by T. A. White
“It’s a chance I’ll have to take.”
“You’re not going. That’s final.”
“Fallon,” Shea protested to his back.
He shook his head and walked out of the tent before she could say more. Stubborn, stubborn man. This wasn’t over.
Shea followed and was brought up short when Trenton stepped into her path with an apologetic look.
“Get out of my way.”
“I’m sorry, Shea. The Warlord has given orders. You’re to stay in the tent for now.”
Shea’s eyebrows climbed nearly to her hairline, and she stared at him with a shock that quickly turned to fury.
“Oh, did he?”
Trenton drew a deep breath. “Yes, and he’s authorized us to use force if necessary.”
Shea was quiet for a moment, her shock and anger filling her with ugly feelings that wanted to burst out. She couldn’t let them. She needed to retain control.
“And you’d do as he asked?”
His nod was somber even as the look in his eyes were apologetic. “I would.”
Shea looked away. There was a tight feeling behind her eyes and a prickling at the bridge of her nose.
“He is my Warlord,” Trenton said in a soft voice.
She nodded, not saying anything for a long moment. When she’d gotten her emotions under control she looked him in the eye. “And here I thought we were becoming friends.”
There was nothing to say to that. Shea turned and walked back into the tent, not acknowledging the soft apology that followed in her wake.
Back in the tent, she moved quickly through the communal area to the bed chamber. She went directly to a trunk at the foot of the bed, kneeling to open it. The trunk held most of Shea’s things—clothes, odd knick-knacks she’d picked up here and there and wanted to keep, including the green jacket that was part of her scout uniform and a knife she’d stolen when she’d appropriated that jacket.
She plucked the knife out of its scabbard and stood. If Fallon thought he was going to keep her locked up in this tent, he had another thing coming. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d escaped from one of these tents. Admittedly, last time she’d been fleeing because she’d thought her life was in danger, but this worked to.
She walked to the opposite side of the tent and set the knife against the canvas. She hesitated, her arm tensed to push the knife’s point through to the other side. This was the action of a child. One who didn’t get their way and threw a fit to punish everyone around them.
Her arm dropped. It would be so easy to vent her frustration by going on walkabout. So easy to disappear right from under their very noses. To punish Fallon for being an obstinate, stubborn and unreasonable man. That didn’t mean it would be right. Just because you could do something didn’t mean you should.
He was right. He had enemies that would love to take him down through Shea. Despite being in the middle of the encampment, it was still dangerous to be walking around at night. All sorts of beasts, both four legged and two, came out at this time. She was only lightly armed and tired.
Still, she didn’t want Fallon to think he could get away with this kind of behavior. She was his partner. Not his prisoner. It was time he understood that.
She raised her arm and cut into the canvas. It was easier than the last time she’d done this—the knife sharper. She stepped through and looked around, half surprised no one had thought to put guards on the back of the tent given her history.
She shook her head and stepped back into the tent, going over to her bed and laying down. She didn’t need to go anywhere. Her point had been made. Besides, her comfortable bed was right here.
*
“I must say I’m a little surprised you’re still here.” Darius’s voice came from the broken partition. They would have to get that fixed before much longer. Shea was a little surprised it hadn’t been already.
Darius stood a foot inside the personal quarters. He was alone and dressed simply.
Shea sat up. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugged and held up a bottle of wine. “I thought you could use the company, considering Fallon is pacing the camp like a wild animal.”
Shea considered him through narrowed eyes. They were not friends. Darius had never gone out of his way to engage her before. When Fallon was gone and had left Darius in charge, she’d barely seen the other man. It made his presence here a tad suspicious.
He looked around and noticed the gaping hole Shea had cut in their tent. “I see I spoke too soon. Did you desire another entrance?”
Shea didn’t answer, giving him a stone-faced stare.
He sighed. “Well, at least you’re still here. That’s something. Why don’t you come out here so we can talk? I doubt Fallon would appreciate my presence in his private chambers with only his Telroi for company.”
“You assume I care what he thinks right now.”
“Of course, you care, or you would have taken the exit that you so diligently made and taken off into the night. Come, I have wine.”
Darius didn’t wait for her response, disappearing into the other room. There were small sounds of movement as he rustled around trying to find glasses.
Shea gave a heavy sigh and got up.
Darius had made himself at home in the short time Shea had taken to follow him. He reclined on one of the pillows that had a chair back attached. He’d nabbed two chalices from the long table and set them next to him on one of the low tables next to his pillow chair.
“Please. Help yourself.” Sarcasm tinged her voice.
He gave her a lazy grin. “I always do.”
Her huff held a note of laughter in it. She took a seat beside him and reclined into the backrest, nabbing the glass of wine. She took a sip and made a surprised expression of pleasure. It was pretty good. Much better than she would have thought. Probably from one of the south-eastern cities. She thought she remembered wine being one of their main exports.
“So. Why are you here?” Shea asked, cutting to the chase.
