She reached out to squeeze his arm, interrupting him. “Precisely. Now open the gate.”
He straightened, licking his lips. “I’m sorry, my lady. Not without the proper orders.” He drew back, as if he expected her to command Wag to eat him.
Fess dismounted and waved to the lieutenant. “A moment, if you please, Lieutenant,” he said, stepping a few paces away from the rest of the guards.
Fess’s back blocked her view, but a moment later the lieutenant stiffened and turned toward her. “I’m sorry to have impeded you, my lady. I am Lieutenant Anbroce. You may journey north tomorrow morning when I take the next set of dispatches to the king. ”
As they retreated to the center of the city to find lodgings, Toria tried not to grind her teeth at the delay. “How did you persuade him to let us through?”
“I showed him my scrying stone and offered to let him speak with King Rymark directly,” Fess said. “I might have mentioned that the king’s not the most patient man when he’s interrupted.”
“Clever,” Toria said, “but the scrying stones don’t connect us to Rymark, only each other in the Vigil and Brid Teorian. I don’t think the lieutenant would have been as impressed talking to the Chief of Servants.”
He shrugged. “I doubt whether the king and queens bother to tell their subjects about who holds which set of scrying stones.”
The next morning, the lieutenant joined them, mounted on a serviceable black horse and carrying a pack stuffed with reports for the king. Two pennants, the top one red and the lower one green fluttered on a slender pole seated into his left stirrup. Seeing their question the lieutenant nodded. “The patrols have orders to shoot anyone north of here without the colors of the day. King Rymark’s orders.”
It took eight guards to lift the beam that secured the gate and two more to move it on its massive black hinges, but within minutes she and Fess and the sentinel stood with the lieutenant outside the walls of Treflow. The gates banged shut with a hollow boom that sounded too much like the knell of an iron bell.
A day and a half north of Treflow, Wag went still, his nose pointed into the headwind and the thick fur on his neck bristling. Toria dismounted and put her bare hand on his head, closing her eyes to avoid the vertigo that came with the sudden shift in perception. “What do you smell?” she asked. But by the time the question left her lips, Wag’s answer was no longer necessary. She was already in the delve. Heavy on the wind came the smell of death, not the scent of a decaying animal, but the heavy cloying odor of men, unburied and left in the open to rot.
She remounted and they continued north, but they encountered their first patrol before they came across any bodies. A squad of soldiers in green and white in the distance spotted them when they crested a hill and came thundering toward them at a gallop. Fess pulled his sword and palmed a dagger with the other hand. “You should place yourself behind me, Lady Deel.”
With a glance toward the lieutenant, she shook her head. “If you’re going to be part of our company, Fess, you’re going to have to learn how to deal with others without drawing your sword.” She waited as the pounding of hooves grew more distinct, but he didn’t reply.
The soldiers reined in and came to a stop twenty paces away, the five of them spreading so that they covered a broad arc. The lieutenant stepped forward, interposing himself between Toria and the squad. “What’s the meaning of this? Can you not see the flag?”
The soldier in the center, dark-haired to match his countenance, nodded. “Aye, but security has been doubled.” His stare took in Fess, searching, before he looked at Toria, his gaze doing a slow pan from boots to hair, pausing at various times. Men had looked at her that way before, and she met the soldier’s stare with her own, cold and implacable.
“Why?” she demanded, her voice cracking in the early morning air.
Caught off guard, he blinked. “Why what?”
She let enough of her frustration show on her face to make him lean back in his saddle. “Why have the patrols been doubled?” she grated.
Instead of answering, he turned to Lieutenant Anbroce. “You will deliver your reports to me and return to Treflow.” He glanced at Toria. “And take them with you.”
“We must see King Rymark,” Toria said.
The squad leader snapped his fingers and the men on either side of him drew their swords. “On the contrary, you must do as you’re told.”
Anger flooded through her like a tidal wave, turning her vision red. At her side, Fess drew his sword, already leaning forward in his saddle, a preface to attack. She managed to reach out and put one restraining hand on his arm. Taking a deep breath, she spoke a single word.
“Wag.”
The sentinel exploded into motion. Blurring as he took half a dozen strides in less than a heartbeat, he leapt with jaws wide, taking the squad leader in the throat, bearing him to the ground, where he struggled to pull his dagger. Wag’s jaws closed a fraction, and the squad leader quieted, hardly daring to breathe.
“Don’t move, Captain,” Toria said. “It would be unfortunate if Wag misinterpreted your struggles as a threat.”
“Release me,” he said, his eyes burning. “Or I’ll order my men to kill you.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Captain. Wag isn’t a dog, in case you haven’t noticed. He could dispatch you and the rest of your men before they came within sword reach. Now use your brains, if Aer has seen fit to give you any. If I have one of the sentinels, wouldn’t it be a good idea if I were permitted to get to the front where he could be useful?”
“All the sentinels are dead,”
