Page 125 of Beds and Blades

“I am sorry, Meghan. Truly. But I cannot send these soldiers into Nema in the dark.”

His expression tightened.

“They are turning the villagers now,” I said. “Eight hours gives them enough time to finish the turning and send the newly turned into the surrounding settlements. By sunrise, Nema will not be one occupied village. It will be a dozen moving threats scattered behind the line.”

“That is a possibility,” Cato said. “It does not justify sending the garrison into an established position at night.”

I stepped closer. “If we wait, we give them time. That is not the safer choice. Morvanna chose the night because she believes it belongs to her. I am not willing to give her eight more hours of it.”

Cato said nothing and shook his head.

The courtyard was very quiet.

I continued to feel Skip’s fear. Steady and real and continuous. I felt this with the certainty that the claiming bond provided. He was alive.

The conclusion I had given Cato settled into place with greater clarity. Morvanna had neither killed nor turned him. Turning him would have severed the bond, and a severed bond was useless to her. A dead claimed was a grief, not a lure.

She was keeping him alive and hurting him, allowing the resulting fear to travel to me. The fear was the signal. The signal was designed for one specific receiver. Me.

She was not holding Skip. She was holding the thing that would bring me out of these walls after dark, through the sworn order, past every soldier who had witnessed it.

Morvanna had built a trap specifically shaped for me.

My throat tightened.

The tears arrived without my permission, which was extremely inconvenient because they had no tactical utility whatsoever.

I let them come anyway. I let them come, and I did not manage them, and I did not maintain composure. I felt what I felt. The precipice of loss. Eight hours that he would not survive.

I wiped my face.

Tears were not going to save Skip. I was not going to mourn him while he still had a chance. This was a time for resolve, not sorrow. If Skip’s life was going to be saved, I had to take action.

I climbed the broad stone steps at the base of the keep’s eastern face. The steps that gave height and were visible from the full breadth of the courtyard.

I climbed them, and I turned, and I looked at the assembled garrison directly.

“I am Scipio’s claimed woman.”

They looked up at me.

“I can feel him through the claiming bond right now. He is alive. Everything Varia did—her report from Nema, the supply cart, and her departure through the eastern gate—points to that village.”

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. The torches moved in the wind.

“Morvanna is attempting to lure me out of this fortress. Morvanna thinks I am an easy target. Alone, she might be right. But I am not alone. She did not account for the rest of you.”

I looked at the faces. The soldiers I had eaten breakfast with for four months. The soldiers who had started talking to me the way they talked to each other.

“And every one of you knows that if it were you in that village right now, he would already be riding. He would not be standing in a courtyard calculating the odds. He would be coming to save you.”

I paused and made eye contact with several members of the garrison.

“Your High Commander is in that village right now. He is alive, and we still have a chance to save him.”

I swallowed hard and raised my voice even higher.

“But this isn’t only about saving your High Commander. It is about securing these lands. If Morvanna is allowed to hold Nema until dawn—to fortify it and use it as the foothold she has been trying to establish behind this line—then the road to Newardia opens. The road opens because the defensive line has been breached from behind.”