I look down the lane toward Callyn’s barn again. “Does he have more scravers who can help?”
Tycho shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Not since Xovaar started terrorizing everyone.” He sets down an arrowhead and picks up another. “You saw what Nakiis looked like.” He gestures at his own shoulder. “You see whatIlook like. Do you blame them?”
“No.” I finish my second and reach for a third. “So that’s our advantage,” I say. “High ground?”
“Yep,” says Tycho.
“And because Lady Karyl has bonded with this Xovaar, she can heal any injuries more efficiently?”
“Yep.”
“And our entire armed force consists of”— I quickly count—“seven people?”
“Ah . . . yep.”
“Well, that’s a piss- poor plan.”
Tycho picks up his next arrowhead. “You can always leave if you don’t like it.”
I bristle again, and I have to remind myself of Callyn’s words in thecarriage, about the way I set myself up as an opponent. It’s just so difficult to see the world through any other view.
“I came to you to discuss a way to succeed,” I say tightly. “Not to flee.”
His hand goes still against the whetstone, and then he nods. “That’s true. You did.” He pauses, then looks at me. “Forgive me.”
This might be the first time Tycho has ever offered me a genuine apology, and it’s so freely given that I’m nearly knocked sideways. I almost have to clear my throat. “The road is muddy, so that will slow the Truthbringers on foot.”
“It’ll slow us, too,” Tycho says, and a lot of the rancor has slipped out of his voice. “But it won’t slow the scravers.”
From down the lane, Igaa’s magical voice speaks to us.—The rain will. Our magic brings the ice, which makes it difficult to fly.
I raise my eyebrows. “That’s something.”
Tycho considers this for a while. “In Emberfall, the magesmith who trapped Prince Rhen for years was able to use magic to reverse an entire season.” He raises his voice. “Igaa, if you share your magic, could we somehow gain more time to assemble a larger force here?”
— You need more powerful magic than mine,she says.—And you were not raised as a magesmith. You lack the skill for such a thing, do you not?
Tycho swears under his breath.
“Neither was Karyl,” I say. “So any magic she can use will be similarly limited.”
He lets out a breath. “There’s that, at least.”
“It’s too wet for fire,” says Jax. “You won’t be able to use that against them again.”
“Well, they can’t use it againstus.”
“So we’re back to more practical defenses,” I say. “No magic.”
We all fall silent again, thinking. Jax tosses another arrowhead onto the table, then looks dubiously at the rest of the bolt. “I’m going to melt a small stretch of this,” he says. “We should test whether coating the edge of your blades will have the same effect.”
— It will,Igaa says.—Iishellasan steel is quite potent.
I glance at the arrowheads on the table. I’m genuinely shocked at how quickly he made this many. Maybe I shouldn’t have called him lazy.
Even still, there don’t seem to be anywhere near enough. “We’re limited to twenty arrows?” I say.
“I don’t have a lot of steel to work with,” says Jax. “We have a lot of blades to coat.”
