Leaves of Revolution (21 page)

Zander pursed his lips and blinked. “Nothing. Nothing at all. What were you wondering about what’s been going on? I thought Thomas had been filling you in.”

“He has. Mostly anyway. So how many injured soldiers are here?”

“Fifteen.”

“Sixteen now,” James said, returning with a bucket of milk in one hand and a crate of vegetables cradled against his chest with the other. “They brought another one over from the camp yesterday evening when you were asleep. Not an injury, though. This one had a high fever.”

“That’s two of those then,” Zander sighed.

“Yes,” James said. “Don’t worry, though, milady, the ill soldiers are staying in one of Tobias’ smaller barns. They’re warm and have what they need, but Prince Nathaniel hopes to keep the infection away from the house and the other soldiers.”

“Which has been interesting, because some of the soldiers have never heard of germs before,” Zander said. “Apparently Nathaniel and William’s
strange ideas
about healing haven’t made it to all the areas of Philotheum.”

Linnea had to bite her lip to keep from snickering. Not over what Zander was telling her – she didn’t find that amusing at all – but over the not-accidental way he dropped William’s and Nathaniel’s first names without their titles in front of James. She contained her amusement when he glanced her way, though, and shot him a severe look.

“The good news is that there are now over a hundred soldiers at the camp,” James said, oblivious to their exchange. “And yesterday, they brought in a group from one of the Dovelnian border stations who managed to acquire a good number of supplies from somewhere – tents, extra cloaks, and even some food.”

“And how many here at Tobias’?” Linnea asked.

“Thirty-six, counting the injured ones, plus those of us who traveled here with you, milady.”

She nodded, taking a bite of the roll he’d put in front of her. “Have we heard anything from my father about how things are going on the Eirenthean front?”

“There have been some minor skirmishes along the border because King Stephen has closed it to travel while things are so unstable,” Zander said. “But Her Majesty has actually been worried about how little communication she’s received from Eirentheos in the last couple of days.”

“My father may just be worried about messages being intercepted.” She directed a surreptitious nod of approval at him while she had his attention.

“Probably,” Zander agreed, although he didn’t sound convinced.

“Is it true that Alvin was here?” she asked. She’d heard something about him days ago, but she’d been in the depths of her illness then.

“Yes, but he was weird as usual,” Zander said. “He was here the whole time I was telling Quinn about the camp of soldiers, but then he left without another word to anyone, and as far as I know, nobody’s heard from him since.”

“I would be lying if I said that surprised me.”

Zander chuckled.

“So what is the plan now?”

“Well, the plan for
today
is to take a group of men out to scout around the villages north of the capital city, searching for some known Friends of Philip safe houses,” James said. “We still haven’t had any word on the whereabouts of Princess Ellen or Prince Charles.”

Linnea wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. “Who is going?”

“I am,” James said. “I’ll be leading the group, since I know where two of the houses are.”

She looked at Zander, wondering if her eyes were as wide as they felt. “I have to stay here,” he said. “Occupational hazard of night duty – I lose out on the next day’s adventure.”

Though she didn’t understand why – and she never would have admitted it – she was relieved.

“YOUR MAJESTY?”

Quinn looked up from watching Samuel’s eyelashes flutter against his tiny cheeks to see Tobias standing in the doorway. “Come in.”

When he came in he stood over her for a minute, peeking down at Samuel, then he sighed and sat down on the other end of the couch from where Linnea was sitting. “He’s always sleeping when I come around.”

“I could come find you when he wakes.”

“Actually, I’m not sure I’ll be around this afternoon – that was what I came in here to talk to you about.”

Even a moon ago, a statement like that would have set her heart racing, but after many days of constantly being bombarded with dramatic decisions, she was becoming accustomed to remaining calm. She ran her fingers through Samuel’s hair as she waited for whatever Tobias was going to tell her.

“Every moon around this time, I go into the village to trade supplies and take care of some business matters.”

“And if you don’t appear, you’ll be missed, I assume?”

“Yes. I can’t promise nobody will ever come looking for me even if I do go, but surely someone will check in on an old man if I don’t. It wouldn’t have been such an issue when there were only a few of you, but with the soldiers here now…”

“There’s no hiding it.”

“Correct.”

“Then of course you’ll have to go.”

“My crates are packed and ready to go already. But while we’re on the topic, I was wondering if you had a plan as regards your relationship with Valderwood?”

She frowned. “I thought the people who lived there were suspicious of any involvement with the capital and the royal family.”

“Yes. Most of them are.”

“Exactly. So my current
plan
as regards my relationship with them was to do my best to avoid making more enemies who want to kill me. I was going to leave them alone.”

“All right.” Tobias nodded and started to stand.

“Do you think I should have a
different
plan?”

“Can
I
answer that?” Linnea interrupted. “Because I think ignoring them is more than a little dangerous.”

“More dangerous than making them mad?”

“Yes, actually. At least if you go out and make an enemy, you know you have one. Haven’t you learned by now that what you don’t know is more dangerous than what you do?”

Quinn sighed. “By that argument,
I’m
more dangerous to Valderwood if they don’t know about me.”

“Is that what you want to be?” Tobias asked. “Dangerous to your people? You’re building an army close to their village. With any luck, we’ll be able to grow this army considerably before we try to take on the castle. Do you want the people of Valderwood to discover a massive army by accident?”

“Of course not. What I really want is for them not to be wary and fearful of me. I want them to trust me.”

“It’s far from my concern, but that sounds like a far better plan than conducting a war in their kingdom without telling them.”

“That’s not a plan, Tobias. It’s wishful thinking. I can’t just tell them to trust me and call it good.”

