The curve of her cheekbone cast a shadow across the hollow beneath it. There were more hollows at her throat and in the dip of her collarbones, and the trough of her waist between rib cage and hip was deep. She was a slight woman who’d noticeably missed more than a few meals since she fled the sanctuary of his house. She watched him with a steady expression, as if fully expecting his mockery. Had he not personally experienced an evil that tried toreel him in like a caught fish, he might have expressed his disbelief. There were indeed charlatan shade speakers. Siora, he was fast coming to believe, wasn’t one of them.
Instead, he gave a disdainful huff and closed his eyes against the image of her next to him, more shadow than flesh and anchored to earth by the thinnest of threads. “Then the dead suffer the same weakness as the living. All are willing to talk. Few are willing to listen.”
He cracked an eyelid open at her soft chuckle. “That, lord, is very true.”
She said no more, and exhaustion swept over him, conquering the pain in his back and shoulders enough that he fell asleep, though not for long. It seemed only a series of breaths had passed before someone rudely woke him with a kick to the backside and a harsh voice belting out orders to his abused ear.
“Wake up, cat’s-paw. We’re headed out, and I’m eager to turn you over to the general so I can get back to important things like fighting the Nunari instead of playing nanny to you and the whore.”
Gharek struggled to a sitting position, staring blearily at the group’s captain. His shoulders had gone completely numb, and his fingers tingled in warning that they would soon do the same.
Unlike him, Siora stood and gave the captain the same disapproving look she’d leveled on Gharek numerous times so far. “I’m not a whore.”
The man raked her with a cutting glance. “You have a cunt. You’re a whore,” he said flatly, and walked away.
Siora glared after him. “If there’s any fairness in this world, that man’s mother is dead and he has no sister, no wife, and no children to suffer his presence.”
It was Gharek’s turn to scoff. “I think you’re the most pathetically hopeful person I’ve ever met.”
Unlike the captain’s comment, Gharek’s mockery bounced off her without any noticeable mark. She shrugged. “Of course I am. After all, I didn’t let you stumble into Midrigar.”
They traveled through the day and beyond sundown, riding over ground both Gharek and Siora had just traveled going the opposite direction two days earlier. Pastures and fields rolled out on either side of the road, lush carpets of green under the hot summer sun. Deceptively peaceful despite the turmoil that was tearing apart the Empire at every seam.
They stopped not far from the southern perimeter of the same forest that hid Midrigar from view to take a piss break and water the horses at a seasonal stream. Gharek fancied he smelled the smoke that plumed occasionally from Kraelag’s ruins, still smoldering so many months after its destruction. The men consumed their meals from horseback—travel rations of hard bread and dried fruit. They offered none to Gharek or Siora.
Full night had chased away the last of the gloaming when they finally reached a sprawling camp teeming with Kraelian soldiers and lit by hundreds of torches. Banners displaying a crest for the noble House of Varan fluttered from the peaks of several tents, with the biggest one flapping above the largest tent.
Gharek knew every house banner of the Kraelian nobility, and though he’d never seen or met Zaredis, he recognized the stylized design of the black wolf and bear locked in eternal combat on a field of green and bronze.
A crowd of soldiers hailed the new arrivals and several curious stares followed their prisoners as they were led toward the camp’slargest tent. Gharek was shoved to one spot not far from the entrance and ordered to sit. A soldier did the same to Siora but put her too far away for them to exchange conversation. No doubt a purposeful move from a commander used to dealing with spies. He’d played spy now and again.
He settled down to wait, thoughts racing as he scrutinized what he could see of the camp from the limited scope of his vision. Horses were penned in a corral near the edge of the camp but not so far that predators would risk the light and the smell of humanity to attack one. Others grazed idly just outside of tents, some still saddled, others wearing bridles and horse blankets. A makeshift forge had been erected, open to the air except for a short awning pulled over the cold iron waiting to be hammered into weaponry or horseshoes. An impressive rack of spears and other pole arms bristled next to a wall of shields.
