by Kim Wedlock
He waved it away. "It was a long time ago. And it was my fault, I startled her."
"You did, but she was young, and overzealous in her care of a colony of swiftlets. She has since learned."
"As have I. But I would appreciate it if you could keep your kvistdjur away from Aria when we return home."
She turned and considered him, then her gaze trailed slowly past and onto the child who watched the pair with a mixture of fascination and caution. She looked back to him. "Are you sure? She isn't like other children. She could bond well with them."
"Or she could startle them like I did and have no magic to repel their attack. Kvistdjur are swift."
Again she paused for thought, but shortly nodded her head, her wild black hair bouncing around her perfectly-sculpted shoulders. "Very well."
He bowed his head, deeper this time, and rose to find her smiling fondly. All trace of her fury had passed but for the volatility inherent in her eyes. "I thank you. Now: are we free to leave and continue as we intend?"
"You are."
"And you won't keep us here?"
"I will not. The way is open to you. You'll reach the border in five days."
"Thank you. Oh, and, we won't be eating any more of those mushrooms."
"No, I imagine you won't." She smiled beautifully, freckled with affection, and, to his surprise, turned with her entourage and stepped away into the trees without even the briefest inappropriate glance.
The others joined him the moment their captors were out of sight.
Garon grabbed him roughly by the shoulder. "You," he growled, "play a dangerous game."
"Yes, I do," he cast his hand away from him, "and it worked. We're free to leave."
"And it'll take us five days to get out." Petra rubbed the tension from her forehead with a sigh. "But I suppose that's something..." She returned her sword to her sheath at last, though she didn't relinquish her hold, and adjusted the bag upon her back before stepping forwards with more than a little urgency. "The sooner we move, the better. No stops unless we have to." The others grunted in agreement and she pointedly ignored Garon's look of protest as she stepped past him. They all fell in behind.
Eyila shortly hurried up beside her. "Do you think Rathen meant what he said?"
She smiled sadly at the fret in her brow, but she didn't need to consider the question for long. She looked back to their heading. "I think he wishes he did."
Anthis, meanwhile, was more vocal with his concerns, and it earned him a sharp, unanimous look of warning. He promptly glanced about the supposedly empty woods and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. "Everyone wants us to fix their homes - are we really going to go all across Arasiin and do it one by one? There must be an easier way..."
"If there is," Rathen grunted in a manner that suggested the thought had occurred to him far too often already, "only Kienza can give it to us."
"Couldn't the elves help?" Aria asked. "Or the vakehn? They're elves! Or, were..."
"The vakehn lied to us - there's a surprise - so I wouldn't trust them or any other elf as far as I could throw them. And regardless, we have no way of contacting them should there be one we could. It's Kienza or no one."
Anthis shook his head. "And what if she can't help?"
"Then my promised payment is going up."
For two more days they continued unmolested, and a sense of progress finally began to brighten their path. They abandoned all the mykodendrit and every other species of fungus at the first opportunity and continued with the tubers and meats, albeit warily. Aside from some brief if excessively powerful cravings for sweet mushrooms - cravings they each kept worriedly to themselves - they experienced no more unusual turns.
But no sooner had the collective mood began to rise than another helpless issue rose to trample it back down. It was one they had expected, in truth, and much sooner now they spared it thought, but the ensuing tension had slipped it their minds. Not that there was a thing they could do to help it. Willingly, anyway.
They'd not been near a settlement for three weeks, and Anthis's foul temper was just beginning to broil. Manifesting as impatience and snapped responses, it was only going to get worse, and he knew it as well as they did. But while he'd begun keeping to himself - perhaps for their sake, perhaps for his, or maybe through the simple desire to avoid taking their lives to satisfy a number of his needs - on that, the thirteenth night, the accumulating pressure finally reached breaking point.
Chapter 37
"No, Aria, look, like this:" Rathen tightened the blade of grass between the edges of his palms and thumbs, raised it to his mouth and blew. The whistle was perfectly pitched.
