Chapter Thirteen
We drive the wagon through the narrow path between trees for fifty paces until it opens up into a clearing with a small stream running through the center. Delicate pink flowers grow in wild clumps, flaunting the last of their summer finery before harvesttime chills drive them into hiding.
When Elianna pulls the horses to a stop, she jumps down. “After we care for the horses, we should help unload the provisions for dinner. Everyone else has been scouting all day, so we’re probably the least tired.”
I’m not sure that’s true. Exhaustion drags at me.
I spent the afternoon and early evening doing my best to stay awake when the wagon’s rocking motion whispered temptations to sleep.
Still, she’s right that I wasn’t doing anything productive, so I ease my way off the wagon seat—somewhat less sore than I was in the morning, thankfully—and get to work.
Andras and Bern are roaming around outside our encampment on patrol. The rest of us work quietly at tasks I hope will become second nature to me. For now, though, currying the horses, unpacking food, and starting a fire are novelties, and I enjoy doing them.
Trying to start a fire, I should say.
Sergeant Neville finds good-sized rocks and makes a circle to keep the fire from jumping out and into the trees. He shakes his head at my futile attempts to rub two sticks together to create a spark.
“Fire is crucial.”
“Unless you’re on a ship,” I mutter.
He quirks an eyebrow at me but continues, crouching down next to me. “Okay, you want to create your base first, so when you get a spark, you have somewhere to put it.”
He shows me how to build a platform with sticks and twigs, and then we put dry grass and leaves on top for kindling. He also forms a pile of sticks just next to all that, so we’re ready once we get that evasive spark to appear.
Finally, he pulls a small pouch from a pocket and shows me a smooth, glassy rock and a piece of steel. “For flint, you use rocks like this quartz and a bit of steel. The edge of a knife works, but it damages the blade, so I carry this square of steel around me.” He holds them out to me.
When I don’t immediately reach for them, he sighs. “Soli, you may need to know how to do this for yourself. We don’t know what’s going to happen on this trip. If you get separated from … from any of us, you still need to continue, right? Without fire, you can’t eat. So, take these and try.”
I stare at him, his words ringing in my ears. If you get separated …
How can he possibly think I’ll succeed if I’m alone?
My mouth is suddenly dry. “Sergeant Neville, I don’t …
I think … You’re seriously confused. If I’m separated from all of you, I’ll have no chance at all.
I’m not a soldier or a prince born and raised to command.
I’m not a sorcerer or warrior or a Sylvan high lord.
I’m not even a thief who could at least steal food in order to survive. ”
“No, you’re a formerly indentured servant with the courage of a queen.” I didn’t even know Kaelen was behind me, but he speaks with iron in his voice. “Look at yourself through our eyes, Soli, not through your own. We see someone brave enough to touch that amulet. Making a fire will be nothing.”
I want to believe him. I do. But I have ten and seven years of practice at being nobody. Being worthless. How am I meant to turn that around in a few short days?
I stand abruptly, brush dirt off my fine, oversize leather pants, and then stare at the two of them.
“Please don’t lie to me or to yourselves.
I am who I am—the person my life shaped me into.
I’ll no more survive this trip if I end up on my own than those flowers will survive the winter’s first snow, if snow even comes this winter. ”
Kaelen starts to speak, but I shake my head.
“No. I’ll learn to make a fire, and camp, and curry horses.
I’ll ask Chitai to teach me the basics of using a dagger.
But if you believe I’m some grand hero, you’re only deluding yourselves and putting even more unbearable pressure on me.
How much of that do you think I can carry before the weight of it crushes me? ”
“Lass,” the sergeant says, but I’m suddenly so very weary.
“I promise to learn how to make a fire tomorrow,” I tell them. “Andras is coming back with game. I’ll see if he minds teaching me how to clean it for dinner. That’s the kind of thing servants do, after all.”
They don’t try again to keep me there, and I’m glad.
I don’t have the strength to argue any more about being strong.
Turns out cleaning quail is not my favorite thing.
I’ll leave it at that.
I hang in there, grim but determined, and soon the birds are cooking over the fire that somebody else built.
Conversations ripple around me like streams around a rocky island—with me being the rock, solid and heavy and unfeeling.
I don’t have any energy left to talk to anybody about anything.
Maybe if I stay silent and just listen, I’ll have time to dig deep inside myself to find another reserve of courage.
Trick wanders up at some point but takes one look at my face and walks away again.
I force myself to pay attention when Elianna says something about the Zhagarn.
“I’ve been thinking about what the ferryman said. That they were headed to the Spires.”
“Maybe they said that to plant a false trail?” Trick says.
“I doubt it. They must have known they were leaving him to die. Who would he tell? No, I think they were just careless. The last letter I received from a friend at home, two and twenty days before we left, said that the Sorcerers’ Guild Deeded Territory was still safe.
