“Strong, but not stable,” Artemisia adds softly.
“And four is not much better than three,” Maile says, before she motions to me. “And she’s too valuable to risk losing on the front lines of battle. As soon as you show the Kalovaxians what you are—what you can do—you’ll become their target. The rest of us will be an afterthought.”
“So instead,” Blaise says slowly, “you would rather we hide in the woods.”
“Instead,” Maile counters with a surprising measure of patience, “I would rather you hide in the woods and cause them as much trouble as you can. While they’re running around trying to figure out what’s happening behind them, we’ll storm through the front gate and attack with the brunt of our force. It won’t buy us much of an advantage, but it’s something.”
“You want us to be distractions,” Artemisia says again.
Maile looks to me for help. “It’s not just a distraction,” I say. “We’ll be attacking from another direction, just from afar. I’ve seen the three of you use your powers at such a scale that we’ll still be able to help. Heron, you can throw a windstorm at them. Artemisia, you can buy our troops even more time. This close to the water, you can summon waves to hit at the mine’s walls. You said yourself—they aren’t built to withstand an attack. We might not be able to send men across the lake, but that doesn’t mean we can’t attack from here in a different sense.”
That makes Artemisia grin. “One big wave would certainly be enough to destroy the walls, and a good chunk of the camp as well.”
“We do need to remember that there are innocent people in the camp—more innocent people than there are guards,” Heron points out mildly.
“Right. Small waves, then,” Artemisia says, looking put out.
“And, Blaise,” Maile continues, “I heard that you destroyed three ships from a greater distance than we’ll be at.”
I wince, remembering how Blaise used his gift to rip the Kalovaxian ships outside the Fire Mine apart plank by plank, how the effort very nearly destroyed him—destroyed all of us—until Artemisia knocked him unconscious and saved his life.
“That may not be the best example to use,” I say.
What we’re talking about—the distance, the scale—it requires a good deal of power. Too much power. Again, I imagine a pot boiling over, the way Mina described Guardians like Blaise, Laius, and Griselda, whose powers aren’t quite stable, though they aren’t quite berserkers, either.
My stomach ties itself in knots. Before he destroyed the ships, he said that he wouldn’t push himself if I asked him not to. Now, though, I don’t think I could stop him.
“You’ll leave after supper,” I tell Maile. “There’s a narrow part of the lake just to the west of us that is shallow enough to wade across. Take our soldiers to join up with the others. The twelve of us with gifts will stay and start our attack just before dawn. As soon as we begin, you’ll attack as well.”
Maile nods, eyes measuring me in a way I don’t appreciate. I can’t help but feel that she’s keeping a running tally in her mind about me, and I’m not sure what to make of that. “Which means you should eat now,” I say pointedly. “And bathe. Artemisia’s right—you are starting to smell.”
MAILE LEAVES WITH HER LEGION as soon as the sun sets completely, wrapped in the cover the darkness provides. I stand on the shore with the others, watching them go. I wonder how many I’ll see again. Suddenly I wish I’d gotten to know them better. I think I spoke to only a handful of them, and even so, their names and faces blur together in my mind.
Søren remembers the names of those he has killed, even nine years removed. Even if we have the numbers to win this battle, we won’t do it without casualties. Their blood will be on my hands. And I don’t even know their names.
I turn away and walk back toward the small camp we set up—just a scattering of bedrolls under the open sky, and a dead fire.
Twelve of us total but even that seems like so many. Besides my friends, I know only Griselda and Laius, and the two of them have been too frightened of me to mumble more than a few words in my presence. But it’s more than I’ve heard from the other six. Two men and four women, their ages difficult to surmise. Some might be teenagers, others could be in their forties, but the years of malnourishment and physical labor make them all look both older and younger. Sallow skin and skittish eyes and hair already threaded with gray. Their arms are more scar tissue than unblemished skin, not unlike my back. I suppose that no matter how old they are, they’ve all lived through far too much pain and suffering.
And yet, here they are. Lining up to risk still more.
Artemisia and Heron sit together near the dead fire, bowls of lukewarm stew in hand, the molo varu between them, still smooth and unchanged. Heron waves me over, but I shake my head. I don’t feel like I’m good company just now, and I certainly don’t think I could keep any food down. Instead I walk around the perimeter of camp, crossing my arms over my chest to ward off the humid chill in the air from being so close to the lake.
The woods are peaceful, the murmur of voices from the camp barely loud enough to be heard over the sounds of crickets chirping and the wind ruffling the leaves overhead.
“You do remember that you have the Fire Gift now, right?” a voice says, startling me. I turn to see Blaise sitting at the base of a tree, cross-legged. Though I know he’s speaking to me, his eyes remain downcast, focusing on the dirt gathered in the palms of his hands. I watch silently as he levitates it from one palm to the other and back again. A child’s party trick, nothing useful, but his hands don’t shake at least. When I step toward him, he looks up at me. His eyes remain his own and the dirt falls back to the ground.
“I don’t want to waste my gift,” I say. “I’ll need all the fire I can spare for tomorrow. You should try to restrain yourself as well.”
He shakes his head. “We’re surrounded by earth, and that alone recharges me, but even if we weren’t…it doesn’t work that way for me,” he says. “Like a well that can go dry. The power is just…me. It doesn’t run out.”
“You run out, though,” I say, but he only shrugs.
“We don’t know that for sure, do we?” he says. “We’ve never tested that theory.”
The way he says it—so offhandedly—unnerves me.
“Tomorrow,” I say slowly, “I’m going to hold on to your gem. We won’t need your gift.”
He exhales slowly, eyes dropping away from mine again. “Theo, we’re at war,” he says. As if I don’t know that. As if I ever have the luxury of forgetting that. “I have no illusions of living to see the end of it, and I don’t care that I won’t. As long as you’re on the throne at the end, I’m happy to watch on from the After.”