by Cara Witter
“And me?” Jaeme said. “I’m not even religious. There’s no way I’m a bearer.”
“You’re not the only one,” Sayvil said.
Daniella narrowed her eyes at him. “We all saw what you did with that rock. It wasn’t Vorgalian. Was it blood magic?”
Jaeme’s face hardened, but Daniella didn’t even wait for a response.
“Then yes,” Daniella said. “I’d say you probably are.”
“The godbearers,” Nikaenor said. “We’re the godbearers. It’s not a curse at all.”
Kenton leaned forward, a hint of a smile glowing in the dim firelight. “That’s right, kid.”
He glanced at Perchaya, and she could see the excitement of all his work finally crystallizing before his very eyes. She smiled at him, and his grin widened.
This was really happening, and despite the gruesome things she’d seen tonight, Perchaya couldn’t help but be thrilled to be here to see it. She looked at each of the chosen in turn, wanting to memorize the way they looked at this moment—the shock and the anger and the awe, even Jaeme’s sullen disbelief. She wanted to hold this image in her head, to sketch it later, to paint it like it should be.
After a long pause, it was Saara who finally spoke. “I have to return to Tirostaar. That hudan isn’t going to get away with this.”
Perchaya didn’t understand that word, but she gathered its meaning. She looked to Kenton. “It does make sense to start there, doesn’t it?”
“That’s the only stone we know how to find,” Kenton said.
“Also,” Daniella said, “going to Tirostaar would keep us safe from my father, at least for a time. The queen of Tirostaar won’t even let us send diplomats.”
Both Saara and Kenton nodded.
“But,” Perchaya said, “isn’t that also exactly what Diamis will expect us to do?”
Their faces all sobered, especially Daniella’s.
“We’ll have to be careful getting out of Berlaith,” Kenton said. “I have some contacts there. I should be able to get us onto a boat.” He looked around at the bearers. “But the minute any of you starts flashing your powers, Diamis’ soldiers will be on us.”
“My aunt will be no more merciful,” Saara added.
Perchaya stared into the fire. They would be leaving behind one problem, though only for a short time. And they’d be stepping right into another one—one only Saara really understood. “It’s going to be dangerous,” she said. “But we should expect that, shouldn’t we? That’s what heroes do—they face danger head on.”
“I’m no hero,” Jaeme said, and Sayvil and Nikaenor looked like they agreed.
Perchaya could empathize. “Neither am I. I’m just a girl from a farm near Dov. My highest aspiration was to work at a booksmith. But here I am, attacking soldiers, generals, blood mages. Wearing the ring that called you together, traveling in your company to gather gods.”
She removed her glove and held up her hand, for the first time displaying the ring like she was proud of it. And, she was startled to find, she was.
“I don’t know if the history supports this,” she said, looking at Daniella, “but I imagine most of the people who’ve ever made a difference in this world were just people, and if you feel like you’re not heroes, well. They probably felt the same.”
Daniella hesitated, but then nodded. And one by one, the bearers did the same, though Jaeme was clearly the most reluctant.
Kenton nodded last, a single bow of his head, directed at Perchaya. She’d said the right thing. A warm flush spread through her. Kenton looked around at the bearers. “So we’ll go south. We’ll get a boat, and we’ll start in Tirostaar and return to the mainland after we have the first stone.” He paused. “Does that feel right?”
Nikaenor stared at the fire, the light reflecting in his eyes. He nodded, and Sayvil followed. Jaeme nodded last, almost imperceptibly. And Saara only glared, already having declared her intentions.
Perchaya cleared her throat. “I think we should all get some sleep and get our clothes as dry as we can. We can make more specific plans tomorrow.”
No one could argue with that logic, and even Kenton and Saara seemed disinclined to try. In mostly silence, they went about their nighttime preparations, bedding the horses down, then laying out their blankets on any spot not jutting with rocks or dipping into large puddles. The two groups still slept on opposite sides of the small hill, and when Kenton offered to take the first watch, Jaeme said he’d stay up, too.
