Helenai took the lead as the thorny trees grew thicker to the west. The Seena military was encamped east of Osote’s tent, where the trees were spaced further apart. “We’ve no time to stop,” she said. “We must get there quickly and find the best place to hide.”

“I hate hiding,” Quo grumbled. “If I wanted to hide, I’d have applied to become a scout.”

“You’d never pass the selection process,” Helenai cracked.

Quo punched her spine between her shoulders; the captain retaliated with an elbow into his chest.

Recognizing their antics as release before a potential battle, Mero said to Quo, “Enjoy Osote’s trust in you. You’ll be General someday.”

Quo grunted. “May the Cerchi’s god hope not!”

The three of them shared a brief, harsh laugh. All three were Victrix, and privately held various levels of contempt for the Cerchi’s theism. Mero knew Quo’s disdain to be authentic; his own was more tempered. While all Cerchi were theists by definition, not all of them were quite so vocal as those who ascended to the Assembly.

“I can’t believe one of our own soldiers would dare betray us like this,” Quo said as Helenai set a quick pace. A teacher of scouts herself, she found the quickest way through the forest with haste Mero could only marvel at.

“Captain Helenai is right,” he said. “Money and power. They play havoc with the best of us.”

“But the Scalus! Those slimy lizards.”

“I for one am not certain they have the taste for war,” Mero said.

“Have not the . . . ? Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, but have you been in the battles lately?”

Quo’s sarcasm didn’t bother him; he was far too used to it. But Mero caught Helenai casting a glance at him over her shoulder. She hoped to hear an answer.

“We lived in peace with the Scalus for generations,” Mero said. “We ought not mistake their fierceness in combat as desire. We are the invaders.”

Quo stopped. It was so abrupt that Helenai nearly disappeared into the darkness before realizing he’d stayed behind. Mero came to halt as well as he saw Quo glaring at him.

“Mero . . . you oppose this war?”

“I oppose conquest. The water in the Scalus woods is abundant. I should think there is some way to negotiate rights with them.”

Quo stepped to Mero and lowered his head to peer into his friend’s eyes. “We are on our way to find and identify a traitor who has the same idea, Mero. What’s the matter with you?”

Holding himself still, Mero said quietly, “Step back, Quo.”

Quo held himself in place for a moment—then respectfully took one step away.

“This traitor, whoever he is, shares nothing in common with me,” Mero said. “Whoever they are, they are usurping the rule of law in Seena. Usurping the Assembly, and all in Seena who placed them there, as Osote said. I serve our state, Quo. I serve our people.”

“Bah,” Quo said, waving a hand not to dismiss his friend, but the conversation. “I know that. I just want my hands around the throat of whoever is betraying us. That’s really the thing.”

“Agreed,” Mero said, and nodded at Helenai to continue leading the way.

The captain crafted a winding path through the woods, guiding them around and between tall, thick trees blocking what little moonlight from Ilia shone down. Night creatures called one another around them—small nocturnal animals and birds, Mero knew, but some were poisonous and deadly.

“But let’s say for the moment,” Quo added a few moments later, because he loved a good argument—so much so that Mero chuckled in his friend’s predictability. “That Magistrate Lidia did somehow approach the Scalus to write a treaty between us. First of all, they have no written language. That would prove problematic.”

“Most certainly.”

“Then there’s our water shortage—”

“Pending water shortage, and then only if our scholars are correct.”

Quo laughed. “Going to Cerchi church, are you? Since when do you question our scholars?”

“I don’t. Not often. They have been wrong in the past, that’s all. Perhaps Seena’s water supply is sufficient.”

“The crops, Mero! The growing size of our citizenry! We need the land and water.”

“Now who sounds like a Cerchi?”

Quo laughed again, caught. For all their religion, the Cerchi’s god “Holy Creator Anyi” apparently had eyes only for his “chosen children” and their comfort, a hypocrisy which at best dismayed the Victrix, at worst incensed them. The founders of the Victrix system had been scholars and thinkers, though not sinless by any measure. Long ago, they and the spiritually minded Cerchi had walked together in peace if not harmony, developing the Assembly to represent the entire population of the small but burgeoning city-state of Seena. As generations passed, each side grew more convicted in their righteousness, until today, when in many corners of the state, each system could barely tolerate the other. Prior to their invasion of the Scalus lands, brawls in the city streets between Victrix and Cerchi had been rising. Mero could only wonder how the relationship stood now. The Cerchi favored this war, had clamored for it in the Assembly, yet few served in the military.

“And if our resources are thinning,” Mero went on, “then perhaps we ought to stop adding quite so many Victrix and Cerchi to Seena’s population in the first place.”

Quo clapped his shoulders and gave Mero a shake. “But that’s the most fun part!”

All three veterans laughed at that. Some things were simply universally true. The pleasure of making babies happened to be one of them.

“Don’t worry, my friend,” Mero said. “I don’t question our orders. Regardless of what this traitor’s plans are, the betrayal itself is reason enough to send them before Lidia.”

“I’ll gladly sharpen the saws myself,” Quo growled.

They walked on. Mero was glad for the banter between them, to take his mind off the mission for a moment while still reasonable. But now a silence grew between the three of them, and his heartbeat sped.

They could punch and joke and argue all they wished, as soldiers do.

It would not protect them from this mission, nor from this night.