What he felt he must do to protect his people.
She could not and would not take that brave decision away from him.
Still, selfish and cowardly, her thoughts crawled forward as they directed Torrentians to safe pockets as they pushed forward. With every saved person, every step, they were closer to a confrontation she’d dreaded since the moment her blade had wavered against her mother in the hidden passage within the Itspi.
There didn’t seem to be enough fighters—which laid bare another fear that had festered within her for days. The hushed conversation she’d had with Koldo and Ula rising from the mists within her mind and into firm reality.
“The resistance tents—where are they?” Amarande asked Luca as he dispatched a man reaching for his dagger. “In one cluster? Spread out? Where are our fighters?”
“Clustered. By the Hand.”
That explained the lack of fighters by the firepit—perhaps. What it meant for sure was that there were mostly innocents nearest the flames. Members of the caravans, hope heavy in their sleepy eyes just hours ago, now facing their worst fears.
Retaliation. Punishment. Penance for believing in the new rise of Torrence.
Amarande shoved a man with a tent stake protruding from his gut out of the way with the back of her sword, rushing toward where she’d last seen Geneva. Abandoned horses were on the run—a good sign in that the Warlord’s men and women were the only ones upon them, but the horses also added to the chaos and low visibility.
Then came a new voice. Behind them. Shouting a name Amarande had never hoped to hear with the possibility that someone might answer to it.
“Talmage!”
A chill slithered around Amarande’s heart.
The first Warlord.
He’d come. The man who created it all, who killed Luca’s parents, who’d been a ghost for more than a decade, had come. Or had already been present.
“Talmage?” Luca cursed, his kind heart and penchant for trust obvious in his surprised tone. “I’d hoped she wouldn’t connect with the other Warlords.”
Amarande’s heart sank, that festering fear out in the hazy air now. She strained to see through the smoke at who’d called his name and where the first Warlord was in this chaos, but that aim was immediately lost among a gauntlet of mounted attackers.
Back to back, she and Luca knocked riders off their horses, freeing the animals to run away—given any chance, they’d run away from the flames, and these horses did just that, naturally dispersing the crowd the second they were without a rider who could control them. Luca dispatched a man in front of them, and then they both turned around to see who’d invoked the first Warlord’s name.
A rough-faced Torrentian woman had climbed from her horse’s saddle to the thumb of the Hand. This gave her both a superior vantage point and a chance to be seen as she yelled into the crowd in a tone that demanded to be heard over the hum and wail of battle. Big and brash, darkly freckled, and impatient. And as loud as a cannon blast.
“Do not ignore me, old friend!” Her words were mocking and playful but as sour as sagardoa. “Not replying to our letters? Not turning at the call of your name? Where have your manners gone after all these years?”
Alasne, the second Warlord. This was who she had to be.
Geneva had indeed successfully connected with—and drawn out—both her predecessors.
Amarande followed the woman’s angling gaze to her target. North of them, near where the fighters were clustered.
Tala.
No twin brother facing him down. No direct assailant at all. Just Tala. Tall and visible, and dispensing fevered orders from atop a cart. Ignoring Alasne’s calls, busy directing his resistance fighters this way and that.
Men and women to fight against Geneva orforher?
Suddenly, the fears Koldo had expressed were not just fears, they were the truth. There and undeniable. Tala wasn’t Talmage’s brother.
Tala was the first Warlord himself.
“Look at himignoreus, Geneva,” Alasne bellowed before huffing dramatically—she was putting on a purposeful show at his expense and at the top of her lungs, using the direction of the wind to carry her words farther. “Do you suppose he told them we were coming? Or do you think he kept that to himself to keep his true identity safe?”
Alasne was spelling everything out to a gape-inducing level. That was the very loud point. “Are you fighting for us, then? Orthem? Tell us now or your men will be dead either way! Best be clear about it—no more smoke and mirrors here, old man! Choose wrong and I will personally send you to the stars.”
Some of the resistance members were hesitating now. Watching Alasne, watching Tala, confusion on all sides.
