Rules for Spies

1

"I think you should include Gwyn on this mission," Rhys says, and Azriel has to work to keep his composure.

"Gwyn isn't a spy." He thumps his finger on the map, over Koschei's lake. For the past four hours, the two of them have been discussing everything they know about the death-lord on the continent. His new alliance with Beron, only discovered through careful maneuvering between Eris and Rhys. What this partnership might mean to their fragile peace, the treaty with its endless revisions, still unsigned.

Cassian had left after the first two hours when it became evident that, for the moment, there was no threat of open battle, no need to raise an army. Azriel had been disappointed to lose the buffer between himself and Rhys but tried not to let it show, attempting to keep his focus on the strategy, the interweaving of the facts, the ways they might gain more knowledge and act.

He's trying to put what happened last Solstice behind him, the summons away from Elain and the subsequent dressing down, and has mostly succeeded. He's excised Elain from his life as requested and has firmly tamped down any lingering frustration towards Rhys. And it's been easier than he would've anticipated, even when Elain no longer looked at him too long, even with the recent evidence that she has moved on. Still, his shadows have clustered tight around him for the duration of this meeting, their darkness almost tangible.

For a second, reaching for a more delicate yet comprehensive way to tell Rhys that his plan is awful, Azriel thinks of Gwyn, the way she looks in the training ring, her large teal eyes focused on her target, and something constricts inside him, thinking of her transposition into his typical environment. The blood and the horror which he moves through too easily.

"She's a trained warrior. A Carynthian, like you." Rhys' face is too innocent. He's plotting something. Not knowing the specifics makes Azriel want to gnash his teeth.

"Did she ask you for such an assignment?"

"I had a meeting with Clotho yesterday, and she suggested that Gwyn might be ready to leave the library."

"There are a thousand less dangerous projects. To be a spy--"

Rhys holds up his hand.

"You're the spymaster, brother, but my understanding is that a spy is often successful when they're unexpected. After all, we can't all rely on our shadows."

"There are still many other options."

Rhys looks down at the map between them, circles his fingertip around the Autumn Court. Azriel has had to pull his spies twice since Hybern, even hovered as close to the Forest House as he dared while sending his own shadows, and still the secrets of that place elude him. He's not used to operating so blindly, and Rhys knows it as calls out the fact with a gesture.

"There are rumours that a child in Sangravah had sirenic powers."

"How did you hear about it?" Rhys was Under the Mountain when Gwyn was born.

"You'd be amazed by what shows up in temple records. Especially when the priestess writing them was fond of airing all her thoughts on the daily goings-on. You might also be surprised by what I end up reading when Nyx refuses to sleep."

What his brother doesn't say is that the garrulous priestess had been killed by Hybern soldiers before either Azriel or Rhys arrived at the temple. There are so many awful histories that lurk behind their offhand comments.

"And you think Gwyn was that child?"

"This power is most common in nymphs. She and her sister were the only two with the likely heritage."

"Sirenic powers require careful training," he says, but the words are only a stop-gap and Rhys knows it, too. If Gwyn has managed at the library for more than three years without turning the other priestesses into her minions, she keeps her power on a tight leash. If she is in fact the one with the sirenic powers. If they didn't didn't die with her sister, or one of the other victims at the temple.