An icy southern wind blew through the camp, carrying with it the smell of snow, and Silvara tugged her worn cloak tighter around her body. Her stomach growled angrily, but she’d eaten her meager dinner with the rest of the laundresses, all of them huddled around a tiny fire as fuel was at a premium. Even if they’d been willing to cut down one of the redwoods, it was forbidden, the valuable lumber claimed as property of the Empire. Even the legions were forced to trek deep into the forests to find deadfall to use in their camps.
Her gaze moved to Hydrilla. No smoke rose from the fortress, their fuel nearly exhausted and what remained being held back for the sake of its defense. As starving and cold as Silvara was, for her family, it was much worse.
He’s not coming.
She’d told Carina that she didn’t think he would. With her own eyes, she’d seen Agrippa and his patrol racing back to their camp, an injured legionnaire carried in their arms. Had seen the trail of blood left across the bridge and the grimness in their eyes. And then the rumors had soon filtered in from Twenty-Ninth availing themselves of paid company about some little shit in the Thirty-Seventh in need of a good beating, and Silvara had known they’d meant him.
“Best hope otherwise,” was all Carina had said, then continued to drill into her all the information she wanted Silvara to extract from the Thirty-Seventh’s primus.
But now it was past dark and the legion camp had shut its gates and all she was doing was freezing for nothing. Taking a deep breath, Silvara took a step, intending on retreating to her own tiny tent, when a voice said, “Sorry I’m late.”
She spun to find a shadowy form behind her, recognition dawning only when Agrippa pulled back his hood.
“Sorry.” The faint light of the moon illuminated his face, which was devoid of its usual smile and shadowed with exhaustion. “Light feet are a hazard of the job.”
Her pulse thundered through her veins, though less now for the surprise and more for the fact that he was here. “I didn’t think you were going to come.”
“Then why did you wait for me?”
She hesitated, then said, “Because I hoped I was wrong.” Because she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the feel of his gladius in her hand.
Or the feel of him at her back.
The last thing she wanted was another night with Carina watching her every move, so she said, “Let’s go somewhere else. I don’t want to listen to Agnes snore.”
“I was hoping you might say that.”
He took her hand, and a jolt ran through her at the heat of it. His palms were callused from a lifetime wielding weapons, and she found herself unsure of whether she wanted to jerk hers free or squeeze his fingers tighter. Before she had the chance to decide, he led her out of the camp, turning up the lantern he carried to illuminate their path as they ventured to the river, then headed downstream along the banks toward the roaring falls.
“Have you looked at them?” he asked.
Her teeth were chattering from the cold, the frigid mist rising up not helping matters. “Not closely, no. We’re told not to wander outside of camp unless necessary.”
“Was the first thing we looked at when we came here,” he said, then pointed. “See how the river splits? Half goes over the falls, but the other half goes down a hole.” Tugging her hand, he led her out onto the rocks, and Silvara’s eyes locked on the black opening, a shiver of unease running through her.
“We threw all sorts of things into it,” he said. “Wood and empty bottles and bits of paper. A helmet.” He laughed. “None of it goes downstream. Rastag—he’s our head engineer—drew us all a diagram of his theory that the hole joins the rest of the falls at the base. He believes everything we threw in it got caught in the plunge pool and endlessly recirculates, but I’m not convinced. I think it all went somewhere else.”
“Where?”
He shrugged, moving close enough to the hole that her heart skipped. “Somewhere downstream, I suppose. This area has lots of caves. We looked while on patrols but never found anything.” Turning, he grinned. “Makes you want to jump in to see if you can find the answer, right?” He bent his knees. “Let’s do it!”
Without thinking, Silvara lunged forward and caught his arm, hauling him back even as Agrippa laughed. “Is that a no?”
“Agnes is right, you must be simple in the head,” she snapped, pulling him farther away lest he get any ideas. “There is no other explanation.”
“All right, all right. Let’s throw stuff in it instead. It will be fun.”
Frustration flooded through her, because nothing about this evening was turning out how she’d wanted.
Then Agrippa burst into laughter, the light from the lantern shaking. “Oh, the look on your face right now is worth your weight in gold. Do you really think I couldn’t come up with a better way for us to spend our time?”
“My expectations were low.”
