“They didn’t breach the Black Forest, as we know,” I add, nodding to Cornelia. “But they also set up walls to the east. Places where they basically gave up, ceding the land to the Celts and not bothering to push deeper.”
Cornelia frowns, looking at my crude diagram as I draw a squiggly line to indicate the Limes, the fortified border that the Romans believed separated them from the barbarous Germanic tribes.
“If I had to guess,” I say slowly, “I would think Perchta would hide her stone somewhere like this, in lands that her people kept out of the Roman’s hands.”
Fritzi sits up straighter. “And if Abnoba already has one stone in the forest…” She brushes the right-hand side of my map. “That’s still a lot of ground to cover, but it does narrow things down.”
If I’m right, I think.
But Cornelia’s staring at my squiggled lines with fierce intensity. “There’s weight to this,” she mutters. “Brigitta!” she calls sharply, and the captain gets up from her bedroll so quickly that I’m certain she was already awake.
“What’s this?” Brigitta asks, looking down.
Cornelia taps a spot near the line that represents the Roman border, then traces it back. “Our location,” Cornelia says, glancing at me.
“Roughly.”
She draws back over the line, due east, tapping another spot. She turns to Brigitta. “You know the legends of this area?”
“The Alamanni,” Brigitta gasps, squatting down by the map.
“Alamanni?” Fritzi looks from one woman to the next. “What is that?”
“Who is that,” Cornelia corrects. “A tribe that fought the Romans. Alamanni means ‘all man.’ The tribe was a conglomeration of different people from different tribes. And they built a huge fort here.”
“I’ve never heard of such a tribe,” Fritzi says.
“Because they’re nothing but ghosts now.” Cornelia’s voice is dark. She looks up at us. “They were the ones who led the battles against the invading Romans. While some of us hid—going back to the Tree, the Well—the Alamanni fought.”
Brigitta touches the map I made, bouncing her finger from one spot in the east across the squiggling line I drew to show the Rhine. “And according to legend, one of the ways they fought was by flying over the Rhine. The frozen river couldn’t be crossed by boat, and the ice was thin and dangerous. But the goddesses carried them over the river so they could push back the Roman forces.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the goddesses,” I say. “Maybe it was the air stone.”
16
Fritzi
I didn’t know the stories of the Alamanni—so it is likely Dieter doesn’t know either. Unless it is something he discovered while using me to research in the Well’s library.
I think that and manage not to shudder. The resistance doesn’t come from how I usually just ignore the pain; it comes from flashes of memory in the tunnels. The wall of water bending tomymagic, then the enhanced power of the water from the stone. The way I kept Dieter out of my head, even with the chaos and destruction of the water thrashing around us.
My bond with Otto, the tattoo strengthening his own fortitude, my now seemingly unlimited abilities with wild magic—it can allwork. I’ve seen it now.
“We can do this,” I whisper to my palms, stretching and closing my fingers.
Cornelia, Brigitta, and Otto look at me, but I sniff away the flare of…ofthrill. I cannot bear to let Otto, especially, see the spark of hope onmy face, not so soon after losing Johann. I can’t let him feel that errant emotion from me, and I try to shield it from our connection. Part of what happened under Trier may have felt like a victory to me, but it was a loss in so many ways.
“Do we know if Dieter has left the city?” I ask. “We can still take him out without having to risk going to—”
“He isn’t in Trier,” Brigitta says, her voice going to iron, the tone I’ve heard her take with those under her command. Like she expects pushback.
I frown. “How do you know?”
“People are buzzing with news that Dieter left almost immediately after the flood and took most of his hexenjägers with him. Alois and Ignatz scouted the city while you were resting.”
“They—what?” The breath kicks out of me, all lingering specks of hope evaporating in a lurch of concern. My eyes snap around our forested campsite and there, I spot Alois, with another of Brigitta’s guards, packing their supplies. They made it back, but still, fear swarms me.
It’s Otto who says, “You sent them into Trier? Without talking with us?”
