Chapter 13 #2
The pink-haired lady interrupted me with a loud sigh of disappointment, turning away from me in the same breath. ‘Oh, never mind, then. Whose turn was it?’
I spent the first half of the day’s ride bracing myself for Durlain’s reaction.
He’d suggested we avoid being seen together near the house, and so I rode the first four hours alone – over the well-travelled road to Brainne, between the ox carts and fellow travellers on horseback, until I reached the fringes of the dead forest that stretched across the hills around the city.
There I steered Pain down the dirt track between the petrified trees, hoping with all my heart that I’d remembered our agreed meeting place correctly; hoping just as hard that Durlain had gotten lost and I’d never need to look him in the eye again.
He'd be gloating his fucking horns off. I knew he would be.
The forest was dead quiet – rows upon rows of oaks and chestnut trees that hadn’t survived the cooling of Seidrinn’s climate two centuries ago, nothing but hardy moss and some stubborn ferns growing around their roots now.
I caught sight of a few hedgehogs scurrying along the path.
The orange flash of a fox shooting by, a pair of ravens circling overhead.
No other life, no birdsong or buzzing insects, and by the time I reached the clearing I’d been looking for, my skin was prickling with the eeriness of it.
I’d barely dismounted and led Pain to the creek that ran along the glade when Durlain emerged from between the grey tree trunks, dark as a midnight shadow in the midday sun. He, somehow, looked perfectly at home in this dead, decaying place.
‘Had a good ride?’ I asked, steeling myself.
‘Uneventful.’ He dismounted in a graceful sweep of black and shimmering purple, the only trace of colour in this pale, dull landscape. ‘You’re still alive, I see? Not ambushed and executed on the spot, against overwhelming odds?’
Three whole sentences.
Three sentences coming out of that pretty, sarcastic mouth of his, and already I was sorely tempted to kill him again.
‘It was a mad gamble.’ I hated how defensive it sounded. ‘You had absolutely no way of knowing it would work, and—’
A piercing look. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘I told you I don’t deal with people well,’ I bit out, yanking my water bottle from Pain’s tack and gulping down a mouthful.
It tasted of leather and smoke. ‘If you insist on trusting your luck more than you trust my experience, by all means, go ahead, but don’t pretend it’s some strategical masterstroke when it happens to work out.
And maybe don’t bet my neck on it next time. ’
He didn’t speak as he took off his gloves and coat, swiftly untied our provisions from his saddle, and prodded Smudge to join Pain by the creek.
It wasn’t the sort of silence that suggested he had humbly cowered under the weight of my admonition, though.
Rather, it was the sort of silence that felt like a prelude to murder.
I sank down in the moss and crossed my legs, waiting for the axe to drop.
But all he said when he finally settled himself beside me, sharp-edged and perfectly composed, was, ‘And a blessed First Fruits to you, of course.’
I blinked at the hand he held out to me. In his palm was a little fruit tart, filled with the last of last year’s plum preserves – a perfectly traditional First Fruits treat, in the hand of a fireborn, witch-hating Averre prince.
‘Do you celebrate?’ I said, frowning at it.
‘Our old nursemaid did.’ He shrugged. ‘And since it meant extra sweets for us, Muri and I knew to keep our mouths shut. Are you going to take it, or am I supposed to sit here like a store sign for another hour?’
Ah, yes.
Imagine, a pleasant gesture without any snarky jabs attached.
I took the treat and nibbled off a first bit, tasting plums and thyme and honey. Next to me, Durlain stuck half of his own tart into his mouth.
Only when he’d swallowed that first bite down did he stretch out his legs in front of him and say, ‘I recall you coming face-to-face with one of the kingdom’s most dangerous men recently. You did a remarkable job of talking your way out of that.’
Belloc.
It took a heartbeat for me to remember what conversation he was even continuing.
‘I was panicking that night!’ The sweetness of the plums turned sour on my tongue – ready for the bastard to explain to me in great detail why he would happily throw me to the wolves again next time. ‘That doesn’t count as knowing how to handle people under normal—’
‘Hmm.’ He seemed to consider that a moment, the muted sunlight glinting off his horns as he slowly cocked his head. ‘Except that a state of panic is exactly when most people start making mistakes, isn’t it?’
