The Art of Escape - A Recruits Story

Chapter I: The Vanishing Act

Chapter II: Sleight of Hand

Well, Cybele, congratulations. You’ve gone and bunged it all up again.

It was not, sadly, an unusual state of affairs. Sometimes Cybele felt as if her entire life was one long history of misdeeds, inadequacies, and failures. She’d bunged up her work on the family farm. Bunged up her relationship with Lacey—no, nope, don’t think about that right now. And of all the members of the Nirvei squad, she was pretty obviously the odd man out: if not a total fuck-up, at least not anymore, then clearly still the least useful. And now she couldn’t even keep an eye on a spoiled, rotten, no-good, dopey soldier-princess when all that sharmooti kaq had to do was stay asleep—

“All right, let’s split up,” Justyn was saying, his normally mild and congenial face now grave and hard-eyed. A shadow of stubble clung to his jaw, and his hair and clothes were sleep-rumpled: dawn had not quite crested yet. “She can’t have gone far, and if she’s planning on fleeing on her own, she’ll need supplies, food, and gear. That means she’s stuck in this town until the shops open. Let’s take each direction and find her while the streets are empty and she has fewer places to hide.”

Cybele took the protestation that Pliny’s Landing was still quite a large town to hide in—with a population of at least a thousand—and wadded it up behind her teeth. She was not going to waste time feeling sorry for herself. Ysa still looked terrible, her fine pale hair disheveled and stringy, and Justyn himself had dark circles under his eyes, the strain of their intense spell-work the night before still evident on their faces. And if they weren’t going to complain, she sure as Hael wouldn’t. Especially when this was all her fault. She was just going to have to make it right.

Daren was looking at her, his gaze as direct and unyielding as ever. “She took her horse, but the stable hands weren’t awake to see it or where she went after that. You really didn’t hear anything throughout the night?”

“No,” Cybele answered through gritted teeth. In fact, it was a miracle that she’d woken up and noticed Emarynne was gone at all. Upon collapsing into her bed, she’d felt as if she could have slept for two days. Which was probably exactly what their errant charge had been counting on.

“Did she say anything to you that might have indicated why she’d leave?”

“Oh, yeah, we became real bosom-buddies just before bed. I think it was sharing the bathroom that really made her feel as if she could take me into her confidence.” At Justyn’s quelling look, she bit back any further retort and added resentfully, “She didn’t say a damn word. You’d have a better idea of where she’s gone than me.”

Except, she realized once they’d left the inn and split up—with Justyn taking the north, Ysa taking the west, Daren the south, and Cybele the east—that wasn’t completely true. When they’d been undressing, Emarynne had hung her expensive coat on the back of a chair, and a pile of letters and envelopes had slipped out of its pocket and onto the floor. It would have been an utterly forgettable, mundane moment at the time, except for the fact that—at Cybele’s cursory and incurious glance—the noblewoman had jumped guiltily, immediately scooping the letters back into her coat pocket and out of sight.

Lovers’ tokens or embarrassing poetry, Cybele had assumed at the time: bad news for Justyn, who was already looking at Emarynne with that particularly moony gaze he got whenever he was utterly suckered in by a woman. But somehow the recollection of the panicked look on Emarynne’s face now gave her pause.

Those letters had been important to their rescued captive. And what are letters for, if not for mailing?

She swiveled instantly, startling a nearby sleepy-eyed hostler, and asked for the directions to the nearest courier office.

#

Relay stations made Cybele nervous for a whole glut of reasons, not least because she’d made a damn fool of herself the last time she’d been in one. Her sweetheart Lacey had left their farming community in the Sun’s Embrace to move into Haven and become a Relay Rider, and sometimes Cybele burned with so much thrashing embarrassment at the memory of their last conversation—

I’m sorry, Lace, I was wrong, I’ll move here too, get my own job and… and support you —

It’s too late, Bel, please. You shouldn’t be here.