He grinned, then held out a hand. “Trust me?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“Want me to take you back to camp instead?”
That would be wise. Safer, a voice whispered in her head. But another voice, louder and more demanding, screamed for something very different. And it was the voice she listened to. “I don’t want to go back.”
With her hand gripped in his, they wove through the forests, the lantern abandoned back at the river and the only light from the moon which filtered through the trees above. Despite the darkness, Agrippa moved almost silently, endlessly amused as she tripped over tree roots and rocks, cursing herself for agreeing to this mad venture.
Then the faint scent of smoke filled her nose and Agrippa murmured, “In here.”
Peering into the darkness, she made out a hole in the ground. A cave.
“There are hundreds of them around these parts,” he said. “Rebels use them, but this one’s a bit too close to camp for their tastes.” Tugging on her hand, he stepped down, and Silvara’s pulse raced as they were swallowed by darkness.
And then there was light. And warmth. A faint glow filled her eyes, the source of the smoke revealing itself as a fire that had burned down to embers. Agrippa let go of her hand and set branches over the blaze, blowing on the embers until flames licked over them, the smoke disappearing out a small hole in the ceiling above.
Silvara held her frozen hands over the blaze, feeling slowly returning to her fingertips. And that was when she saw them.
Paintings.
The walls were covered with paintings of the forest in the height of summer, all rich browns and greens mixed with pinks and yellows of flowers. Children ran through the woods, faces smiling and laughing.
And the trees ran with them.
The spirits.
Trepidation filled her as she took in the dancing redwoods with roots for legs and branches for arms, smiling faces made out of knots in their wood. It was said when a person’s life ended that their spirit grew from the ground as redwood, the eternal forests not made of trees but from the ancestors. To cut one down was to destroy the spirit, and her heart broke when she thought of how many had been lost to legion axes.
“Do you like them? The paintings?”
She hesitated, for the practice of what the Cel referred to as paganism was a crime in their eyes. All along the coast and in the regions of Bardeen that the Empire had brought under its dominion, paintings like these had been completely destroyed, and it had been years since she’d seen anything on this scale. And while rationally she knew that confessing she held to traditional beliefs was probably foolish, her heart told her that this wasn’t a trick. The gesture was genuine, and that, more than the paintings, made her heart fill with unexpected warmth. “Yes. Do you know the stories?”
“Bits and pieces. My mother had to be careful what she told us, because if she was accused of paganism, she’d have been sent to prison.” He moved to the cave wall, running a finger gently over the artwork. “But I remember my father’s wife decorating an entire room in redwood to spite my mother. She pretended not to care, that it didn’t matter, but I once saw her in that room crying and talking to the wood. Seemed like madness to me at the time, but now I see it was like having a room decorated with the corpses of her ancestors.”
Your ancestors, too, Silvara considered saying but remained silent, not wanting to disrupt what felt like a confession.
“Hostus made us take black paint out on patrols to cover any we found but we mostly just dumped it out. Seems a petty thing to do when we’re already chopping trees down by the hundreds. Though with the way we’ve been killing rebels, I suppose hundreds more will grow. Thousands. Tens of thousands.” Agrippa gave a sharp shake of his head, then pulled off his cloak and set it aside. “Although I’d appreciate you keeping that little tidbit to yourself—Hostus isn’t tremendously pleased with me right now.”
“Why is that?”
“Just the usual camp politics.” Bending down, he added more wood to the fire. “Trust me when I say that a legion camp is more gossipy than a brothel, especially a camp sitting on its laurels. When we get bored we cause drama for the sake of entertainment. Nothing you need to concern yourself about.”
Lifting a sack, he pulled out a bottle, and then a feast worth of food. Silvara’s mouth watered as he set it on the flat rock between them. Wax-coated cheeses and cured meats and handfuls of dried fruit and a jar of dark ovals.
“What are those?” she asked, pointing.
“Olives stuffed with spices,” he answered. “Grypus will only eat Cel food, so we receive regular shipments via the xenthier stem at Melitene. Same with this particular vintage.” Pulling the stopper, he handed her the bottle. “Forgot to bring cups, sorry.”