Aria, her face screwed up tightly, moved around and scrutinised his hands even closer before adjusting her own to match. She raised it to her mouth just as he had done, blew hard and hopefully, but the resulting sound was just as blunt and muffled.
"You're too low." He adjusted her position, she tried again, but instead came the sound of the grass flapping loose between her fingers. "Now you're blowing too hard. Gently, Aria, you're not trying to shoo off a fly."
Movement caught his eye, and he glanced up across the fire as Eyila rose from her lonely spot just within the light's reach. Despite the heavy shadows, it wasn't difficult to see the preoccupied look that shrouded her face, nor the mournful distance in her eyes. Her gaze brushed no one as she ghosted into the trees.
Sympathy bowed his lips until a rough, inconsistent whistle brought him back to Aria. "You've almost got it," he smiled, tousling her hair. "Keep trying, I'll be back in a minute." She nodded, adjusting the grass again as he rose and stepped quietly away from the camp. Anthis, sitting across the fire with elven texts in hand, watched him darkly.
"Eyila," Rathen called softly, catching up with her among the black and ancient trees. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she beamed back at him peculiarly. "I'm just going to meditate..."
He'd recognised her lie even before she spoke. She'd used that smile too often. But he didn't challenge it. "I'll walk you," he said instead. "Just in case." With her reluctant nod of thanks, they proceeded in silence. A heavy, burdening silence that neither addressed until Eyila turned at last and looked at him with another peculiar expression. She must have felt him staring at her; he only noticed it himself half a moment before, but at the haunting in her eyes - something he may have imagined, he privately admitted - he decided to carry his see-sawing debate through.
He smiled lightly before turning his gaze towards the trees. "Aria lost her family." She didn't speak, but he hadn't expected her to. The trivial and almost conversational way in which he'd made the statement had no doubt confused her even more. "She was too young to remember, fortunately, and I've never told her. Her village was razed by bandits, you see, and she was the only one to escape. I think they hid her away somewhere and she sort of wandered off when hunger got the better of her. I found her in my garden a few days later, and she's been with me ever since. She was two years old, I think." He didn't spare her a direct glance. He didn't need to see how it landed. "My own mother died when I was three. And when my magic surface when I was seven, I was carted off to the Order. I never really had much of a family. And, of course, my...father died not long ago.
"Petra's lost her father, too," he glanced around at a chirp of a bird, the songs of which had become increasingly ordinary over the past few days, "and Anthis...well, it's not my place to talk about his family. And who knows about Garon - I wonder sometimes if he didn't spawn off the back of a frog." Finally he looked, and she stared back at him with eyes as big as eggs, glittering like starlight over a lake. His lips slanted apologetically. "My point is, while we might not know exactly how you feel, we're not without some idea. Don't suffer in silence. Use us."
She appeared to think for a moment, but, to his deep disappointment, nothing came of it. Instead the glitter abruptly vanished, her strange, belying smile clattered back into place and she spoke with a voice so strong and certa
in it would put Garon's denial to shame. "Thank you, but, really, I'm just going to meditate..."
His heart sagged in his chest, but he kept his sigh trapped behind his lips and nodded. The defeat hadn't been entirely unexpected. "All right," he smiled. "Good." And they walked on for another silent minute until she slowed them at last to a stop.
Closing her eyes, she turned her face up towards a tree. The slightest breeze disturbed her hair. "This spot feels right."
"All right - shout if you need anything."
"I will. Thank you, Rathen." She caught his hand as he turned away, but this time the smile she gave him was soft and open, and it set him at ease, if only a little. "Really."
He inclined his head, then left her to climb up the trunk as he made his way back towards camp. But a dark shape flickered out of the forest when he was only half way back.
Rathen abandoned his spell as his hands dropped in relief. "Anthis, you scared the life out of--"
"Leave Eyila alone."
He blinked at the abrupt tone, and strained a little harder through the blackness to regard him - and ensure that it was him after all. "I was escorting her, Anthis, and reminding her that she can talk to us. She's fine."
