The Last Oath-Breaker

Leave to Travel

Getting away from Drayce without his noticing wasn't possible. Wren understood that within the first hour of trying to plan it — the general had eyes throughout the camp that owed him more loyalty than they owed anyone else, and a soldier simply vanishing south for a week would be noticed, reported, and questioned long before he and Isolde ever reached the river.

So he did the only thing that might actually work. He asked permission.

He found Drayce reviewing supply requisitions, the same unhurried morning ritual as always, and made himself walk in with the loose, unguarded posture of a man who had nothing to hide — a performance he'd had four days now to practice in the mirror of his own tent, alone, at night, saying the words over and over until they stopped sounding like a lie in his own mouth.

"Sir. I'd like to request leave. A week, maybe less."

Drayce looked up, and something moved behind his eyes too fast for Wren to name — there and gone, the way it always was, the way Wren had spent thirteen years learning to read and had somehow never once thought to be afraid of until four days ago.

"That's unusual, coming from you." Drayce set down his pen. "You haven't taken leave in over a year. What's brought this on?"

Wren had rehearsed this too. "Scholar Farrow found some old family records. My father's line, apparently — older than I knew. There's a cousin still living, south of the river. I'd like to meet her. Ask her about the family I don't remember."

It was, he understood even as he said it, the most dangerous sentence he had spoken aloud in thirteen years — true enough in its shape to be convincing, deceptive enough in its framing to buy him a week Drayce would never have granted if he'd known what was actually being asked.

Drayce was quiet a long moment, and Wren made himself hold still under the weight of it, the same stillness he'd learned as a boy standing in doorways waiting to see which version of an adult's mood he'd walked into.

"Family," Drayce said finally, and something in his voice had gone soft in a way that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I've never spoken much about your family, have I. I suppose I always thought it kinder not to dwell on a night you were too young to remember clearly."

"I'd like to know more, if I can. Now that there's a name to ask about."

"Of course." Drayce rose, crossed to him, and set a hand on his shoulder — the same gesture, the same weight, and Wren had to fight not to flinch away from something that had comforted him for thirteen years and now felt, unmistakably, like a hand checking whether something was still exactly where it was supposed to be. "Take the week. Take two, if you need them. Family is worth more than any duty roster." A pause, brief, almost nothing. "Take Farrow's escort as well, if she's willing to travel that far. The roads south aren't as safe as they once were."

"I will, sir."

Drayce's hand didn't move from his shoulder right away. "Wren." His voice had gone quieter still, and for one terrible second Wren was certain — completely, coldly certain — that the whole performance had failed, that Drayce could see straight through four days of careful lies to the truth sitting underneath them. "Whatever you learn down there. Whatever this cousin tells you about that night — I hope you'll remember that I've only ever tried to protect you from things too heavy for a child to carry alone. That hasn't changed, whatever you find."

Wren made himself nod, made his voice come out steady. "I know, sir."

Drayce's hand finally lifted. "Then go. Safe travels, Wren. I'll expect you back within the fortnight."

---

He didn't breathe properly again until he was three streets away, Isolde falling into step beside him with a satchel already packed, her face carefully neutral in the way he now recognized as her own version of holding still under scrutiny.

"He granted it," Wren said, still not quite believing it. "Two weeks. He even offered you as escort."

"I noticed." Isolde's voice was tight. "Wren — did that feel right to you? Truly right? Because it didn't feel right to me. A man who's spent thirteen years controlling exactly what you knew about your own family doesn't simply hand you two weeks and his blessing to go find out the rest on your own."

Wren slowed. She was right, and he'd known it the moment Drayce's hand had lingered too long on his shoulder — some old, buried instinct sounding an alarm his relief had been too loud to hear clearly.

"You think he's letting us go on purpose."

"I think a man who built his entire life around controlling information doesn't lose control of it by accident." Isolde glanced back over her shoulder, toward the camp they were leaving behind, her jaw tight. "I think either he genuinely doesn't yet know how much we've already pieced together — in which case we have a real head start and should use every hour of it. Or he knows exactly what we're going to find in that fishing village, and he's decided it's more useful to him to let us walk straight into it than to stop us here, where he'd have to explain why."

Wren thought of Bel Ferro. Of seven vanished soldiers. Of a fever that broke overnight and a border raid no one had ever truly investigated.

"Then we don't waste the head start wondering which one it is," he said. "We go. Now, today, before he changes his mind about which version of this he wants to be true."

They reached the southern gate by dusk, and neither of them looked back to see whether anyone was watching them go — though later, much later, Wren would wonder whether that had been its own kind of mistake, the one blind spot two careful people hadn't thought to cover between them.