After the exhausting events of the evening, Perchaya should have fallen asleep instantly. But instead she stared up at the few stars she could see peeking intermittently through the passing clouds and the leaves overhead. She sympathized with Nikaenor’s unbridled shock, Saara’s anger, and Jaeme’s disbelief. She looked over at Kenton, who sat up against the trunk of a tree only a few feet away. In the hint of moonlight that filtered down through the trees, he met her eyes, and he smiled. And for the first time since she’d met him, Perchaya thought he looked . . . happy.
Terror and awe aside, Perchaya was exactly where she wanted to be.
Thirty-seven
Jaeme awoke feeling achy and confused—much like he would after a night’s hard drinking, only without any pleasant, scattered memories to ease the hangover. The scent of sizzling rabbit drifted over to him from the fire hole, and Jaeme’s stomach growled. He’d been up late into the night, staring into the darkness, avoiding the eye of the Drim who called himself Kenton. Though he and his friends had clearly saved them, Jaeme still felt inclined to blame them for an additional night spent sleeping in the muck.
He stretched his sword-arm, wincing as pain lanced through his shoulder. His side—and face, for that matter—wasn’t feeling much better, but Jaeme bit his tongue and tucked his arm next to his body. As far as he could tell, it wasn’t broken or dislocated. He could still feel and move all his fingers, so whatever had been done to it should heal with time.
Jaeme approached the fire. Across the clearing, he could see Daniella wrapped in her cloak, still sleeping. Perchaya adjusted the green sticks beneath a couple of skinned rabbits, and Nikaenor crouched behind her.
“You caught these?” Jaeme asked him.
Nikaenor nodded. “Got them early this morning, during my watch.”
Perchaya smiled. She had a beautiful smile, the kind that could stop a bar fight. Jaeme had long thought that some girls had smiles like weapons, and others had smiles like salves. Perchaya was definitely one of the latter. It wasn’t how Jaeme had imagined the Drim, but then, he’d never been one to be particularly afraid of them, either.
Saara made her way over with another pile of wet sticks and began drying them out next to the fire. “Thank you,” Perchaya said. “Would you mind taking a turn stoking it? I’ll see if I can find Kenton.”
Saara shook her head. “I have no skill in the wilderness. Only what I’ve learned from him.” She gestured toward Nikaenor, who suddenly looked proud.
As he should. He’d been the reason both Jaeme and Saara had eaten passably well these last weeks.
Perchaya handed the stick she’d used to poke the fire to Nikaenor and headed into the woods. “If you’re the bearer of Nerendal,” Nikaenor said to Saara, “shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, drawn to fire somehow?”
Saara gave him a look. “Because you’re so fond of water.”
Nikaenor wrapped his now-dried cloak tighter around him. “Good point.”
Jaeme smiled at him. At least Nikaenor wasn’t hiding in the woods. They’d all seen his full fish-form, and he was willing to face them again this morning. Given his previous mortification about his scales, Jaeme imagined this took an incredible amount of courage. More than most of the knights he knew at home combined.
Of course, the thought that he was one of the prophesied bearers might have helped somewhat.
“R
eally, though,” Jaeme said. “You don’t believe what Kenton said about us, do you?”
“I do,” Saara said. “Back in Tir Neren, the stone told me to take it. I thought Nerendal was trying to kill me, but . . .” She shook her head. “He was trying to tell me what I was.”
“Doesn’t sound like he did a very clear job of it,” Jaeme said.
“True,” she said.
Nikaenor looked aghast at this. “He’s still a god.”
“Tell me,” Sayvil said, walking into the clearing with a handful of white flowers, “what the gods have ever done for any of us.”
If Jaeme thought for a moment that this nonsense about being a bearer was true, he might think that Kotali had done him an incredible favor, returning Daniella to him with such improbable gusto. He’d have to lie now and tell his uncle and the Council that he’d been tracking Daniella all along, but had feared to say so in letters. But if it meant being able to take over for his uncle as Duke of Grisham someday, he’d do it.
