Several days after leaving the capital, we crossed into the Icefang territory. The only reason that we knew it happened was the change in flags on the walls of the waystations we passed through and the different uniforms of the guards.

  While we were mounted in an enchanted carriage, not having a guard escort with us meant that we didn’t draw as much attention. Queen Gemma used her carriages to carry messages and convey important packages to her vassals, so while it was rare to see one passing through the area, it wasn’t so unexpected that it triggered additional checks.

  The other benefit of traveling under the queen’s mark was that no one dared to search the carriage. We were stopped several times by guards at the way stations, but our driver handed over the papers and then we were urged along.

  Embracing Valda’s earlier chastisement about getting used to Shape-Shifting even in small amounts, the girls all worked together to alter themselves enough to not stand out. While our papers from the queen gave a reason for our group to be there, we all agreed that standing out in the memories of the guards and locals was best avoided.

  Valda was the most extreme in her choices, shifting away her scales and claws to instead replace them with the features of a wolf kin woman with sandy brown hair. Rieka matched her fur color when we had to stop overnight at the way station. Kassandra, likewise, shifted her scale and hair color. Jane and Shayla only adjusted their hair colors to disguise themselves, while Shayla hid her wings and antennae under a hooded cloak since moth kin were rare in this part of the queendom and Shayla struggled more without her antennae than even Rieka did with shifting away her ears and tail. Personally, I thought the bulky garment was more suspicious than just showing herself off, but dropped it when the girls pointed out the number of travelers with such garments pulled close in the taverns.

  It was our second day in the Icefang territory when the driver slowed the carriage between towns, rapping on the panel under his seat that conveyed the sound through to where we were sitting.

  “We are close to where we will meet the spies,” Rieka explained, pulling the curtain over her window back to peek through. “You know, I’m both glad and surprised that we haven’t had something strange occur yet. But I’ve been jumpy ever since Mother’s carriage train was ambushed that one time…”

  “Where were you traveling from back then anyway?” I asked, mirroring Rieka’s actions on the other side of the carriage. “I’ve wondered about it a few times but never remembered to ask.”

  “My mother’s country estate,” Rieka answered with a shrug. “It was easier to return with her to the capital and then from there to Juneau.”

  “So it wasn’t just random bandits that attacked,” I said, not even bothering to pitch it as a question.

  “No, it was distinctly an attack,” Rieka replied dryly.

  Another knock came from the driver, this one a different pattern and then the carriage began to slow.

  With Rieka’s guidance, we got our things together and disembarked once the carriage had stopped. The driver had pulled us off the road into a cutout that was set up as a traveling rest-stop area. A fire ring was set with stones while old wood rounds made seats around it. Wood was stacked between two fir trees, the evergreen’s branches shielding them from rain.

  The driver didn’t speak, but gave a sharp nod to Rieka before he set to work strapping feed bags to the horses and setting up a simple camp.

  “He’ll wait here for us,” Rieka explained, hands on her hips. “Now we just have to wait for the agents to come to us.”

  I was already using Shape-Shifting to tune my senses higher. Between the scrape of Kassandra’s scales against the ground and the rustle of Shayla’s wings, I caught a distant crunch of a branch breaking in the trees behind the camp.

  A gesture to Valda caught the lizard-folk woman’s attention and she followed my gaze into the brush.

  “I think Liam already spotted them,” Kassandra said a moment later, pride oozing from her voice.

  I didn’t respond, scanning the trees for a long moment before a shifting outline that didn’t match the glimmer of leaf-shadows caught my attention.

  A push with Manipulate Element sent a pulse of mana into the soil, which echoed back within a moment revealing the presence of a half-dozen concealed bipeds up on the hillside.

  I locked onto the nearest of the six and stared directly at it, hands on my hips, waiting to see how they would react. I was fairly certain that these were the scouts and spies that we were here to meet, but I wasn’t going to take a risk.

  Ten seconds passed as my girls shifted to put myself and Valda between them and the spies while our driver continued to set his camp up as if he had not a care in the world.

  It was actually the old driver who broke the silence first, not looking up but calling out in a raspy voice that carried nonetheless.

