22

The convoy left Caleryon with three routes and four truths.

The first truth traveled in an iron chest: partial plans of Ydrael’s confluences.

The third filled twelve blue crates beneath tarps covering grain.

The fourth had been left off the inventory. Varek had added twenty-four men to the escort without informing Darian.

The regent discovered the last as they passed through the White Gate.

One column traveled along the river road, slow and in plain sight. Another left through the north wall during the changing of the guard. Technical Captain Cevran Tor had used a commission seal.

Darian summoned him beside the first bridge.

“The order lists thirty-two guards,” he said.

Cevran wore a blue plate on his chest and a white armband beneath his black one.

“The commission has deployed a containment unit.”

“Who commands it?”

“Lord Varek.”

“The operation falls under my command.”

“The main escort does.”

Darian held up the signed order.

“All associated forces.”

“The containment unit protects the outer routes. It intervenes in the event of a magical threat.”

“The plates are part of the inventory. How many are you carrying?”

“As many as we need.”

“The number.”

Cevran glanced toward the middle wagon.

“Twelve nets, eight locators, four ground harpoons, and three mobile cores.”

Darian checked his copy: six nets, four locators, two harpoons, and one core. Cevran had signed that list the previous day.

“Three,” the regent repeated. “I want the location of each one.”

“One with the containment unit. Another in the quarry. The third can accompany the vanguard.”

“That one will be in my custody. Add them to the register. Every piece will have a custodian and written authorization for its use.”

“That exposes the unit’s capabilities.”

“It also exposes whoever loses a weapon.”

Cevran obeyed. Contempt showed in every stroke of his pen.

Darian walked toward the prisoner.

Beren was thirty, with a reddish beard and a scar around his neck. His hands and feet were shackled. Two of Varek’s guards rode in the wagon.

“The civil order calls for transport chains, with no fastening to the floor,” Darian said.

One of the men held up a report.

“He tried to escape twice.”

“During which journeys?”

“Arvek to Umbral. Umbral to Luzmer.”

“Neither has a legal record.”

Darian undid the floor fastening. He left the manacles on Beren’s hands and removed the shackles from his feet.

“Do you know the person we’re looking for?” he asked.

Beren spat out of the wagon.

“I know my sister.”

“Neira.”

The man looked up.

“Is she alive?”

“According to the latest civil records, she left Bren after an occupation.”

“Your men took my mother.”

“She was freed.”

“By you?”

Darian held his gaze.

“By people from the village and an anonymous force.”

“Then you know the answer.”

“Will she come for you?”

“Neira would come even if the wagon carried an army.”

“I’m asking about the woman with the fire.”

“So am I.”

Beren looked at the iron chest.

“That plan contains one real route. The other pages will have been altered.”

“How do you know?”

“I worked at West-9. Varek never uses a lie when he can use a truth that will kill whoever follows it.”

Darian closed the wagon door.

The words stayed with him all the way to the bridge.

* * *

Isolde saw the convoy through Rheskan’s eyes.

The dragon was flying over the open sea. He had followed Low Threshold to an unlit lighthouse and found the containment unit hidden among the quarries. The blue plates formed an arc around the coastal road.

Rheskan showed her Beren inside the middle wagon. Then he showed her the chest, the harpoons, and a second mobile core concealed beneath rocks.

“Varek has doubled the trap,” Isolde said.

Kaoran lay in the boat. Vela had immobilized his shoulder and was traveling beside him. Every movement of the hull changed the color of his face.

“Darian controls the visible convoy,” he said. “Varek controls the containment unit.”

“The soldiers will obey the regent if the orders conflict.”

“Some of them.”

“Beren’s in the middle.”

“How many prisoners?”

“One.”

“Documents.”

“One real chest and two decoys.”

“Rheskan can tell them apart.”

The dragon answered with an image of the three chests. One held red stone, old ink, and Ydrael’s pressure. The others contained dead weight.

“Yes.”

“Need.”

“Get Beren out, and enough of a copy to verify the plan.”

“Limit.”

“Fishermen, guards who lay down their weapons, Rheskan, and you.”

“Including me is starting to seem routine.”

“It’s been in writing since Luzmer.”

“Time.”

Isolde looked at the tide. The coastal road crossed a tongue of stone between the marsh and the cliff. Wagons could pass at low tide. As the water rose, only one causeway remained.

“They’ll attack at dusk, when the tide closes off the exits. We have six hours.”

Kaoran tried to sit up. Isolde put a hand on his chest.

“You’re staying in the boat.”

“That’s an order.”

“It’s a medical restriction.”

“I can watch the lighthouse and send signals.”

“From the boat.”

