The Last Stand (The Eleven Years War: Book One)
Chapter Forty

Elise slowly emerged from the dungeon,her entire body numb. She was light-headed from using so much fire, to thepoint where she couldn’t quite walk straight, and every place the Giskens hadhit her was throbbing painfully.

She could hardlybelieve everything that had happened to her in the past few hours. The Giskenshad arrested her and beaten her for information. Olrick had just rescued her,but not without a price; she’d had to kill people for the first just to get outof the dungeon, and Olrick was still down there, likely stalling for her untilshe could get away. It felt like her entire world was falling apart around her.

AsElise began walking towards the servants’ quarters and her comfortable bed, sheheard soft footfalls coming from behind her. When she looked over her shoulder,praying to the gods that she wasn’t being chased by more Giskens, she saw thatit wasn’t an enemy soldier: it was a very unhappy-looking Eza.

“What’sgoing on?” Elise asked as she began walking toward her.

“Ishould be asking you that,” Eza said.She took her by the shoulder and began leading her across the hall, towards oneof the private dining rooms. “Let’s get you somewhere safe, first; wouldn’twant the Giskens replaceing you, again.”

Oncethey were in the dining room, Elise saw that Eza wasn’t the only person thathad been waiting for her to come back. Silas was also in the dining room,picking something out of his teeth with a dagger. He’d unbuttoned his suitjacket, revealing a dirty white shirt underneath his now slightly wrinkled suit.

Silasput the dagger back in its sheathe and stood up. “Well, where have you been,you little sh-“ Eza smacked him on the back of the head, hard, before he couldfinish his sentence.

“Everything’sgone to hell, and that’s what youask?” Eza asked. “By the saints, Silas, try and focus on what’s important!”Silas whistled.

“Ooookay,”he said. “I see that you’re nice andon edge this evening.” He looked over at Elise. “What exactly happened,tonight? Did someone walk in on you?”

Eliseshook her head. “There were soldiers waiting for me in Raul’s room when I gotthere. They knew that I was going to be there.” Silas cursed, while Eza justgot an even angrier look on her face.

“Howlong have they known about this?” he asked himself.

“It’sbeen at least two weeks,” Eza said. “That information about the small easternforce must have been planted for things to go as horribly wrong as they did.”

“Andwhat happened to Olrick?” Silas said.

Elisecould feel her blood run cold as she looked down at her feet. It wasn’t untilthat moment that the pieces began to fit together.

“Itwas a trap,” she said to herself, shocked.

“What?”Elise looked back up.

“Duringmy interrogation, they kept asking me who put me up to this, and they didn’tstarve me when I didn’t say anything.” she said. “They didn’t want me; theywanted one of you.” Once again, Silas cursed as Eza began pacing back andforth, running a hand through her hair.

“Lookslike the Giskens know more about counter intelligence than we thought,” Silassaid. He began walking towards the door. “My turn to break someone out. If Idon’t come back, you’ll be getting control of the intelligence service, Eza.”

Ezatook her staff and whacked it against his chest. “No, you aren’t. Not yet,anyway.” Silas sighed and folded his arms over his chest.

“Andwhat do you suggest?” he asked.

“Obviously,that strategy doesn’t work,” Eza said. “We need information on what’s going on,or else this cycle of getting caught and getting rescued is just going to continueuntil those Giskens take one of us away to die.”

“Andlet me guess,” Silas said. “You’ll bethe one to get that information.”

“Seeingas I’m the only one between the two of us that can fit in the assassin’s hole,yes,” Eza said. “Unless you want to cram yourself into it, then by all means,go ahead.”

So, there is an assassin’s hole in Raul’s room. Elise had been wondering aboutthat ever since Raul had mentioned it weeks ago.

Silassighed, exasperated. It seemed that he knew that there wouldn’t be any winningthis argument. “Fine. Take a few hours to spy on Raul, then get your ass backhere. We don’t want another incident like tonight’s, got it?” Eza nodded andwalked out the door.

“Isshe going to kill Raul?” Elise asked once the door had shut behind Eza.

Silassnorted. “Sadly, no. She’ll just be hanging out in the hole to do some spying.As far as we know, Raul doesn’t know where that is, yet.” He sat down at thetable, running a hand through his hair and pulling a flask out from hisuniform’s inside pocket.

“Bythe way, your boyfriend came by right before Olrick left,” he said. “He was alittle upset; you may want to replace him in the morning.”

“Whatdo you mean, upset?” She asked as her stomach began to twist itself into knots.With everything that had happened to her over the past few hours, she’dforgotten about Finn. She couldn’t even imagine the things that must have runthrough his head when he found out about what had happened to her and why.

Silasshrugged. “Olrick was the one who talked to him. Whatever it was, it was bigenough that Finn looked like he was on the verge of tears.”

Elise sat down andput her head in her hands. Her gut told her that it had to do with her spyingon Raul.

“What was Ithinking?” she asked no one in particular. “I shouldn’t have done any of this.What in the world made me think that I was at all capable of spying on someonelike Raul?”

“Don’t beat yourselfup so much,” Silas said. “Believe me, you did a lot better than I ever thoughtyou would.” Elise looked over at him confused.

