The small items Ava had left in the hills before they’d gone on to Bartolo had certainly wreaked havoc here, by the sounds of things.
They were stretched thin and jumpy.
She waited, still crouched low.
This is where she let Luc, Oscar and Deni do their thing.
She was just as capable as they were of attacking the remaining soldiers, but unlike Oscar and Deni, she hadn’t slept for more than an hour this morning.
She had spent the day embroidering, and she was exhausted, so now she waited, crouched low in the darkness, her scarf around her neck.
She was a killer, though, just as much as them.
Maybe warrior was a better word.
She hoped she wasn’t just finding nicer, more palatable versions of the truth.
It was probably the exhaustion talking.
None of them had gone looking to be death bringers.
Kassia had forced this uprising, and they had upped the stakes with these flares.
The fact that Kassia remained without allies and with so many nations ranged against them, told the story of their missteps, greed and cruelty.
No one wanted to help them, unless, like the Speaker of Grimwalt, there was a personal benefit.
And her aunt, the queen, was behind each badly-made decision. Along with her cousin.
It pained Ava that she was related to them, although she wouldn’t have endured what she had if there’d been no relationship between them.
She wanted revenge against them specifically, especially after what they’d done to her mother, but they were shielded behind the walls of Fernwell, and there would be a lot of blood that wasn’t theirs on her hands before this was finished.
Luc stepped in front of her, searching for her in the darkness, and she pulled the scarf away.
“Site’s cleared,” he said and held out a hand to her.
There was a thin line of blood spray across his cheek.
She realized she hadn’t even heard the fighting. She’d gone into a doze while she waited.
She closed her fingers around his and rose up, hooked a hand around his arm, and glanced at what they were calling a cannon nest.
Everyone was dead.
Oscar crouched beside the cannon, opening the wooden box beside it.
She walked over to Maynard’s body and pulled the handkerchief from his pocket. No sense leaving any evidence behind.
“They all there?” Luc asked.
Oscar turned and nodded. “All three accounted for.”
This was the ninth nest they’d cleared. They had one more to go.
The sound of footsteps had them all turning, but it was Deni.
“There is a base camp,” he said. “I’m amazed we didn’t stumble across it by accident before now.”
“How many in it?” Luc moved toward the cannon.
“Just four that I could see. Probably off-duty scouts. This one,” he toed Vaten, who they’d dragged back up the hill after killing, “said he’d get a scout to stand in for his deserting friend, so it’s possible there are others patrolling the valley.”
“That makes sense. They wouldn’t want anyone to stumble across this by accident. They aren’t expecting us but anyone could be wandering around.” Oscar took out the hammer they’d brought with them, and Luc carefully tipped the small cannon over.
They systematically smashed the levers and then pulled it apart.
A shout went up, coming from a hill they had cleared earlier, and they all rose to their feet.
“Looks like one of the scouts stopped in to say hello and got a surprise,” Deni said.
“We need to get to the last hill. Now.”
Luc ran and they fell in line behind him. The others were faster than she was and Ava had just lost sight of them when she remembered the flares.
She stopped. Damn! There was no good choice here.
She needed to help the others, but hiding the flares was her job, and it was vital no one could find them.
She turned and ran back.
Oscar had already moved the wooden crate to the side, but not under bushes as they had done at the other sites.
She tried to lift it, but it was too heavy and she was too afraid of knocking the glass canisters together or dropping the box.
She turned in a circle, looking for inspiration, and ran at the closest tree, jumping up to grab a leafy branch, and ripping it off the main trunk.
It wasn’t much, but it just needed to obscure.
She didn’t know if it was even necessary. It was possible her working would hide the crate even if it were out on the plains in full sunlight, but she wasn’t prepared to take that chance.
They were planning to come back and find a way to destroy all the flares, but right now they just needed to hide them and keep them out of Kassian hands.
She tied the long strip of fabric she’d embroidered with invisibility to the box and arranged the branch on top, then ran back toward the trail. She felt lightheaded by the time she reached the bottom and stood, head bent over her knees, to get herself together.
“You sure you saw someone come this way?”
“Yes.”
Ava slowly raised her head, grateful beyond words she’d decided to put her scarf back on.
Her cloak hadn’t warned her of the small group’s approach, but then, they couldn’t mean her harm if they didn’t know she existed.
Her old cloak would have alerted her, though.
She knew it.
And there was nothing she could do about it, so she focused on what she could do.
Five soldiers moved in single file up the narrow path to the hilltop, and Ava stepped out of the way to let them pass.
They had their weapons drawn, and they were dressed in the brown and gray of scouting parties, not the more formal uniform of the Kassian soldiers.
This must be the four scouts Deni had checked out earlier, and the fifth soldier who’d sent up the cry of alarm.
Ava followed behind the last in line, and then kicked the back of his knee.
He went down, hands splayed out to stop himself, and she threw a piece of fabric in front of him.
“You all right, Rogers?” The scout in front of him turned to look.
“Just tripped.” Rogers stood, holding the small square in his hand.
“It’s not good, is it, Rogers? Guarding flare cannons?” Ava asked from behind him.
He stopped, turned to look, and frowned.
“I’m here, you just can’t see me. You have to be sick to your stomach at the thought of it. Of burning all those people.” She had found most of the soldiers at the cannon nests had needed almost no persuasion to leave their posts. Maybe it was the havoc she had already sown by leaving her little surprises behind, or maybe they truly did have a conscience.
She had started working a compulsion to leave the hills into the fabric she had left for them to find, and ended up not having to talk to them at all after the third nest.
“Like how I feel about it would make any difference.” Rogers scoffed. “At least I don’t have to fire the things.”
“You could stop it. You should stop it.”
“How?” He started to scramble up a steep section of path, and Ava realized she was in danger of falling behind.
“Run home.” She could get him to kill some of the others, but she didn’t want to do that. It was easier to just make them run away.
“Now?”
“Now. And when you get home, you should throw that square of fabric in the fire.” It was her last one, as it happened.