But in all honesty, I was. People trusted Benni because he spoke like a man who still believed in things – or could make you believe, just long enough to follow. It had always come naturally to him. Not like me, who had to earn loyalty, or even tolerance, one scar at a time.
He caught my expression, and his smile shifted wryly. “Well, that’s all me, I guess. It certainly didn’t run in the family. At least I didn’t get it from my father.”
“No,” I said, slowly, almost drawing out the word. “But you got something.”
He didn’t answer right away. Just stood there, one hand resting on the saddle, fingers curling slightly against the leather.
Falkar. Benjadir’s father. A name that hadn’t even crossed my mind in years. Our tormentor and mentor in equal measure. The General before me.
“He was relentless,” Benni said finally. “Woke us before dawn, ran us until our legs gave out. Never missed a mistake. Never missed a chance to drive us harder.”
Benni wasn’t wrong. Falkar had trained us both, and trained us hard. Not just as soldiers, but as something sharper – weapons shaped to serve. He gave no quarter, not even to his son, and certainly not to the Sorcerer Queen’s daughter. My mother had made it clear when she had shoved me to the sands of the barracks: if I was to be useful, if I was to be worthy of the title of Heir Apparent, I would have to bleed for it first.
I looked down, the memory surfacing with unwanted clarity – the frostbitten morning when General Falkar had made Benni and I spar for hours under a sleet-streaked sky. No food. No fire. No end until one of us dropped. We had both, eventually - he from exhaustion, me from a cut to the ribs that soaked half my tunic before anyone called halt.
Falkar didn’t praise us. He handed us each a strip of salted meat, nodded once, and walked away. He didn’t need to say anything. I’d understood. So had Benni. Though we’d taken different things from it.
“I think he cared,” I said. “In his own, admittedly peculiar and brutish way.”
“You would.” Benni’s voice was flat but not cold. Just tired. “You got the nods. The meat. I got the bruises.”
I looked at him, and for once he didn’t avoid my gaze. “We both got the bruises.”
He nodded once, barely perceptibly. Then: “Well, in the end, it didn’t really matter, did it?”
I didn’t answer. I knew exactly what he meant.
Falkar had died too quickly. Too suddenly. A man who’d survived twenty years of war, felled in days by a fever no one could explain. I hadn’t believed it even then. Not when I saw the state of his tent. Notwhen I heard the screams. His body had convulsed for hours, his skin blistering from the inside, his blood turning black at the edges.
No illness I knew worked like that. But I had seen what Dragon Fire could do when my Mother truly wished someone gone. It could boil the blood from your veins and leave nothing but a husk. There were no marks left for the physicians to inspect. No signs a blade had been drawn. Just heat, and pain, and silence.
She had that kind of power. The Sisterhood of Sorcerers did. And when Falkar began to question her strategy in front of his men, it wouldn’t have been the first time dissent had caught fire.
There had never been proof. Only whispers. Only the stench of burned flesh and fear in the air for days after.
“I don’t think he died of fever,” I said quietly.
Benni didn’t look at me, but I saw the flicker pass through his face like a shadow crossing water.
“No,” he said. “Neither do I.”
Silence again. Not the peaceful kind. The oppressive kind. The kind that sat dense between us, thick with the weight of things long understood but never said aloud.
For a moment, the shadow settled behind his eyes – a quiet, bitter thing that didn’t belong there, not quite grief, not quite anger, but close enough to both that even I felt it in my chest.
Then, as if he’d had enough of the heavy air between us, Benni slapped his hand gently on the neck of my mount and flashed me one of his famously vexing smiles.
“Why is it every time your Mother sends you off to do something horrifying, we get sentimental? I swear, we’re making Daen look like the merry member of our band of misfits.”
“Because it’s my Mother beckoning me to do some unexplainable odd jobs that only a sorcerer of her calibre could possibly understand.” I sighed and rolled my eyes, grateful for the breath of fresh air in mylungs and the dark weight between the Captain and me lifting.
Then, a horn sounded across the camp – one sharp note, short and final. A blessing, almost. It was time to go.
Astrid and Daen approached, the latter already mounted again, the former leading a thin, caged cart behind her horse. The wheels creaked like bones grinding together.
The prisoner was brought out, his arms bound tight before him. A filthy cloth sack covered his head, and his robes were little more than tattered strips now. He moved with difficulty, feet dragging, breath laboured. When the guards pushed him toward the cart, he stumbled, caught himself, and stepped in without a word.
The Acolytes emerged from the edges of the camp like flies drawn to rot. They hissed as the old man passed, and one of them spat at his feet, the sputter sharp and wet in the morning chill. Another reached out with withered fingers, muttering a string of harsh syllables I didn’t understand.