  “Might as well show yourselves, the young lad’s spotted you. I wouldn’t be risking him or the ladies deciding you are threats.”

  A moment stretched out after our driver’s voice died away, then a figure in a woodland cloak stood from behind a bush, gesturing for us to follow before turning to walk back into the brush.

  I didn’t move, and neither did Valda. The driver snorted in amusement and shook his head, not looking up from where he was arranging wood in the firepit.

  The figure paused and looked back, obviously surprised we weren’t following. I just raised my eyebrows at them and Valda’s hand tightened on her sword hilt.

  Our little standoff was broken a moment later by a second figure standing up from the bushes. This one was even broader than the first and had a crossbow held across his chest, not aimed our way but loaded with a wicked, barbed bolt.

  “The victorious protector stands watch at the edge of the world,” the second figure said in a gruff, male voice.

  “Took you long enough,” Rieka grumbled behind me before replying. “Welcomed first by the crimson and the crown.”

  “Never can be too cautious,” replied the second figure, motioning with their head to beckon us forward. “Let’s get away from the road before a passerby shows up.”

  “Interesting choice in code phrases,” I murmured to Rieka as our group started up into the trees. I bent and scooped Jane up off the ground, making the mouse kin woman squeak in surprise before she clung to my chest. The underbrush was thick enough that I knew she’d have trouble, so I didn’t wait for her to ask.

  “How many people would catch the underlying notes besides us?” Rieka asked with a smirk. “I set up several codes like that with Mother after the attack on the caravan specifically if she had to send an agent that couldn’t or wouldn’t identify themselves.”

  “I don’t get it,” Shayla murmured from the back of the group.

  “It’s about us,” Kassandra explained in a low tone as we pushed through the bushes at the edge of the campsite and started up the hillside to where the figures waited. “Liam’s name translates into ‘victorious protector’ in the language of his people, and the ‘crimson’ and the ‘crown’ are myself and Rieka. Most folks who know the first part would instinctively put Rieka’s marker first, but I was the one to push for a partnership with Liam first.”

  “Interesting,” mumbled Jane in my ear and I gave her a squeeze around the waist.

  “If you think that one is fun, just wait for if we have to use the others,” Rieka said with a quiet laugh.

  The scouts led us up the hill, over a dry stream-bed and then to a game-trail that crossed the same stream. Within ten minutes, we were up over the low ridge that ran along either side of the road. The spies’ camp was tucked inside a narrow stone canyon that shielded it from view except from very specific directions.

  The camp itself was simple, a recessed fire pit built into the earth in the middle with a dozen small tents tucked into the bushes or under trees, concealed from casual glances by camouflage or the local terrain, but there if you knew where to look.

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  While we marched, the two cloaked figures we were following were joined by the four other people I’d detected. Three others popped up to signal them with hand gestures before dropping back out of sight as we walked. None of the agents spoke until we had reached the interior of the canyon. Even then, the only one to pull down his hood was the broad-shouldered one who had called out the code phrase to Rieka.

  I immediately memorized his features, pushing my improved intelligence score to try and learn whatever I could from this man at a glance.

  He was a bear kin, that much was obvious from his build and the rounded ears poking up out of his graying brown hair. The bushy beard that clung to his chin was well-maintained despite the environment, though it hadn’t evaded the sprinkling of white either, giving it the look of well-mixed cinnamon-sugar.

  “Princess, it is a pleasure to see you,” the bear kin man said, inclining his head in a shallow bow. “I hope the travel here was at least an easy trip?”

  “It was, Jeremiah,” Rieka replied with a small smile, stepping closer to the man. “I hope that we can resolve this issue soon. A man of your advanced years shouldn’t be camping out in the wilderness like this.”

  The bear kin man rolled his eyes derisively, but the edge of a smile tugged at his lips.

  “ ‘Advanced years,’ ” he mocked, laughing once sharply. “I’ve spent more time sleeping under open skies across the queendom than you’ve been alive, Princess.”

  “And I hope that you will get to spend just as much time tucked up comfortably in a bed,” Rieka countered primly. “Mostly because I know how much it annoys you to be sleeping on a soft surface. We can trade quips for hours, though. Do you have any news?”

