Page 38

“That’s enough.” She folded her gloved hands in front of her. “An operative who asks questions is a weapon with a weakness. That weakness can be exploited.” She glanced up at the ridge, where Conan stood. “I sent you up that path to do one last useful thing. If you’d killed him, the wolves would have been blamed for your death on the way back. If he killed you, the same. Either way, the wolves take the blame, and the Order finally has its reason to clear them from this land.” A delicate shrug. “It was tidy.”

Tidy. A granddaughter sent up a path to die. Tidy.

I lifted my chin. “You don’t have the authority.”

She arched one thin gray brow. “I beg your pardon?”

“To ban them. To take this land.” I swept my hand toward the ridge, the wolves, the graves I couldn’t see from here but knew were there. “The Order doesn’t have that authority and neither do you.”

“Authority.” She smiled, the way she used to when I gave a wrong answer she found charming. “Sweet girl, authority is simply the right to be obeyed.” She lifted one gloved hand an inch, and every operative in red within sight of her went still. “Look around you.”

“The Crown⁠—”

“The Crown has never once told me no.” She didn’t turn her head. She didn’t need to. Behind her, Mervyn studied the reins in his gloved hands with great interest.

“They haven’t told you yes, either,” I said.

“They don’t need to.” Her smile didn’t waver.

She’d lost it. Gone far beyond anywhere that was legal or right. And for what? Acquiring more land? Didn’t they have enough?

Reaching inside my cloak, I drew out the two files I’d carried down from the longhouse. I unfolded them and held them up so she could see.

“Tomas and Marianna Mays.”

For the first time, something moved in her face. Not guilt. Something quicker and colder, like a door closing.

“My parents,” I said. “Not yet settled. That’s your handwriting at the bottom. The wolves never killed them. They’ve kept a ledger of everything that has happened here.”

A small voice inside me said until today. I resisted the urge to swallow, show her any fear. The meadow had gone so quiet I could hear the stream.

“You told me wolves did it. So many times. You lied to me, to sharpen my hatred into your weapon.” My voice echoed around me in the stillness, but I didn’t let it shake. “They asked questions too, didn’t they? Just like me.” I lowered the files. “An operative you note as not yet settled is eventually resolved, right?”

Behind her, one of the gray-coated soldiers turned his head toward another. Mervyn’s hands shifted on the pommel.

My grandmother studied me for several seconds. “My son,” she said at last. “My only child. I raised him to stand where I am. He had the mind for it, the discipline.” Her voice hardened. “And then he met your mother.”

She spat it as if it were a disease.

“A clerk’s daughter from the river wards, with soft hands and softer opinions. She filled his head with questions. Whether the wolves were truly animals. Whether the land grants were lawful. Whether every order that crossed his desk deserved to be carried out.” Her gloved fingers tightened on each other. “She turned my son against me. Against everything I’d built.” Her voice pitched higher. “By the time I understood how much she’d poisoned him, there was nothing of him left to save.”

My nostrils flared. “So you killed him.”

“I gave him every chance beforehand,” she said. Her pale eyes held mine, steady. “She took him from me. The only option was to resolve.”

The words hit somewhere under my ribs and stayed there. My parents. Killed by my grandmother.

“I took you the next season,” she went on. “At six instead of eight. I changed the intake age myself, so I could have you before your mother’s softness took root in you too. And I made you into the finest blade the Order has ever produced.” Pride warmed her voice. Real pride. “Six confirmed. Never a single failure in the field.”

“Until this one.” My voice came out low, cold.

She inclined her head. “Which is why I’m here.”

She took one step toward me. Then another. Eight paces now. Seven.

“It isn’t too late,” she said softly. “Those animals will be off this land by sundown tomorrow, one way or another. You know how this ends. You’ve seen it end before.” She held out her gloved hand, palm up, the way she used to when I was small and she wanted me to take it on the steps of the training house. “Walk back across this meadow with me. We’ll call it deep-cover recovery. Intelligence gathered from inside the Lockridge pack. There’ll be a commendation. A promotion.” Her smile returned, warm and familiar. “You’ll come home.”

Home. The third-floor office above the river. The cold training halls. The narrow bed where she’d woken me every morning with her hand on my shoulder.