Just like that, the forest around us changed without changing. The fresh midsummer scent of the trees turned thick and cloying, a perfume masking some lingering odor tickling the back of the throat. The lush canopy of the trees over the old cobblestone road pressed in a little tighter, aggressively vibrant, the colors blurring at the edges of your vision and concealing shifting shadows that vanished when you looked.

The birdsong died away, leaving only a breathy, scuttling rattle like unseen dead leaves swept in a winter breeze. A nervous whisper rippled through the company to fill the silence, and died away immediately as Baba Anastasia shifted her head and swept a glare through the soldiers. Questioning eyes turned to me, and I tried to ignore them with Baba-like grace. The girls' steps faltered amid a few whimpers, and I reached over to give a warning jerk on their chains.

Sergeant Jakob cleared his throat. "Captain Lenistov?" he said, uncertain and hoarse. "Are we going through the Faewood?"

"We're going back to Severnaya Natsiya," I said with more calm than I felt. "I rather don't think we're getting there past the Khagan's army on the steppes, and they—" I jerked the chains again—"wouldn't survive Orlov Pass." I glanced over at Anastasia for backup, but as usual, for all her reaction I might as well have not even been there.

"Okay," Jakob said, and licked his lips as his eyes darted around the silent forest. "Okay."

"Hope we all get eaten," one of the girls behind me mumbled. I whipped my head around, but all of them were silent and expressionless, eyes fixed on the ground. Probably Sarnai again.

But even she lapsed into silence, and our first day in the Faewood was little more than the tapping of boots on stone, and the rasp of chains as the girls' bare feet shuffled along the road.

---

"Listen," Baba Anastasia abruptly said as what little light we could see through the canopy was beginning to fade, "the wood is hungry." She lifted her staff and turned it in her fingers, tense and alert. My soldiers unconsciously closed ranks, hands to hilts, and strained their ears, but the silence remained as deafening as before.

"If you would survive the Faewood," she said, raising her voice, "heed me. The fae are ancient shadows of shadows, fell and hungry, as solid as oaths and as true as lies, and it is oaths and lies which bind them to our world." She turned around to address us, finally, and for a moment I thought her eyes were fixed on me but she didn't adjust them to meet my gaze. "They do not exist as we do. That is everything that a fae is—oaths and lies, and an unquenchable hunger to rip more from our souls—and that is the only way they have of harming you. Lies, to open your heart, and oaths, to clench their jaws upon it. And the moment you forget that is when you are devoured."

The trees around us rustled and swayed, and their sound was high and delicate laughter. All the soldiers tensed or flinched, and the rasp of at least two drawn swords joined my own. Jakob froze, eyes wide. One of the girls bit back a scream, and several balled up, arms over their heads. Only Anastasia was unmoved, eyes fixed in the middle distance at something only she could see.

"This is what you must remember above all else: Do not fall afoul of oaths." She thumped her staff on the stones. "By the ancient oaths that bar them from the rest of the world, all this wood is theirs—but the road is not of the wood. Stay on it, or you are theirs. Make no promises—for if you do, what you swear is theirs. And what is theirs is eaten. Do you understand?"

Jakob's fingers drifted up to clench the iron Bozhestvite cross-in-circle hanging around his neck. "D-do we have to?" he blurted out, the color drained from his face. "M-maybe Orlov Pass, if we go back, sn-sneak past the bloodwyrms at night—"

"Sergeant," I snapped, and he snapped straight, hand still in a white-knuckled grip around his cross. "You are out of line."

"Captain, sorry, Captain," he said, eyes darting around the darkening wood.

There was another ethereal giggle, seeming to come from all around us. Beads of sweat glistened on Jakob's clammy brow. He stiffened and said nothing.

Anastasia turned her head to me, met my gaze, and frowned, then abruptly whirled around and resumed our march.

