Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
Ashara
The Truth
The small sound of a tongue wetting lips, as if he was licking the rest of me off him, drifted through the latch. I imagined his mouth, full and red, still stained with my blood. My throat tightened, dry as parchment.
“Three questions,” he reminded me, as if I were not already aware.
“I am a busy druid with an endless list of duties this day, thus make them quick.” Metal groaned as he adjusted himself on the bench.
I too started to squirm, fidgety despite the cushioned seats.
I swallowed thickly, trying to return some moisture to my parched mouth.
“Monks to intimidate? Acolytes to inspire? Souls to save?” I asked, unsure why.
“Are those your questions?” he hedged.
“No,” I protested. “Do you struggle to tell the difference between conversation and inquisition? The two now one and the same?”
“That’s a fourth, and a fifth.”
“Vetrius,” I chastised, the syllables strange on my tongue like it was I who now held a thumb in my mouth.
There was but the ghost of an intake of breath, so quick, I may have imagined it.
“Ashara,” he returned, able to mimic my exasperation with surprising uncanniness. It was a small sin, the way my name tumbled from the druid’s mouth. So much so, it struck me silent.
“Ashara?”
I shook my head to clear it, threading my hands before me.
“I wish for a clean slate, Druid Vetrius. Those were not my questions – and you didn’t answer them anyhow,” I reasoned, ready to defend my case.
“I will indulge you three.”
I scoffed. “Six.” So many had piled atop one another, like flies upon honeycomb, that I struggled to narrow down the most pressing.
“We are not haggling over the cost of a loaf. This is a gesture of my good will and I have told you I will answer three questions with complete honesty. A rare offer for a druid to make. So, ask. Three.” From the gap in the metalwork, his knee bounced.
Subtle, just a vibration, but enough to disturb the Unmantle.
“How will I be certain you aren’t lying, since I have not been gifted with the blessing of truth?” A fair question.
“Can you not simply trust me?” The telltale lightness of a smile seasoned his words. My mouth, however, was thinned to a line. Trust.
“No, Druid Vetrius, I cannot.”
He pressed forward, his knee still, the tips of his fingers invading my side of the Unmantle. “Have I caused you harm, Seamstress? Have I hurt you? Have I not given you nothing but honesty? I do not wish to see you maimed or dead, though you seem intent on pushing until I fulfil such a demand.”
One of the flies dropped from the others, belly-up, its wings no longer beating; a question answered before it was asked. So he did not wish me ill, then.
“No, but—”
“There are different ways to discern if someone is lying,” he interrupted.
“Less effective, but still useful—the eyes, for one.” Ours must have locked through the lattice, for mine pricked at the contact.
“But since you cannot gaze into mine, however much you might like to, I can teach you some other ways. Quickly.”
I scrunched my skirts.
“Many attempt to lie to a druid—out of fear, desperation, or simply because they are schemers, eager to appease those in power and take some for themselves.” He became animated, hands moving in time with his words.
“Before I was blessed, I trained myself to deduce them. People are never half as cunning, nor half as clever, as they fancy themselves to be.”
I sat straighter, eager to be a keen student.
“First, the speed at which they reply. Too quick, and they have rehearsed an answer; too slow, and they are scrambling for a lie. Sometimes it’s silence; other times, their hesitation is clumsy. A stutter, a ramble, an attempt to distract.”
“And?” I prompted.
“Second, I listen for a shift in their voice. Tones rise when nervous, become shrill and desperate. A break, like that of a boy on the cusp of manhood, and they are almost certain to be hiding something.”
“What other transformations?” I encouraged, wishing I had a roll of parchment to quill notes.
“The best liars are practiced.” His voice lowered. “They may attempt to manipulate or distract, to turn your attention back to them. Smoke and mirrors, tricks as old as the soil of Thromarra. You must not fall for it.”
It was a warning as well as a plea. I searched for his eyes behind the filigree, but found only the starlight of torches and cold, hard metal.
“The best have mastery of all. They can name a lie in the same breath as a truth, muddying them both until even they forget where one begins and the other one ends. That is why, without my blessing, there is no certified way.”
I fiddled with the ends of my hair, twirling the strands between my impatient fingers.
“So, provided you answer in an appropriate window, your voice remains steady and sure, and you make no attempt to distract me, I should assume you are being truthful? That you haven’t mastered the art of lying? That is, indeed, quite the leap of faith, Druid.”
He hesitated. A lie?
“There is another way.” He lacked the enthusiasm of his prior lecture, each syllable measured with a restraint that had not been there before. “It is subtle, requiring a refined sort of skill that I am unsure you possess.”
I bristled. Try hemming silk.
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“By measurement of blood,” he immediately replied.
So I was to taste him.
“I must suck your thumb, too?”
“So eager to get a taste of me?” He chuckled. “No, you shall not suck me this day. But you must feel.”
I ignored his innuendo, even if my thundering heart could not. “…feel your blood?” I gripped the bottom of the opening, edging closer, as if my proximity might somehow grant a better insight into the workings of deception.
He cleared his throat.
“Not literally, but the way it moves through my body. Blood is telling; it is not stagnant in our flesh, but fluid, alive. Do you not notice the fluttering in your chest when you are nervous, excited, or afraid? Right here.”
With that, he flattened his large hand over the expanse of my chest, the chest I had inadvertently pushed closer to him, his fingers brushing my throat. Palm rested over my heart, it pounded under his touch.
“So, which one is it? Nervous, excited, or scared?”
Not only could he undoubtedly feel the hammering of my heart, but also the searing heat of a blush spreading across my clavicle, my neck, and my face.
“Neither,” I snapped, batting his hand away and pressing my back against the metal behind me. “And you’ve already asked your questions.”
“You wanted me to show you, did you not? How to detect a lie in the human body. You may thank me for that insight whenever you wish, though now would be most polite.”
“You will not touch me again.”
Can one hear a smile? For I could swear to the beyond that I heard it crack across his face.
“Worry not. I will not touch you again, for it is you who must touch me. You will feel my heart,” he explained. “Hunt for changes in its rhythm; if it stutters or speeds. My blood will quicken if I am nervous…or lying.”
“I am to feel your heart?” My own pumped harder.
“Yes. If you’d like.” He was calm, seemingly unphased. Meanwhile, my palms grew embarrassingly slick.
“I—very well.”
I steeled myself, reeling from the knowledge that my hand would soon lie upon a druid’s heart. A learned experience indeed, to discover if they possessed one.
“Come here.” His hand enveloped mine, which I had absentmindedly brought to my sternum, tracing the ghost of his palm. My fingers vanished from sight. With deliberate slowness, he settled it upon his upper chest, pinned beneath the weight of his own.
His tunic was thick and soft—a finely woven wool designed for the chill of autumn in a templum of stone—though warmed slightly by the body beneath.
“Can you feel it?” he asked, his body vibrating under my touch, voice low and deep.
I concentrated, a surprisingly difficult feat, on the rhythm of his heart. A faint flutter, its thump just an echo.
“The material is too thick. I can barely feel a thing,” I admitted, unable to track its muffled beat.
“Did you have designs to get under my shirt from the beginning?”
I sputtered. “Of all the—”
Before I could finish, he manoeuvred my hand beneath his hem.
Wool gave way to flesh, and suddenly, I could feel everything. Every texture and bump. The blazing heat of his skin, the light dusting of hair. The rise and fall of his breath. And the beat. The thunderous beat of a heart in chaos.