by Deb E Howell
Jonas hadn’t even broken a sweat. Llew had. Her own muscles tensed, as if it had been her in the fight.
“You alright?” he asked.
“No.” Llew pouted, all the tension she had held during the short battle flooding out, leaving her feeling crabby. She supposed she shouldn’t feel so bad about a little water, nor needing to be rescued from the Zaki, but she was beginning to realise that it wasn’t all that was upsetting her. It hadn’t just been Cassidy pushing her out of her depth; she had been out of her depth ever since Kynas pointed his finger at her in the streets of Cheer. She no longer had a home. The closest thing she’d had to a friend was dead, and served him right, the bastard. She was surrounded by strangers who didn’t know who, or what, she was – and her new friend would kill her if he ever found out.
Jonas tilted his head, giving a sympathetic grimace, and put a hand on her shoulder.
Llew broke down. She lowered herself into a crouch, hugged her knees, and let the tears come, soaking into her already drenched forearms. She sensed Jonas crouch beside her, but didn’t look at him. She kept her head bowed until the tears subsided and her head cleared a little. She rested her chin on her arms, catching her breath, and shared a small, wet smile with him.
“Come on. Put these on.” He pressed the dry clothing at her, then stood and stepped behind a tree.
Llew sighed, and began peeling the wet clothes from her skin.
“You think Aris will let me go on with you all once he knows?”
“I’d say he already knows. And why wouldn’t he?”
“Because we’re meant to be keeping Anya safe. And I’d be just another girl.”
“You’re not just another girl, Llew.”
Llew caught her breath and swallowed. Her initial reaction, What did he know? gave way to pondering just what else he might mean. Llew had no time for romantic temptations. She had to get to Phyos, strike out on her own. Then again, there was more than romance between a man and a woman . . .
She wondered what he might be thinking now that he had seen her almost naked. She certainly knew what kinds of thoughts she was having after seeing him.
“You ever seen a woman before?” she asked when she finally had the dry trousers up around her damp waist. She wished she could lounge around in a sunny patch to dry before getting dressed, but this wasn’t her Spot back in Cheer, and she wasn’t alone.
“A woman, yes,” he said. “I was married.”
She stopped, the shirt halfway over her face. It wasn’t that he wasn’t old enough to have married. But to have been married? Past tense. A year ago . . .
“What happened?” She pulled the shirt down, and re-strung the trousers, trying to get them to stay up.
“She was murdered.”
She stepped around the tree to stand before him. “I’m sorry.” She almost surprised herself with her sincerity.
The briefest smile indicated his appreciation before it broke into a full grin.
“There’s a difference between a woman and a girl, though.” He stepped around her and began the trek back to camp.
Llew’s jaw dropped. She ran after him, intending to begin her assault with a poke in his side, or, perhaps cold, soaking, clothing on bare skin, but his arm flung out and wrapped around her waist, lifting her from the ground and swinging her across him. Then he plonked her back to earth on his other side. He put an arm across her shoulders and drew her close, making it difficult to manoeuvre into a position of attack: not that she felt inclined to all of a sudden.
“What does it mean?”
“What?”
“The gryphon. It’s on your knife, the carving and your . . . ” She waved a hand at his torso and, once again, found herself having to study the forest canopy, fearing that to look at or speak of the battle-hardened muscles might send her tumbling into the undergrowth.
“It’s a family emblem, of sorts.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She smiled at him. He returned a half-smile and they continued in silence.
Everyone turned to watch as the pair emerged from the trees. Anya was wide-eyed, and Llew couldn’t tell if it was because of her own revelation or the sight of Jonas’ bare chest. Emylia was more difficult to read. She tried to discourage Anya’s stares, but she was not immune to assessing the pair herself. Cassidy gave them a brief grin and a suggestive nod and continued tying his shoe. Alvaro watched them, eyes narrowed. Aris, too, watched with a flat, unreadable expression. Under the latter’s appraisal, Jonas removed his arm from Llew’s shoulders and took a step away from her.