---

I shook Jakob awake shortly after the company had staked down the girls' chains and snuffed most of the torches, and motioned him back down the road past the bend we were using for our shit-piles. "Sergeant," I said roughly once we were alone, "what was that about?"

"I'm sorry, Captain," he said, not meeting my eyes. "I won't cause trouble."

"Our Baba's annoyed—it's too late for that. Out with it."

He winced, closed his eyes, and hung his head. "I lived in Kray Lesa for a few months before I enlisted," he said faintly.

"Just on the other side of the wood?"

"Yes. With my brother and his family, who'd moved out from the capital. Until one day…" A shudder passed through his body. "Little Yulia was playing with some friends on the wall, and fell off the far side. And before anyone could do a thing, the shadows swooped out of the trees and dragged her in. We could hear her screams from the village…for hours. Hours. Finally, Konstantin couldn't bear it any more. With the strength of a madman, he threw off the ten men holding him down, grabbed a sword, and charged into the Feywood after her. And the sounds stopped." Jakob clenched his cross again, hand trembling. "The next day, we heard her voice, scared and crying, saying they'd eaten her daddy and she wanted to come home. E-elena…ran into the forest shouting…if they'd promise to keep her alive, sh-she'd trade her life for Yulia's…"

I interrupted him with a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," I said. "Those must be hard memories. But regardless of how much the Faewood has taken from you, we can make it through. We've got a Baba, and a good wide road to follow."

"You don't understand," he said, rocking back and forth. "That was her voice."

---

When sunlight started filtering through the trees the next morning, it was with the distant sound of women's laughter and chatter. Occasional giggles and shrieks. Happy sounds that made the false colors and scents of the wood feel all the more off. But more than once, the girls paused in their barefoot plodding to lift their heads and stare longingly out into the trees.

And then the chatter began to take shape. "I wish we had were more friends," the high-pitched ethereal voices said, and "Nobody will let girls run into the forest," and "All the adults are too scared of the monsters," and "Of course they are—the monsters will eat them."

I put some extra length into my strides until I caught up to Baba Anastasia. "The company understands the dangers here, but the girls have a lot less incentive to believe you," I murmured. "If this continues, we'll have the whole lot of them breaking for the woods when we unchain them to squat."

"So don't unchain them," Anastasia said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jakob's face twitch with a suppressed frown—and as bad an idea as it was to cross a Baba, I couldn't much disagree with the sentiment.

"They're whelps of the Khagan, but they're still human," I said. "They're not animals, to shit where they lay."

"They're no good to anyone dead," Anastasia said, swiveling her head to me, in a sweet tone that seemed to invite defiance in much the same way as the Faewood invited visitors.

I swallowed and tried again. "And you don't think the wood will use that humiliation as further evidence against us? Chains alone can't stop them from running if the ember of hope kindles, and—" I stopped myself at the last moment from mentioning Jakob's tale to her—"I've heard about what the Faewood can put in people's heads…"

Anastasia walked in silence for a minute, then pursed her lips and nodded curtly. "Fine, then. If you can't handle them, I'll address it at lunch."

When the halt was called a few hours later, she bid the company gather in a circle around the girls, and paced back and forth at the edge of the road like a big cat, sniffing the air. "Unchain them," she finally said, "and be ready to cut down any who bolt," and then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she chanted witch-words and traced runes in the air with the tip of her staff. The cloying wrongness of the Faewood intensified into an oppressive miasma, until finally Anastasia reached into a pouch at her side and flung a handful of glittering dust into the woods. For a moment, where it hung in the air, the woods were black and dead, frail and twisted—and then those shadows distorted and inverted, blurring inward into a humanoid white form, leaving us blinking back afterimages.

