“Go on.” Torwin motioned to the tree with his chin. “Part of learning how to shoot is having to retrieve your arrows.”
“Is that so?” said Dax.
“It is,” Roa said from the ground where she and Lirabel crouched. “Papa used to pinch our ears if we left our arrows behind for the servants to clean up.”
Bolstered by her allegiance, Torwin laughed. “Did you hear that? Do you want your ears pinched by her father?”
Dax rolled his eyes, but went to fetch the arrow.
Torwin flashed Roa a half smile. Roa flashed one back. But it died on her lips at the glint of the silver band encircling his throat.
The sight of it was like a cold blade in her belly.
Unlike scrublanders, draksors kept slaves. Half a century ago, an army from the north—a group of people called the skral—came to conquer Firgaard. They failed, and instead of sending them back where they came from, the dragon queen—Dax’s grandmother—enslaved them.
Torwin, Roa had learned, was one such slave, owned by the cruelest man she had ever met. It was just another reason she’d decided to help Dax bring down his father: no human being should be owned by another.
“And, yes,” said Dax, jogging back after pulling the arrow from the whorl. “That’s the only map we have.”
Roa looked down to the parchment spread across the ground beneath her. It was tearing along the creases from being folded one too many times and whole sections were smudged out.
Then it’ll have to do,she thought.
Roa tapped the city of Darmoor, then looked to Lirabel, who crouched beside her. “What about here?”
Lirabel’s curls were unbound tonight, and her earned bow was resting on the ground beside her. She smelled like rosewater.
“It’s smaller than Firgaard,” Roa said. “And look: no walls.”
Lirabel’s gaze moved from the walled capital of Firgaard, over the Rift mountains, to where Roa’s finger pointed: Darmoor. A port on the sea.
Lirabel smiled a slow smile. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, then I think you’re brilliant.”
There were too many armed soldats within the walls of Firgaard. If they wanted to pull off Dax’s revolt, they needed to cut down their numbers.
“How important is Darmoor to the king?” Roa asked Dax while staring at the map.
“Very,” came the reply, followed by anotherthunk!“Roughly half our food and supplies come from Darmoor.”
“And if it came under siege?”
Roa and Lirabel looked up, waiting for his answer. Dax paused at the tree, his hand wrapped around the arrow shaft—stuck just below the whorl this time.
“My father would send his army to reclaim it.”
“Then I think Roa’s solved your problem,” said Lirabel.
Before Roa could bask in her triumph, though, Essie’s voice broke through her mind.
Roa!
Essie had been put on lookout. They were in the ruins of the House of Shade, where no one ever came. As a precaution, Essie had been sent to watch the front entrance.
He’s coming!
Roa shot to her feet.Who?
Essie didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. Because as Roa turned toward the half-crumbled wall behind her, she saw him.
