Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
Omos has a small, leather-bound book full of blank parchment that he gifts me for my idea.
The entire thing is beautiful and clearly handmade, and I hate the thought of scribbling notes into it and ruining what looks like hundreds of hours of work.
But the monk shakes his head, offering me a leather-wrapped packet of quills and a small, flat pot of ink with a cork stopper.
“What is parchment paper for if not to be written on? Lady Riekki, the Knowledge-bringer, would be most pleased with your efforts.”
Kalos coughs into his hand, shooting me a meaningful look.
I take the gifts from Omos and promise to return in a few hours. Once Kalos and I are on the road to the village, I demand answers. “What’s with the coughing, by the way? What do you know?”
“Lady Riekki, the goddess of knowledge, is in danger of losing her throne. Who do you think Seth is going after? To him, she’s the weakest link.” He takes the journal from me and admires it, touching the small, braided ribbon tucked between the pages. “This is quite nice work.”
“What do you mean, she’s in danger of losing her throne? Seth isn’t a god of knowledge!”
“You think he cares? He sees her as the weak spot.” He shrugs and hands me back the journal.
“He plans on pushing his way into our ranks by edging her out. He’s killed two of her Aspects thus far and told me of his plans to capture the other two and hold them hostage until he gets his way.
If her worshipers turn to him, he’ll weaken her even more and make a good case for replacing her. ”
The thought that a god can play by the “rules” set for them and still lose is a little terrifying. “Is that even allowed?”
“If the High Father views it as beneficial overall for Aos, I imagine he’d allow it, which is unfortunate. Riekki is a bit of an idiot, but she’s harmless. Like all of us, she gets caught up in the smaller things and loses the bigger picture.”
Kalos lapses into silence, and I wonder if he’s worried about his own place in his world.
We walk down the dusty road together. It’s a lovely day with birds singing and a gentle breeze to rustle the grasses on the “good” side of the road (there’s nothing on the other side but dirt), but I can’t relax.
He’s quiet for so long that as we walk, I start to worry he’s heading into another fugue state.
If he is, I’d rather be back at the monastery than the dirty little village.
“You okay?” I finally ask, reaching over and touching his arm. “Do we need to pause for a while?
He glances over at me, and a wry smile curves his handsome mouth. “You know you don’t have to be my caretaker at all times, Elsie. You can just be my companion.”
I flush. “Sorry. Bad habits. It’s going to take me some time before I figure out who I am when I’m not being a mother hen.”
“The delicious irony being that we are on a journey in which we plan on taking care of an entire village,” he says in a teasing voice, gesturing broadly at our surroundings.
I want to laugh, but his statement is so accurate that it’s downright embarrassing.
“I know. I’m the worst.” I chew on my lip, questions stewing in my mind.
Finally, I decide to blurt out the one that’s been bothering me the most. “Kalos, do you think I’m a martyr?
Not in a real, religious sense of the term, just that I need to be the suffering party somehow? ”
“You?” He pauses in the road. I stop too and wait as he looks me up and down. After a moment, he shakes his head. “I think you have a too-generous heart and that it’s easier to care for others than to put yourself first.”
His kind observation makes me relax, just a bit. It eases something tight in my chest. “I just feel as if I’m jumping from caretaking project to caretaking project,” I say. “I just know what it’s like to be scared of what’s happening to your loved ones and wanting to help out.”
“First of all, I don’t think you helping your brother was a ‘project.’ You loved him.”
The way David is referred to in past tense feels like poking an open wound. “I still do.”
“Anyone would do the same for family. And second…is that what I am to you? A project?”
Oh god, talk about putting my foot into my mouth. “Maybe in the beginning, when we hated each other? But I like to think that we’re friends now.” Or flirting partners. Or star-crossed lovers. Or something.
“It was never hate on my part. Hate takes entirely too much energy.” His tone is casual, almost flat, and my senses prick. I glance over at him, but his face is turned up to the blue sky, and he seems to be enjoying the day. No sign of fugue, which is a good thing.
“You should definitely save your energy,” I agree.
“I can think of a few things I wouldn’t mind exhausting myself doing.”
