Chapter 23
After a few days in camp, Azreth seemed to run out of things to do. He followed Raiya around as she helped Jai and Madira with their chores, and he sat and watched her in the evenings while she drafted new counter-bindings or worked on her baton, which didn’t bother her, but she could tell something was on his mind.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him, working her stylus into the tricky curve of an Auren-Li rune.
He put his chin in his hand. “Nothing. I have everything I need. We are not hungry or cold. We are not in imminent danger. But I don’t feel content. I am restless.”
“You mean you’re bored.”
He looked thoughtful, as if that possibility hadn’t occurred to him. “Yes. Bored,” he said, rolling the word around in his mouth like it was deeply unfamiliar.
“Have you never been bored before? When mortals have free time, we socialize or play games or create things.”
He silently contemplated that. That night, he abstained from sleep yet again, though he must have been exhausted.
In the morning, he disappeared while Raiya was in the bathing tent with Jai and some of the other women. Later, she was surprised to find him fully glamoured and hauling water from the nearby river, holding several large buckets on each arm. A group of Roamers lounged nearby, watching him with amusement. Raiya gleaned that they were the ones responsible for carrying water that day, and he’d relieved them of that task. As Azreth went back for a third trip to gather another six bucketsful, the group clapped and cheered him on, bemused but clearly won over. Azreth wrinkled his brow at them.
After they assured him that he had brought more water than they could possibly use, Madira introduced him to his friends, a group of young men and teenage boys. They were chopping wood for the fires that night, so Azreth joined in. He kept going long after the others had tired, and even when he had a neat stack as high as himself beside him, he seemed like he could have carried on.
He seemed to come to a realization that night, because the next day, instead of chopping logs into wedges, he went into the woods to do the hard work that the others couldn’t. He felled trees and carried them back to camp, slinging entire tree trunks over his shoulders. Bystanders stopped and stared as he passed. A few trees in, Raiya spotted him wiping sweat from his brow. Finally, he had found something that required effort.
He quickly became quite popular, and people began asking him for help with other things. When a carriage on the road became stuck in a ditch near town, someone came to ask him for help putting it back on the road. When a group went hunting, they asked him to come along as protection from the bandits and monsters that roamed the wilderness. He always obliged. And no one asked too many questions about his origins.
Raiya spent the first day helping Jai with her chores around the camp, but then Fu-lon suggested that her skills might be better spent elsewhere. Raiya took the hint and asked her if there were any enchantments she might benefit from. She spent that afternoon weaving a heating enchantment into a pair of gloves.
Word got around, and people began asking her for other small items. Heating devices were popular, as were water purification and anti-conception enchantments.
When they’d been in camp for a week, Raiya saw Azreth begin to change. His shoulders became less stiff. He stopped looking over his shoulder so often. He became comfortable moving around the camp on his own without having Raiya nearby.
They slept together every night, but didn’t have sex, even though Raiya craved him constantly. It was difficult to find a private place in the camp.
On the seventh night, lying in bed, she felt him go still and lax in her arms, and when she looked over, his eyes were closed. She didn’t think she’d ever been so pleased by the sight of someone sleeping.
One day, she found him painstakingly carving a long piece of wood with a small knife.
“I didn’t know you did woodworking, Azreth.”
He gave a noncommittal hum. Later that afternoon, she saw him present a small, rectangular wooden object to Madira.
Madira gave it a disinterested look as he took it. “Why would I want this?”
“It is an incense burner,” Azreth said flatly. “It is small, so you can take it anywhere with you. You can make an offering to your goddess even if there is no temple nearby.”
“I know what it is. The Goddess doesn’t care about incense. I don’t see when I would use this.”
Azreth shrugged.
That night, Raiya caught the unmistakable scent of resinous incense burning somewhere nearby.
Later, Azreth came to her in their tent and showed her another result of his efforts. He’d made a bow. It was made of dark wood, smooth and polished, with little geometric designs carved into the limbs that reminded her a little of her rune-covered projects. It was beautiful, though it looked smaller than what she would have expected a man of his size to use.
“I made this for you,” he said, making her look up at him in surprise. He’d divested himself of his glamour, as he always did when they were alone. She was getting used to these two very different versions of him, but she would always prefer his true appearance. She regretted that he had to hide himself.
She took the bow in both hands. “You made this for me?”
“So you can stay practiced with a weapon other than your baton,” he explained, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “So that you can defend yourself and hunt your own food if you ever need to, when another weapon isn’t close at hand.”
Raiya looked down at the bow helplessly. She didn’t even know how to hold it properly, let alone shoot it.
“Do you know how to use it?” Azreth asked, cocking his head.
“I’ve never tried,” she admitted, feeling very sheltered. She struggled to draw it. She wasn’t strong enough.
“I will modify it to make it easier for you,” he said.
“You’re very kind.”
“If you don’t know how to shoot, someone should teach you. You are clever. You’ll learn quickly.”
