Leaves of Revolution (18 page)

“DO YOU KNOW HOW to start a fire?” Nathaniel asked.

Zander nodded. “I’'m getting better.”

“Good. I’m going to need a fire over here for boiling water.” He pointed at a clear spot on the ground, close to the tent the guards had set up as a makeshift hospital. “Maybe after, you can check to make sure all the medical supplies are unloaded?"

“Sure.”

“Thank you.”

Having a task he could handle felt better than watching the flurry of activity around him and trying to jump in. Finding a pile of rocks to build a fire circle was harder than he expected. The soldiers working tirelessly to build a safe haven here had cleared rocks along with the snow between shelters.

The campsite was impressive for having been set up so hastily in the wake of a blizzard – and with so few necessities.

On their way here with the carriage, Rhys had told them about the scarcity here. Most of the men, fleeing from the confusion of the castle and the city, had brought only what they could grab in haste. The medical tent was the only real shelter – the uninjured men had spent the stormy nights huddled around fires in caves dug from the snowbanks and under whatever blankets and extra coats they could find.

He looked around in amazement as he worked to coax a flame from the damp wood, wondering what he’d gotten himself into agreeing to be a guard. Surely, he’d have been the first to die out here in a situation like this one. Or two months – moons, whatever – ago, he would have. Now… well, he’d probably still have been one of the guards being carried into the medical tent with frostbite.

Even for the experienced soldiers here, though, the conditions were dire. Ethan and James had already pulled every bit of fabric they could from the carriage and were helping to set up more shelters and fires.

As soon as Zander had a bucket of fresh snow sitting in the crackling flames, he went to find Nathaniel.

“Did you send a message to Quinn?” he asked, as soon as he managed to corner Nathaniel in a quiet spot.

“Yes.”

“Did you tell her what it’s like here?”

“I told her we’d come across these soldiers, yes, but it isn’t safe to exchange a lot of information right now.”

The words sounded logical; he couldn’t argue with the idea. They didn’t know many of these guards, and protecting Quinn and Samuel was the most important thing – but there was something he didn’t like about it. He couldn’t put the feeling into words, though, so he started trying to unpack and organize supplies.

“Sir Zander?” The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t place it until he turned around to see the man standing there. He was a guard in the castle – Kenneth? He thought that was right. Zander had talked to him a few times during his training, and once Kenneth had invited him to a crumple game among the guards, though Zander hadn’t gone. “Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Oh, thank the Maker! I was looking for you – are you all right?”

“Me?” He looked at the ragged bandage wound around Kenneth’s left arm. It might have once been white, but was now brown and gray, the fraying edges revealing dark shades of purple and red underneath. “I’m fine. What happened to you?”

“It’s not too serious, just a cut.”

That wasn’t the whole story; Zander could tell by the way he moved that there were other injuries hidden by his shirt and green cloak – a cloak he’d been wearing even as he laid on one of the pallets in the tent. All of his clothes were disheveled, and his face was flushed and shining. “From what?”

“A sword. I’ll be all right.”

“I hope the other guy looks worse.”

“He does. Much.”

“Were you in the battle?”

“I suppose you could call it that. I was on duty the night of the invasion, patrolling in the front hall when I heard the shouting. Someone at the northern gate had let them in – at least sixty men. My father ran past me, yelling at me to help stop them as they came in, but I was so worried about the queen and her family, I went upstairs instead. I didn’t know they were already gone.”

Raw, hot shame flooded through Zander, curling in sick waves through his chest and into his limbs. He’d been far away and safe by then. “And then what happened?”

Kenneth shook his head. “I don’t know how they did it, exactly, but they must have sent someone in first to take the king and queen. Three soldiers, actually. Some of their best ones, I’m sure, but they were anticipating a sleeping family trying to protect an infant – not trained guards willing to take chances.”

“What kind of chances?” The longer he talked to Kenneth, the more Zander noticed the way he held himself a little too stiffly, how sometimes just talking made him almost wince.

“After I was certain the family wasn’t in the room, I put the end of a broom into the embers of the fire and used it as a weapon to disarm the soldier who seemed the strongest – and then I used my sword.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Yes. Another was badly injured, and his friend took him and fled the fire once I lit the bedding and the rugs.”

By this point, their conversation had drawn Nathaniel’s attention.

“Who was with you?”

“Felix Bosch.”

“And he…?”

Kenneth shook his head; the slow motion back and forth pulled Zander’s stomach right along with it. “I tried to get him out of there, but he was already… It was a bad idea staying in the room as long as I did.” He glanced down toward the right side of his body. “I was just lucky the intruders don’t know all the exits from that wing of the castle.”

“Has anyone looked at
your
injuries?” Nathaniel asked.

“Just my friend Ellis. I don’t think he appreciated the view, though. We haven’t had any healers here – some of the men know a little, but not enough to do anything.”

Nathaniel flew into action immediately, his hand stretching toward Kenneth’s forehead immediately – Zander could tell by the hard set of Nathaniel’s jaw that he didn’t like his findings. Somehow, in the next instant, Kenneth lay on the pallet again as Nathaniel pulled back his cloak and began unbuttoning his shirt.

Zander retrieved Nathaniel’s bag from the other side of the tent without being asked. “What else do you need?”

“Everything.” Nathaniel didn’t take his eyes from what he was doing for even a second as he lifted Kenneth’s shirt, revealing hot, red blisters underneath. Zander was grateful for a strong stomach. “Did you bring all the supplies out of the carriage?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’m going to need some of that water you boiled, as much pain medicine as you can find, valoris seed…”

Zander stared at him. “You need more help than me. I don’t even know what valoris seed looks like!”

