19. Business in Drida #3
“Come on.” Almatra plunged out into the night with the small party behind her.
Hooves thudded closer as the door fell wide open in his rescuers’ wake.
They were reaching for the horses that emerged from the darkness.
Feldlady Arleth was already up in a saddle.
Imalroc followed with stilted, uncertain steps.
Etiana came after him, her face stark white, voice shaking. “Don’t leave without saying goodbye. He doesn’t deserve to be left like that.”
Imalroc's legs were leaden, but he moved forward. He needed to tear himself free. It felt as if he might just rip in half instead.
“Don’t do this.” Etiana followed him with hands outstretched, her eyes glittering. “Too many people have done this to him. Please.”
His chest ached, eyes burning. “I can’t,” was all he could summon, and it came up his throat like bile, searing and hot.
“I knew it would come to this,” Etiana said. “I knew you would leave him.”
He spun around to glare at her, or tried to, but his vision blurred terribly as his eyes welled. He staggered back, his heel striking the threshold of the courtyard door, catching himself on the frame.
And then he hung there, paralyzed and miserable.
He thought of Rerdas’s face, the way the huntmaster looked up at him like he was extraordinary and desired and known.
His heart struggled against the prison of his ribs.
There was a kiss in Draal, a night in Lakara, and the sensation of Rerdas’s arm across his waist in a bed so close to where he stood now.
There were forests and laughter and blackberry wine.
It shoved at him, a wind pressing at his back, powerful enough that he nearly gave in and stepped back inside.
But a dark undercurrent ran counter to it.
There were also battleboxes. Manacles and chains.
He thought of owners and handlers, and he thought of sand.
Red sand of the Arble. Golden sand of the Vandro.
White sand of Iffroa. The fucking river in Navona, the black sand of Tamasyad, and the blood-slick floors of Widran.
“He didn’t—” His throat was so choked he could barely get it out. “He never gave me a choice.”
“You’re choosing now,” Etiana whispered.
Yes. And he chose himself because no one else would.
Imalroc dragged his sleeve across his eyes and reeled away from her. His blood pounded in his head. He crossed the courtyard to where the Southerners waited.
“There you are,” Almatra said. She nodded toward a horse beside a mounting block.
He fumbled with the stirrups, trembled as he hoisted himself up, the Draalish sword flat beneath his arm. Maybe this was a dream. Maybe a nightmare. The horse danced to the side a little, as if it sensed its fracturing rider.
They moved swiftly away from the inn. Imalroc couldn’t help but look back, up to where the moonlight glanced off a pair of distant porthole windows. His breath came in rattling waves. He fought in vain to steady it.
Almatra rode up beside him, veering enthusiastically but without the skill of an experienced rider. “It’s not quite long enough, but this is better than nothing.” She held out an empty scabbard to him.
Awkwardly, he pried one hand loose from where he had it knotted in the horse’s mane and took the scabbard. He sheathed the Draalish sword as best he could. It hung over his back, bumping his shoulder with comforting weight.
“We’ll have to get out of the city quickly, once we finish our last bit of business,” Almatra said.
It took him too long to reply. He needed something else to focus on, or he was going to fall off the saddle and possibly sprint back to the inn and into the attic.
Rerdas would be warm and half-asleep, but he’d roll over and open his arms, and never need to know that Imalroc had tried to sever the tie between them.
“You alright?” Almatra peered at him.
“Fine,” Imalroc rasped. “What business is it?”
“You know of Bren Kul Mari.” It wasn’t a question.
Every battleboxer who lasted longer than a season on the sands knew of Drida’s jewel.
“They’re preparing for a huge fight festival.
Brought in oil drums the size of houses, they say, to bless all the fights.
The holding cells are packed, and we have a way in. And out.”
His pulse sped. That was exactly the dangerous sort of thing to seize his concentration. “You’re going to take the battleboxers? How will they get away without being caught?”
Almatra grinned savagely. “The freedom traders have already begun the process. There are teams prepared to get them through the city a half-dozen ways. All they need is a good cover. And we’ll give it to them. We’re going to light that oil-drenched prison on fire.”
He didn’t know it was possible to suddenly feel weightless as air, and yet also as if he were buried in ice. Hope kindled in the same heart where some delicate, bright, terrible thing continued to crack.
“What do you say, champion? Shall we burn the battlebox to the ground?”
Imalroc returned her starved smile. “Yes,” he snarled.
He could taste the ash already.