Chapter 24 Bad Shepherd
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BAD SHEPHERD
ADELINE
Ardruna lopes through the meadows to meet us. She nudges me with her massive head. “Are you all right?”
But Roane gets right in her face. “What were you thinking, Druna? Taking her out on the balcony?”
The lioness growls. “She wanted to see what you were doing.”
That seems to knock the breath out of him. He turns toward me, eyes a little wide. “Why?”
“I was curious.” To hide my embarrassment, I scowl at the lioness. “I thought you said the balcony was safe.”
“We’ve never been attacked up there before,” she growls.
“I’m just that unlucky, then?”
She licks her chops. “Finding the book, entering a forbidden library, and getting attacked on the balcony? It sure looks like it.”
Roane curses, recovering. “Druna, you shouldn’t have taken her up there.”
“How was I supposed to know that she wouldn’t be quick enough to evade the attack?” Ardruna retorts.
“So it’s my fault,” I whisper. I’m a liability, like Roane had said. Unable to protect myself. Not quick enough.
“She’s not used to our world, Druna,” Roane says quietly. “You know better than that.”
The lioness rumbles and turns away. “You’re one to talk. If I’m not needed here, I have other business to attend to. Your hunt was interrupted. I’ll grab us something.”
“Druna…” Roane rubs a filthy hand over his face and breathes out, a shaky sound. “Damn.”
For the first time, I realize he looks tired, too. His leathers are worn, holed in places, dark with grime. His boots are in a similar state, and his long hair is matted.
Nobody has looked after him in a long time, I think, and shy away from the sad thought the moment it forms.
He’s a warrior librarian. He chose this life. He doesn’t need anyone taking care of him as if he were a child.
And in any case, what comfort could I offer him? I’m just a bookish human thief that he doesn’t want around.
Ardruna runs away, leaving me alone with Roane, and I’m sorry about their spat over me, but I’m distracted because it’s the first time that I’m completely alone with him.
However, he doesn’t linger. Turning, he motions for me to follow him. “It’s getting dark. We should make our way back to the library.”
“I’m parched. Aren’t we near the river? I can hear water running.”
“Riding a firebird sort of dries you out,” he unexpectedly agrees. “The river is right ahead. It’s a small detour.”
I follow him, the book pressing against my breasts inside my bodice, the griffin egg in my arms. I hadn’t counted on him being so understanding. But truth be told, he has been kind to me. If not for the fact that he wants me gone from here and the occasional insult, we’re practically best friends.
Funny, Aline. Very funny.
“How did you tame the phoenix?” I ask, out of breath as we cross small streams and cross blooming meadows.
“It’s a long story.”
“I love long stories.”
He slows down, letting me catch up, only to arch a dark brow at me. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No. It’s the truth. Why invest my time and affections in a world and people who won’t be around for long?”
“People? You mean characters.”
“Same thing.”
He stops. The look he gives me is long, dark, and inscrutable. “You really mean that.”
“Haven’t you figured that out about me yet?” I laugh softly. “I live for stories. I wish I could disappear inside one.”
A feverish gleam enters his eyes, and his cheekbones flush. “You wouldn’t rather live in the real world?”
“The real world… is fine,” I say with a shrug. “Not perfect, for sure, but good enough. My family is poor but loving. I only meant… I like disappearing inside books once in a while.”
“Ah.” The word is almost a sigh. He opens his stride again. “I see.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He’s quiet after that. We cross a smaller creek and finally reach the river bank where the water flows like liquid glass over rounded, colored pebbles and green weeds, running like a sylkie’s hair.
It’s pretty wide, though still too narrow and fast-flowing to hold a boat, and groves of what look like black pines grow on either side.
He crouches down and splashes his face, then cups his hands and drinks. He looks like a wild animal, some fantastic creature, the ends of his long hair dipping into the river, his gleaming eyes scanning both banks.
