Stunned by the offer, Bron gaped at him for a moment before bowing several times and repeating “Thank you, sir” untilReylan told him to stop. He raced home after that, telling his mother the news in rush of tumbled words that had her handing him a cup of water just so he’d pause long enough to breathe.
“That’s very generous of Reylan, Bron,” she said. “You’ll need to find a way to thank him with more than just words.” She peered at him in much the way Reylan had, and once more he squirmed inside. “And thank Disaris too.”
That night, as he lay in the narrow bed tucked away in the loft above the cottage’s two ground floor rooms, Bron considered and discarded a thousand ideas for how to repay Disaris’s father. He wasn’t brawny and strong like the field hands some of the yeoman hired from other towns to help bring in the hay or rebuild the stone walls that had tumbled down in places and let the sheep through. He was, however, a hard worker. A dedicated one, too, unafraid to learn something new. Every family could use an extra pair of hands to help out, and there were times when his mother didn’t need him, especially with the work of midwifery.
An image of Disaris’s face blossomed in his mind’s eye, both hopeful and sad.“Will you play with me again now?”
He had apologies to make and thanks to give to the friend who stood by him. And a gift. He’d make her a gift.
Chapter Three
The tent in which Disaris faced a tribunal of Daesin commanders and the general they served was a spacious abode, more fit for palace grounds than the rugged encampment entrenched for two years on the Vasparan plain. The scents of brewing tea and incense wafted through the air, carried on the light breeze that swirled from under the canvas flaps partially rolled up to allow circulation and cooling. Thick rugs carpeted the ground while tapestries depicting scenes of battle decorated the felt walls. A pedestal brazier stood in one corner, ghostly coils of smoke rising from the mound of red coals heaped in its bowl. Numerous lanterns chased away the darkness draped across the encampment outside, illuminating a rack of spears and swords next to an armor stand displaying the helmet and harness of a Daesin general.
Disaris guessed the armor and weaponry belonged to the man opposite from where she stood in the tent’s center. General Osum Golius sat tall in a chair as ornamented as any throne and elevated on a dais, his eyes in the lantern light as dark as the shadows clotting the tent opening behind her. A long table stacked with scrolls, maps, and sheaves of parchment stood infront of him. A dozen men flanked him, six on either side. Bron stood among their number, and like the rest, watched her with an inscrutable expression.
Were they alone—in another time, another place—she’d rush toward him and throw herself in his arms. Excluding his rescue of her hours earlier, it had been three years since they’d last seen each other, and that memory still punched her in the soul every time she allowed it to surface. Like her, he’d bathed and changed clothes. Unlike her, in her simple borrowed frock of dull gray linen, he wore the finery of a high-ranking Daesin officer. He was almost as beautiful now as when he loomed over her in Baelok, filthy, bloody, and stunned to see her among the corpses of dead Daggermen and their victims.
“On your knees,” the guard who’d escorted her here from the medical tent growled before delivering a hard kick to the back of her legs. Disaris fell, stretching out her arms to catch herself. Fire licked up her stitched and bandaged forearm. She bit back a cry and stayed prostrate, staring at the weft and warp of the rug beneath her.
“Raise your head, itzuli, so I may see your face.” Disaris did as she was commanded and met the general’s gaze. He regarded her with a less-than-impressed expression. “So you’re the one we’ve spent two hard years trying to capture from Baelok.” He turned his head, attention now on Bron. “Are you certain, jin Hazarin? She doesn’t look any different from every half-starved beggar roaming the streets of Ashoross.”
Bron nodded. “I’m certain of her magic, General. She was the only one encircled by a nimbus. Jin Orune can verify that for me.”
Another man standing on the other side of Bron’s general also nodded. He was eagle-eyed with a harsh face and even harsher expression. “Bright as the noonday sun, General.”