The xenthier stem he referred to was the one that had allowed the Empire to invade the interior of Bardeen. Silvara had never seen one of the crystal paths that crisscrossed the Empire, but to her, they seemed like magic. To be able to touch the tip of a crystal in one place and be instantly transported to the far end of its path boggled her mind. And yet it was how Celendor had conquered the known world, turning every other nation into provinces of its Empire. The Senate apparently paid men and women to travel unmapped paths, bestowing upon them great fortunes of gold if they returned with answers to where paths went. It had been one of these path-hunters who, despite her countrymen’s efforts, had managed to return to the Empire with information of a path that terminated in the heart of Bardeen. And it had been from that path that these legions had come.
A flicker of anger filled her, and to cover it she looked at the markings on the side of the bottle, though she couldn’t read in any language. “If all of this is the proconsul’s food… Did you…did you steal it?” Was there no end to his love for risk-taking?
“Steal isn’t quite the right word. Try it—costs ten gold dragons a bottle and the bastard drinks three bottles of it a day, so it must be good.”
She could work her entire life and never earn that much coin and yet so much was spent on a drink?
Tentatively, she took a mouthful, smooth red wine washing over her tongue and tasting nothing like anything she’d ever been served. But wary of getting light in the head, she set the bottle back down on the rock.
“Eat up.” Agrippa took a mouthful of the wine. “If I get caught with this in camp I’ll be digging latrines for the next year, so I can’t take it back.”
For weeks, she had eaten nothing but thin gruel, coarse bread, and what roots could be harvested from the forest. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had meat. The last time she’d had cheese.
Snatching up the small wheel, she peeled back the wax and broke off a piece. It was creamy and smooth on her tongue, and she closed her eyes, savoring the flavor. Then another bite and another, before moving on to the rest, her stomach feeling full to the brim alarmingly swiftly.
Agrippa, she noted, ate only sparingly, sipping occasionally from the bottle as he watched her tear into the spread like a wild animal. There was tension to him tonight, and she knew why. “I saw you today.”
“Yes, I know. I was there for the conversation.” His voice was light, but from the way his gaze moved from her to the fire, it was clear he knew she wasn’t talking about their meeting that morning.
“What happened?”
“Ran afoul of a trap in the woods. Happens.”
It did happen, but Silvara knew for fact that the rebels hadn’t set this one because rebel scouts had spotted Carmo’s men digging it. The scouts had presumed it was a trap for them, but how events played out suggested something else. Suggested that tensions between the two legions were higher than had been believed, which was something that could be exploited. Yet she could admit none of this without revealing her link to the rebel cause.
“The young man who was injured…did he—”
“He’s dead.”
Agrippa’s tone was flat; he clearly had no interest in discussing the issue, but she pushed anyway. “Who?”
“Yaro.”
Her chest tightened, memory of the ugly but cheerful boy filling her mind’s eye. Before she’d met Agrippa, the only names of legionnaires she’d known were those she’d been warned about, like Carmo. But that was no longer the case. Now they were boys she knew. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing. He’s not the first under my command to die and he won’t be the last.”
It wasn’t nothing. To him, but also, she realized, to her. “But he was your friend, wasn’t he?”
Agrippa threw a branch onto the fire with enough violence that sparks flew everywhere. “Other than the few times one of us was stuck in medical, I’ve spent every day of my life with him since I was seven. And now he’s rotting in a grave because I fucked up.”
She flinched at the profanity but asked, “How is it your fault?”
“I didn’t see the trap.”
“Neither did he.” And the trap was set by their comrades, whom they had no reason to suspect.
“He wasn’t in command. I was. My responsibility.” He took another long mouthful of the wine. “I’d rather we talk about something different. Talking about it makes me think about it and thinking about it makes it hard to forget.”
“You do the dead no honor by forgetting them and their stories.”
In one quick motion, he was on his feet, pacing back and forth across the cave. “Except that I have to go out and do the same thing again tomorrow, Silvara. Lead my men out and into danger, and how am I supposed to do that day after day if all I can think about is the fallen? For the sake of the living, I have to forget.” Then he rounded on her. “And I certainly didn’t come here with you to sit around weeping about it.”
“Then why did you come?”
