Page 75 of The Threadbare Queen

“What happened?” Luc looked the length of the village, and saw to his relief people stepping out from behind the rough-built houses at the sound of the old man’s greeting.

“The Jatan attacked. Took all our supplies.” The man put both hands on his hips and looked up at them.

“Is anyone hurt?”

The man made a sound that Luc realised was a hacking laugh.

“The Kassian have been after us too long for us to be caught like that.” He wiped away a tear as the smoke blew in their direction and irritated the eyes. “We have ways of disappearing that we’ve honed over many years of hiding our children from the Chosen camps.” He looked at the soldier from Bintinya. “I think they were headed for Bintinya next.”

Frebo looked at Luc, eyes wide.

“How long ago did they leave?”

“An hour.” The man dropped his arms to his sides. “We suffered little but the loss of food and supplies. Go help Bintinya. And maybe get our things back, eh?”

“How many were there?”

The old man moved his head from side to side, considering. “Maybe twenty.” His gaze flicked west, to where the rest of the unit was galloping toward them. “Not as many as you.”

Luc nodded to Frebo. “Lead the way.”

“Wait!” The man lifted a hand in supplication. “Who won? Who won the war?”

Luc tapped his chest. “We did. Kassia is ours.”

With a whooping battle cry, Frebo turned his horse and raced away, with Luc following, and Luc could hear the man behind them whooping along.

As the rest of the unit thundered through, the soldiers took up the cry, and so did the other villagers, so there was a building victory call rising up behind him.

Joy to balance the hardship of the attack.

As he followed Frebo, he thought about timing.

They had just missed the raid.

That told Luc either this might have been done by a Jatan group who were already in the area, one of the break-away units Kym had worried about—the reason she’d come to Fernwell to warn him in the first place—or this was Tuart, under orders to attack, and just ahead of them because his unit had taken the easier route.

Either way, whichever Jatan force had done this, they had openly attacked Cervantes.

If it was Tuart, he would know what Luc’s reaction to it would be.

And he’d done it anyway.

Now, there would be no quarter given.

Chapter 19

“What is that?”

Ava looked up from her place in front of the fire and found Gregor watching her.

She set down the thin piece of bark she had woven into a knot around one of Blackie’s fluffy chest feathers and shrugged. “Nothing.”

She was biding time until Evelyn left the cart.

She needed to find the Focus.

She kept her head down, careful to look absorbed in what she was doing, but Evelyn had said she was going to bathe in the river.

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