But where are you staying now? I could wait for you— 

Stop. Don’t embarrass yourself any further. For both our sakes.

—that she’d avoided their signature courier offices like the plague ever since. Due to the nature of the Relay Riders, who hung around different posts waiting for urgent messages to rush in so they could take off with them across the Continent on a passing chain system, there was always the slight possibility that any office she walked into could be the one currently housing her ambitious former lover. The last she’d heard, Lace had already been promoted from a trainee to an apprentice to a junior post rider, all within the span of a year. All Cybele had to brag about was that she’d been selected to train under the illustrious Hero of Haven, but even then, she wasn’t always sure it was going so swimmingly. 

Luckily for her, she found the Relay Rider office still buttoned up tight, as were most of the buildings on the sleepy, out-of-the-way avenue, which primarily seemed to hold smithies, outdoor glass shops, and farrier corners. The few vendors who were out were groggy and silent as they dragged out racks and signage to prepare for the day’s visitors.

Two men did stand out, however. They had the swagger of soldiers or mercenaries, their eyes hard as they walked down the street towards her, their heads moving to and fro like hunting dogs as their gazes swept the avenue. They were clearly looking for something—or someone. Cybele’s suspicions were confirmed when they stopped an irritated blacksmith and asked him, in quiet tones, whether he’d seen a lone young woman wandering around recently.

The blacksmith looked pointedly at Cybele, who stiffened. But the men—both Norm, by the look of them—glanced at her indifferently and then away again, shaking their heads. They weren’t looking for a diminutive auburn-haired Elf, obviously.

Are they guards from the Teivel estate? If they were, that was alarming news: it was now only just dawn, which meant Emarynne’s disappearance had somehow been discovered hours ago, with soldiers dispatched immediately to the surrounding towns. It was a scary thought. Cybele had assumed that, once they’d discovered their captive spirited away into thin air, the Teivels would have given up trying to retrieve her, considering themselves bested. For surely—if she’d been rescued—the whole farce of ‘Oh, I’m not keeping her hostage, she’s just my house guest’ would have dispelled instantly once Emarynne delivered her version of events to her rescuers. What would be the point of expending forces to retrieve her at that point? They’d already lost the game.

Unless, Cybele thought with a chill, the Teivels were no longer interested in keeping up the pretense of innocence… and considered getting Emarynne back in their clutches paramount for some other reason.

They want to silence her.

Which means they’re also willing to silence us.

Still, she didn’t know if these men had been sent by the Teivels, and she certainly couldn’t ask them outright. They could just be random men looking for some other young lady. Though from the look of them, that couldn’t speak well of their intentions in either case…

A mischievous thought stole into her mind then. She hustled up to the two mercs—damn long-legs, and curse my bad genes—and said in a high, childish voice, “Erm, excuse me, sirs…” She tugged on one man’s cloak for additional effect.

Both soldiers turned and gave her looks of fathomless contempt. They weren’t used to being addressed directly by Diminished, of course, and certainly not so impertinently, which was why Cybele had to affect the manner of a very simple-minded woman or a child (from her experience, non-Elves had a devil of a time discerning her true age). Stifling a laugh, she continued in a serious voice, “Did I hear correctly that you were looking for a young woman? What does she look like?”

The two men exchanged glances, shifting now with more interest as they seemed to realize she wasn’t soliciting for coin. They seemed a bit dull and sullen, these men, one tall and weathered with a full, curly brown beard, his companion a younger man with short-cropped red hair and wild-looking blue eyes set in a tan face. It was the older one she had to watch out for, Cybele sensed, for he seemed a grizzled veteran with the canniness of a seasoned soldier; but the other man was impatient and contemptuous, and both seemed to resent the fact that they had to be here at all. If they were working for the Teivels, they were not impassioned loyalists of them, which was another mark in her favor.   

