The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) Garrett Robinson (poetry books to read TXT) 📖

Mag led the way back to Kun’s camp, with Yue and me close behind. On the northeastern end of the camp, Chausiku still stood his sentry post.

“Hail!” called Mag in the darkness. “Three rods.”

“And two wings,” called Chausiku. He had raised his bow at the sound of her voice, but now he lowered it again. Relief was plain in his expression as we crept up out of the darkness. “I am glad to see you safe, Sergeants.”

“As are we,” I said. “No trouble here while we were gone?”

“None,” said Chausiku. “No one seems to have noticed a thing.”

My mouth twisted. “That is well. But remember—do not lie on our account. If anyone asks you what happened tonight, you tell the truth, do you hear?”

Chausiku lifted his chin slightly. “I hear you, Sergeant.”

It was not an agreement, but I decided to let it be. With any luck, he would not need to face such a choice at all.

A campfire still burned at our end of the camp, where our tents were set up at the end of our squadrons’ lines. Mag made to walk straight past them, heading for Kun’s tent. But a sudden shout stopped us all in our tracks.

“Hail, Sergeants!”

We froze. Then, slowly, we turned. From the shadows between our tents stepped Kun. Behind him was Tou, a furious expression on his face.

The captain’s smile was as thin as new-frozen ice.

“And where, pray tell, have the three of you been?” he asked sweetly.

“Captain,” said Mag.

“Am I?” said Kun.

Mag, Yue, and I exchanged a glance. “Ser?” said Mag.

“Am I your captain?” said Kun. “Because one obeys one’s captain. And yet the three of you have gone to scout for the enemy alone after I explicitly ordered you not to.”

That, of course, is the sort of statement for which there is no safe response, and so we said nothing. At Kun’s side, Tou looked furious enough to burst into flames. Only deference to his captain seemed to be keeping him silent. I did not doubt he wished to say many loud, angry things to us, and would when Kun had gone.

“Well?” said Kun. “You are all uncustomarily silent. Sergeant Telfer, at least, has a clever tongue that hardly ever stills. What am I to make of you? This is the sort of thing that carries heavy penalties. Limited rations certainly, mayhap stocks, if we had them. Lashes would not be out of the question if anything disastrous should occur as a result of your transgression. Even execution, were the consequences dire enough. I say this not to hound you with empty threats, but to convey the severity with which I must now consider your case.”

Mag rallied, speaking in a calm voice. “Ser, we apologize for going against your orders. But our venture bore fruit. We found the Shades. They are trapped, and we can wipe them out if we act quickly enough.”

Kun studied her for a moment, his eyes sometimes flitting to Yue and me on either side of her. When he spoke, it was not in response to her.

“Do you know that, when you first arrived, I was positive you were Shades?” he said. “I was convinced of it. The first thing that shook my conviction was Sergeant Baolan’s arrival. And then we fought together against the enemy, and I watched you kill them with my own eyes. My last vestiges of doubt vanished, and I thought that was the end of it. Yet now I see things clearly for the first time after a long while spent in the darkness.”

“Ser,” I said, “we are not Shades.”

“Oh no,” said Kun. “I am even more certain of that now. You are something less evil than Shades, but no less dangerous. You are vigilantes. Folk who think yourselves above the rest of us, who see yourselves as being removed from the petty concerns of the nine lands.”

“Respectfully, ser,” said Yue, “I love Underrealm with my whole heart, and I will defend my honor on—”

“Be silent, Sergeant!” roared Tou. He bit off the words almost as sharply as they had erupted, and I gained a new appreciation for just how hard he must be clamping down on his temper. “Do not try to defend your honor when we have caught you violating the captain’s trust.”

Yue’s jaw spasmed once, but she fell silent. Mag spoke again, still calm.

“Yet it is true, sers. We do love Underrealm.”

“Not as much as you loved your husband,” said Kun, and he too was calm. “I do not say this to hurt you. It is no evil thing that you loved him more than a nation. Underrealm is not even a real thing, nothing you can touch, or see, or hold in the darkness when fear and grief press themselves upon you. It is more useful than true. Yet within the false idea that is a kingdom, there are real people. Many of them are as worthy as your husband, though you do not know them. And by your actions, you endanger them. This war that poisons Underrealm is of little concern to you as long as you satisfy your pursuit of revenge—and yet in that pursuit, you are willing to leave others in grief, countless folk who now must seek their own reparations for the loss of loved ones.”

He paused for a moment and sighed, and his smile faded a bit. “I changed my mind, you know. I sent for Lieutenant Shi tonight. I told him to assign you to hunt for the Shades tomorrow, as you requested. If you had been less foolish, you would now be free to pursue your aims. And if I had not come around to your way of thinking, I would never have noticed your betrayal.”

The captain’s words struck me hard, and I could see I was not the only one. Mag’s eyes had widened, and her stance had become tense. I could feel the