Page 113 of Rule of Wolves

“Manure,” Tamar replied.

A low moo sounded from somewhere ahead.

“It’s a dairy,” Mayu exclaimed.

Tamar signaled them onward. “It was a dairy.”

Queen Makhi had hidden this secret facility in plain sight. And her messenger had led them right to the door.

She’d taken the bait. Ehri had made sure to tell Makhi that she’d left Grisha guards to protect their grandmother at the Palace of the Thousand Stars. They knew that threat wouldn’t stop Makhi, and they also knew that she couldn’t use her Tavgharad against Leyti Kir-Taban. They would never raise a hand against a Taban queen, even if that queen no longer sat the throne. So who could Makhi use against a fighting force of Grisha? Soldiers who supposedly didn’t exist: the khergud. To deploy them, she had to get a message to one of her secret laboratories, and Tamar’s scouts had followed.

Mayu could only hope Reyem was behind these walls. There were no obvious guard posts around the dairy, just what looked like a night watchman.

“Are we sure this is the place?” she asked.

Tamar nodded. “That watchman is carrying a repeating rifle. Unless the cows are planning a breakout, that kind of firepower is excessive.” She gestured to the right side of the yard, past the fence. “There’s a lookout posted in those trees.”

Mayu and Ehri peered into the shadows.

“How can you tell?” Mayu asked.

“I can feel his heartbeat,” said Tamar.

Heartrender. Mayu sometimes forgot. Tamar was deadly enough without her axes or a gun in her hands.

“Stay here,” she said.

“I’ve never done anything like this,” Ehri murmured as they waited in the dark. “Have you?”

“Only in training exercises,” Mayu admitted. She was Tavgharad. She shouldn’t fear death. She shouldn’t fear at all. But she’d never seen real combat, never been in a proper fight. Isaak had been the first person she’d killed.

What was waiting behind those doors? And if they were caught, what would she do? The answer came easier than she’d expected. She would fight to the death if she had to—for herself, for her brother, for Isaak who had died for nothing. She tried to summon the focus and quiet her instructors had attempted to drill into her.

Maybe she’d been in the city too long. She was unused to the deep black of the night, the spread of stars above them, the sounds of all this empty space—frogs, crickets, something chittering in the trees. She blew out an exasperated breath. “The country is much noisier than I anticipated.”

Ehri closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “This is what I long for.”

“A dairy?”

“Peace. I always dreamed I’d get to build my own home in the mountains, a canyon where I could place a little amphitheater, maybe teach music. You would have come with me, I suppose. You and my other Tavgharad.”

A silence fell between them, the memory of the women they’d both known.

“They didn’t scream,” Ehri said, a tremble in her voice. “I was the only one who cried out as they burned.” When she opened her eyes they were wet with tears, silver in the moonlight. “Would you have done it? If you hadn’t been in the infirmary and my sister had given the order?”

Yes. If not for Reyem. If not for the debt she owed him. Even now, she knew she was betraying the oath she had taken and that she had lived by—to protect the Taban queen over all others. She was in Ehri’s service, had lived in her household, but ultimately, Queen Makhi was the woman she was meant to serve. Mayu had loved that simplicity, that certainty. She would never have it again.

“I would have died with my sisters,” she admitted.

“And would you have sentenced me to death as well?”

“I don’t know.” Mayu thought of the confusion in Isaak’s eyes when he’d realized what she’d done. He’d tried to tell her he wasn’t the king. But it was too late by then. “I thought I understood death. I’m not so sure anymore.”

They heard a soft thump and a moment later, Tamar jogged back to them.

“Did you kill him?” asked Ehri.

“I just dropped his heart rate. He’ll stay unconscious and wake up with a headache.”