“She’d be taller than you, early twenties, Norm, with short hair, sort of reddish-blonde,” the younger man said, his eyes fixed intently, almost angrily, upon hers, as if daring her to admit to wasting their time by saying she was thinking of the wrong person.

So they are looking for Emarynne. “I came across someone like that,” Cybele said, slowly, thoughtfully, “though it was some ways back out of town.” She pointed north, back in the direction of the Teivel estate. “She was deep in the woods, off the road, though. I only saw her because she’d started a little campfire, and I was on my way back from visiting my dear grandmama, you see, who lives in a cabin out in those woods, though I had to come back in the wee hours of the morning because my friend, Lottie, is due to have her baby, and I woke in the middle of the night with the most awful dream that she needed my help and was going to die in childbirth, so I hustled back here, only to find that I was only being silly because Lottie’s fine—”

The men’s eyes had grown larger and angrier as she continued on without stopping for breath; even one of the blacksmiths, listening in behind them, seemed agog with disbelief at her nonsense. The older soldier snapped, “But who did you come across?" 

Cybele blinked, as if shaken out of a reverie. “Hm? Oh, she didn’t tell me her name. She seemed dreadfully frightened and nervous, poor thing. I’d followed the light of her campfire, but she snuffed it out as soon as I found her. She’d fallen down into a ditch and sprained her ankle, sad little lamb, and I offered to help her get to where she needed going, but she denied me and said she was going to Fort Lagann, which is so far away. Why on earth a little slip of a thing like that would be heading there, I have no idea, and with that ankle, she wasn’t going to get there any time soon. But she was very adamant that I leave her alone, so I did.” She looked around at them, her eyes wide. “She isn’t in any trouble, is she?”

“No,” the young man said in a hard voice. “We want to… help her. Tell us exactly where it was you saw her last.”

She spent several minutes loading them up with nonsense directions—“you need to follow the road back north, I know that, but then you’ve got to go off the road and cut through one of the pastures—I think it’s the one with the green watermill, but I don’t remember, you’ve got me a bit in a tizzy—and then you have to go deep in the forest, in the direction of Granny’s house—though of course you don’t know where she lives—it’s sort of a northeasterly direction—and then there’ll be a series of ditches, and a little stream"—before they scurried off, clearly convinced by her story.

Snickering, Cybele turned back to the Relay Rider office (though it still wouldn’t open for another hour) before another thought made her stop in her tracks. 

Wait. If we don’t find Emarynne, and we’re still here by the time they figure out it’s a goose chase and come back… they’ll remember what I look like.

But would they try to seek her out, or would they just chalk the whole thing up to the silliness and vagaries of a well-meaning idiot? They wouldn’t have any reason to believe an Elf, of all people, had anything to do with Emarynne’s disappearance, but...

A hand descended on her shoulder then.

Cybele whirled, biting back a scream, and her fist came flying up in a hold-breaking strike, just the way her captain had taught her.

Luckily for them both, Emarynne Reaver had military training. She merely stepped back from Cybele’s blow and held both hands up in a placating gesture; she’d gotten a cloak from somewhere, and had drawn its wide hood up over her telltale, half-curling aureole of red-gold hair. Both of them glanced around in the street—no one had taken any notice of them—before Emarynne said in a low voice, “That was well done. You’ve drawn them out of town, I think.”

Cybele scowled at her. “You—! You were watching that whole time?”

Emarynne nodded seriously, indicating the nearby entrance to an alleyway. Cybele felt a little prick of alarm when she saw that that alleyway was a dead-end. If the Teivel guards had proceeded any further up the street before Cybele diverted them, they might have found Emarynne.

She may have just inadvertently saved the noblewoman’s life.

“Oh,” she said faintly. Then she shook herself and said, “Where do you get off, running off like that while I was sleeping? We’ve all been worried sick about you—and you sort of fucked me over in the process, you know, and stole our horse—”

Emarynne made a quieting gesture and continued in a hushed tone, “Let’s get ourselves inside somewhere, out of sight. Then we can talk.”

