Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(53)

I could hardly articulate the thought that then occurred to me. We had lost our soldiers. How strange a coincidence this was, now I reflected upon it. The four men dead were the four soldiers. It was not just that our party had evil intent within it, but that the intent had a purpose. Our guards had been deliberately removed.

Aleksey had got there himself without me saying anything. We stared at each other.

“This is another peninsula.”

I licked my lips. “You think this has all been a…?”

“A ruse, yes. I believe we have been in an entirely different war than the one we thought we were in. But I have not seen the enemy’s plans this time, so I have no idea what war we are in.” He peered back into the tree line. “But I think now that they killed Faelan deliberately.”

“What?” But I suddenly saw the logic in this. Four soldiers and a ferocious wolf…. Who better to remove if you… if you… if you what? Why would they eliminate four soldiers of a rescue party? Were they not the best placed to—“They did not want rescue.”

His face paled, and he put a hand on my arm. “You. They tried to get rid of you as well.”

I opened my mouth to question this, but then I remembered the very first night upon the riverbank. Aleksey’s prejudice in favor of my countenance had led him to think Mary Wright had been tempted beyond sense by my beauty—that that was why she had picked me to accuse.

Four soldiers, one wolf, me.

If she had been believed, if it had been the lieutenant or the major to come upon us and not Aleksey, would I too have been strung from a tree for my crime?

And then I remembered her venomous glare at me at our first meeting. She had not been seeing me as a potential ravisher but as a threat of an entirely different nature. Expecting a shriveled, old, rheumatic doctor, she had got… me.

I shook myself. “I think we are making castles out of clouds. If any of this is true, then they would have tried to kill you as well. The soldiers before you? I do not think so. After me, you are… I mean, as with me, you are clearly a warrior.” Fortunately for me he let my slip go.

“Yes, maybe. But be wary of them, Niko. Things are not as they have seemed to us. Do not trust anyone.”

“Oh, believe me—”

“What?”

I shook my head. “Anyone. I thought that there was nothing that would get me onto this island—to cross the river.”

“Oh God, and then we saw the naked woman. But she cannot be part of this—whatever this is. She was genuinely terrified.”

“She was. But of us crossing or… not crossing?”

The others were making noises that they wanted us to join them. Those lucky enough to have boots had emptied them of water, dry clothes had been redonned, and they wanted to be off. The days were very short now. I suddenly had an idea. Should we not walk around the entire shoreline to ensure that there were no other crossing points? It seemed important to me for some reason to know that what we sought was ahead of us and not behind us—that we could not be taken unawares. Our crossing point was guarded. Let us be sure it was the only one. I put my idea to the major and he agreed. It was the task of no more than an hour, for the island was very small. If the shoreline had not been occasionally steep and difficult to negotiate we would have done the circumnavigation more quickly. In truth we did not walk around the whole island for, of course, one long side of the small piece of land formed a share of the vast cliff over which the two sets of falls plummeted.

We started where we crossed and walked away from the falls on our side around the back of the island where the water of the great river split and then along the other side almost as far as the second falls. The northern half of the great river divide was far wider than the one on our side and was impossible to cross. I could hardly see the northern far shore at all. I had a good sense of the lay of the land now. The island was about a mile long and two miles wide with a thick covering of trees. Clearly Etienne had been too long in the sun, for there were birds in the very top branches of the trees (although to be fair I had seen no game as yet), and I could not see how any tribe could use this place for rites, sacred or not, given the difficulty of the crossing.

There was nothing on the shore, so whatever was happening, was happening in the heart of the island.

I went in the lead with Aleksey, the captain brought up the rear, and the major stayed in the middle with the remainder of the Wright family. I did not like the look of the major. He had struggled on the crossing and had had to be helped in the same contraption we had rigged for Mary Wright, and his face was now an unhealthy red, like he was being squeezed too tight. He should not have come on this mission. None of us should have come on this ghastly journey. I think secretly he’d just wanted to see the falls. Have a picnic. Return with some stories.

I hoped he would return with tales to tell. I hoped we’d be there to share them with him.

I was moving steadily through the trees—it was not hard to tell which direction we faced, for I could not only see the plume of mist above the falls at all times, I could feel its wetting upon my face and, of course, hear the dreadful sound of its maker. The vibration was appalling in all directions, so that was no help at all. At one point I chose a route and had gone a little way when I realized the others had stopped. I turned around to see the child standing on another possible pathway, but one that led through a small bit of boggy ground that I had therefore rejected. He had started upon this route himself and seemed surprised that no one else followed him. I had the immediate and very sure conviction that this child knew exactly where he was and that he had made a mistake here, falling out of character, so to speak, by showing us this knowledge. His mother ignored him, not looking at him, and continued to follow me, and after a moment he ran to her. He took her skirts in one hand and looked down at his other.