Chapter 11
They made camp a few hours later, when Sweetness decided that she was done. The Dervish estimated that it was still well before noon, but he wasn’t complaining. If the Sleeveless chased them in this weather, they’d earned it.
Still, they didn’t risk a fire. Dog Violet dragged branches together in a crude shelter under a pine, while Edmund rubbed down the mule with stumbling, automatic movements.
After a moment, the Dervish began helping the gnole build a shelter.
He might only be required to protect Edmund, but letting a creature half his size, still limping from her captivity, do the work while he sat around crossed the line from protest to just being a miserable bastard.
Besides, I’ll be inside that shelter too. The only other way not to freeze is to go back in the sword.
Edmund draped a saddle blanket over Sweetness and tied her up out of the wind. (The Dervish triple-checked the knots.) Large Francis agreed to act as a windbreak, waited until they had crawled inside, and proceeded to roll into a ball at the mouth of the lean-to.
“I wish I could do that,” Edmund muttered.
Good way to trap us inside and eat us later, the Dervish thought, but didn’t say. Really, it was just paranoid reflex. Large Francis might look like the greatest nightmare in creation, but he seemed almost sweet. Certainly a great deal like Edmund. Although Edmund is sweet too, come to that.
It was a good thing that the Dervish had no use for sweet men, even if they had interesting hands.
The shelter was barely large enough to sit up in, mostly enclosing the clear space under a low-branched pine.
The three mammals spent a few minutes trying to arrange blankets in the close quarters, then gave up and simply huddled together.
Dog Violet wound up draped over the Dervish’s legs like a blanket that smelled strongly of wet dog.
“You’ve got fur,” the Dervish said enviously.
“Not a gnole’s fault that humans don’t.”
“I always th-thought huddling for warmth s-s-sounded romantic,” said Edmund, teeth chattering. “It shows up in all the b-b-books.”
The Dervish gave a sharp crack of laughter. “Edmund, are you telling me that you read dirty books? Not just monographs about barnacle pigeons?”
“N-n-no! They’re imp-p-proving literature!”
“Oh, is that what they call it here? Do they come with pictures?”
“N-not like that. Although, there are some in the archives…”
“I bet there are.”
“The ones I read aren’t like that!” It was too dark to see, but the Dervish was pretty sure that Edmund was blushing hard enough to melt the snow outside.
“You’re telling me you never went looking through the archives for dirty books? Because I won’t believe you. I was a young boy once too, and I don’t care how long I was in the sword, that can’t have changed.”
Edmund cleared his throat. “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The Dervish had heard more convincing lies from children under the age of five.
“Sure you don’t. It’s universal. Tell him, Dog Violet.”
An explosive snort sounded near his ankles. “Gnole-cubs don’t look at mating pictures, knife-man.”
“There, you see?” Edmund seized on this like a lifeline.
“No. Pictures no good, don’t mean anything. When gnoles get to that age, go out looking for plant. Don’t know the name for humans. Like small tree, white flowers? In spring, smells like mating. Young gnoles sniff it, act silly, get embarrassed. Can’t grow tree near a burrow, very awkward.”
“Told you it was universal,” said the Dervish smugly. In the darkness beside him, Edmund groaned.
It was dark and dark and dark and then the dark was gone and he wished it would come back.
The Dervish was in the red-lit room where the Smith stood, her eyes clear and bright and rabid.
Commander Sarkis cursed somewhere beside him, and then he was being dragged forward and Sarkis was shouting “No!” but it did not matter because there was a sword clamped in a vise, red-hot, and his captors threw him against it, quenching the blade with his blood, and he screamed at the sight of the blade going in, even though it hadn’t started hurting yet, but it was inside him and it was making horrible sizzling noises and the smell of cooked meat filled his nostrils and it was his own body cooking and—
A net dropped over him.
The Dervish jerked away and the sword was gone. Orange-gold flame blazed around him, a cacophony of candles and lamps, lighting the room as bright as day. The priest’s eyes were as bright and rabid as the Smith’s, and he held a knife instead of a sword.
A net dropped over him.
“It’s all right,” a voice said. “It’s all right. Shhh.”
