I shake my head. “I just used the last of it. Taran? Anything from the drawer?”
Taran reaches into his pocket. “Aloe, willow bark, silphium…”
“Godsdammit,” says Ronan. “Scream, and I’ll burn a hole through your head. Got it?”
The threat is entirely empty, I can tell by Ronan’s feelings, but Seth can’t perceive them. He nods furiously, reasonably convinced.
Ronan drops his hand.
“Oh, thank the gods,” says Seth, rubbing his face where Ronan had his mouth covered. “Who the fuck are you? Where are you taking me and my prisoners?”
Oh, right. He can’t see through Ronan’s illusion.
Ronan drops his disguise again, revealing his face. “I’m taking my people back home where they belong. And you’re coming too.”
Seth regards Ronan for a moment with chilling disdain, and then he turns to me. “This is your doing?”
“Yes.” I don’t have much of an explanation for him. Taking him wasn’t in any of the plans Taran and I had discussed, and it certainly wasn’t in Ronan’s plan. It just felt like the best thing to do at the time.
“Very well,” says Seth. He turns and looks out over the rows of tents we’ve just walked through, sloping up and away from the river. Finally, he spots what he was looking for.
He raises his hand and produces a ball of flame no larger than a walnut before I manage to get a grip on him again with my shadows.
“Seth!” I hiss. “What are you doing?”
But it’s too late. He’s already done it.
He fires the ball of flame at a tent in the distance with arrow-like precision. It catches on the green fabric, and the entire tent is on fire within moments.
I stare at him in stunned disbelief. “Your tent. You destroyed your own tent? After all that trouble?”
“If I’m changing sides, might as well not make it easy for them,” he says with a shrug, swiping his blond hair from his facewith a complete lack of concern, like his precious tent meant nothing to him at all.
“What he’s done is alerted half the camp that something is wrong. We have to gonow,” says Larus.
“Lead the way,” says Seth.
“Taran,” says Ronan, giving him a look that says he’s in charge of my idiot brother.
“Understood, sir.”
“Oh, fun. I have a babysitter now,” says Seth as he reluctantly jogs along with the rest of us. “A pity I won’t have a chance to torture you. I was so looking forward to it.”
We keep a steady jogging pace towards the docks. Seth calls out orders to extinguish the fire, and no one even looks twice at the “guards” and prisoners running with him away from the blaze.
Even Larus will have to admit that taking Seth was a good idea.
We leave the dry dirt of the pasture where this camp was erected and enter the marshy flood lands once more. The dock here is long, constructed more as a boardwalk than a single structure jutting out into the water to account for the changing water levels.
At the end of the dock waits a vessel flying Nithyrian blue and green, a small patrol ship of the variety that carries our peacekeepers and the guards who travel the northern stretches of the river Mara, protecting the shipments of phoenix cypress ash.
I hesitate, but Ronan squeezes my hand in comfort. “It’s ours. A false flag.”
The dock appears unguarded, which feels wrong. There are many docks along this stretch of the Mara, but I’m surprised Seth didn’t have anyone posted to patrol the area at least. Maybe they’re busy putting out Seth’s fire.
Then we hear voices. Several of them, mostly male. They’re laughing and jeering in a way that turns my blood cold.
Then there’s another voice. Female, distressed. She’s turned away, so I can’t make out what she says, but I can sense her fear.
