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“Where is General Rufus anyhow?” Lucius asked with a frown and a growl. “He bears as much of the blame for the devastation of the winter as King Julius does.”
Dushka’s expression flared with interest in what Lucius said. Pasha and Rik stopped what they were doing to stare at him as well.
“And what sort of devastation would that be?” Dushka asked.
I glanced to Appius, then on to Mara, then the rest of my friends. “I don’t even know where to start,” I said.
The next few hours were spent telling Dushka everything that had happened in the Old Realm in the last few months. I told him a bit about life on the other side of the mountains, about the things I had witnessed at the Harvest Festival, then about the new army and its destruction. We all took turns telling about the horrors we had experienced through the winter.
Flora excused herself in tears as we spoke about it all, handing Aurora back to me so that she could take her son outside. Several more of the important men from Kettering joined us in her place until our small house was packed with a captive audience as we told of the horrors of the winter.
Dushka roared in fury at our story of General Reuben choosing random people from the college to murder just to prove a point. He was astounded as we took turns describing what a captive Royersford was like, and about how we’d managed to escape. Everyone hung on our every word as we described our flight across the countryside, and our trek through the ruined mountain pass.
But perhaps the most interesting reactions, at least to me, were when I revealed that Mara was Magnus’s niece.
“Does he know about you?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at Mara. “Because I’ve known Magnus for a very long time, and he’s never mentioned a niece.”
Mara shook her head, maintaining her usual calm, even in the face of the leader of the settlement where she now found herself questioning her. “I was born after he left,” she said. “My mother is Magnus’s sister, Clelia. I’ve been told that my father, Marius Foscani was friends with Magnus as well, though he’s been dead for many years.”
Dushka just stared at her before saying, “I see the resemblance. In your features, yes, but in your mannerisms particularly.” He glanced to me with a grin. “We’ll have to take her with us when we go to the dedication of the new king’s city next month.”
That had me sitting up and taking notice. “The king’s city is finished?”
Dushka laughed. “You’ve missed so many things, my love. You missed the meeting of four kingdoms, the discovery of spies, everything that happened on this side of the mountain when the pass was destroyed.”
“What happened over here?” I asked, feeling as if a whole other narrative needed to be told.
Dushka laughed. Several of his men laughed along with him. “What didn’t happen?” he asked, shaking his head. “General Rufus tried to attack Kettering and claim all the land between here and Tesladom.”
“He did?” I gaped at him.
“Hetried,” Pasha emphasized. “The bastard didn’t have the first clue what he was up against.”
“The lone wolves he’d forced into his army told him we were all a bunch of tamed puppies,” Uriah laughed. He was one of the men who had come into the house to hear the story and who had stayed. “Those wolves and General Rufus both had quite a shock.”
“The attack was short,” Dushka said. His expression seemed to say it was very short indeed. He frowned as he went on with, “Which just goes to show that General Rufus is intelligent enough to pull back when he knows he’s outnumbered.”
“Unlike Yuri, Bela, and Nikolai,” Pasha added.
“So what did he do after that?” I asked. “We didn’t see any trace of him the whole way down from the mountains.”
Dushka huffed. “Despite his title, General Rufus is more interested in ruling than fighting.”
“He’s past middle age,” Lucius said, surprising everyone as he spoke. “So it makes sense that he would rather make peace than war.”
“And what do you know about it?” Dushka asked, glancing Lucius up and down.
Lucius was as stubborn as ever, even in the face of a leader like Dushka. “I was part of the resistance movement against King Julius,” he said with as much fire and vinegar as he used when arguing with Leander and Darius. My brow went up right along with Dushka’s at the information. I’d always suspected, but here was the truth at last. “We had a long dossier on General Rufus. He suffered the loss of all three of his sons in the old king’s wars, and he was resentful of anything the royal family did.”
“He volunteered to lead the army into the frontier last summer,” Mara picked up the explanation. “We believe that he never had any intention of fighting on behalf of King Julius. He wanted to carve out a place of his own where he could be free of my family and its reach for the rest of his days.”
“But he’s still ambitious,” Lucius said. “Conrad has been telling us what the frontier is really like, and I’m not saying that I know General Rufus’s mind—and I detest the man after what he did that led to my brother’s death—but it strikes me as more likely that he would fight for peace instead of fighting for glory, if that makes sense.”
A chill went down my spine at Lucius’s words. I’d known him for nine months now, and that was the first time I’d had any sort of insight into how strategic his mind was, or how dangerous he could be. Thank God he had Mara to keep him on the straight and narrow. Although Mara had her moments too.
Dushka huffed and grinned slyly at Lucius’s logic. “Fighting for peace,” he said. “King Magnus would like you. He has the same aim in mind. Although Magnus would bend over backwards not to fight at all.”
“Have there been any more battles since the Battle of the Coronation?” I asked. “And you still didn’t really answer what General Rufus is up to now.”