"Talk to you, you mean."
His dark brows drew slowly closer together. "What are you talking about? She needs a friend, I'm just tryi--"
"She doesn't need your kind of friendship."
"My 'kind' of friendship?"
The shape scoffed bitterly, sparking Rathen's irritation. "You just have to have every woman tripping over you, don't you? Do you think you're entitled to them? Is it because you're so far above the rest of us? As a mage? As an accidental hero? Or is it just a game of notches on the bed post for you?"
A blinding mix of confusion and insult propelled Rathen forwards before he could think, but Anthis stood his ground with a powerful sneer. "What?!" he hissed, dropping his voice against being overheard, by human ear or otherwise. "What in Zikhon's name has gotten into you?!"
"I'll tell you: I am sick of watching you fawn over her. It's disgusting. She's not interested, and she's hurting - leave her alone."
"You think--" Sheer disbelief dazed him for a moment. "Eyila?! She's nineteen! She's a child!"
"And young enough to be your daughter."
The debilitating perplexity threatened to burst something inside his skull, and a familiar, terrifying turmoil started to rage in the blackest reach of his consciousness.
He stamped it down.
He knew what this was, what had truly stoked Anthis's ire, and he was as helpless to it as Garon had been to Hlífrún's mushroom-manipulation. But that did little to offset the monumental offence. "Anthis," he said as steadily as his insult would allow, though it came through his teeth all the same, "she needs help, and she isn't going to ask for it."
"She doesn't need your help."
But upon the slightest lash of that venomous tone, his efforts snapped. He fixed Anthis cruelly, whose green eyes he could see in the shift of moonlight bore an identical sentiment. "She doesn't?" He growled. "Or you don't want her to have it?"
His lip curled. "She doesn't."
"And you know what she needs? Really? You?"
"I've got a better feel for people than you do."
Rathen's voice rattled caustically. "Oh I don't doubt that. A very special 'feel'. So special that I'm not sure she'd like your 'kind of friendship' either." He watched Anthis darken with anger and felt no small pinch of satisfaction. But it didn't last for long. Sense was all too quick to kick back in and encourage him to abandon that avenue of resentful entertainment. Antagonising him wouldn't achieve anything, and though he was loathe to admit it, in this state, the man was dangerous.
Rathen straightened, composed himself, and tempered his voice into a tone of persuasion. "Anthis, whatever ideas you've concocted, you're wrong. Look, Eyila is right along through there, and we both know she doesn't want to be alone. Go to her."
"Oh, so you're going to stand back, how very generous of you."
"Vastal's Blood, Anthis! I have no interest in her! At all! Are you really so frightened of your own feelings that you have to find excuses to avoid them?!"
"What excuses?"
"For someone with such a 'special feel' for people, you've not got a great read on yourself."
"And you know me so well?"
He sneered. "Regrettably."
"Then allow me to apologise for sullying your magnificent presence."
Again the fury rose, but again he breathed it away, and finally remembered that he was not in fact chained to the spot. He shook his head in helpless exasperation and turned to walk away, sparing them both the blisteringly familiar confrontation. "I'm not doing this with you again. You're not yourself."
"We're not finished."
He snapped back around as Anthis's fingers closed sharply around his shoulder and impaled him with a brutal look. The boy's eyes were alight with foolish challenge. "No," he snatched himself free, "we're finished. If you want to pin all of your inadequacy onto someone, look somewhere else. I won't be party to your self-pity. But that girl is out there right now, crying in the trees, and despite everything, she won't talk to any of us. Myself included. And I've not tried to wring it out of her because I know who she really wants to talk to, and I've been hanging back just waiting for you to shed that yellow stripe of yours and step up, to stop sitting around and watching her from the shadows, but your cowardice is just too deep-seated. Which is remarkable, really, considering how easily you raise your blade against murderers, rapists and bandits. And yet you can't let a girl cry on your shoulder. You really are pathetic."