Darius took a sip and made a pleased expression. “Lowlanders are so different from us. They can’t fight worth shit and they fear their very shadows, but they do make some amazing things, don’t they?”
Shea gave a shrug of agreement. “They do seem to excel at the trades.”
“What about your people? They have anything like this where you come from?”
Shea shrugged noncommittally. She didn’t want to get into another discussion about the Highlands and what it had to offer. One of the reasons it had never been conquered was because most people were convinced there wasn’t anything up there worth conquering. It was hard to go to all that trouble, if there wasn’t going to be a reward worth having at the end of it.
“You do that well,” Darius said, pointing his goblet at her.
“What?”
“Deflect. Pretend to be less than you are.”
She gave him a questioning look, not quite understanding his point.
“When it comes to anything but your abilities with scouting, you downplay what you can do.”
“I don’t do that.” That was ridiculous.
“Oh?” He took another sip of his drink as he studied her. “The beast board. Why haven’t you taken more of an active role? More than scouting, that idea has the greatest potential to effect real change by educating and training our soldiers in the dangers they face every time they step out of camp.”
“That’s Clark’s thing. Him and Charles. They came up with that and they’re doing a great job.”
“They’ve asked for your help several times now.”
“They don’t need it. They’re doing fine as is.”
“That’s your problem. Fine isn’t good enough. You have a unique set of skills that we could take advantage of. I know you know that. Your work trying to prepare Eamon’s men for the mist proves that. You’re good at it too. Surprisingly so.”
Shea didn’t have a response to that, electing to take another s
ip of her wine.
“You’re a leader who doesn’t want the responsibility of leading,” Darius said after a long pause.
Shea nearly choked on her wine. There were many things that could be laid at her feet. That wasn’t one of them.
“How much of this wine have you had?” she asked Darius.
“Enough to know that I’m right. You’ll see.”
Shea peered at him from the corner of her eye. He didn’t look drunk, but perhaps he hid it better than most.
“Fallon’s changed since he met you,” Darius said after a long silence. “You probably don’t see it, but the rest of us do.”
Shea set her goblet down and leaned back, fixing Darius with a long stare. They were finally getting to the reason he was here.
“What makes you say that?”
“There were plans to invade the Highlands immediately after we conquered the Lowlands.” Darius’s words were a boulder thrown into a still pond.
Shea went still, her heartbeat reverberating in her ears.
“He put that aside.” Darius pointed his goblet at her. “For you. He wouldn’t have done that before.”
“How do you know? I thought you had decided that it was unconquerable because of Bearan’s Fault.”
Bearan’s Fault was a string of cliffs hundreds of miles long. The Highlands sat on the shelf above the Fault and below them was the Lowlands. It was if some giant had ripped the two lands apart and then tried to tape them back together, the resulting pieces not quite lining up again.
Though they weren’t unsurpassable, it would be next to impossible to get an entire army with supplies and horses up them without completely giving up any element of surprise. Such an endeavor would take weeks if not years.
“Not if we went through the Badlands.” He gave her a sly smile. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
She knew much more than that, including a way through the cliffs that would allow Fallon to take his men and horses in half the time and half the danger.
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that you’ve changed him. He’s different now.”
“Let’s say you’re right, and he is. Why are you telling me this?”
He shrugged and poured himself another glass. “Maybe I’m hoping you’ll take pity and not take that exit you made. That you’ll have patience with him. Change takes time. He might seem unreasonable and autocratic, but he has softened with you. More than any other person in this world.”
“And do I just give him a pass in the meantime? Let him walk all over me. Keep me prisoner in the place we call home? How long do I give him to change?” Anger coursed through Shea’s voice. He wasn’t putting this all on her shoulders. She didn’t know a lot about relationships, but she knew they were a partnership, each person responsible for the well-being of the whole. She couldn’t do it on her own nor did she want to.
“No, of course not. Hold him responsible. Let him feel your anger. Just don’t run away. Don’t shut him out.” This last was said with a meaningful look.
Shea flushed and looked away, knowing she was at fault for that last one. Had already fallen back on it the night before.
He made a slight huff of acknowledgement seeing his words had scored a point. “We’re warriors and not often given to soft words, but he cares for you. Probably more than any other person in this world. All I’m asking is that you give him a chance to find his way back before you do anything drastic.”
There was a small sound at the entrance of the tent. Shea looked up to find Fallon standing there, his eyes shadowed and his face expressionless.
Darius aimed a smile at Fallon and raised his cup. “We’re drinking. Join us.”
Fallon’s eyes went to Shea and then back to Darius. He advanced, grabbing a goblet from the long table and then settling on a pillow across from Shea. Darius poured him some wine and sat back.
Shea sipped hers while avoiding looking at Fallon. She held herself stiff and straight.
“How many of our men do you think will have stories of this oasis tomorrow?” Darius asked. “Some of those women were eyeing us like they were preparing for a feast. I’ve never seen the like in Lowlanders. If I didn’t know better, I would say there is Trateri blood in their past.”