‘But—’
‘Thraga.’ There was something in the sound of my name on his lips that shut me up like a fist to the gut – a thoroughness, an intentness, that crushed my half-hearted objections like dry leaves beneath boots.
‘Why, exactly, are you so very convinced you’re perpetually on the brink of committing some irreparable error?
I’ve heard you tell me you cannot win a fight.
I’ve heard you tell me you cannot navigate a kingdom you obviously know like the back of your hand.
I’ve heard you tell me you cannot have a decent conversation with a single person, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Why?’
I’d stiffened up like a hare between hunters. I only realised it moments later – when I parted my lips and found that even my vocal cords had clamped up, unable to get out a sound.
There was the axe, then, except not blunt and brutal as I’d expected. Instead, so viciously sharp it slid through skin and armour almost without a sting – aimed so elegantly that it barely felt like an attack at all.
They always bled harder, those wounds.
‘I’m still not your friend or ally,’ I choked out, fingers tightening around my half-eaten food. ‘I don’t see how this would be any of your concern.’
‘Oh, the opposite. It’s all my concern.’ His voice never lost that silky softness.
‘We have weeks of travelling ahead of us. I’m about to put my life in your hands a lot more often, and I disliked dying plenty the first time.
If there’s any factual basis to the nonsense, I’d like to be aware of it. So?’
‘It’s not nonsense! I—’
He interrupted me with a testy sigh, gaze flitting heavenward for a brief moment. ‘As you wish. You still owe me a truth; here’s your question. What unforgivable blunders have you commited, in the past … oh, six months?’
I stared at him, lost for words.
Only then did he tilt his face towards me, meeting my gaze for the first time in the conversation. A shadow of annoyance glittered in the black of his eye – annoyance, and below it something that far, far too closely resembled the gleam of a … challenge?
‘No,’ I said numbly.
A quirk of his brow. ‘I’m afraid that’s not an acceptable answer in this game.’
‘But you could ask me so many other things – so many useful things!’ My words stumbled over each other, desperate to get out and change his mind.
‘I could tell you all about Aranc’s secrets.
Court gossip. I have dozens of names and locations of people who could help you deal with your father. Just—'
‘Touched as I might be by your sudden display of goodwill’ – he looked touched by nothing but perhaps eternal frost – ‘you’re hardly helping your own case by objecting so much to a simple question, Thraga. Putting five more locks on a door has never made what lays behind look less intriguing.’
My jaw snapped shut.
His smile was mirthless and full of thorns.
But something close to smugness hovered in his expression, just a hint of triumph. Mists take me – had I played straight into his hands, giving him the sore spot he’d needed to turn me inside out all over again? Was this exactly the revenge he’d been looking for?
‘You pest-ridden bastard,’ I whispered.
He cocked his head, unimpressed. ‘I’m waiting.’
‘You already know the worst of it.’ It came out hoarse, the words tasting like blood on my tongue. ‘I got Lark killed, for a start. If that isn’t enough to—’
‘Oh, did you?’ he interrupted, turning around to face me fully now, crossing his legs between us with half his fruit tart still elegantly perched in his long fingers.
‘And here I was, thinking you weren’t even around when it happened.
Shouldn’t he just have fought a little better, if he didn’t want to end up dead? ’
My mind went blank.
‘How … how dare you …’ The words stuttered out in strangled gasps. ‘That’s not— How— He didn’t—’
‘Grammar, Thraga,’ he sweetly reminded me.
‘Go fuck yourself!’ My voice soared. Vaguely, I registered that the last bit of my pastry was crumbling between my fingers, plum puree dripping over my hand and wrist. My mind refused to focus on anything but that skull-edged face before me, brow raised in mock-interest, the ghost of a smile on those venomous lips.
‘He wouldn’t have been in that fight without me, don’t you understand?
If I hadn’t dragged him into this mess, if I’d simply left on my own like I was planning to—’
‘Oh, were you?’ His eye narrowed a sliver. ‘Interesting. Why didn’t you?’
‘Because I would never have survived on my own,’ I said desperately, ‘so of course he had to step in and stop me, and—’
He abruptly straightened.
I fell silent just as suddenly, bracing myself for the inevitable blistering remark … and then it didn’t come, and I found myself blinking at him owlishly, trying to remember what in the world I’d said to trigger that unexpected response.
Durlain was faster. ‘You’re saying he stopped you?’