The Lost Reavers Read online

  “At his command.”

  “Morwyn received the same command and she was less than pleased. Yet just now she wasn’t objecting to taking more time to learn about our enemy.”

  “I’m not Morwyn.”

  “That I know. You’re something else altogether. An intelligent, powerful woman who has been forced all her life to bend her knee to her inferiors.”

  “Lord Annaro is not -”

  “A woman who is passionately curious about the hidden workings of the world, but who instead is forced to ponder the minutiae of bureaucracy and taxation.”

  “My lord, if you think to sway me with mere flattery -”

  “Not at all. I’m just trying to figure you out. Ignore me if you wish. But last night you were faced with an existential threat to your training and you agreed to turn a blind eye to Elena’s true nature. Especially when she spoke of your frustration with the academy, with the very nature of your magic. How you yearned for freedom, for the -”

  “My lord!” Anastasia took a sharp step forward, her cheeks burning. “Do not take my lapse in judgement regarding a good friend as a sign of general weakness. There is no -”

  “I’m sorry, but no. I don’t agree with you. First, I don’t see it as a lapse in judgement. A lapse can easily be remedied. Do you intend to include the truth about Elena in your report?”

  Anastasia’s chest was rising and falling as she breathed deeply, her gloved hands closing and opening, the leather creaking as she did so.

  “Well? Is that why you wish to send a missive with such urgency? To reveal that there’s a lisica in our midst?”

  Still Anastasia didn’t respond.

  Hugh walked forward till he loomed over her. Close enough to scent a subtle hint of perfume from the disciplus. “Answer me, Anastasia. Is that what’s going on?”

  “No,” she hissed, and looked down and away. “I was not planning to discuss Elena at all.”

  “Then it’s no lapse. Is it?”

  “I don’t see what Elena’s confidence in me has to do with -”

  “Answer me, disciplus. I am still your commanding officer. If you did not mean to reveal Elena’s true nature, then it was no lapse in judgement. Was it?”

  Anastasia looked back up, forcing her expression into one of studied neutrality. “No, I suppose not, my lord.”

  “Elena - no, Zarja - said last night that you yearned for freedom. To slip the bonds of academy and chirography. Is this true?”

  “That has absolutely no bearing on the matter at hand.”

  Hugh’s voice was a near snarl. “Answer me, disciplus.”

  “My private philosophies are not regulated by my role as disciplus, and thus -”

  Hugh slammed his fist on the dining table beside them, causing Anastasia to startle. “I am your commanding officer and your prime directive is to never lie. I’m asking a direct question, disciplus. Is it true? Do you wish to escape the bonds of the academy and the restrictions of chirography?”

  “Anastasia?” To Hugh’s surprise it was Elena at the door. “Is everything all right?”

  “Leave us, Zarja,” Hugh snarled.

  “No,” said the lisica, stepping through the doorway. “Not unless Anastasia tells me she wants me to go.”

  Something flashed through Anastasia’s dark eyes, an inscrutable emotion Hugh couldn’t read. She raised a gloved hand. “It’s all right, Zarja.”

  “Very well.” And the lisica stepped back outside.

  Hugh crossed his arms. “Don’t make me ask a third time.”

  “Very well. Yes. I admit to a certain level of frustration with the academy’s policies and philosophies. I admit that I sense greater potential beyond the circumscriptions of chirography. What of it? Our thoughts only become treasonous when voiced aloud or acted on.”

  “You are a failure as a disciplus,” Hugh said, voice harsh. “You bring shame to the academy, to your position, and the role you are meant to play for my brother. Your arrogance is breathtaking, as is your blindness. You think you’ve not acted? That you’ve not committed treason? What would you call agreeing to hide a lisica’s existence from the Fate Makers and your liege lord if not treason?”

  Anastasia stepped back, eyes wide, her mouth working. “I - that is not at all -”

  Hugh glared down at her. “Hypocrisy doesn’t suit you, Anastasia. I thought you smarter than that. More self-aware. I’m disappointed. You’re as blind as any Fate Maker. Which is a pity. I had high hopes for you. When you agreed to accompany us north, I was thrilled.” He laughed scornfully. “I’d have never asked you north if I’d know you to be so weak.”

