Page 114

The soldiers who’d come with her were arranged in a semi-circle on either side of her, covering the whole Kassian side of the field.

The raw lust in Baclar’s gaze as he studied Massi pricked Luc’s anger. He knew his friend was beautiful. Her dark hair was pulled back in one of the complicated braids the Venyatux had taught her, and she sat straight and lethal on her mount, the firelight dancing over her face.

“Pity for you, you lead the army that harmed the newborn baby of one of her best friends,” Luc murmured, and Baclar’s gaze snapped to his, his face going blank as if he had not wanted to reveal quite so much.

“A baby?” Tuart repeated softly. “Surely not.”

Luc swept his hand out toward the soldiers holding the line behind him. “I started this journey with eighty warriors. I now have many more. The injury to that baby has meant I’ve had to turn warriors away who wanted to join me.”

Baclar swore. “Hurst always was a little shit. He didn’t die a moment too soon.”

Luc had a feeling if Hurst’s head had lain at his feet at that moment, Baclar would have kicked it.

“Shall we get down to business?” Didier rose from where he and the other councillors had been sitting, watching and listening to the exchange.

Luc inclined his head and took a seat across from them, making sure his back was facing his own people. The two generals settled beside him to his left.

They talked about reparations, about border rights, and about what the old Kassian queen, Freida, had done to the Jatan in her effort to annex their mines.

“What is the situation at the mines?” Luc asked. “Are they being run by Kassian miners?”

There was a moment of hesitation.

Luc raised his brows. “You killed them?”

“Not all of them,” Baclar was quick to state. “But some, yes.”

“And the rest? Where are they?”

“Prisoners.” Falacia glanced at the other councillors. “Some were very cruel to our miners, who’d been conscripted to keep working the shafts for the Kassians.”

“If they are put on trial, and the trial is fair in accordance with your laws, I have no issue with them being punished for their crimes.” Luc would not interfere in Jatan justice. “But some of them would surely have been simply under orders of the queen, and there through no fault of their own?”

“We undertake to sort the innocent from the guilty. And yes, it would be good to have trials. It would soothe the anger, I think.” Didier noted the point down, as he had done since they started negotiating.

“We did not know the new queen would be so unlike her aunt,” Tuart said.

“You didn’t ask,” Luc answered, and after a moment, he acknowledged the point with a nod.

They had been served a vegetable soup, and then roasted chicken flavoured with a tangy spice rub, and finally presented with coal bread, the bread cooked in cast iron camp ovens common through the whole continent. It took the place of dessert, served as it was with butter and jam.

Nothing lavish, but then Luc’s unit wouldn’t have been able to provide anything better than this, and Luc guessed even this meal was stretching the Jatan’s provisions.

Finally, a young soldier moved about, offering mugs of ale.

The invisible line on Luc’s forearm fizzled, igniting his skin, and he realized with a start he was rubbing his chest where the arrow had once pierced him.

He watched the soldier closely, looking for where his weapon might be hidden.

The soldier was closer to a boy than a man, seventeen, perhaps, and he was clearly nervous, but then, that would be normal, given the circumstances.

Luc lifted the mug of ale to his lips and took a shallow sip, keeping track as the boy moved to hand a mug to Fallacia.

As the ale hit the back of his throat, it began to burn.

He felt immobilized, stuck for a long moment in a strange confusion.

Then he managed to choke out the word that had leaped onto his tongue. “Poison.”