Empire of Shadows

26.

"It's been a week."

Raziel let out a groan.

Everyone else ignored him.

Dante stepped behind Jameson who instinctually put an arm on her shoulder. She finally said the words that everyone had been thinking. "What if he really is dead?"

It was Vasco's turn to groan, but he'd been griping for the past two days ever since he dropped a satchel containing his bejlen game cards and a few kips into the river.

To hear him complain, you'd think he'd lost a satchel of diamonds, Dante thought bitterly.

Vasco finally spoke, threading his hands through his hair. "Ketil isn't dead."

He was ignored by all of them. His optimism was beginning to become annoying to just about everyone.

Anubis studied her maps that stretched across a cot and was marked with thin lines of ink and rushed notes. "Raziel, come here."

He grudgingly came as she called, bending to stare at the map. "We've traveled twenty miles in the past week. That's a terrible rate."

"To be fair, we have been stopping every half hour to search for Ketil," Lio whispered, running a knife underneath his fingernails. "We've traveled, in a week, twenty miles straight toward Kampsden, but we've been all across this place so we've really traveled who knows how many miles."

Dante wrapped an arm around Jameson's waist nervously, clinging onto him as if he was a cane. "So what are we going to do then?"

Anubis was silent, her brows creased as she stared at the map. She ignored the pressing silence in the room, even as Vasco paced, the blue fog of his ability swirling between his palms. With each second ticking by, morning was becoming nearer and he was losing a grasp on his ability.

Anubis finally grabbed him by the shoulder, stopping him in his tracks and messing up his concentration. "Stop pacing."

Vasco did, throwing himself down on the cot beside the maps. Raziel snarled soundlessly at him, turning his back as he traced a finger against a map. "If we really try, we can be in Kampsden in ten days. This is pushing our horses hard and without any expected delays due to weather."

"The townsfolk predict the skies to be clear for the next two weeks," Jameson answered, absentmindedly playing with a strand of Dante's hair. "Something about the way the trees are in bloom? I don't know, but I've overheard that much."

"Good."

Vasco sighed, running his hands through his hair. Exhaustion weighed in his eyes and voice, but that was nothing odd for the Order. Dante could feel the tiredness weighing lead-heavy in her own bones. "We're just going to move on then? We're going on to Kampsden to assassinate Empress Aslaug ourselves?"

Lio jerked to attention from where he lounged in a chair, two out of the four legs off the ground. "This is a job for me. It will be hard for all of us to blend in, but in shadow form..." he stared at his hands, closing his open palms into tight fists. "I will be unstoppable. I will take her in her sleep before anyone can stop me. By morning, we will have established ourselves as the new rulers of Polaria."

They were all silent. Dante wanted to say something to defend staying and continuing their search for Ketil, but what argument could she make? Ketil was, as far as they knew, very dead. They had a mission to accomplish and if Ketil couldn't cary out the mission, someone else would have to. From that decision, it was easy to see who would carry out a task of assassination. No one was as talented at the art as Lio.