“URTZI!Up! The Warlord!”
Ula rushed into her partner’s tent without preamble, her heart leaping more than she’d like to admit at the low tones of his typical snoring pattern hitting her ears—immediate confirmation that he was indeed alive.
The boy could and would sleep through his own disembowelment. She wasn’t going to let that happen, and she most certainly wasn’t going to let anyone touch a hair on Luca’s head.
“Uh, what?” Urtzi muttered as Ula literally yanked him up from his bedroll and to a seated position. The big oaf rubbed sleep out of his eyes as she began pelting all the necessities at him—tunic, weapons, boots.
“Geneva! She’s here. Riding horses like a maniac all over the camp.”
“How do we know it’s her?”
“She’s lit the firepit.”
“That’s one way to announce you’re the Warlord.”
Urtzi was getting the message now. Lacing his boots at a good clip. Weapons on. He’d just gotten a tunic over his bedhead noggin when something collided with the back of the tent. A horse. A person or two. Hard to say, other than the whole back half where Urtzi’s head had lain a minute earlier was now collapsed.
Ula hauled Urtzi to his feet, through the tent flap, and into the open. The increase in sound since she’d barreled inside was substantial—a birdcall whirring to a hurricane.
They blinked at the chaos.
Tents smashed, whole families on the run, horses streaking by with missing riders or ones who were all but dead. Past the smoke of the firepit, dawn had nearly broken, the blue of the sky more brilliant than just a few minutes before, but the tumult would take many lives before the sun could clear the horizon.
Urtzi’s mouth gaped, his twin grips on his preferred daggers tightwith the need to strike anything and everyone he did not know by name. He didn’t have to say as much; Ula knew it just like she knew when he was about to complain of hunger pangs.
“Anyone on a horse is Geneva’s,” she told him.
“And Tala? Have you seen him? Is it possible—”
“I haven’t and it doesn’t matter.” They hadn’t been able to confirm a lick about Tala’s cipher, only that he’d received it. And plans to discuss it with Amarande had dissolved the moment the royals had arrived to camp to jeers and questions. Ula knew she should’ve pushed the issue—perhaps gone to find them after dark. Too late now. If it meant something, they would all soon find out. “Luca is our first and only priority. And before you waste your breath—Amarande’ll agree with me.”
He didn’t argue.
“Wherever they are, they’re together.” That was true. Yet Urtzi’s shoulders seemed to sag as the chaos of battle surged past. “I don’t know how we’re going to find them in this.”
Again, Ula grabbed Urtzi’s hand and tried not to waste time by rolling her eyes. “They’re where the trouble is.”
“There’s trouble everywhere, Ula.”
They started to run, eyes darting for opponents as well as their king and queen. They wound through the tents, past the Hand to an open plane of completely flattened tents and hand-to-hand combat everywhere.
“I’ve never been in a fight this big,” Urtzi grunted, lowering his shoulder to send an opponent up and over. The moment the man hit the ground with a thud hard enough to knock the wind from his chest, Urtzi was already leaning over, dagger dragged across his throat for an assassin’s smile. It was true—he hadn’t been there for the chaos of the resistance’s attack on the Warlord. “Closest thing were the bare-hand brawls at the orphanage.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Ula answered, withdrawing her sword from deep within a man’s thigh. The opponent fell away with a cry and a useless appendage, and Ula’s senses suddenly sharpened over the general wave of battle. She couldn’t tell if they were winning or losing, only that it was harder and harder to guess who was who as more riders were dislodged from their saddles.
And then, over the deep pulls of her breath and the ebb and flowof the battle, in that pause came a woman’s voice above it all, loud and clear—deadly in its confidence.
“My Otsakumea, if you’re listening, you seem like the type to sacrifice yourself for the sake of your people. If that’s your plan, I would suggest you get to it soon; the blood flows and the bodies burn. As you know, the firepit does not light itself.”
Geneva.
Ula halted Urtzi with a stiff arm to the chest. Her eyes scanned the melee toward the sound of that woman’s words. There. A figure in the distance sat atop a silver horse, attempting to look important, pacing before the firepit. It had to be her.
“Luca will run at Geneva. You know he will.” Ula flipped her hand from Urtzi’s chest to his back and gave the big oaf a little shove. “Come on, let’s go!”
CHAPTER 19
FERDINANDand Osana ran straight for the firepit. No discussion, no hesitation.
