Except for Moth. Moth looked angry.
“I looked everywhere for you,” he said. “No one would tell us anything. And then Sammerin tells me that you had gone home?”
“Do you know what’s happening, sir?” Phelyp asked. His brow was knotted. He’d grown into a more confident, capable soldier, but he still was awful at hiding his unease. “Why did the plans change?”
Dread fell to the bottom of my stomach.
“Change?” I repeated.
The soldiers exchanged a wary look.
“All leave canceled. All leadership called back. Everyone to remain at the base indefinitely. Locked down. We’ve been told to remain prepared for action, sir,” Phelyp said. “You didn’t…know?”
“Is this still about Aviness’s allies?” another asked. “I thought we were done with them.”
“Should be done with them, after all that,” Phelyp muttered. “I heard rumors that it’s something else — maybe even… ah…Threllians…” His eyes fell to Tisaanah, awkwardly clearing his throat, before flicking back to me expectantly.
They were nervous. Of course they were. To call everyone back so abruptly, with so little information, and at such sweeping scale was extremely rare. It happened when the Ryvenai War broke out. At least then, we’d had at least some idea of why.
This? This was a strange measure to take, when a war had just ended. Nura must already be flexing the muscles of her newfound power. She wasn’t even officially Arch Commandant yet, not until the confirmation, but who was going to question her?
The image of her face flashed through my mind — the sheer determination in it.
She believed something horrible was coming, and Nura met formidable opponents with formidable strength. Formidable strength required an army. Would she use that army for a pre-emptive attack? I wanted to think she wouldn’t. But…
I was so lost in thought that I didn’t realize I had just been standing there, silent, as the boys stared at me.
“You’ll be returning, right, sir?” Phelyp said, at last.
“There are plans that still need to be settled,” I replied.
They exchanged another glance. They weren’t stupid — they recognized a non-answer when they heard one.
“Is there… any information, sir? Anything?”
They didn’t just want information. They wanted reassurance. Leadership. They had been looking at me like I could give it to them. But this was the moment I had dreaded when I had noticed them starting to hoist me onto that mental pedestal — the moment they realized I couldn’t be what they wanted me to be.
“No,” I said. “Not now. Go to talk to Essanie and Arith. They’re the ones you should be asking these questions, anyway. And if you’re supposed to be in lockdown, you shouldn’t even be this far from the base.”
They did not move.
“I will make sure you get more information,” I said. “As soon as it’s available to you. I promise. Now go before your captains realize you’re gone and you get slapped with three weeks of cleaning duty.”
They gave me half-hearted salutes and shuffled away back toward the city. But Moth remained, giving me a piercing stare that seemed so uncharacteristic of him. It made him look several years older.
“I know that I make a lot of mistakes,” he said. “But I’m not dumb.”
“I never said—”
“They all know you as the general. But I remember what you were like before all of this. And I know what you were like after the first war. You just hid.”
My eyebrows lurched. “Excuse me?”
Is he wrong, though?
“They’d talk about you like you’re some kind of legend. Like we can win anything if we have you. And they’d act like we would always have you, like it was just a given. But sometimes they would talk like that and I’d think…” He swallowed, his jaw tight. “I’d think about what you used to be like. And I’d think about how you could still just run away and leave us to fight alone. Is that what you’re doing? Leaving us to fight alone?”
My mouth, half open already with the beginnings of a response, closed.
Moth just stared at me. Waiting for an answer — demanding one.
Good question, Max. Is that what you’re doing?
“No,” I said, at last. “No. It’s not.”
Something I couldn’t identify flickered in Moth’s gaze, like he was caught between two warring versions of himself — Moth, the righteous adult, and Moth, the unsure child.
“None of them know what’s going to happen next,” he said. “Not even the older ones. I think even Essanie and Arith are scared, even though they don’t show it. Everyone has been asking about you. They trust you. All of them trust you.”
His words burrowed deep. Not so long ago, it would have been downright nightmarish to hear them, because there was nothing I wanted less than to be entrusted with something so precious. I wanted to tell him, If they trust me, they shouldn’t. I’m not worthy of it.
Instead, I said, quietly, “You won’t be alone, Moth. Whatever happens.”
Moth didn’t look like he believed me.
I lifted my chin to the others, who had set off into the night. “You’d better catch up. If you’re late, you’ll be in more trouble.”
Moth still stood there, tight-lipped, and I thought he might argue. But then he just turned to Tisaanah, gave her a little smile and a polite, “Goodnight, Tisaanah,” and followed the others.
I watched the group of young men hurry down the street until they turned around a corner, a tightness in my chest that I couldn’t shake.
They were new recruits. Young. Untrained. No rank to speak of. No family names to protect them. If war came, they would be the first to be thrown at the feet of the enemy. The first lambs to be sacrificed.
I closed my eyes.
“Fuck,” I muttered, beneath my breath.
“I know what it looks like when people trust their leader,” Tisaanah murmured. I almost laughed. Figured that it took less than an hour for my own words to be turned back on me.
“I’d rather not be one,” I said.
“If only we all got to be what we wished.”
I opened my eyes to
