Sev shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Very well,” Rolan said, though his voice sounded more tired than relieved as he bent over his papers and waved the girl and the guard away. Sev tried to read over Rolan’s shoulder and thought he caught the words “return to” before the governor leaned back and Sev hastily withdrew his gaze.
The third bondservant was a plump woman who wept throughout the meeting, and the fourth was a burly man with an unkempt beard and forearms as thick as tree trunks. Neither had been involved, as far as Sev knew, and he did his best to recount where he last remembered seeing them or their assignments on the day’s duty rosters. It was a delicate balance—Sev knew more than the average soldier would, so he had to be vague in some instances and more specific in others.
He measured each word he spoke, hoping every time the door closed that it would be the last time—while secretly, desperately hoping that it wouldn’t be, that there would be just one more survivor….
Even that was selfish, though. In a perfect world, Kade wouldn’t be caught—he’d have run as far from the war and the empire as possible. In some ways that was easier…. Sev could imagine him living somewhere safe in Pyra, free from bondage, but the hard part was that he’d never know for sure. The hard part was imagining the other possibility if Kade didn’t turn up today, the far more likely possibility that Kade had died like so many others that night. That Sev would never see him again.
Rolan took notes, asking questions here and there, but it seemed that their full stories had already been recounted and recorded—likely by Officer Yara—and Sev was acting as confirmation for the details.
He wasn’t sure if he should be relieved that none of Trix’s true conspirators had been caught, or if this meant that they’d all likely been executed atop Pyrmont.
When the door opened for the fifth time, Sev’s heart plummeted.
This was someone he knew—and not the person he’d secretly been hoping for.
The man who shuffled into the room had steely gray hair and eyes to match. His skin was a deep, ruddy shade that came from a lifetime in the sun, and his thin body was wiry with age and decades of hard work. Sev recalled that he’d been a breeder of Stellan horses in the south but hadn’t been a registered animage and so owed fifteen years of back taxes. He’d probably be a bondservant until he died.
Sev remembered him; he’d been part of the hunting party—the worst duty for an animage, being forced to lure animals to the slaughter over and over again.
He’d also been a supporter of Trix. He’d helped to harvest the pyraflora—Trix’s poison of choice—while out on hunting trips, and Sev had seen him whispering with Trix many times throughout their long journey up Pyrmont.
As soon as the man’s eyes fell on Sev, he stiffened in recognition, causing the soldier who held his arms to shove him more aggressively toward his seat, as if the man had been resisting his grip rather than reacting to the sight of Sev sitting there on the opposite side of the table.
Just as Sev had seen him with Trix, so too had he seen Sev.
His name was Ulric. They had never spoken, but Sev saw a familiar hatred in his eyes—the hatred he himself had carried toward soldiers, toward the empire, for most of his life—and knew that this was not going to go like the rest. For him to see Sev alive and well while he was imprisoned—and the majority of his co-conspirators dead—was obviously too much for Ulric to bear. His eyes glinted dangerously, near the point of looking deranged, and Sev understood in that instant that this man wanted to bring Sev down, his own life be damned.
“All right, Sevro, let’s—”
“That man is a traitor!” Ulric said, voice tight with suppressed rage as he cut Lord Rolan off. The room went silent. The soldier who’d deposited Ulric into his chair stepped forward, as if ready to apprehend the bondservant, though he glanced to Rolan for instruction.
Rolan held up a hand to the soldier, halting his movement, before turning his attention to Ulric. “I do not recall asking you to speak.”
Ulric laughed, a rasping bark that echoed in the cramped space. “No, but I will,” he said, the laughter dying as abruptly as it had begun. He leaned forward in his chair. “He’s one of us. He’s a traitor, and here he sits next to his lord, a war hero, while the rest of us bow and bend and scrape.”
Out of nowhere, he lunged for Sev, but his hands came up short, missing their target—Sev’s throat—by inches, thanks to the soldier, who leapt forward and took hold of the back of Ulric’s tunic.
Sev reared back anyway, almost toppling over in his chair, but Rolan gripped his good shoulder to steady him.
When it was clear he’d not be able to move again, Ulric spat instead. It landed on Sev’s chest, and he clenched his jaw to stop from reacting. He was breathing heavily, the accusations stinging, despite the fact that he understood them. This man thought Sev had gotten away with it—which he had—but that he’d decided to return to his masters in the empire without a backward glance. Maybe he expected Sev to turn him in—Sev would have too, if faced with an empire soldier in his position—but what made Sev’s stomach twist painfully was the realization that now he had to do exactly what the man expected him to. He had to discredit Ulric’s claims.
“He was one of hers!” Ulric shouted, struggling against the soldier’s hold, though he was weak and easily restrained. “That old woman needed a soldier. She needed one of them near the animals. She—”
Sev lurched to his feet, turning his fear and panic into outward anger. “Shut your mouth, beast-talker,” he snapped, having heard the slur countless times and never once expecting to say it himself, and with such vitriol. With such hate. But he had to stop Ulric from speaking, stop him from saying something that Sev couldn’t explain away.
He turned to Lord Rolan. “This man was a member of the hunting party—and he resented it. He—” Sev hesitated, his stomach clenched like a fist. “He wanted to work with the pack animals instead. Asked me to put in a good word, as if I’d put my neck out for a mageslave. I thought he just hated the hunt, but he must’ve wanted to be near the food supplies.”
Ulric bared his teeth in a snarl. “She didn’t need me there when she already had—”
Rolan said, in a bored voice, “Subdue him.”
There was a loud thump—a fist to the jaw—and Ulric sagged dazedly in his seat, his lip bloody.
Rolan turned an expressionless face to Sev. “And the night of the poisoning?”
Sev felt as if he stood on a precipice, overlooking an expanse of dark, endless emptiness below. Could he do it? Could he cross that line and make that leap?
Did he have a choice? This was spying, wasn’t it? Ruthlessness. Fearlessness. Trix had said she was ready every day for her own death—but she didn’t talk about how many times she’d defeated death. How many others she had condemned to die in her stead.
Trix never talked about how hard it was to be good at surviving when it seemed so many others were good at dying.
Sev swallowed thickly and stepped over the edge.
“He was lurking near the cook fires,” he said, acid roiling in his belly, “and now I think on it, they decided to serve stew last minute—and he butchered the venison they used. He must have convinced the servants to change the menu and poisoned the meat when he couldn’t get at the other food stores.”