He crept the rest of the way to the camp, taking a full bell to avoid alerting any scouts. He avoided the canal. It was as dangerous as walking on a road, but harder to leave once spotted. At least he had nightfall in his favor.

A distant clang met his ears. He stopped. Listened. Dim voices, a shout. He took a few steps closer, tugging his right glove off to free his time snap before remembering with a growl that it was dead. He had no emergency plan. No escape route. If only he were in a militair uniform.

The snow muffled his footsteps but illuminated his presence. He used the trees and noise and shadows as a shield until the clanging mixed with human grunts. Flickering torchlight met his eyes before the full scene could. There was too much light—both from the near-full moon and the torches. He couldn’t move much closer without getting caught.

Something about the noise struck him as odd. These militairen were doing something . . . unusual. He opted for a different angle, traversing the scene and keeping his distance until the trees lent themselves to a better view.

There. An opening.

Ground torches formed long lines, curving like two parallel snakes deeper into the camp than the darkness allowed Bastiaan to see. The flames illuminated dozens of militairen . . . digging. They hefted mounds of dirt into wagons that were carried to a different place and poured to create berms. Bastiaan didn’t envy their having to break through frozen earth.

At first they seemed to be working on a large hole—far too large for a latrine and too purposeful to be a sleeping shelter. Bastiaan studied the shadows, following the line of torches, and saw more militairen.

Not a single hole. It was a trench of some sort. Wide and deep.

He spread out the map of the land in his mind, locating himself on the edge of the camp and picturing this snake of a trench and where it might lead. Chills struck his body so fiercely he almost mistook them for a clump of snow falling on his neck.

They were digging a trench to the Nightwell.

No. More than that. From the Nightwell. But to where?

He followed the trail in his mind’s eye. This wasn’t just a ravine. It was a canal. They were connecting the trench to the Vier.

They were going to release the Nightwell water into the canals and infect all of Winterune.

Chapter 38
Bastiaan

Bastiaan mounted Sterk and was on his way back toward the Well of Talents in what seemed like minutes. His mind thrashed theories back and forth like wind upon the weak boughs of a sapling.

A new canal would direct the water from the Nightwell straight into the water of the entire country. If it went far enough, it could even hit the Handel Sea and spread to the rest of the world.