“Arrow. Ribs. I’m all right. You need—”
“Grab on to me. We’ll get you out. Your Majesty, how much farther?”
“This way,” I say.
But Thorin keeps gasping as we walk. “I can walk. You need—you need to leave me. They’re going—”
“We’re not leaving you.”
“You have torun.” He makes a pain-filled sound. “You have to warn—” He breaks off on a grunt.
“What happened?” says Saeth. “How did you get away?”
“They left me for dead,” says Thorin. “I thought they’d follow—” Another pain-filled gasp. “And I could’ve shot them from behind. But they didn’t. They turned back.”
“They turned back?” Quint says in surprise.
“Yes. But they said they can’t wait. They’re going to attack the Wilds for sheltering the king.”
I can run fast, but never far. Never for long. My lungs always scream for air until I’m more in danger of passing out than collapsing from exhaustion. But maybe the rumors of the poison being stopped are true, because tonight it’s not as hard as it usually is. Maybe it’s Thorin’s wheezing breath as he tries to keep up with us all. There’s a dangerous amount of blood along the side of his tunic, but he refuses to stop. Quint sprints along beside me, though Saeth is well ahead. He kept circling back until I told him to justrun.
The woods are eerily silent, but I know why. It’s the middle of the night. It takes time to call up soldiers, to saddle horses, to ready weapons and equipment.
I remember from the night I had to do the same thing to send the army after Corrick and Tessa.
Then, the time felt eternal.
Right now, I know it’s not going to be very long atall.
The worst part is that I don’t know what to do. If the army attacks the Wilds in the middle of the night, a lot of people will die. This is exactly why we haven’t attacked the Royal Sector. The rebels don’t have the weapons—or the manpower, honestly—to stand up to that kind of attack.
We can warn the people, but it might not do any good. There’s a chance we’ll get back in time to tell them they’re about to die.
“We can’t fight the army,” I gasp to Thorin and Quint. “The rebels will need to flee.”
“Butwhere?” says Thorin.
“There are hundreds of them,” Quint agrees. “Thousands.They can’t get into the Royal Sector. Steel City no longer has a consul—the army would run them down without any resistance at all.”
“Trader’s Landing doesn’t have a consul either,” says Thorin, gasping between phrases. “And Mosswell’s border would take hours on foot. They wouldn’t be able to run that far. Not in the middle of the night—if they’d even find refuge there. It leaves Artis.”
“I didn’t hear Consul Beeching in the palace,” says Quint.
Neither did I—but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there.
I remember Jonas Beeching at one of the last consul meetings I ever held. He wanted funding to build a new bridge over the Queen’s River. Corrick rejected his proposal because he was asking for too much, and Jonas seemed so dismayed about it. He said there was a miscalculation, and Corrick practically accused him oftrying to trick us out of more silver, but he’s also never been greedy like some of the others.
If I led the rebels into Artis, Consul Beeching could stop the army. With me missing, there still isn’t anyone who can order military action within his sector. So hecouldoffer sanctuary and buy us time.
If he was willing.
I just don’t know if he would be. The rebels held him prisoner on the dais in the middle of the Royal Sector on the night they tried to take the palace. They killed someone close to him. He could just as easily tell the entire army to kill everyone in retribution. If he believes these claims of poison, he could do it to get tome. He could hang me right in the town square.
He could create a very public execution, just like my brother always did.
But still. It’s the only close sector with a consul who has the authority to stop the army. If the rebels try to run anywhere else, we might as well just surrender.
They can’t simply march into Artis and expect Consul Beeching to take action, however. I’m going to have to get to him first.
