew they’d never be lovers. But Adela was still Linna’s best friend, and friendship was its own kind of love, wasn’t it? She’d do anything for the princess, anything. Linna had proven that when she’d directly disobeyed the Commander’s orders and snuck aboard the Rooster’s Comb, all because Adela had begged Linna to go to the East and watch over her sister. Now Linna was proving her loyalty to Adela again, even if Adela didn’t realize it.
Linna and Akella stopped to rest about an hour into the journey, which they judged to be roughly the halfway point. Linna unslung the waterskin from around her neck, drinking from it before passing it to Akella.
After the other woman took a few swallows, she pointed to Linna’s second waterskin, the one Linna had secured tightly against her chest to minimize its bouncing as they ran.
“Is that it?” Akella asked. “The poison that seedy sorcerer gave to you?”
“He’s not ‘seedy.’” Linna took her waterskin back and drank again. “And he’s not a sorcerer, either; he’s part of the Brotherhood. The Brothers never say it, but I think he’s the head of all of them.”
“Oh, he’s the head sorcerer. That changes everything,” Akella said in mock reverence. “Why did head Brother Rennus need to send you in particular to poison the mountain men?”
“I told you already,” Linna said irritably. “I’ve already proven I can sneak into a camp of soldiers and poison their food. That’s how I helped rescue the Empress when her grandfather was sending her back to Port Lorsin to be executed.”
“Hmm.” Akella reached for the waterskin again. Linna handed it over.
“Brother Rennus wanted me to do this earlier, back when we were camped near Bawold,” Linna said. “He and his apprentice, Udolf, figured out the mountain men were drinking some kind of elixir before battle that gives them extra energy and makes them impervious to pain. If the Empress would’ve let me poison them then, maybe there wouldn’t be as many of them massed on the edge of the forest now.”
“Maybe.” Akella gazed out into the woods, staring at nothing in particular. She wore a thoughtful expression. “And exactly how did learned Brother Rennus discover this elixir?”
“He studied the blood of dead mountain men.” Linna grimaced. “I think he skinwalked into a few prisoners, too.” Even Linna had to admit there was something unnatural about skinwalking.
“Clever sorcerer.”
“He’s not a – ”
“Yes, yes, he’s a head Brother, not a sorcerer.”
“Why are you so against the Brotherhood?” Linna asked.
Akella turned to Linna, face incredulous. “Are you really asking me that? Are you, a Terintan, asking me why I should be suspicious of the Cult of Culo?”
“I’m only half Terintan,” Linna said defensively, even though her heritage was besides the point. “When I was a slave, Lord M’Tongliss and his wives used seers and healers all the time. I think the Lord’s mother was some kind of shaman in their tribe. Before them, I lived with tinkers, and my mistress was a seer. So I’m used to seeing the shadow arts.”
“That’s different.”
Linna snorted. “How?”
“Because the Cult of Culo – Brotherhood of Culo, whatever you want to call them – they’re not your village healer or tinker seer. They’re power-hungry. And they believe themselves above all laws.”
Linna laughed. “Since when have you cared about laws, Rizalt?”
“Not the laws of the Empire, or the laws of the Islands,” Akella said. “The laws of humankind. Of nature.”
“The Brotherhood specifically exists to protect humankind – to maintain the boundary between the world of men from the Shadowlands,” Linna said. Admittedly, they weren’t Linna’s words. She’d heard Brother Evrart and other Brothers say it often enough that she’d learned them by heart. But from what she’d seen, the Brothers seemed to live by that code. Brother Rennus was on the arrogant side, true, but he’d saved the Commander’s life when the assassin attacked back when stupid Darien delivered her to the Empress’s doorstep, and ever since then, Brother Rennus had worked hard to support the Empress. Thanks to him, hundreds of Brothers had come out of the woodwork to join the campaign in the East. “Anyway,” Linna added, “the Empress trusts the Brotherhood.”
“Ohhh,” Akella said. “The Empress trusts the Brotherhood? The same Empress who believes sailing into the Kingdom of Persopos is going to solve all the Empire’s problems? Well, then, I stand corrected. Obviously I’m mistaken, and the Brotherhood is not a clan of conniving, back-stabbing sorcerers, after all.”
“Why do you hate the Brotherhood so much? Did they do something to you?”
“I already told you,” Akella grumbled. “They draw their power from the Shadowlands – from beings who want nothing more than to obliterate the mortal realm. They are like children who play with fire and then act surprised when they accidentally burn down their own house.”
“I guess you know everything.”
Instead of answering, Akella tossed the waterskin back to Linna and stood up. “We need to keep moving.”
Linna got to her feet, and the two took off at a loping run once more.
Dawn came. Not just the weak grey-pink light that had been starting to emerge from the east when they left Pellon, but the true dawn of molten orange and capped with violet-blue. Akella set down the lantern they’d been using to light their way ever since Linna’s shattered, and now they moved even faster through the forest.
The landscape began to roll more, hills rising and falling beneath their feet. That was good; the camp was supposed to be where the forest thinned and the foothills of the Sunrise Mountains rose. They crested a ridge, and from its peak, Linna could finally see where forest was interrupted by road – the same road General Alric and his two brigades would travel to reach the mountain men’s camp. Excellent. For the rest of the trip, they would keep to the forest but travel parallel to the road. It would take them straight into the abandoned village where the mountain men had made their camp. They should reach Brother Rennus’s X in a matter of ten or fifteen minutes, which would put them right on time as the camp began to break its fast. Nerves fluttered in her stomach, but Linna pushed them down. Mizanas controlled their emotions on the eve of battle.
