Taniel took the turkey leg with some trepidation. The bone was only warm, despite having just come off the flames, and when he bit into it, juice ran down his unshaved chin. He didn’t speak until he was done eating. “How can you make me unseen?” Taniel asked. “Before, you had to ask Ka-poel’s permission to touch my mind.”
“I just did,” Mihali said.
Taniel froze in the midst of picking the last bits of flavor off the turkey leg. He looked around. “I don’t feel unseen.” He glanced down at the turkey bone. “Did you…”
“Yes,” Mihali said. “Doing any kind of constructive sorcery directly to the human body is one of the most difficult things a Privileged can accomplish. That’s why healers are so rare. I figured out about a thousand years ago that the easiest way to get a spell into a person was through their stomach.” Mihali picked up a turkey leg and took a bite. A sudden look of worry crossed his face. “Let’s have that be our secret, hmm?”
Taniel snorted. “I won’t tell on you.”
“Oh, thank you.” Mihali finished his turkey leg noisily and then lifted another off the grill. “Care to take one to Ka-poel?”
“Will it make her unseen? And if I’m unseen now, how will she see me? Or how are you seeing me?”
“I can see you because I’m a god. Ka-poel will be able to sense where you are, and the spell doesn’t muffle your voice.”
“If I sneeze?”
“Uh” — Mihali tapped the tongs against his apron, leaving a greasy stain — ”Don’t. The spell does have its drawbacks. For instance, it is designed to drop as soon as you get close to Kresimir’s sphere of influence. It would backfire to have Kresimir sense my intrusion.”
Taniel looked at his hand. He certainly didn’t feel unseen. “How long did it take you to come up with this?”
“A few moments.”
“Really?”
Mihali raised an eyebrow. “We’re not called gods necessarily because we’re the most powerful Privileged — though that is an interpretation. We’re called gods because the things that regular mortals struggle for days, weeks, or months to accomplish take us only the effort of a thought.”
“Ah. Well, I’m going now.”
“Wait.” Mihali produced a deep pewter mug seemingly out of nowhere and crossed to his pot of soup. He ladled the mug full and set a lid on it. “Take this to Ka-poel. It’ll help her sleep while you’re gone.”
Taniel turned to go, when he thought better of it. “Adom — Mihali?”
“Hmm?”
“Will you protect her?”
“I feel after giving her my blood, that it is I who need protection,” Mihali said. He winked. “That girl is like a glass teapot filled with gunpowder. So fragile, but with such a power for destruction.” He straightened up and swung the ladle into a salute. Soup spattered on his apron. “No harm will come to her.”
“Thank you,” Taniel said. “Now I’m going to get some of your brother’s blood.”
Tamas watched Olem rub down his horse as the camp settled in for the night. A low fire of brush and prairie twigs crackled in a stone ring in front of him. The sun still shone in the western sky, lighting the plateau with a brilliant hue of reds, oranges, and pinks.
Their second day on the plateau, and their supplies were already running low. They’d slaughtered thousands of Kez horses after the battle fourteen days before, but only been able to carry a limited amount. What little food they had needed to be rationed. A pound of meat per man per day was not much.
Tamas lifted his head at a sound carried on the wind. He waited a few seconds, then returned to gazing at the flames. Beside him, Olem was snapping twigs and feeding them into the fire.
His rangers still hadn’t found this mysterious Adran army, but there were plenty of signs of their passing. Stripped bean fields, burned farms. The dead and the dying, the old and the infirm of what was left of the farmers of the Northern Expanse. The plateau was already a dry, exhausted land. Whatever army had come through two weeks ago had killed everything living.
Per his orders, the army had dug a six-foot trench around the entire camp. It was backbreaking work, but he’d be damned if he’d be caught at night by an army he didn’t see coming. Some of his soldiers were still digging. The sound of shovels scraping rocks and dirt, the curses of infantry working after a long day’s march.
Tamas lifted his head again. That sound. What was it? He cocked his head to one side, trying to find a location.
Nothing.
Had the Deliv turned on him? The king of Deliv had been firm in his response earlier this summer when Tamas had asked for allies against the Kez. They’d promised to stay out of the war entirely.
“May I join you, Field Marshal?”
Tamas looked up. The lengthening shadows tricked his eyes for a moment before he made out Beon je Ipille. Tamas gestured to the bare ground on the other side of the fire. Beon lowered himself gingerly to the ground, crossing his legs beneath him. The Kez general’s eyes were sunken, his face pale. He was one of the few Kez officers that Tamas had kept with him as prisoners — the rest were paroled to the Kez army.
