Kael's POV
The scholar knew he was lying before he'd finished the sentence.
Kael knew by the way she looked first at the herb, then at him, then back at the herb - slowly, carefully, like she was looking at two things that didn't go together and trying to work out which was the mistake.
"You found this on patrol," she said.
"Yes," she said.
"In the Wastes.
"Yes,"
She pinched the dried herb between her fingers and held it up to the light. Her name was Sera. She was old, small, sharp-eyed, so ancient that even Kael himself wasn't entirely sure of her age. She had been the Citadel's archivist since before he could count the years. She knew the history of the void better than anyone alive. She was also absolutely impossible to lie to, and he found that inconvenient just now.
"Kael," she said.
"Name it," he commanded. "That's all I require.
She looked at him for a long time. Then she glanced back at the herb.
"Green silverleaf," she said softly. The words fell into the room like stones into still water. Extinct. Extinct since the Night of Burning, two hundred and three years ago, when Dawnspire destroyed the last Verdant groves. Gently she laid it on her worktable. "Every seed known. All roots. Every single cut. In a night lost."
"You sure about the ID.
"I grew up learning about this plant. I'd know it in the dark. She stopped. The question is, what is it like. This isn't a blade locked in stasis. The cell structure is novel. "This plant was alive within twenty-four hours." She put her hands together on the table. "Which is not possible."
And yet.
'And yet. Again she looked at him. That face. Patient. Waiting. Not at all convinced by what he had said so far. "Anything else you want to tell me about locating it?"
"No," said Kael.
He was gone before she could ask another question.
When he came back Corden was at the war table.
The way his general was standing, weight forward, hands clasped behind his back, the posture of someone bearing news he wasn't sure how to deliver, told Kael the report wasn't going to be simple.
"Imperial eagle scouts," said Corden, setting down a marked map on the table. "Northeastern limit. Just after dawn, three separate patrol units saw it. They were not on any regular run." He indicated the marks. "That pattern, wide arc, low altitude, slow speed, that's surveillance. Somebody gave them a certain area to look at."
Kael looked at the map. The arc traced exactly the sector where Seraphine's mana had sparked last night. Right. Not near. Not really. That's right.
Faster than he would have expected.
"How many scouts?"
Four eagles. "Probably two riders each."
"Armed?"
Scout-light. Not a combat deployment. They want to see, not to fight. Not yet.
Kael stood up straight His mind spun through the options as it always did – fast, clean, without feeling. This was the bit he was good at. This was the bit that had kept him alive for two hundred years when everything else had tried to kill him.
"Withdraw all visible patrols from the northeast line," he said. No fires in any of the border sectors, not even fires for cooking after dark. Void-beasts south of the ridge tonight, every one of them. Anyone moving near the border moves in groups of two, no more, and stays under the dead tree coverage.
"Got it." Corden jotted down some notes. "And what's the signature they want?"
"Not seen from the air and doesn't need to be talked about."
Corden nodded. Wrote something else. "Timeline?
In two days they would be back in the capital. In another two somebody will make a decision in court. We have four days before anything happens." He halted. "Likely."
"Probably," said Corden, the tone of a man who found that word deeply unsatisfying.
Kael waved him off with a glance. Corden gathered his notes and started for the door.
He paused.
That was what Kael had expected.
"And one more thing," Corden said, not turning. "I had two formal requests for reassignment this morning. Written. Signed "Following proper protocol." Stop. "From Dren and Kett.
Kael said nothing in reply.
"They wanted to be removed from border patrol. Corden's voice was neutral, tentatively so. It's professional neutral. The neutrality of a man who works very hard. "To the perimeter of Thornwall."
It was quiet in the room.
"Not as guards," Corden went on. They put that down. Not a security position. They're requesting transfer as—" a slight pause, as if to make sure he had the quote exactly right— "reconstruction workers. "They want to help to rebuild the settlement," he said.
Kael glanced at the map.
"They did the paperwork right," Corden said. Both of them. Dren's form was cleaner than anything he'd done in eleven years of service. Kett included a structural assessment of the northwest corner of Thornwall, apparently written before dawn this morning." A pause. I don't know when he went to sleep.
Kael did not reply.
I asked them why," Corden said. "Both of them. Separately so they wouldn't compare notes. He stopped. Neither could explain it. Dren said it was like something he "should" do "I don't know exactly," said Kett. "But it didn't feel right not to do it." Another pause. "They were adults, Kael. Soldiers with eleven and fourteen years in the service. "They looked, " Corden paused. He chose his next word carefully. "Baffled. Like something happened to them that they didn't have a framework for.
Kael studied the map.
The void-beast had bowed its head. His scouts had knelt down. And now two of his most practical, unsentimental soldiers had filed papers - neat, correct, proper papers - to go rebuild houses for two hundred strangers they'd just met four hours ago.
And none of them could tell why.
He knew why.
He just didn't want to say it out loud yet. Because saying it out loud would make it real, and making it real would be admitting that what was happening was exactly what it felt like. She was more than a girl with a pendant and a blood line.
The Wastes were already beginning to respond to her.
That the land itself was pulling towards her the way his bond was pulling towards her, the way his scouts were pulling towards her, the way he'd stood outside a fence in the cold for forty minutes and called it a structural assessment.
"Approve the requests," he said. His voice was flat and even. "Both of them.
Corden was silent for a full second.
"Of course," he said.
The door shut.
Kael sat alone at the war table, his fist against the center of his chest where the bond lived, and thought of a woman on her knees in the dirt, her hands pressed flat to dead ground.
And what she was feeling now.
And hated that he had to know.