  “How dare you?” hissed Anastasia, voice venomous.

  “How dare I?” Hugh’s voice rose to a roar. “Because I see the woman you could become and lament the fact that you’re too gutless to be yourself! Because I see a brilliant mind that chooses to shutter itself in the dark, that turns away from the world that it so hungers for. A strong, beautiful, powerful, brilliant woman who could be anything she chose if she but allowed herself the agency, but no!”

  The high color in Anastasia’s raised cheeks drained away, leaving her pale as she stepped back again, eyes wide.

  “Damn it but I thought you above such self-mutilation, Anastasia! That in you there lay the ability to transcend your brutalization. I thought I caught a glimpse of it last night, but I was wrong. That glimpse of independence terrified you, didn’t it? You’ve been trying to be the perfect disciplus ever since. But tell me. Did you ever feel so alive as when you agreed to harbor Zarja in our midst?”

  “I - I don’t know what you’re talking about -” She backed up another step and pressed herself against the wall.

  “You know exactly of what I speak.” Hugh moved forward, looming over her still, glaring at her in full wroth. “A direct question, disciplus, from your commanding officer. Don’t you dare lie to me. When you agreed to shelter Zarja, did you feel self-disgust?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Did you feel horror?”

  Anastasia turned her face away. “No.”

  “Then what?”

  For a long, aching moment, he thought she’d not reply.

  But then tears filled her eyes. “Joy.”

  “Joy.” Hugh stepped back. “And this morning. When you awoke. It was like the breaking of a fever dream. Returning to cold reality. What did you feel then?”

  “Self-disgust,” she whispered, still looking down. “Horror.”

  “And those are the emotions that are making you so damn insistent on telling my brother about Aleksandr, aren’t they? You’re trying to do penance for last night’s madness. To balance out that betrayal with an act of supreme, blind devotion. Even if that loyalty damns my brother. Even if your loyalty leads him and hundreds of innocent men into a death trap.”

  Tears brimmed and ran down Anastasia’s cheeks.

  “You want to send that report not because you think it best for Stasiek, but to salve your wounded conscience. To feel better about your friendship with Zarja. To prove to the world that you are a devoted disciplus. Even if you know, deep in your heart, that you are no such thing.”

  Anastasia lifted her wrist to her eyes, blotting her tears on the gold thread of her sleeve. With a supreme effort of will she met his gaze once more, but now her eyes betrayed nothing less than her wounded soul and the depths of pain that filled it. “Yes. Perhaps. I can’t deny it.”

  “Think, Anastasia.” Hugh stepped back once more. “For a moment, right now, while you have this clarity. What is it you want? To be a mindless, devoted disciplus for the rest of your life? Is that what you wish for in the depths of your heart?”

  She swallowed, lifted her chin, pushed her shoulders back. Her cheeks glimmered wetly, her eyelashes clumped into triangles by her tears. Her jaw trembled, as if she wished to speak but could not force the words free.

  “This is it, Anastasia.” His voice was soft, almost a whisper. “Your whole life has led to this mo
ment of possible truth. Honesty. A chance to speak out loud your greatest desire. I’ll not punish you for it. By the Ashen Garden, I’ll welcome it. Welcome you. The real you. The independent, brave woman of integrity that no band of old men with their spells and lashes could break. Tell me. Is that what you wish? To be nothing more than a devoted disciplus for the rest of your life?”

  Tears brimmed in her eyes again, overflowed once more, even as she held her martial stance. “No,” she whispered, voice tremulous, and then again, firmer: “No.”

  Relief swamped Hugh. “I didn’t bloody think so.” He moved back to the counter, took up the bottle of wine and drank near half of it in a series of gulps. Exhaled loudly as he lowered the bottle, then looked over to where Anastasia stood, one arm crossing her chest to grasp the other elbow, staring fixedly down at the floor.

  “Here,” he said, filling a cup and extending it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the cup in both hands. She didn’t drink, but continued to stare out at nothing. Hugh watched, nonplussed, and was about to speak when she raised the cup almost convulsively to her lips and drained it.

