When Trix decided it was time, the cooks and bondservants would poison the evening meal. They were using a toxic mountain flower called Fire Blossom, which could be dissolved into food or drink. Captain Belden and the others didn’t know about the flowers, which Trix’s cohorts had to pick as they traveled. Clusters of the Fire Blossom tree dotted the mountainside, their fat red petals dangling like drops of blood from their knotted, twisted boughs.
“But what are you waiting for?” Sev asked one night, spotting a pyraflora tree and tugging a bright red flower from a hanging branch. “Fire Blossoms are everywhere. Why not poison them now, before we risk getting caught?”
“This,” Trix said, plucking the flower from his hand, “is about as poisonous as black stew. Which is to say, quite poisonous—but not poisonous enough.”
Then she popped the blossom into her mouth. Sev gaped at her, and she gave him a wide, wicked grin.
“Iron stomach,” she promised, before moving on.
“So you need time to turn the flowers into poison—into something lethal.”
Trix nodded. “Boiled. Dried. Crushed into a fine powder. All this has to be done after our regular duties and out of sight of the captain. Besides, we must choose our moment carefully. You soldier types aren’t often all in one place . . . what with scouting up ahead, hunting for game, or breaking off to meet informants or purchase llamas. We can’t risk poisoning too few and wind up on the edge of a returning soldier’s blade.”
Sev hadn’t considered that. Suddenly her task seemed impossible. “So when?”
“We will have one opportunity when no hunting parties or forward scouts leave camp: the night before the attack. They’ll need to ensure everyone returns to the campsite to nail down assault plans, assign positions, and prepare to strike with force. That’s when we’ll deliver an attack of our own. One blow to the main camp and . . .”
“Another to the perimeter guards,” Sev said, seeing his role at last. Despite Trix’s confidence that they could poison the majority of their party in a single stroke—including Captain Belden, whom she intended to deal with personally—at any given time at least five guards were on watch duty at the edges of their campsite. Sometimes more, depending on their location.
With his gift for memorization, easy access to the duty roster, and his position with the llamas, Sev was ideally placed to poison the personal packs of the soldiers assigned to perimeter guard before they left for duty. They didn’t have a lot of the Fire Blossom to spare, and of course, they didn’t want to spoil all the supplies. If they were successful, the other bondservants, cooks, and anyone else loyal to Trix would need them to make their way back down the mountain—or wherever they intended to go. Most would probably seek out refuge somewhere in Pyra, where they could be free from bondage—and the empire—and start their lives anew. Sev would seek out what was left of his family farm in Hillsbridge, but he didn’t know where Trix would go. Or Kade.
No matter how hard Sev tried, he couldn’t figure the bondservant out. Kade had argued against Trix’s hasty dismissal of Sev the night he volunteered, insisting they needed him, but now Kade seemed unhappy that Sev had to decided to remain. It didn’t make any sense.
Without their interactions during pack animal duty, the only time Sev saw Kade was at night with Trix. He remained frowning and distant as they discussed plans and strategies, and sometimes he didn’t turn up at all.
“Were you one of her generals?” Sev asked Trix a few nights after she’d revealed her plans, the pair of them sitting together around a rare fire. It was very late, with everyone but the perimeter guard asleep, and Kade was nowhere to be found.
They were camped in a deep gorge, with steep stone spears rising above them, completely blocking the sky. Giant boulders were scattered in random heaps and piles, as if tossed there by a god’s careless hand. To the west, the ground fell away steeply, giving Sev the impression that their entire campsite was perched on some precarious ledge and one good gust of wind could blow them clear off.
Luckily, their fire was tucked up against one of the large stones, far away from the cliff and protected from view of the campsite.
“No . . . I was never much of warrior. I served my queen in other, less obvious ways.”
Sev stared at her thoughtfully. “You said it’s been your business to know things for a very long time,” he began, thinking out loud, “and that you advised Avalkyra Ashfire. Before you claimed that being famous ‘would have quite defeated the point’ of whatever you were doing in the war. Now all this stuff with poison . . . You were a spy, weren’t you?”
It seemed obvious, all of a sudden, with her penchant for scheming and blackmailing and all her talk of information as power. Trix managed Captain Belden’s messenger pigeons, and Sev suspected she spent as much time reading the captain’s messages as she did sending them. She’d already mentioned that Belden was in constant contact with scouts higher up the mountain, and Sev had no doubt that was how she had so much information about his plans.
“I traded in secrets,” she said, not addressing Sev’s assumption directly but confirming it all the same. “My life began in the Aura Nova slums, and I will have the touch of it on me for the rest of my life, the same as you. Back then, joining the empire’s military was a great honor, not a forced conscription. It was a guarantee of food, shelter, and work—and of course, joining the Phoenix Riders meant being a part of its most prestigious ranks. I almost flunked out of training,” she said, chuckling as she poked at the fire with a stick. “But my aptitude for codes, patterns, and puzzles set me apart from my fellows. I’d learned to write thanks to my time serving Hael, god of health and healing, and was able to put my knowledge of herbs and medicines to use as well. My queen saw something in me and elevated me to serve at her side. War has a way of making regular people into heroes.”
“Or fools,” Sev said before he could stop himself.
Trix laughed loudly at that. “One and the same, are they often not? But this is why I need you, Sevro, animage soldier and common thief. Heroes have their uses, but we have ours, too. We’re not popular, people like us,” she said, her shrewd expression soft at the edges. “Too many deceptions, too many whispered secrets and mysterious missions. But we’re useful. That’s what it comes down to at the end of the day. Be useful, boy, and you’ll never want for a position in this world. Find what you’re best at and use it. If you’re sneaky, then sneak. If you’re a liar, then lie. If you’re wicked as the south wind and devious as a deathmaiden, then, well . . .” She shrugged helplessly, arms wide, and Sev snorted.
Her words had made an impression on him, though. Maybe he wasn’t a lost cause after all.
“What do you know about the informant?” Sev asked. It had been on his mind ever since Trix first told him about Belden’s meeting. He couldn’t help but wonder who would sell out their own people that way—what they had to lose and what they had to gain.
“Not much,” Trix conceded, her mood turning dark. “I’ve not been able to intercept a letter since we were in the capital. I have no idea what happened at their meeting outside Vayle or if this traitor is still in play. That is why this battle cannot happen—why we must stop Belden’s plan before it can be carried out. I don’t have the network and resources I once did, and my blind spots nag at me.”