If I could spend the rest of my time with the Border Patrol here in the forest, I would. Here, the grip of winter isn’t quite as strong as in the mountains, and I find enough herbs to fill my satchel within a few hours. And the company is pleasant. After his sparring lesson, which he peppers with plenty of compliments and encouragement, Six becomes a willing student of herb lore. He asks questions about the different medicinal uses of each plant I pick, about how I know which is which, and about what I am learning from Somre and how it compares to the things Edlan taught me. It makes me wonder if he has an interest in healing, but when I ask him about it, he only laughs.
“Somre tried his hand at me when I first joined the Patrol,” he says. “He pronounced me unteachable within a week.”
I can’t stop a chuckle. “You’ve managed to pick up a few things now,” I tell him. “Enough to be a decent assistant to someone who knows what he’s doing.”
Six grins. “I pick it up quickly enough, sure. But after a few days it disappears from my mind. There’s no helping it.”
“You have to use it every day,” I say. “Just like with fighting. If you don’t practice, it will never stick.”
Six’s mouth curves into a crooked smile. “Perhaps you’re just a better teacher than Somre. But if you value my life, don’t tell him I said that.”
The sun is high as we return to the infirmary, bag and pockets filled with plants. I lift my face to the sky, basking in the bright, unfiltered light. “It’s warmer here,” I say quietly.
“Than your village?”
I nod. “It’s still winter there. Here at least most of the snow is gone.”
Six steps over a puddle and lifts the infirmary tent flap. “Yes, and leaving mud in its place. If it’s not the cold, it’s the rain, or the heat, or the wind. There’s always something.”
I follow him inside and find Somre studying the back of a soldier’s head. He glances up as we come in, his eyes barely rising from his patient before returning. “White willow bark,” he says, holding out his hand. “Over there.”
I hurry to fetch it while Six tilts his head toward the soldier. “What happened, Lixeln?”
“Tent collapsed,” the soldier groans, reaching back to put his hand over his head.
Somre swats it away and accepts the strips of willow I give him. “You managed not to split your thick skull at least,” he says. His voice is harsh, but when he parts the man’s hair his movements are careful. “No bleeding. Here, chew this. Swallow the juices and spit out the wood.”
He hands the willow to the soldier, who stuffs it into his mouth. His nose wrinkles as he chews, and Six lets out a soft snort. “You couldn’t give him a little honey with it?”
“My honey supply is low,” Somre grunts. “Unless you’re volunteering to find some more?”
“I already spent the day hunting supplies for you,” Six says.
“No honey then. He’ll just have to manage the bitterness on his own.”
Lixeln continues to chew, his expression pinched, until Somre tells him to spit out the wood. Gingerly, he takes it from his mouth, gulping down the medicine and letting his tongue loll out when it’s gone. “I’d rather have split my head, I think.”
“Toss that outside,” Somre says, dismissing the soldier and turning to me. “Now, what have you found?”
I open the satchel to reveal the herbs Six and I gathered, and Six points to a clump of leaves, his other hand resting confidently on his hip. “Rosemary.”
“Wolfspaw,” Somre corrects with a glare. “Stick to your sword, Larkspur. The world of plants is not for you.”
Six sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets. “I told you, Brennr.”
I give him a half smile as Somre inspects the rest of the herbs, nodding and muttering under his breath. “Well,” he says at last. “It isn’t much, but for the time of year I suppose we can’t complain. You can sort it while I finish up here.”
Six starts to turn away, but Somre tosses a pile of cloth at him and points to a table behind him. “Make some bandages while you’re standing there. We’ve only a few days left before the messenger returns, and assuming His Majesty agrees to the attack, we have plenty of work to do.”
Six shoots me a helpless look, but I just shrug and go back to my herbs. For the next several hours, I prepare poultices, salves, tinctures, and compounds, while Six helps Somre pack away his supplies. The physician returns frequently to check my progress—and, I suspect, to make sure I’m not poisoning the medicine—but always drifts away with a grunt of approval. For once, the added suspicion doesn’t bother me. I’ve been learning the art of healing for thirteen years, and a feeling of deep contentment settles over me as I work. This is what I know, what I’m good at. What I love.
Extra supervision isn’t going to ruin that for me.
We eat a bit of bread and dried meat as we work, but by the time the sun begins to set, my stomach rumbles its desire for a full meal. Somre tells us to report early the next morning, and Six seizes the opportunity to leave by grabbing my arm and guiding me from the tent, as though he’s afraid Somre will change his mind.
“I’ll have him back before sunrise,” Six promises over his shoulder. As soon as we get outside, he leans close to me and speaks in a loud whisper. “Come on, let’s get some food.”
