Last Stand (The Black Mage #4)(47)

Evil, omnipotent dictators with too much time on their hands.

I told myself the answer would come in the morning.

It didn’t.



*

“Paige…” I paused in my late afternoon drill, looking over at the knight on my right. She had the day off from her own duties, and she had still chosen to join me at the practice courts after my stint in the library. She should’ve been prowling the streets of Devon, bartering for that new chainmail she’d been eyeing for weeks, but she seemed to have given up for the moment.

No one wanted to go into the city now.

“Yes?”

“When you were a squire, did you train with four regiments same as the apprentice mages?”

“The best years of my life.” Her response wasn’t very enthusiastic; she was too busy concentrating on a lift.

I watched her muscles expand and contract, more than a little envious at the definition in her arms. She could give most men a run for their gold.

“Were one of those regiments a part of Ishir?”

“They were.” The knight set down her weights and proceeded to stretch. “Why?”

“Commander Ama spent a great deal of time going over strategy. I’m trying to remember if there was anything important I should remember from her talks?”

The guard squinted at me as she switched arms. “This has to do with that duke, doesn’t it? You are going to think up some miraculous way to convince him to join our cause? Again.”

There was no harm in letting her think I was worried about Cassius—even if it wasn’t for the same reason as everyone else. I nodded.

“Well, to start, it was the desert.” She made a face. “I never got the appeal of miles and miles of sand.”

“And that’s important because…?”

“Whoever serves in that regiment is mad.”

“Very helpful.”

She grinned. “You are welcome.”

“Anything else?”

“That desert is the best defense Jerar has. It’s just a shame we don’t have the same in the north.”

“How so?” My logic was failing me. “Ferren’s Keep is the largest city regiment we have.”

“You are forgetting the Red Gate. If anyone tried to invade the capital from the south, they would be limited to the pass.” Paige knelt to the ground to begin her next exercise. “If we had the same wall in our north, we wouldn’t need the Pythians to win a war… We’d just line up our army at the gate, waiting for the enemy to enter, one by one.”

The northern border was a forest, that strategy would never work… but the south was a desert bordered by red bluffs. The only way through was the Red Gate.

And suddenly everything Paige was saying made sense.

She hadn’t given me the answer I needed, but she’d given me something much better.

Cassius had asked for a way to hold off the Crown’s Army.

What if his ships staged an attack on one of the southern desert ports?

What if Blayne sent half his army south to save Jerar’s most precious commodity? Salt was the main source of Jerar’s economy—hadn’t the rebels taught me that during that year of the apprenticeship?

And then the rebels and Caltothian forces could storm the capital and send some of their men to barricade the Red Gate. The Crown’s Army might have more men, but by blocking the pass, we would have the upper hand.

We’d have enough time to place a Pythian on the throne. I could find a way to distract Darren while the others imprisoned the king. The Black Mage would never see betrayal coming from his own wife. There would be minimal bloodshed, and we’d win a war that never had time to start.

I had found the solution to Cassius’s riddle.

“You are right, Paige.” I kept my face impassive, fighting hard to keep the elation from reaching my lips. “It’s a shame we don’t have the same in our north.” I started to gather my things.

“You are leaving? Now?” Paige lifted a brow. “You usually train for three hours. It’s barely been one.”

“I’m going to see if I can dig up any more information in the library.” I needed to get to Cassius. Now, while everyone else was occupied. It was almost time for dinner; the ambassador always insisted on taking a stroll around the gardens before. It was the best time to meet—there were too many eyes in the palace itself. If I timed it right, I could still reach him before he returned to his rooms.

“We spend so much time trying to appease these Pythians.” She looked angry. “I don’t trust that duke at all. We should just go to war without them. For all we know, they’ll turn again and demand something else.”

She wasn’t wrong.



*

I found Duke Cassius just in time. We met behind the stables, and I tried not to think back to my last meeting here, when it had been Derrick instead. I wished my brother could see me now. I wished he could see I was a part of his cause.

“I wasn’t expecting to meet again so soon.”

“I have the answer you want.”

“I’m eager to hear it.” The man folded his arms. “Let’s hope this one is better than the last.”

“The Red Gate. It’s the only passage in or out of the desert to our south. If your men attack the ports with enough force, Blayne will dispatch the Crown’s Army to help. All we need is to get them through the gate, and then we can barricade the army in. The mountains, they aren’t like the ones in our north. They’re impassable—”