Page 72 of The Threadbare Queen

He knew she could manage whatever the city council and the nobles in Fernwell threw at her, and with Dak and General Ru as her allies she would be safe, but he would feel better with her by his side.

The only thing that helped distract him was physical exertion.

He’d pushed the unit hard the day before, and they’d made huge progress across the relatively open ground that skirted the heavily forested foothills.

He hadn’t exactly been trying to shake the Jatan loose, but he had the feeling they’d kept up with a determined will, and it hadn’t been easy for them.

The look in General Tuart’s eyes when he’d insisted on accompanying them to Cervantes to see what the Jatan were up to there had set alarms tingling across Luc’s skin and put a hard ball of worry in the pit of his stomach.

If he read Tuart correctly, the general was worried about what they would find, and if he was worried, Luc was terrified.

“Kym never signed off from guard duty,” Vera said, breaking across his thoughts. “She told Hassini that she was going to wash by the river straight after her shift and asked him to sign her out when he got back to camp.”

“That’s not acceptable.” Luc saw Rafe had arrived at the far side of the camp, moving his horse through the abandoned detritus with a considering look in his eye.

“That’s what Hassini said. He refused to do it, but she never checked in anyway, so he told Revek what she’d asked him to do.”

Luc remembered the look of Kym’s face as she’d studied the Jatan soldiers yesterday. He had meant to ask her what she’d seen, but after Tuart gathered his troops and rode beside them, he realized she must have kept to the back of the unit. He hadn’t seen her at all since yesterday afternoon.

“Fetch Kym for me now. And Hassini.”

Vera nodded and galloped away.

Rafe reached him, but his gaze was on Vera as she left. “What are the Jatan playing at?”

“There is something going on here to do with our scouts at the border. I’ll wait for confirmation from Vera, but my guess is Kym went with them last night, or they took her.”

Rafe gaped at him. “Kym?”

“She saw something yesterday. Or rather, someone. I noticed it when she came with me to talk to Tuart. She said it was nothing, but it obviously was. Vera says last night she told a fellow guard to check in for her after her shift, that she was going to bathe in the river, and my guess is she slipped away to talk to someone in the Jatan unit.”

He knew something was off with her reaction yesterday, but he had never followed up. He’d let her avoid him, and now she was either gone, or abducted.

He was angry with himself for the slip.

“You think whatever it was that was going on between her and the person she saw in Tuart’s unit is why they left?”

Luc shrugged. “It seems extreme, but if not, then where is she?”

Maybe Vera would come back with Kym in tow, but he doubted it. An exclamation from across the clearing had him raising his head.

News of the Jatan’s disappearance had obviously spread, because Massi, Revek and Kikir had come to see for themselves, looking in surprise at the sight of the tents and other things the Jatan had left behind.

“Their need to slip away quietly was obviously greater than their need to pack all their equipment.” Kikir stared narrow-eyed at the half-collapsed tents and bowls lying near the fire-pits.

“And they were ragtag enough as it was,” Massi said. “They didn’t look as if they could afford to leave much behind.”

That was true. They had the hungry, desperate look of men and women who had been fighting without enough provisions for a long time.

So whatever they wished to hide from him, it had overridden every other consideration.

That worried Luc.

He worried about Kym, too, but the possibility remained she had gone with them willingly.

“What could she have seen on the border? Who could have been in Tuart’s unit that caused the kind of distress I picked up from her?”

Rafe shook his head. “I have never had cause to doubt her. She is a loyal Cervantes.”

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