Calla’s nostrils flared. Perhaps she was trying to suppress heracid tongue. “What does it do?”
“Connects me to stone. I can command it.” She wasn’t ready totalk about the extent, frightened to speculate.
“How did you make it?”
“Again, I cannot explain. I haven’t the vocabulary.” Time foranother subject. Perhaps the two of them were more alike than she thought.“Have you always known your status?”
Calla blinked, uttering a clipped, “What?”
“As a noble. Were you brought up as one?”
“Of course. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It must have been quite a blow.” She recalled her own panic atfacing discovery, but Calla had no doubt faced it immediately if the Umbriels werealways looking for magic in their kin. How had she borne such a thing? “Even ifyou were excited by the power, you were stripped of your old life, your peers.It must have been unsettling.”
Her cheeks went scarlet. “It’s not like they moved me into a caveabove the sea.”
“It was still exile.” Sylph tilted her head as Calla seemedperplexed. “I quite understand.”
She sneered again as if to say that no one understood her, andthey shouldn’t dare try. “You’ve been going through this for how many days, andyou think you know my life story? Oh, please. Even if we did feel the same, myfamily is letting the secret of noble pyradistés out because you demanded it. You’llsacrifice nothing.”
Both somewhat true and mostly false. And Sylph had no interest inexplaining. A small part of her had thought she and Calla could bond, but sheno longer cared to push where she wasn’t wanted, not in this moment, when shewas supposed to be completely in the present. “I cannot answer your questionsnow. Perhaps I will one day, but our time seems at an end.” She nodded at thecaptives as Calla went from scarlet to indigo. “You will accompany them toMarienne, I take it?”
“Why should I?” she asked between her teeth.
Sylph frowned, genuinely confused. “Because you will have deducedthat Thana and I will most likely remain on the hunt, and you loathe us. Andthe prince, to a point.” She lifted a hand as her father often did at the endof an argument. “And the escorts will have need of a pyradisté, and you haverearmed yourself.”
Calla put her hands on her slender hips. “With a bunch of uselessjunk, no destructive pyramids left.”
Sylph smiled as brightly as she could. “Even so, the loathingremains.”
“Oh, fine. I guess I’ll do it. At least you’re somewhatintelligent.” From her, it seemed like high praise. She marched away stiffly,as if on parade, and Sylph knew she’d continue all the way to Marienne just asthe prince would remain behind.
The brothers joined Calla in escorting the prisoners, leavingPrince Gunnar, Sylph, Thana, and Dina the monk to follow the rogue pyradistés’trail and find out where they’d come from.
The rogues had made no attempt at disguising it. Sylph couldn’tblame them. The hunting parties she was used to never attempted to cover theirtracks, either.
Of course, she’d never hunted people before.
But Prince Gunnar had. He tracked with Sylph in the front, andneither had to dismount to see the path. The pyradistés might as well havehacked their way through the undergrowth.
“They seemed in quite the hurry,” he said. “I wonder if that wasthe plan of the original five all along, to lead us out where their allies werewaiting.”
“But when you spotted and followed Thana and me, you disruptedtheir plans.” She nodded. It made sense, though it couldn’t be confirmed. Thepyradistés hadn’t seemed willing to talk before they’d left—aside from chainsof expletives—and since they were pyradistés, their memories couldn’t be read.
He shook his head. “How did it come this far? Were we blind tomiss rebellion brewing in our own city?”
Like Thana, he seemed prone to thinking aloud and likely did notrequire an answer, but as before, she felt she should contribute. “Why shouldyou have noticed, Highness?”
He blinked as if he’d forgotten she was there. Then he frowned,and though he was as handsome as ever, she wondered how many nobles andcourtiers would still be smitten if they saw these genuine expressions. She’dheard that his lackadaisical personality was part of his charm, just like hismother’s passion was part of hers.
Though they rarely appealed to the same people.
“You don’t think I should have seen this coming?” he asked.
She shrugged. “The pyradistés did not tell Thana, your link tothem, and even though you clearly work with”—she glanced back at Thana andDina—“those outside your station, you do not seem to socialize there inpublic.” She tilted her head. “Unless you sometimes mingle with the populace indisguise?”
He seemed intrigued but still shook his head. “I still shouldhave…” He sighed. “I wish someone would have told me.” He chuckled as ifrealizing how ridiculous that sounded.
But her mind was already working. “Use spies. The pyradistés knowof Thana’s connection to you, so someone else must serve as your eyes and earsin their camp. After this current rebellion has been dealt with, of course.”
“A spy in the academy?” he said, frowning.
“And wherever else one might be needed.” She thought of her maidsand tutors. Her father would never hire someone who couldn’t be bought, and hispockets were so deep, he never feared being outbid.
The prince’s frown said he found the idea distasteful. She nearlylaughed, tickled that his conscience extended so far. She liked him. Her fatherwould have laughed himself sick, but it would have been all disdain.
“Or recruit a spy master,” she said. “Someone whose loyalty youtrust but who knows how to buy it in others.”
A step removed from dirtying his hands seemed to please him, andhe looked at her as if seeing someone different.
She nearly laughed again, prepared to tell him to look elsewherefor his tender of secrets, but perhaps the lessons her father had inadvertentlytaught her could be put to good use.
And even he would be impressed that she’d found another way to beuseful to the crown.
But that was the future, and she didn’t have to think
