I’d been expecting a handful of tents and a few guards, but this was almost a small village. A high wooden fence surrounded the camp, the tree trunks carved to sharp tips to deter anyone from climbing in—or out.
From my vantage point high in one of the tallest trees I could find, I spotted at least thirty prisoners scurrying about the camp in their faded clothes and clanging shackles. They hauled water from the rushing Medria River, sawed logs, and minded the camp. All under the watchful eyes of over a dozen soldiers. And that didn’t count the ones who might be patrolling around the camp.
I’d been in this tree for nearly three hours, judging by the stiffness in my muscles. Sunset had come and gone. I was grateful for the cloak of shadows, but the darkness made it much more difficult to distinguish patterns.
Torches crowned the guard posts on the east and west sides of the camp. The guards were alert and well-rested.
Fucking rotten luck.
A low, trilling whistle told me Maz was descending from his tree. He was probably going out of his mind with impatience.
We’d pushed ourselves in the last week of riding, ever-conscious of the timeline we navigated. If Jek and the others had made it back to Yargoth and told Skelly of our plan, Skelly would be sailing to meet the Shadow-Wolf prison ship by now.
Nikella had two days to make her explosives. Then we needed to steal one of these log shipments and raft it right into the mine.
But walking into this camp would be suicide.
I silently swung down from my tree, the movements written into my muscles after years of climbing these trees growing up. Stepping back into the goddess’s forest of Twaryn had felt like coming home. That first breath of rich, dewy air had eased an ache in my chest I hadn’t even known was there.
Kiera had asked me why the trees didn’t change color like the ones in Dagriel. Why the coming winter didn’t seem to touch Twaryn.
I’d told her what Nikella had told me when I was a young boy. These were Viridana’s trees, and she’d willed this forest to live forever.
I watched Maz’s bulky shadow slide down his tree and land with a grunt.
“How are you so gods-damned quick?” he muttered.
I smiled in the dark. “Sheer talent. Let’s go.”
We slipped back through the thick forest to where we’d left the others with the horses. Nikella had chosen a grove far enough from the fortress that no one would see our fire. And if they did, hopefully they would assume we were simple Twarynites.
Ruru was standing guard when we approached. I whistled, and he relaxed. “All right?”
“It’s locked up tight,” Maz said, collapsing by the small fire Kiera tended. “Nothing goes in or out except the logs.”
Ruru frowned. “Who floats the logs down the river, then?”
I sat next to Kiera. “A guard with four or five prisoners, as Caddik said. But they don’t use the prisoners who do the logging, from the looks of it. A wagon arrived with a group of prisoners who hopped on the raft and started riding it down the river with the same guard who drove the wagon.”
“So they use the same guards and prisoners on the river,” Kiera summed up, dusting off her hands. “Probably to prevent many new faces they can’t track.”
I nodded.
“Which means we’ve got shitty luck,” Maz said, glaring into the fire. “We can’t take the shipment from inside the camp because they don’t use the same prisoners. And we can’t take it outside the camp because theydouse the same prisoners.”
“It’s clever,” I admitted.
“It’s a problem,” Maz countered. “We have eight days until we have to be at that fucking mine. Otherwise, my sisters and Skelly and the rest of them will be attacking a beach for no reason.”
“We’ll figure it out, Mazkull.” I turned to Kiera. “Nikella?”
She shook her head. “Still not back.”
The moment we’d set up camp, Nikella had disappeared into the forest with her notes.
She’d been more focused than ever on Kiera’s training since the night she made us fight each other. I’d seen the two of them talking afterward, their expressions solemn. I hadn’t asked what it was about, but both women trained like the world depended on it. Which it probably did.
Ruru trained hard as well, as if determined to prove he could do his part in the mine.