“The quarry offers a better angle.”

“The climb could shift your ribs.”

“Two people could carry me on a stretcher.”

Isolde looked at him.

“You’ve spent years teaching me when a body changes the plan.”

“And to use what it has left.”

“You have strategy and the ability to insult pillows. Both work from the deck.”

Kaoran gave in.

The boat’s crew came from Luzmer. Tarin had asked for volunteers. The captain, Yssa Vale, knew the channels between the salt pans. Two fisherwomen, the sisters Dira and Col, handled the nets. A boy named Peren carried messages along the dikes.

Isolde explained the trap. Each person chose a task.

Yssa would keep the boat south of the causeway. Dira and Col would place nets around two ground harpoons. Peren would take a copy of the signal to a group of salt workers. Isolde would go in through the marsh.

“And the dragon?” Yssa asked.

“He’ll choose his target.”

“You don’t know which one?”

“He knows the plan and the plates. He’ll decide when he’s seen the ground.”

The captain accepted that.

Kaoran sketched the convoy on a board.

“Darian knows you,” he said. “He expects you to free the prisoner first.”

“I will.”

“The chest will be placed where it forces you to choose.”

“Then someone else takes the documents.”

“Varek expects that. There’ll be a second unit guarding the chest.”

Isolde moved two stones.

“Dira and Col disable the harpoons. The salt workers open the north dike when the middle wagon reaches the causeway. The water separates the vanguard from the containment unit. I take Beren out through the marsh. Rheskan is free to destroy plates, watch the chest, or stay clear.”

“Where does Darian come in?”

“He’ll command from the vanguard to control the capture. If he sees the flood, he’ll turn toward the middle wagon.”

“He knows you know that.”

“He’s spent four years thinking he can predict me.”

Kaoran kept his finger on the stone that represented Darian.

“What will you do when you hear his voice?”

Isolde had planned for the positions of his guards, the turn of his horse, and the distance to the chest. The question left her without an answer.

“Keep going toward Beren.”

“Tell Yssa. If you change course, she needs to be able to get the boat out.”

Isolde called the captain over and showed her the south channel.

“If I stay talking to the regent, you pick up Beren and leave. Kaoran’s mirror will be enough to warn me.”

Yssa studied the tide.

“I can trail a rope. Whoever reaches it grabs on.”

“Do it.”

When she returned to the map, Isolde found Darian’s stone in the same place. She had spent years rehearsing what she would say to him. Now other people needed to know how much time she was willing to lose listening.

Isolde took her knife, two tubes from Bren, and a small saw. She left her gray cloak in the boat. She wore a salt worker’s clothes and a broad-brimmed hat, and carried a basket.

Kaoran handed her a signaling mirror.

“One flash: the vanguard is moving. Two: the containment unit appears. Three: Rheskan chooses his ground.”

“Four: the master admits the boat was the right place.”

“That signal has no operational use.”

“I’ll watch for it anyway.”

She entered the marsh.

The mud reached her ankles in the first channel and her knees in the second. She moved between rows of rushes with the basket resting against her hip. The water smelled of old salt, gutted fish, and approaching rain.

The salt workers were working in the upper pans. Five belonged to Yssa’s group. Another nine had come for the pay, believing they would be repairing a dike. Isolde could tell them apart by the way they held their shovels. The volunteers watched the road. The hired workers watched the ground.

Three more men stood closer to the embankment.

They wore brown shirts and had salt even in their hair. None had hands burned by lime. One bent to pick up a rope, revealing blue wire around his wrist.

Varek had placed observers inside the civilian area.

Isolde kept walking. She left her basket beside a stack of sacks and approached Peren.

“Three false salt workers,” she murmured. “Beside the embankment.”

The boy kept his eyes on his shovel.

“Do I call off the opening?”

“Warn our people. Have the hired workers head for the huts when they hear the bell.”

“The bell was the signal.”

“Now it’s the evacuation. We’ll open when you raise your handkerchief.”

Peren drove in his shovel.

“Kaoran said we’d change the plan.”

“Kaoran tends to be right about irritating things.”

The boy smiled and walked away along the edge of a pan.

Isolde examined the causeway. The sea was beginning to erase the dark bands on the stones. In an hour, any wagon that left the road would have its axles underwater. Yssa’s boat waited behind a line of reeds, invisible from shore.

A flash crossed the channel.

The vanguard was moving.

The convoy appeared among the hills shortly afterward. Four riders led the way. Behind them came two wagons of guards, one covered with a gray tarp, and three freight wagons. Beren’s wagon was in the middle. The iron chest traveled in the next one, chained to the platform.

Darian rode at the front.