He opened his mouth, then his teeth clicked shut. For a moment, she didn’t think he’d answer, then he said, “Because it’s what he would have wanted me to do. He was always shit with girls, so he lived for my stories.” He scrubbed a hand over his shorn hair. “I’m sorry. That’s probably not what I should have said. And it’s not that I didn’t want to see you, it’s just…”
His voice was dull with misery, and she felt the weight of his grief. “It hurts.”
“Yeah.” He sat back down on rock next to her, picked up the bottle and stared at for a heartbeat before setting it down. “Forty years of service, that is the legion indenture. Which means I have thirty left to go and sometimes I wonder how many of my brothers will be alive at the end of it. Whether I’ll make it to the end of it.” He let out a strangled laugh. “Though with Grypus’s impatience, I’ll probably be dead within the week and all my friends along with me.”
Her pulse leapt into a gallop. The rebel spy in her demanded that she push for more, that she take advantage of this moment of weakness, of his trust, and dig deep. For of a surety, he was referring to an attack on Hydrilla.
But then Agrippa’s shoulders bowed, and without thinking, she pulled him against her, her heart fracturing as he exhaled a ragged sob. As his tears soaked the fabric of her dress. And though it was forbidden, she drew in a deep breath and sang a lament of their people, the words flowing from her lips to echo off the painted walls of the cave. She sang of the spirits and the forests, and how a strong soul would grow a tree that reached to the sky. She sang until his muscled shoulders stilled beneath her hands, until his breathing steadied against her throat, and only then allowed the last note to trail away. Then she pushed him upright and kissed his forehead. “For Yaro. May his tree grow to tower above all the others.”
His hazel eyes were red and swollen, but he still gave her a crooked smile. “If Yaro has turned into a spirit tree, then you’ve definitely given him—”
“Don’t you dare say it!” She clapped a hand over his mouth, trying and failing to contain her shocked laughter. “You have the foulest mouth, Agrippa. Truly. There are some things you should not jest about.”
“If I don’t laugh, I might cry again,” he said once she removed her hand. “And I feel I’ve already done enough damage to my image tonight. Besides, Yaro always appreciated a good joke about his—”
“Don’t you dare! You cannot speak ill of the dead!”
He gave her a pained expression. “It’s not speaking ill to say that he had a giant—”
She kissed him.
His lips were softer than she’d expected, and rather than pulling away after silencing him, as she’d intended, Silvara found herself leaning into him, her hands braced against his chest. Her eyelids drifted shut and her lips parted, a soft gasp exiting her when his tongue touched hers. He tasted like the proconsul’s expensive wine, and his touch had a similar effect, sending a flush of heat through her body.
And then he pulled back, hand curving around her head, fingers tangling in her hair. Her eyes still closed, she waited for him to say something clever. For him to make her laugh to cut the tension, the way he always did. Instead he stroked his thumb over her cheek, the sensation making her body quiver, making her want to kiss him again.
“Why are you here?”
She jumped, her eyes snapping open, certain she’d see accusation. Certain he knew exactly what she’d been sent to accomplish.
Instead she saw a soft sort of wonder in his eyes, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, and he said, “What’s a girl like you doing on the edge of a battleground? What are you doing following around the foulest legion in the Empire?” He shook his head. “It’s not right. You deserve better than this, Silvara.”
He spoke to her not in Cel, but in Bardenese, her native tongue rolling off his with only the faintest of accents. Another surprise, and it occurred to her that this was what she liked best about him: the fact that she couldn’t predict him and the thrill that came along with it.
Realizing she hadn’t answered, she said, “Fate brings us where we are meant to be.”
“Why could you possibly be meant to be here? What good can come of it?”
A question with so many answers, none of them certain. “Time will tell.”
Agrippa blinked, his eyes refocusing, and he straightened. “Time. Shit. I need to get back to camp before shift changes or I’ll be stuck out all night. We need to go.”
He swiftly shoved the remains of the food and wine into a sack, then kicked dirt and sand over the fire until it was only glowing embers. Pulling on his cloak, he took her by the hand, leading her unerringly through the darkness and back to her camp.
On the outskirts, he pulled her to a stop in the shadows before pushing the sack of food into her hands. Pulling her close, he lowered his head to kiss her lips. “Thank you.”
“For what?” she asked, looking at the precious food that would be enough to feed all the laundresses tomorrow and maybe the day after.
“Everything,” he answered, and then disappeared into the night.