6. Garrek
6
GARREK
W hen I packed up my bed roll at dawn, Killian was already awake, awkwardly sidling back into camp with a trough of fresh water for the shuldu. He wasn’t large or strong enough to balance it up on the back of his shoulders like I did yet, so he carried it in front of himself, leaning back to counter the weight, sloshing water with every step.
But there was still a decent amount of water remaining for the shuldu, so I decided not to complain. At least he was up and doing chores instead of any of the other myriad things he was wont to do. Like biting me.
He’d always been interested in the animals. Getting him to help out with them was never too difficult. But even outside of that, he’d seemed calmer, or at least a little more subdued, after the fire. I squinted at him as his wiry arms strained, setting down the trough. Either he was feeling enough remorse about the fire that he was really trying to rein himself in and change his behaviour…
Or this was Magnolia’s influence.
I did not want to think of what Killian would be like the day we would have to leave her.
I grunted a greeting at him and grabbed up the other trough, the one from the bracku herd. A quick headcount told me all the bracku were accounted for. One of the benefits of giving up my tent meant that I’d be more easily woken should a predator approach. The bracku, in unfamiliar territory, had spent the night huddled very close together, the youngest, smallest, and easiest to pick off in the middle. Genka were large, and they could take down an adult Zabrian male with relative ease, but they’d struggle with a full-sized bracku. They were not pack animals that could hunt large prey with their brethren. Solitary, they usually went for the easiest prey.
Didn’t mean a predator wouldn’t be able to start a stampede, though. And the closer we got to the mountains, the more we’d be exposed to other, new predators that I was less familiar with.
All in all, a colossal pain in my backside.
I headed for the creek and filled the bracku’s trough, hauling it back on my shoulders, following Killian’s waterlogged footprints. I sighed when I realized, based on the size and shape of them, that he hadn’t bothered to put his boots on yet.
“Where are your boots?” I asked him, glancing down at his filthy bare feet as I returned with the water trough .
I’d learned some time ago that issuing orders at Killian very often resulted in him deciding to do the exact opposite thing. If I’d told him to put on his boots, not only would he likely not have done it, but I might have found myself dodging one (or both) being thrown violently at my head.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“You don’t… What? How can you not know?”
I squatted and set down the trough among the bracku. Then I straightened and stood with my back to Killian for a moment, breathing deeply until my annoyance was only a low simmer in my blood and my eyes were not blazing white.
I turned around.
“Don’t you think,” I said slowly, “that finding them and putting them on might be a good idea?”
“No.”
Empire help me.
The way this child could reject all reason and rational thought, even when designed to help him, was an exercise in torture I could never have conceived of.
I scrubbed my hands down my face and rubbed at my jaw.
“Do I need to remind you that there are ardu serpents?”
One bite from an ardu would kill a grown man my size, let alone a child. Not to mention the other less lethal but still vastly unpleasant things there were to step on out here. Thorns and beetle nests and dung, to name a few.
Killian merely stared at me in white-eyed, mutinous silence, his bare toes wiggling defiantly in the dirt.
My tail squeezed the metal of its hook as frustration lanced through me. Some men likely would have thrown up their hands at this point and said, “Fine, don’t wear the boots then.” I’d said similar enough things myself, usually when it came to more mundane issues like making sure he cleaned his face. Sometimes letting him go to bed with dirt on his cheek was better than the fight.
But not when it came to things that could actually, truly hurt him.
I was going to keep this thick-skulled child alive even if it killed me.
I whipped open Killian’s tent flap and went in. There wasn’t much in here. Killian’s bedroll was in a mad, messy heap. Beside it was a small pile of what looked to be pebbles Killian must have collected at some point during our travels.
The boots I found, not under or beside, but inside the turmoil of the bedroll’s hides. I thought it likely he’d gone to sleep in them and had kicked them off in his sleep. I pulled them out. The weight of them in my hands was very familiar.
They were my old boots from when I was Killian’s age. When he’d arrived here, I’d mended and resoled them for him.
“Here,” I grunted, thrusting the boots at him as I emerged. “I’m going to go back to the creek to refill the bracku trough one more time and have a quick wash. When I get back, I want to see these boots on your feet.”
Maddeningly, he did not take them. He merely brought his pale eyebrows heavily down over his bright and asked, “Or what?”
Or what? I remembered asking such a thing of my father, once, before I learned how foolish it would be. And I remembered the cutting blows to my back that followed.
If I ever tried to forget, the stiff stretch of scars there reminded me.
No matter how he angered me, no matter what he did, I refused to hit him. I’d wrestle him to the ground and tie his boots tightly to his feet if I had to, to make sure he was safe, but I wouldn’t hurt him.
