That little smile changed everything. Enough playing. It was time to end this.
I let my breath steady, let the threads of my magic reach across the room.
I drew one from myself to the other side of the tent, just behind Atrius.
Pulled it tight. Tight. Tight.
Stepped into it.
The world collapsed, shifted, rearranged in less than a second, and then I was standing behind him.
Atrius was tall, but not so tall I couldn’t position my blade against his throat, my other arm wrapped around his body.
“I win,” I said.
I tried not to sound smug.
Tried.
His body was pressed against mine. I felt his muscles tense with surprise, even if no part of his presence betrayed it. Felt the exhale as he realized what I’d just done.
He raised his hands.
“Impressed?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“Mm.”
The sound was more of a grunt.
So he was a sore loser. Noted.
I lowered and sheathed my blade, and he did the same.
“I’ve heard the Arachessen knew how to do that kind of thing,” he said. “Never witnessed it.”
“We can do much more than that,” I said, and immediately cursed myself.
We. I hoped he’d dismiss that as a holdover habit from my years of service. But if he noticed my slip, he didn’t show it. Instead, he turned and regarded me stonily.
“So?” I said. “Are you convinced now of my competence?”
He looked me up and down. A muscle in his jaw twitched, like whatever he was about to say physically pained him.
“Good enough,” he muttered at last, turning back to his desk. “Fine. You can come. Now get out of my tent. I have actual work to do.”
13
Maybe I should have considered further that I had deliberately chosen to sabotage Atrius’s army before I’d insisted on marching with them.
On the optimistic side, at least if I was there in person, I’d get to confirm that my sabotage worked.
Atrius moved, as I’d instructed, on the night of the full moon.
It was cold that night, the fog thick and soupy. The moon, which Atrius had watched so closely, was now only visible in fractured glimpses through the clouds, which blotted out the stars and inky night. The mist smeared all light to murky sunspots, making Atrius’s band of warriors look like a long trail of silver ghosts in the moonlight.
I rode near the front of the group, near Erekkus, who did little to hide how appalled he was that Atrius had allowed me to come.
“I’ve fought you before,” he grumbled. “That’s not the kind of skill that keeps you alive. Don’t expect me to save you.”
It bothered me more than it should have that Erekkus dismissed me so easily. “You won because I let you win” danced on the tip of my tongue—petty, childish competition that the Arachessen never quite managed to stomp out of me.
Still, it wasn’t lost on me that, despite his complaining, Erekkus still remained close to me. I didn’t need saving, and he’d see that soon enough, but it was still touching. Apparently he’d gotten a little protective over his ward.
Atrius’s warriors were serious and disciplined. No one spoke on the long ride up to the heart of Alka.
There was no optimal way to approach the city. It was positioned high up in the mountains and spread over several stone islands connected by a network of unusual rock formations, which functioned as bridges between subsections. When the tide was very low, it revealed tunnels and paths that were normally hidden beneath the surf. Tonight, those paths were bare.
Atrius seemed pleased by this, at least as much as the man seemed pleased by anything. He took the extremely low tide as the gift given by my vision. He intended to use these tunnels and formations as additional entry points into the city, climbing up through them into the biggest of the city’s secondary branches.
He broke his army up into many small groups, sending them to each corner of the city, surrounding it on all sides. Alka was difficult to approach not only because of the narrow, rocky paths and tunnels that were hard to scale and easy to defend, but also because it was so decentralized. The tunnels, combined with the other paths on the western land-locked side of the city, meant that he could surround Alka.
“Is he setting up a siege?” I asked Erekkus, as Atrius doled out his commands.
It would be what most would do to take out a city like this. Maybe the smartest path forward.
“We proposed it,” Erekkus replied. “But no.”
“Why not?”
“It takes too long and it kills a lot of locals.”