“Are we eating with the other rangers?” I ask, trying to keep my voice neutral. This has been my most pleasant day in weeks, and I don’t want it ruined by Redge’s snide comments.
The long look Six gives me tells me he’s seen through my question. “We usually take our meals together.”
“I don’t need to eat with you. If it would be easier not to, I mean.”
Six runs a hand through his hair, letting out a slow breath. “We all have our issues to work through. Avoiding them won’t help anything.”
And in a few days I’ll be nothing more than a memory to the rangers, and Redge’s opinion of me won’t matter. Just a few more days, and I can be off in search of a new home. I’ll have enough time to say goodbye to Aze and the others, and I’ll get to see the look on Bronhold’s face when he finds out that Brennr was actually his sweet Ynria, who was definitely not pining away for him back home like he’s been saying.
The thought brings a smile to my lips, and Six tilts his head. “What?”
“I was thinking about someone from my village,” I hedge.
“A girl?”
I snort. “Someone who thinks we will be betrothed and won’t take no for an answer. I was picturing what things will be like when I return.”
“Ah, an overzealous suitor. I know what that’s like. Except...” He trails off, his jaw tightening as he looks away.
“Mine thinks I’ve spent all this time mourning our separation,” I say, hoping to coax a smile from his suddenly serious expression. “As if I’ve had nothing else to worry about.”
One corner of Six’s mouth twitches up. “She told you this?”
“Everybody who can hear has been told.” I roll my eyes, and Six’s grin widens. “But at least most people know not to listen to... Bronhilda.”
“Bronhilda?” Six wrinkles his nose. “Sounds like you were lucky to escape. Mine was named Alarra, the daughter of one of my father’s acquaintances. She was the bossiest girl I’ve ever met.” He quiets, but the solemn look from before doesn’t return. “Well,” he murmurs, rolling one shoulder. “Perhaps we can afford a meal elsewhere after all.”
The dining tent is just ahead, but Six turns away and guides me between a pair of abandoned fire pits. He leads me to the outskirts of the unit, where wagons are set up at varying intervals along the road that leads into camp. “They follow the Patrol when it moves,” he explains. “When we’re stationary, they leave every few days to restock their supplies, and then return to sell them to either Bayal’s supplier or to the soldiers directly. The food here isn’t much better than what’s in the meal tent, and you have to pay for it yourself. But it’s something different.”
“How much is it?”
“I’ll cover yours.”
“That’s not necessary. I can—”
“Where I’m from, we repay our debts,” Six interrupts. “A meal is the least I can give you.”
Guilt pulls at my stomach. “I saved myself,” I say in a low voice. “You just happened to be there, too. If I hadn’t been sentenced alongside you, I would have watched your execution and done nothing.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Amusement flickers across his face. “It doesn’t matter what might have happened. You acted, and my life was spared. All other paths are irrelevant.” He reaches out to muss my short hair, and this time, I don’t lean away. “Don’t look so serious.”
But I can’t help it. Two days ago he was nobody, a prisoner without a name or a story. Now, he’s real. He has talents and humor and friends who would miss him if he were gone.
And I would have let him die, simply because I didn’t know him.
He leads the way to a wagon and buys a pair of sticks skewered through some kind of roasted meat that he says is probably rabbit. At another wagon, he exchanges a coin for a wineskin and a honey cake wrapped in wax cloth. “Here,” he says, handing over the cake and my stick of meat. “I want to show you something.”
Once again we wind our way through the outskirts of the unit, this time heading south for the forest. The last of the sunlight paints the clouds a brilliant scarlet and bathes the Border Infantry in gold, casting long shadows across the level ground. Before long we leave the tents and soldiers behind, and the noise of the army fades into the sounds of the forest. Evening birds flit through the branches, singing to each other as they search out their roosts for the night.
Six steers us toward an enormous tree with thick, low-hanging branches. “This is where I go when I want to be alone,” he says, gesturing toward the wide trunk. “If you climb high enough, you have a decent view of the whole unit.”
I nibble at a piece of meat, staring up into the branches. “If you come here to be alone, why bring me?”
“Every secret is found out eventually.” Six shrugs and straps the wineskin to his belt. “I like mine to be revealed on my own terms.”
Alarm and guilt flood my body, tensing my muscles, clenching my stomach. But Six’s attention is on the tree, leaving me to find my own way up. For a moment I thought—but how could he suspect me already? I went a month without anyone discovering my identity at the fort. Maybe something gave me away this morning when I had the dream, or maybe… maybe he’s talking about my Wordweaving? Or he’s not talking about me at all, and I’m panicking for no reason.