It was looking more and more likely that wrestling him was exactly what I’d have to do. He still hadn’t taken the boots, and I had no real punishments at my disposal that might actually make a difference to him. Nor did I have anything to offer as a reward, because the Empire knew I was not above bribing this child. But I had nothing that he’d want. There was some satisfaction to be found in this world, in this life, but there weren’t many nice things, and Killian no doubt knew that.
Nice things…
My mind went to Magnolia, with her large dark-and-bright eyes and skin that looked so soft I found myself almost afraid of ever touching it.
And suddenly, I had my strategy .
“When I’m not in camp, who do you think will look after Magnolia?”
Killian, whose tail had been lashing madly behind him in the dust, froze.
“I’m going to the creek,” I reiterated, “and while I’m gone, she’ll be relying on you. So will the animals. You think she can take care of a herd of bracku on her own if something happens to me? Or even feed herself if the supplies run out?”
I did not think Magnolia entirely incompetent. She may not have been able to ride a shuldu or get out of her saddle, but I was sure that she would be smart enough to survive in her old world.
But she was in our world now. And she did not know its dangers like we did.
Killian’s eyes became very large, his expression sober.
It was working. Thank the blazes.
I set my mouth sternly and delivered the final blow.
“How are you going to take care of the animals and make sure Magnolia’s safe if you die from an ardu bite because you were too stubborn to put your boots on?”
We stood in silence for a moment, regarding each other. The boots dangled from my claws in the air between us.
Killian took them.
I expelled a rough exhale, not realizing until that moment that I’d been holding my breath.
“I’ll be back,” I said, grabbing the now near-empty bracku trough. By the time I’d picked it up, from the corner of my eye I saw Killian scrambling to shove his boots on.
At the creek, I stripped swiftly, stepping out of my boots and clothes and into the water. I washed quickly, thinking of the small disc – now half-disc – of soap Magnolia had made and given to me. It was in my vest pocket, back with my things.
I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to use it. It smelled like she did. I’d already mistakenly eaten half of it thinking it was food and I found myself unwilling to waste more of it in the water now.
I wanted to save it. For what, I was not sure.
I dunked my head, scrubbing my scalp vigorously before rising and striding, dripping, from the water. I took some time to beat the dust out of my trousers, holding them up with my hands and snapping my tail against them like a paddle. I also spent more time than was my custom combing my soaked hair with my claws. When I realized what I was doing – trying to make myself look more presentable because Magnolia would be awake to see me soon – I huffed a sigh and purposely mussed my hair a little in defiance before tying it back.
After that, I dressed, filled the trough, and headed back for camp.
When I returned, it appeared that Magnolia had not yet emerged. Killian had stationed himself at the entrance to her tent. His white eyes swept back and forth, and his spine was as straight as a soldier of the Imperial Justice Committee of Zabria. Put a uniform on him and he’d be the perfect miniature of any well- regarded Zabrian guard. For a disorienting moment, I was thrown back more than twenty cycles in time, reminded of when there was once a guard outside my door, when I’d slept inside a cell.
“She’s not up?” I asked, setting down the trough and grabbing my vest from where I’d lain it down on top of my pack.
“Not yet.”
I frowned, setting my hat atop my head and squinting at the sky, noting the position of the sun. Magnolia hadn’t slept in nearly this late yesterday morning. She’d been awake and ready at dawn at Fallon’s ranch.
A prickly sort of panic worked its way quietly up my spine. Panic that something wasn’t right.
“We should get the shuldu saddled and ready,” I told Killian. “When the bracku are done with the water, I want to be ready to leave.”
Luckily, working with the animals was one of the few things Killian enjoyed enough to actually do without any biting on his part or cajoling on mine. With a glance back at Magnolia’s tent – Empire, I was already thinking of it as hers, not one full day after lending it to her – he got to work.
And I just stood there, thumbs hooked into my belt, waiting.
And listening. From out here, I could at least pick up the sound of her rhythmic breathing if not any movement. I’d managed to keep her alive for the first night, at least .
“Magnolia,” I said to the blank face of the tent’s hides.
No answer.
Unbelievable.
I knew Zabrian hearing was better than that of humans, but there really was no excuse for her not to awaken immediately and respond to me when I’d spoken at that volume and in that tone.
Unless…
Something really was wrong.
The prickle of unease intensified. My tail squeezed its hook.
I reached for the tent flap and then stopped.
It was technically still my tent. I should be able to open it if I wanted to. Especially if it was to check and make sure someone under my charge was well.
But even so, it did not feel right. Having not seen a female of my own kind since childhood, there was already a sense of forbidden mystery about whatever lay beyond the fabric clutched in my claws. The fact that Magnolia was human only magnified the feeling.
