Heart of Defiance (The Royal Spares)

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Signy

I ’m so busy staring at my unexpected defender that the first surge of conversation rushes past me without my comprehending.

Landric stands tall and defiant, his dark brown eyes penetrating beneath the sweep of his coppery hair. He’s staring down the soldiers rather than looking at me.

He thinks I’m right? He’s arguing in my favor—in front of all that’s left of our town?

Did he take a blow to the head in the middle of the destruction last night?

Then the comments being tossed around penetrate my consciousness.

Norbert the old cobbler is waving his hand toward me dismissively. “We can’t trust anything that comes out of that girl’s mouth. Even her own godlen didn’t trust her enough to give her a gift.”

The crouched figures nearby sway uneasily. A woman farther back is sniffling. “The Darium empire always wins. ”

One of the devouts who escaped the All-Giver’s temple dips his head. “We took one of their lives, and they took our whole town. You can’t conquer every foe.”

I feel my aunt’s piercing gaze on me before I pick out her face in the crowd. “Signy never could make anything of herself. She’s the last person any of us should be following.”

Jostein’s bright blue eyes have fixed on me again. His mouth slants at a discomforted angle. “Your dedication sacrifice was rejected?”

A heaviness presses down on my chest. I force a tight smile, wiggling my remaining toes within my boots, not that he can see them. “I asked Inganne for more creative talent. Apparently she didn’t think I’d make a good artist.”

And what that has to do with my opinions on the Darium empire, I can’t really see. But more disheartened mutters are still passing through the crowd, any rebellious energy that was left dwindling by the second.

Landric shakes his head, though his stance has already started to deflate as if he can tell this is a losing battle. “If Signy knows about anything, it’s how to survive without much support. She pulled together an entire household with the scraps everyone else threw away.”

“Because she couldn’t manage better,” someone calls out, and another burst of disparaging murmurs follows.

I suppress a wince and lower my head. The insults sting, but they’re nothing new.

What prickles deeper is the frustration that’s gripped me since the first moment I saw the Darium soldiers swing at Mom’s fountain. The frustration that’s maybe been simmering in me for longer than I knew.

How can they just give up? How can they shrug off the latest horror the Darium empire has inflicted on us on top of so many others?

The dukeling liked to call me the waif of refuse, but it’s all the rest of them who’ve been sitting down and eating a pile of shit without complaint, day after day. And now we’re absolutely mired in it.

Unless we find a way to dig ourselves out. To throw the shit right back at the pricks who buried us in it.

What do any of us have left to lose? I’ve certainly got nothing.

I square my shoulders and lift my gaze again, pitching my voice to carry. “Just listen!”

I’m still a little surprised when the barrage of voices falls silent. Not knowing how long their grace will last, I hurtle onward. “We have a chance. Even the empire knows we do. The Darium soldiers must see our rebellion as a legitimate threat or they wouldn’t have come down on us so harshly over one brief scuffle.”

“Or maybe they’re just bastards,” someone grumbles.

“No,” I say. “They’re not used to anyone fighting back. It terrifies them. They’ve gotten complacent—because we’ve gotten complacent, just taking whatever they inflict on us. They aren’t prepared for a real uprising. None of them have needed to face one before.”

The soldier next to Jostein, the one with blond hair tucked behind his ears and a roguish grin, arches a skeptical eyebrow at me. “And you think you’re in a position to face them? The entire Darium army?”

I stare steadily back at him. “Yes, I do.”

My gaze travels over the townspeople hunched all through the woods around me. “If we strike out at them again, fast and effectively, while they’re thinking they’ve cowed us, we could do some real damage. And the more we push back and tear them down, the more people from other towns will realize it’s possible and join us.”

The image unfurls in my mind’s eye, the way I can sometimes look at a cracked bucket or a tattered net and see how it could be mended into something functional again. Veldunians standing up against Darium soldiers all across the country. Not just hundreds but tens of thousands of us, fueled by centuries of bottled anger.

My voice falters with the enormity of what I’m saying, but I push the words out. “We could… We could take our whole country back. If we’re just willing to try.”

Someone snorts, and someone else makes a scoffing sound. “That’s dreaming too big.”

But the image has taken hold of me too forcefully for me to back down. I can almost taste it, the freedom from fear and tyrannical demands. The knowledge that our home was really ours, with the rules and justice we decided on.

Where no child ever lost someone they loved because an asshole in a skeleton-painted uniform took offense.

“It’s not,” I insist. “Not if we show the rest of Velduny what’s possible. There’s—there’s a Darium guard post just an hour’s ride southeast of here. That’s probably where some of the pricks who burned our town are holed up now, rejoicing their ‘victory.’ I say we burn the guard post down to the ground as payback. I’ll go do it even if I have to by myself.”

“And what would they do to us next?” Norbert demands.

I pause, and a laugh hitches out of me with the obvious answer. “What could they do? How would they even know who attacked them, or where to find us? They took away the place where we lived. Now all of Velduny is our home.”

