“You think I let myself get caught in the middle of that blood-bath? I trailed and dipped into a valley when they came up behind you. I heard them then.”

A soldier who would duck a fight might be a coward, but in retrospect Jackov’s actions could be seen as wise rather than cowardly.

“Where is she, then?” Silvie demanded.

Jackov circled them and leaned on the rock, lips twisted in a grin. “In the Horde city.”

“The city . . . There’s more than one city.”

“There’s only one large city. Three days’ ride southwest.”

“How do you know that?” Johnis asked.

“Everyone knows that,” Jackov said. “But they said as much. Follow the course they were on and you’d come close. But it’s hidden.”

Johnis wasn’t sure what to make of this admission. Jackov seemed sincere enough, but he also had confused motives. What if he was simply out to ruin Johnis for the trouble he’d caused him?

“You don’t believe me?”

“Should I?” Johnis asked.

“He’s right about the city,” Silvie said.

Johnis frowned, his eyes holding Jackov, who looked more like a snake than the bearer of truth at the moment. “But should we believe him about overhearing the Horde?”

“Your mother’s ring should convince you,” Jackov said.

Only Billos, Darsal, and Silvie knew about the ring. So then Jackov was telling the truth—he must’ve heard about the ring from the Horde. Unless Billos had joined him in a plot to undermine Johnis, something he couldn’t accept. Billos might be testy, even rude, but he wasn’t a traitor.

“Who told you . . . ?”

“I told you, I heard them! How many times do you want me to repeat myself?”

“And what else did you overhear?”

Jackov looked toward the west, eyes lost in thought.

“Tell me!”

“She’s a slave for someone they call the Dark Priest.”

“You’re lying!”

“I can show you how to find her.”

And with those words, Johnis knew that he was going out into the desert again. He wouldn’t show his face in the village or make any further explanation to the Council. Not until he knew the truth about his mother, and looking at Jackov now, he knew that the truth awaited him in the desert.

“Why would you risk your neck for my mother?” Johnis asked.

“To redeem myself,” Jackov said. “To show the forests that I can lead men too.”

The boy’s logic made sense, in a desperate sort of way. If Jackov led the very fighter who’d taken his place as most favored young recruit on a successful rescue mission, the forests might reconsider his heroism. Good for Jackov.

And if they did find his mother . . . Johnis felt his hope swell.

There was also the matter of the missing books—now either in his saddlebag on the route they would take or in the possession of the Horde.