That new form was, like the rest of the Wood, so beautiful as to feel artificial. It was a woman, tall and willowy, but with curves that accented every little shift of her body. She wore a dress of satin and gauze and lace that seemed to defy gravity, fabric intricately swirling out around a closely clinging base like a snowstorm sweeping the hills. Her skin was nearly as white as the dress—as porcelain as the Tsar's serving-staff in his winter palace—and so impossibly smooth and flawless that I took it to be either mask or thick makeup until her cheeks shifted with a smile. Her lips were full and brilliantly red, out of place like a drop of blood upon a marble floor, and I found my gaze fixed on them—though a quick glance around found most of the male soldiers' eyes drifting further down.

The spirit lifted her arms, spread regally, and the gauzy sleeves underneath them glittered as Anastasia's dust had. "Be welcomed to our forest," she said, her tone gentle and maternal and almost musical, "a realm of such delights as mankind has never known—"

"I bind you," Anastasia interrupted, ugly and rasping, her stony face locked in a scowl. "By the oaths of my power, I bind you against false display of form." She thumped her staff to the road, and I felt a new force clench its jaws to the air, and the spirit woman exploded.

There wasn't another word for it. The moment before the staff's impact, she was there, and then in her place was a dark and ethereal maw. The rippling snow of her dress became shards, hard and cold, and the graceful curves of her form twisted into the jagged lines of teeth. It hung in midair, all sharp points and menace and hunger, and vertigo settled in as my heart squeezed in terror. Several of the younger girls whimpered and fainted.

There was a hollow laugh, and the dagger-points of the dark cloud shifted around as if speaking. "How brazen you are, witch. Do you not know the cost of such a binding?"

"I do," Anastasia said, and gestured. Some invisible force grabbed the arm of one of the older girls, jerking her out of the circle. "One human life, forfeit."

The girl—a skinny and heavily bruised one named Khulan, who had not spoken save to answer when we demanded her name—shrieked and staggered for balance, reaching back toward the others. "Sarnai!" she screamed, "Sarnai!" Sarnai lunged forward, fire flashing in her eyes, but the closest two soldiers grabbed her and hauled her back. Anastasia made a small gesture, and Khulan was roughly flung forward, landing heavily on the edge of the road and bouncing off into the underbrush.

In a moment, the shadows had leapt upon her, whirling and flaying. I looked away when the first of the teeth pierced her skin, and I did not look back until the screams had stopped and the sounds of motion died away. Only three, as far as I could tell, even tried to watch: Jakob, who quickly lost his lunch; Sarnai, who stared in abject horror; and Anastasia, who eyed the scene dispassionately.

The cloud of shadows, its teeth gleaming a little brighter, gradually rose away from Khulan's pitted and weathered skeleton, into a semblance of a smile. "Thank you for your gift," it purred, voice like syrup. "Shall we discuss the binding's cost?"

Anastasia's expression didn't change, but I saw her knuckles whiten around her staff, and her hand start to tremble. "Speak," she said, voice slow and level.

"Did you think a binding could be repaid in any manner but oath?" the shadow said mockingly. "A promise of a human life not already ours, to be delivered as soon as you take the road past the wood's boundaries. To sacrifice one who has already entered the wood is to pay a debt from the debtor's purse."

Every eye turned to Anastasia. The Baba slowly turned her head to me, frowning. Every eye turned to me. "Well?" Anastasia scowled, and I knew her look. The Baba had done this at my insistence, and she wasn't going to take an oath for me.

I glanced down at the skeleton and swallowed. There was no getting out of this one, with the binding already made. And no doubt that if I refused, the Baba would throw me to the Faewood and move on down the ranks.

…Starting with Jakob. I glanced over at his ashen face. No…I couldn't do that to him. My stomach twisted and fell, and I knew there was only one way this could go.

"I promise," I said, and I felt a shadow stir in my chest and clench its jaws around my heart. Then I turned to the girls. "Do you see now what sort of monsters lie in wait off the path?" I couldn't keep my terror off my face, so I tried to at least put it to advantage. "Let's have no talk of escape here, not if you value your lives more than I valued mine."

