Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,94

had sold to them for what Navi suspected was an exorbitant price. But she had gladly spent it, even though the coin they’d managed to smuggle out of Astavar—and exchange for Vesperian currency before word of the invasion spread—was disappearing fast. The bog’s flies were ravenous, each the size of a thumbprint.

“Forty-seven,” Navi breathed, looking over the encoded list of names before her—the latest count of everyone they had recruited to their little army of strays. Red Crown loyalists, refugees, orphans. “It isn’t enough.”

“No,” Hob said simply. “It is not.”

“We have to move faster, somehow. I hate being stuck in this awful place.”

“It was the right decision, to stay and keep watch over the fissure.”

Navi drew in a long, slow breath, hoping it would bring her some semblance of calm.

It did not.

The tent’s canvas and some hundred yards of swamp stood between her and the fissure to the Deep, but Navi could still feel it pulling at her. The shape of its dark, jagged eye had stamped itself on her vision, as if she had stared too long at a bright light. Nothing had emerged from the fissure, and the tear had not grown larger.

But the swamp had grown eerily quiet since the fissure’s appearance. Navi had the sense that she wasn’t alone in holding her breath, waiting for the next quake and what it might bring.

The tent flap opened, and Miro ducked inside, looking miserable. He dragged his sleeve across his grimy face. “My lady, may I sleep in here until my next watch? The flies are eating me alive.”

“Yes, of course.” Navi gestured to a battered leather tarp that served as a bed for anyone who needed it, and once the boy’s breathing had evened out, she returned to Hob, wiped her brow with a rag from her pocket, and then hid her face against the damp cloth.

The only sounds were Miro’s light snores, the buzzing flies, soft shuffling and clanking noises as others moved around the camp, everyone’s voices hushed as if afraid to disturb the swamp’s unnatural silence. Somewhere nearby, those on watch were slowly patrolling the water.

“What was I thinking, Hob?” Navi whispered. “This is madness.”

“I think I would call it rash courage, perhaps,” Hob said evenly, “but not madness.”

She looked up at him, exhaustion making her eyes sting with tears. “An army to crush the Empire. That’s what I said I would build. That’s what I told Malik as we fled Astavar. And now I have forty-seven people in a bug-infested swamp, waiting for me to do something extraordinary while a door to the Deep stares at us day and night, and Malik, who has gone to meet our supposed ally, has been gone for far too long. Have I sent him to his death as well?”

“There is no supposing. Ysabet will help us.”

Navi let out a tired laugh and rubbed her eyes, willing her tears to dry.

“You trust me, don’t you?” Hob said gently.

“That you have told me what you think is true? Yes, I trust that. But a woman I’ve never met?” Navi stared bleakly at her list of names. “I have failed Eliana.”

“We’ve done nothing yet. You have not had the opportunity to fail her.”

Navi made a soft, frustrated sound. “And that inaction could be the thing that kills her, the thing that kills us all. Or maybe…” She sighed, wiped her face once more. She had never sweated so much in her life. “Maybe it’s arrogant, even idiotic, to think that whatever I could do would be of any help to her.”

“You’ll drive yourself mad thinking coulds and maybes.”

Navi knew he was right. And yet, the world shrank around her even as it expanded. She felt the truth of her own smallness, the enormity of the world, how much pain and sorrow it contained.

She rose, rolling her shoulders. A walk might clear her mind, even if it meant facing the flies.

Then the lamps outside the tent, dotting the camp like dim fireflies, went out one by one. Muted, startled cries arose from the night.

Hob stood swiftly, blew out their own lamp, drew his sword, and roused Miro. Navi bent to retrieve her revolver, a crude thing they’d bought in Morsia’s underground market. She was grateful to Hob for dousing their light; already, her eyes had begun to adjust.

A voice called out from the center of camp. “You who claim this camp. You who calls herself Jatana. If you want the man Rovan to live, you will empty your hands of