A trickle of cold sweat slid down Disaris’s back, and she swallowed the choking knot of fear threatening to close her throat. She knew why she’d been brought here, knew what an itzuli was. The physician who tended her arm had been a talkative sort. He’d sat at her bedside as she ate the gruel prepared for her, voice soft with a hint of sympathy as he explained what awaited her once she was bathed and rested.
“You’ll be taken to General Golius’s tent to be questioned. Do you know what an itzuli is?” She shook her head. “It’s a person with the ability to translate any written language into one they can read. It can be a missive using newly made-up symbols, a code created with the alphabet of a hundred different languages. Runes, sigils, even the arcane language of the lim.” As he spoke, the physician’s voice rose in volume with his excitement. “It’s a magical gift of extraordinary power.” The exuberance in his face drained away just as quickly, leaving only pity as he stared at Disaris. “And if you are an itzuli, then you know it’s coveted by those either in great power or who want to achieve great power.”
She gave a short bark of humorless laughter. “I’ve never heard the term before. The Daggermen just called me the Reader or sometimes the Code Breaker if they were speaking about the Daesin army. Itzuli makes me sound unique.”
The physician’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, you’re unique. The reason many are in doubt that the commander actually recovered the itzuli is because you’re a woman. Itzulis are rare, and all have been men until you.”
Now, as she waited on her knees to find out what the Daesin general planned to do with her, she cursed the “gift” bestowed upon her and wished herself an ordinary woman whose only claim to anything interesting was her longstanding passion for an extraordinary battle mage.
She glanced once more at Bron, whose narrow-eyed scrutiny wasn’t on her but on the soldier beside her. That one nervouslyshuffled his feet under the weight of Bron’s stare. She hadn’t seen the reaction, if any, Bron might have had when the guard had kicked her to her knees, but unless he’d changed beyond all recognition during his years in the Daesin army, then that small brutality had incited quiet anger and the promise of retribution.
Bron stepped closer to the general’s seat and bent to murmur something in his ear. Golius nodded, and Bron abandoned his spot in the line on the dais. From her position, Disaris couldn’t see what he did to her guard, but the man’s pained yelp told her Bron hadn’t been delicate about replacing him. He stood much closer to her than the other man had, the scent of clove and orange teasing her nose as the hems of his long shirt and tunic brushed her arm. Disaris didn’t ask him to help her stand, and he didn’t offer. Only the general’s command to rise would allow her off her knees.
Fortunately for her, Golius must have grown as tired of her groveling as she was. “Stand up, girl.”
Before she could get her feet beneath her, Bron slid his hands under her arms and lifted her. Just as quickly, he stepped away, his profile frozen as he stared at his superior.
Golius studied her, rolling a quill between his fingers. “Jin Hazarin has told me the two of you grew up together in the same village. Did the Daggermen seek you out because you knew a Daesin battle mage?”
Oh how she wished it had been so simple, then she wouldn’t have ended up in her current dilemma, with a sister held hostage by a pack of fanatics who would no doubt send out kill squads to find Disaris now that she was free of their clutches and knew their secrets.
“No, lord,” she told him. “I became involved with the Daggermen by unlucky fate and the trickery of some of their members.”
His faintly bored expression didn’t change. “Tell me.”
“When our village was razed by the Kefian army during the Battle of Burnpool, the few of us who survived were offered sanctuary by those who called themselves the Followers of Solace.” The awful memory of returning to what was left of Panrin, of pushing her mother and father’s bodies into a mass grave, still made her shudder.
A scowl chased away the boredom Golius wore. He straightened in his seat. “I recognize the name. The Daggermen use it to recruit members to their numbers. The poor, the displaced, the grieving.”
That was us, she thought. Us and so many, many others thanks to this horrific, interminable war.
She kept the words to herself. Every man in this tent, Bron included, hadn’t yet been born when Daes went to war with Kefinor, and warfare was what they’d cut their teeth on as they grew up—boys transitioning to men, where recognition of the first beard was accompanied by acquisition of the first sword and shield.