She immediately set off down the street, without waiting to see if Cybele would follow her. Cursing her and all dratted, big-headed nobles—and without pausing to consider the triumph of having found their runaway, after all—Cybele darted after her, wishing suddenly that she could go back to bed.

#

Emarynne, as it turned out, had stabled her pilfered horse nearby as she waited for the Relay Rider office to open (another victory that Cybele could only briefly indulge in). They wound up ducking into the restaurant attached to the same stable, which had opened for breakfast and was now decently crowded with workers, travelers, and tourists hoping to down a few hot cups of khav and a platter of eggs and toast before setting off for the day. Tucking themselves into a corner out of sight from the fogged-over windows and the front entrance, they ordered a small meal—khav and oatmeal for Emarynne, vytas and a rasher of bacon, eggs, and potatoes for Cybele—while Cybele waited for the noblewoman to explain herself.

No such explanation was forthcoming. Emarynne only sipped daintly at her khav, looking deep in thought, until Cybele was fairly squirming in her seat with impatience. Finally she burst out, “Well? Aren’t you going to say something?" 

Instead, Emarynne gave her a sideways kind of glance, the kind you gave to a dog you weren’t sure was going to bite you or not. “I always thought that Elves found asking direct questions to be impolite,” she said, in deceptively mild tones. “Is that actually not true?”

That brought Cybele up short, though she didn’t know whether to laugh or feel annoyed. It was always the same old story: Why aren’t you like the other Elves? She wasn’t—tall, or ethereal, or serene and composed and patient and perfect, not like Tallys Ironwood and the others who’d joined after the business with that great old tree. She was keenly aware of that. She was also just a bit sick of other people pointing it out.

“Most Elves you see are old,” she muttered, trying to keep it as brief as possible. “Born in the old cities before the Castigation, or, if they’re younger, born on the road in their own special little wandering tribes and caravans. Even the ones in Ashtown basically live in their own district. They were brought up in that culture. Me, I was born on a farmstead in the Sun’s Embrace, not three hours’ ride from Haven’s gates. My parents had me and my siblings young—well, young by our standards. And they integrated into the village, like, along with some others. Took up their ways. They weren’t all that interested in—in keeping the ways they’d been taught preserved, I guess. It wouldn’t have helped them survive, trying to emphasize to all their neighbors that they were different instead of just adapting and fitting in.” She shook her head. “So all of my friends and neighbors were Norms, growing up. And I was always talking, playing, acting just like them. We celebrated the same holidays and had each other over for dinner. I absorbed their—their culture, their way of being, I suppose. I didn’t even know there was any other way to be until I came to Haven and everyone commented on it." 

It had been a source of both surprise and vexation for her. Everyone in her village talked and thought the way she did, and no one had made her feel much different for running around, barefoot and gap-toothed, with the other farm brats. She knew that their lifespans were different, of course, and it was a bit sad to see a childhood friend grow up and have a family while she and her siblings seemed to stay perpetually pre-pubescent, but from the books, she understood that was just a natural part of being an Elf. No one had given her any cause to believe that there were other differences; that there was an entire manner of speech and set of traditions and gestures and protocols and etiquette that she was ignorant of. Her disinclination to leave the farm, and her perpetual contentment with her simple, straightforward life there—the ultimate source of contention between her and Lacey—had only added to the length in her ignorance.

Emarynne nodded slowly. “I see,” she murmured. “Well, it seems to have suited you well.”

Cybele waved the statement away: it was noble flattery, and thereby meaningless fluff. “Enough stalling,” she said bluntly. “Why’d you run off in the middle of the night?" 

And why exactly are the Teivels so hell-bent on finding you?