---

The shadows showed little inclination to whisper temptations to us once they'd been unmasked, so the rest of the day passed in eerie silence. Murmurs filled the air as night fell, but neither I nor any of the company could make out their words, and the voices raised in meaningless chorus throughout the night, making our sleep tense and restless.

My sleep was restless for a different reason. Khulan's screams echoed in my mind, and the anguish in Sarnai's face was painted on my eyelids. They were ultimately just raiding-trophies liberated from the whore-tents of the Khagan hordes, to be turned over to the Babas for re-education and witch-training…and while officially unfortunate, her death would barely merit a mention in the mission report. But I had spoken up, and so now that death was my fault. Would keeping them shackled for a few days have been so bad?

Yes, I told myself. Yes, it would have. It had to be worth taking a stand for. Otherwise, Khulan's death had been for nothing.

But if their lives mean that much, I thought, why are we marching them to Severnaya Natsiya in chains in the first place?

"They're better off," I murmured to myself, but Anastasia's cold face lingered in my brain above the words.

---

As we set off the next morning, hungry shadows flitted from tree trunk to tree trunk, pacing us, staying well back from the road but well within sight. Anastasia prowled the edges of the road, eyes hard, neck snapping back and forth as the shadows crept closer at the edges of our vision and then receded at a direct look. Their chorus of babble continued all the while, and every eye nervously scanned the trees, wondering whether the road was as safe as the Baba had assured us.

So it was, when two of my soldiers unchained Sarnai for a squat, that nobody else looked at her until it was too late. She bolted not uproad or downroad past the soldiers, but straight sideways at the Baba—and by the time they came to their senses and shouted a warning, Sarnai had already covered the three strides to the road's edge. With a scream that rang like a Khagan war-cry, she shoulder-checked Anastasia from behind.

The Baba yelped and overbalanced, and that was that. The shadows were already swarming in from the trees as she was falling, and by the time she hit the grass at the edge of the road, the air around her was writhing black. The tip of her staff flared out into light, and then just as suddenly winked out. A soldier tackled Sarnai, who was standing defiantly over the gruesome scene, and two of the others had the presence of mind to grab Anastasia's boots and try to pull her back onto the road. The boots came back limp and aged, filled only with bones and glittering dust. On the grass, not even that remained.

"Rot unburied, witch," Sarnai snarled, and spat on the ground. "All of you rot. All of you. Khulan was the best of us."

I strode over to her as my soldiers hauled her to her feet. She reared her face back to spit at mine, and would have hit had Vlad not jerked her head sideways at the last moment. "Do what you will. At least her death is avenged."

"Sarnai," I said. "Was this your idea? Or the wood's?"

"Mine," she said. "And proud of it."

Shit, I thought.

"Then you leave me no choice," I said, and stabbed her through the heart.

---

We walked in grim silence for several hours, with what sounded like Anastasia's screams echoing from the distance. "Ignore them," I said loudly. "The wood's trying to scare us with lies again."

I realized I was wrong about its motives when the high-pitched voice floated back in on the winds. "Oh, I wish I had more friends to watch this with," it said. "To watch that evil lady get what's coming to her, together. She was the one who made it look like we ate your friend. Wasn't she, Khulan?"

A second voice giggled. "I'm sure glad I'm not under her enchantment any more." Several of the girls looked back and forth at each other, eyes widening.

"Company," I shouted, "halt."

As my soldiers came to a stop, I pointed at Jakob and a few of his men. "You, unlock the girls," I said. "The rest of you, back here with me." Jakob furrowed his brow in confusion, but complied.

"Company, listen," I said as the girls got into a wary huddle. "I'm not losing any more of you to this wood, and I don't want to take the risk of anyone else getting Sarnai's idea. Under no circumstances is anyone to go closer than one body-length to the edge of the road. And as for you." I gestured at the girls. "I've tried my best to keep you safe. I didn't know what the Baba was going to do, and I'm sorry for that. But she's dead now, and making it out of here is going to be all the harder. If you're insane enough to believe the wood's lies, go. Just…go. Better you walk off in peace and dignity than to get us all killed chasing after you."