Whatever he meant, he clearly doesn’t intend to linger on it. His hands grip the branches as he pulls himself upward, and I push down my emotions and look up at the tree. Setting the stick of meat between my teeth and putting the honey cake into my satchel, I reach for a low branch and make my way up. Before long, I pass Six and continue on until I reach a bow-shaped branch about twenty feet up.
“You climb like a squirrel,” Six grumbles.
“Don’t you come up here often?” I ask around the stick in my teeth. “Why are you so slow?”
He huffs out a breathy laugh. “I don’t like heights.”
“You’re afraid of heights, so you climb a tree?”
“Not afraid.” He pulls himself up another branch, focusing on his hands. “Just don’t like them. That’s no reason not to do something.”
I lean against the trunk and remove the stick from my teeth, tearing off a bite of meat. He steadies himself on another branch. “We used to have races as children,” I say. “Whoever reached the top of the tree and climbed back down the quickest was the winner, and the winner got to make everyone else do something.”
“Like what?”
“Silly things. Once one of the boys made everyone do his chores for the day. Once we—um, we raced some of the girls too.” I watch as he climbs around me to settle on the branch, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed my mistake. “Two of them used to always try to climb with us, but their skirts got in the way. So they went out every morning before their chores and practiced until they could beat us.” The look on Kjerrin’s face when I passed him the first time is still one of my fondest memories. Aze refused to talk to Mjera for a week after she beat him. “They made us do the same thing when they won.”
“What?”
“Climb in skirts.”
Six snickers, twirling his skewer between his fingers. “How did that go?”
“Not well. Aze fell out of the tree when he stepped on his skirt, so they didn’t make us do it again.”
“Aze is your brother?”
I nod. In the neighboring tree, a squirrel chides us for invading its territory, and I turn to watch it scurry into its hollow.
“You two are close?”
Another nod, and a pause while I chew on a piece of meat. “We’re only two years apart. Do you...” Six’s shoulders go stiff, and I swallow my words with the rabbit.
But after a moment he looks at me, his expression carefully relaxed. “Did I have brothers?” he finishes. When I nod, he shrugs. “I had three, and three sisters. We were never close.” His eyes stray toward the setting sun, and I hold my breath, afraid any movement might make him stop. “They were... let’s see... ten, eight, seven, five, and three years older than me. And then my little sister, and I was fourteen years her senior. We last two had a different mother than my other siblings. I think they resented us for that. We were not what you’d call a happy family.”
Six drinks from the wineskin and offers it to me, but I shake my head. He stops up the end and sets it on the trunk between us. “There, nosy,” he says, elbowing me gently in the ribs. “There’s something I haven’t told anyone. Happy?”
I lean away and reach into my satchel to hide my face. “No.” But a warm glow spreads across my chest, creeping up my neck in an unsettling flush. All for a few words spoken in confidence. What’s wrong with me? I sneak a look at him as I search for the honey cake, frowning at his profile. His features are unremarkable—nothing unseemly, but nothing to make him stand out either. Chass is far more handsome, and he never flustered me this way.
It must be the setting. Never fall for a soldier, Mama told me once. Most of their appeal is the excitement of their situation. She usually said it with a wink to Papa, who would shrug and say she was right.
So that’s it. I allowed myself to get swept up in the excitement of the situation and the fact that Six has shown me kindness. How ridiculous. I pull out the honey cake and hand it over, taking a calming breath and thinking cooling thoughts toward my heated face.
Six accepts the little loaf and tears it in half, handing one back to me. “To moving on?” he says, and I smile and tap the corner of my cake against his.
“To moving on.”
“Sir!”
I look down, startled, and find a boy of about ten staring up at us from the base of the tree. Six leans over to peer between our feet. Darkness has fallen, and I have to squint to make out his features. “What is it?”
“Sir,” the boy says breathlessly. “You’ve been summoned to Captain Bayal’s tent, you and your men. The messenger from Elni arrived.”
“What?” Six glances at me before scrambling to his feet, leaning over me to put his hand against the tree trunk. “That’s impossible. It takes two days to get to Elni on a horse, and even with the fastest—”
“Sir, excuse me, but the messenger was met by another rider who was on his way to deliver orders to Captain Bayal,” interrupts the boy. “I don’t know any more. But the Captain surely will.”
While he talks, I wrap the honey cake back into its cloth and tuck it into my satchel before sliding onto a lower branch. Going down is never as fast as going up, but I still beat Six to the ground. He jumps the last few feet, landing on slightly bent knees and springing into a walk.
“The other rangers have already been told to report,” the boy says. “We couldn’t find you, but one of them said you come here sometimes.”
“Thank you,” Six says, and the boy scampers back to camp. Six rolls his eyes at me. “Probably Iorin,” he grumbles. “So much for my secret.”
“How can the messenger be here already?” I ask.
