CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Night quickly approached, cloaking what remained of Terrence in darkness. Nothing could cloak the sight from Sy’s memory. He trailed behind the other two through the trees, clutching Anya’s shotgun, knuckles white.
When Bertrand had returned it to him, he’d thought about refusing. But Anya had entrusted it to Sy, not Bertrand. So he kept it and held it unloaded and open-barreled over his shoulder, ready to make his best attempt if need be. It did not comfort him.
The other two walked side by side, their heads close together, muttering under their breath.
Mourning their lost friend, Sy assumed. He hadn’t liked Terrence, but he’d been alone in that.
When Bertrand put a reassuring hand on the small of David’s back, Sy pretended to examine the gun.
It wasn’t any of his business who David sought solace in. Not anymore.
The camp amounted to two overburdened rucksacks and a clumsily rolled tent.
When the others had left the city, they’d brought everything in wagons and expected to stay in them; they hadn’t thought to pack for traveling on foot.
Terrence’s pack was left behind. Sabina must have taken hers, wherever she went.
He hoped she had returned to the city. He hoped David and Bertrand would, after what they had seen. He certainly wanted to.
He couldn’t.
David and Bertrand’s gathered sticks made an impressive pyre – or would have, if any of them could manage to light it. Bertrand, scraping his knife against a sharp rock and producing a few sparks, got the closest. Since the night air was mild and they didn’t need to cook, they soon gave up.
The three of them sat in silence, none too eager to eat, not even their own supposedly safe provisions. After what he had just witnessed, Sy was not sure he would ever hold an appetite again. He thought again of Sabina’s botched spell, of how the way it altered Anya should have been impossible.
Impossible, like a man’s insides rotting away in mere seconds?
Had the apple, the tree been bewitched? He didn’t think so. Based on Anya’s warnings, the tree’s magic was its own.
Sabina’s spell had been her own; the tea had been brought from ?bender.
What had happened to corrupt her spell? In the calm, he thought he could feel a certain thickness to the air, almost like the clinging humidity in the city after a summer storm, though the forest air rang in his lungs clean and clear as a bell.
It had a smell, like pine – that was the trees, of course – but something else, something bitter, something vivacious.
Was there a dark, vernal, untapped magic in the very air?
Or, he thought, pressing his fingers into the soft, damp dirt around the mossy stone he made his seat, was it found in something lower to the ground?
It was beyond him; none of it made any sense, and his aching head swam with the effort of trying to make it.
He forced himself to swallow a stale piece of rye softened with a bit of water.
Bertrand, meanwhile, had unearthed a bottle of rye whiskey from the depths of his rucksack.
He offered Sy and David both a drink, but Sy declined.
Though his nerves begged for it, though he was almost useless, he may still need to pen a spell, and thinner blood was the last thing he needed.
David was the first to break their silence. “We have to go home.”
His voice and gaze were steady. Sy recalled David’s almost eerie calm when his own back was shredded and seeping blood, unphased when even Anya’s hand had been clasped tightly in his. He had known the spell by rote.
Almost as if he had seen such violence before.
But where would he have seen it?
“We need to go back to ?bender,” David repeated. “You came here on foot, with the huntress. Do you know the way?”
“If I ever did, I don’t anymore. I lost hours today. I have no idea where we are.” He didn’t mention it, wary of frightening them further, but he had a sneaking suspicion the hours he lost were not due to his inexperience. A suspicion the forest would not be too keen to let them leave.
Already, he thought of the Lichtenwald as its own creature, sentient. Hungry.
He also didn’t mention the map.
Bertrand nursed the whiskey bottle, staring at the lantern they, hungry for light of any kind, had placed in the barren pile of sticks that would have been their fire. “I’m not leaving. If nothing else, this proves the magic here is even more volatile than we suspected. We’re closer than ever.”
At his dead-eyed stare, Sy frowned. “Are you completely unaffected by what we just saw?”
“Of course I’m not,” Bertrand said, heat creeping into his voice. “Unaffected enough to shoot the man.”
“I–” Sy faltered. Now both of them gazed at him, accusation written in bold letters upon their brows. “I’ve never even held a gun before. I panicked.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “You stopped me from eating the apple. Why?”
“Anya. Before we…parted ways, she warned me not to eat anything I hadn’t killed or brought myself. Now you have the same warning. As did Terrence, I might add.”