The camp hummed with activity, a hive of hundreds if not thousands of soldiers and camp followers brought across the Maemor Channel’s turbulent waters on ships left docked on the Karadoc shores. Everyone knew the southern territories turned green soldiers into hardened fighting men. If it didn’t, it was only because those lads didn’t survive the experience. A general like Zaredis, de facto monarch himself over a realm of savages who, given half a chance, would eat his raw entrails straight out of his gutted belly while he was still alive, was even tougher than the soldiers he commanded. Gharek wasn’t at all surprised that he’d returned to the heart of the Empire, most likely intent on wresting the throne from the latest usurper and crowning himself emperor. Gharek couldn’t care less who sat on the blood-painted chair. His worry sprang from the fact that a man with such grand ambitions hadput out the order to hunt him. There was no scenario he could imagine here in which his head didn’t end up mounted on a pike.
He had expected to wait much longer—hoped he could wait much longer—before being summoned to the general’s tent, but no more than an hour passed before the captain of the escort came for him and yanked him to a standing position by his tunic front.
“Hard to believe looking at you that you were once the most feared bastard in the Empire,” he said, eyes a little glassy from drink and dark with contempt.
“That’s what every fool thought before I killed them,” Gharek replied, smiling the smile he always used on those he’d been sent to murder. And just like them, Zaredis’s man lost his mocking bravado. He shoved Gharek away with a growl, made uneasy by a threat he sensed more than heard.
Gharek stayed upright, dropping his stance in anticipation of dodging a blow. He was crippled by his bonds but not completely defenseless as long as his legs were free. He’d knocked out a few teeth and broken bones on more than one occasion with a well-placed kick. He might die and his remains fed to the camp dogs before the night was over, but this rejected whelp of a poxy tar leather wasn’t going to use him as a boot scraper.
Heartbeat thundering in his ears, he waited for a punch that didn’t come. The captain eyed him, then the large tent where his commander waited to have his audience with his captive. “The general wants to see you. And the whore too.” He crooked his fingers in an impatient gesture and two soldiers soon took a place on either side of Gharek. Another brought Siora to join them. She fell into step beside Gharek as they were marched to the tent and pushed inside.
As tents went, this one bore more similarities to a rich man’s abode than the humble shelters that kept most of the elements out. Supported by lattice walls, ropes, and a center pole whose girth equaled that of a draft horse’s middle, the general’s tent offered comfort afforded to the most spoiled and entitled Kraelian aristocrat. Carpets covered the ground, providing a soft foundation for the feet and backside. Several braziers were scattered in spots through the tent, though only one was lit to boil water in a trio of kettles. Oil lamps hung from hooks attached to the roof supports. They swayed gently on chains in the breeze that swooped in from the roof’s open peak and blew into the lattice exposed by the wall coverings that had been rolled up and tied to let cool air in and warm air escape.
No fewer than four armor stands, clad in a mishmash of armor styles reflecting Kraelian and Galagus influences, acted as the backdrop to a simple stool placed on a modest carpet-draped dais. Behind that, a great banner with the Varan coat of arms hung in green and bronze majesty.
Gharek took it all in with a single glance before setting his focus on the man seated on the stool watching him. Every instinct he possessed, already fine-tuned to danger, strummed a vibration through his body. This general, who had yet to say anything, swallowed the air in the tent with just his presence. Worse, Gharek recognized him. Recognized him when he’d never met him before or seen his picture. Recognized him because he’d delivered a man with the same face to meet a brutal end at the hands of the empress.
Zaredis stood. A man of average height and build, made muscular by the demands of his position and made scarred by thebattles he’d fought, he seemed a giant in a tent no longer spacious. He strolled casually toward his wary guests, and his dark eyes burned bright with a light Gharek immediately recognized every time he saw his own visage in a reflective surface. Vengeance.
That burning gaze rested briefly on Siora with little interest before returning to Gharek with an intensity to make a dead man sweat, and Gharek had no doubt he’d soon be a dead man.
“Do you know who I am?” the general asked in a gruff but quiet voice.
Gharek nodded once, swallowing to unlock the muscles in his throat. “General Zaredis of House Varan, supreme commander of the legions occupying the Galagus Gate lands and consul of the four prefectures there.” He offered an honest observation, certain such a man as this would instantly recognize—and punish—empty praise. “Of the generals who served under Herself, you were the one she feared most.”