Six tosses away his empty stick and drops the wineskin into his pack, which he throws over his shoulder. “Aquillis must have sent word for Bayal to move the camp as we were sending a report about the tunnel,” he answers.
“Why would he want to move the camp?”
“I don’t know.” Six brushes his hands on his jacket and starts back to camp, frowning. “Whenever we’ve moved in the past, it’s been on Bayal’s orders. He has to report any change in position back to Elni, of course, but Aquillis has never sent specific directions before.”
A guard waits outside Bayal’s tent, and when he sees us, he steps out of the way and beckons to the entrance. Six ducks inside, and I squeeze past the guard with my head down.
The rest of the rangers are crammed inside, with Vikko and Somre speaking in low tones near Bayal’s table. They look at us as we enter, and then all eyes go to Captain Bayal.
“A messenger from Elni arrived not half an hour ago,” Bayal begins. “He met with the runner I sent along the road and they traded messages. We have orders to move on the tunnel immediately.”
“How could Aquillis have known about the tunnel?” Six asks.
Bayal accepts the interruption without reproach. “Someone sent word shortly after the tunnel was completed,” he says. “The message didn’t say who.”
One of his eyebrows lifts toward me, but I shake my head. “It wasn’t me.”
“I didn’t think so,” the captain sighs. “Then it seems we have a friend in Awnia.”
“Sir,” Iorin says, and Bayal nods for him to speak. “Someone sent the message from within the camp? Is it possible we have spies there?”
The captain shakes his head. “We withdrew all our spies years ago.”
“Then it is someone sympathetic to Ieli,” Iorin continues. “A traitor.”
Again, the captain looks at me. “Do you know anyone who could have been responsible?”
I hesitate, trying not to cower under the pressure of all their waiting stares. “There—there was someone, but...” Six sets a hand on my shoulder. The weight of it sinks through me, anchoring me to the earth, and I let out a slow breath. “Someone tried to help Six out of the guardhouse the night before we escaped. I don’t know who it was. He pinned it on me, which is why...”
“Which is why you were labeled a traitor,” Vikko finishes. “And since you did not send the message, it seems the man responsible is still within the fort.”
Bayal nods, a pensive expression on his face. “His Majesty has sent word that we are to march on the tunnel immediately. I’ve already given the order to strike camp at dawn. Brennr, we will rely on your Wordweaving once we arrive at the tunnel. You are ordered to conserve your energy to that end, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Then get some rest, men. Tomorrow we march to battle.”
The rangers turn to go, but Six’s hand on my shoulder keeps me from following. “Captain,” he begins when only Somre, Vikko, and Bayal remain. He drops his hand, and its absence feels like missing armor. “Aquillis doesn’t know we have a Wordweaver. He’s ordered us to attack? He must know we’re outnumbered.”
“The king has promised to send aid,” Bayal says in a flat tone.
“Then why didn’t he send anyone along with the messenger?”
The captain frowns a warning. “It is not our place to question His Majesty’s strategy.”
“If the man who sent the message to Aquillis was found out, we could be walking into a trap,” Six continues. “Let me take the rangers ahead to scout the tunnel. We need to know what we’re up against.”
Bayal looks to Vikko, who gives a minute nod. “You will not engage the Awnians unless absolutely necessary,” the captain says, and Six salutes.
“Yes, sir. And—” he adds when Bayal starts to dismiss him. “I’d like to bring Brennr with us, sir.”
A mixture of fear and excitement—no, not pride, just excitement—swirls in my stomach. “We don’t know what we will find,” Six goes on. “It would be helpful to have a Wordweaver and a healer along.”
Bayal studies me, his brown eyes picking out every insecurity and doubt. “You will take responsibility for him?” he asks Six.
“Yes, sir. And he will take responsibility for us. Like any ranger.”
Bayal’s eyebrows go up. “Is that so? Will you take responsibility for them, Brennr? Will you risk your life for theirs?”
I know the answer expected of me, but I don’t give it. Not right away, not before thinking. Would I fight for the rangers? Die for them? Use my Wordweaving to protect them—all of them? Even Redge?
But the answer spreads through me with like a fist unclenching. If the rangers are willing to fight to free my neighbors, then of course I must help them. And afterwards, if we’re successful… Six’s offer is there, unfurling in my thoughts, bringing with it a smoldering ember of hope.
You can always stay with us.
“Yes,” I say. “I will be responsible for them.”
“Then you will leave before sunrise,” Bayal says. “And may the Pathkeeper light your way.”
Six salutes, and I hasten to do the same before following him from the tent. “Report to me tomorrow before you leave,” Somre calls after me. “I’ll give you supplies.”
I nod, and Six and I leave the three men to their plans.