Ellina abandoned her hiding spot and walked towards the rowboat.
???
They halted their preparations. The supply wagons were left as they were, the soldiers given leave to return to the city. Venick found Harmon in the brothel’s workroom to explain their change in plans.
She wasn’t happy. “If we don’t send our men to meet the Dark Army now, they will be free to approach the city. They’ll travel as far as they want without opposition.”
“I know.”
“But you’re changing the plan anyway.”
“Yes.”
“And what are the rest of us supposed to do while you’re off playing the champion?”
“You can prepare the soldiers to defend the city, though truthfully, if my plan fails…you’ll need to evacuate.”
Harmon exhaled an angry breath.
“There’s something else,” Venick said. He handed her Dourin’s letter. Harmon’s face paled at the sight of the Elder’s insignia stamped into the envelope’s wax seal. “Your father sent this. He’s on his way here to Kenath. He’ll likely arrive while I’m away.”
She stared at the envelope. “My father.”
“Dourin—that is to say, we—worry he’s returning to summon back his men.”
“Or to summon backme.” The letter crinkled in her grip.
Harmon’s relationship with her father had always been complicated. As a girl, she’d wanted to become a soldier in the highland army, but the Elder refused; after Harmon’s mother was killed in battle, the Elder forbid women from fighting. Harmon had become a war healer instead, and the Elder allowed it, but he’d never gone so far as to acknowledge Harmon’s rightful position as a Stonehelm military leader. In his eyes, Harmon was most useful as someone he could marry off to gain more wealth and influence, as he’d tried to do with Venick.
Venick didn’t know what Harmon would do if the Elder tried to bargain for her cooperation. Though the man could be cold, he was also shrewd, and he’d always doted on his daughter, even if doting wasn’t what she wanted. The Elder still had power over Harmon, and much to offer. Autonomy. Knighthood. A place at his side.
Venick withdrew the letter from Harmon’s stiff fingers and smoothed it on his thigh. “I need to know,” he started, pushing the parchment back into its envelope, “that I can trust you.”
Harmon’s eyes came to his. There was anguish there, and shame, but determination, too. “I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye,” she said. “My mother would say we’re too alike, though I’m not sure that’s even true. Regardless, I’m on your side, Venick. I have been ever since you risked redemption to pull me from that fire pit in Irek. You saved my life that day.”
“Your father—”
“I love my father,” she interrupted, “but he wants the wrong things, for this war and for me. I will not abandon the resistance. You can trust me.” She was steady as she said this, just as she’d been when they first met. This almost had Venick thinking about the elven trick of hiding true emotions behind a stony mask, and about his own inability to spot deception, and about all the ways she had deceived him…until Harmon said: “Tell me how to say it in elvish.”
Venick’s thoughts scattered. He swallowed his first reply, and his second, until he finally managed, “It’s pronounced,uro en emasthi.”
“Uro en emasthi,” Harmon repeated, the words coming easily, with no hitch or hesitation—proof that she spoke the truth. And again, softer this time, in their own language: “Flawed, but not evil, right?”
He exhaled an almost-laugh. “Right.”
She held his gaze. “I swear to you, Venick, I am seeing this through to the end. You can trust me.”
???
Ellina rowed. The oars dipped steadily into the water, droplets flinging across its wind-rippled surface. There was a second dock on the moat’s opposite side situated at the base of a narrow staircase leading to the doorway. Ellina eddied the dingy alongside that dock, roped off. She peered around, first along the waterline where Revalti’s base sank straight into the moat, then up the manor’s sheer four-story height, the stone block like a fist punching up through the water.
Ellina exited the boat and started up the stairs. She wore only a simple cloth tunic and trousers. No armor, no weapons. This had been a necessary part of her strategy, though Ellina was beginning to doubt its wisdom; she felt like a newborn, naked and defenseless.
At the top of the stairs, Revalti’s iron-studded door creaked open, and a figure emerged.
Ellina was shocked by the sight of her sister. Farah appeared to be wearing what she had worn during the battle at Hurendue: blood-streaked armor, a torn cape, her hair singed on one side. No weapons, as far as Ellina could see. No shoes, either. Farah stepped away from the shadows of the doorway, and when she smiled, Ellina saw that she had sharpened her teeth to points.
“Hello, sister.”
