Tybalt started looking around, presumably for the hidden path he had mentioned when they were on the ground.

  As he felt along the wall, lifting and probing the moss that lined the cliff face, Sperry took the opportunity to ask some questions.

  “Tybalt, you really saw nothing of the enemy who almost killed you?”

  “That’s the big perk of using arrows, Lieutenant. You don’t need to look into the other fellow’s eyes as you kill him. You ought to try them sometime, though I know fire’s good for that too.”

  Sperry winced but made herself keep talking. She wouldn’t let Tybalt steer the conversation.

  “And then you traded shirts with Baldwin.”

  “Sure we did, we love swapping clothes,” he said sarcastically. “Don’t you have any sisters? Siblings do it all the time. We just wanted to get in on the fun.”

  “Only younger brothers.” She did not dignify the rest of his words with further reply, but Tybalt seemed to interpret what she had said as an invitation to get a little bit personal.

  “I only have a half-sister myself, but I hear clothing swapping is lots of fun.”

  “So that’s why you did it? For fun?”

  “Doesn’t sound like us, honestly. Can you think of a reason why we would?”

  She thought for a minute. “If Baldwin was wearing the other gambeson, it would mean he was the one who got hurt.” She slowly added, “But why would you let him be the hero for saving you when you could have gotten the credit…?”

  “Assuming that Commander Volusia would give me credit in the first place instead of finding a way to blame me for Baldwin getting hurt, that’s a good question.”

  “He’s not like that. I know you and he don’t like each other, but he’s basically fair.” She noticed that her voice had lost most of its conviction from the last time she had defended Volusia.

  Tybalt didn’t seem to realize, though.

  “And you really believe that,” Tybalt said, shaking his head. “I envy you. I think I understand a little better why you’re willing to serve in the King’s Army now. I bet you believe the whole country is run justly, too, from top to bottom.”

  Sperry gave him a withering look, then visibly deflated.

  “No, I’m not quite there,” she admitted. “I have lost a little faith.” Her hand rose slightly, in a gesture that made it appear as if she was surprised at herself for speaking so frankly to Tybalt. Like she was holding herself back from covering her mouth.

  “That’s… very honest,” Tybalt said, taking a moment to look her in the eyes as he spoke.

  The search paused for a minute as the two conversed and focused entirely on the conversation, speaking in hushed tones despite the squad being over thirty feet below them now.

  “You knew about this already, though,” Sperry said. “You’ve known for a while, it sounded like.”

  Tybalt looked away, then simply nodded.

  “How did you stay on?” Sperry asked. “Or… why? Why do the others in the squad? If what we’re doing is…”

  He met her eyes again. “I’m an extraordinarily selfish person,” he said. “I make no apologies. For my own ambitions, I would kill a lot of people. That’s the truth. I made the mistake of getting assigned to a squad with no prospects for upward mobility, especially for me personally. Since I’m obnoxious and disliked. But I was willing to go along with everything. Killing is killing. That’s what soldiers do. I didn’t like it, but I’m not here for my pleasure. The rest of the men, I don’t know. In some cases, I think there’s nothing in their hearts. For most of them, I think they tell themselves that beastfolk aren’t human. That the girls they rape aren’t like their daughters. The civilians they kill aren’t like their own families. Just a guess. I’m supposed to renew my contract or end it after this mission. I’m not going to stay in the Army after this. No one can make me. So I’m done.”

  “I still can’t believe—” But Sperry stopped herself in mid-sentence and shook her head. She felt that Tybalt had been completely sincere in everything he had just said. Even where it was extremely unflattering. She wasn’t going to respond to that by lying to herself and him. “There has to be another way. Something besides just quitting that you can do. Have you ever tried reporting up the chain of command?”

  Tybalt looked like he was going to make fun of her for a moment—a slightly bitter, cynical expression crossed his face, barely older than hers—then clearly held that instinct in check.

  His next words came slowly. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t make trouble. You’re only causing problems for yourself. The higher ups don’t care. Transfer to a different squad. That’s what I would tell someone I care about. You’ll just wreck your career, maybe put yourself in danger, if you open your mouth about this.”

  Then why did you tell me? she wanted to ask.

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  But then Tybalt’s eyes widened. He hadn’t been actively searching, as far as Sperry could see, but his hand had touched on something beneath the moss. Both of them looked at the area his fingers had brushed. Soil crumbled away from where his hand had grazed the cliff face. The fact that the cliffside was otherwise almost entirely solid stone made this notable.

  “This is a cave-in,” Tybalt said, as if thinking aloud.

  “Sorry?” Sperry said. “Are you saying there was a cave here?”

  He nodded wordlessly, his fingers quickly brushing the moss aside. There was a circular hole in the stone of the cliff, large enough for a crouched human, now filled in with loosely packed dirt.

  Was this where they shot at Tybalt from? Where they came from when they killed Lorenzo and Jackson?

  “Fuck,” Tybalt said quietly, clearly dismayed.