“You might, but that would be speaking ill of the dead.”
“Don’t you dare blame this on me.”
David laughed humorlessly, grabbing the bottle from Bertrand. He took a swig and pointed at Sy. “You knew. You might have stopped him. You might have so much as flinched when you saw him die.”
“The way you flinched when you saw the wreck that bear left of my back?”
“Should I have frozen in panic?”
“You tend traumatic wounds with ease, you poach others’ ideas for your own gain. The forest is revealing another side of you. I only wonder what else you’re hiding.”
“Then at last, we’re on equal footing.” He took a drink of whiskey, then stared into the bottle and spoke flatly. “My father’s factory manufactures gunpowder. Accidents happen, not infrequently. I’ve seen and tended far worse.”
Sy kept his face neutral, but inwardly winced. He had seen his share of factory accidents himself when he tended the streets of Lower Bunting. Most amounted to a twisted ankle or a sprained wrist, but some were quite gruesome. No wonder David hadn’t flinched.
As for why Sy hadn’t stopped Terrence, he had no answer for that. No answer he wanted to face.
When David spoke again, his voice had less venom in it. Less venom, and a question. “When that woman was hurt. You ran out to help her.”
So David didn’t think him a complete monster. An idiot, perhaps. He felt a tension in his shoulders release. “It was foolish, I know.”
Bertrand sat up straighter. “You know about injured women better than most. Don’t you, Sylas?”
“I’m sure I don’t catch your meaning.”
“The rumors of what Edgard does with the girls he collects. Of what you help him with. Tell us they’re not true.”
At last, someone had asked.
And he said nothing. Let the answer haunt him in its silence, as it always had.
But then David spoke, venomous once more. “I know Edgard will have his way. And you are a King’s Wizard first. A King’s Wizard must obey the king. Especially one…like you.”
“Of course,” Sy agreed acerbically.
“But…to change someone, against their will. It’s a clear violation of our oath as scribes.”
Sy felt as if he had been kicked. His scarred left hand curled into a fist. “There’s no reason I should give a single shit for that hypocritical oath, but you honestly think I would ever take someone’s choice from them?”
“If your choice was taken? If you were desperate to free yourself?” He licked his lips, pressed a hand to his mouth. “If you saw a chance to get ahead of a competitor, one you knew meant something to me, even if it meant letting him die in horrific fear and pain?”
Sy felt his expression smooth.
“There,” he said, pointing weakly. “That. You disappear. I thought it was because of your upbringing, because you felt out of place. But now–”
“Don’t be shy,” Sy prompted, his voice deadly calm.
“After what I’ve seen today, I no longer know what I think you would do.”
Another kick, straight to the chest. David had been boiling with grief, with fear, with anger, and ready to spill it all on Sy.
The moment his anger began to cool, Bertrand posed a question designed to paint Sy as an immoral beast. That didn’t bother him; he knew as much – and far worse – had been said about him behind closed doors.
But that David was willing to see the likeness? David, who he thought knew him better than anyone?
Didn’t that mean there was a likeness to see?
“You could have come to me, Sy,” said David, setting the whiskey aside. “I could have helped you. We could have found a way, together. This shouldn’t have happened.”
“Terrence was a beast. Little better than the king. Claude too, evidently.” David paled, and Sy pressed on. “Make of that what you will.”
“He’s right,” Bertrand put in. “They visit my club when they’re not at Martin’s. Not your sort of place. They like to… boast of their latest conquests.”
David closed his eyes. “I – I believe you. Be that as it may–”
“You’re the one who sent everyone scattered about out here like ants.”
“No, that was your country cousin. If we had our wagons–”
“It wouldn’t matter. Some other horror would take you. It may still. And if I’d had my way, none of you would be here. Sabina would be safe at her brother’s country estate, not wandering about alone in the darkness–”
“You’re not the only one who deserves the chance,” said David.
Something in David’s words gave him pause. “Have you considered what we’re attempting to do? Really considered it.”
Bertrand barked a grim, high laugh. “Risking being eaten alive by an evil tree?”
“Giving Edgard eternal life. He’s already a tyrant. Can we honestly expect immortality to temper him?”
“He does have a point,” David said haltingly. “If Edgard were a better man–”