“We have to make do with what we have here,
Sir
Zander. I can tell you what I need; it’s easy enough.”

The veiled reminder of his duty to Quinn was meant to keep him quiet, to stop even considering divulging the fact he knew the location of the royal family – but Nathaniel’s words had the opposite effect. What he felt instead was a surge of defiant indignation – at least as much on Quinn’s behalf as his own.

In any other situation, Nathaniel would have had his priorities in order; his actions when they’d first met the soldiers on the trail told Zander that much. Right now, though, he wasn’t acting as a prince of his kingdom, or even as a healer who would do everything in his power to provide the best help for these men. Right now, his actions spoke only “overprotective uncle.”

But however noble that might be – however much Zander understood the instinct to protect Quinn – the decision didn’t belong to Nathaniel.

For the next fifteen minutes, he hauled over every supply Nathaniel asked for. He dug through crates and boxes, asked questions, and learned vocabulary he’d never intended to need. And the whole time, he thought about what to do.

Once Zander had finally given Nathaniel everything he needed, he mumbled an – honest – excuse about not wanting to watch whatever was about to happen and he escaped the tent.

He didn’t stop to second guess himself, or to chance an encounter that might compel him to explain.

The horses were all tied up close together in a small clearing near the icy stream. In the hurry to investigate the encampment and provide assistance to the wounded soldiers, nobody had bothered to unsaddle them. Zander paused for only a moment to check Ember’s saddlebags for anything that might be of use at the camp, but the only thing left in them was a half-full canteen and, in a special pocket where he always kept it, one of the notebooks Quinn had given him once when he’d mentioned missing having a place to write down his thoughts.

For only a second, the notebook gave him pause as he remembered the story of Quinn being kidnapped from an emergency encampment. Although his heart pounded in his hurry to leave, he was rational enough to realize the danger it might cause to have people worrying about him. At least paper was the solution to one of his problems.

His breath felt heavy and tight in his chest as he rode around the outside of the camp, tracing the route they’d traveled coming here from the trail, only this time in reverse. With every step he expected someone to appear through the trees to stop him – though he didn’t even know what he would do if someone did.
Could
they stop him? He wasn’t afraid of any of the guards here; if he had been, he wouldn’t be on his horse right now.

It didn’t happen anyway. He stayed just far enough away from the shelters and activity to avoid notice, and after a few minutes, the road that had brought them here stretched before him. Without another second of hesitation, he headed back in the direction of Tobias’ house.

He’d been riding for over an hour and could tell he was getting closer to Tobias’ when he heard it – the heavy pounding of a horse’s hooves behind him on the snowy trail. Maybe more than one horse. There was only one way to find out.

Bringing Ember to a halt, he pulled his sword all the way out of its sheath, holding it ready as he brought his horse slowly around.

What he saw nearly made him drop the weapon into the snow.

He didn’t know much about horses, even after all the time he’d spent around them here, but he knew he’d never seen that breed in Deusterros. He knew because he would have recognized the massive beast – not from a personal encounter, but from beer commercials back in his world.

The rider he had seen here. Now that he thought about it, the man would have been a nice touch in one of those commercials. One of the holiday ones, maybe.

“You might want to get a better grip on that thing, Zander. You don’t want to scratch it up before you’ve ever had a chance to use it.”

After the initial shock of
that horse
– Ember wasn’t a small horse in any estimation, but that animal dwarfed him – Zander couldn’t even muster up surprise at this encounter. “I’ve got it,” he said, sliding it back in place.

“I must say, you’ve gained some excellent control of both the weapon and your horse since the last time I saw you,” Alvin said, with a note of approval in his voice that did little for Zander except annoy him.

He shrugged. “I figure if I can’t
watch
reality television, I might as well play and see how long it takes me to get voted off.”

Alvin’s laugh was bright and sincere. “I hear you were audience favorite last week. Although your social media scores might be higher if you played up the romance angle just a bit.”

“What are you doing here, Alvin?”

“I would have thought that was obvious. Traveling to have a chat with the queen, much the same as you, I expect. Of course, at this pace we’ll never get there. Let’s pick it up a bit, shall we?”

And with those words he was moving again, leaving Zander with little choice but to turn and try to catch up.

“Did Nathaniel send you after me when he realized I wasn’t back at the camp?” he asked when he finally brought Ember alongside the other horse.

It was a stupid question, and Alvin didn’t bother acknowledging it with a real response. “You were awfully confident you’d be able to find your way back to Tobias’.”

“Was I wrong?”

“No. You do realize, of course, that the birds can travel much faster than you can, and that we’ll be encountering a search party from Tobias’ in rather short order?”

“Well, I don’t have a bird.”

“What would you have done if you did?”

He bit his upper lip. “If I had a bird, I’d have just sent a message to Quinn. I didn’t
want
to run away from there when they needed so much help. But Nathaniel wasn’t going to listen to me, and having an argument with him in front of all those guards would have been more obvious than leaving. Who knows what kind of information might have leaked if things got heated. Quinn can send him a message when I get there – but she needs to know.”

“I agree.”

Those words brought him up short, leaving the taste of a bitter retort frozen on his tongue. “You do?”

“Yes, Zander, I do.” He paused, his eyes on the road ahead of them for a moment before he spoke again. “Can I ask why you didn’t inform James or Ethan about what you were doing?”