“The Airabel are few, and the isolation of their home and events in the past have led to the danger of inbreeding. They are most likely hoping your men can give them new bloodlines,” Shea said.
Darius aimed an affronted look her way. “You mean they plan to use us as broodmares.”
“In this instance, I think it would be more like stallions.”
“Well, don’t that just beat all. This land gets stranger and stranger all the time.” He leaned forward. “Do they actually think we’d leave our children behind?”
Shea gave him a quizzical look.
Fallon answered her unspoken question. “The Trateri love children. Our lives are hard and dangerous. Every life is a precious gift. If my men were to sire children, they would take them with them when we left.”
Shea shrugged. “Only if they knew about them ahead of time. They’re betting that by the time the women show, your army will have moved on. It’s unlikely that you’ll be in this area again anytime soon, and by the time they circle back the women will have given birth and claimed their own people sired the children.”
Both men stared at her with twin looks of distaste.
“I will let the men know to be careful with the women. We’ll leave a detachment behind to keep an eye out for any births,” Darius told Fallon.
Fallon shook his head. “Of all the things I thought we’d face, I never thought we’d be in danger of Lowlanders making off with our unborn children.”
“It’s an ever-changing world, my friend.” Darius drained his wine and stood, leaving the half-finished bottle behind. “Well, I’m off.”
Shea looked up, a little surprised at the abrupt departure. Fallon, with his typical granite facade, didn’t even twitch. He took a slow sip of the wine and acknowledged Darius’s departure with a nod.
“Before I go, I suggest you take a look at your personal chambers.” With that last remark, Darius made his departure.
Fallon’s head tilted as he stared into his wine. Suspicion dawned on his face and he stood, making his way to their personal quarters without a word. Shea let him go as she calmly sipped her wine.
Three, two, one.
There was a crash in the other room and a stream of curses reached her ears. She trained her eyes on the front entrance and was only mildly surprised when no one ventured in to see if they were in any danger. Darius must have warned them. Smart man.
“Would you like to explain why there is a new entrance to our bedchamber?” Fallon’s silky voice came from behind Shea.
“You’re smart. I’m sure you can figure it out.” Shea took another sip of her wine.
He prowled closer, his movements containing a lethal edge.
“You were going to leave me.” He sounded like the very idea that she would contemplate such an action enraged him.
She raised an eyebrow. “Now why would I want to do that?” She gave him a long minute to answer. His eyes narrowed, taking on a dangerous glint “Ah, yes. Perhaps that’s because you treated me like a prisoner, having your guards keep me here whether I wanted to or not.”
He looked away. She felt a spurt of grim satisfaction. He knew he was in the wrong.
“That was for your own safety.”
“Bullshit. That was because you were angry and wanted to take it out on me.” She waited for him to correct her. When he didn’t, she continued, “I’m here because I want to be here. The next time you do something like that, expect me to be gone.”
She set her glass down and stood. Shea walked past an unmoving Fallon to their chamber, saying over her shoulder, “I suggest you station one of your men at our new entrance so that we’re not murdered in our sleep by one of your many enemies.”
CHAPTER FOURTEE
N
SHEA WOKE to an empty bed. Again. She rested one hand on the indent from Fallon’s body before rolling over and facing in the other direction. It had been several days since their argument, and neither of them had made any effort to make amends. Their exchanges had devolved into a series of icy greetings.
She’d busied herself with helping Clark and Charles and their beast classes. Something she enjoyed more than she wanted to admit. They had taken her proposal of teaching tracking and recognizing the different signs of beasts to the next level. The class size had doubled in a few short days and they were having to put people on waiting lists.
Shea knew that would change once patrols started back up in full force. A few had been sent out, but Fallon hadn’t lifted all restrictions yet.
She heaved herself to her feet and shuffled over to her trunk, pulling out a clean set of the scout uniform she’d taken to wearing when she taught. It was really just a pair of pants and a linen shirt missing any patches that would have signified her unit, division and clan.
She ducked out of the tent, using the entrance she had made in her fit of anger. Wilhelm waited for her. He gave her an easy smile and handed her a roll filled with spicy meat, the Trateri’s version of a quick breakfast. The smell tantalized, causing her mouth to water and her stomach to rumble.
“Here, I thought you might need this since you always skip breakfast,” Wilhelm said.
Shea grunted. Her relationship with her guards had been damaged by that night, and she wasn’t quite willing to forgive them for following Fallon’s orders. She accepted their presence, but she made no attempt at friendly overtures. The same couldn’t be said of them.
“Are you heading for the beast class again today?” Wilhelm asked, falling into step beside her.
She nodded, her mouth full of the roll he’d brought her.
“What’s the name of that beast you were talking about yesterday? The one with three horns?”
“A trihorn boar.”
The trihorn boar got its name from its three horns, two on its forehead and one on its nose. It had a muscular body and easily reached to Shea’s waist. It was carnivorous and extremely aggressive when its territory was threatened. It also hunted in packs.
