Page 124 of The Threadbare Queen

A sound wafted toward them on the light breeze, a deep, mournful cry that Luc at first thought had been made by some strange animal.

Then it came again, and he recognized it as a horn.

It meant nothing to him, but the Jatan recognized it.

They faltered in their focus, turning left toward the call, which came a third time from the road through the forest.

An army appeared.

Or, not an army, but at least twenty soldiers, maybe a little more, with blue and green patterns on their faces, riding the small, hardy ponies from the Skäddar mountains.

Kikir rode at the front with a man and a woman on either side of him, and he caught Luc’s gaze and rode straight toward him, using a signal to order the rest of his unit to join the Rising Wave.

The Skäddar’s arrival, their immediate support for the Rising Wave, had a devastating effect on the Jatan.

They lowered their weapons.

Some placed their swords on the ground in a more obvious surrender.

“We still outnumber them.” Hurst’s words were furious.

“Is that you, Hurst? All the way at the back of the line?” Bartholomew called.

His jeer was met with silence, as many of the Jatan turned to look for Hurst’s place among them.

“My friend, it seems we are just in time.” Kikir extended his hand down from his seat in the saddle, and Luc grinned up at him, clasping it in his own.

“Your timing is impeccable.”

Kikir looked across at the Jatan forces, then at the bodies and the recovering victims close to Luc. “I cannot wait to hear this story,” he said.

“I will be happy to tell it,” Luc said. “But how did you come to be here?” The last he had heard, Kikir was headed home to Skäddar to press the case for an alliance with the Rising Wave. That had been less than a week ago. It seemed impossible he would have managed to win over the Skäddar Collective so quickly.

Kikir lifted his shoulder. “Some of my people became worried about me, about my long absence, and they began to hear rumors of our victory over the Kassians. They sent a small party to investigate, and we met where the Kassian border touches both Jatan and Grimwalt.”

Luc could see from Kikir’s expression that had been a very good reunion.

“You didn’t keep on going, back to Skäddar?”

“No.” Kikir seemed uncomfortable all of a sudden. As if unsure of himself. “We planned to, but while we were camped for the night, just inside Kassia’s northern-most edge, I found something.” He shrugged, looking away. “I had the feeling Ava needed help.”

“Ava?” Luc’s gaze flicked to the Jatan councillors again, but the thin shadow was gone.

Kikir put a hand in his pocket and held something out. Luc took it, frowning. A twist of thin bark around a black feather.

The moment he touched it, he felt a sudden, tight grip of pressure. Of a need to make sure Ava was safe.

He looked up at the Skäddar warrior. “She is here. And she is safe.” His voice was strained, as if something was constricting his throat.

Kikir blew out a breath and lifted his shoulders, as if he had been relieved of a burden. “I would like to hear that story, too. I fought my better judgment all the way through the forests. I don’t know why I had such a strong feeling that Ava had made that, and that she needed help. It floated to us on the wind, and it was just out of curiosity that I caught it as it floated by. It could have come from anywhere.” He looked back at his own unit, who were silent as they spread along the Rising Wave line. “We decided to head for Illoa, where there’s a bridge from Kassia into Grimwalt, to see what news we could find there, but sometime yesterday I had the sense we should go west, and then we heard from a traveller about your meeting with the Jatan, so we headed here as fast as we could.”

Luc nodded, without giving anything away.

“Who’s that with General Tuart?” Kikir asked, his gaze moving to Baclar and Tuart, who were now sitting up, with Bartholomew hovering over them.

“The Jatan high-general, Baclar, and his aide.”

“The story gets more interesting by the minute,” Kikir said, and slid from his horse.

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