“Traitors?” The voice belonged to Artis, quiet and level. “It is a big camp.”
Ellina understood Artis’ skepticism. Even if a few operatives managed to sneak a living corpse past the night’s watch, that did not explain how the creature had made it all the way to Venick’s tent unobserved. Someone should have noticed.
“Southern conjurors can summon shadows,” Branton offered. “Maybe the conjuror disguised the corpse. Covered it in darkness, made it difficult to observe.”
Erol rubbed his chin. “If that was possible, why wouldn’t the conjuror have snuck into camp along with it? She could have covered herself in shadows too, crept up close to Venick’s tent. That would have been easier than conjuring blind from a distance.”
“Maybe she was too limited in her power.”
“Maybe she was a decoy, and that’s whatanotherconjuror was doing.”
The discussion continued. As everyone took turns throwing out progressively wilder ideas, Ellina came to kneel beside the corpse. Though its uniform had lost all color in the fire, she could still make out the rough shape of it, the size of the neck hole, the reinforced stitching. She reached out to touch the blackened tunic, searching for a clue, some thread she could pull to unravel this mystery. The fabric disintegrated under her fingers.
“Well,” Lin Lill huffed. “Until we have an answer, we can take no chances. Venick, I am doubling your guard.”
“No.” Venick’s face pinched. “Absolutely not.”
“It is for your own safety.”
“You three are enough. I can’t have someone watching me every minute.”
“You are the Commander.”
“And as Commander, I order you to let it go.”
Lin Lill dragged her eyes over Venick’s face. Ellina knew that look. It was the same way Venick had looked at Ellina earlier when he decided not to question her about her trip to the river. There was a promise there, an agreement to let things go…for now.
They called the meeting to an end. Everyone agreed to continue mulling over the problem and to reconvene if any new information was uncovered. Branton and Artis exited the tent first, their long elven braids swishing in unison. Lin Lill went next, chin high, followed closely by Erol, who gave Venick a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. Ellina was the last to come to her feet. She was halfway out of the tent when Venick’s hand closed on her sleeve, tugging her gently backward. “Not so fast.” He dipped his head, squinting as he searched her face. “Are you alright?”
That was like him, to ask if she was alright when he was the one who had been attacked. He caught her expression and gave a slight smile. “So it’s like Lin said? You just fancied a dip in a river?”
Ellina shrugged. She did not want Venick probing into her early morning swim session. He had a way of seeing things too clearly. Of seeinghertoo clearly. And though there were times when Ellina appreciated his insight, she often wished it was easier to hide. It could be disorienting, having another person read your every thought, particularly when you yourself did not even know what you were thinking.
She turned the question back on him, motioning towards the corpse.
Venick raked a hand through his hair. The movement was momentarily distracting. Venick’s hair had grown these past months. Not nearly as long as an elf’s, which might reach as far as their waist, but long enough to brush his shoulders. Wavy. Thick.
“I was lucky,” Venick said. “The conjuror was at a disadvantage—working from outside the camp like that, she couldn’t actually seethe fight, so she struggled to control the corpse. She had it facing the wrong way at one point. It bought me time. Not that time was much help.” He grimaced. “It was like fighting a cloth doll. Stabbing it was useless. It just kept coming for me.”
It had been the same when Ellina first witnessed the conjurors practicing their corpse-bending in the palace crypts. She had seen an elf cut off an undead’s head, but it had not stopped the creature from fighting. Or rather, it had not stopped theconjurorfrom fighting. The corpse was merely a vessel for the conjuror’s power, a puppet that could be manipulated on its master’s behalf. A severed head was no obstacle.
“She was female,” Venick said abruptly. “The corpse-bender, I mean. The one behind last night’s attack. Lin Lill said she was female. I thought Balid might…” He stumbled. “I thought it might have been him.”
The space around Ellina seemed to shrink. Balid, the elf who had stolen Ellina’s voice. Balid, the elf who Ellina had first seen controlling a corpse in the crypts. A powerful elf, vicious in a way even Youvan had not been. If Ellina killed Balid, they believed that his conjuring would be reversed, and she would get her voice back. Yet whenever Ellina tried to imagine facing him, her mind only served her images of the prison: Balid’s long, slim fingers. Farah’s wicked smile. The feeling of her voice being sucked from her throat.
She looked at the wall of the tent, the way it cupped the morning light. She tried to breathe evenly.
“If Balid was with that conjuror last night,” Venick began. “If there was even a chance—”
Ellina lifted a hand to stop him. She did not want Venick to finish that sentence. She did not want to hear his voice go low with resolve as he offered to turn his army around, forsaking their greater mission to hunt down Balid. And Venick wouldoffer it. He would run his army into the ground if it meant giving Ellina her voice back, because he blamed himself, and believed it was the right thing.
He was wrong. It was not Venick’s fault, what had happened to her. It was not his job to set things right. And Venick had sacrificed enough for her already. Too much. He must be aware of the problems her presence was causing among his soldiers, the way they gossiped, the mistrust it sowed. Ellina could not let Venick throw away any more of his hard-won progress on her behalf.
If anyone was going to go after Balid, it would have to be her.
A feverish shiver spread from her chest. Ellina again remembered the prison, guards gripping bruises into her forearms, Balid sliding towards her like a snake slides over sand. The blacks of his eyes had been large. His mouth was a bloodless slit. He lifted his hands, an almost delicate gesture, a conductor before his orchestra. Then those hands had squeezed to fists, and Ellina’s world cracked down the middle.
THREE
