Treason Keep by Jennifer Fallon

little suspiciously.
    “They’re looking a bit too comfortable for my liking. I think we should wake them up.”
    “What does that mean exactly?”
    Damin laughed. “It means putting aside your damnable Defender’s honour for a time and learning to be sneaky.” He climbed to his feet and dusted off his trousers. “We need to do something about their supply lines, for one thing. What about it, Commandant? Are you with us?”
    Tarja glanced at Garet curiously, knowing there was much more to Damin’s simple question than whether or not he wanted to attack the Karien camp. The older man studied them both in silence for a moment.
    “I’ll not be a party to anything thing that reeks of stupidity,” he warned, climbing to his feet and handing the looking glass back to Damin. “That also includes your ludicrous scheme for replacing Joyhinia, Tarja. Come up with something workable, and I’ll back you to the hilt. But what you’re planning is insane. And I plan to die in my bed a very old man.”
    “That’s the most uncommitted excuse for an agreement I’ve ever heard.”
    “Be satisfied with it. It’s the best you’re likely to get until you show me something devised by brains, not wishful thinking.”
    Damin glanced at the two of them and shook his head. “Let’s just push him off the cliff and be done with it, Tarja,” he suggested.
    “I hear you have a reputation as a cunning warrior, Lord Wolfblade. I can’t for the life of me imagine how you came about it.” He pushed past Damin on the ledge and began to climb down to the narrow trail where their horses were tethered below.
    “If this man was not your friend, Tarja…” Damin began.
    “He’s just testing you. We need him.”
    “No, y ou need him. I’d just as soon see him dead. And I warn you, every moment I spend in his company, the idea becomes more attractive.”
    Damin slammed the delicate looking glass back into its leather case and began to follow the path that Garet had taken.
    Tarja shook his head. The last thing they needed was Damin Wolfblade threatening to kill Garet Warner. With Garet’s assistance, it would be far easierto fool the Quorum into believing all was well with the First Sister and his help was essential if they were to eventually replace her. And if the Kariens really had allied with Fardohnya, their only hope of preventing a southern incursion was Damin’s Hythrun Raiders.
    Not for the first time since Joyhinia had won the First Sister’s mantle, Tarja wished he had let her hang him. He would never have become involved in the rebellion. He would never have led the raid to rescue R’shiel that resulted in the death of the Karien Envoy, and they would not be facing an invasion. But what hurt most, when he let himself think on it, was R’shiel. If not for him, she would be alive and probably in blissful ignorance of what she really was.
    But then again, maybe nothing would be different, even if he had died. The Harshini had known all along what R’shiel was and had sent Brak to find her. Garet and he had identified the Karien threat long before any of these other events took shape. Whichever way he looked at it, he was caught in circumstances that seemed to be constantly spiralling out of control. He remembered thinking, more than a year ago, when he was riding toward capture in Testra at the hands of Lord Draco, the man who turned out to be his father, that life was no longer certain.
    He was starting to wryly think of those times as the good old days.
    The ride back to the Defender’s camp was tense. Damin was angry and Garet silent. Tarja wished he could think of something to say that would bringsome sanity to the situation. He had always liked and respected Garet Warner, yet he had found a rare friendship with Damin Wolfblade—ironically, a man he had spent four years on the southern border trying to kill.
    It was late afternoon when Treason Keep appeared on the horizon. Although the engineers had done their best,