“What do you think?”
The woman who had been his mother for fifteen years stepped into the light.
Her face was uncovered, smiling wide, eyes crinkling brilliantly as the shadows melted away. Twin swords were crossed at her back, the pommels a protruding and protracted warning, along with the edge to her voice. Around her, at least a hundred men and women, maybe more in the shadows, made themselves known.
“Geneva.”
“Still not calling me mother, are you?” She took a step forward, and it could’ve been his imagination, but Ferdinand was sure her lips twitched with disappointment. The complicated tinge of guilt thatslid into place over his heart immediately dissipated with her next twist of the knife. “Even though I’m the only one you have left?”
The ice in his veins met the pounding of his heart in an awkward collision. Dizziness spilled over him in a rush, and Ferdinand squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stay in his saddle.
“I understand there is to be a meeting in Pyrenee,” she said with the same twist in her voice she got when gossiping about the kingdoms during her time as Warlord. “By my account, you’re early. Where is the rest of the Ardenian caravan?”
So, her watchers had reported back after the conclave—maybe even Zavier himself. That wasn’t good. Geneva likely knew much more than anyone save her brother wanted her to know about the state of the Sand and Sky. Information that she could use against Ardenia, Torrence, and the union itself.
“I was sent ahead at the request of the queen.”
Ferdinand’s gaze slipped to his soldiers—still alive, though some in better straits than others, though all had been stripped of their weapons. He still held his sword—his father’s sword—though Ferdinand knew that if he used it now, the brave Ardenian soldiers would likely die even as Geneva spared him.
But if he surrendered, and let Geneva use him for whatever she had planned, whatever this was, wouldmorepeople die?
His mind churned forward, engaging the possibilities—all of them seemingly wrong—as Geneva stepped toward him, a cat playing with a mouse backed into a corner. That smile had widened into something feral, her head tilted in show for the men and women at her back, looking to her to be the fiercest version of the Warlord they knew.
“My daughter would sendyouon no mere errand.”
She motioned to a set of men with ropes. “Hold my son as I examine his wares.”
The men came forward and Ferdinand made his choice. He stowed Sendoa’s sword and slid from his saddle, his hands up and placating. Not fighting. In surrender.
Geneva smiled, advanced to the cart, and in one bold swish, she revealed the topmost crate. The glass within tinkled in warning. A knowing smile tipped upon her lips before she even drew the dagger at her belt and wedged open the wooden top. “And what are these, Ferdinand?”
She asked, though she knew.
“Inés’s wedding dowry, seized by Ardenia while her ship was in port, ordered returned by Pyrenee.”
Geneva withdrew a vial. Even at this distance, Ferdinand witnessed the thick green sludge known as fire swamp drape a film across the interior. That vial could bore through this mountain and to the center of the earth itself—or so he’d been told. She grasped at another one, also in a clear bit of glass—the color of the vial didn’t seem to matter as much as the label—this one with a colorless liquid thinly sloshing throughout. It was exactly the same as the one Koldo had in her hand during that first meeting at the Itspi.
Geneva knew it, too. “Is this the poison that killed Domingu?”
Ferdinand nodded. “And Sendoa.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Truly? He was poisoned?”
“By Renard, according to Taillefer’s last admission.”
This was a test, Ferdinand knew. Geneva had come to loathe his preference for truth-telling in the past few weeks, but here, she was asking for information, and she was getting it.
Grinning from ear to ear, Geneva slipped the hemlock into the pocket of her trousers, returned the top to the crate, and pulled the cover back over it all.
“Tisne, drive the cart. You four”—she gestured to the men in linen and leathers holding the Ardenian soldiers—“march the soldiers into the woods. Ferdinand comes with me. We shall move everything to the clearing a hundred paces up and wait for the remainder of the Ardenian—”
“This is the one who killed Alasne!” A gold-toothed pirate cut short Geneva’s sentence with a loud, sneering shout straight into Ferdinand’s face, his breath reeking of ale and fish, his few remaining teeth as brown as rye bread. The man had a shaved head and a crown of freckles; every bit of skin showing was like its own stretch of Torrentian sand.
Ferdinand winced at the stench of his accuser, unable to help himself as he was held in place by two other men and being tied by a third. The pirate was leaning in as if he were about to start an ale house brawl, his sun-scarred shoulders hunched forward, and posture unflinching.
Ferdinand did not look at Geneva as he told a truth that might save her from what really happened.
“Alasne was about to kill me.”