The girls looked at me in silent confusion, then at the few soldiers looming over them, chains still in hand.

"I'm serious," I said. "Company, stand down, and get over here. If you'd rather choose the woods over us, this is your chance."

"Captain," Jakob said in horror, "no."

"Do it!" Khulan's ethereal voice hissed urgently. "Now's your chance!"

"No!" Jakob said, flinging his arms wide, causing the one or two girls straying from the pack to flinch. "Are you mad, Captain? I lost Yulia to this wood—I can't watch more children walk into it!"

"Jakob," I said quietly, "let them decide."

"Not until they know Yulia's story," he said firmly, and he knelt among them and began to tell it.

"No!" Khulan's voice boomed. "Liars—the liars that killed Sarnai!" Then the voice shifted to the one whose laughter we had originally heard. "Uncle, why are you lying to them? I'm alive!"

Jakob's face drained of color, and he stared intently around at the girls. "Don't listen. That's how they got Konstantin. That's how they got Elena."

"Mommy made an oath!" the voice screamed. "Why are you lying? I'm alive! They can't break oaths!"

One of the girls—a younger one, Tsetseg—tugged on the edge of Jakob's leathers. "Mister Jakob," she said in a small voice, "is that really your daughter?"

"Niece," he said, looking into her eyes. "And no. That thing is not my niece."

"LIAR!" the voice screamed.

Jakob shot to his feet. "If I lied about that," he shouted back, "then I swear to you I will walk into the woods right this minute!"

The woods fells silent.

Then the shadows receded.

---

None of the girls walked into the woods, and with the shadows' retreat, I couldn't help but silently feel that we'd won something—if not a victory, then at least a reprieve.

I ordered the chains stowed for the rest of the day. Jakob and I walked at the head of the column, half a dozen of my soldiers behind, followed by the cluster of unchained girls and a rear guard.

"Captain," Jakob finally murmured, glancing behind him to make sure his voice wasn't carrying. "We should let them go."

"I'm grateful to you for saving their lives," I responded quietly, "but that's crazy talk."

"Is it?" he said. "You were about to let the wood take them all, and report to the Babas that they'd died. It's the same thing, except this time, they're not dead."

"I was trying to get their deaths off of my conscience before I sacrificed myself to the Baba's insane spell," I murmured. "To let them die free, instead of having them bolt my chains and leave me wondering if I should have beat them until they were too terrified to run. That's very different."

He considered that. "You're planning on being the Baba's sacrifice, then?"

"What alternative do I have?"

"Then what difference does it make to you?"

That gnawed at my conscience for long moments until I shifted the topic. "Sergeant, what alternative do I have? Because your question certainly made it sound like I have a choice."

Jakob turned his head to look at me, surprised. "Surely it had to occur to you that you promised them a life at the end of the journey, yes? Not your life."

I turned my head to meet his gaze. "And what sort of captain would I be if I sacrificed one of my soldiers to save my skin?"

He returned his gaze to the road. "The all-too-common sort."

"Well, I won't," I said, but a seed of doubt had been planted, and its roots tickled uncomfortably.

We walked in silence for a minute, and the silence didn't help.

"Truthfully," Jakob said, "I thought for sure you'd just decide to sacrifice one of the girls." He chewed his lip. "…I'm glad you didn't."

"Because of Yulia?" I attempted to parry, and felt no less uncomfortable.

"Because of what it says about you."

That gnawed at me for the rest of the day.

Why wasn't I just letting the girls go?

Surely life with the Babas was better for them than the Khagan's whore-tents…wasn't it?

---

"Captain," Vlad asked as the sky darkened, "should we put them back in chains while we sleep?"

I turned to him with a carefully neutral face, but inwardly, I was squirming. "Trusting each other is the only way we're going to all get through the Faewoods," I said, "and I can't throw away the trust we built today."

