The Wrath of Rivers by A.R. Knight

Author:A.R. Knight [Knight, A.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Key Books

Chapter 25

Caught

The trail wasn’t hard to find. A walk back to where Wax had left Eujo when casting off the oil boat and there, breaking back into the marshes south of the city: bent reeds and lines in the mud. Bootprints leading from the abduction into the murk. A question presented itself then, with the light fading fast.

“Going after her now’s going to be dangerous,” Quik said, already slipping the gauntlets onto his hands.

Wax noticed, nodded at the arms. “But you’ve made your choice.”

“I just know what you’re going to do.”

Wax flicked a grateful grin. “You think I can’t walk away from a fight?”

“Not if you think you’re responsible.”

Ah, Quik. Like his sister, good and ready to cut to the heart of things when he wanted to. Wax suspected, no, knew his siblings understood Wax better than he did himself. Good thing, then, they were his guardians and not his enemies.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Quik pointed, those deadly wood gloves on and secure, at the marsh. “We go slow, quiet. A hunt, Wax. These guards aren’t stupid, wouldn’t be responsible for the Queen if they were. Which means they left those prints on purpose, or didn’t have time to clear’em.”

Whether the guards were moving fast or setting an ambush, Quik and Wax took a measured pace, slipping into the reeds and staying low. Wax had his Foti blade ready, still hurting some from the fire around the fiend, but stable enough thanks to the Vis skar. That and the lightning urge to keep moving, keep striking after Eujo. Because Quik had it right: Wax had left her there alone, and while Eujo seemed nothing if not capable, he shouldn’t have been that careless.

If that’d even been his decision to make in the first place.

Damn, this was turning out just like Pan. His friend had made the call to catch the skar after Wax threw it, to run away down the Great Sana with it and risk the injury in the chase. Eujo had made her own choice not to go with Wax, to—

“There,” Quik whispered, tapping Wax’s shoulder. “You can see the armor.”

Those Kance plates, so glass-like and beautiful as they moved, had a nasty habit of catching the light, sparkling it like a diamond. Wax couldn’t call himself an expert in warfare, but as a hunter, anything giving yourself away like that had no purpose. Well, no purpose save one: warning everything else to stay away.

“Circle them?” Wax whispered.

“We need to make sure they’re all around first.”

Quik’s suggestion came to prescience moments later, as the pair slogged through waist deep water—odd things brushed up again and again on Wax’s legs, his waist, and he refused to think about what they were—and neared enough to see Blinth and Silvrin, the guard commander, pulling a struggling Eujo between them. The Queen, blossoming up a wild grin on Wax’s face, undercut their every stride. She slipped in the mud, grappled with the guarding pair at every opportunity. The two Kance soldiers snapped demands at her to cooperate, to act her station, only to earn curses from Eujo in return.

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