strike at Bourshkanya! They couldn’t get to my father so they attacked us!?
Pain lined the corners of Captain Vrana’s mouth. ?After an attack on his family, no one questioned the Stormhawk tightening his grip on the State. He sent the Tayemstvoy to hunt bozhk deserters and others who’d suffered during the war—people who remembered the old Bourshkanya and might be strong enough to see its return. They arrested—?
?They arrested traitors.? The memory of the sleet-lickers beating his mother overwhelmed his sousednia. Combat nuzhda drove Gerrit to the balls of his feet, desperate to fight. He struggled for control. This had to be a test. Captain Vrana could not believe what she was saying. She couldn’t be a traitor. ?The resistance murdered my mother. Don’t you dare blame that on the Tayemstvoy.?
?Do you remember your sousednia before?? Captain Vrana asked.
?I was weak before.?
Captain Vrana inclined her head as though he’d made her point for her. He opened his mouth to protest, but she said, ?And your step-mother? Have you never questioned the favorable munitions contracts her family’s factories grant the regime??
?My father rose from tragedy and strengthened Bourshkanya.?
Captain Vrana held his gaze beneath the shadows and skeins of light snaking her sousedni-shape, face solemn, like she was waiting for him to understand a complex nuzhda weave in practicum. She waited, as though he only had to study the problem and he would understand.
He refused to understand. She spoke madness. She spoke treason.
?I knew your mother well,? Captain Vrana said. ?What would she think of the red shoulders watching from every corner? What would she think of them forcing you to imbue??
His stomach curdled. He wanted to return to true-life and scream for the Tayemstvoy to arrest her. Instead, he said, ?I’m not a traitor.? Dragging himself back to true-life, he turned on heel and left her behind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HUNDREDS OF METERS above the Storm Guard fortress, Gerrit sat cross-legged on a rock outcrop, gold storm pendant heavy in his hand. Lightning flickered over the plains, and the hairs on the backs of Gerrit’s hand prickled as he rubbed rabbit’s fur over the pendant, charging it in prayer. The prayer, however, didn’t come, his worries too nebulous and churning, so he touched his finger to the metal, wincing at the spark, and began charging it again.
Scattering pebbles warned him of Filip’s approach.
Gaze locked on the horizon, Gerrit clasped the storm pendant back around his throat and tucked it beneath his shirt. He didn’t like anyone, even Filip, to see him in prayer. His mother had given him the pendant shortly before her death, and holding it always shook his control.
“I didn’t see you at breakfast,” Filip said as he stretched out next to Gerrit, battledress uniform an olive bruise on the coppery pine litter.
Evergreens screened the Storm Guard fortress’ clay roofs, but circus tents sprouted like dirty mushrooms from the valley floor. By now, the other cadets would have walked into town.
No one should have been able to find him here, not after he’d slipped through underbrush and scrabbled up boulders to this perch, and Gerrit wasn’t sure if he regretted the strazh bond that allowed Filip to find him, or if he was profoundly grateful for it. The bond helped ground Gerrit and gave Filip a sense for his true-life location. None of the other imbuement-strazh pairs shared such a bond, and Captain Vrana had sworn them to secrecy—the process to create the bond too dangerous for weaker mages to attempt.
As Filip reached into his satchel, Gerrit wondered if Captain Vrana had known, when she’d helped create their bond, what the Tayemstvoy would do to Bourshkanya’s storm-blessed. Knowing the Tayemstvoy had murdered his mother, she must have guessed how much further they’d go.
Filip extended a cloth-wrapped bundle. “I guess even the cooks were excited about the circus.”
Hunger seemed as distant as the world of elephants and acrobats, but Gerrit took the bulging napkin.
“Captain Vrana said you needed to talk,” Filip said.
Gerrit unwrapped the napkin to avoid looking at his best friend. Cinnamon and cardamom wafted from the slightly smashed crescent rolls, their tops black with poppyseeds. “The cooks made loupak?”
“Couldn’t let you miss loupak. Sorry they’re not hot.”
Gerrit folded the napkin over the sweet rolls and handed them back. A flash of distant Gods’ Breath made him wince. “I’m not hungry.”
Filip leaned back on his hands, refusing the loupak. Waiting.
Gerrit dipped into sousednia first, the transition as easy as rolling downhill, and swept aside true-life obstacles. He searched his sun-bright clearing, seeking