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I know that signature.
She whispered the words to recall the magical current. The brightness faded.
Miro Karasek crouched a few yards away, his sword angled up and outward, ready to strike. The branches above swung to and fro, casting raindrops over them both. It was hard to make out much in the gray-green shadows, but Ilse could see the dark circles under his eyes, the lines drawn sharp beside his mouth. The past two weeks had cost him much.
Miro bent to massage his shin. “I warned you against using magic.”
Ilse ran her tongue over her swollen lip. “And I do not like games. Why did you attack?”
“My apologies for the roughness,” he said. “I didn’t recognize you.”
And thought her a brigand—or worse. Her hands shaking, Ilse sheathed her sword. “You have news?”
He nodded. “Where is her highness, the queen?”
He did not say whether the news was good or bad, and Ilse did not press him. She gave a short shrill whistle to signal all-safe. Within moments Valara appeared, pushing the low-hanging branches to one side, as if they were curtains in a palace. She spared a glance toward Ilse, but her attention was for Miro Karasek.
His gaze caught hers, then flicked away. “They are hunting north and east,” he said. He gestured toward the clearing. “I can tell you more after you eat. You will be starving, and I want you able to pay attention.”
Before long they were seated close to a campfire and shedding their filthiest, dampest outer garments. It was not exactly Ilse’s dream of wishes, but nearly so. She greedily drank the soup Miro Karasek offered, followed by a mug of tea. The tea was strong and black, sweetened with honey. Before she had finished it, she found a second panniken of soup waiting, along with a flat disk of camp bread.
Valara waved away her second helping of soup. “Tell us what happened at Rastov. No, before that. Start from the day you left us.”
Her voice was short and sharp. Ilse stiffened. Would Karasek recognize the panic?
Karasek stirred the coals, betraying nothing of his thoughts. “There is not much to tell. You remember how we worked to mislead any trackers from Duke Markov? I decided that was not sufficient. Markov has a number of mages in his employ, not to mention his ally, Duke Cernosek. If they once decided to search beyond Mantharah, they would overtake you within days. So I prepared other clues farther to the east.”
As he fed the fire with more sticks, he told them of creating the apparent signs of a large camp between Károví’s capital city of Rastov and Mantharah, then a distinct trail leading northeast toward a remote inlet. It had taken him the entire day and half of the next.
“I returned to Rastov by the following morning—”
“What did they say about the king?” Valara said.
He regarded her with a long, impenetrable look. “They say he died. And that someone killed him.”
Valara subsided. It was a matter of technicalities, who or what had killed Leos Dzavek. Ilse had distracted him. Valara had infuriated him. In the end, Lir’s jewels had unleashed the magic to kill the immortal king, but they could not have done so without each small step and sidestep in between. We are all complicit, including Leos himself.
“What about those horses?” she said. “You didn’t take those from a garrison.”
“The horses are for you. I acquired them discreetly, along with these maps…”
He went to his mount and extracted several scrolls from a pouch. These were maps of the regions, wrapped in oilskin against the uncertain summer rains. Now Ilse could see clearly the reasons behind his instructions from ten days before—the way they had circled around Rastov toward the mountains, how their path would parallel his as they proceeded south into the central plains, and the point where they would turn east into Karasek’s duchy of Taboresk, where he would rejoin them.
“I have new provisions and more gear,” he continued.
Obtained from garrison stores, and at the risk of discovery.
Ilse hesitated to ask. Valara had no qualms. “Does anyone suspect?” she asked.
This time there was no pause before he answered.
“Duke Markov might,” he said. “I arrived, almost coincidentally, at the crisis. I took it upon myself to track the assassins. In his eyes, that will appear unusual enough for suspicion. But he cannot afford to offend me, nor I him. What of you?”
“We survived,” Valara said. “Anything else is superfluous.”
Karasek’s eyes narrowed and he studied her a long moment. “As you say,” he said slowly.
* * *
