In hindsight, it should have been obvious that Vain was leading them all right into a trap.

The royal spies knew there was a scattered rebel presence in the small towns around the rocky foothills of the mountains. For that reason, the mission had planned to avoid contact with the insurgents by riding through Coramine, a larger trading town that had more of a border guard presence and therefore no outspoken rebel support. It was a slightly longer trip than going through one of the smaller towns, but it was worth avoiding a skirmish with any rebels.

The problem was that they encountered the rebels anyway — if you could even call it that.

It started with a bird screeching, its call ringing out ugly and loud as warning bells. It was sitting on the stone post that marked the fork in the road toward Coramine: a large, dull black specimen with cunning eyes and a harsh scream that could be heard for quite a distance. It was familiar to Vain. He thought he might have seen a bird like that flying overhead earlier in the trip. He gave it a curious look and some of the other guards responded to its screeching with vulgar gestures he wasn't sure birds could understand, but no one gave it any more thought.

From the post, it was a short ride to the town. Coramine was walled and gated, which was what made it the favored mountain-base town for wealthy merchants to stop in overnight. That meant they had to stop for the town's guards at the gate.

"Reason for entering?" The first of the two guards asked, looking up at them.

"Picking up supplies for our trip through the mountains," Vain said, dismounting. The woman didn't look too impressed by or pleased to see them, and speaking on the same level might make the process go faster. "Is it normal procedure to ask everyone who enters Coramine?"

"No, sir, but with increased reports of rebel activity we have to check everyone entering from the Solangian side more carefully. I need to see your commerce certificates or other documents proving your identity, or you'll have to go through a different town."

He produced the leather wallet holding the badge with the princess's seal from inside his coat and handed it over. It would mark them as guards on official royal duty, and require the border and town guards to help them with anything they needed.

The woman's posture changed the moment she opened and examined it. "Damn, that's real. Real official, I mean." She glanced up and smiled as she pulled some official-looking papers and stamps out of her pockets, juggling the badge at the same time. "Sorry about that, it's just that the border captains are practically jumping out of their skins with this rebel business getting closer to their territory, so we're all on edge. It's like, fine if some nutcases want to risk their asses rebelling against the king, but don't bring my career into it. Keep that nonsense in Maenar where it belongs, right?"

He laughed and agreed. It was borderline treasonous to talk so openly about the rebels without expressing explicit hatred for them, but guards were always friendly with each other and border guards, so far from the capital, were more relaxed than most.

"Anyway, here you go." She handed over the badge wallet and some papers. "And yeah, this stuff's new," she answered to his unasked question, "they decided to hand out additional verification, because this job wasn't tedious enough already, apparently."

He laughed again and tucked the heavy wallet back into his coat. "It never is."

She gave a slight bow as her partner opened the gates. "Welcome to Coramine — and goodbye as well, because we all know people only come to this town to leave it. Enjoy the Protectorate for me!"

He was too distracted laughing and enjoying his first relaxed conversation in days to realize he never told her they were going to the Protectorate next. And by then it was too late.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I nudged Pitch a little faster and pulled up next to Joshua at the head of the group. It had been a few days since we left the boat and the Mitrove, and we had mostly focused on speed since then, with limited opportunities for talking.

"Should we hear back at the next place we stop?" I asked.

"You're the one who helped Dell organize this, shouldn't you know?"

I shrugged. "I like bossing people around, not being in charge. I make sure not to be too invested in things so no one can expect to rely on me."

"I hope that's a joke," Dell muttered on my other side as Joshua rolled his eyes. "But you already have your answer, anyway."

We looked up as she pointed. In the distance, a large black bird was descending on the town we were heading towards. It was the last stop before the mountain base town where we would pick up supplies and start up the mountain trail.

Even Pitch seems to perk up a little. "Race me?" I asked Wes, bouncing up and down a little. Finally, news. Hopefully the good kind.

"Nah, I don't wanna — yeah, bye!" He kicked his horse into a gallop in the middle of the sentence, leaving me a few paces behind and yelling wordlessly as we raced toward the town.

The bland landscape we had been riding through for the past day blurred into streaks as we ran down the narrow road, hooves pounding up dust and wind yanking handfuls of my hair out of its braid. We raced from the road onto the town's main street side by side, laughing.

The rest of them caught up with us after we had already tied up the horses and sunken into the shade.

"Immature," Joshua pronounced, looking down at us lying on the scraggly grass.

"I agree," I said. "Wes, that was a very immature way to start a race."

"You're just bitter 'cause you lost."

"We tied, even after you cheated!"

Dell ignored us and kept riding. "The bird is trained to wait at the inn's stable. Come on."

I jumped up to follow, buzzing from the race and nervousness, and we found the small inn — if it could be called that, with just two rooms available — in the center of the town. The half-decrepit stables were filled with slats of sunlight and housed only a donkey and the newly arrived bird.

"Looks like your plan worked," Joshua said, untying a pouch from the bird's leg. "Yet again, I find myself astonished."

"One day it'll stop being a surprise," I told him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vain paced the small Coramine cell, panicked. His badge was a fake. He didn't understand — except he was starting to.

They had ridden into the town, stabled their horses where they would stay until they returned to Coramine on the return trip. Then he and Nick went to purchase supplies, but the storeowner jacked up his prices seeing the quality of their uniforms. He could have argued the prices down, but what was the point when they had been given the badges to save time? He pulled out the badge and coolly told the owner they would pay the prices on the labels, or he would be in contempt of Her Royal Highness.

The storeowner looked at the badge, pronounced it an unconvincing fake, and threw them out.

The town guards Vain showed the badge to next in outrage didn't find it any more convincing. "Who checked your documents?" The captain demanded. The tone of his voice said that any guard who accepted that badge was going to be in a significant amount of trouble.

"The guard at the gate," Vain said impatiently, barely holding onto his anger. He was the one who would bear the consequences if the mission was held up for too long. He sat and stewed in anger as they sent someone to fetch the guard from the gate.

Anger was replaced with dread when that person returned and quietly informed the captain that both gate guards were found unconscious, bound in rope and piled near the gate.

Seconds later, the town guards had seized each of member of Vain's company and forced them into Coramine's jail.

And now, pacing his cell, Vain thought about the friendly woman at the gate. At first he had been worried for her, thought the rebels she mentioned when they arrived had come by just after they entered the town and beat up the gate guards. He had felt guilty for not taking just a little longer to enter the town, for not being there to fight off the rebels!

But now... now he thought about the moment after she checked the badge, when she was barely holding onto everything at once as she grabbed things from her pockets. He had been laughing. He hadn't been watching closely. He hadn't suspected anything.

"Can I see the badge?" He asked the town guard on the other side of the bars. His voice had lost its self-riotiousness.

"What for?" She asked gruffly, clearly impatient with such boring guard duty. "You're staying here until our message gets to Maenar and they send someone up here to confirm your identity." Still, perhaps out of pity, she picked up the wallet from the table holding the things they had taken from them and opened it, facing him.

Vain stared at it, then wrapped a hand around a bar and rested his forehead against it. His head ached. "I need a favor," he said quietly. "It's important."

Because the badge she showed him, the one the town guards had taken from him, wasn't a royal badge with the princess's seal.

It was a thoroughly unconvincing fake.