“I think you and I need to have a word,” Aris said, approaching Llew.
“Surprise. I’m a girl.” She smiled, weakly. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner . . . ” Her voice trailed away. She folded her arms, trying to make herself small, and failing. She was the same height as Jonas, slightly taller than Aris.
Jonas chuckled. Llew resisted firing a glare at him. Aris didn’t.
He looked back to Llew and she waited for the onslaught of accusations and reasons why they should leave her behind to start, but it didn’t come. Instead Aris folded his arms and looked her up and down. “I suppose I can understand a girl not wantin’ to look like a girl travellin’ on her own.” He pursed his lips. “No more secrets?”
Llew considered and dismissed telling him she could heal a scratch in little more than an instant. She shook her head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Now I need bait.” Hook in hand Llew flicked the grass with her fingers to see if she could stir anything to life. Tasked with catching a fresh dinner, she was determined to impress.
“Like what?” Jonas asked, crouching beside her. Alvaro followed him down on her other side.
“Like . . . ” Llew said, looking about. “That.” She pointed at finely flickering grass blades where she had just caught a glimpse of a cricket going into hiding.
Jonas squinted to see what she was pointing at. The cricket leapt from its cover, disappearing into another clump of the yellow native grass. The grass shuddered and Jonas flung out his hand.
“Like . . . ” He opened his fist, clutching the creature’s powerful hind legs between the knuckles of two fingers. “This?”
Llew grinned at him.
“That’s spittin’ distance to cheatin’, that is,” said Alvaro.
Jonas raised an eyebrow dismissively at him.
Llew carefully took the cricket and grimaced while slicing the insect’s head off with the hook. It wasn’t her favourite part of fishing, but it was necessary – she’d rather they died from a quick decapitation than writhed around with a hook through them, no matter how much more appealing that might be to the fish.
“Usually, catching the bait is as much a challenge as catching dinner,” she said, threading the hook through the fleshy abdomen. “There were a few hungry nights I could have done with you around.”
The water downstream from the swimming hole filled the air with a babble loud enough to drown out the loose stones shifting under their feet and to cover their approach from over-sensitive fish that Llew hoped had returned since their earlier swim. She stepped up to the water’s edge, let out her horsehair line, and set about her usual performance of teasing the fish with light flicks of her bait on the surface. She sensed Jonas step up close behind her left shoulder. He blocked what breeze there was, and the warmth emanating from him gave her a heady feeling not unlike that provided by his small bottle of liquor.
Alvaro started to say something but, with a raised hand, Llew demanded silence of them both as they waited for the fish to grow brave enough to investigate the insect touching down on the water’s surface.
Little more than an hour later, Llew had caught four sizable fish, which the three of them had scaled and gutted, releasing the entrails into the water to be washed away to feed more fish farther downstream.
“So, why were you leaving Cheer?” Aris asked, tucking into the now boiled fish. Llew wished they had a skillet and a littl
e oil but, even boiled, the fish was a welcome change.
“My . . . friend accused me of murdering his boss. I figured it’d only be a matter of time before the law tracked me down and hung me for it.” Less than an hour, but they didn’t need to know that. “I didn’t do it.” She eye-balled each of them.
Anya was nodding. She might not have lived on the streets, but she would have known something about the ways of the law in Cheer. If someone of her standing had been accused, there would have been a trial; a street girl or boy would only get summary punishment. Lucky for Llew, it seemed that in her excitement about her impending trip, the news of the hanging of the two young thieves had skipped Anya’s notice. She watched the other girl carefully for signs of ringing bells, but it seemed Anya had remained sheltered from such events.
“So, you cut your hair and left your home town, that it?” Aris was savvy. He knew Llew’s one-of-the-boys act wasn’t new.
“My pa didn’t like me as a girl. Said I reminded him too much of my ma.” She sensed everyone’s mood change. She supposed it was sad for her pa to feel that way, but she had little time for his feelings any more. “And by the time he went missing, I already knew what happened to girls on the street. I didn’t want that, so I stayed as a boy. I hardly knew different by then, anyway.”
