Fenris growled at that, but hope filled me – Daresh had just admitted the Resistance had the delegates. “So you’ve taken all the delegates prisoner, then?” I demanded.
“All but the Chief Mage.” Some of the smugness faded from Daresh’s voice. “The idiot we planted aboard the airship killed him.”
No! I nearly screamed aloud as shock and grief rippled through me. But then I remembered the serapha charms around my chest, and forced myself to remain calm. The tiger shifter might have believed he was telling the truth, but his intel was wrong – Iannis was alive. The charm didn’t lie.
“How did he die?” I asked, pretending I didn’t know better.
“We weren’t given specifics. But trust me, if he’d been alive we would have brought him in. He was our main target.”
I gritted my teeth – the tiger shifter had confirmed our suspicions, but we were still collecting more questions than answers.
“Where is your camp?” Fenris demanded.
The shifter hesitated, so I lowered my hand, allowing the flame to singe his orange fur. “Oww, oww, oww! Okay! We’ve taken over an abandoned mining village at the base of the Sarania Mountain Range.”
I frowned, calling up a mental image of the map we’d studied earlier. “That’s to the west, right?” There were two mountain ranges flanking the plains here.
“Yeah, if you head west through the forest, you’ll come right to it.”
I lifted my head to look at Fenris and Annia. “Guess we’d better head over there, huh?”
“It’s the only lead we’ve got, so yeah.” Annia sighed, running a hand through her hair as she looked off into the distance. “Not that we’re going to find the Chief Mage there, since this asshole insists he’s dead.” She shot the shifter a glare, who returned it in full force.
“Even if he isn’t there, the delegates are and we need to try and free them anyway,” Fenris said. “They are mages, after all, and could be useful to us.”
I groaned, not at all thrilled about the idea of working with a bunch of stuffy mages to rescue Iannis. But I couldn’t deny the extra magepower would be useful. “Alright then, let’s go.”
“Wait!” The tiger shifter yelled. “You’re not just going to leave me like this, are you?”
I turned back toward him and arched a brow. “If you were in our position, what would you do?”
“I’d probably kill you,” the tiger shifter admitted reluctantly.
“Then you should thank Magorah that we’re not you,” I told him.
Hefting our packs higher onto our shoulders, we left the clearing and headed west, the tiger shifter cursing us all the way until we’d traveled out of mindspeak range.
“How long do you suppose it will take for the spell to wear off?” Annia asked after a while. “We’d better be gone from the camp by the time he storms in there, howling for revenge.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Perhaps we should have killed him after all. He would not show us any mercy when he recovered the use of his limbs.
“Two to three days,” Fenris said, and we both turned to him, surprised by the certainty in his voice. “That should be time enough.”
I arched a brow. “Are you sure about that?”
“Sure enough to bet our lives on it.” Fenris strode past us, taking the lead with his compass firmly in his hand. “Now let’s go and find these traitors before they kill the delegates they do have in their possession.”
10
Three hours later, I stood on one of the topmost branches of a pine tree, one arm gripping the trunk as my other trained a telescope on the abandoned mining village at the base of the Sarania Mountain Range. Men were moving in between a handful of dilapidated brick buildings and sagging wooden cabins. The buildings had been painted over to approximate the dry, pale coloring of the desert landscape, making the compound difficult to spot from the sky. Many of the buildings sported boarded-up windows and missing slats in the siding. Only to be expected, considering that mining on tribal lands had been outlawed over a century ago, but I still wasn’t looking forward to spending time here.
“Can’t really see much going on from here,” I admitted to Fenris, who was waiting on the ground with Annia. “There are a few guys stationed at the entrance, and two on the rooftops with bows. A few guys are coming and going in the streets, but I have a feeling most everyone’s indoors.”
“Very well. Why don’t you come down then, before they spot you, so we can get on with our plan?”
I snorted. “They’re not going to spot me.” My perch was too far away for me to be easily spotted amongst the sea of trees, and I wasn’t sticking my head out like an idiot for anyone to take a shot at me. But I shimmied back down onto the ground anyway.
“So what’s our cover story?” Annia asked as I placed my hands on Fenris’s shoulders and muttered an illusion spell to change his features. I lightened his hair, made him taller and thinner, and got rid of his beard. It was doubtful anyone out here would know him, but I was sure the higher-ups in the Resistance would be keeping tabs on Fenris because of his unusual relationship with Iannis. No way was I taking chances.
“We’re going to tell them that we’re recent recruits, and that Rylan Baine sent us out here.” I stepped back from Fenris, then used the spell to give myself short, platinum blonde hair, yellow jaguar shifter eyes, and a shorter but curvier frame. “From what I can see, they don’t have any electrical lines set up, so they won’t be able to send telegrams. By the time they reach my cousin and ask him for confirmation, we’ll be long gone.”