Nikaenor sputtered something that didn’t quite add up to an answer, and Sayvil looked at him like this proved her point. Nikaenor sullenly pulled the rabbits off the fire and stirred the embers with a stick, causing the flames to lick higher.
Jaeme found himself strangely glad that Sayvil was safe. He’d grown used to feeling protective of Saara and Nikaenor, but to feel it for Sayvil, too? If he wasn’t careful, he was going to believe some of this nonsense himself. The Banishment Chronicle was a children’s story, after all. A tale people told to make themselves feel better about what would happen next time the world fell apart. And finding Daniella again wasn’t an act of Kotali. It was a stroke of good luck, one Jaeme would take.
“I understand wanting to go back to Tirostaar,” Jaeme said to Saara. “But anyone who thinks I’m going to go searching for a dead god is in for a surprise.”
“They aren’t dead,” Nikaenor said. “They’re in the stones.” He paused. “Do you think I’ll be next after Saara? I’d like to go home to my family.”
“If Kenton has anything to say about it,” Sayvil said, “then none of us will be going home until we’ve marched into the Chamber of Binding itself. But yes, I imagine you and Jaeme will be next, since Andronim is farther north, and we’d have to sail past Sevairn to get there.”
That did make sense. If Daniella planned to follow this through, then they likely would be going back to Foroclae before Jaeme could get back to Mortiche. It was practically on the way, after all, though that would mean Jaeme would be even later getting back to his uncle than he’d suggested in his letters. He’d have to send another at the nearest port, but at least now he was back with Daniella. His uncle would be glad to hear of that, even if Jaeme couldn’t report a seduction of any kind as of yet.
On the other side of the clearing, Daniella stirred. Her deep red hair gathered in billows around her face and she brushed it aside, squinting at them, her eyes meeting Jaeme’s.
She looked quickly away, batting at her hair self-consciously. She didn’t need to; she was gorgeous, even after traipsing in the woods with this bunch of lunatics. She looked little like the well-groomed woman Jaeme had first found by that fountain in Drepaine, but if she was trying to avoid returning to Peldenar, it would be to her detriment if she did look like she had back then. A red-haired woman would be common enough in Sevairn, but not one who dressed and acted like a princess.
Then again, in each of their encounters, she’d never behaved the way he expected her to. Jaeme had more than his share of experience with noblewomen, and Daniella was different. More self-conscious, perhaps, more easily flustered. But there was something else to her, too. A sharp edge, a hardness he wouldn’t have expected from someone who had been cloistered in a castle her entire life, living in luxury and never seeing anything of the world.
Still, finding her here was the biggest surprise of all, more so than even Kenton’s claim. The last place in the world he would have expected to find Daniella again was wandering in the woods with two Drim. He still found it hard to believe she was here of her own free will.
Even if Daniella seemed oddly resistant to his advances, he could still gain her trust. The Council wouldn’t care if he was her lover or her friend, as long as he got the information they needed. And the word that Diamis was a blood mage, with other blood mages under his employ, would go a long way toward mollifying them.
It might even be useful in defending Mortiche.
Daniella crawled from her bedroll and began digging through her pack, pulling free a pair of fresh stockings that Jaeme could only imagine were damp. She poked her finger through a hole in the heel and started digging through her pack in dismay until she came up with a needle.
Before he could join Daniella, Sayvil began prodding his shoulder without invitation. “Ouch,” Jaeme said, wincing.
Sayvil nodded like she’d learned something important. “Give me a minute and I’ll have a tea ready for you.” She began heating water over the fire in a bent tin cup, shredding the flowers in her hand and dropping them in. She looked around. “And where, may I ask, is Kenton?”
“Back from scouting,” Kenton said, emerging through the trees beyond the horses. “The road to Berlaith is practically lined with soldiers, so we’ll have to tramp through the marsh, at least until we’ve gotten far enough away that they won’t be covering the road as closely.”
Nikaenor shivered. “How long will that be?”
