Chapter Ten #2
“Soli,” he says quietly. “The sorcerer’s binding. It feels like—like nothing I can describe. Like having magical cords wrapped around and around and around me. I’m—You know about my hatred … my fear of being bound or locked up.”
“I’m sorry. So sorry. I’ll ask her to make it stop. Retract the magic.”
“We have to get away from these people,” he murmurs, checking to see if anyone is within hearing range.
Part of me wants to agree, but the weight of the quest stops me. “I … don’t know. I think I have to do this. To help save Artemisen. Save Altarra.”
His arm tightens around my shoulders, and then he removes it and clasps his hands between his knees.
“Okay. We can talk about this later. Anyway, should you be resting? I know you’re tough, but you’ve spent most of your life indoors.
You must be as worn out as I am,” he says, so kind and caring that I can’t help but return his smile.
“It was a long day, but somehow I’m hanging in there,” I say, wanting to make him understand. “It’s like I finally have the chance to step outside the smallness of my life, and—”
“And you’re braver than I am to do it without protest,” he says, reaching over to take the spoon from my hand. “Let me help with this, at least.”
When I let him take the spoon, a wave of warmth slides through me. This may be the most terrifying, impossible quest in the history of Altarra, but I’m not alone.
My friend is with me.
And Trick thinks I’m brave, so maybe I’m pretending hard enough to become brave, after all.
He’s right, though. I’m exhausted. If today was this hard, what will tomorrow bring?
The thought sends a chill to replace the warmth. Who am I trying to fool? What could an indentured servant contribute to this journey beyond the simple fact of my existence as a nobody, fulfilling an oracle’s almost indecipherable rambling?
When I pull my knees up to my chest and rest my head on them, closing my eyes, Trick puts a hand on my shoulder. “I know you’re tough, Soli. You’ll take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.”
“Soli is doing a great job taking care of herself.” The words sizzle like ice dropped into a hot skillet, and I open my eyes to see the prince standing across the fire, glaring at Trick.
Trick shoots a lazy grin at Kaelen. “She always does. But whether or not I help my friend is none of your business, is it?”
Kaelen’s face hardens, and his body tenses—a lightning strike in the shape of a man.
I jump up, not willing to wait for the thunder. “Stop! Both of you, please. Just stop.”
“Yes, stop,” drawls the Sylvan’s familiar aristocratic voice from behind me. “This quest has enough danger without adding the stress of two rabid dogs fighting over a bone.”
“Rabid?” Kaelen says, and
“Dogs?” Trick says, and
“Bone?” I say, our words tumbling over one another.
Chitai strolls up to the fire, grinning at Andras and then at me. “I think their bones are the problem, not yours, sweet Soli.”
“You could come and sit by me,” the Sylvan tells me, a slyly amused expression on his face. “I promise not to fight over my … bone.”
I blink, not understanding, and then heat rolls up my face when I do. “Maybe we could change the subject?”
Sergeant Neville frowns at Andras and Chitai. “Good idea. Who would have guessed you could put a poisoner to shame like that? How in the world did you learn so much about poisons in the few hours of tutoring you had with Lady Elianna?”
“Soli knows many things,” Chitai says, her sharp gaze on me. “Poisons. Court etiquette of the Sylvan. Much more. This is from reading?”
“Yes. Of course, I’m not actually allowed to read the books and scrolls at the library,” I confess, wincing as I slant a glance at Neville.
If I survive this, I don’t want to end up in the dungeon for unauthorized use of library materials.
“But after I taught myself the letters and then the words, I couldn’t make myself stop reading.
For all my years trapped in the life of an indentured servant, I compulsively read and read and read.
Anything to give me a window onto the world I knew I’d never be allowed to see. ”
“Yes, yes,” Chitai says. “You read the books. But—”
“I don’t just read them,” I say, wondering how to make them understand.
“Books are so much more to me. I … It’s almost like I …
discovered how to climb inside the stories.
How to wrestle with the sentences and wrap myself up in the paragraphs until I climb out at the end, exhausted but triumphant, sweaty and covered with words and drenched in ideas. ”
When I look around, I see varying levels of comprehension, but Kaelen and Elianna are nodding.
“Books are a window.” I duck my head and wrap my arms around my knees. “A window to the lives of people whose minds aren’t broken like mine.”
Kaelen hurls a stick into the fire with controlled ferocity. “Your mind isn’t broken, Soli. It just works differently than most other people’s. It’s abominable the way Pyrrh treats Gray Minds.”