“You’re doing ahorrible job of making me feel better,” she said. Silas began to scratch hisbeard.

“I never was thatgood at it,” he said. “What I was trying to say was that you’ve done a betterjob than that prostitute I was going to hire would have.” Elise could feel hercheeks beginning to burn red.

“You were going tohire a prostitute for that, too?” she asked. How many of those could hepossibly know?

“First of all, Lirais an escort; there’s a huge difference,” Silas said. “And yes, I was going tohire a prostitute to come in and spy on Raul, but Eza didn’t think it would bea good thing if she were to – well – use her feminine charms on the general toget us information, and that kind of person’s loyalty only goes as deep astheir pockets. We knew that you were loyal beyond coin and your means ofgetting information wouldn’t be so scandalous.”

“So, you decided torecruit me because I’m not a prostitute?” she asked. Silas sighed, leaning backin his chair.

“If you want to takeit that way, sure,” Silas said with a shrug. “What I’m trying to say is thatthere’s some damned good reasons why we wanted you to do this. Believe me, wedidn’t pick you because you were the most convenient choice.” Elise foundherself smiling, if just slightly. Unlike the rest of the pep talk, that parthad managed to make her feel a little better.

“Now, you need to getyourself to bed,” Silas said. “Don’t worry about getting up early to do servantstuff; I think you’ve earned yourself some time to sleep in, tonight.”

Ezasat in the assassin’s hole, watching Raul as he sat at his desk, reading somemilitary reports that evening. Even with how small she was, the hole stillmanaged to be a little cramped: after all, it was meant for quick assassinations,not long spying efforts. She didn’t mind, though. By far, the assassin’s holewas one of the more comfortable places she’d had to spy on people from.

Thehole was actually accessed through the servant’s passage, next to the door thatgave the servants access to the room. Unlike that door, though, the one to thisroom (if it was big enough to be called that) was more concealed; the onlypeople who knew how to access it were Polain, Silas, Olrick, herself, and allthe past rulers, generals, and intelligence officers who’ve been stationedthere. Even Marion didn’t know about the various hidden rooms in her owncastle, and she wouldn’t know until her coronation next month. Once inside, anormal-sized person had to sit with their legs up against their chest as theylooked into the room through a peephole, hidden from the view of whoever wasstaying in the room. If needed, there was a second, larger hole that could beused for assassinations. It did limit methods of death to poison darts, but notmany cared; as a member of the military intelligence core, she’d been trainedin most every type of weapon, though she certainly preferred her trusty staff.It wasn’t the kind of place that people would want to spend much time in, butanyone who knew about it wouldn’t care; there were worse places spies andassassins could spend time in.

SinceEza was a lot smaller than the average Watchmen or Rook, she could manage tosit down with her legs crossed and her staff leaning against the wall next toher. It made the job of spying on Raul a little easier, but she still foundherself getting antsy. She’d been sitting there for a good half hour, and allshe’d done was watch him read military report after military report. While itdid give her an appreciation of how Polain’s army ran (if she had to write areport on every single thing she did, she would probably go traitor, herself),it was getting her pretty annoyed. If it had been General Polain who had justcaught someone spying on him, he’d be a busy bee. He certainly wouldn’t spendhalf an hour reading intelligence reports and sipping Vercourian wine.

Finally,just as Eza was starting to fall asleep, there was a knock at Raul’s door.

Raulput down the wine and the intelligence report he was reading and stood up. “Enter.”

Oncommand, the door opened and a Gisken soldier walked in, holding yet anotherreport in his hand. He was young, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, and wasa private, judging by his white armband.

He saluted Raul. “GeneralRaul, sir.”

“Atease,” Raul said with a wave of his hand. The Gisken put his hand down andoffered him the letter.

“Messagefrom Kurzh, sir,” he said.

Thatsnatched Eza’s attention. Kurzh, her birthplace, had been an intelligence blackhole for ten years. It was rare to hear about anything of importance that wasgoing on, there.

Raultook the letter, opened it, and began reading it. Apparently, whatever was inthe letter was interesting; his frown grew deeper and deeper the more of it heread.

“Issomething wrong, sir?” the private asked as Raul sat back down at his desk.

“Doyou know who General Mitrius of Kurzh is, private?” Raul said. “Or are you alittle young for that?”

Ezafound herself leaning forward as her heart shot up into her throat. Mitrius hadtaken her in after she’d tried to pick his pockets. She, along with the rest ofthe world, hadn’t seen or heard from him since she left Kurzh.

“Ofcourse, sir,” the private said. “He was the general of the Kurzhian army beforewe liberated Kurzh; why?”

“Itseems that he’s been arrested,” Raul said. “They caught him trying to stealfood from our boys’ food supplies.”

Ezafelt like she’d been punched in the gut. If it had been anyone else, she wouldhave had some hope that they would live, but not Mitrius. In fact, she wasshocked they kept him alive long enough to arrest him. The closest man she’dhad to a father was going to be executed, and there wasn’t a thing she could doabout it.

Actually,no; there was something she could doabout it. She would do somethingabout it.

Shedidn’t even hear the rest of the conversation. Eza silently left the assassin’shole, already trying to come up with some way she could get back to the countryshe’d tried so hard to escape from.