Page 73 of The Threadbare Queen

“She said her fellow scouts had all disappeared. That was one of the reasons she felt she had to come find us and report in.” Luc wondered if some of the scouts could have switched allegiances. It was possible she saw one of her friends amongst the Jatan soldiers yesterday.

“We need to press on as fast as we can.” Cervantes was still in danger, and he was sure Tuart had not gone back to Jatan. He had wanted to get to Cervantes ahead of the Rising Wave.

What he intended to do when he got there was the mystery that was gnawing at Luc’s gut.

As he took up his reins and swung back into the saddle, Vera appeared with Hassini in tow, and he waited for them.

“Kym is gone.” Vera’s lips were thin and tight. “Her tent is there, but she isn’t in it.”

He had thought as much. “What did she say to you, exactly?” He asked Hassini. “And how did she seem?”

“She wasn’t herself.” Hassini rubbed his breastbone in agitation. “She wasn’t even supposed to be on guard duty, but she said she couldn’t sleep, so she switched with Canril.” He looked around the camp. “I told her it wasn’t worth the trouble I’d get into to sign off for her after shift, that she was putting me in a bad position.” He sighed. “She said, ‘I’m in a bad position myself, Hass. So do this for me, please.’ And then she just rode off.”

“Luc.” Kikir had been wandering around the camp on horseback, looking at the mess, but his voice sounded tight as he looked down at something.

Luc moved over, and the others followed.

The place where Kikir had stopped was red with blood. Luc could see the fine arterial spray of a cut throat, and the place where someone had scrabbled on the ground with their hands, desperate in their death throes.

“Look for a body,” Luc said. “Whoever this was didn’t survive.” There was too much blood.

Without a word, all grim-faced, they began to search.

There was no sign of anyone, and no sign of disturbed earth where they might have buried someone, either.

“We have to move on. They may have taken the body with them.” Luc felt the thump of every second, slipping through his hands.

“Why would they do that?” Kikir asked.

“Maybe we’d recognize the body,” Massi said, voice low. “Maybe that’s why they left. They’d killed one of our guards and they knew we’d retaliate.”

“Killed Kym?” Revek looked like he wanted to deny it.

Massi shrugged.

The blood might be Kym’s, Luc acknowledged, but it might be someone else’s, someone Tuart suddenly realized might be familiar to them. Like another of the Cervantes scouts.

He shook the thoughts off. Speculating was no help. They had to go.

“I should have gone after her.” Hassini looked miserable.

Luc remembered his fresh, open face. He’d been in his mid-teens when Luc had liberated him from one of the Chosen camps he’d been held in, and he was still painfully young.

“Kym was the one who should have come to me. Told me what she was doing.” Or he should have found her. He was equally at fault there. “We don’t know if this blood is hers, but if she’d asked for help, she wouldn’t have come into this camp alone.”

“What do you think happened?” Hassini’s gaze went to the place where Kikir had found the blood.

Luc turned his mount in the direction of the Rising Wave camp. “There are too many possibilities to guess what’s going on. So let’s move and find out what it is they're up to.”

The unit was on its way in less than ten minutes, and Luc thought if Kym had come off her shift after midnight, and only then gone to the Jatan camp, even if the Jatan had killed her immediately and then panicked and started packing their things, they could only be five hours ahead of them, at most.

They had been riding hard for an hour, Luc out front with Massi and Rev, when he saw a whirl of movement between the trees to his left.

“Did you—?” Massi kept her eyes ahead, but she had clearly seen it, too.

“I did.”

“What?” Revek had missed it, but he was too experienced to look.

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