Aris nodded, then his eyes narrowed. “Didn’t happen to know anything about that witch we were questioned over just out of Cheer, did you?”
Llew felt her insides constrict and she concentrated very hard on not letting it show. She shook her head as assertively as she could, which probably just made her look as guilty as she was trying not to appear. Aris’ gaze lingered long enough that she nearly peed herself, but he said no more on the subject and soon returned his attention to his fish. He congratulated her on the catch. She tried not to beam too broadly – just enough for the appreciation of the fish.
Watch duty was as unpleasant as it had been the first night. Unfamiliar animals prowled the forest floor, and she now had the added fear that they were surrounded by Aghacian natives; this was not helped by the occasional scuffle through the trees that sounded human-sized. Again the air lost all heat soon after sun-down, and, even in her jacket, Llew spent most of her awake time shivering and she didn’t look forward to trying to return to sleep.
The task of rousing Cassidy without waking anyone else wasn’t easy, but she managed it eventually and headed for her own bedroll.
Shivering in the chill night air, she stopped before the sleeping Jonas and recalled snuggling in the arms of Kynas on cold winter evenings. They had been unsettling times. Being warm should have allowed her to relax, but being so close to Kynas and his ever groping hands did not a pleasant night’s sleep make. While she had traded the skin-crawling for the cold in Kynas’ case, she was seriously considering otherwise this time. Besides, Jonas was at least nice to look at. Maybe the rest wouldn’t be bad, either.
Of course he would expect something in return, that was the nature of things. You traded what you had for what they had: and he had warmth. Technically they were sharing heat, but Kynas had always made it clear that he gave more than she did and therefore the deficit ran in his favour. In Jonas’ case, maybe it would help with the whole matter of not putting a knife in her if the truth about what she was came out, too. Maybe.
She shrugged off her jacket, placed it on the ground nearby and tugged off her shoes, hopping about in an effort to remain balanced on one foot on the frosty damp ground. She knelt before him and peeled back his bedroll. He clung to the tightly woven wool, but with a little pressure Llew had him sleepily making room for her. Some part of her wondered if he knew it was her or if, in the fog of sleep, he was imagining his wife joining him. She didn’t dwell on it long; she’d been up against her mother’s ghost almost her entire life and lost. Anyway, this was just about getting a comfortable night’s sleep. That was all.
Jonas wore only his shirt and long-johns, and when Llew pressed back into his chest she was rewarded with immediate heat radiating down the length of her spine and permeating through her body. Relaxing, she settled herself in closer, fitting her rump into the fold of his hips. His arm drooped lazily over her and he gave an unconscious welcoming hug and relaxed again, the steady pulse of his breathing interrupted by one contented sigh.
As was expected in these situations, Llew brought her hand up behind her, found a gap between long-john buttons and slid her fingers inside, but as she touched the coarse hair the arm that was over her drew back and a strong hand gripped her wrist. He withdrew her hand and, linking his fingers with hers, resumed his casual embrace so that, instead of pleasuring him, she found herself captive to a warm cuddle.
Llew was confused. He was a man, she was a girl and they were beside one another. Usually that meant groping and nakedness. Was there something wrong with him? He shuffled back to remove the growing pressure against her lower back. Nothing physically wrong with him, then.
Pondering the quirks of men, Llew fell into a deep, pleasantly warm slumber.
***
She was woken by the morning stirrings of the rest of the camp. Shifting in her cocoon, Jonas’ arm squeezed her tight.
“Stay,” he breathed into her hair. She was happy to oblige. A faint glow was the only hint that the sun was due to make any sort of appearance and the night’s chill prevailed.
