Page 33 of Bound By Fire
7
Ridge
The last quarter of the trail is the steepest. I take it at a pace that has my shirt sticking between my shoulder blades by the time the trees thin out, which is just as well.
The Sister Stones rise out of the undergrowth ahead of me. The spring at their base runs narrow this time of year. It bubbles between two of the stones and disappears into a patch of moss.
Reed is already there, with her back to the largest of the three rocks. She is in hiking clothes. Her hair is pulled back in a knot at the base of her neck.
She watches me come up the last of the slope.
“Councilor.”
“Ridge. Thank you for coming.”
“You didn’t exactly leave me an out.”
“I left you one. You chose not to take it. Let’s skip the preamble, shall we?”
She has a leather satchel at her feet.
“I’ll keep this as short as I can,” she says. “Two days ago, our IT department intercepted communications between someonefrom Draig and the Mainland. I’m not going to get into the details. They are not important; suffice to say that the intel was damning and worrisome.”
“What intel?”
“Eight individuals were named as spies for the Mainland. Assets of the Mainland planted among us. Actively supplying intelligence and in the perfect position to sabotage some of the key operations on Draig.”
“Eight.” I whistle low. “That’s a high number.”
“Yep.” She nods. “Sure is.”
“Who did the information come from?” I ask.
“We don’t know exactly. Like I said, the how and the why aren’t important. Our department is on it, but we may never know where the information came from.”
“Who are the eight?”
“I’ll get to that in due course. Let me finish.”
I dip my head once.
“Three of the names are human. Five are our own kind. All of them hold positions where harm could be done if they chose to do it. They all hold executive positions. Every one of them has been with us long enough to be trusted. That is the part that is most worrying.”
“Or that is the part that is meant to be worrying.”
She points at me. “There it is. That is why I called you and not someone else.”
“You think the whole thing is planted?”
“I think it is a little too clean. I think the choice of names is too useful. If we act on this in the way the intercepted information invites us to act on it, we will pull eight people out of key roles. If even a quarter of them are innocent, we have carved holes in our own defenses that we won’t fill in months. Maybe longer. And all at a time when we can least afford it.”
“And if you do nothing and they are guilty, you’ve got eight assets ready to act against us in the middle of…wherever we are heading.”
“Exactly.”
“So you have to look into all of them.” I fold my arms.
“That’s right…I do. I need to do it quickly and quietly without pulling any of them out until we know for sure if they’re dirty or not. It has to be without alerting any of them. Without putting it in any system that the sender of the information could have access to.”
