Knight of the Wolf

11: An Occultation

In true heist fashion, the plot commenced with Crew at the forefront. Dev and Zoyla were a distraction—the soldiers kept their eyes on Dev knowing that a logical line connected Crew, the bounty hunter, to Dev. Dev was Crew's mark, and they all assumed it just as Scott had.

While Zoyla was none the wiser about this fate, Dev was relieved now that Crew's perceived allegiance to the Empire was unwavering.

From afar, Crew could see the no-longer-locked door through the stone archways, reassured that the damage wasn't entirely noticeable. They'd shoved the knob back in, though the bolt was gone. It was only a matter of time before the General went to check on his captive and wrench the doorknob out of place in the process.

Judging the scrappy appearance of the princess, Crew bet heavily on a lack of meals to the gilded prison. While her own stomach ached with empathy, she knew a meal time would foil their escape plan, and Crew simply couldn't risk that.

This trick would ruin not only Dev and Zoyla's reputation, but also Crew's. The only way they'd be able to return to civilization was with Princess Morrow as their ticket.

There was also the matter of the Empire's intelligence director's pawn slithering somewhere in the keep. Crew suspected there were dozens of them now, deployed all across the borders to inspect the hide of every black wolf captured or killed.

She wondered what the order was. The magic channels allotted to sorcerers with gems would be more active now than ever—in all elements. Water and metal were the most common modes of communication, and the northern temperatures made ice an excellent conduit for the northern keeps to transmit messages. It was how she imagined the General received word of the princess' death.

And possibly the order to capture the wolf alive, she wondered.

But such an order was bizarre. Did the Emperor intend to kill the beast himself? No, then the Grand General wouldn't have instructed Devesh so ambiguously.

Maybe the Emperor knows his daughter shifts, Crew thought. Zoyla hadn't said as much, but that would give perfect logic to the no-kill order.

Then why put all the blame on Devesh Cormaic? These thoughts spiraled into a solid mass that weighed at the back of her skull as she approached the General's office and knocked.

The Eastern Keep's general was an imposing man with a hatchet nose and sunken eyes, as if each sleepless night pushed them deeper into his skull.

"Ah, the Emperor's sell sword," he commented at the tip of Crew's hat. However guarded he might have been in that moment, Crew dissected in his pulse. Quickened, but the pleasing hint in his eye suggested that he was more eager to talk to her than he was skeptical of her.

She grinned.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

"I'm low on gems," she said, hands on her hips. "If I pay you for them, could you spare a few from your armory?"

It was an absurd request. Gems were never forfeit, and if they were, the amount of coin Crew forked over would be criminal. In fact, it'd come at the cost of the majority of her remaining stipend for this godforsaken quest.

The general blinked, startled. "You deal in magic, then?"

"For communication," she said, which was true. It was pretty much all of the magic she had bothered to learn as a kid. The rest of the principles fell off shortly thereafter, like adults who learned cursive but never applied it consistently.

But the gems Crew needed didn't deal in communication.

"And heat," she added just as the general opened his mouth to comply.