“Of course not. You can’t tell anyone to trust you. Trust isn’t something communicated with words.”

“Then how do I get them to trust me?”

Tobias leaned forward, rubbing at his chin as he contemplated her. “When you first arrived here, Your Majesty, you had no reason to trust me – in fact, with the information you had at hand, and the danger you were in, you were justified in being very suspicious of me. After all, you didn’t know me, and you’d been lied to about me, even by someone you did trust.”

“Keep talking, Tobias, and I might be calling for one of my guards.”

He chuckled. “Exactly. If you had to rely on my
words
you wouldn’t be in the same room with me without a guard between us. Why is your guard in the hallway?”

That was easy. “Because we’ve been here for over a week and you haven’t done anything except provide help and support and share food and supplies you can’t possibly afford to be sharing with us.”

“To be fair, your guards have done their share of hunting and cultivating in the winter garden. And the barn they finished restoring yesterday will be a tremendous boon to me in the coming cycle.”

“Even all those things together wouldn’t add up to what you’ve contributed to us, Tobias.”

“Perhaps. But when you add in the other currency used to pay me, I would argue that I’m still in your debt.”

“And what currency is that?”

“Your trust.”

She smiled. “You’re right. You have earned that.” As much of it as she was willing to give
anyone
right now, anyway. “So what do I have to offer the people of Valderwood without expecting anything in return?”

“I can’t promise anything will work with some of them, Your Majesty – but several families in the village are experiencing the same fever illness we’ve been dealing with here.”

“All right,” she sighed. “Before you leave, why don’t you talk to Nathaniel about going along?”

“That opens up the risk of people in the village realizing he’s not missing, and that you might not be far away.”

“I know. I can’t ask for trust without giving up something real in return. I think Nathaniel is in the barn.”

Once Tobias was gone, Linnea looked at her. “He could have just asked to take Nathaniel in the first place.”

Quinn nodded. “Is it terrible if I just choose to not even think about why he didn’t right now?”

“Only if thinking about it would help you make a better decision about it sometime in the next fifteen minutes.”

“Does fifteen cycles count?”

Linnea snorted. “Okay, my turn to hold the baby for a bit.”

*          *          *

Not five minutes after Tobias left, Marcus entered the room holding a folded piece of paper. He didn’t speak as he handed it to Quinn, but Linnea didn’t like the hard set of his shoulders or the too-heavy sound of his footfalls.

“What’s wrong?” Linnea asked before she even got the note open, but Quinn ignored her, reading the note more than once before she finally looked up at Marcus.

“Who sent this?”

“I’m not certain. It’s not signed, and I believe that was intentional.”

“Well, it’s not
addressed
either, but it’s definitely for me.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a guess as to who might have sent it? What bird brought it?”

“It was one of Tobias’ birds we’ve been using to send messages to Eirentheos.”

Linnea knew better, but the sudden ice in her chest at the mention of Eirentheos made her not care. A second later she was across the room, snatching the note from Quinn’s hands.

What she saw when she scanned it didn’t help, though, instead the burning cold raced outward from her center, down her arms and legs. “I know who wrote this. What I don’t know is what he’s doing in Philotheum.”

“Engaging in some kind of battle,” Quinn said, standing and walking over to one of her maps. Her voice shook. “It’s not your father – that’s not his writing.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s my brother’s. It’s from Maxwell.”

“What is he doing here?”

Linnea’s mouth fell open – she had
no
idea, but Quinn was speaking to Marcus.

“I don’t know. Let’s find this location.” Marcus followed her to the map, tracing his finger down the blue line of a river until it intersected with another one. “Here.”

“I’m still bad with scale here,” Quinn said. “How long would it take to travel there from here?”

“Probably under two hours, depending on the terrain. I don’t know this area well, and there aren’t many roads. The mountains in this area isolate it well, but still – they’re close.”

“Mountains?” Quinn sounded confused.

Linnea frowned. “You know, the big hills out there. Lots of trees. What did you think they were?”

“She thought they were big hills.” William’s voice made Linnea turn around; she hadn’t heard him come into the room. “Mountains are a little bigger where she’s from.” He smiled, taking Samuel from Linnea’s arms before going to stand next to Quinn. “We’re in the mountains here, though, love, at least the Philothean version of them.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she said, pressing her fingers to her forehead as she handed the note to William.

The smile he’d been wearing faded into something dark and bleak as his eyes scanned Max’s words. “Well, that explains the relative lack of communication from Eirentheos the last couple of days.”

“Explains it
how
? Why wouldn’t Stephen have told me Max was coming?
Why
is Max here?”

“Those two questions are undoubtedly related,” Marcus said. “Stephen would have wanted to make sure no information about Maxwell’s location was compromised until he reached safety.”

“So he wouldn’t tell
me?
”

“Remember that he doesn’t know exactly who’s with us here. All he knows is that this whole situation started because there were untrustworthy people around you – and around him. Our messages to him haven’t been overly informative, either, in case someone in the castle who can’t be trusted reads one. You haven’t even told him exactly where we are, although he must have guessed. From this note, I don’t think Maxwell knows how to get any closer than where he is.”

“So we need to send a brigade to find him,” Quinn said.

“That’s dangerous. They could be followed, either on the way there, or on the way back,” Marcus said. “I don’t know what the situation is, exactly, but it sounds as though Max and whoever he’s with may have run into some of Tolliver’s troops.”

“Yes, it’s dangerous,” Quinn agreed. “I suppose that’s why they call it war. Can you please find me several men who are trustworthy and willing to go?”