He raised one eyebrow. "But then there's nothing to stop them from sneaking back down the road to the steppes while we sleep."

"I doubt they can all go without waking us up," I said confidently, "and if we lose one or two, then, well, they'll know whose fault it is when they're put back in chains."

It was lunatic-logic, and I was pretty certain Vlad accepted it only because I was the captain, but my dreams that night were far less troubled. Until, that is, I was woken up by the subtle whisper of metal on metal near my head. My eyes shot open to find the silhouette of one of the girls crouched over my weapon-belt, and I realized in a moment of terror that sneaking back down the road to the steppes was far from the worst thing that freed prisoners could do.

Adrenaline focused my thoughts as she worked my dagger out of its sheath, and I desperately studied her silhouette as I sat silently up. I could simply grab her and raise a shout…and then I'd have to kill her, wouldn't I? A clear and present threat, the same way Sarnai had been. Another body cooling on the stone, the rest of the girls back in chains, and…then everything would be so simple for me, wouldn't it? Just admit this whole thing had been foolhardy from the start.

Just give up. And let Jakob down.

She was large for a girl, with some curve to her hips and some more to her chest. One of the teenagers, and Sarnai and Khulan were dead. I drew a silent breath, mentally flipping a coin, and…"Gerel?" I whispered as softly as I could.

She froze.

"Will that bring Sarnai back?" I continued. "Will it save the others? All it will accomplish is to get you killed, and get the others put back in chains and shipped to the Babas." She didn't respond. "Go back to sleep." I tried to soften my voice. "Please."

Gerel's body slowly pivoted, legs and fingers touching down with the grace of a cat, until she was facing me with one hand still clenched around the hilt of my dagger. "That's what you're doing anyway," she breathed at me accusingly. "Once we get out of the woods. Isn't it?"

"I don't know," I whispered, desperately hoping the truth was enough. "But if you kill me, the next captain will."

Her hand on the dagger trembled, but stayed put.

"Why," she finally whispered, "did you kill Sarnai?"

My heart froze. I had plenty of answers to that, but none of them were good. Justice, for ending a woman who was herself a terrifying murderer. Retribution, for retribution. Petty vengeance, for turning my attempt at sympathy for the girls so bloody.

"Why are you holding my knife now?" I tried.

She frowned. "So our reasons are the same, but you get to do it and I don't?"

I tried to hide a swallow through my dry throat. "If I did something I regret, wouldn't I try to stop you from making the same mistake?"

Gerel shifted her wrist as she spidered forward, and the knife whispered free of its sheath, and before I could react it was at my throat. "No 'if'. Did you regret it?" Her voice rose to a husky whisper, agitated, and the soldier six feet away stirred in his sleep. "Was it a mistake? You swear to me. You swear like Jakob swore."

"Ssssh," I said, flicking my eyes toward the shifting form. Gerel turned her head and froze, and I desperately used the time to wrack my brain.

No, it hadn't been—that was the stark truth. I'd been protecting my soldiers by removing a threat and setting an example. I'd have been mad to keep her alive…and even if I had, death would have been a mercy compared to what the Babas would have done to her. No, Sarnai had been a dead girl walking from the moment she touched the Baba. None of which helped me here.

"Gerel," I whispered as the soldier returned to slumber, staring earnestly into her eyes. "If killing her hadn't hurt, you'd be dead too. I whispered your name instead of shouting for help. Sarnai knew she had to die for what she did, but do you know what would have been a mistake? Killing you. Just like killing me would be a mistake right now."

Her lips curled back, and I could see her teeth clenched tightly together behind them. "Promise me you'll let us go."

I closed my eyes for a moment and took what might have been my last breath. "I can't yet."

Gerel grimaced and rolled her head back, muttering curses through clenched teeth. Her knife hand trembled at the edge of my vision, and I could feel the metal tap my skin.

Then she withdrew her hand, setting the knife down on the corner of my bedroll, and silently scampered on all fours back to the pile of huddled, sleeping girls.

