“Between this world and the one that sits adjacent to it,” she turned the cup in her hands, “it has been thinning for some time. But what those reports describe—the fish, the crop failures, the livestock, the border disappearances—those aren’t isolated events. They’re symptoms.”
“Of what?”
“Of something that hasn’t crossed yet,” she said, “but is preparing to.”
I held that thought for a moment and examined it with the same methodology I applied to intelligence reports: source reliability, internal consistency, corroborating evidence. Morgan was the most reliable source I had.
“How much time do we have?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” And I could tell from the way she said the words that not knowing was its own kind of cost for her.
From her crate across the fire, Hailey said nothing. But I saw her write something at the top of her page and underline it twice. I didn’t ask what it was. I’d find out in the morning when she handed me the summary she always produced after nights like this one: clean, precise, and almost always containing at least one thing I hadn’t thought about.
I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and looked at the fire. The small camp sounds carried: men moving around the perimeter, the distant sound of horses, someone low-talking near the supply line. My people. Two hundred of them, distributed across eleven camps in the northern forest belt. Safe houses from the Ashford Pass to the coast of Pendrath. Message runners and waystation keepers and half a dozen women in Camelot’s serving staff who sent information out in laundry bundles and bread deliveries.
Not a ragtag rebellion. I was particular about that. A rebellion was what people called it who wanted to make it sound desperate and amateur. What we’d built was a shadow army, and a shadow army didn’t behave like a desperate thing. It was patient. Methodical. It was the kind of force that won wars by the time its enemy realized a war was being fought.
Carlisle didn’t always understand that. Carlisle wanted the enemy to know the war was being fought. Wanted them afraid. And there was something to be said for fear as a tactic, butthere was more to be said for the positioning that made fear unnecessary.
“Carlisle’s going to be a problem,” I said. Not a question.
“He was always going to be a problem.” Morgan’s voice was neutral. “But he’s useful. His people are loyal, his territory is strategically necessary, and his anger is genuine in a way that your network’s more calculated members can never replicate. People follow him because he has actually suffered under Arthur’s rule and makes no pretense about what he wants to do about it.” She paused. “But he doesn’t share your theory of how this ends.”
“No.”
“He wants Arthur dead.”
“Yes.”
“And you want—”
“—I want the system that produced Arthur dismantled so thoroughly that whoever comes after him can’t rebuild it.” I looked at her. “Which is a different project.”
She held my gaze for a moment. Something moved through her expression that I couldn’t name: something layered, old, with the sediment of specific memories I hadn’t been present for.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
From across the fire, quietly, without looking up from her notes, Hailey said: “For what it’s worth, I think you’re both right.” A pause. “Carlisle’s right that fear is a tool, but you’re also right that it’s a tool that cuts the hand that holds it if you’re not careful about when you pick it up.” She turned a page. “The trick is knowing which fucking moment you’re in.”
Morgan looked at her again with that same quality of attention.
“She’s useful,” Morgan said to me, as though Hailey weren’t sitting eight feet away.
“I know,” I answered.
“Hey, I’m right fucking here,” Hailey said pleasantly, still writing.
Morgan smiled in response, and it was an expression that in a different woman I might have called warmth. There was a silence between us then, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. We’d known each other long enough for silence to be its own form of conversation.
I moved to sit beside her on the log, and she leaned into me, not with the deliberateness of a gesture, just the slight realignment of bodies that happens between people who have learned each other’s weight. Her head came to my shoulder. I felt the warmth of her through both of our cloaks.
“The fish,” I said.
“Mmm.”
“You knew before tonight.”
A pause. “I suspected.”
