Chapter 3 #3
His offer left her speechless. Not for its potential rewards, but for the reason behind them.
Daes and Keforin had been at war with each other since her grandfather’s youth, taking territory from each other in one battle only to surrender it in the next one.
The contested lands were rich with widows and orphans and poor with food and shelter, a fertile breeding ground to turn the forsaken into those like the Daggermen.
Disaris was Daesin, though she truly didn’t care who won this godsforsaken war, only that it would finally end.
An itzuli, a Reader, a code-breaker. Whatever name was given to her, her particular skill was coveted by far more than the fanatical Hierarch and for a reason that offered hope instead of terror.
Her mind raced. She wanted to tell the general she’d decipher whatever missives he gave her, translate until her eyes bled and her skull threatened to split, but she couldn’t.
Her sister lived on borrowed time, a future sacrifice to the Hierarch’s bloodthirsty goddess.
To stay here and offer aid condemned Luda to death.
Though she had been truthful in her way with her replies to Golius’s questions, honesty had its limits.
There was no way he’d accept her refusal, even if she explained her reasons and promised to return later.
No one was that na?ve. Her thoughts raced with burgeoning excitement.
She needed to buy time and a means to reach the escape route she’d planned for many months. Golius had possibly given her both.
“Your offers are generous, lord,” she said, clasping her hands together and bowing low.
Her vision swam for a moment when she straightened, a reminder that while a bowl of thick gruel had helped fill the chasm in her belly, she was still weak and the task ahead of her impossibly daunting.
“I agree to our exchange, but I want to be wise in my choice.” She offered up a silent prayer to any pantheon of deities who might be listening.
Please make him believe me. “There is a temple within a quarter day’s ride north of your encampment.
It was built to honor Saeclum, god of wisdom and insight.
I’d like to pray to him for guidance before I ask for a reward. ”
A temple. A gate. The way to Luda.
Golius’s eyes narrowed once more. “Why not pray to the Daggermen’s goddess? She sounds quite powerful.”
Disaris couldn’t stop the sneer that curled her upper lip. “I will never bend the knee nor bow the head to the likes of Kocyte.”
Bron spoke for the first time. “I can escort her to the temple, General. I’ve been there once before.”
There was nothing in his tone to indicate his opinion or feelings regarding her request, or for the entire proceedings for that matter. Bron had always been naturally guarded. Maturity and circumstance had strengthened that aspect of his character.
Golius waved his hand in a gesture of approval.
“So be it. Make your prayers, itzuli. I’ll expect an answer when you return, along with more proof of your talent.
” His gaze turned to Bron. “You said earlier she isn’t a stranger.
Keep her with you. You know her and her value. I trust your vigilance.”
With that, he dismissed everyone in the tent except his personal aides. Bron wasted no time, capturing Disaris’s wrist in a light grip and leading her outside. The others followed, their stares heavy on her back, their whispered conjectures tickling her ears.
She was a woman of average height but still had to jog to keep up with her companion’s leggy stride as she trailed him down labyrinthine paths lined by smaller, far humbler tents than the general’s.
Soldiers quieted their conversations as they passed, while a few called out Bron’s name in greeting or saluted him.
Smoke from campfires filled the air, and the faint chorus of voices raised in laughter and drunken song floated on a zephyr tinged with the scent of horse and metal.
They halted at a tent larger than those of the rank and file. It lacked any insignia or banner to indicate one of Golius’s commanders bunkered here. Bron let go of her wrist, swept back one side of the entrance flaps and wordlessly motioned her inside.
Disaris didn’t hesitate. There was no one in the entire world she trusted more than Bron. He might hate her, but she’d never believe he meant her harm. She stepped inside, the tent’s cozy interior shrinking instantly when he followed and stood behind her.
A lit lantern hung in one corner, its weak light casting more shadows than illumination.
She got only a brief glimpse of the space before his hands settled on her shoulders, and he turned her to face him.
He was a study in pale and dark. Carved cheekbones.
The livid scar bisecting his left cheek told a story of terrible violence.
She reached out to touch it. “What happened?”