  Sperry gave him a pointed look, in response to which he rolled his eyes.

  “I mean to say, we’re in some trouble,” he said. “Look.”

  He pointed to several thick hunks of tree branch that sat broken and scattered along the ledge.

  “Where did those come from?” she asked.

  “There was a path here,” Tybalt said, tracing the part of the cliffside that was filled in with dirt using two fingertips. His voice had assumed the air of a teacher, Sperry noticed in the back of her mind. “A tunnel or cave that went partway through the mountain. They shot at me from here, and then I assume that they used it to come through and kill two of our men. At some point, they filled it in. I don’t know how they did it so quickly or why they closed off this route. It’s possible they have another way of getting out here to attack us. Either way, caving it in took pre-planning. Someone had been planning to fight the Army before we showed up.” His gaze went distant for a moment, as if lost in his own speculations, but he quickly shook himself and returned to explaining. “I think these tree branches were support beams holding up a manmade section of cave that the beastfolk dug out themselves. When they collapsed it, whatever wood was left behind got smashed into chunks.”

  Or they smashed the wood, and that’s what caused the cave-in, Sperry thought. Either way.

  “We should go down and report this,” Sperry said.

  “Or we could climb further and see if there are other passages like this,” Tybalt suggested. “They have to have some way of getting to the abandoned village, then back to their part of the mountain, quickly. They wouldn’t have destroyed this cave if they didn’t have another route. Probably. If we discovered it, that would be a big deal.”

  After a moment of thought, Sperry nodded.

  It made sense, and it wasn’t as if this climb had come at the tail end of a long day of walking. She had plenty of energy left.

  The two began to climb again, but Tybalt let her take the lead this time. They were no longer searching for a specific landmark that he knew about, so perhaps her rank mattered more to him than asserting himself or showing off.

  She made it to the next ledge, reached down, and pulled him the rest of the way up. She thought he looked less surprised by her strength this time, but still seemed a little impressed that she was probably physically stronger than him. Usually, men found that off-putting.

  They searched.

  Then they did the same thing for another ledge.

  And another. She was consistently a slightly faster climber than him, despite his obvious skill and experience, so she repeatedly wound up lifting him the short distance that separated them. The ledges continued to average around ten feet apart, so she probably saved him a fifth of the climbing she was doing.

  “I could get used to scaling a cliff being so easy,” he said after she pulled him up a fourth time. He was grinning at this point.

  “You’re pretty good at it yourself,” she admitted.

  “It’s part of my training as a scout,” Tybalt replied. “They don’t assume we’re good at things like animal training, so I had to be capable of reaching most of the places I use Val to check now.”

  Sperry nodded, then flailed her arms, her eyes going wide. The wind had whipped under her shirt and pulled her back, throwing her off balance. She could feel the open air behind her, insistently tugging, her feet tilting backward—and then Tybalt had his arm around her waist. He pulled her closer to the cliff face.

  “We have to stick close to the rock up here,” he said quietly, not looking at her. “The wind is picking up. It gets worse with altitude, and I’d hate to fall from this height.”

  They were at least sixty feet up. Probably closer to seventy.

  There was a little part of Sperry that wanted to point out that the fall wouldn’t have injured her too much. Probably. With her class, her physical strength and constitution were high enough that she imagined she wouldn’t have more than a sprained ankle, quickly healed with a health elixir.

  Then she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her body shook slightly, and she felt her heart. It was beating out of her chest.

  I was actually afraid. And I’ve never actually fallen from up anywhere near this high. Maybe I would’ve died… or at least broken a leg.

  Instead of trying to argue with the rescue, Sperry muttered a quiet, “Thank you.”

  She could feel herself flush slightly as she spoke. Tybalt’s arm around her waist was pleasantly warm, a comforting weight.

  He simply nodded and gave Sperry a small smile, still not looking straight at her. Was his face going a little pink, too? It was hard to tell. His skin was so pale. It could just be the beginnings of a sunburn.

  “We should probably make this the last ledge anyway,” Tybalt said after a moment. He tilted his face up, as if pointing with his forehead. “The handholds are getting worse. I don’t think we can climb much further this way. Even if we could, the rest of the squad couldn’t follow. It won’t be much use even if we discover a beastfolk passage up here. Plus—” He touched the rock just above their heads and showed her his fingertips. They were wet.

  Sperry nodded her understanding. Moisture on the rock would make further climbing that way extremely unsafe.

  The two checked the ledge they were on for any other hidden caves, but they had no luck. They performed the rest of the search in silence, but they stayed close together, not splitting up this time. Tybalt kept his arm around her waist. Sperry told herself that was best—for Tybalt’s safety. If his stamina ran low, she could hold him up. She was up there for his protection, after all.

  And he was clearly tired from the climb already. His rasping breaths close in her ear made that obvious, if she hadn’t known.

  Sperry felt the absence of his arm around her waist with a strange twinge of something like regret when they finally turned back and began to descend.

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