one of our most formidable generals was doing holed up in the mountains with an unknown number of soldiers at his disposal.
They weren’t the only group stationed, either, if what he’d said about the eighth pass was to be believed.
I paused in the middle of rising to my feet, rooted in place with half curiosity, half dread. I didn’t want to know what was going on. As far as I was concerned, Iseul had stopped being predictable the night he’d declared Mamoru a traitor. To try and understand the motives of such a man was pointless, and time was a resource I couldn’t afford to waste. Not now, when Iseul’s devilry boiled in my lord’s veins. And yet I found that I couldn’t move. I had to know.
What madness had Mamoru’s brother wrought in the time since we’d fled the palace?
Had the war begun again, in our absence?
“There’ll be a use for us, all right,” General Yisun repeated, lighting a long-stemmed pipe and puffing easily, as though he really were home with his family. “Can’t answer for the poor bastards elsewhere, but we’re set to move straight into Thremedon, soon as the Emperor’s given us the signal. Shame his attention’s been diverted by that whelp for so long, but that’ll soon be over.”
“I don’t care what else is going on, so long as we get moving soon,” said the soldier. “It’s too hot during the day and too cold during the night in these damned mountains.”
“Mind your manners before a superior officer,” said General Yisun, and he flicked his ashes into the wind. “I won’t tell you that again.”
The soldier coughed.
I straightened up slowly, ever so slowly, and gently pulled at Mamoru’s shoulder. He nodded, seemingly unable to tear his gaze away from the soldiers down in the pass, so that I had to tug at him again before he would move, stepping as softly as any servant might have.
He had picked up such an eclectic mixture of skills during our time on the run. I felt an odd flush of pride in my chest at his accomplishments, too myriad to denote with simple braids.
“I don’t understand,” he said to me, once we’d rejoined the horse, ducking and weaving through the complex of rocky outcroppings and hideaways. His voice was still shadowed with caution and the effects of the fever.
“There are soldiers in the mountains again,” I said, not that it was an answer. I didn’t understand what it meant. I didn’t see how we could understand, without seeing firsthand in the capital what Iseul was planning. My own concerns were more immediate: traveling as far as we could before the fever set in again and curing the fever once and for all.
I did my best to ignore the nagging voice in my head that wondered what General Yisun had meant by that’ll be over soon. Did he have some information regarding Iseul’s pursuit of us that I did not? All I could know was that he must have been in close contact with the Emperor. As much as I hesitated to speculate, I was beginning to fear my lord’s fever in the same way I feared his brother the Emperor. I hated the power he wielded over my lord and how we’d been blinded to it for so long.
I had to know for certain.
“Stay where you are,” I whispered, holding my hand up to Mamoru as I would have to a skittish horse. “I’m going back.”
“Why,” Mamoru said. “Wait—Kouje—”
I couldn’t listen to him. I had to learn more—for there might come a time when knowledge of Iseul’s next move would be our only salvation. And if there was more that Iseul had up his bright sleeve, I would have to be the shield between that knowledge and Mamoru.
The soldier and the general were still talking when I returned, hidden behind the rock and the lichen, my palms pressed against the rough surface, hoping against all hope that I remained hidden.
“… so that’s his trick,” the soldier was saying, before he whistled softly. “To his own brother?”
“Traitor to the country,” General Yisun replied. His voice was dry, in a way that indicated he didn’t believe that story for a moment but had no trouble agreeing to it. “There’s no punishment too harsh for those.”
“Blood magic,” the soldier said. I could feel the terror in his voice, even when he tried to swallow it down. “Have you really seen it?”
“Our Emperor wears the vial around his neck,” General Yisun said. “It’s