If she were human, she would have already succumbed to the craving for oxygen. As it was, her body was pleading with her to resurface, wade back to shore. Part of her wanted to stay at the river’s bottom, to push her limit hard enough to hear it crack, but the other part of her—the older, wiser part—warned against it.
She broke the surface with a gasp.
Cold air rushed into her face. Her eyes smarted. Ellina pressed her palms to her temples, taking measured gulps of air. When she lowered her hands, she saw she was no longer alone.
Lin Lill stood at the river’s edge, staring at Ellina with an expression that was, for the ranger, as good as open bafflement. It was not Ellina’s questionable decision to swim in a freezing river that had Lin Lill so affected, but rather the fact that Ellina was swimming at all. This was widely known: elves did not swim.
Lin Lill recovered, giving a small bow and an even smaller, “Cessena.” Though Ellina had asked the elves—or rather, asked Venick to ask the elves—not to call her by her formal title, old habits were hard to break. This was especially true for Lin Lill, who was so tightly bound by duty that Ellina could often feel its stranglehold secondhand.
“I was ordered to inform you,” Lin Lill said. “There has been an attack.”
???
Ellina pushed into Erol’s tent.
It was a tight space, a modest conjunction of poles and rope and canvas, though it seemed even tighter because of the number of bodies that had been crammed inside. There were Ellina’s old troopmates Branton and Artis, the legion ranger Lin Lill, the elderly human healer named Erol, and—much to Ellina’s horror—the charred remains of what appeared to be an elven soldier.
Ellina blinked down at the body. Waited for her mind to right itself. Squinted and blinked again. When the corpse remained firmly in place, she had to concede that this was not a resurgence of her blood loss-induced hallucinations…though why Lin Lill had failed to mention the body during her briefing, Ellina could not guess.
She arrowed a look at the ranger, waiting for an explanation.
“Venick’s attacker,” Lin Lill offered. She spoke offhandedly, as if a dead body on display was nothing unusual. Then again, for a legionnaire like Lin Lill, it might not be. Ellina supposed that Lin Lill was used to these sorts of dealings, that her role as an elite killer had desensitized her…
Ellina stumbled over that thought. Brought a hand to her head, as if to check for fever. What was she thinking? It confounded her how quick she was to set Lin Lill into a separate category from herself, as if they had nothing in common. But Ellina had been an elite killer, too. She had hunted trespassers along the border, had ended the lives of more humans than she cared to count. Ellina was no stranger to dead bodies, was no stranger even toburneddead bodies. Had she forgotten her own history?
“Bad news,” came a voice from behind. Ellina turned to see Venick stepping into the tent, taking with him what little was left of their free space. The others shuffled to accommodate the fifth—sixth body as Venick let the tent’s flap fall closed behind him.
His eyes came to Ellina. His expression changed at the sight of her, then changed again, his gaze shifting to her wet hair, her blue lips. His tone was alarmed. “What happened to you?”
Ellina knew what he must be thinking: that there had been some kind of confrontation, that she had been pranked, attacked, pulled into a body of water against her will. She began to motion with her hands—Nothing, I am fine—when Lin Lill interjected. “The princess fancied a dip in the river.”
It was as if a line had been cut. The sudden release of support, the tumble into freefall. In the ensuing silence, Ellina was starkly aware of five pairs of eyes pressing into her skin.
There was nothing so unusual, really, about a travel-worn soldier seeking a cleansing dip in a river. Except that it was winter. Except that the western plains were blanketed in snow, the rivers and lakes crusted with ice. Even those rivers that had not yet frozen were treacherously cold. No one in their right mind would choose to swimin them. No elf, really, would choose to swim at all.
Venick was concerned. Ellina saw his concern, the half-formeddo you have a death wish?on his lips. But he recognized her discomfort. Recognized, too, that this was not the time to press for answers. Reluctantly, and with a look that conveyed his unhappiness, he hauled the conversation back onto its original track.
“I talked to the night’s watch about the attack,” Venick reported. “It’s as we thought. No one saw the corpse enter camp.”
“That is impossible,” Branton asserted. “Someone must have seen.”
“The men are lying,” Lin Lill agreed.
“Not just the men,” Erol said, lifting a wrinkled finger. “There were elves on watch last night, too.”
“I questioned the elven watch,” Lin Lill replied stiffly.“They had nothing to report.”
“You accuse our men of lying, but not your elves?”
Venick’s gaze skipped sideways, caught Ellina’s. This was dangerous language, the kind Venick had worked hard to smother. He did not want it to beour menandyour elves.He wanted the soldiers to be a collectiveus.They had made impressive strides in that direction, but these were old prejudices, hard to smother. That was true even for men like Erol who had—years ago, before the border—spent time in the elflands.
“I questioned the elves inelvish,” Lin Lill clarified. “Last I checked, Ellina is the only one who can—” a sidelong glance “—could lie in elvish. And anyway, all of our soldiers are traditional.”
Traditional. The soldiers had white hair, she meant, indicating that they were not conjurors and therefore could not lie in elvish. Only black-haired elves like Ellina—and more specifically, black-haired elves from the north—had the power to break the bonds of their language in that way.
Venick folded his arms. “If our men say they didn’t see a corpse, I believe them. They have no reason to lie.”
Lin Lill was quick. “Unless there are traitors among us.”