“She’s not broken,” Trick agrees, his readiness to align with his enemy’s sentiment a sure sign that he really means it. “You’re just different, Soli. Occasionally fragile. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, ever.”
“Fragile means easily breakable, does it not, riverlander?” Chitai pulls out one of her daggers and begins to sharpen it.
“I think you have used the wrong word to describe your friend. She has more courage than many of the warriors I’ve known.
I didn’t see you touch that amulet. And she fought a Fell and won. ”
It’s true. I was pretty brave then, right? And all day today. Maybe I can wake up every morning deciding to be brave for that day only. It might be more possible than thinking about the bravery required for this entire quest as a whole.
Bern clears his throat. “If it’s not too presumptuous to ask, Your Highness, how is it you’re a one-man force of destruction with a sword? I thought you were just—”
Kaelen grins, but his expression is bleak. “A useless fop? A pretty-boy courtier?”
Chitai gives him a sly glance. “You think you’re pretty?”
Oh, he’s definitely pretty, I think, only to look around and see everyone watching me with amused expressions. Everyone but Trick, who scowls, and the prince himself, whose gaze holds more than a little heat.
“I said that out loud?” I mutter.
Elianna, seated on my other side, snickers. “Just a bit.”
“My mother put a wooden sword in my hand as soon as I could walk,” Kaelen says, rescuing me. “Since I became a ‘guest’ in Pyrrh, Over-Lieutenant Rackness has been kind enough to allow me to train with a few, carefully selected guards.”
“We made sure to tell them the king didn’t ‘officially’ need to know about Kaelen’s skill with a blade,” Sergeant Neville says gruffly. “That the prince was his secret weapon, so to speak.”
I nod. Having met the king, I can’t imagine he’d approve anything that made his captive prince a potential threat.
“I saw your parents give a demonstration in swordplay at a tournament once, nearly twenty years ago,” Andras interjects. “Watching them was like attending a master class in the art, and we Sylvan are among the best in Altarra, so I don’t say that lightly. Your mother …”
“She was an artist with a blade,” Chitai says when Andras trails off.
“I saw her fight for true once, when I was a child and a small contingent of Zhagarn attacked our camp. Your mother was visiting with her healer and only a small group of guards, talking about herbs with our elders. When the Zhagarn attacked …”
The desert woman touches the cloth binding her left arm, kisses her fingertips, and points up to the sky.
“The queen was fierceness itself. A death-dealing sandstorm the enemy could not touch. She left many dead in her wake. I’ve never seen the like until today.
” She slowly turns to stare at Kaelen. “She would be proud of her son.”
“As would the king,” Andras says, inclining his head toward the prince.
Kaelen’s jaw clenches, and I can see that their words have a profound effect on him.
“Bern and I’ll take a turn around the perimeter,” Neville says, rising. “I want to be sociable, but I’m getting itchy sitting here. Sociable can equal dead when a watch isn’t set. We’ll take the first four hours.”
“Make it three,” Kaelen says. Neville nods, and he and Bern stride off toward the horses. The prince glances at Chitai, who nods. “Chitai and I will take the next three.”
“And I the dawn,” Andras says. He raises a sardonic eyebrow at Trick. “The thief can share my watch.”
Trick’s shoulders tense, but then he looks up and flashes a charming smile at the Sylvan, who is decidedly not charmed. “Sure. Anything for the quest.”
“I can take a watch,” I volunteer, only to see them all react negatively. Because of course they do. They think I’m a nobody. What good could a servant do in the face of danger?
The only enemy I fought died almost accidentally.
“We don’t know how much of your energy and strength it will take to bear the amulet, Soli,” Elianna says quietly. “You’re already starting this journey off weakened—”
“I’m not weak,” I snap. “Gray Mind isn’t—”
“By the monstrous Sisters’ starvation and ill treatment of you,” she continues, tension beneath her words.
I lean away from her, hopeful but not entirely certain her anger is for the Sisters, not me.
My reflexive response to harsh emotion is to flinch and huddle away from angry people.
If you’re not in arms’ reach when the blowup occurs, you’re less likely to carry the bruises later.
“Tell us what it is, Soli,” the Sylvan says.
I blink, not sure what he means.
“You said ‘Gray Mind isn’t.’ Tell us what Gray Mind is,” he says, his onyx eyes intent. “My people don’t have this condition. Perhaps because we’ve had such close proximity to the goddess, may she be restored, for millennia.”