The heaviness Amarande had been holding about her body seemed to flare, her whole carriage from the top of her head to the tips of her toes shifting to something hard and hungry. “Then I’m coming with you.”
Amarande took a step toward the pens that had been erected to hold the Warlord’s men, but Luca dove for her hand. Her attention.
“This is something I need to do alone, Ama.”
The queen stilled, her eyes still pink at the edges, her wan face coloring with fury at the mere thought of punishing the man who’d ignored King Sendoa’s orders and led Torrence to fall to ash.
Luca expected her to fight him on it. To insist upon standing sentry outside, waiting for him to walk away with answers and next steps.
Instead, Amarande said, “Then I’ll check on Ferdinand,” bent to her boot, and withdrew her favorite weapon. She placed it in Luca’s palm. “Take my dagger.”
He did, of course.
When they parted, Luca didn’t stake a course for the makeshift jail and the Ardenian soldiers manning it. Instead, he turned for his own tent.
The Torrentian camp had been rebuilt in a cluster about the Hand. Many of the tents could not be salvaged, and the Ardenian army gave up half their tents to the cause. Thus, sturdy resting spots of crisp, sun-bleached canvas replaced the previous patchwork of shelters devised from various caravans from all across the Torrent. For those who’d survived Geneva’s attack, it was a welcome configuration.
Moreover, with Luca’s approval, Amarande directed the Ardenian army to form their tents in a protective barrier around the Torrentians— a buffer from further attack. It wasn’t perfect and it wasn’t permanent, and it did make some of those still skeptical of Ardenia nervous, but if it built up a modicum of new trust along with a night of safety, it was worth it to both Luca and Amarande.
Upon insistence from Amarande, Luca’s tent had been General Koldo’s.
And within, beyond the four posted Torrentian guards, was Tala.
He was still bound at the wrists and knees. Sitting in a chair—not tied to it. Simply staring into the fire, awaiting his fate. As Luca entered, the old man’s head snapped up and immediately he began to beg.
“My Otsakumea, please. Have mercy. I ignored their requests, burned Geneva’s letters. I should’ve taken the time to read them to have a guess as to what she had planned, but I didn’t because I was afraid someone would see. Someone would doubt me. I want you to know I never once wavered in my support of you, I…”
His pleas trailed off as his attention pinned upon the knife in Luca’s hand.
The knot at Tala’s throat bobbed. Luca sank to a squat so that he was eye level with the man who killed his father.
Now, Tala’s taut body stilled, calm. At peace. He wrenched his gaze away from the glinting Basilican steel of the blade. “My Otsakumea, I am sorry.”
Luca raised the knife.
Tala’s eyes squeezed shut, his teeth gritted, his body again tense, waiting for the blow—slicing and devastating and immediate…
The blade flashed, plunging past the man’s open jugular, his chest, down to his wrists… and split through the rope binding his hands with a single sharp cut. Two more precise hacks released the bindings about Tala’s legs.
The old man’s eyes flew open. The rope pooled in his lap. On the floor.
Luca sheathed the dagger and pulled up a chair to sit across from Tala. The furnishings were the general’s and it felt a little to Luca as if Koldo were standing, staunch and stout, in the corner, surveying the seating arrangement with her famed precision.
Confrontation was not Luca’s preference, even when necessary. He was improving in that category of leadership, but it was a painful gain.
And this conversation was something that he could put off no longer.
Tala waited, staring at his freed limbs as if it were a trick. Or a tiny reprieve designed to make the next, unexpected blow even worse. Instead, Luca folded his hands in his lap and asked the man the question that perplexed him immediately and the most.
“Truly, none in the resistance suspected that you were really Jericho Talmage?”
Those among the resistance were savvy, careful people. Not untrusting or cold, simply skeptical and cautious in the right ways. The fact that the man who founded what they tried to destroy walked among them for so long was one nearly impossible to believe. If Koldo recognized him, shouldn’t they? With or without his mask?
Tala shrugged his slim shoulders, fingers trembling.
“Those who worked for the Otxoa the longest suspected. Enrico—that was Tala’s first name—and I were twins but we were not the same man.” He grimaced at his mottled hands. “There is a reason one of us had a nickname and the other did not. He was more personable. I was simply loud and people called it authority.”
Luca kept his tone gentle. “What happened to him?”
