2: Transgressions

As the plainsrider pulled up his trousers, Leiyn stepped out from behind the tree, an arrow trained on his eye. 

The man jerked around and went still at the sight of her weapon. His hands still clutched his unfastened pants, his long tunic bunched up around his arms. His weapons belt lay out of reach on the ground.

“Not a sound,” she said in Kalgan, just loud enough to carry across the ten strides between them. “No more than you have already made.” Her lips quirked in mockery.

To the man’s credit, a hard stare swiftly replaced his surprise. “Ranger. So you survived.” 

He spoke back in Baltesian, and spoke it well, though with enough of an accent she had to concentrate on his words.

“No thanks to you lot,” she said in her own tongue, then nodded toward the camp. She had positioned herself so the trees hid her from the closest scouts. “Come to pillage what’s left of the Lodge, have you?”

“We are not pillagers, Ranger Leiyn.”

He knows me. Simple enough to guess how. She and Isla had been conspicuous during their brief stay at the Greathouse.

“Invaders, then,” she amended. “Seizing land not your own.”

“We take it not for ourselves, but for your people.”

Her patience frayed to its last strand. Leiyn had to stop herself from pulling the bowstring taut.

“Help me understand.” She bit off each word. “You mean to fight Suncoats for Baltesia?”

“Our alliance says it will be so.”

If the plainsrider was lying, he did it well. His gaze never wavered, and he showed few signs of nervousness, despite remaining in a compromising position. 

Iron nerves. A reluctant admission, but no less true for it.

Tempting as it was to see if he would hold steady before a drawn bow, she knew better than to draw unless she meant to loose. For the moment, he remained under her control. His fellows had noticed nothing amiss, judging by their stationary esses.

“Ranger Leiyn,” the plainsrider said slowly, “I understand your mistrust. When you visited, our position was different.”

“Your position. The one where you tried killing me and my friends, you mean?”

“Yes. An Ilberian conqueror offered an alliance. Altan Gaz saw an opportunity for expansion.” The man shrugged. “We had our orders. Would you not obey yours?”

Leiyn flashed him a tight smile. “If it meant butchering innocents? No, I wouldn’t.”

To her surprise, the plainsrider smiled as well. It was far from a pleasant sight. Gaps showed between teeth, and scars across his lips pulled wide.

“You always stood up for innocents—I remember that well.”

“Do you?” An odd thing to say, but she considered it from a wary distance. Refused to let it tip her off-balance.

“You do not remember me? The boy you fought to protect the Wilds bastard?”

The memory rose with his words. She had to hold back a laugh.

“Altun, wasn’t it? Yes, I remember you. Weren’t so brave back then. Even with friends at your back, you still slunk away after the beating.”

“You are right.” Altun spoke without a trace of defensiveness. “I was a coward and a bully. But experience can reform a man.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t seem much like a new man.”

“Ranger. We need not see eye to eye, but listen to what I say. Your governor, Mauricio di Siveña, requested of Taban Khyan that we plainsriders secure the frontier. Premier Itzel welcomed the aid.”

“Premier”? Leiyn was vaguely familiar with premiers, officials placed in charge of swaths of land back in Ilberia. Used here in Baltesia, it was certainly an elevation from “mayor.” She wondered at all that had occurred in her absence for Itzel to rise so high.

And what she might have compromised to gain it.

“The Ilberian Union lands upon your shores,” Altun continued. “Altan Gaz now stands with Baltesia. We are your allies, not your enemies.”

Memories of fleeing the Greathouse flashed through her mind. The nighttime flight across the shadowed plains. The arrows falling. The fiery pain of one piercing her leg. The titan rising from the river and overwhelming her.

“But if we were not,” the plainsrider pressed on, “what would you do here? Fight both us and the Ilberians? Leave them to terrorize your people? You cannot kill us all. I would welcome your bow in our raid, but if you do not trust us, then I ask that you stay out of our way.”

She bared her teeth, but before she could spit out another insult, her lifesense alerted her to movement. A scout was headed their way.

“Fesht,” she muttered under her breath, then spoke loud enough for Altun to hear. “I’ll be watching. If everything isn’t as you say, then know I’ll hunt you down. Every last one of you.”

The approaching watchman shouted something in Kalgan, still too far for her to make out. Leiyn backed away, lowering her bow as the distance widened between her and Altun. The plainsrider watched her depart, calmly tying together his pants.

“At midnight,” he called after her. “You will see we are true then.”

Cursing, she retreated into the forest, feeling like a fox fleeing before a hunter. But come midnight, she would hide no longer.

Select the next chapter to keep reading the sample or pick up the full book on Kickstarter.