Jenn sank to her knees with tears burning in her eyes and cutting paths down her cheeks. The soldier looked on with a trained lack of emotion and expressed his condolences for her loss.

‘How can he understand my pain,’ she thought, ‘nobody has ever felt pain such as this.’

“If you need anything…” he trailed off as he spoke just before she punctuated his sentence for him.

“Just leave.”

The kind soldier crashed his arm to his breastplate in a salute before executing a neat about-face and departing from her stoop.

Anger flashed behind her eyes as she remained in front of the open door. For a few minutes, she sat and festered with the blinding rage growing inside her.

It could never be his fault. She never wanted him to leave and join the army, but he had. He volunteered before they had drafted him, but she lay all the blame on Pitt. That Ranger who sent out the call for aid was fully to blame for the death of Camm, and she let her fury blaze forth to find a way to make them pay. She must strike where they were weakest, and the easiest way was to interrupt their intelligence network.

Others will die, but they probably deserved to die anyway, serving that army. Jenn continued to rationalize as she picked herself up and went about her routine of the morning.

She left the house late in the morning and headed toward the courthouse, where she knew there would be generals and captains strategizing about the war. She steeled herself and feigned emotion, calling up tears to help sell her plight. The door was opened as she knocked, and she threw herself at the boots of the doorman, bawling hysterically and pleading to see the quartermaster. Several people came into the hall to witness the commotion before she was brought before him and out of view from the prying eyes. Jenn begged her case before the man, asking to help in some way that would aid the Pitt alliance.

Speaking in hurried tones, she moved her eyes around the room and scanned the faces of all the top brass that were present. Convincing them by her hysteria, she managed to be entrusted with a missive that was to go to a “Dravis, Fort Appalachia.”

Jenn took the note and departed, drying her fake tears on her shawl and thanking the commanders as she exited. She headed to the eastern district, intent on gaining support for her personal rebellion. She flagged down a coach and rode to the public house to advertise for a meeting of war widows who desire revenge.

Early the next morning, she was greeted by a score of grieving ladies who were eager to sit and listen to the protests of one of their own as she railed against the war with the Baaman Empire. Jenn spoke in elevated tones as she held aloft the intelligence missive and gesticulated as she told of her intent to deliver it into the hands of the Baamans.

She scanned the room as she spoke and her eyes met with those of one of the commanders from the war room. “Get him,” she shouted to her compatriots, pointing at the man. They all stood and advanced and Jenn Todd the opportunity to flee, running out the door and out of the city. She passed half a dozen mounted soldiers on her way out, but she continued to run as fast as her legs would allow.

Her skirts began to restrict her full running stride, so she pulled up the folds and unabashedly revealed her sinewy legs to any whom she passed.

The forest. If she could just reach the forest, she could escape them.