  He moved over and refilled her cup. “Sit.”

  She stepped over to the dining table and did so.

  Hugh grabbed another bottle, opened it, and sat across from her. “Look, I was a real asshole there. I apologize. Perhaps someone better at this could have gotten through to you without being such a jerk. But… I’m not that person.”

  Anastasia swallowed, encircled her cup with both hands and stared down into the wine.

  “But what I said before? About admiring you? I mean it even more, now.”

  She made a bitter, scoffing sound.

  “No. I swear it by Fortuna’s fickle favor. I can’t begin to imagine how hard it was for you to admit what you just did. How much bravery it took. But I recognize it. And I’ll say it again, with all my heart: you are a strong, beautiful, powerful, brilliant woman, and I’m grateful that you’re with me.”

  Anastasia slowly raised her gaze, her brows lowered, her generous lips pursed, her expression searching. As if she sought to find a hint of mockery, to catch him in a lie.

  Her voice was bleak. “If you don’t dismiss me and send me back to be punished then you’ll be as much a traitor to the duke and emperor as I am.”

  “Yeah,” he said, squinting into his wine before raising it to his lips. “True.”

  “True?” Her voice rose with indignation. “True? That’s all you have to say?”

  Hugh drained his cup. “Yeah.”

  “But.” She gave a quick shake of her head. “You’re a lord of the empire. I may be a broken disciplus, but you…”

  Hugh grinned. “Have you forgotten what I’ve been up to these past three years? I wouldn’t say I’m overly concerned with my reputation.”

  “This goes beyond reputation. If you don’t report me, you’ll be branded a traitor, stripped of your rank, and sent to a forced labor camp in the frozen north.” She gazed at him in wonder. “You can’t laugh at this.”

  “Look.” Hugh leaned his weight on both elbows, hunching his shoulders as he leaned forward. “I bullied you into being honest with me because I want the woman I glimpsed last night by my side, not the shell of a person you’ve been pretending to be. You were brave enough to confide your truth to me. You could have chosen not to, but you chose to speak out anyway. I see that trust as a covenant between us. You’re one of mine, Anastasia. For better or worse, I’ll protect you. The real you. These past three years I’ve been dead to the world. But ever since leaving Stasiek, with you, with Morwyn, and especially with Zarja… I’ve felt something awaken within me. A desire to live. To somehow defy the odds. To make sense of this world. My old life was destroyed in the Goat’s Wood. I mean to pick up those broken pieces and see what new form I can make from them. What new truth. What new life. And the Hanged God take the emperor and my brother and anyone else who’d hold me to those old, broken truths. They only served to break me on Fortuna’s wheel. I mean to forge a new destiny for myself. To continue spurning the Fate Maker as I cut a new path. And I want you by my side. The woman you are, the woman you might become. So - treason? Being branded a traitor?”

  Hugh sneered. “Those are the least of my concerns. I’ve much to pay penance for. I’ve thirty dead souls walking behind me howling for my death. I’ve a smuggler and who knows what else hiding up in those fae-infested mountains awaiting me. My odds of succeeding are inestimably higher with you by my side.”

  He reached out and placed his hand over her own, engulfing her long, elegant fingers. “I’ll die to protect you. Because something tells me you’d do the same for me and Zarja. Maybe. And that what we’re fighting here for? The change we’re going to bring? We’ll only succeed if we stand strong together. Trust each other. Respect each other. And if we do, then there’s no telling what we’ll achieve.”

  Anastasia stared at him, expression inscrutable, then tossed back her wine, drinking it all in a series of gulps before slamming the cup back down. “I think you’re insane. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. But.” She held up one finger. “I’ll agree to not telling Annaro about the situation for now. And I’ll follow your lead.”

  Hugh sat back. “Good. That’s all I ask for.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And if you ever try to browbeat me like that again, may the Hanged God take my soul but I’ll break you where you stand.”

  Hugh laughed. “A deal. Especially since I don’t think there are any further hidden truths to birth into the light of day. Or are there?”