---

"Psst," I heard, a vague sound coming from nowhere in particular, and stirred back to consciousness to find absolutely nothing amiss around the darkened camp.

I frowned and sat up. "Psst," the voice whispered. "Captain."

I rubbed my eyes and glanced around the slumbering company. Not a one with open eyes or moving mouth.

"I think you should do it," the voice said, and shifted into Khulan's high, thin tone. "Let them go."

My blood froze.

"I'm not listening," I whispered back, and lay back down on my bedroll, heart pounding.

"You'd be doing the right thing," the wood said. "There's already been enough war. You can save them."

I stuck my fingers in my ears.

"Of course…" it paused as if surprised. "Why, that would leave you without a sacrifice. Unless you truly were planning on sacrificing yourself. But certainly, a person as clever as yourself has figured out the solution to that, yes?"

I reached over for my knife, sliced a small cut in my bedroll, and started picking out some cotton strands to stuff in my ears.

"No? You never figured out the loophole? Well, I can certainly tell you, for a price." I could feel the shadow grin, just out of sight. "Another life. Not even one of these! Any life you'd like. I'll even give you a year to find them. Just think of how much better you could make the world with the right sacrifice…a murderer, a rapist…one of the Babas hungering for fresh slaves…an enemy soldier fighting to subdue Severnaya Natsiya. It would be a shame to have you walk into the woods to get torn apart, Captain, when we could do so much good together."

I started cramming my ears with cotton. The voice got more muffled.

"And all you have to do to start is let the girls go free," it whispered. "In fact, if you swear to do so, I will swear to release you from your binding-oath."

I paused, and pulled the cotton from one ear. "What?"

"You heard me."

"…What's the catch?"

"I'd be quite happy to tell you," it purred, "for another life."

---

Gerel's eyes bored into me through the course of my morning routine. When the bowls of breakfast kasha were doled out, she took hers without removing her stare from me, passing the bowl off to one of the younger girls.

I avoided returning her gaze, for her sake as well as my own. But finally, I couldn't take it any more, and announced a little louder than strictly necessary: "If we make good time, we should be through the Faewood by the end of the day." I finally turned my head to glance at her, and said: "We're leaving the chains off again."

Gerel's brow furrowed, but otherwise she gave no indication of her reaction. "Captain—" one of the soldiers started to protest.

I held up my hand, turning to him. "I'm not spending another night in this wood, and chaining the girls slows them down. Besides, they behaved last night, didn't they?" Gerel's eyes flew open at that, and I tried not to give her away by looking back at her. "We'll discuss the rest once we get out of here."

"Where the captain plans to release the girls," a shadow's voice purred from the trees. "Isn't that true, Captain?"

The company froze. Several soldiers gave me curious looks, then over at the girls. The girls stared up, wide-eyed.

I deliberately chewed a spoonful of kasha. "Ignore the voice. I'm not discussing anything here where the Faewood can pervert it and spread lies."

The shadow grinned as it floated to the edge of the road. "How interesting. So you intend to be around outside the forest to discuss your future plans. Who will you sacrifice in your place, Captain? Care to share with the crowd?"

My gut twisted as mutters swept through the ranks and the girls started whispering to each other. I hadn't figured that out yet, and the Faewood knew it. It hadn't left us alone in the last day of walking…it had merely been silent, observing. And it looked like its last trap was snapping shut.

I took another bite of kasha to disguise my fear. "Trust me."

"I don't see how they can, Captain. Are you going to betray the precious soldiers who would follow you through fire? Or are you going to betray the girls you've sweet-talked into trusting you with their lives mere days after you were dragging them around in chains?"

I threw my bowl to the road and stood up. "Neither," I said forcefully—and in a moment of insanity or inspiration, I added, "So I swear."

I felt a second shadow, much like the one from the last oath, uncoil in my chest and sink its teeth around the edges of my heart. The shadow at the edge of the road, for its part, suddenly went very still.