Emarynne sighed, but she seemed to understand there was no dodging the question any longer. “I meant no offense to you or your team,” she began unhappily. “But something’s happened. I didn’t know if I could risk—trusting you—and I had to leave. I can’t go back to Haven with you, but I thought you would still try to force me because your orders demand it, or you wouldn’t believe me... So I decided to slip out and go off on my own. I’m sorry. It’s not personal. I just didn’t think you would… understand.”

“…You’re going to have to do a much better job than that,” Cybele drawled, pointedly slathering a piece of toast with so much butter that the toast threatened to explode into shards.

Emarynne heaved a sigh. “Yes, I see that. I’m normally much more articulate.” She dragged a weary hand over her face—a most unladylike, ignoble gesture—before she said softly, almost to herself, “You really are Shepherds, aren’t you? The way you handled those men… You did it so effortlessly. I imagine you’re placed in high-risk scenarios like that all the time.”

“Ehm,” Cybele hazarded, thinking of all the attention she may have just inadvertently attracted to their little team. “Yeah… you could say that.”

Emarynne shook her head. “Then I’ll simply tell you the truth, then,” she told her in a resigned voice. “Since I clearly do need your help. I thought I could handle things on my own, get to the North by myself, but…” She shook her head. “Seeing how the Teivels’ soldiers have descended on this place already, I see now that I probably wouldn’t get very far without you.”

Cybele saw how much the statement hurt the young woman’s pride to admit it. She swallowed her impatience at Emarynne’s meandering, distracted manner and only nodded her head, waiting for the full story.

The young Reaver heiress launched into it. “You already know, it seems, about the long-standing rivalry between my family and the Teivels,” she began. “Both of our families built their reputations on military service to Autarchs past, and different generations have bested each other, leading to increased grudges over time. There have been duels, deaths, vendettas, bloodfeud… you name it. The culminating factor was during the War of the Five Saints.” This was a period of civil war that had taken place in the North, Cybele recalled fuzzily, with the forces of the Autarch quelling rebellions from Karzai, Korgoth, Luxue, and other northern settlements over a hundred years ago. “Both of our domains are in the North, you see, though Kianlever, my family’s lands, is actually a border-territory that holds the line of defense against those powers, whereas the Teivels lie behind that line as a kind of fallback, should enemy armies actually break through our defenses first.” A slightly lofty tone entered her voice as she said it. “Anyway, during that war, both my great-grandfather and the Teivels’ served together on the field. From the stories, there was an epic last stand that took place, our forces surrounded on all sides by the Northern army in one last hopeless battle… and, rather than standing with my great-grandfather, Parcival Teivel chose to cut his losses and run.” 

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think it was an act of cowardice, necessarily: it was more that he hoped my great-grandfather, his rival, would be killed in action, while Parcival got to live and reap the rewards. He simply chose not to stand by him. Unfortunately for him, my great-grandfather did live, and he immediately told the Autarch about Parcival’s act of disloyalty and dishonor. The Teivels declined rapidly in reputation and favor after that—no one likes a military family that turns tail at the crucial moment—and they’ve hated us all the more for their fall from grace ever since.”

She took a breath. “Colen Teivel, the current-day head of the family, was even discharged from his service early due to a leg injury, adding to their shame. In recent years, he poured all of his energy into making business investments with the family fortune, something that some old blue-bloods find a bit gauche—but we’ve been told it’s made the Teivels very wealthy. I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t care all that much about our rivalry with the Teivels when I was younger—they seemed quite irrelevant, by the time I was old enough to be affected by it—so I thought it was… not such a bad thing that they could try and make a name for themselves outside of the sphere that brought them into direct competition with us. Maybe, if they carved out another niche for themselves, we wouldn’t be rivals any longer, and in a few generations, there might finally be peace.”

