“Durzo?” Count Drake asked. “I thought you were dead.”
Kylar froze. It was so good to see Count Drake alive that his control of the disguise almost wavered. The count looked older now, careworn. He’d walked with a limp since Kylar had known him, but he’d never needed a cane before.
“Is there some place we can talk, Count Drake?” Kylar barely stopped himself from calling him “sir.”
“Yes, yes of course. Why are you calling me that? You haven’t called me Count Drake in years.”
“Uh …it has been a while. How did you get out?”
Count Drake squinted at him, and Kylar stared at Count Drake’s chest, hoping that Durzo’s eyes were meeting Count Drake’s. “Are you well?” Count Drake asked.
Dismounting, Kylar extended his hand and clasped Count Drake’s wrist. The man clasping his wrist back felt real, solid, the way Count Drake had always felt. He was an anchor, and Kylar was overwhelmed between an urge to tell him everything and shame just as strong.
The danger in talking to Count Drake was that everything became clear as he listened. Decisions that had seemed so muddy became suddenly simple. Something in Kylar shied away from that. If Count Drake really knew him, he’d stop loving him. A wetboy doesn’t have friends.
Count Drake led him to a tent near the center of the camp. He sat in a chair, his leg obviously stiff. “It’s a little drafty, but if we’re still here we’ll shore it up before winter.”
“We?” Kylar asked.
The joy leached out of the count’s eyes. “My wife and Ilena and I. Serah and Magdalyn didn’t—didn’t make it out. Serah was a comfort woman. We heard …she hanged herself with her bed sheets. Magdalyn is either a comfort woman or one of the Godking’s concubines, last we heard.” He cleared his throat. “Most of them don’t last very long.”
So it was true. Kylar hadn’t thought Jarl was lying, but he hadn’t been able to believe it. “I’m so sorry,” Kylar said. Words were totally inadequate. Comfort women. Bound into the cruelest, most dehumanizing form of slavery Kylar knew: magically sterilized and given a room in the Khalidoran barracks for the convenience of the soldiers—a convenience used dozens of times a day. His stomach churned.
“Yes. It’s a, an open wound,” Count Drake said, his face gray. “Our Khalidoran brethren have given themselves over to the worst appetites. Please, come inside. Let’s talk about the war we have to win.”
Kylar stepped inside, but the churning in his stomach didn’t stop. It intensified. As he saw Ilena Drake, the count’s youngest daughter, who was now fourteen, that guilt crushed in on him. God, what if they’d caught her, too?
“Could you heat up some ootai for us?” the count asked his daughter. “You remember my daughter?” he asked Kylar.
“Ilena, right?” Ilena had always been his favorite. She had her mother’s cool complexion and white-blonde hair and her father’s penchant for mischief, untempered by her father’s years.
“Pleased to meet you,” the girl said politely. Damn, she was becoming a lady. When had that happened?
Kylar looked back to the count. “So what’s your title or your position here?”
“Titles? Position?” Count Drake smiled and spun his cane on its point. “Terah Graesin has been bargaining off titles, trying to tie families into the rebellion. But when it comes to actually getting things done, she’s glad to have my help.”
“You’re joking.”
“Afraid not. That’s why we’re still here—what is it? Three months since the coup? She’s only allowed small raids against supply lines and poorly defended outposts. She’s afraid that if we get handed a big loss the families will back out and swear their allegiance to the Godking.”
“That’s no way to win a war.”
“No one knows how to win a war against Khalidor. Nobody’s fought successfully against an army reinforced with wytches in decades,” Count Drake said. “There are reports that the Khalidorans are having troubles along the Freeze. She’s hoping that most of them will be sent home before the snows block Screaming Winds.”
“I thought we held Screaming Winds,” Kylar said.
“We did,” Count Drake said. “I even got news from my friend Solon Tofusin to signal them when we were ready to march for war. The garrison there had the best Cenarian troops in the realm, veterans, every one.”
“And?” Kylar asked.
“They’re all dead. Killed themselves or lay down and let someone slit their throats. My spies say it was the work of the goddess Khali. That just adds to the duchess’s caution.”
“Terah Graesin,” Ilena said, “does most of her campaigning on her back.”
“Ilena!” her father said.
“It’s true. I spend every day with her maids-in-waiting,” Ilena said, scowling.
“Ilena.”
“Sorry.”
Kylar was shaken. It was impossible. Gods were superstition and madness. But what superstition would drive hundreds of veterans to suicide?
Ilena hadn’t taken her eyes off Kylar since he came into the tent. She looked at him like he was going to try to steal something.
“So what’s the plan?” Kylar asked, taking ootai from the frowning girl. Too late, he realized he wouldn’t be able to drink it—Durzo’s lips were in the wrong place.
“So far as I can tell,” the count said, pained, “there isn’t one. She’s talked about a big offensive, but I’m afraid she doesn’t know what to do. She’s been trying to hire wetboys; there was even a Ymmuri stalker here a few weeks ago—scary sort—but I think she’s trying to stack the deck but not play the game. She’s gathering an army, but she doesn’t know what to do with it. She’s a political creature, not a martial one. She doesn’t have any military men in her circle.”
“It sounds like this is going to be the shortest-lived rebellion in history.”
“Stop encouraging me.” Count Drake sipped his ootai. “So what brings you here? Not work, I hope?”
“What kind of work do you do?” Ilena asked.
“Ilena, be silent or be gone,” Count Drake said.
At her expression, which was at once wounded and peeved, Kylar coughed into his hand and looked away to keep from laughing.
When he looked up, Ilena’s expression had changed altogether. Her eyes were bright and wide.
“It is you!” she said. “Kylar!”
She threw herself into his arms, knocking the delicate ootai cup from his hands and utterly smashing the illusion as she hugged him.
The count was shocked into silence. Kylar looked at him, aghast.
“You big oaf, hug me!” Ilena said.
Kylar laughed and hugged her. Gods, it felt good— really, really good—to be hugged. She squeezed as hard as she could, and he picked her up as he hugged her. He pretended to squeeze as hard as he could. She squeezed harder until he cried out for mercy. They laughed again—they’d always hugged like that—and he set her down.
“Oh, Kylar, that was so the slam,” she said. “How did you do that? Can you teach me? Will you, please?”