Aunt sent me with a basket of sweetbread for the soldiers who stood at attention as I emerged from the gates.

  “May we help you, miss?” the leader of the stationed pair asked. “The herald and adjudicator have gone with the prisoner if you’re looking to convert.”

  I hadn’t expected such politeness from Hume who held arms against me and my people, and it would have helped to set me at ease had the news that the Order were the ones holding Bansaerin not followed. I tugged tighter the aura of calm I’d summoned around myself and spoke aloud the lines I’d rehearsed. “I am Draeza Lif-sai’Lune, apprentice spiritspeaker of the Twisted River Clan. I come with a gift for your captain, and yourselves, and should like to speak with him if I may.”

  They whispered between themselves for a moment before summoning a guard from within the camp who came to meet me and escorted me to the largest of the tents. There was a hole in the camp’s formation where the herald’s tent had been.

  The guard presented me to the captain who received me diplomatically enough. Dark shadows hung beneath his red-rimmed eyes. He’d either been out most of the night or had hardly slept through it.

  Uncle and I had practiced what I would say. I didn’t want to lie, and I wouldn’t apologize for something I knew Bansaerin hadn’t done, but I couldn’t call the captain a liar either. “Glean as much information as you can,” Uncle had advised. “Do not admit fault but be generous with compassion.”

  “I have brought a gift on behalf of my clan. We were grieved to hear of your sheriff’s passing.”

  The captain narrowed his gaze, looking me over. “Grieved at harboring murderers more like,” he snapped. “No finer commander than the sheriff. We’re all worse off without him. Even those ungrateful for such leadership, who would spit in the face of their protectors.”

  I tightened my grip on my basket. The captain was deeply distressed by the loss of his commander. I needed to find a way to use that to my advantage without his emotions spiraling out of control. “Have you served with him long?”

  The captain nodded. “About a decade now. The best part of my career.”

  He hadn’t been with the sheriff for the raids hunting down the Lifkin rebels, which warmed me to him slightly. “My aunt made you these sweetbreads. And if you and your men would like, I’d be honored to lead a memory prayer for the sheriff. It’s part of my role as a spiritspeaker, to help the departed pass on.”

  “The herald promised the same for when we return to Dust. He’ll be escorting the prisoner there.” The captain crossed his arms over his chest, jutting his jaw forward. “But there’s little harm in an extra prayer, is there? I think it’d be good for my men and for me.”

  With the captain’s permission, I assembled the candles I’d brought on one corner of the table the adjudicator had been stationed beside, the one I assumed they’d planned to use for whatever the process of conversion looked like. Were they recording names and a statement of belief? Some sort of confession? Had I been less worried about Bansaerin, I might have scoffed at how quickly the ruse of our conversion fell apart.

  A pair of the soldiers watched me work, elbowing one another until one finally came forward. “Are you the only one planning on coming out d’you think?”

  His friend gawped from the line of the tents encircled around the table.

  “For today at least, I’d say so. We’re making preparations to go north.” I trod carefully. I didn’t want to over-inform the soldiers of our plans lest it enabled their own that were a danger to us.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Did you know the murderer?”

  “Excuse me?” I fumbled at striking the match I’d drawn and it stopped it two against the edge of the candle.

  “Allow me,” the soldier said, reaching out for my matchbox.

  I offered it to him with a quick smile which he returned.

  “The prisoner, the one they’re taking to Dust for the baron. Did you know him?”

  I swallowed around the growing lump in my throat. “Yes. I’ve known him my whole life.”

  “Is it strange, that someone you know would be a murderer?”

  I frowned at that. In the first, I knew the accusations against Bansaerin weren’t true, but I was still working out who to turn to that could help me prove otherwise. Soldiers determined to believe what they were told were unlikely to be the source of assistance I sought. In the second, how could one of the baron’s soldiers balk at keeping close acquaintance with someone who killed others as that was an identity they all shared. “You’re a soldier. Isn’t that true of everyone you know? Everyone here?”

  “That’s different.” He shrugged.

  How to answer him? “I think the candles are ready now, if you’d like to inform the captain.”

  He smiled at me again, unbothered by our conversation, his conscience free from burden despite the actions of himself and his fellows.

  Bansaerin and my parents would have agreed with the Hume in part. They would have said that the difference between their actions, in my parents’ case, and the accusation against Bansaerin was that the Hume killed to oppress and for coin. My parents had done so, they would have claimed and I had to believe, for the freedom and dignity of their people. In my studies with Aveela, I had grown more and more convinced that there had to be other avenues to pursue that didn’t involve death, even if I didn’t know yet what they were.

  The captain gathered his soldiers, leaving two on lookout should this offering be part of an elaborate trap. Once everyone had gathered, I spoke the prayer of passing in Brelish so as to appease the Hume around me and avoid arousing their suspicions. The captain stepped forward after I had finished and said a few words about honor, duty, and service.

  I watched the soldiers’ faces as he spoke. They’d all removed their helmets and kept their heads bowed. Despite their chain mail and swords, I saw the same sorts of cares that I knew from my own clan. Smile lines beside a father’s eyes, a crease of concern beside a brother’s mouth. Here they were in a strange place that they might have feared to come to, away from their families and their homes. Had they wanted this any more than we had?

  A few of the men spoke a eulogy in the sheriff’s honor, and they poured a measure of ale upon the ground in his memory—a tradition we share but with mead. The captain pulled me aside afterward and thanked me for my kindness in helping them. His eyes were still red-rimmed, but his shoulders hung a bit looser than they had. “Is there anything we can do for you, miss? Any kindness we might pay in return?”

  I smiled at his offer for it was what I had hoped to achieve. I hadn’t dared to hope I might gain their trust as well. “My cousin lives in Shakerton and is expecting. I should like to tell her of our plans to go north, and I have some supplies to bring her as well to aid her time. With your permission, might I travel the forest path?” It was a little later in the morning than when I’d traveled to Shakerton just a few days before, but I would still arrive before noon and be able to carry out my cover visit to Eletria and, hopefully, see Bansaerin as well.

  As Gwinny and I rode away from the soldiers, my thoughts could not help but turn to the day they took Iredella. We weren’t very far from the camp, though I didn’t know the forest as well then. A fortnight hadn’t yet passed since our arrival at Twisted River.

  But as the distance between the clan and myself grew, my thoughts turned instead to Bansaerin and his capture. With each turn in the path, I wondered if I was passing along where he’d been seized.

  If only the Hume had not arrived so quickly, he would have had time to be further away. I keep thinking about the night before their arrival. If I hadn’t convinced him to stay, he would have been further south. The way he had paced in the stables, his frustration at ekeing out an existence on the Hume’s terms of doing little more than surviving.

  I thought I was helping, asking him to wait, asking him to hold out hope a little while longer. The return of whatever creature stalks the midpoint of the forest distracted me from my self-blame. As Gwinny neighed and cantered away from whatever lurks in the forest shadows, I tried to leave behind me my fears that his arrest is my fault, that whatever the baron has planned for him was brought about by me.

  I’ve no doubt Bansaerin would come to rescue me, and I cannot lose anyone else to the cursed Baron, king, or the Order ever again.