Her expression turned rueful, almost bitter. She took a sip of her khav and continued, “But then my lady-in-waiting fell from her horse. And I discovered, with a shock, that the closest place to fetch her help was at the Teivel estate. Even then, I knew it was foolish to go there, but she was in so much pain, and she couldn’t have made it to Pliny’s Landing, and the soldiers from Fort Lagann were so cruel and impatient, and wouldn’t help me at all…” She tightened her lips angrily. “So we went to the Teivels. They welcomed us nicely enough, and I thought perhaps Colen viewed our request as an opportunity to claw back some of their old influence: their great-grandfather had abandoned ours, but in my time of need, Colen graciously put the past aside and helped… So I thought maybe he viewed it as an act of repentance, mercy, or atonement. I don’t know.”

 She shook her head. “But, after a few days of staying there, after they’d sent my friend away… I began to get this feeling. As if they were nervous, or hiding something. It was more than just the usual distress—which Colen’s mother, the dowager viscountess, stringently showed—that would come from housing a member of a rival family. They were very firm about not letting me wander around the house unaccompanied. So, one night, heeding my instincts… I decided to look in Colen Teivel’s study.”

 “And what did you find?” Cybele asked, listening to the story with bated breath now, her food lying untouched.

 Emarynne Reaver closed her eyes, as if attempting to banish the very memory. “To understand it, you must understand another key piece of our family’s legacy,” she said. “We are margraves: that means our march is an important territory that actively safeguards the Autarchy, and that its loss would have significant economic or military consequences. And part of our responsibilities as a family is guarding our lands from those who would seek to claim it for those reasons… and many do. We call it the Spring Thaw, or the Thaw Campaigns. Every spring, when the mountain passes begin to clear and the hard snow begins to melt, bands of rebel forces or mercenary armies from Luxue or Korgoth descend upon Kianlever and attempt to press their luck. It’s up to my family—and especially its heir, my sister Imogín—to lead our troops and repel them. Year after year, we’ve done this.” At Cybele’s appalled look, Emarynne shrugged lightly and added, “Despite how it sounds, it was never really all that grueling: otherwise the Autarch’s legions would return in force and put a more decisive end to it. The rebels were always ill-armed, ill-prepared, and scattered in leadership and strategy. Compared to our family’s wealth, infrastructure, and established military might, the Thaw Campaigns have historically been little more than a rite of passage for young Reavers to cut their teeth on and gain some real experience before joining the army.”

 Then she frowned. “That is, until the last five years or so. Slowly but surely, we’ve been finding that the rebels are showing up every year with better weaponry and more deadly munitions than they’ve had in the past. We assumed it was due to some hidden alliance they’ve made, with Karzai or some other foreign power, perhaps, but…” She shook her head. “When I stole that night into Colen Teivel’s study, I discovered otherwise.” Her lips tightened. “The Teivels have been the ones supplying the rebels with better arms. That’s what Colen Teivel has been making his investments in. He funnels money into arms dealers and manufacturers in Korgoth and Luxue, they in turn supply the rebels at a high mark-up, splitting the profits with Colen, and… little-by-little, he chips away at our strength, all while reaping a healthy profit for himself while he’s at it. It would be the perfect scheme, if…”

 "If you hadn’t stumbled across it,” Cybele finished then, breathless at the realization of it all. “And if it didn’t mean an act of treachery against the Autarchy. The Autarch would hang him if he found out Teivel was secretly making investments with the other side! So that’s why they’re so desperate to get you back—”

Emarynne was nodding grimly. “Unfortunately, I was discovered,” she said, looking pained at the thought of it. “So that was when they decided to keep me prisoner, to prevent their secret from getting out. They sent the soldiers who’d accompanied me away, telling them their own guards would take me to Haven, and…” She faltered, then. “And that’s not even the worst of it. Colen Teivel gave extra money to the rebels to… to develop some kind of terrible weapon this year. He even gave them tips on how best to use it against our family, and which places to attack because they were the weakest!”

