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He grinned. “I don’t need luck.” He had Ava’s protections.

She grinned back, and then she was gone, calling in a low voice for the ten soldiers who were going to stay with her and the Bintinya villagers.

The plan was for them to ambush and capture the soldiers from the camp each time they ventured out. To whittle them down to nothing, and then surround them and keep them contained.

“Ready?” Rafe called to him in a low voice.

In answer, Luc gave a low whistle and started to ride.

The rest of the unit fell in around him, silent and serious as they headed deeper into Cervantes, to find General Hurst and put a halt to his raids.

It took them until midday before they saw the first evidence of violence.

There wasn’t much between Bintinya and the Cervantes heartland, but the first village they came to, Druitte, a large sprawl of wooden houses on a slight rise, was silent and empty.

“They may be hiding. They might think we’re Jatan,” Revek murmured.

Eight of the soldiers in his group were from here.

But even when they called out, there was no answer, no movement or sign of life, and grim-faced, they rode on.

At least there were no bodies.

Luc wasn’t the only one cataloguing the destruction, the burned-out homes and broken doors.

He could feel the rise in anger.

This village, and the two others they passed, equally abandoned, had been unable to defend themselves because most of the warriors from here had joined the Rising Wave and had fought their way to Fernwell with him.

Those that had come back with him now would be almost impossible to hold in check when they came face to face with the Jatan.

Luc didn’t plan to, anyway.

“They’ve moved to safety somewhere else, because this is the Jatan’s path to and from the camp,” Revek said.

Luc nodded. He had guessed the same.

If the villagers had returned, they’d have been harassed over and over again, each time General Hurst returned to his safe haven.

“They might still be alive and well.” Rev raised his voice so the other soldiers would hear him, but the dark swirl of violence-in-waiting did not lift.

They reached Versai in the late afternoon.

Luc had come through the small town many times.

When he was younger, he’d come with his mother, before he’d been taken to the Chosen camps, and then after he’d freed himself and the other Cervantes, he’d ridden through here every time he’d returned from building up support for the Rising Wave on his way home to Ta-lin, Cervantes’ capital.

Versai was currently as silent as the other villages had been, but instead of calling out, as members of his unit who were locals had done each time they’d ridden through a village, one of the soldiers, a woman with long, braided hair and a stark look on her face, gave a whistle, as if calling a pet.

From further down the street, a dog began to bark, and then raced out, and with a laugh of joy, the woman jumped down from her horse and crouched to greet her friend.

A cry of astonishment came from close by, and then people began appearing.

Luc watched them come forward, cataloguing the damage to the buildings around him.

Some Cervantes had left their villages completely during the years the Kassian army had spent abducting Cervantes children.

The Cervantes had fought against them, and fought hard—it was what they were good at, and partly why the Kassians were interested in their children in the first place. Though Luc had always suspected the capture and training of Cervantes children to fight for Kassia had been a side benefit.