  “We’ve spotted several groups of the constructs in the area,” the bear kin man said, gesturing toward the hole in the ground that had a thin trail of smoke rising from it. “Still haven’t been able to approach the ruins to get a look inside. Every time we get close, it always feels like something is waiting and watching us. It’s like the entire area is somehow warded, but we can’t locate the damn wardstones to confirm it. And I have two mages in my team, so they should have found them by now.”

  I felt Jane twitch in my arms and shot her a sideways glance. My mousy scholar looked like she wanted to say something but was holding it in right now. I could guess that she wanted to comment on or offer her help in finding the wardstones, but was resisting. So I gave her another affectionate squeeze around the waist before lowering her to the ground once more.

  “Thank you, Liam,” Jane whispered, blushing as she straightened her clothes.

  “No problem,” I replied with a wink while Rieka continued to talk to the leader of the little group. The other five scouts that had escorted us this far turned around to melt back into the bushes, likely returning to their watch on the land.

  “How much land are you surveying right now?” Rieka asked, arms crossed over her chest while she rubbed her chin in thought.

  “We are covering roughly eight miles of road right now,” Jeremiah said, grabbing a few sticks from a pile and stuffing them into the hole in the ground. A brief tongue of flame flared up from the fire-hole before the bear man produced a kettle from inside one of the tents and set it over the hole. “There have been a dozen or more sightings of the constructs in the last week alone. I’m almost positive they are increasing in numbers, but we can’t get close enough to confirm. There is some magical effect screening them as well, because our spyglasses blur out when we use them.”

  “I assume that you are using the enchanted glasses?” Rieka asked, her question forstalling one from Kassandra, who had followed the princess over to the fire while the rest of us trailed behind them.

  “Of course,” the bear man said. “Not that it’s done us any good. Those spyglasses are spelled to resist damage and fogging, but it’s like the constructs have a field around them that blurs their outlines. I’d say it’s useful and I would want a field like that for infiltration, but I also know it’d set off every warning bell in an intelligent mind if only one person in a crowd was suddenly hard to see at a distance.”

  Jeremiah turned to look out over the ridgeline. I followed his gaze toward the canyon entrance and spotted a rocky outcropping on a hill some miles off from the road.

  Bet that’s the keep they were talking about, I thought grimly. It’s set far enough back from the road that it doesn’t make any sense, unless it was supposed to be much taller.

  “I’m sure there are more of the constructs than there were two weeks ago,” Jeremiah said after a long moment, a frown showing through his thick beard. “Sightings have been increasing ever since we saw the group bringing people in chains.”

  “They might just be getting bolder and not hiding their numbers as much,” Valda suggested, though from the look on the swordswoman’s face, I could tell she doubted it.

  “Aye, that is possible,” Jeremiah said grimly. “But my guts are telling me there are more. The fact that the bastards can just disappear from one spot as if they sink into the ground and pop up elsewhere is frustrating to say the least.”

  “Do you have an earth mage with you?” Jane asked, her large ears wiggling while her tuft-tipped tail danced in the air behind her.

  “No,” Jeremiah replied without hesitation. “Our casters are wind and water, strong support and usually very powerful for tracking, but they haven’t had any luck with these.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out then,” I said without hesitation, getting a questioning look from the bear man.

  “Liam has earth magic amongst his talents,” Rieka said, flicking one hand dismissively to get the bear man’s attention once more.

  It was subtle, but I noticed Jeremiah’s eyebrows tic upwards when my name was mentioned. The look he shot me for just a second was appraising, but I didn’t react.

  Gemma must have mentioned me to him, I decided. I’m just glad that I kept my entropic magic as secret as I do. Means I have a trump card if something happens. The more people who know what I’m capable of, the easier it’ll be for people to come up with ways to handle me if they come after the girls. But Rieka seems to trust this guy, so I should as well. Also might be reconsidering their little test earlier too after the carriage-driver warned them.

  “That’ll be appreciated,” Jeremiah said a moment later. “I may have said it seems like they can burrow, but I have no proof of that. No signs of digging or holes left behind. They just seem to step behind a rock or bush and don’t step out again. It’s infuriating to say the least.”