A burst of more emphatic conversation erupts, voices clashing and colliding, but a note of excitement reverberates through some of them.

They’re listening. They’re seeing what I see.

The captain steps in, her square jaw tight. I suppose I should be glad she hasn’t brought out the gag she threatened yet.

She glowers at me. “All right, you said your piece. But you’re not burning anything down while you’re tied to a tree. What your neighbors need is rest and healing, not a call to arms.”

Jostein shifts his weight from one foot to the other and glances over at her. His expression has tensed even more than before. “Captain… She has made some good points. I think she could see them through.”

As I clamp my teeth to avoid gaping at him in shock, his captain’s head jerks toward him. I’m even more shocked that she doesn’t snap at him for contradicting her but studies him pensively.

“Let’s not hear any insubordination out of you, squad leader,” she says, but her voice is simply terse, not outright cutting.

The blond man who seems to be Jostein’s friend rocks back on his heels with an air of restless enthusiasm. “One little guard post, hit it in the middle of the night, no one the wiser… We could just see what happens. Baby steps rather than diving in headfirst.”

The captain lets out a growl of irritation. “Iko, you can’t call instigating war a ‘baby step.’”

He shrugs and offers her one of his crooked grins. “I think I just did.”

The captain glares at both him and Jostein for a moment. Then she points at me. “I think this one is stirring up enough trouble with her neighbors. You two, bring her over to my tent so she can’t disturb them any more while we figure out what to do with all of these people. I trust between the two of you, you can keep her restrained.”

She marches off through the trees. A hush has fallen over our makeshift camp.

An ache expands in my stomach. So now I’m going to be set apart from the rest of my town all over again, when we don’t even have a town left ?

Jostein and Iko exchange a look I can’t read. Jostein crouches next to me to untie the rope that binds me to the tree trunk while Iko kneels by my ankles. I guess I should be glad they’re going to let me walk rather than carting me over like a trussed pig.

They leave my wrists tied and yank me to my feet by my elbows. My legs wobble after so long sitting in that cramped position.

Landric is still on his feet. “You’re not really going to?—”

Jostein aims a hard look at him. “Captain’s orders. No one’s going to hurt your woman.”

I sputter indignantly. “I’m not his.”

Iko hums in apparent amusement and tugs me forward.

We tramp between the trees in silence, past a few small tents the soldiers have set up to a slightly taller one with a little Veldunian flag waving from its front post.

Inside, we find the captain sitting on a stool by the far end. She has a map unrolled on her lap.

At our entrance, she nods and makes a brief gesture for the men to sit me down across from her. They let go of me, Jostein a little warily. “Do you want us to bind her legs again? She does have a habit of running off.”

The captain shakes her head. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

The men move to leave, but she clears her throat. “Actually, I’d like to speak to both of you too.”

Something in her tone sharpens my attention. I peer at her as she sets the map aside and considers me in return.

Jostein and Iko stay where they are, Jostein’s posture stiff with tension and Iko slinging his thumbs in his belt in a casual stance.

“You raised some interesting points,” the captain says to me. “I see the guard post you mentioned. There wouldn’t be more than ten soldiers stationed there at any given time, if that.”

I shrug. “It’d be a start. A symbol that we can fight back.”

“Or simple revenge.”

My jaw clenches. “If I only wanted revenge, I’d have hunted them down years ago for killing my parents. I’m tired of standing back and letting them screw us over again and again. I’m tired of feeling like nothing we do matters, because they can step in and ruin it in an instant. Do you like pretending to have some authority when you’re really just their puppet?”

A muscle ticks in the captain’s cheek. She fixes her gaze on the men. “And you agree with the sedition she’s spouting?”

Jostein manages to tense even more. “I can see the logic to her strategy, if someone was going to push back against the empire.”

Iko snorts. “Let’s not pretend that all of us wouldn’t like to see all those Darium pricks with their heads on pikes.”

“Hmm.” The captain glances down at the map and back at us. “We’re staying here another day while we gather supplies for these people and determine where they might be taken. So there would be plenty of opportunity for just a few of this company to slip off after dusk falls and put their words into action.”

Jostein’s eyes widen so much I think they might fall out of his head. “You’re saying?—”

“I’m saying if you believe in this one, you can stand with her—and fall with her. Stir up the makings of a rebellion if you can. If you’re caught…” The captain lifts her shoulder. “I’ll say you deserted our company and condemn you.”

My breath catches in my throat. She’s really agreeing to this plan .

But the men have far more to lose than I do. I look over at them, my heart pounding.

Iko nods, a subtler smile curving his lips. After a moment, with a flex of his jaw, Jostein does too.

“Someone has to light the first match,” he says. “I couldn’t ask anyone else to do it if I won’t myself.”

Iko gives a muted whoop and pumps his fist in the air. “Let’s go hand those Darium bastards their asses!”