CHAPTER
SEVEN

SIRIS BECAME a leader.

It happened just like that. He gave his Dark Self a little freedom, and it transformed him.

When Isa introduced him to the troops, he knew to nod and commend them on their bravery. He knew to ask the captains if their men were being properly fed, if they needed new boots. He knew to bolster the men with compliments, rather than pointing out that they looked half-trained, that a third of their number saluted with the wrong hand, and that their uniforms didn’t match.

Isa, at his side, relaxed noticeably. “You’re good with them, Whiskers,” she whispered. “A regular dominatrix.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Where did you get that word?”

“I read it.”

“What kinds of books have you been reading?”

“Whatever I could find! Not enough people read out here—most of them are illiterate. It’s not easy to find books. I read it, and assumed it meant dominating, commanding . . . like a leader, right? No?”

He smiled. “Not really.”

“Stupid language.” She dug out her notebook and made a notation.

Once the inspection was done, they followed the captains to the rebellion’s version of a command center—a log cabin with maps on the inside walls.

As they entered, one of the men asked Isa where to find the latest scout reports, and she just shrugged. “Why are you asking me?” she said. “Talk to the scouts, dimwit.”

Siris smothered a smile. She was hardly a natural leader—while she was clever, she did not know how to deal with people. Not without insulting them a few times, at least.

The commander of Isa’s “troops” was a weathered, white-haired woman named Lux. Those scars on her face, and the way she scowled perpetually, made her seem part daeril. She hadn’t come to meet him with the others; instead, she looked him up and down as they entered the command center, then snorted.

“Hell take me,” she said. “You really are one of them.”

“You can tell by looking?” Siris said.

“You all look like teenagers,” Lux said. “Pampered teenagers with the baby fat still on you.” She turned toward the maps on one of the walls. “Eyes are wrong, though.”

Curious. She had seen Deathless without their helms or masks on, then? Siris filed away the information. “Too old?” he asked, stepping up beside Lux. Isa joined them.

“Yeah, you know too much. But the greater part is because you’re just too damn confident. I’ve never met a boy your apparent age who is so sure of himself. Arrogant, yes. Confident, no.”

He didn’t feel particularly confident—but the Dark Self was. And, he supposed, she was probably right because of it.

“You’ve had combat experience,” he said.

“Served under Saydhi during the Broken Cliffs campaign. Heard you offed her.”

“I did.”

“Permanently? Gone for good?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not supposed to be possible,” Lux said, still looking at the maps.

“It is now,” Siris said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I killed her, and you realized that they could be fought.”

She eyed him. “Know too much,” she said under her breath. “Yeah, definitely one of them.”

And, startled, he realized that he did know too much about her. Not this woman specifically, but her type of person. He had lived for a long, long time. Buried deeply within him was an instinctive understanding of someone like Lux. She’d always fought for Saydhi loyally, counting herself lucky at least to not be one of the poor sods who had to work the fields.

That had built in Lux a certain guilt, perhaps even a resentment. She was happy to not have a worse life, but felt that she profited from the sacrifice of so many others. When Saydhi had fallen, it had come to Lux like a moment of revelation and light. The Deathless could actually die. They weren’t gods.

Siris would bet she had resigned her post that very day.

“What kind of training do your soldiers have?” Siris asked.

“As much as I could give them in six months,” Lux said. “We have done a few raids on the God King’s thugs, killing everyone involved and leaving signs to make it look like wild daerils were behind the attacks. He sent troops and wiped out the nearest batch of those, though, so if we try it again we’ll need a different cover.”

She hesitated.

“That was just training,” she continued. “A skirmish, not a full fight. I worried that anything more would reveal us.” She looked at him. “This is not a rebellion, Deathless.”

“It’s not?”

“No. It’s a desperate group of fools who need something to believe in. If you want a real rebellion, you’re going to need a real army.”

“No,” Siris said. “You’re wrong.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“To have a real rebellion, General,” he said, meeting her gaze, “we don’t need an army. We just need to convince everyone that we have one.”

“A lie.”

“Isa tells me that there is a rising air of malcontent,” Siris said. “We need the people out there—the townsfolk telling stories about oppression, the cobblers who are tired of taxation, the farmers who are starving—to believe that fighting back has even the smallest chance of working. Then you’ll see a rebellion. Do you have any intelligence on the enemy?”

“Some,” she said. “I brought what I could with me when I abandoned my post—some stronghold layouts, troop numbers, things like that. A few of the people who joined us also worked for the Deathless, and they brought information too. That, mixed with what we’ve stolen in our raids, gave us something to work from. It’s random and spotty, though.”

“Bring it to me,” Siris said. “I want everything you have.”