Anya, wandering by with the pot to collect water from the river, smiled at the two of them. Returning from his watch post, Alvaro stopped when he saw them, but he gave no smile. Nor did Aris, who showed his dislike by generally keeping his eyes averted; quick glances let them know they hadn’t escaped his notice, though. Emylia’s sensibilities did not consider an unwed girl and young man sharing a bed proper, and her disapproving looks didn’t hide this. Cassidy alone didn’t even appear to have seen them, and his concern focused, instead, on the slow progress of breakfast and the early rising after a too short night of broken sleep.
Llew luxuriated in the shared warmth, but she couldn’t stay long. For one thing, the party had to get on the road and make the most of the cooler morning air before the heat of the day kicked in; for another, she didn’t want to be the cause of bad feelings within the group. Reluctantly, she extricated herself from Jonas’ arm and slid from the warmth of his bedroll to start pulling her shoes back on. He watched her, with the hint of a smile.
“Brr.”
“Well, get up and moving, then,” she said as she shivered under the touch of her cold jacket. It would warm soon, but that was little consolation in the moment. “What happened to your rigorous military training? Aren’t you supposed to be used to early mornings?”
“Sure I am. But I’m on holiday.”
“Holiday?” She raised an eyebrow at him.
“You look cute when you do that.”
She scowled at him. He grinned.
Alvaro, walking past, muttered something under his breath. Llew stooped, collected up Jonas’ jacket and threw it at the prone figure.
“Get up,” she said, then rolled up her own bedroll and went to help Cassidy with the horses’ morning rations and with fitting their saddles.
As Llew passed him, Aris stood up from tending the fire and strode back to Jonas, who was untangling himself from his bedding. No matter how much she strained, though, she couldn’t hear their words. Whatever was being said, Aris didn’t look happy. His voice rose enough so they all knew Jonas was being reprimanded, but his words still weren’t clear to anyone not standing right in front of him. Jonas looked like a kicked puppy by the time Aris was finished. Llew watched Aris return to the fire and restrained herself from glaring at him when he looked up at her. His expression wasn’t clear. She still felt like she’d done something wrong. She supposed she had: girls in polite company did not share their bed with young men, and despite their need to sleep outdoors, she supposed she was in polite company.
Breakfast was quiet, with no one prepared to risk eye-contact with Aris or Jonas. Most of the group were civilian
s, and it was as though the experienced and highly trained Aris and Jonas were the backbone, providing structure for the rest of them to work from. To feel that support crumble was unsettling.
Llew kept her horse between her and Jonas while they tightened girth straps and tied saddlebags and bedrolls, but as soon as Aris was involved with getting the carriage horses hitched, she stooped under the golden neck to talk.
“I’m sorry I caused you trouble with Aris,” she said.
“It weren’t your fault.” He didn’t look at her, instead continuing to tie his bedroll in place.
“But if I hadn’t–”
“I said don’t, Llew.”
Llew wanted to punch something. She had finally met a man who didn’t make her cringe when he looked at or touched her and for some reason known only to him and Aris he was supposed to do neither. She turned, fists balled, and nearly walked into the shoulder of her horse. The heat of humiliation mixed with her frustration and she raised a fist, but caught herself and instead ran her knuckles up and down the horse’s neck. His head extended and his top lip quivered, and she calmed.
“Aris would rather Llew rode up front with me,” Alvaro said as they were taking their places on the road, ready to head out. Behind him, Cassidy nodded and gave Llew and Jonas an apologetic shrug.
Jonas nodded too, and flicked his eyes from Llew to the front of the carriage, telling her to go. Her shoulders slumped, but she reluctantly led her horse to the front.
The clop of the horses’ hooves, the jingling of tack and the carriage’s creaks and groans dominated the morning ride. Llew didn’t know what to say to Alvaro. He turned to her a number of times, even opened his mouth and drew breath as though about to speak, but nothing was forthcoming. Anya pointed out the natural beauty of the passing landscape to those in the carriage, but otherwise even her usual carefree banter was kept in check. Aris’ mood affected everyone.
“You don’t have any brothers or sisters?” Alvaro finally found his voice.
Llew shook her head and Alvaro fell silent for a few minutes.