He shackled her wrist with one hand. “That isn’t your concern. His mercurial eyes gleamed with warning in the lantern light as he let go and stepped back. “What happened to Ceybold?”
There had once been no secrets between them, and Disaris wept inside for that lost time. “He died shortly before you found me. Crushed by a collapsed wall.” She didn’t weep for Ceybold or his fate.
She caught her breath when Bron moved closer again and caressed her injured arm with a fingertip. The lightest touch, but she felt it through the bandage. “Did he do this to you?”
Bron had always been a soft-spoken boy. Even when manhood deepened his voice, he still spoke in quiet tones, especially when he was angry. His question was barely above a whisper now, and asked through clenched teeth.
Disaris wanted to hug him, assure him she was fine—more than fine with him standing in front of her, alive and unharmed.
His dour expression made it obvious he wouldn’t welcome the overture.
Instead she bunched her skirt in her hands and shook her head.
“No. It’s the work of a shard from a pot that fell and shattered.
” She didn’t mention Ceybold’s knife attack just before the wall fell on him.
Bron’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe me? ”
He tilted his head, studying her for a moment. “That depends.”
“On what?”
His short huff of laughter made her stiffen. “Your eyelashes.”
She blinked. “What?”
He nodded. “Everyone has a tell. Your eyelashes are yours. Any time you lie or hide something, your eyelashes flutter as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. They’ve done so since you were a child.”
Disaris sputtered. “They do not!” Suddenly her eyelashes felt heavier than iron fans on her eyelids. “You’re imagining things.”
“I’m not. Why do you think you could never lie to me?
Every time you tried it, I thought you’d fly away.
” His ghost of a smile slid away as quickly as it appeared.
“It wasn’t what you told Golius that made them flutter.
I’m sure every word you uttered was the truth…
a truth if it were told by one of the lim-folk.
It’s what you didn’t say that brought the hummingbirds out.
” He leaned toward her, so close that she could see the prisms of light in his irises and the way his own white eyelashes fanned shadows under his eyes. “What are you hiding, Disa?”
In the summer of her fifteenth year, Disaris received three gifts from Bron: one which she could hold in her hand, the other two in her memory.
Most of the villagers of Panrin spent their days in the wheat fields.
Harvest season had begun two weeks earlier, when the daylight hours stretched long, and dawn seemed to arrive before night had barely taken hold of the world.
Disaris no longer felt the pain and stiffness of sore muscles from crouching to cut winter wheat with her sickle.
The combination of early mornings and oppressive heat made even the bees and wasps somnolent, and she yawned numerous times as she cut and stacked the stalks into bundles to be sheaved and later threshed on the threshing floor.
It was hard, boring work, and she sorely missed the summers when Bron had worked beside her, soaked in sweat while shielded from the sun in cloak, hood, and gloves.
Several people cut wheat around her, but she still felt solitary in her task, missing her best friend and wondering—as she did a thousand times a day—how he fared at the garrison at Burnpool.
He wouldn’t be here for the fall planting either, a depressing thought that made her sigh as she swung the sickle in mindless rhythm.
“Disa! DISA!”
Nazlen bellowing her name from nearby startled her out of her melancholy so that she cut the cluster of stalks she held too long and nearly sliced her skirt.
Several of the other villagers straightened and gawked along with Disaris as Nazlen burst through a wall of wheat stalks and into the clearing the harvesters had made in the field.
“Oh my gods, Disa, what are you doing?”
Disaris shrugged, raising her sickle in one hand and a cut wheat stalk in the other.
“Not doing my hair, obviously. Why are you out here?” Her friend, the oldest of eight children, with a mother made invalid a few years earlier, normally acted as child-minder for her younger siblings and didn’t work the fields.
An awful thought made Disaris drop the stalk and grab Nazlen’s arm.
“What’s wrong? Did something happen to one of the littles? Your mother?”
Nazlen shook her head, and her features lit with a wide grin. “You should be minding that mop of yours. Yeoman Kasark’s come home from delivering a load of barley to the mill. He met Bron at the Drunken Cabbage when he stopped for a pint.”
With that announcement, the world stopped for Disaris, along with her heart. “What?”