She was just about to start her run down the ridge and towards the road when Akella suddenly grabbed the collar of her coat and yanked her backwards. Linna turned to ask what Akella thought she was doing, but Akella pulled her behind a tree trunk and pressed a finger to her lips.
“Look,” she whispered into Linna’s ear. She pointed to the place where the forest butted against the road.
Linna opened her mouth to demand what she was supposed to be looking at, but then she saw it: A brown, leafless bush shifted.
It didn’t shift from wind. It shifted because it wasn’t a bush but a man, camouflaged as a piece of forest. Linna’s eyes widened as they roved up and down the edge of the forest. What had looked like ordinary rocks, bushes, and fallen logs was actually an infinitely long line of tribesmen, waiting in perfect silence along the edge of the road.
An ambush, set perfectly for General Alric’s brigades. And Linna had almost run straight into it.
“Shite-filled beard of Q’Util,” she cursed under her breath in Terintan. She turned to Akella, her heart thumping hard against her ribs.
Akella pointed in the direction they’d come from and made a slow walking motion with her two fingers. Keeping to a low crouch so that they stayed below the protective line of the ridge, the two of them retreated until they felt safe enough to whisper.
“They know,” Linna breathed. “They know the General is on his way, that he’s taking that road. But that’s… that’s not… How can they know?”
“A spy.”
“There couldn’t be a spy,” Linna whispered back. “The decision for General Alric to attack the camp was only made last night – not even eight hours ago. And the only people in the Empress’s quarters besides me when the decision was made were the Empress, the Commander, General Alric, and…” Her eyes found Akella’s. “Brother Rennus.”
Could it be…?
“General Alric doesn’t strike me as smart enough to plot to overthrow the Empress and destroy the Imperial Army,” Akella said. “And why would he lead himself into an ambush? But he is your Empress’s Chief of Spies, which means if he was negotiating with the mountain men behind the scenes, he would have had the personnel to do it.”
Linna went numb and cold all over. “No. General Alric adores the Empress. Almost as much as the Commander does.”
“If it wasn’t the general, it has to be either the Empress herself, the Commander, or… the head Brother.”
But Linna was already shaking her head. The truth was right there – she and Akella both saw it – yet it just didn’t make sense. Her mind worked rapidly through other possible explanations, because Brother Rennus couldn’t have been the one to betray their plans to the mountain men, not after he’d done so much to serve the Empire and the Empress. It had to be someone else.
Maybe the mountain men themselves – but no, even if the mountain men had infiltrated Pellon, they would have had to have been in the Empress’s chambers eight hours earlier when the decision to attack was made.
Maybe one of the beastwalker spies who’d been traveling back and forth between Pellon and the mountain men in animal form?
But the other Brothers revered Brother Rennus. They practically treated him like a minor deity. Imagining them going against Brother Rennus’s wishes was almost as hard to imagine as Brother Rennus himself betraying the Empire.
But why, why? Brother healers, including Brother Rennus, had saved the lives of countless thousands of Imperial soldiers. Brother Rennus had saved the Commander’s life back in Port Lorsin, Linna had seen it with her own eyes. He’d also been so concerned about the Empress’s health on their journey to Pellon. Before that, when they were still camped outside Bawold, he’d worked hard to uncover the elixir that had made the mountain men so unusually strong. Why would he have argued so fervently for Linna to deliver poison to Bawold if he was allied with the mountain men? Why would he have created the poison this time if he had tipped the mountain men off about General Alric’s coming raid?
Yet the mountain men were clearly expecting General Alric. And the fact remained that only five people had been in the room when that decision had been made, and four of them wouldn’t betray the Empress or the Empire for all the gold or glory in the world.
“Someone could’ve found out after the meeting, after they decided to send General Alric east,” Linna said aloud. “An officer, maybe. General Alric would’ve had to tell the commanding officers of the two brigades that they would be marching at dawn. He might’ve shown them the route, too. And then those officers might have told other officers.”
“Maybe.”
Linna could tell by the furrow in Akella’s brow that her mind was also spinning through different possibilities. She might have no love for the Brotherhood, but to her credit, she was trying not to jump to conclusions.
“Except,” Akella said, “an officer would’ve found out – when? An hour or two before midnight? Certainly not any sooner than when you went to Brother Rennus and offered to deliver his poison.”
Linna understood what Akella was getting at. “They couldn’t have left much earlier than you and me. And if there was someone running through the forest – behind us or ahead of us – we would have heard them or seen signs of them by now.”
Akella met Linna’s worried gaze. “Yes. I think we would have.”
“Unless they took a different route.”
“Would there have been a faster route than the one we took?”
Linna thought for a moment and shook her head.
Akella pursed her lips. “Are you sure the sorcerer gave you poison to deliver?”
“He was definitely brewing something with Udolf when I knocked on his door a few hours ago,” Linna said. She thought back to that moment, when Udolf had opened the door. There’d been a rack of vials on the table in front of Brother Rennus, and a pile of dried flowers on a piece of parchment paper.