The Dervish wanted to laugh at that, because it was not right, it would never be right, the Smith had killed him once and the priest of the Lord of the Book had killed him a hundred times over but he didn’t die, he couldn’t ever die—
A net dropped over him.
“It’s just a nightmare,” the voice said, and at the same time, the priest said, “We are learning so much,” and the slab was so cold and he was freezing but the knife was even colder, a razor so sharp that it didn’t hurt at first but he could feel his flesh dragging against it and then it did hurt, the pain so extraordinary that he thrashed against it—
The Dervish woke. It was dark, not brilliantly lit. The few bits of light he could see were blue, not red. He always knew where he was when he woke up, except for a moment he didn’t, and that was terrifying. If he couldn’t trust his own brain anymore, what did he have left?
“You’ll be all right,” the voice said.
Edmund, thought some part of the Dervish’s mind, and then everything fell back into place. The fight with the Sleeveless. Our Friend. Dog Violet. The shelter in the snow.
“It’s all right,” Edmund said soothingly. “You’re awake now. It’s over.”
“Good,” said the Dervish, barely aware of what he was saying. “That’s good.”
The voice was coming from under his cheek. He was warm. His legs were a little cramped because something heavy was sprawled across them—Dog Violet—but otherwise he felt almost … comfortable?
He could not remember the last time he’d felt something as simple as comfort.
“It was just a nightmare,” Edmund said gently.
“Yes. Of course.” It was more than that, but if he kept his eyes closed, he could pretend it was just a nightmare, not a thing that had happened and that, somewhere in the back of his head, would always be happening.
Then Edmund shifted a little, only a little, and the Dervish realized that part of the warmth was the scholar’s arm was around him, and it wasn’t tight but it was there, a weight as solid as a …
Chain.
Panic sprang up howling inside his mind.
He slammed his elbow backward, startling a surprised grunt from Edmund, and the sword’s magic clamped down on him and he thrashed against it and the weight holding him down and Dog Violet rolled off with a startled yip and then the Dervish smashed his shoulder into the side of the shelter and the branches fell over and about five pounds of snow poured down directly into his face.
There was a brief, thundering silence, broken only by the liquid growls of gnolespeech. The Dervish didn’t need to speak the language to know that Dog Violet was swearing.
He lay on something much lumpier than Edmund’s embrace. Pine branches. He still didn’t know what species. Pinus uncomfortablus. He wiped snow grimly off his face and looked up into the nightmare face of Large Francis, who was gazing down at him in evident concern.
“Are-you-unwell-friend-Dervish?”
“I’m fine. Just … fine.” The Dervish sat up. Edmund came crawling out from under the tree, his hair full of pine needles. A moment later, Dog Violet erupted from the snow and shook like a dog, flinging wet snow directly into the Dervish’s face.
It was probably no more than he deserved.
The snow had stopped. The sun hadn’t exactly come out, but cracks of blue had formed in the clouds. After the Dervish had rather dramatically broken camp, it made more sense to start walking again, even though they’d only had about four hours of sleep.
Edmund had no idea what to do about the Dervish.
The man was jittery and restless, pacing the edges of the campsite until they had gotten Sweetness loaded and ready to move.
He didn’t talk and communicated only in monosyllables.
Edmund couldn’t tell if it was anger or embarrassment and had no idea what to do about either.
Mistress Slate would probably say that his emotions aren’t my responsibility to manage.
Which is true, but … Edmund had always been the confessor for the brothers in his cohort, always the one who saw when someone was upset and came to offer them a kind word.
More importantly, he was very much responsible for the Dervish’s presence here.
If I hadn’t drawn the sword … if I’d gone south instead of east …
But no, he couldn’t actually regret that. If he had gone south, Large Francis would still be in a hole under the Sleeveless camp and Dog Violet would still be chained in their kitchen. No amount of emotional upset could outweigh that.
I set him free of the sword. He hates the sword. Surely this is better? Edmund knew that being shackled to a nearly helpless scholar had to be galling, but surely it could be worse?
The Dervish’s nightmare had sounded terrible enough. The man had moaned and mumbled fragments of words that sounded like pleas, his body wracked with half-formed sobs. It had felt natural to gather him up and make soothing sounds as best he could.
It had even seemed to work, at first.