The Zhagarn have been making incursions on the edges of the Freeholders’ Territory and trying to breach ours, but with little luck—or so say the rumors.
Nobody has reported direct word from the Freeholders in a long time, though.
Maybe this is part of a plot to advance on two sides?
” The sorcerer shakes her head in frustration.
“I don’t know battle strategy, so I really have no idea. ”
“I do know battle strategy, and I doubt that’s the plan,” Kaelen says. “Too small a force. No, they undoubtedly have some secret plot that makes sense only to them, but it would help if we could figure it out. In the meantime, we’ll try our best to avoid them.”
That sounds good to me, but my mind can’t focus on strategy. If you get separated from us flattened me, and I can feel myself sinking, losing touch with the conversation.
“… hungry?”
“Soli?”
I try to fight my way back to the surface when I hear my name, but then someone pokes my shoulder hard, and a quail drumstick appears in front of my face.
“Stop thinking and eat your dinner,” Chitai says, a hint of amusement in her voice. “Your thoughts are so loud I can’t hear my own.”
“Thank you.” I take the drumstick and promptly drop it when it burns my hand.
But the desert warrior’s reflexes are as quick as her horse-riding skills are impressive, and she catches it before it hits the dirt.
She wraps a bit of white cloth around the end and holds it out to me again. “Your quail, my lady.”
“Thank you. Sorry. Deep in tangled-up musings, I guess.”
She drops down to sit next to me, and I bite into the bird, which is absolutely delicious.
The scent of roasting meat and fire and whatever herbs are in Elianna’s ointment combine into an aroma so wonderful, I want to sit and breathe it in.
“I’ve never eaten anything this good. Does it taste better because I helped prepare it?
I’ve never cleaned a bird before. Feathers went everywhere. I probably have them in my hair!”
She studies me and then shakes her head. “No. Don’t see any. But why would it matter? Think of feathers as a badge of honor.”
I take another bite and chew, considering. “There’s honor in plucking a quail? I highly doubt it.”
“There’s honor in providing for the tribe.” She picks her portion of quail clean and then opens another bit of cloth to reveal two roasted potatoes, one of which she hands to me. This time, I’m smart enough to test the temperature with one fingertip before I take it.
“Catching the game,” she continues. “Cleaning it. Cooking it. Fighting our enemies. Protecting the tribe. Bearing the children. If you discount your worth for doing any of these things, you’re negating the value of all who do that task.”
I stare into the fire, potato forgotten in my hands, and consider this. “I never thought about it like that,” I say slowly.
“No offense, riverlander, but for someone who knows so much from books, you never thought about a lot of things. You can’t use a knife, and you don’t know how to fight. You never rode a horse, you never drove a wagon, you never cleaned a bird.”
“Hey! I was trapped on the grounds of a library for my entire life. If you think—”
She whips one of her daggers out so fast I never saw her draw it, then flips it in her hand and holds it out, hilt facing me. “What I think is that you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. Were you born knowing how to fight off a Fell? To poison people? To make them do this … emesis?”
“Definitely not.”
“Just as I was not born knowing how to gut enemies with my daggers.” She leans back, a look of satisfaction on her face. “Do you see?”
Having just gutted those quail, I see more than I might want to and feel a little queasy. “I see.”
“Then tonight we start to teach you skill with blades.”
“In case we’re separated,” I say bitterly. “Are you thinking about when I’m alone, too?”
Her face hardens. “Not a chance. I’ll defend you with the last breath in my dying body and beyond, Soli of the Amulet. Do not forget it. My lands are dying, and my people have no chance without you.”
Before I can reassure her that I didn’t think she’d leave me, Andras stalks over to the fire.
“Listen up. I’ll tell you the story of the Bane.”
Kaelen and Elianna approach at his call, taking seats around the fire like children gathering for a pantomime at Harvest Fest. Only there’s nothing festive about this tale; Andras’s body is limned in tension, his face a mask of worry.
The Sylvan shoves his hand through his hair and pushes the waterfall of braids away from his face. “It all started the night King Prasan exiled the High Inquisitor from Pallanhold.”
Kaelen shakes his head. “No, that was a long time ago, at least—”
Andras cuts him off. “More than ninety years. Yes. I should know. I was there.”
“But that can’t be true,” I protest. “You can’t have been there.”
“Agreed,” Elianna says with a voice like ice cracking. “Tell us how you spirited the amulet away from Artemisen’s tomb and then carried it all the way across Altarra without catching fire and burning to death when you touched it.”
“Yes,” Kaelen says, his voice steady and face expressionless. “Tell us how you didn’t catch fire.”
“That’s just it,” Andras says, shrugging. “I did.”