 She was trembling now. Without even thinking about it, Cybele reached across the table to touch her hand. Emarynne Reaver drew in a sharp breath and blinked at her, looking as if she’d never been touched by someone without giving formal permission for it first. But she didn’t draw her hand away.

 “We only have a short time before the Thaw Campaigns are due to begin,” Emarynne told her, her palm cold and unmoving beneath Cybele’s. “And my siblings are in Haven, worried about me, not back in Kianlever to defend it. My mother is overseeing things, but she isn’t as trained as the rest of us, and she has no idea that this weapon is coming. So I can’t go back to Haven. I have to ride back home, now—”

 Cybele nodded slowly, then glanced at Emarynne’s inner coat pocket. “Are those letters for you to send back to your people? To warn them?”

 Emarynne nodded faintly. “To my siblings,” she whispered. “But since they’re in Haven, they won’t make it back quickly enough, and Relay Riders don’t pass through Thielwood, so even hiring a private courier to go to Kianlever wouldn’t do much good: they’d scarcely arrive just before I would. But if I can get there in time myself…” Her jaw tightened. “I can rally our troops, and prepare them for what’s coming. Otherwise they’ll be caught totally off-guard, and it will be a slaughter.”

 Cybele chewed the inside of her cheek. She was beginning to see Emarynne’s reasoning, but… “Why didn’t you just tell us all of this? Why leave us in the lurch when we could have helped you?”

 “I couldn’t take the risk that you’d try to stop me,” Emarynne said, dropping her eyes as she picked at the cloth napkin lying on her lap. “It would only delay me horribly, and your loyalties are to your Order, not to me or my family. I was afraid that if you’d been ordered to return me to Haven, you simply wouldn’t listen to me… or even believe me. There are many people who would chalk all of this up to the hysteria of a silly noblewoman.”

 Cybele snorted, thinking of Lavinet Naveen. “Not us,” she muttered. Then she closed her eyes and thought, Thielwood, huh? The thought gave her no small measure of trepidation. The Continent’s oldest forest was a vast, primordial place, full of ancient mystery and power. It wasn’t forbidden to enter it, exactly, but it wasn’t a place for a casual traveler to wander into, either.

 Still. Her people were said to have come from there; it was thought to be the original birthplace of all the Continent’s children. And Lacey had said Cybele showed no interest in seeing the sights the wide world had to offer; she’d accused her of being a homebody, of not being adventurous or curious enough to brave traveling far from home. Not like a Relay Rider had to be.

 Well, going that far North would certainly prove her wrong. And people lived in Thielwood—there were dozens, if not hundreds, of cities tucked away in its vast realm—it wasn’t as if they would be entering some hazardous triangle of eldritch energy, like the Bleakmoor.

 Though facing down northern insurrectionists afterward wasn’t exactly what they’d signed up for, either.

 “Our orders were to keep you safe,” Cybele said then, determinedly, before she could talk herself out of it. “If you want to go to Kianlever, I don’t really see how we could stop you. We’ll just have to go with you, and then make sure you get back to Haven in one piece. Or at least until your siblings get word to us that we can leave you in safe hands.” Our captain told us to get you out alive and keep you out of the Teivels’ hands. So that’s what we’ll do. Even if it means following you into a warzone. She shook her head. “But we can’t just let you go haring off on your own. The Teivels are hot on your heels. Without us, they’d catch you and kill you before you even reached Thielwood.”

 Emarynne was studying her face, with something like a faint glimmer of hope seeming to light her features up from within. Cybele felt strangely moved by the expression: it seemed vulnerable, and honest somehow.

 “Do you think you can convince the others to help me?” the noblewoman asked, her whisper sounding almost ashamed. “Will they go along with it?”

 Cybele rolled her eyes. Justyn would probably lick a toad to impress Emarynne, and Daren always followed his team leader with unyielding Ket obedience, and Ysa just went along with whatever the rest of them decided. “Trust me,” she drawled, “getting them to do it will be the easiest part of what’s ahead.”