Page 78 of Kingdom of Feathers

“Because I have often been required to use my magic as part of my duties,” said Sergeant Obsidian, with a touch of bitterness.

The general shifted. “Often?” he repeated, with an impatient noise.

“I wasn’t referring to that,” said Basil decisively. He crossed his arms, pinning the sergeant with his gaze. He didn’t understand the dynamic between the magic-using sergeant and his superior officers, and he didn’t especially care to. “Have you sensed any other kind of magic in the camp?”

Sergeant Obsidian rubbed his clean-shaven jaw with one hand. “In the camp? No.”

“Anywhere nearby, then?” Basil prompted, with a touch of impatience.

“Well, there’s the general protective enchantment over the whole battleground, but I assume you mean other than that.”

Basil uncrossed his arms, staring at the sergeant. “She was right,” he muttered, thinking of the merchant woman’s words. Sergeant Obsidian looked confused, so he hurried on. “What general protective enchantment?”

The sergeant frowned. “I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s a little like a building protection, but different. I mean, it would have to be different, wouldn’t it? Protecting a battlefield must be quite a different task from protecting a home or store.”

“I know nothing of a protective enchantment over my camp,” the general said, turning his sharp gaze on Basil. “Your Majesty, if you put something like that in place after you ascended the throne, I really think you should have warned me, at the very least.”

Basil shook his head. “I didn’t put it in place. I had no knowledge of it at all until recently.”

The sergeant looked startled. “Was it the Mistrans, then?” he asked, frowning. “I’ve wondered what the point of it was sometimes…it certainly feels like a protective enchantment, but I’ve seen men die while fighting right above it, so it can’t be that powerful.”

“Above it?” Basil asked, perplexed.

The soldier shrugged. “It’s soaked into the ground or something. It sort of…emanates up from the battlefield.”

Basil stared at him. “Can you take me to where it’s strongest?” he asked. “I mean, are you able to, I don’t know…follow the trail of it like a dog following a scent?”

He could have sworn a flash of amusement passed through Sergeant Obsidian’s dark eyes, but they were so unreadable again a moment later, he couldn’t be sure.

“I can try, Your Majesty. But like I said, it always seems to kind of come from the ground. What will you do, dig down to it?”

“If I have to,” said Basil grimly, “then that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Wren held herself as straight as she could, meeting the general’s eyes unflinchingly. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that he wasn’t supportive of her desire to scour his camp for secret magic in company with an Entolian enchantress. But Wren had never been more determined in her life. If the dragons themselves had told Basil they’d felt magic at the front lines, she didn’t doubt for a moment it was there. And if neither the Mistran nor Entolian crowns knew anything of it, there could be little doubt its purpose was nefarious.

Here at last was a substantial lead. Surely whoever was using illicit magic on the battlefield was connected to whoever had launched the magical attack against her and her brothers in order to provoke war.

Either that, or they had more than one group of renegade magic-users on their hands, and that possibility didn’t bear thinking about.

“Your Highness, I simply cannot allow you to wander around the army camp unaccompanied. It’s not safe, and it’s not seemly.” The general’s tone was clearly intended to be final, but as always, he had underestimated Wren.

Pulling out her slate, she wrote one simple sentence.

To stop me, you will have to physically restrain me.

The grizzled man before her scowled at the words, his agitation growing. Wren could see in his eyes that he would like very well to do exactly that, but she was fairly confident he wasn’t going to dare. It was as well that Ari and Bram hadn’t accompanied her into the camp. She’d told them to keep their distance given the Entolian enchantress’s presence, and the associated risk of discovery. The fact that their absence made her seem slightly less of a lunatic in front of the general was just an added bonus.

“Your Highness,” the general said gruffly, his eyes still on her slate. “This is not your place.”

Serenely, Wren added two words to her message.

I disagree.

She lowered her slate and folded her hands over it, raising an eyebrow expectantly. The general let out a frustrated grunt as he turned helplessly to Wren’s solitary guard. The man shrugged his shoulders, and Wren allowed herself a tiny smile of satisfaction. Her father’s general had never taken her seriously, but the assumption that nothing was going on behind her silence had been his mistake, not hers.

Her thoughts flew to Basil, who must be undertaking a similar process in his own army camp right now. Similar, but entirely dissimilar, she guessed. It was almost laughable to imagine Basil groveling for permission to search the battleground. He would listen calmly to whatever his general had to say, then do exactly what he wanted.

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