I blush for the rest of the walk, imagining just what his exhaustion would entail. Every time I sneak a peek over at him, he’s got a sly smile on his face, as if he’s imagining the very same thing, and it makes me get flustered all over again.
The Dirtlands fall away, and the greenery deepens on both sides of the road.
Thornhill finally comes into view, and I see chickens racing across the rutted roads, someone’s old dog lounging in the shadow of a nearby house.
The village looks a bit busier than last time, and as we pass through the cluster of houses, I notice people working in front of their homes.
There’s a woman with a butter churn, and another is hanging laundry on a rope line.
Two old women are on stools, sewing in the sunlight.
A man is weeding a vegetable patch behind his house.
Everyone pauses to look at us as we walk in. I’m hoping it’s because we just look a bit touristy. But when the old women grab their sewing and make the sign of salt-throwing over their shoulder before scrambling inside the nearest house, I have my suspicions.
“You think the spinner said something to them?” I mumble to Kalos, deliberately smiling through my words.
He huffs. “Without a doubt.”
Just great. So much for my “anonymously helping the locals” plan. They’re not running away in fear, though. They’re just avoiding eye contact and trying to make themselves unnoticeable. I suppose it could be worse. “Let’s go say hi to our friend, then. We’ll start with her.”
We head to the spinner’s house, and her door is shut. There’s a chicken roosting in the weeds to the side of the house, but there’s no sign of a person. The plague marks that were here last time are gone, at least. I lift my hand to knock, but before I do, Kalos grabs my fist and pulls it down.
When I look at him in surprise, he grins at me and tugs me toward him, and my heart flutters in my chest. “Is it time for our kiss?”
He doesn’t answer, just pulls me closer. That enticing smile tugs at his lips, and as he drags me forward, I hold my breath in anticipation. Kalos gazes at my face, watching my mouth before meeting my eyes. He leans in.
I lean in to meet him.
Before our lips can brush, he whispers, “Not yet, I think.”
I growl at him. When he laughs, I give him a shove and flounce away to hide my embarrassment. “Now you’re just being a tease.”
“I’ve only got five kisses. I’ve got to make them count.”
With a roll of my eyes, I knock on the door. Hopefully I don’t look too flustered and out of sorts. Hopefully. The chickens nearby are clucking wildly, and I knock a second time to make sure that I’m heard. I clear my throat and manage to get a relaxed look on my face by the time the door opens.
The spinner opens the door and gives me a frazzled look. “What?” Her gaze falls on me as if she’s just now seeing me, then on Kalos, and she goes white. “We weren’t doing anything!”
“Ominous,” I say cheerfully. “Can we come in?”
She pauses, considering. The chickens cluck louder, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the sound seems as if it’s coming from her house. After a moment, she sighs heavily and opens the door wider. “Come inside. It’s not as if I can keep a secret from a god anyhow.”
I’m starting to wonder if we should have picked a different house. I step inside into the dark cottage, and the moment I do, I pause.
There’s a woman seated by the fire, her arm bent and bound over her head.
More bandages are scattered around the room, along with feathers.
Tied to the woman’s armpit is a flailing chicken, the source of the clucking, and she holds it in place with her other hand despite the chicken’s frantic pecking.
A chicken. Tied to an armpit.
“What the fuck?” I blurt out.
Kalos steps in behind me, his hands on my shoulders like a cool balm. He peers over me and chuckles, shaking his head. He leans in close, his lips brushing my ear. “Good luck helping the village, my darling.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” the spinner blurts.
I try to retain my composure even though he just called me “darling.” “It looks like you’ve tied a chicken to that poor woman.”
She pauses and eyes her friend. “Well, no, that’s exactly what I’ve done. It’s because she has the plague.”
The spinner says this as if it was the most logical thing ever.
Glancing over at Kalos, he closes his eyes and shakes his head, indicating that there’s no plague at all.
I eye the woman by the fire. Other than the fact that she’s flustered and crying and there are feathers in her hair, she seems healthy to me.
All right. Maybe I can use this as a good teaching moment to lead into my goals for the village.
“I’m new here, so perhaps I’m just not following. What are your names again, ladies?”
“Metta,” says the spinner, and gestures at her friend. “That’s Borja.” Metta looks over at Borja and stage-whispers, “That’s the god and his Anchor like I told you about.”