“Maybe,” I said cautiously, feeling for my sword’s hilt, wondering who he was and what he wanted. “You are… ?”

“It is you!” he said, grasping my arm. “The years have changed you—but it is good to see you alive!”

“Who are you,” I demanded, shrugging off his hand, “and what in all the hells do you think you’re doing here at this hour?” No matter who he was, I did not appreciate being awakened from my much-needed and much-deserved rest. It was one thing to receive the king’s summons and quite another to be roused by a stranger.

His voice was quiet. “Has it been so long you no longer know me?”

“I have no idea who—” I began. Then I paused and looked at him. Really looked at him.

“Uncle Dworkin?” I whispered. It had been ten years since I’d last set eyes on him. He had worn his hair cropped short in those days, and he had seemed much, much taller.

Dworkin smiled and bowed his head. “The very same.”

“What—how—”

He waved me to silence. “Later. You must come with me, and quickly. I have sent for a carriage. I assure you, this cannot wait. You will come with me. Now.”

It was a command, not a suggestion.

I gave a bark of a laugh. “Go with you? Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t. I’m due back at camp in the morning. I’m no longer a child, Dworkin—I have duties and responsibilities you cannot imagine.”

“It is a matter of life and death.”

“Whose?”

“Yours—and King Elnar’s. I cannot say more than that.”

That made me pause. “What about King Elnar?” I asked slowly. My duty was clear: to protect and serve first the king and second all of Ilerium. If Dworkin knew something of such great importance that it endangered King Elnar’s life, I had to report it at once.

He shook his head, though. “Later. When we are safely away from here.”

I took a deep breath. Dworkin wasn’t really my uncle—he had been a close friend of my parents. When my father died at the hands of pirates from Saliir shortly after my birth, Dworkin had practically adopted my mother and me. Perhaps it was because he had had no children or family of his own, but I had come to view him as almost a father. It had been Dworkin who played soldier with me, brought me treats on high holidays, and took me hunting in the fields beyond our house at Piermont as if I were his own true son. It had been Dworkin who presented me with my first real sword, and Dworkin who began the training in arms that had ultimately become my livelihood. That is, until he disappeared following my mother’s death from the Scarlet Plague. That had been just after my fourteenth birthday. Those had been crazy times, mad times, with death in the air and fear in every heart. After the death-cart took my mother’s body away, she and Dworkin were both simply gone, I had always assumed he’d died in the plague, too.

And now he stood before me, smug as you please, expecting me to drop everything and go off with him for reasons he wouldn’t share beyond claiming it was a matter of life or death to both the king and me. It was impossible.

Instead of filial love and devotion, I felt a sudden towering rage at having been abandoned.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I growled at him, “unless you explain exactly what you mean. See my orderly in the morning, if you like, and I’ll breakfast with you in my tent. We can catch up with each other then. And you’d better have a damned good explanation—for everything!”

I started to shut the door.

“You will not be alive in the morning if you remain here,” he said softly.

I hesitated, looked into his face, searching—for what, I didn’t know. Truth, perhaps. Or maybe some sign that he still cared for me. After all, my mother was gone now. Perhaps he had only befriended me to get to her.

“Explain,” I said.

“There is no time!” He glanced up the street as if expecting to see someone or something, but the street remained deserted. “My carriage will be here soon. Dress yourself, and be quick about it. We must be ready.”

“What does this have to do with the king? You said it involved him.”

“Yes, though he does not yet know it himself. But if you come with me now, I promise that the invasion of your world will be over within the week. I can say no more.”

The invasion of your world. I did not like the sound of that, but I held back a flood of questions demanding to be asked. Somehow, though I didn’t understand why, I found I wanted to trust Dworkin.

And if he really knew something that could end our war with the hell-creatures, I owed it to King Elnar to listen. I had never known Dworkin to lie. For the sake of my oath to the king and Ilerium, for my childhood and all the kindness Dworkin had showered on my mother and me, I decided I would take him at his word… for now.

“Very well.” I handed him my sword and hurriedly began pulling on my pants.

He remained nervous and apprehensive, glancing up the street every few seconds. He had volunteered little information, I realized, but perhaps I could extract more with an indirect line of questioning.

“Where have you been all these years?” I asked. “I thought you were dead.”

“Traveling,” he said absently. “My… business took me far from here.”

“You could have sent messages.”

“You didn’t need them. I would have been a distraction for you. Had you known I was alive, you would have given up your commission and come looking for me.”

I pulled on my shirt and began lacing the front. “You don’t know that!”

“Of course I do. I know you, Obere, better than you know yourself.”

He shifted slightly, glancing again in the direction of the battlefield outside town. I paused, straining to hear, but even the distant scavenging dogs had grown silent. That seemed an ominous sign.

More slowly, Dworkin went on. “Friends have been sending me reports now and again of you and your career. From raw soldier to lieutenant in ten years is quite a remarkable feat. You have done your parents proud.”

“King Elnar rewards deeds more than accidents of birth.” I shrugged and began to link my shirt-cuffs. “Less than half his officers have noble bloodlines.”

“So I have heard.”

“And I owe much to your training.”

He nodded slightly. “You were an apt student. But don’t discount your own talents—you were born to greatness.”

As I buckled on my swordbelt, I found I began to share his apprehension. A strange, almost expectant hush had fallen over the street… over all of Kingstown. Not an insect chirped, not a bat winged overhead, not a single dog howled in the distance. An unpleasant tension hung over everything around us, like the calm before a storm.

“They are near, I think,” Dworkin said softly. “Even the animals sense it…”

“Who?”

“The enemy. Those you call hell-creatures.”

“You say it like they have some other name.”

“They do.” He looked at me and smiled. “But in this place, they are merely soldiers, like you or I.”

“Not like me! And when have you ever been a soldier?”

He chuckled, a strange gleam in his eye. “You have more in common with them than you realize. We both do.”

I gave a derisive snort, not enjoying the idea. That hell-creatures should be here in Kingstown, behind our lines, seemed unlikely. And yet Dworkin certainly appeared to know more about them than King Elnar’s own agents. Nobody on our side knew where they came from originally, or how many they numbered—they had swept down from the north a year ago in a vast horde, destroying villages, murdering men, women, and children alike by the thousands. King Elnar had marched his army against them at once and fought them to a standstill. But slowly, over the months, their numbers swelled and they advanced on us again and again, driving us ever back, until presently they controlled half of Ilerium.

How did Dworkin know so much, when our own agents knew so little? I found it disconcerting to say the least. And it raised more than a few danger flags in my mind.