Page 20 of Ash and Feather

Black strings of hair framed a hollow face with silver-green eyes that were nearly always casting about in search of trouble. He moved with a slight limp, the result of a riding accident that had left his right leg mangled, its bones shattered too completely to properly set.

Captain Sordrin.

He’d served my father since before I was born. A decorated and well-respected soldier, advisor, speaker…and often the one who had caught my brother and me during our clandestine adventures into the city.

He growled out a few more orders to the rest of his soldiers before turning and striding toward the main doors of the palace.

I followed closely behind. If anybody was going to have useful information for me to gather tonight, it would likely be him and the circle he surrounded himself with.

My hunch about this was further confirmed only a moment later, as another familiar face—Lord Ryltar—met him on the front steps. Ryltar’s eyes were wide as he watched the group in the distance carrying away the wounded, his rotund body shaking with anxiety as he wheezed for breath. “What the hell happened? You were on a routine patrol, yet I’ve heard—”

Captain Sordrin held up a hand, his gaze sliding toward the handful of people close enough to listen. “Not here. Gather whatever council we have available and meet me in the north-view room. And ready a messenger to send to His Majesty; he’ll want this report as soon as possible.”

A messenger?

So my brother wasn’t here, it seemed.

Just as well.

It would be easier to focus on what I needed to find out if I didn’t have to worry about seeing him—or him seeing me. I didn’twantto see him. Regardless of what Rieta believed, I could in fact separate my divine obligations and plans fromwhatever lingering, complicated feelings I had toward what remained of my mortal family.

I paused with my foot on the top step, just for a moment. Though I had returned to this palace—and the city around it—numerous times over the past years, I rarely went inside the building itself.

But Sordrin and Ryltar had already slipped through the door and started down the hall.

Just as the footman pushed that heavy, steel door closed, I made myself step forward, darting inside, the drag of metal on marble covering the sound of my footsteps.

For a moment, I paused in the center of the atrium, staring at my family’s coat of arms. It had been etched in gold against the floor—a shield wrapped in brambles with an eagle on one edge, wings unfurled, talons stretching toward a sword on the opposite edge.

Familiar sounds and scents assaulted me as I stood there. It was officially sundown—the hour when prayer and occasional fasting and offerings began among the more devout palace inhabitants—which meant smoky trails of incense, pungent whiffs of floral offerings, and the hum of prayer and soft chants as people made their way to the various shrines spread throughout the palace and its grounds.

It didn’t escape my notice how amusing these humans were, preparing prayers and offerings to gods without realizing one was currently walking among them.

I didn’t recall there being so many devout palace inhabitants in the past. How much did they all know about what was happening to the north? Maybe they were praying more earnestly because they were afraid of more men returning to the palace, lifeless, on the backs of their horses.

In my experience, few things inspired prayer more than fear.

I knew where the north-view room Sordrin had referred to was located, so I didn’t worry about losing track of him. Instead, I took my time as I walked through the halls of my old home, studying it closer—but not too close.

In truth, I struggled to strike a balance; I’d come to gather information, which necessitated a closer look and an eavesdropping ear toward everything…but to look or listentooclosely was to invite a trip down memory lane that I had no interest in taking.

As I reached my destination, several members of the summoned council reached it simultaneously. I hesitated, waiting for the right moment to make my next move.

I ended up slipping in alongside Lady Meira, an elderly woman who’d served as an advisor to my family for so long she was even closer to a ghost than I currently was; needless to say, her deteriorating eyes saw nothing out of the ordinary as I slid past her.

Once inside, I moved silently to the wall farthest from the table most of them were gathering around, pressing back against it and narrowing my gaze on Captain Sordrin.

As expected, he spoke first.

“One dead, two severely wounded.”

A chorus of disgust and outrage rippled through the room.

Sordrin held up his hand, silencing them as he had Lord Ryltar earlier. “We never made it to Ederis proper, as we’d planned—only to what appears to be a new base they’re trying to establish just north of the upper Berlnath river. A base very close to Ghaun. We spoke with some of Ghaun’s inhabitants, and they confirmed that our old enemies have been terrorizing them. Nothing too harrowing, as of yet—only petty thievery and threats. But the citizens of Ghaun are afraid.”

Ghaun was a small village with a dwindling population; it had once been a booming town, but most of the younger, moreable bodies had migrated further south over the past decades—into Altis. So its population was elderly, its resources scarce, its ability to defend itself nearly non-existent.

The room turned Sordrin’s words over in silence for several moments, until a man with ash-colored hair and unsettlingly bright green eyes sat up straighter in his seat, cleared his throat, and said, “So they’re spreading beyond even the places we originally feared. Out of the Hollowlands and into the kingdom at large. Creeping their way closer to our own fair city. And attacking Ghaun along the way? By the gods…what business could they have in that peaceful place, if not abject destruction? They are the lowest of the low.”

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