  “I can imagine,” Rieka said, her tail hanging limply behind her.

  The sight of Rieka’s tail still told me just how hard she was thinking right now. My princess normally had a bit of a wiggle to the appendage even when being serious. The only time it went dead still was when she was stressed or extremely focused.

  “Any more of the guard groups come through?” Kassandra asked, taking the opportunity to ask while Rieka was lost in thought.

  “No,” Jeremiah said immediately. “We’ve been keeping watch for them, but nothing yet. I don’t know how often they come yet, we haven’t gotten enough samples. But the report we sent back to Her Majesty must have been concerning enough that she sent you out.”

  “Yes,” Rieka said distractedly. “There are other things in play that we are running down. Potential connections and motivations, but we cannot be sure of them just yet.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jeremiah said with a wave of his hand. “I taught you better than to just reveal everything after a few casual questions, Princess. I’ve got my orders to keep watch and send back reports. I know better than to pry into another’s mission.”

  “Speaking of,” Rieka said, her ears perking up. “I have orders for you from my mother.”

  Rieka turned toward me with a soft smile and held out her hand. She didn’t need to ask further.

  A brief tug of the ability and I produced the sealed messenger pouch from my Dimensional Pocket ability and opened it for her. Rieka rummaged for a moment in the pouch before pulling out a parchment-wrapped bundle sealed with ice-blue wax infused with a shimmer of magic.

  Turning, my princess held the package out to Jeremiah, who immediately stood and stepped forward to accept it with both hands. The bear kin’s eyes were intently fixed on me though, as I smoothly banished the bag into my Dimensional Storage once more.

  “Now that has to be handy beyond belief,” he said, bushy eyebrows in his hairline.

  “Yes, he is very helpful,” Rieka said. I knew she was intentionally misunderstanding him while teasing me at the same time because her tail began to wag slowly behind her and the way her hip cocked to one side.

  “If you will excuse me for a moment?” the bear man said. He didn’t wait for permission and pulled a slim silver blade from his sleeve. A quick slice of the blade over the sealing wax caused the shimmer to fade from the seal before he opened it and began to read.

  “What was that?” Jane asked curiously, her ears twitching while she watched Jeremiah with wide eyes.

  “Enchanted seal on the wax,” Rieka answered. “If someone had broken the wax without countering it, the whole letter would have burned up. Normally, they have to be carried in dimensional bags to ensure they are transported without damage. The pouch they are in is also sealed to only open at my touch, which is why Liam is carrying it to prevent accidents.”

  “Also you like making me carry your things,” I quipped, earning me a small grin from Rieka and a wink.

  “It is only right that a gentleman carries a lady's things,” Rieka replied primly.

  “Forget that she refuses to let anyone else carry her personal dimensional bag,” Kassandra said in a stage whisper between giggles.

  “To be fair, none of us do,” Jane said with a small smile. “I keep all my mana-infused metal in it, and feel naked without access.”

  “Same,” Shayla said quietly, her antennae slowly balling up then unclenching. “Are we going to be camping here long?”

  “That depends on how long Jeremiah spends reading his orders,” Rieka said with a shrug.

  “No more than an hour,” Jeremiah replied, folding over the parchment with his thumb to shoot Rieka a pointed look. “I have orders here to give you a copy of all our notes and the maps we’ve been drawing. It’ll take at least that long to copy it all over, even encoded. The orders state you have a message-pouch for them?”

  “Liam?” Rieka asked, and I pulled the carrier bag for her once more.

  A bit of rifling through the bag and Rieka produced a reinforced leather pouch imprinted with runes carved of mana metal that she offered to Jeremiah. The bear man took the pouch with a nod. He held it in one hand while skimming the parchment once more before nodding and squatting over the fire hole.

  A bit of shuffling had the kettle out of the way and he stuffed the papers with the written orders into the hole. A few seconds later and the ashes were all that was left.

  “I’ll get started on the copies,” Jeremiah said. “Feel free to make yourselves comfortable for the moment. The tea will be ready in a few more minutes so you have something to drink while you wait, then we’ll get you back on your way.”

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