  Anastasia drew back her cup as if ready to hurl it at him, and Hugh leaped to his feet, arms raised and laughing.

  He turned to the door, ready to call out to the others, when Anastasia’s low voice stopped him.

  “Hugh.”

  He paused. It was the first time she’d ever addressed him by his name alone. He looked back over his shoulder. “Yes?”

  She was staring down at her fingers. Glanced up at him, then back down. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She nodded slowly, pensively, as if squaring some new thought, and then looked up and met his gaze.

  In her eyes Hugh saw pain, saw weariness, and a faint gleam of something he might have called hope. “Thank you,” she whispered again, the intensity of her gaze and voice causing him to shiver.

  No words. All he could do was bow his head, then turn back to the sunlight and step outside.

  Chapter Eleven

  “About six hundred crowns,” said Branka, sitting back on her heels and looking up at Hugh. “The rest we spent on restoring the more run-down buildings and supporting those in need.”

  Hugh gazed down at the chest she’d hauled out from behind the false back of her wardrobe. It was small, neatly built and bound in black iron. Filled to bursting with gold. He crouched beside her, took up a crown, and turned it over. The previous emperor’s face in profile, the Fate Maker’s scales on the reverse. An old coin from the imperial mint. Not seeing his brother’s face on the coin somehow made it a little easier to bear.

  “Six hundred. A fair sum. Enough to hire masons to begin rebuilding the fort, at any rate.” The coin clinked as he dropped it back onto the pile. “Any suggestions as to where the best can be hired?”

  “Masons? No professionals around these parts. You’d have to send to Zagoskin for a talented crew. They’ve a granite quarry that supplied our grander buildings here.”

  “Zagoskin. That’s, what, a three-day journey by foot?”

  “About, yes.”

  “Two weeks then to get them on site. It’ll have to wait till we’ve learned more about Aleksandr’s plans.”

  “About that.” Branka slowly closed the chest. “You won’t be able to rebuild without his knowing. And I don’t see his allowing you to fortify without moving to stop you. The fort’s high up in the mountains. His territory. Those masons would be easy targets for archers or worse.”

/>   “True. Which is why we should begin negotiations with the masons now, but not send for them till we can assure their safety. Do you trust anyone in town to represent our interests in Zagoskin?”

  “Yes,” said Branka. “Want me to send them out today?”

  “No. I want to meet with them first. That and there’s no sense in heading out now - it’s grown late. No sense in having them camp a couple of miles outside of town.”

  “Aye, agreed.” Ran a finger along the hard lines of the chest, her expression grown wistful. “You’ll be taking this with you?”

  Hugh stood up. “No, leave it hidden where you had it.”

  She glanced up at him sharply, expression unsure, speculative. “This a test?”

  Hugh studied her, aware of how the neck of her tunic hung forward, revealing a tantalizing expanse of pale cleavage. “For some reason I’m not worried about your fleeing. I believe you genuinely care about Erro. So, no. Not a test. A gesture of trust.”

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “So soon? I tried to have you killed this morning.”

  “And failed. And have since been given ample reason to side with me against Aleksandr and my brother.”

  “Have I though? You’re still going to tell the duke about our smuggling. That’ll mean my death.”

  “I’m not sure what exactly I’m going to tell my brother. I won’t outright lie. But I may decide to omit certain facts.”

  “And why would you do that?” She shifted about, the neck of her tunic opening just a little further. “You looking for further persuasion?”

  And just like that, atmosphere in the room shifted. Something subtle had changed in her features. A gleam in her eye. A slight knowing curve to the smile in her lips. She’d been about to suck his cock but earlier that day. Had grasped his shaft, licked the underside of his head, her eyes locked on his own.

  Hugh’s heart began to pound as certainty filled him: he could take her now, if he wished. Could pin her to the floor and have his way with her, for as long and as hard as he wanted - and she’d not object. Would welcome it. Because it would be an exchange based on a currency she understood. But one, perhaps, that she’d not have faith in; no matter how many times she submitted to him, what was to stop him from telling his brother about her perfidy? Which meant she’d engage in the transaction out of desperation, knowing she had precious little other coin with which to wager.