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“But it was theirs. We’re guests here…” Filip rakes his hand through his tawny hair with such a distressed air that I have to wonder who punished him for mistakes in the past.
Considering the company he was keeping, I can make a few decent guesses.
Petra steps out into the hallway. “Here, let’s pick up the largest pieces to clean it up some and then we’ll go straight to Delfis and sort it out.”
For a moment, he just stares at us. “You would really speak for me? You didn’t—you weren’t even in the hall to know for sure how it happened.”
I can’t restrain a laugh. “We don’t have any reason to think you’d be toppling vases on purpose, do we? It’s not that hard to give the benefit of the doubt.”
On this particular subject, anyway.
Filip lets out a shaky chuckle of his own and bobs his head to both of us. “I appreciate it.”
He crouches to hastily gather the pieces alongside Petra. As I sink down beside him, more thoughts spin in my head.
I don’t need Casimir’s sensitivity to pick up on this man’s fears of being dismissed or outright punished. Even if he isn’t perfectly loyal to us yet… couldn’t we start the process of earning that loyalty right here, right now?
If we can win over a former scourge sorcerer, the rest of the country shouldn’t be a problem.
If Casimir were here, he’d be asking what this man really wants. To be treated as a valued colleague? To be trusted?
Well, we have the perfect opportunity right in front of us.
I scoop up a few of the larger shards and glance over at him. “Filip, how would you feel about joining in on a mission to destroy a whole lot more clay vessels?”
Twenty-Four
Ivy
From our vantage point over the top of the low hill, the small stone-block building looks tiny amid the sprawling fields. It’s hard to believe that an operation producing hundreds of living clay prisons for daimon could be contained in there, but Rheave quickly provides the explanation.
His eerie eyes widen as he takes in the landscape. “They’re under the ground. There has to be—I can’t count them all, but I can feel them. Dozens.”
Under the ground. I wet my lips as I study the fields, apprehension creeping up my back beneath my scars.
I’ve spent plenty of time sneaking around in dark, deep passages, some of it fairly recently. The hard part is going to be getting into this underground structure with no cover at all overhead.
The scourge sorcerers couldn’t have picked a better position to watch for incoming threats. They placed the outer building with open land all around, giving anyone watching from there a clear view of at least a mile in every direction.
Stavros must be contemplating the same problem. He makes a disgruntled sound low in his throat. “They’ll have people keeping watch up top as well, I’m sure.”
Emor shifts on his elbows where he’s sprawled next to Stavros, peering over the hilltop. The other leader of the Pima resistors decided to join us for this mission, wanting to meet the prospective queen for himself and see how we’re using the people he and Voleska sent to help us.
He rubs his knobby chin. “We’ve got the magic advisor, don’t we? I thought he had ways of concealing people.”
Tinom is waiting farther down the hill behind us with Alek, Filip, and the seventeen others we’ve been able to bring together for this mission. The advisor’s presence makes my skin itch, remembering what Alek and Petra have told me about his attitude toward the riven.
“We have a few charms that can keep one person almost completely invisible,” I say. “It’d be beyond his power to completely hide our entire force for an extended period of time from people specifically watching for intruders. And I’m not even sure the charms will do much good… The man who defected from the scourge sorcerers warned us that the Order is using magic to guard against us as well.”
Emor glances my way with a slight twist of his mouth. I understand why when he speaks. “Couldn’t you handle all of that?”
My gut twists in turn. I realized I wasn’t going to be able to keep my magic a secret from the resistance group as soon as Emor and Voleska’s people started working with ours. Someone who knew would gossip about it. But I’d hoped that the subtle signs of discomfort I noticed when Emor first arrived—his gaze getting a bit twitchy when he looked at me, never placing himself right next to me—were just my imagination or for some other reason.
I work to keep my voice even. “In theory, I could. But expending that much magic would have a significant impact on my mental state. I’m not sure how well I could control it even in the moment. We don’t need to destroy this facility so urgently that it’s worth risking me harming our cause in the process.”
Stavros’s tone is curter than I allowed mine to be. “Ivy has plenty of other talents that can help us without taking that kind of risk.”
He touches his shoulder to mine. “Why don’t you take one of the invisibility charms and scout around closer to the facility? You’ll be able to sense if they have any magical wards in place. Once we have more information, it’ll be easier to strategize.”