“Will you teach me, then?”
He pretended to think about it, then nodded and said, “If you wish,” and it was fairly obvious that he’d been hoping she would ask. She suppressed a smile.
He pointed to the carved details he’d made in the wood—unusual patterns of lines and squares. “This part is art,” he said, glancing up at her. “Like the lattices on the windows in town. It serves no purpose but to be beautiful.”
She grinned. “It is beautiful,” she agreed.
Beneath his stony expression, he looked pleased.
A runaway wife and a demon could, in fact, make a peaceful life in Heilune. They’d found a place where their talents could be of use, where they weren’t being driven out with torches and pitchforks, where they were actually starting to get along with people. And the runes on Azreth’s hand weren’t hurting him, much as it dismayed her to see the permanent reminder of Nirlan’s attempt at enslaving him.
Madira had taken it upon himself to go on several scouting missions at the temple, and he had seen nothing suspicious—at least, not more suspicious than the cultists usually were—except that Gereg was missing. Raiya doubted they would try to capture Azreth again without a significant advantage on their side. Trapping him in a rune circle had been lucky for them, and would be a difficult maneuver to repeat.
The only thing that still worried her was Nirlan. She’d seen no sign of him since he’d left town over a week ago. It was almost enough for her to hope he might have gotten tired of chasing them.
After Azreth had finished modifyingher bow, he took her to the edge of camp to practice shooting into the woods. He demonstrated how to draw it, then handed the bow and an arrow to her. Taking the smooth, elegant pieces of wood in her hands, she raised the bow. He reached over to reposition her arms, then nodded. She planted her feet, snug in their fur-lined boots, and her slow exhale clouded in front of her.
She released the arrow. It flew into the woods and struck a tree. It was immensely satisfying, even if it wasn’t the tree Azreth had told her to aim for.
“I’m sorry,” she said, fearing he would consider it a waste of time to try to teach her. “I’m not very good at this.”
He arched an eyebrow. “It was your first attempt.” He didn’t chastise her for apologizing, but she sensed his disapproval. She was apologizing for nothing. Most people who were not Nirlan would not be angered over such small failures.
“Do it again,” he said. “I want to watch you.”
She kept shooting until her back and arms were too sore to continue, but by the end of the session she was consistently hitting the correct tree.
“Did you use bows in the hells?” she asked him.
“Sometimes. There are many dangerous things in the hells. Many of them fly.”
“Really? I’ve never seen you use a weapon here.”
“I’ve never needed one. Mortals are easy to hurt.”
“Of course. How could I forget?”
“You would do well not to. I have told you that.”
She turned to him, serious. “Isn’t it more… unpleasant to use your bare hands to kill someone?”
He cocked his head. “Unpleasant?”
“People are naturally averse to killing. I think Astra made us that way. People prefer weapons like bows because they put you farther away from your victim. It means you can’t see the fear on their face so vividly. You can’t smell their blood, or feel it on your hands. It makes the horror of killing… less horrific.”
Azreth’s dark, illusory human eyes stared at her. In that moment, she was sure that anyone could have seen through his glamour. There was something demonic about his eyes as he contemplated the idea of murder.
“I like to feel blood on my hands,” he said. “I enjoy the sensation of it slicking my skin, and the metallic taste of it on my tongue. I want to smell my enemy’s panic as their insides spill from their body.”
Raiya wasn’t quite breathing as she listened to him.
“The people here have good reason to fear me,” he said. “I long for destruction and bloodshed. I am dangerous.”
For once, it didn’t sound like a boast. He sounded almost unhappy, and Raiya wondered if, perhaps, he didn’t want to be who he was. Maybe he didn’t believe he could be the sort of person he wanted to be.
“When I killed that mage in your castle, you felt that bloodthirst, too,” he said. “I could feel your terror, but I could also feel your fascination. Your triumph.” He raised a hand to her cheek. “You were lovely.”
She wanted to deny it. But there was no point in lying to him or to herself. Both of them held darkness deep inside them. The fury of a person wronged. A craving for violent retribution.
But she shook her head slowly, denying it anyway. “If you really felt such a desire for bloodshed, you would act on it. You would have done as the cultists wished. You could kill me and all the others at the camp. You would enjoy it, and it would strengthen you to feed on us. What’s stopping you?”
He blinked slowly, studying her. His fingers stroked her hair.
“Nothing,” he replied. “I am either a poor example of a demon, or a poor attempt at a goodly mortal.”
“Then I must be, as well.”
The ground shook, interrupting them. Azreth’s eyes widened.
Raiya blinked, startled. “Was… Was that you?”
The earth shook again, a shivering vibration and then a distant screech that rent the air. Raiya spun, trying to identify the source of the sound. It echoed everywhere, and it was difficult to tell which direction it came from. Azreth put an arm around her, keeping her close.
“We should return to the camp,” he said. “Come.”