“It’s all right, Hagan. Clearly you feel that I’m making a mistake. Why?”
“Th-the Curgh army holds the center, Your Majesty. Braedon’s soldiers have been testing us, looking for where we’re weakest. If they see that we’ve shifted so many men, they’ll strike at where they had been. And if our center fails, we’re lost.”
“Thorald’s army should reach us by tomorrow, Hagan. They can reinforce the center. But right now our weakest point lies here. If Braedon’s army strikes at the western lines, the entire Heneagh army could be lost. Surely you see that I can’t allow that.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Kearney grinned, though the look in his eyes remained bleak. “Don’t humor me, swordmaster. Gershon Trasker has served me for quite a few years now, and whenever he agrees with me in the manner you just did, I know that I’ve done something wrong.”
Kearney’s archminister cleared her throat. “If I may offer a suggestion, Your Majesty: you’ve also given five hundred men to Lord Shanstead. If we wait until nightfall to move the men from Curgh’s army to Heneagh’s, the enemy might not notice. And tomorrow, when the Thorald army arrives, Lord Shanstead can send half of those five hundred men to Lord Curgh.”
The king smiled again, more convincingly this time. “A fine idea, Archminister.”
“It is, Your Majesty,” Fotir said. “But I don’t think we should wait until dark. As the archminister just said, Lord Shanstead should reach here tomorrow. If Braedon’s scouts learn of his approach, the empire will attack today. Certainly that’s what I’d advise them to do. We should move half the men immediately.”
“You make a good point, First Minister.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“What do you think, Hagan?”
The swordmaster smiled as well, though clearly it was forced. “Very well, Your Majesty. We’ll send two hundred and fifty men to the Heneagh lines. I’ll see to it right away.”
The king nodded. “Good.” He glanced at Welfyl, his smile fading. The old duke was weeping, and though his son’s chest still rose and fell, the healer had stopped working on him. It was but a matter of time.
“Excuse me,” Kearney said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. He stepped to where Lord Heneagh still knelt and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. Welfyl seemed to collapse at the king’s touch, falling against Kearney’s leg and sobbing.
“Two hundred and fifty men is nothing,” Hagan said, pitching his voice so that Javan could hear but Kearney could not.
“I know. But it’s all we have. Half of the King’s Guard is in Kentigern, and half of Eibithar’s houses have chosen not to fight at all. We’re fortunate to have as many men as we do.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“There’s nothing for us to do here,” the duke said, looking once more at Welfyl and wincing, as if the man’s grief pained him. Tavis couldn’t help but wonder if Javan was thinking about how close he had come to losing his own son the previous year. “We should return to the Curgh lines.”
Tavis saw Grinsa and Keziah exchange a look.
“I’ll be along shortly, Tavis,” the gleaner said. Then, facing Fotir, he raised an eyebrow. “Will you join us for a moment, First Minister?”
“My lord?” the minister said, seeking Javan’s permission.
“Yes, of course.”
The duke had climbed onto his mount again, as had Hagan. They started away to the east, and Tavis and Xaver followed, scrambling onto their horses and following some distance behind the duke and his swordmaster.
For a time the two young men rode in silence, Tavis enduring the stares of his father’s soldiers as best he could.
“I wonder if they’ll even let us fight now,” Xaver finally said, his voice so low that Tavis wasn’t certain he had heard correctly.
“Let us fight?”
His liege man nodded, then glanced toward their fathers so that Tavis would know who he meant.
“Why wouldn’t they let us fight?”
“Dunfyl, of course. My father didn’t even want to bring me along from Curgh; he made up some nonsense about how he needed me to take command of the castle guard while he was gone. After seeing Dunfyl killed he’ll have me standing watch over the provisions or some such thing. You watch, your father will be the same way.”
“I doubt that.”
“Tavis, you and your father might not always see eye-to-eye-”
“No, it’s nothing to do with all that. I’ve been gone for a year now, evading Aindreas’s guards, journeying through Aneira, tracking down Cadel. He doesn’t get to choose anymore whether or not I fight. I know he’s my father, but the fact is that I’ve been taking care of myself for some time now. I don’t need his permission to pick up a sword.” He looked over at Xaver, who was regarding him as if they’d never met before. “I guess to you I sound pretty full of myself, eh?”
“Not really. Somebody else saying all that, maybe. But not you. Not after what you’ve been through.”
He continued to stare at Tavis, until the young lord began to feel awkward, the way he did when the soldiers cheered for him.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
Xaver dropped his gaze, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, his light curls stirring in the wind. “Sorry.”
“What are you staring at, anyway?”
“You look different.”
“Yes, well, Aindreas saw to that with his blade, didn’t he?”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m used to the scars now. In a way, I find it hard to imagine you without them.”
Tavis looked away. Grinsa had said much the same thing to him not long ago. For his part, Tavis still imagined himself without them all the time. Indeed, even now, whenever he saw his reflection, he found the lattice of scars on his face jarring. He wondered if he’d ever get used to them.
“You look older, Tavis,” Xaver said, drawing the boy’s gaze once more. “Older even than you did when I saw you in the City of Kings.”
“A lot’s happened since then.”
Xaver hesistated. “You still haven’t told me about … about the assassin.”
He shook his head, staring straight ahead. “I’m not sure I can. I killed him. That’s really all that matters.”
“I don’t believe that.”
He could see it all again. The storm that had battered the Wethy Crown that day, the serene expression on the assassin’s face just before he died, the way his own sword cleaved the man’s neck. And he could remember as well being held under water, with Cadel kneeling on his back, the man’s hands clamped on his neck and head. He could feel his lungs burning for air, the frigid waters of the gulf making his head ache.
“I almost died, Xaver. He had me, and he let me go. When I killed him, he wasn’t even trying to protect himself anymore.”
His friend was watching him, seemingly at a loss for words.
“I thought that I’d find peace once I’d killed Cadel, that avenging Brienne would make up for everything that’s happened since she died. But I was wrong.”
“It’s too soon to know that. You may find peace yet, but it can’t be easy when everyone around you is preparing for war.”
A smile touched his lips and was gone. “I suppose.”
“Maybe once this war with the empire is over, and you’ve-”
“You know what, Stinger,” he broke in, “I understand that you’re trying to help, but I just don’t want to talk about any of this.”
Xaver’s jaw tightened and he lowered his gaze. “Fine.”
“Why don’t we talk about you for a while?”
The boy looked up again, a slight frown on his lean face. “About me?”
“Yes. You haven’t told me anything about home.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“There has to be something. Tell me about your studies, or your training. I don’t even know if you have a girl.”
That, of all things, made Xaver’s face shade to scarlet.
“You do! I knew it!”
The boy shrugged, grinning sheepishly. “She’s not really…”
“What? She’s not really a girl?”
Xaver laughed. “Oh, she is that.”
“Well, now I really want to hear.”
His friend was a bit sparing with details-her name was Jolyn, and she was the daughter of one of the ladies who served Tavis’s mother. Other than that, Xaver offered precious little information. But Tavis hardly cared. Long after he and Xaver had returned to the Curgh camp, they continued to talk, laughing and teasing one another as they had long ago, before their Fatings and all that followed. And for a brief time, as the day grew warm and the sun turned its slow arc over the Moorlands, Tavis gave little thought to Cadel or the conspiracy or the war that loomed over them like a dark cloud.