Something inhuman pierced through Anthis's eyes. "Pathetic, am I?" His tightly balled fist thumped him sharply in the shoulder, but after the surprise flickered away from Rathen's face, he only laughed.
"You really think pushing me is going to prove otherwise?"
"It certainly makes me feel better."
Rathen staggered half a step backwards at another heavy shove, and again his anger began to swell. But this time, he was disinclined to suppress it. He speared him with a dangerous focus. "You had better stop and think about what you're doing..."
"Should I?" He struck him again, much harder now, whatever meagre restraint he'd had dissipating like fog, but he was met only with another mocking cackle.
"Yes. You really should."
Rathen saw the enraged strength gathering behind his knuckles as he pulled them back even further, and stepped aside just in time for his fist to hurtle past his face. He felt its power as a lash of air across his cheek.
Stunned eyes crashed onto Anthis, but he was already moving in for a second swing. Rathen sighed witheringly. "I gave you fair warning."
A second later, Anthis was on the floor.
Petra tutted as he hissed and flinched away from the damp cloth. She pressed it firmly to the side of his face and gave him a chiding look for his irritation. "Don't," she told him pointedly, "pick a fight with a soldier."
"He's a mage," Anthis growled, "he was never a real soldier." He winced again at the slap she imparted to the side of his head, and subdued if just to spare himself more injury. "Right, your sister, sorry. But you know what I mean. He never uses his magic so liberally...never used to, anyway..."
"He probably never had need before."
He watched her closely as she reached for a dry cloth, noting the amount of blood on the other. He twitched his face, testing the pain, and regretted it the moment a deep and pounding surge of heat flashed from the edge of his brow and down into his jaw. He kept his face still after that. "Have you noticed it?"
"His magic? Yes, but each time it's been necessary."
"Really? Even this?"
"I dare say so," she smiled wryly. "Assuming that this was magic. What are you getting at, anyway?"
"Nothing..." He stifled another hiss as she wiped away the last of the bloodied water from his face, then handed him another cloth, as clean and dam
p as the first had been, and left to tidy the rest away. He looked up as Rathen entered the camp, and both turned sharply away from the other. Petra sighed and shook her head.
Her despondency hiked further as Garon stepped out from the trees and cast them both curious looks. Predictably, as position dictated, he turned then to her, his face its usual hollow shape of authority. "What's happened?"
She shrugged disinterestedly and continued wringing out the cloths. "Nothing important."
"Really," he grunted doubtfully, then cast her a sideways look. "Conversational tonight. You've been quiet lately."
"Surprised you've noticed."
"Hard not to when you're not chirping in my ear."
"Glad you've been enjoying the silence."
"Blissfully."
Her expression was stone, betraying not a hint of her fight to keep her reaction suppressed. She turned away with perfect composure and walked off into the trees; he barely glanced at her parting.
Rathen glowered at him reproachfully. When the officer's gaze fell then onto him, sitting at the foot of the tree, he turned away icily.
"Well?" He demanded, stepping out into the middle of the tight little camp between the two guilty parties, looking from one to the other as a parent would two naughty children. But where Anthis turned, pulled in his leg and leaned his elbow on his knee, forming a wall of sulking defiance as he pressed the cloth to his face, Rathen replied with a brusque snap.
"'Well' what? It's like she said: nothing important." The way Garon folded his arms, sighed and shook his head grated at him monstrously.
"I expected better of you."
"Sorry to disappoint."
"Hey," he stepped aside and grasped him by the shoulder, but Rathen immediately snatched himself out of it. "I've had enough of the attitude from all of you. Remember who you're speaking to."
"Oh, who am I speaking to?" He rose to his feet as Garon loured, and squared off at him with a rancorous scowl. "A man? Or a badge?"
The inquisitor's face darkened. "What?"
"You know, you might command more respect if you gave a little out in return, but as it stands, you barely pass for a human being. How you weren't drowned at birth the moment they saw your forked tail, I'll never know." Garon's furious eyes widened, and Rathen took some small satisfaction from that. Which he made no attempt a hiding. "Lost for words? What a novelty."