The place where a human female slept was not a place that I could, or should, easily tread.
I snorted at myself. What a load of shuldu shit. It was only a tent. This was my camp and I was responsible for everyone in it.
Including the female one sleeping in too late.
After one more shameful moment of hesitation, I pulled the tent flap aside.
It was not a large space, and my gaze found her right away. Everything smelled like her in here. Instantly, the inside of the tent grew brighter as my ridiculous eyes lit up like the cursed moons on a clear night.
Magnolia was curled on her side, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her arms appeared to be tucked between them. Bizarre way to sleep. Almost like she was…
Cold.
She had no bedroll. Why hadn’t she told me she had no bedroll?
She had nothing besides her bag and a crinkly, absurdly shiny covering that did not even wrap around her all the way. The result was a rather large gap in coverage that revealed her slender back to me. The rounded curve of her backside was also visible from this angle.
For a sudden, searing moment, all I could think about was what it might be like to lie on my side behind her, to cup the perfect shape of her small body with my own. What would it feel like? To rest my hand upon her hip, to draw the lush curve of her strangely tailless backside up against my-
I jerked backwards, dropping the tent flap like I’d been burned.
“What’s wrong?” Killian was staring at me from where he was standing with the shuldu.
What’s wrong? What’s wrong is that I just imagined cozily nestling my cock against the backside of the woman intended for my cousin! What’s wrong is that somewhere at the back of my idiotic brain, I’m still imagining it !
Of course, I said none of that. Instead, I muttered, “Nothing.”
It was not convincing.
Killian frowned at me. On the rare occasions when he was content with something, it barely showed on the boy’s face. But when he was agitated or suspicious, his mouth could bend itself into pouts nearly comical in their exaggeration. His brows pulled in dramatically.
“You just jumped back like you thought a genka was about to bite your nose off.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did. Even Shanti saw it. Didn’t you, Shanti?”
Shanti tossed her head and then levelled her blue eyes at me accusingly.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I grunted at her.
What in the great, dusty blazes had my life turned into? My brain was melting into a perverse sort of soup, and now I was arguing not only with a child, but with a shuldu who could not even speak.
I never should have agreed to bring Magnolia with us.
“Hello?”
It was absurd – and more than a little alarming – the way my heart staggered in response to that sleep-hoarsened voice filtering through the tent’s walls.
“Get up,” I grunted at her from outside. “We should have left by now.”
“Oh… Oh! Sorry!” The sound of mad scrambling followed her words. A moment later, the tent flap was wrenched to the side .
My body went rigid.
I’d never seen Magnolia in clothing quite like this. At least not without her jacket covering her as it had been last night or her blanket just now. I’d noticed the sheen of it when she’d been lying down, but that had not given me the full effect.
The fabric was as pink as her tongue. It looked exquisitely smooth – nearly glossy – and was incredibly, throat-tighteningly thin. The top flowed and clung to the mysterious human mounds of her chest, swaying at her waist and pulled taut at the curve of her hips.
The morning light made her brown skin glow. It caught like little spangles of glittering dust on the two thick plaits of her hair and gleamed along the tufts around her eyes. Eyelashes.
The eyelashes were odd to me, but surprisingly they were not ugly. They made her eyes look even larger than they actually were. She stared out at me from above the high, rounded shapes of her cheekbones. Her plush lips moved quickly as she spoke.
“So sorry,” she said again, her voice tight with worry. “I can’t believe I slept in this long!”
“We leave at dawn,” I told her, striving, fighting, begging for patience. “Every day. Just as we did yesterday.”
“I know! I want to get going, too. I’ve been waiting to meet Oaken all this time!”
Something inconvenient – that I promptly ignored – lurched painfully in my gut.
“I just didn’t sleep all that well,” she called as she disappeared back into the tent. “It got a lot colder than I thought it would at night.”
Wouldn’t have been so cold if she’d had a proper bedroll…
I glanced over to where mine was on the ground, jaw tightening.
I did not like to think of myself out here, sleeping and blissfully ignorant, while she suffered unseen in the tent. Even if that suffering was due to her own unpreparedness. But then, could I really blame her for being unprepared? She’d expected to be picked up by her groom as Darcy and Cherry had been. Had Oaken not been injured, he could have brought a covered wagon for her and transported her home much more comfortably than this. He would have brought blankets and bedrolls to spare.
No. Not to spare.
They would have shared.
And they still would. Once I brought her to him.
By the Empire, but my mood is already foul this morning.
It was simply because we were late. I was annoyed at still being here when we could have left by now.
That was it.
It had to be.