"Idiot," it snarled. "Do you truly think a noble self-sacrifice will help anyone? The price of my loophole has just tripled."

---

Despite the shadows hovering at the edges of our vision, the last leg of our journey passed in eerie silence. There was nothing for them to say if nobody was going to believe them, I supposed. Stripped of their disguises and foiled by our oaths of truth, all they could do was wait for another opening.

My time, though, was running out. As soon as we stepped out from the woods…

…I'd have to decide, wouldn't I? My company had been entrusted with a mission to bring the Babas fresh recruits to re-educate; while my own personal failure very quickly wasn't going to matter, if I simply ordered the company to let them go, that made them complicit, and the consequences weren't going to be pretty. But if I clapped the girls back in chains and delivered them after all…what had all this been for? From the oath that was about to kill me, to the whispered conversation which almost had, to the few days of hope I was about to cruelly snuff back out?

My mind chased itself around in circles for the better part of the day, and some glimmers of a plan began to emerge. But the biggest problem lay there like a boulder in a field, stubbornly resisting every pressure I could exert:

The instant we left the woods, someone had to die.

---

And all too soon, the canopy began to thin, and the white smoke-columns of Kray Lesa's chimneys began to be visible through the trees. The silent, hungry shadows pressed in a little closer. Whispers spread through the girls, and more than one looked to be on the verge of bolting, but Gerel kept glancing back at me and holding up a hand.

We rounded a final bend to see the outer wall of the town less than 100 yards ahead. I slowed our pace as we approached, and stopped entirely about ten paces away. "Company, halt," I called, and the unchained cluster of girls gathered directly behind me, and my soldiers glanced back and forth, a few stepping forward toward their normal guard positions. I held up a hand.

"Let's talk," I said. "The way I see it, we have two very important missions right now. And I most certainly can't lead both. I…might not be able to lead either."

The gathered shadows tittered, flexing their teeth, drifting toward me. "Four lives," the loophole merchant whispered.

I glanced around the two score soldiers under my command, trying to ignore the hovering shadows. "We lost two-thirds of our strength in the steppes. More importantly, we lost our Baba in the Faewoods. The Tsar needs a report as urgently as possible. Sergeant Vlad, you are to assume control of the full company and return to the capital with all haste to personally deliver the news."

He snapped to attention. "Captain."

"And you, Sergeant." I turned to Jakob. "Our primary mission remains to deliver these girls to the Babas. But if we all stay together on our trip to the capital, they will slow Sergeant Vlad down far too much. I want you to take…mmm…six of our most trusted soldiers, hand-picked from the entire company, to oversee our precious cargo…and I trust your discretion in carrying out our mission by any means you deem fit."

Another week for Vlad and the others to get the capital, I thought, and another week for any forces to get back. I can't simply let them go, but I can keep most of my soldiers blameless, and give you and the girls a two-week head start.

As I spoke, Jakob's initial shock shifted to confusion, and then to a sly comprehension. "Any means, Captain," he said with a hint of a smile. But then he blinked and frowned. "…And you?"

I looked up at the wall ten paces away. So near. So innocent. So inevitable.

"You…go on ahead," I said, faltering. "You shouldn't have to see me—"

Then I blinked.

Not when we left the forest. When I left the forest. I was the one who had sworn the oath, after all.

You go on ahead, indeed.

A smile flitted across my face for the first time in days, and I took a step toward the wall, then winced theatrically and bent over to massage my leg. "On second thought, I'm afraid I might have developed a bit of a muscle cramp from all this walking," I said, and gingerly sat down on the road. "It's dreadfully bothersome. I don't suppose you all could go fetch the village doctor while I wait right here? It would rather raise my spirits…especially if he, say, knows any comatose or terminally ill patients whose next of kin might be convinced to console me."

The shadows howled in rage, and Jakob returned my grin.

"I think, Captain," he said, "that can be arranged."