Page 148 of Secrets of Graves and Gold

By the time any of them set foot outside to investigate further, I’ll be long gone… until I see them again armed and armored, storming the bank on my side of the channel.

Forty-One

Ivy

Iappreciated the darkness when I needed it to hide me. I’m less fond of it right now when I want to be able to track our enemies’ approach.

Stavros gives the back of my cloak a gentle tug. “Lean forward any farther and you’ll topple right out, Lady Thief.”

He, Rheave, and I are perched at the top of a lookout tower about half a mile back from the channel. It’s also halfway between the fort he and the daimon-man sealed up and the three pine trees we’ve used as a landmark.

We want to be within viewing distance of the battle but out of the line of fire. I would prefer to continue keeping my head attached to my body long enough for the king to pardon both parts.

The wooden tower, the platform of which stands at the level of the nearby treetops, is only large enough to comfortably hold the three of us. Alek and Casimir, who found their way back to us before we left Fort Cyprian, are watching from its foot.

We’ve set everything up as planned. In the lantern light of the fort, the Silanian flag waving there has been burnt to tatters by Rheave’s magic—the signal to both the Darium soldiers and the Order of the Wild’s march that everything is proceeding as they expect.

The Darium forces themselves arrived on several large watercraft not long ago. I can barely make out their forms over by the pines. They’ve drawn themselves into a rigid formation that could be a massive hedge for all my eyes can tell.

I think there are at least a few hundred of them. Not a huge crowd, since there wouldn’t have been many soldiers stationed along this part of the channel within easy call, but enough to pose a significant threat to the Order when pitting trained military professionals against townspeople and inexperienced nobles.

And I’m still hoping that anyone in the march who’s more misguided than malicious flees rather than getting caught up in the fighting.

Of course, that requires that the scourge sorcerers and their dupes show up at all.

No matter how I squint in the opposite direction, I can’t make out any sign of the march’s approach.

My hands tighten around the railing. A warble like a distant shout reaches my ears, sparking a jolt of nerves, but even as I turn toward it, I recognize that no one else has heard the sound.

It’s only in my head. A reminder of why I can’t set loose the magic that’s been churning in my chest all night.

Rheave glances over at me and bumps his shoulder gently against mine. “The scourge sorcerers will be hiding themselves like they usually do, won’t they?”

“Most likely.” But that fact doesn’t temper my impatience.

“We know they left at the right time to intercept the royal family’s supposed escape to Darium,” Alek says from below. “When we saw traces of them passing by the thicket where we were hiding, they appeared to be heading in the right direction, although obviously they could have diverted since then.”

He and Casimir were only able to arrive ahead of the march thanks to a wagon leaving Iblin that they hitched a ride on, traveling to one of the farms that scatter the lands just west of here. That could have put them as much as an hour ahead of the march that has most of its members on foot.

Borys will come, Julita says in a taut but confident voice. He’ll hate the idea that the king might have pulled one over on him and be slipping from his grasp. And you made it sound as if the royal family already traveled out here to prepare for the meeting without him realizing. It wouldn’t make sense for them to attack the palace in Regica if they believe the people they want to murder aren’t there.

If they believe it being the operative phrase. Did Casimir and Alek’s staged conversation on the road and the dropped letter prove convincing enough?

Even as that thought passes through my head, a tingle of magic grazes my skin.

I stiffen, braced to realize that it’s only another trick of my currently questionable sanity. But the sensation only grows, spreading steadily into my flesh until my bones start to quiver.

It can only mean one thing.

The words fall from my lips in an urgent whisper. “I can feel their magic. They’re here.”

Here and coming closer with every passing second.

As far as I can tell, the Darium troops near the channel haven’t stirred yet. They can’t tell the march is approaching.

They don’t even know that these people will see them as the enemy.

All at once, the flaw in my plan hits me with a jolt of panic. I was counting on the skeletal forms painted on the Darium uniforms unsettling the scourge sorcerers enough to diminish their magic. But I can barely see the soldiers themselves, let alone any imagery on their clothing.

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