Page 101 of Unrivaled
“Always.”But she nodded firmly.“I’ll drop the bar behind you.Ring when you return.”
Luca’s shocked laughter floated to my ears.I let myself out, turning toward the barracks.
Shieldbreakerwas the name given to my ancestor by Barloc.It was a name I didn’t claim and felt no connection to, aside from the lingering residue of shame over what we’d squandered.
I doubted my heritage made me any more fit to be a general than the next man, but if it opened doors, that would be enough.
Kaelson glanced up from the map at his desk with carefully arranged painted pieces.“Evening,” he said, warily.“Better shut that behind you.”
I was already closing his always-open door, sealing us in the heart of the too-quiet barracks.“She doesn’t want to be a general.”
He looked at me, the candlelight softening the lines of his face from the air of experienced calm to a sort of nostalgic compassion.“She’d be a good one,” he offered.“She’s got the head for it.”
“Mayhap she will be, one day.”
“She’ll need a mentor,” he said gently.
I blew out a breath.Nothing good had come from the long shadow my Shieldbreaker forebearer had cast on us.But legacies weren’t born from anyone’s loins.Legacies were built from actions.
“How does one become a general, Kaelson?”I asked him.
“You need an army,” he said, with only the briefest moment of hesitation.“And a head for strategy.Training.I can get you started on them, but I’m a marshal at heart.”I nodded, relief and excitement rushing through me in equal parts.
“And then you need something worth fighting for,” he added, tossing down the tokens in his hand.“But I suppose you’ve found that, haven’t you, lad?”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-EIGHT
ISOLDE
If you come across a dozen people making camp and one of them is a Northern dog, then you’ve encountered a camp of a dozen Northern dogs.
—Southern saying
13thDay of Summer’s Wife Moon,
Age of the Locways, Year 272
La’Angi Keep
Bernadette shook her head, squinting through the pipe’s smoke as she took a pull.“Are you sure?”I demanded.
“Sure,” she said, settling herself before the barrel like a general before his war map, glaring at the cheeses before us.“Got two dead dogs to prove it.”
“Who would’ve poisoned the High Steward?”I asked her, the woodsy smell of her pipe hitting my nose.
“Whowouldn’t?”she asked with a snort that blew smoke out of her nose.
I listened to her complaints with half an ear, but mentally I was running through what she’d told me.Shortness of breath, extreme pain in the limbs, bloodshot eyes, and a faint sweet smell on their breath not unlike the rare spice, cinnamon.
I knew every single person who had access to Laceroot Powder in this keep.The list included the two of us sitting in the cellar.We were as likely to show our hand for that piss weak excuse of humanity as we were to climb into his bed.It didn’t make sense.
“You were smart to give the dogs his meal,” I said, when she fell silent and passed me the pipe.
She shrugged, irritated.“If I’d truly thought it was poison, I’d’ve given it to Big Red.”
I took a pull of the herbs and felt some of the weight lift off my chest.“That mutt been back in your kitchens?”I asked her, sympathetically.
“Fucker barely leaves,” she said, with disgust.“Unless it’s to gobble a string of sausages or bury a good bone.”
