The city was everything Vethara was not — organized, formal, already reassembling itself into the shape of post-war normalcy with the speed of a place that had done this before and knew which version of itself to become once the military apparatus arrived. Coalition flags on the main thoroughfare. Official vehicles on the wide roads. The particular controlled energy of a city being used as a transit point for power.
They entered from the south as traders — Orren had acquired the appropriate documentation in Vethara with the quiet efficiency he applied to all logistical problems — and moved through the city with the practiced unremarkability of people who had learned, over a month of being in places they were not supposed to be, how to occupy space without drawing attention to it.
Kael watched the command center they had identified from the street. A requisitioned civic building, large, with coalition standards at the entrance and a rotation of guards who moved with the competent boredom of soldiers who had been through the hard part and were now doing the administrative part.
Auren was inside. Orren was confident of this based on the pattern of staff movement he had observed for three hours from a market stall that sold dried goods and asked nothing.
"There's a secondary entrance," Ysse said quietly. She had been watching the building's eastern side. "Supply access. Rotation gap of approximately four minutes between guard passes."
"We're not breaking in," Kael said.
"I know. I'm mapping options."
"We wait," Kael said. "Orren was right about the personal assessment. He'll go north. He'll go without the full retinue. We intercept on the road."
"And if he doesn't go," Bren said.
"He'll go," Kael said.
He went.
Two days later, on a grey morning road north of Dorn's Crossing, General Auren rode with two aides and no flag bearer, moving at the pace of a man with a destination rather than a procession. Kael stepped from the tree line onto the road alone, hands visible, the spear held out horizontally, the symbol facing forward.
The horse stopped.
The two aides moved — hands to weapons — and Auren raised one hand, not looking at them, looking at Kael. At the spear. At the symbol.
The fraction of a second from the ridge, extended into something longer. Something that confirmed what it had suggested.
"I wondered," Auren said, "when you would find me."