Chapter 9: Eight Raids

I woke Prue at one in the morning.

She opened her door in a flannel nightgown with her kerchief over one ear.

"Is somebody bleeding?"

"No. I need someone I trust and a second pair of eyes."

She looked at my face for about a second.

Then she grabbed her shawl and came.

In the annex, I put the Stonebridge report and the princess's log side by side on the desk.

Prue read them both twice, her lips moving.

"Well," she said. "Either your husband can be in two places at once, or your ex-fiancé is a liar."

"There might be a mistake in the date."

"Is there?"

"No," I said. "I checked it four times."

Prue pulled the second chair up to the desk.

"Then we need more than one," she said. "One's a mistake. Three's a habit."

We worked until dawn, and then all the next night, and the night after that.

By day, I translated truce letters at the window desk.

By night, we locked the annex door, lit one lamp, and pulled out three years of border reports.

There were hundreds of them.

Most were dull and true.

A stray patrol. A lost horse. A fight over a fence.

But every so often, a report was different.

It was always a raid on a Redoak supply post or a Redoak patrol.

It always named the Eastmarch Alpha, or "his lieutenants."

It always described the losses in loving detail: grain, horses, rifles, winter coats, down to the last sack.

And it was always signed by Gareth Stowe.

By the third night, we had eight of them laid in a row across the floor.

"Look at the wording," I said.

I read from the first, then the fifth, then the eighth.

"By the light of a moon too bright to mistake him."

"By the light of a moon too bright to mistake his lieutenant."

"Under a moon too bright to mistake them."

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