It was difficult to make out Dourin’s features, but Venick didn’t miss the scowl, the sudden stiffness that was elvish forthe hell he is. “The southerners have seen him with me,” Ellina explained. “He helped me escape. They will kill him.”
“And? He was not supposed to live anyway.”
“They will interrogate him.”
“Like you did?”
“Careful.” Ellina didn’t change her tone, but Venick saw the sudden shift of power, the way Dourin dipped his head and flicked his fingers. It was a gesture with many meanings.Apology, it meant now.Deference. “He comes,” she repeated as they began moving again. Quickly, worried that they’d wasted too much time already.
“I do not suppose he knows how to scale a city wall?”
“Askhim, Dourin.”
It was only then that Venick realized they’d been speaking in elvish. Realized, too late, that he looked as if he understood. He turned his face more deeply into the shadows, hoping that if they’d caught a glimpse of his expression before, they would look again now and see nothing.
“Well, human?” Dourin asked in mainlander. “Can you climb?”
“We cannot leave over the wall.”
Dourin made an impatient gesture. “So saysyou.”
“They’ve rung the bells,” Venick said, attempting to keep the frustration from his voice. The urgency, though, he let ring clear. “That means a full party search. Whatever the dogs miss, the watchmen in the towers will catch.”
“It will not matter. I have horses waiting on the other side. By the time they see us, we will be gone.”
“Maybe. Except it’s not just men we’re running from.” Which brought him to his next thought, the one that had tugged on the corner of his mind since he’d heard the first bell ring. Since before then, even. He remembered walking into Kenath, the suspicious eyes of the crowd, the way the streets had emptied of elves. He remembered the shadows in the window, on the roof, how quickly the southern elves had caught their trail. Like they’d been waiting. Or told.
And now, the sound of a hunt. Full party searches were rare. Guards—especiallyborder cityguards—were happier to let citizens sort out their own justice. But now they had launched a search, and for what? Because Ellina had assaulted a wench? And since when had guards ever cared about that?
And then, another memory. Venick had been young, a child of six or seven the first time his father brought him into his study and began teaching him tactics of war. Venick remembered his father’s heavy hand on his shoulder, the smell of leather and oil. And in himself, a pleasure, a desire to please. His father had retired from the military after a knee injury left him with a permanent limp, but he was determined to instill in his son everything he knew.
Here is how the people of the grasslands won the city of Aras, his father said.
Here is how we won it back, he said.
The story was fuzzy in Venick’s memory. An uprising. Stealth attacks. Poisoned horses, burned supply wagons. The people of the grasslands were weaker, but they had somehow managed to bribe or kill their way into positions of power within the city of Aras. They infiltrated it from the inside and took it for their own.
There are no rules to war, said his father’s voice,except the ones you imagine.
Venick fought a well of bitterness. He didn’t like to think of his father in this way, or to remember that there had been a time when he’d admired—hell,worshiped—the man. And yet, this memory had power.
“I think—” Venick started, then stopped, struggling to put his thoughts into words. It would have been easier had he understood more about these southern elves, had Ellina given him something other thanI will handle itandit is not your concern. But now all he had were cries of alarm quickly gaining ground and a hunch. Well. Spit it out then, and let them figure the rest. “The southern elves have taken the city.”
Dourin shot Venick a skeptical look. “And you know this how?”
“Those arewarbells. The guards wouldn’t sound those, not for us. The southern elves are behind this. They’ve infiltrated the guard, and now they’re heading this hunt.”
“That is absurd.”
Venick caught Ellina’s eye. “Do the southerners have anything to gain from overtaking this city?”
“It is irrelevant,” Dourin answered. “The southerners do not have that kind of power.”
“Anything at all?” Venick insisted. Ellina pressed her lips together. “They already chased Ellina through the city, attacked her, lost her. They won’t risk that again. If they have control of the guard and a tip about Ellina’s whereabouts, whywouldn’tthey launch a hunt?”
Dourin clicked his teeth in frustration. “What makes you think—?”
But the answer was given for Venick as shouts became clear over the growing howl of dogs. There were hollers in a mixture of his language and theirs, which made it clear, so painfully clear that what Venick had said was true. The guards should all be human. Elves didn’t protect border cities, and elves and men didn’t work together. Not like this.
