Page 65 of The Sorcerer's Alpha

Sycamore was clenching his jaw again. He relaxed it.

Cypress shifted in his chair with a smirk that boded only ill. “Word around the palace is that Sycamore passed his heat tangled with an alpha. Is the council planning to address this indiscretion?”

“You’re out of line,” Hemlock said in a wavering voice, even as Sycamore’s face flooded with heat. He was grateful that his dark skin concealed his blush.

Someone had seen Marut, then—or smelled him. Sycamore hadn’t taken any pains to air out his rooms. He hadn’t thought of it. He knew there were alphas among the servants, but he had always made it a point not to notice.

“Cypress, your predilection for gossip wearies me,” Juniper said. “Do you think the king is unaware of what the servants say amongst themselves? Concern yourself with your own business and trust that whatever Sycamore has or has not done will be handled as is proper.”

Cypress sniffed and returned to studying his nails as if he had lost interest in the proceedings. Sycamore sat like a pillar of rock, his face still burning. That was it, then. If King Aditya knew, Marut was already gone.

The council moved on to discussing management of the summer weather. Sycamore stared through the window behind Hemlock’s head and let the conversation pass over him in an indistinct wash of sound. He had forgotten, somehow, how things were. Even the younger sorcerers who had come to the palace years after Sycamore knew full well that he had been given his place among them instead of earning it. They would never accept him as a peer.

“Safe travels,” Poplar said to him as the meeting broke up, as much camaraderie as he could ever hope for.

“Thank you,” Sycamore said.

* * *

He rodeout with a company of heavy cavalry who had come in from the coast and were now being reassigned to the badlands. It seemed Poplar was right: the war against the Tihasoy was turning in Chedi’s favor. And maybe Sycamore could win the war against Skopa, or at least do something to move the effort in that direction.

They traveled westward from Banuri to Suketi and then south to Naina, the same route Sycamore had taken with Marut’s patrol all those many months ago. He had been given Rhododendron again to ride, which he was unspeakably grateful for. He still knew little of horses but was nonetheless convinced she was among the very best of horses.

This time, he kept to himself and spoke to no handsome alphas, and no one spoke to him aside from practicalities about when they would eat and where they would stop for the night. The weather was dry and mild. Sycamore could sense Marut behind him in Banuri, moving continually farther away.

The mines were situated along a range of hills not far from the eastern border of the badlands. Centuries of human efforts to extract tin from the earth had left a series of four open pits gouged into the slopes, like bites taken out of an apple. The approach to the mines was across an open and relatively flat stretch of ground with no natural defenses. Seeing the pits spread out like that along the length of the ridge, Sycamore thought it was no wonder the military was having such trouble holding the territory.

The camp here at Beas was less of a camp and more of a fortification. The badlands lacked trees, but lumber had been hauled here to build a perimeter of buildings to serve as a protective wall around the mine pits. Even so, the size of the installation wasn’t what Sycamore had expected. The camp at White Valley had been larger.

He asked a soldier who had traveled with him, an older man who seemed less wary of Sycamore than anyone else including the unit’s commander. The man nodded and said, “They’ve sent a lot of them on down to White Valley, from what I’ve heard. Skopoy all over the place. They say there’s gold there.”

The gold. Sycamore had forgotten.

He was taken directly to the lieutenant general, the general having departed for White Valley. Again he was reminded of his first tour in these hinterlands as he entered the dim, low-ceilinged room where the lieutenant general sat at his campaign desk. He had done all of this once before, and had no real desire to do it again.

“You’re the sorcerer?” the man asked, and at Sycamore’s nod, he rose to his feet and bowed more deeply than Sycamore’s station required. He didn’t look to be much older than Sycamore; perhaps a battlefield promotion. “I’m glad you’re here, my lord. Condolences about your colleague.”

“May the ancestors keep him,” Sycamore said. This reception was much warmer than the one he’d received in White Valley, which made him suspicious—perhaps needlessly so. He sat where the lieutenant general indicated and schooled his expression into one of calm attentiveness. “Is there a Skopoy creature on hand for me to inspect?”

“No. We only captured the first one through luck, and it killed too many of my men when it escaped to justify capturing a second. We’ve killed a few, also through luck, but the carcasses turn back to mud not long after death. But I believe Sorcerer Willow submitted a report to the capital.”

“He did, and it was a great help. I was only curious.” Sycamore considered the man’s down-turned mouth and the dark circles beneath his eyes. “Tell me of the situation here.”

“Poor. Our forces are divided now to defend White Valley. The Skopoy are divided, too, but we still suffer regular attacks. As ever, they prefer to attack at night, and to strike quickly and retreat again before we can rally. It’s a miserable way to conduct warfare. The troops are frightened and demoralized. Sorcerer Willow said he had been tasked with eliminating the creatures altogether, but to be frank, I don’t see how that’s possible. There are too many of them.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Sycamore said, not wanting to offer false hope. “Have someone wake me if the Skopoy attack while I’m sleeping.”

The man snorted. “I imagine you’ll notice the screaming.”

Sycamore smiled despite himself. He liked this soldier’s forthrightness. He left their meeting filled with fresh conviction. He knew no combat magic, but he didn’t think that mattered. He could do so many things he hadn’t known he could. So: he could defeat the Skopoy, then. Why not? He could unwind the magic animating these constructs. He would figure out the way.

He walked up to the top of the ridge above the mines. The upper slopes bristled with sharpened stakes driven into the ground to deter any attack on the mine pits from that direction, and he was forced to take a switchbacked route through that leafless forest. The afternoon sky was blue and cloudless and the weather was warmer than in Banuri. Sycamore took off his tunic and sat on the ridge in his shirt with the sleeves rolled up toward his elbows. A gentle breeze stirred his hair and sang of summer as he sank his awareness into the earth.

The mine pits were blank spots—blind spots the earth couldn’t see. But all around them the land was alive and aware, and it remembered Sycamore and welcomed his presence. It showed him the Skopoy scattered through the hills to the west, camped without tents and in small groups of three or four people so that no Chedoy patrol could capture more than a handful at once.

Sycamore had read about the past wars with Skopa, many of them conducted on this same ground. These small-scale, hit-and-run tactics were new, and he wondered which innovative general had made the Skopoy army so nimble and rendered the Chedoy army lumbering and useless in comparison. The queen of Skopa wasn’t known for her military prowess, but she was a canny and unorthodox woman and he wouldn’t be surprised if she had given some maverick free rein.

He searched farther. Some distance to the south, an odd mass upon the earth caught his attention, a sunken sort of place as if something heavy were weighing upon the soil. He couldn’t see what it was, somehow. He could see the valley all around it, a narrow, hidden valley eroded out of an expansive cluster of hills, but nothing of the object itself, or whatever it was. The constructs, he deduced, stashed away until they were needed. Did a sorcerer control them, or were they self-driven? He knew almost nothing. Willow had learned little that would help him in the event that he came face to face with one of the creatures.