WebNovels

Chapter 173 - 173

Snake had taken to swinging through the hallway outside Lord Ye and Anna's room in the evening when she knew the other woman was on her way back from work. Anna was always a bit frazzled these days and eager to talk to someone who wasn't connected to Lord Ye.

Snake had heard all about the new edition to the Camelia and Anna's fears that she'd finally been pushed out. She couldn't tell Lord Ye not to bring the child, but she wasn't sure what she was meant to do with Chenzhou taking in Eirian's younger brother as his son and heir.

No child she had with Chenzhou would ever be able to compete. They wouldn't even be able to inherit, and Anna hadn't taken it well when Snake pointed that out, and all she'd had to do was stand back and listen, and everything had spilled out of Anna in a blind rage.

Snake had heard all about Chenzhou's suggestion and the ball in the King's honor, even about the rumors surrounding Eirian's parantage, which hadn't actually been answered. Snake's employer had been particularly pleased to learn about that one, especially the fact that no one, including the royal family, knew for sure.

Snake had even been able to identify several of the families likely allied with Eirian's father through Anna's information, which her employer had paid extra for.

Now, with Lord Ye only days away, Anna was particularly vulnerable.

"I'm sure it won't be that bad." Snake tried to make herself sound as comforting as possible, but her patience with Anna's fit was running thin. If the woman weren't such a useful font of information, Snake would never waste time with her.

Even now, the sight of her tears made Snake want to roll her eyes. No woman should give a man the kind of power over them that Anna had, and yet Anna, like so many others, had walked willingly into that fire and didn't seem to understand that she could leave it.

"He has no use for me now." Anna sulked, dabbing at her running makeup.

"I thought you weren't involved in running the estate?"

"I'm not." Anna snapped. "I didn't want people to talk at first, and quite frankly, it's not that interesting. But at least I was his family. He doesn't even need me for an heir now."

"You could still be his partner. You could help raise the boy. You work with children."

But Anna shook her head. "And be reminded every day that he wasn't mine? I want children of my own. I want to raise them with their father, teach them, and help choose their partners and spoil their children!" Her voice rose with each word and then fell at the end as she collapsed into tears. "I stayed by his side while he was sick, and I would have mourned him for the rest of my life when he died. And now…" She threw herself onto the daybed. "I asked him to stay, and he refused."

"I think this was an exceptional situation. The king died." Snake pointed out.

"Yes, and I was selfish; I didn't think about his precious estate at all. He probably thinks I'm some kind of horrible woman now."

Snake blinked, catching up. "I don't think he thinks you're horrible."

Anna ignored her and looked around the rooms she'd shared with Chenzhou since she'd first arrived at the estate. Everything she owned was here; everything she really cared about was on a horse days away.

She hadn't brought much with her when she'd come either. Just a few pieces of jewelry and sets of robes. Her mother had insisted she get a new wardrobe from the castle seamstresses that fit her new station, so most of what Anna had now had no ties to where she'd come from.

She was close with the other teachers she worked with, but not really anyone else. She'd devoted all her free time to taking care of Chenzhou, and now he didn't need her to do that either.

What did she have here?

She glanced at Snake, caught the woman's eyes sliding away from the pile of correspondence on her desk, and realized with a terrible jolt that she'd left out Chenzhou's private letters.

She'd even told Snake about several things he'd written to her, and while they didn't seem too dangerous, she hadn't asked Chenzhou if they could be shared either.

A cold feeling of dread settled in her stomach.

***

Fox managed to cover a significant amount of ground riding through the night. Yuze had decided to send someone to check on Mingzhe's detachment, and Fox had volunteered.

Mingzhe had also sent a message to his other closest detachment asking them to send someone to check on the missing group as well, and they were a day closer than Fox leaving from the Camelia.

Fox was pushing his horse to reach them first. He'd arranged to meet several of his sources along the way; hopefully, they'd have information that would get him ahead of whatever reports were heading back to the Camelia.

The first one didn't know anything useful, but Fox managed to trade in his horse for a fresh one and rode through the day instead of stopping to sleep.

He got luckier with his second, only two days from the outpost that the missing soldiers were supposed to man. She was a low-level trader's wife in a small village nearby and always knew what everyone else was doing thanks to her management of the busiest brothel in the village.

She sent one of her girls to meet him outside the village, and she pointed him to an area of the borderlands filled with rolling hills. They weren't nearly as high or dramatic as the cliffs the Camelia was perched on, but they were high enough to conceal an ambush force in a few areas.

Fox traded horses again and managed to reach the area by dawn.

The smell of blood and rotting flesh pervaded the entire area for miles, and Fox had to wrap a spare shirt over his face on top of his mask to try to breathe without wanting to throw up.

The bodies, man and horse, were spread over nearly two square miles of ground, the golden wheat covered in rotting blood. They'd been caught in a long valley between several rolling hills and, from the look of it, had attempted to ride through the ambush only to become trapped by the tribe's deadliest force, their mounted archers.

A few individuals had made it out of the kill zone, but none of them had reached the crest of a hill before they were run down.

Arrows with blue feathered fletchings protruded from every body. Not even a single horse had been spared.

~ tbc

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