“What a strange place this is,” I whisper, crouching down beside him and placing the egg on the soft soil.
He casts me a sidelong glance. In the low light, his eyes look like lucent gems. “It’s a library.”
“But that’s not true. Only the sanctum is a library. All this… what is it made of?”
“Stories.”
“Pieces of stories,” I breathe. “So if I drink this water… I’m drinking water from a story.”
He huffs. Drinks some more water. It’s dripping off his face like chips of crystal. “That’s a complicated way of looking at it.”
“How would you look at it?”
“It’s just another world. Every world is made of stories.”
I have to acknowledge that, in a sense, he’s right. But I’ve never been anywhere where I know that every piece, every drop belongs to a book. That I can read the world like a page.
“Achlys,” I whisper. “The river. Which story is it from?”
He shrugs those broad shoulders. “I don’t much like stories myself.”
“You’re a librarian.”
“That’s like saying you like sheep because you’re a shepherd.”
“Who says shepherds don’t like sheep?”
He smirks. “They stink and bite.”
I laugh and run my fingers through the water. “Leave the sheep alone. We’re talking about this place. A cavern, and inside it a temple, in which there is a sanctum that contains the Book of Areon, the heart of this strange world. Its living, beating heart.”
“The core of its curse,” he whispers, his gaze going distant.
“But if you control the heart,” I muse, drinking some more icy water, “don’t you control the entire body?”
His voice is sharp when he says, “I didn’t know you were a healer.”
“I’m not. But I’m a healer’s daughter and I want to heal this world.”
“You think you understand this world because you know stories.” His expression closes off as he rises and pats the knives and the scimitars hanging at his belt. “I don’t know how to fix this. Nobody has found a way to stop the monsters from spilling out of magical books in centuries.”
“Fair enough.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing. How about some trust?”
He’s right. I’m acting as if I know more than the people who have been living here for so long, more than him, the designated guardian of this place. By questioning his knowledge and abilities, by keeping Olm, I make it look as if I have no respect for him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, getting up and wiping my hands on the skirt of my dress.
He frowns at me. “What for?”
“For not being the easiest guest in your world.”
If I expected his expression to soften, I was mistaken. His lips pull not into a smile but a snarl. “Indeed.”
I frown, mirroring him. “I’m trying my best.”
“Then try harder.”
“Hey.” He starts walking along the shore and I stomp after him. “Wait. We were having a conversation.”
“Were we? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Don’t do that,” I say, my arms wrapped around the griffin egg.
“Don’t do what?”
“Shut me out. Dismiss me outright, just like when I arrived here. Why did you refuse to speak to me then?”
“I thought you were one of my hallucinations.”
Okay, that opens a whole new can of worms. “One of them?”
“Or a monster who escaped from a book.”
I start running to catch up with him. “Wait, you get that a lot? Monster girls escaping from books?”
“Not really.”
“Do I look like a monster?” Suddenly I want to know. I want to see his face when he replies but when I finally reach him, his gaze is blank.
“Not all monsters are monstrous in appearance,” he says softly and walks faster.
I have no reply to that. So I follow him a little further before I dig my heels in.
“Look,” I say, “I need a bath.”
That stops him in his tracks. He sweeps back around, the frown settling into his favorite dark scowl. “A bath? This isn’t a palace, princess.”
“I don’t have to be a princess to want to wash myself.”
“Well, here is the stream. Cold, as you seem to like it.” He gestures grandly at the river, his grin sharp like a knife. “Suit yourself.”
I clench my jaw. “You should bathe, too.”
“I find protecting you from monsters while standing buck-naked in the river kind of hard.”
“I don’t see any monsters lurking about,” I say while my mind is frozen, having slammed into the image of a naked Roane, long dark hair unbound, bathing in the river.
Like, whoa.
“You usually don’t see most monsters until they are on top of you,” Roane says. “So if you’re going to bathe, if it’s that urgent, hurry it up. I’ll keep watch.”