One
The forest muffled our footsteps, the decomposing leaves and soft earth hiding us just as much as the shadows did. The Dogs made no sounds; the only noise was the Kennelmaster’s wheezing as he struggled to breathe, as though the hole in his chest from Centipede’s monsters was still open, air leaking out with each exhale.
Above us, a few dark shapes glided between branches, and they had to be Iradîo’s owls. My own ravens had made it bitingly clear they had no interest in crashing into trees just to give me some forewarning of what was coming.
I darted forward to the next tree, Tallu following. His hand brushed over my shoulder in the dark. His touch sent a shiver over my skin, a spark of something between us that was more than electric.
Sound came through the woods first, traveling further even than light in the dark. The clank of metal armor broke the night stillness, but the murmur of voices and the crackle of wood from a campfire were loud enough that we knew we were on the right track anyway.
The blood monks had gone ahead, the four that remainedstraining their attachment to Tallu to act as scouts. Their presence demanded Tallu’s, even though his presence made no sense to anyone who did not know about Lerolian and his monastic brothers. Then again, no one was going to argue with His Imperial Majesty. Not when he had faced down a raging fire dragon, survived an exploding volcano, and reclaimed his half-brother and stepmother, both thought dead.
Light brightened as it came toward us, two guards patrolling the outside of their camp. The beams from their lanterns cut through the trees, casting long shadows, but we were well hidden, wearing the muted, matte colors of Dogs, even our faces wrapped in strips of dark fabric.
We waited silently for them to pass, the men walking slowly as they searched the dense forest around them, squinting through the bright light they held out. As soon as they passed, Asahi moved forward, Sagam identical in his motion on our other side. They were two arching dark wings in the shadows, twin blades that Tallu wielded without ever raising a finger.
The Kennelmaster and one of the last of Tallu’s Dogs, Gotuye, guarded our back, and I felt their presence like an itch between my shoulder blades. This would be the perfect time to attack: in the dark, far from the Lakeshore Palace. But we had no choice, not with an army only days away, and no idea whose side they were on.
The Kennelmaster took in another wheezing breath, the sound muffled by his hand and the soft wind rustling leaves. I moved forward, darting to the next tree, keeping my body low, just below the line of brush. Tallu followed behind me.
We began seeing the camp in earnest between the trees, the maroon of General Saxu’s tents lined with gold thread. A flag was mounted atop the high general’s tent, although there was no breeze to reveal if it flew Tallu’s colors, or some new symbol indicating that, in our weeks of absence from the capital, the fundamental power structure of the Imperium had shifted under our feet.
Was General Saxu here as an ally of Tallu? Was he here as an ally of one of the other generals? Was he here at someone else’s behest? Or, perhaps more terribly, was he here to pretend to still be Tallu’s greatest supporter only to send a blade directly into his emperor’s heart?
I tensed when I saw movement through the trees, someone walking confidently toward us, but neither Asahi nor Sagam reacted, so I didn’t say anything, didn’t move until Lerolian crouched next to Tallu and me.
“They are anxious, but they say nothing of import, only speaking about the practicalities of camping in the woods. They ask about food and do not seem to think they will have any fresh supplies coming.” Lerolian looked between us, aware that we couldn’t break our silence without giving ourselves away to the camp ahead or making the Dogs with us even more suspicious. “General Saxu looks troubled when he takes reports from his commanders. As of yet, he hasn’t said anything suspicious, nor mentioned any plans to move against you.”
Perhaps that meant Saxu was as loyal as we hoped. But I wondered if it meant something worse. After all, my sister and I had been sent into the Imperium with the intention of killing the emperor and we had not breathed a single word of it to anyone who traveled with us.
I could see Asahi turn his head, his dark mask nearly invisible in the shadows. He raised his left hand, making a complicated gesture. Tallu responded in kind, and I needed a tutor, to demand someone who could explain to me all of the different motions that spoke so eloquently in the Imperium. Otherwise I was liable to insult someone’s entire line of female relatives when I thought I was asking if they had slept well.
Asahi and Sagam moved ahead and I followed, not wanting to leave them if they were attacked.
We were getting close enough to camp that we were just barely hidden by the trees. The tents were more than dark shadows now,their patchwork visible. Nearby, a dozen men sat around a campfire.
Another set of guards passed in front of us, just inside the invisible boundary of the camp. They didn’t say anything, but one still wore a bandage around his arm, the white scraps of cloth stained brown from old blood and filth. His face was unshaven, eyes dark.
They squinted into the forest, the bright electric lanterns they carried with them casting long shadows into the forest. One of them stopped suddenly, narrowing his eyes and raising his light. Did he see us?
One of Iradîo’s spies, a white owl, flew out of the forest, its long, sharp talons extended, enormous wings beating back and forth as it screeched before gliding up and over their heads, circling the camp three times before flapping off into the woods.
The soldier swore, spitting on the ground, and his wounded companion came up beside him, his own head bowed.
“It was nothing. We won’t say anything to anyone,” the wounded soldier said.
“Come on,” the other soldier said gruffly. He strode forward quickly, his eyes fixed on the ground.
“I’ll go ahead,” Lerolian said.
He strode into the camp, passing the large campfire, the men around it clutching metal cups, plates abandoned on the ground. They didn’t speak, barely even looking at each other as they stared into the flames. Their tents were ragged, showing no signs of any attempts at repairs where travel had torn a hole here or loosened a seam there.
I couldn’t even see any sense or organization to the position of the tents. If they were set up in any sort of hierarchy, it wasn’t immediately obvious. I would have expected Saxu to have his camp organized by commanders, and then the corporals under them who managed individual units, but it appeared that men had setup their tents anywhere they could find space with no sense of rank or position.
I counted the tents I could see and guessed at the number of the rest. The number I came up with was too small for the men we had left guarding the Mountainside Palace over two months ago when Tallu and I had embarked on our journey to the Lakeshore Palace and Krustau.
Asahi moved to the side, and we followed him, slowly circling the camp, gaining a better understanding of what was in front of us. I hadn’t been wrong. Saxu had come east to the Lakeshore Palace with a fraction of his men. More were injured than healthy, and we passed by a medical tent with two doctors outside of it, one staring off into the forest, his eyes unseeing as his companion tried to regain his attention.
Tallu stopped, eyes narrowed, and when Asahi tried to move on, he didn’t go with him. Was it another reminder of his childhood? Was he remembering the men he had lost, the soldiers who had fallen trying to protect the crown prince?
