“I look like a necromancer’s thrall,” he said, side-eyeing Uzmina as he set down the mirror and rose from the stool.
She gnawed on her lower lip, studying him as if there was something more she could add to or change in her handiwork. Finally, she brushed her hands together as if dusting off imaginary dirt. “It will hold upon first or second glance as long as you don’t stop to have conversations with anyone when you leave.”
Easier said than done. The Nesting Grounds were a crowded place. Even if no one recognized him, there would still be hawkers trying to get his attention to buy something, bed maidens wanting to sell him their bodies, or drunk soldiers wishing to impress their equally drunk companions by picking a fight. He’d just have to move fast and avoid the most congested areas.
At the sandglass’s turning, he sneaked out of Uzmina’s tent, crawling under the lower flap along the side farthest from the main thoroughfare. He’d waited until a sutler selling firesticks wheeled his cart by before slipping out and following behind him. No one would think it out of the ordinary for a hooded soldier to trail behind a firestick seller. Every man in the Daesin army carried at least a pair of the sticks with them in their gear at all time and were constantly replacing them.
Bron kept his head down and took the more meandering paths to the loading yard where the provision wagons arrived and waited to be unloaded. He couldn’t avoid the guards stationed there with the same ease with which he’d eschewed the crowds. Getting to Disaris would require a distraction.
The wagon he’d described to her that would bring her from one camp to the other carried chests of mixed goods, from medicines and bandages to uniforms and water flasks. The varying shapes and sizes of containers left pockets of space in the wagon large enough for someone Disaris’s size to squeeze in and hide. The tarp covering the goods was painted with the house emblem of the merchant who provided those specific provisions, along with a number assigned to each wagon.
“A pheasant with a tail that curls under and the number seven on the back” he’d told her while they rode from Slaekum’s temple back to the first encampment. “Hide in that one.”
His gut tightened when he spotted the specific wagon. “Be in there, Disa,” he muttered to himself, keeping out of sightof the guards. Two other wagons stood on either side of the one in which Disaris should be stowed away, the right stacked high with empty amphorae, the left with sacks of grain. Fate continued to favor him. The horses had been unhitched and led away to a feed and water station.
A small crowd of sutlers and their workers had gathered round, haranguing the drivers and the guards to let them have a first look at the newly arrived provisions. The usual cutpurses and pilferers joined them, waiting for a chance to steal cargo.
Bron despised thieves, but the presence of those here now worked in his favor. The wagon with the amphorae was meant for the brewers, vintners, and oil millers to fill with their stock and return to the first encampment for distribution among the troops and camp cooks. It would have been better were they full, but empty ones would work well enough for his plan.
He slinked past the clusters of bystanders, keeping an eye on the guards who were too busy arguing with the group of familiar larcenists to notice the lone figure moving along one side of the amphorae wagon. He studied the spiderweb of ropes holding the jars in place. From the look of it, he’d only have to cut a few of the ropes instead of all of them. Losing a few would destabilize the stack. Once one jar fell, they’d all come crashing down. He just needed to make certain he cut on the side that ensured they fell away from the wagon where Disaris hid.
He crept closer to that side of the wagon. The darkness helped him stay invisible to the guards, and the clatter of the nearby crowd hid the sounds of his blade cutting through thick rope. The groan and snap of breaking rope, followed by the agonized groan of the unbalanced wagon halted all conversation. The first jar tilted in slow motion, falling end over end until it shattered on the ground in a spray of ceramic shrapnel. People shouted and fled in every direction as the tower of amphoraegave way, tumbling down in a thunderous crash punctuated by the heavy thud of the wagon overturning on its side.
Bron didn’t hesitate, rushing to the back of the adjacent wagon and ripping the tarp aside. “Disa!” he shouted amidst the chaos of guards, merchants, and thieves trampling each other to get out of the way.
“Here!” Disaris’s voice was faint, but her grip strong in his hand as he yanked her out of the wagon and into his arms. She immediately jerked back, eyes wide with fright, then confusion as she stared at him. “Bron?”
“Later,” he said, tipping her out of his embrace to let her stand. He didn’t pause to inquire if she was all right. They had only a small window of opportunity to escape and make their way to Uzmina’s tent where his horse waited. “Keep up,” he said and pulled her along with him in a sprint out of the loading yard.
She might have been thin and malnourished, but she matched his pace as they raced down curving pathways and rutted alleyways. Bron held back a victorious shout when he spotted his gelding patiently grazing on a small pile of hay Uzmina must have put there when he left. “Almost there,” he told Disaris running silently behind him.
He spoke too soon.
A figure stepped onto the path from the leaning shadows of an abandoned sutler’s stall. Backlit by the distant light of the camp, they were nothing more than a silhouette except for the metallic glint of a sword blade.
Bron halted, pushed forward as Disaris knocked into him from behind with a soft “umph.” He didn’t need to see detail to know who confronted them. “Cimejen.”
His fellow battle mage shifted in a way that partially revealed his features. Anger harshened his already dour face. “Give me the itzuli, Bron. I’ll pretend you’re deep in your cups and not thinking clearly.”
Silence spooled out between them as Bron considered the choices before him. Turning Disaris over to Cimejen wasn’t one of them. Behind him, she gripped the back of his cloak in tight fists, her breathing shallow and quick. “And if I don’t?”
The mage shrugged. “Then I’ll take her. In the end, it’s all the same. Even if you get past me, you’ll never make it out of the Nesting Grounds before it’s swarming with troops whose sole purpose is to find you and the itzuli. You can evade ten of us, but not a hundred or more.” He stepped closer, sword raised. “Don’t be foolish, jin Hazarin. She isn’t worth it.”
For a moment Bron considered urging Disaris to run, lose herself within the second camp’s teeming population while he battled Cimejen long enough to buy her time. He discarded the idea as soon as he thought of it. There were too many things working against her. Even if he managed to defeat Cimejen in a fight, he’d never find her before others did and turned her over to Golius.
“Step back,” he instructed her as he unsheathed his sword.
“Bron,” she whispered. “I’ll go with him.”
“Do as I say, Disa,” He sketched invisible symbols in the air with his free hand, savoring the cold pulse of magic that surged through his body. The clean, sharp scent of lightning carried on a sudden breeze crackled between him and Cimejen. “If you think she isn’t worth it, then let us go. I don’t want to fight you.”
Cimejen’s bark of laughter held no amusement. “It doesn’t matter what either of us thinks, only what Golius wants, and he wants the itzuli.” He raised the hand not clasping his sword, bringing his fingers together. He blew gently on them, igniting a bright flame that danced on their tips like a fool’s flame. It cast an eerie light across his face. “Do you really want to sling spells here? Wind and lightning courting fire? Together we’ll turn this encampment into an inferno.”
The man had a point. There would be no winner or loser in such a contest, only the burning dead. Not wanting to make the Nesting Grounds into a mass funeral pyre, Bron abruptly broke the thread of his incantation and watched Cimejen do the same. “Cold steel it is then,” he said and lunged toward his opponent, sword raised and braced for a counterstrike.
His surprised yelp was echoed by Disaris behind him when Cimejen suddenly flinched and jerked sideways before dropping to his knees and finally his side. His sword fell from his hand to land next to him. Bron leaped over him to keep from trampling him. A stuttering gasp escaped Cimejen’s mouth before his eyes rolled back, and he went limp.
The man might be his adversary for now, but he’d never been Bron’s enemy. He pivoted and crouched next to Cimejen, turning him onto his back. A soft exhale and the steady rise and fall of his chest, assured Bron his fellow mage was still alive, just unconscious.
