Page 82 of The Threadbare Queen

Tuart could have been sent a guide, Luc acknowledged, but that would still mean he knew a camp had been established.

Which is what Luc had guessed anyway from his careful words.

However, Tuart had made out that any raids that might have been carried out would have been done by new officers, too undisciplined to know better.

This did not look like an undisciplined camp.

And the fact that Tuart was here belied his words, too.

Luc moved back through the trees to the place where he’d caught a glimpse of Tuart and hunkered down, leaning back against a trunk and pulling out a piece of bread and some cheese which he ate slowly as he settled in to watch.

It didn’t take long for Tuart to appear again.

He thought the general looked harried. He looked behind him, waiting for someone, and then two of his soldiers appeared, holding on to Kym between them.

So she was alive.

And a prisoner, by the looks of things.

Luc could see a bruise high on her cheek and her lip was swollen, but she didn’t appear to be badly hurt. She had been crying, though.

Her eyes were red, with dark rings around them.

She had gone willingly into Tuart’s camp, so either she hadn’t cared whether she would be caught or not, or she’d thought the Jatan wouldn’t harm her.

Neither option made Luc think highly of her, but he didn’t have all the facts.

He would try to rescue her unless he was sure she had betrayed the Rising Wave.

And seeing her, alive, if not exactly well, made him wonder whose blood they had found in the Jatan camp.

Clearly, it hadn’t been hers.

Someone else had died, and they had taken the body with them.

It was likely they had discarded it along their way into Cervantes.

Luc had assumed they would, but the fact that they had not wanted the body found by him was suspicious.

Who had died, and by whose hand?

Tuart exchanged words with Kym, then ducked into a tent, and the soldiers pulled Kym in after him, then reappeared.

Luc decided he needed to hear what was going on in that tent.

He had hoped Massi and the rest of the unit would be here by now. He could only have been a half hour ahead of them when he’d left Bintinya, although he knew that they would have stopped at the village, and if they hadn’t found Frebo straight away, there might have been some delay before they continued on after him.

It was close to an hour now since he found the camp, and he expected they would be here any moment.

Still, he needed to eavesdrop on Tuart and Kym’s conversation and he couldn’t wait.

He left his things tucked between the tree roots, pulling out the scarf Ava had worked for him weeks ago from his pack and wrapping it around his neck.

Even knowing it had the effect of making eyes pass over him without registering he was there, he was grateful that dusk was falling.

The shadows had lengthened, and he used them to make his way as close to the tent as he could through the trees, then he stepped out confidently into the camp.

There were soldiers walking around, talking softly as they prepared an evening meal, but none even looked his way.

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