Kenton shrugged. “Depends on how fast we travel. Three, four days at least.”
Gods, Jaeme wished he was back in Mortiche, training or tavern crawling or spending quality time with Sir Viktor’s lovely, if overly chatty, cousin from Bronleigh. Not stuck in a forest with people who thought he was Kotali’s bearer and expected him to go to Tirostaar—Tirostaar, of all places—to prove this theory. He highly doubted Kotali was sitting in a mountain somewhere waiting for Jaeme to carry his oversized piece of jewelry.
If he could talk Daniella away from them—perhaps even convince her that if she was avoiding her father, the safest place was Mortiche—then Jaeme could get away from the lot of them.
Though the mere thought of leaving Saara and Nikaenor—and now Sayvil—tied a knot in his gut.
Kenton moved toward him. “How’s your shoulder? Sayvil can probably give you something that—”
“I’m working on it,” Sayvil snapped. “I’m an apothecary, not a physician. Would everyone quit assuming that I have a never-ending bag full of herbal remedies?”
“But in this case,” Kenton said, “you do.”
Sayvil grunted something unintelligible, and Kenton held up his hands and went to dig some food out of the saddle bags. The group breakfasted on the rabbits, as well as a loaf of bread, a scattering of nuts, a few previously cooked root vegetables, and a wedge of the blue-veined cheese that was popular in Sevairn.
While the others ate, Jaeme wandered over to Daniella with a few handfuls of food, since they were lacking in plates. Daniella had finished mending her stockings and was tugging them onto her feet with some effort.
Daniella took the food from him with only a mumbled thanks, not looking at him. She sat cross-legged, wearing men’s breeches like the other women—which he imagined made for more comfortable riding attire.
“May I?” Jaeme asked, gesturing to a rock next to her bedroll.
Daniella squinted up at him. “May you what?”
Jaeme paused. “Sit, my lady.”
“I’m not a lady out here. Daniella is fine.”
Jaeme took that as an invitation, though from the wary way Daniella was watching him, he wasn’t sure she’d intended it as one. Near the fire, Jaeme saw Kenton and Perchaya finish their food and head off to care for the horses.
“Mind if I share your horse again today?” Jaeme asked. “I’m afraid I’m not going to see my own for quite some time if we’re headed in the directi
on of Berlaith. I wasn’t expecting to need him when I set off for the delegation in Drepaine.”
Daniella shrugged. “You’ll have to share with someone, I suppose. I’d suggest you ride on Kenton’s horse, but that animal is about as pleasant as Kenton himself, and I wouldn’t want to inflict either on you.”
“I’m used to ill-tempered animals. I have one myself. Horse is a nasty thing, but he warms up eventually.” Jaeme shot a look toward Kenton. “I’m not sure I can expect the same from that man.”
Daniella raised an eyebrow at him. “Your horse’s name is Horse?”
“Horse Three, actually. I have a system. It’s much easier that way.”
“I shudder to ask what happened to Horse One and Horse Two.”
“A knight’s life is rough, but his mount’s life is rougher,” he said.
That was only partially true. Horse Two had, in fact, been injured in battle, but Horse One had died of old age. He’d already been a crochety, wizened thing when Uncle Greghor had given the beast to him. He’d said they deserved each other, and Jaeme couldn’t say he was wrong.
Come to think of it, not a single one of Jaeme’s horses had been good-tempered. He supposed he should have wondered before now if that had something to do with their rider.
Daniella took a bite of the cheese he’d brought to her. “You said last night that you met Saara and Nikaenor in a port town in Foroclae. But what was a knight of Mortiche doing wading through Foroclae by himself in the first place?”
He had forgotten how observant she was. He remembered watching her from across the room in the trade meeting, thinking that, as Diamis’ daughter, she was only there as a figurehead. Yet she had been paying attention. Her expressions had attested to how carefully she was following every long-winded speech. She hadn’t said anything, but she had clearly wanted to, several times.
He decided a partial truth was best. “To be honest, I was gathering information.”
That surprised her. “You’re a spy?”
