by Sharon Shinn
Now Kent was watching me. “I didn’t mean to silence you completely,” he said. “Or are you trying to keep from saying I have made no headway at all?”
I shook my head to clear away the cobwebs and grinned up at him. “I was wondering if I could turn myself into someone Greta would like,” I said with a laugh. “Who could I model myself after?”
“Lady Greta herself,” he suggested. “She seems tolerably well pleased with her own personality.”
“No, if I wanted to be like anyone, it would be Elisandra,” I said.
But now Kent, unexpectedly, had turned sober. “I would not take Elisandra for my model if I were you,” he said.
I was completely taken aback. “What? Why not?” He only shook his head in answer. I exclaimed, “I thought you admired her!”
“More than anyone I know, perhaps. But that does not mean I think you should try to be her.”
“Why not?” I said again, and this time he replied, giving me a small, crooked smile that did not make him seem happy in the least.
“Perhaps it is because I like you the way you are.”
That did not seem like the truthful answer, but before I could press him again, Bryan called out a warning of bad trail ahead. Jaxon immediately swung off his horse and pushed ahead of Bryan to examine the track before us.
“I think we’ll be on foot before long,” Kent said. “Just as well. The way seems to be getting narrower all the time.”
And, indeed, ten minutes later when we resumed our journey, we were all dismounted and Jaxon was in the lead. The way was rough with exposed roots and the occasional bramble, not to mention unexpected patches of mud, but I did not really mind. I had spent plenty of time on trails like this, hunting herbs with my grandmother. However, I made sure I did not fall too many paces behind Kent, and glanced behind me now and then to see if Damien and Roderick were still nearby. Damien had his eyes trained on the ground and looked comprehensively miserable. Roderick—who caught my glance every time I looked his way—grinned and nodded encouragement. Despite the fact that he had scarcely spoken this whole day, I found myself liking him just for the cheerfulness of his face.
We continued in this way for more than an hour before Jaxon called another halt to rest. This time, there was even less conversation than before, except when Roderick asked Jaxon how much longer we would continue.
“Another two hours, I would think,” my uncle replied. “We should stop before nightfall and take a little time to make camp. No use exhausting ourselves before we’ve reached our destination.”
“I know you brought provisions,” the guardsman said, “but the woods are full of game. Would you like fresh meat?”
Jaxon eyed him speculatively. “We’re making a considerable noise with our passage,” he said. “I doubt there’s any game for three miles all around us.”
“Well, if I see something, then,” Roderick said, and let it go.
Soon enough, we were back on our feet and back on the trail. I was tired enough by this time that I would not have minded dropping to the mud, curling up in a small ball, and sleeping right there in the middle of the trail. But Jaxon forged on ahead, and we all followed. I watched my feet and tried not to think about feather beds.
I glanced back less often during this stretch of the journey, but when I did, Roderick was missing. I halted my horse and waited for Damien to catch up.
“Where is he? Did he fall? Should we go back?”
Damien shook his head as if he were almost too exhausted to speak. “Hunting,” he said breathlessly. “Said he’d catch up.”
“What if we lose him?”
Damien shrugged. “He seems,” he said in a thin voice, “able to care for himself.”
I hesitated, still troubled, and wondered whether I ought to call out for Jaxon. But Damien nudged me forward. “They’re gaining ground,” he said, and I wearily set myself in motion again. Roderick would be fine, I knew it; just looking at him you could see his easy competence. It was just that I would not want to be alone in these woods myself. I did not want to abandon anyone else to such a wretched fate.
Roderick still had not caught up with us by the time Jaxon mercifully called a halt. It was some hours before nightfall, but he had come across a shallow clearing not far from the trail, wide enough for us to build a fire and pitch three tents.
“Time to make camp,” he said. “Where’s Roderick?”
“Hunting, Damien says,” I replied.
That caught Bryan’s attention. “Hunting! I could have caught us some game if we needed more provisions.”
“I think he was just bored,” Kent said gently. “He’s a country man. Used to rougher land than this.”
“Well, he’s supposed to be guarding me. How can he guard me if he’s off somewhere looking for game?”
I couldn’t help myself, I smiled at my prince. “But Bryan, he knows your sword is as good as his,” I said earnestly, and I meant it. “He knew he didn’t have to be worried for you.”
“Well,” Bryan said, mollified a little, “he probably won’t catch anything this afternoon. Not with all the noise we’ve made.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jaxon said practically. “We’ll need a fire anyway. Who wants to gather firewood and who wants to pitch tents? And who wants to dig a pit for garbage?”
It was clear by the expression on Bryan’s face that he didn’t think the prince should have to do any of these tasks, but since it was clear from Jaxon’s voice that everyone would have to do something, he made his choice. “I’ll build the fire,” he said.
Jaxon pointed. “There. We’ll put the tents around it. Corie, let me set up my tent first, and then I’ll help you with yours.”
“I can settle myself, thank you,” I said, and proceeded to unstrap my bags from my horse’s back. Jaxon could set up Bryan’s tent if he was so eager to be helpful.
In fact, I was the only one of the group to have a tent to myself, since naturally none of the men could sleep beside me and the maid was back at the castle. Bryan had not been happy to learn that he would have to share his quarters with someone else, though he had agreed to allow his cousin to join him. The other three would crowd into a third tent, unless Jaxon slept under the stars, which he expressed an interest in doing. I didn’t mind sleeping in the open myself, unless it rained. In my experience, a tent did very little to keep away insects or shield you from the cold, so you might as well settle on the hard ground and stare up at the fizzing night sky. But a tent had been provided for me and a tent I would use, and in fifteen minutes I had it snugly pegged in place.
Just as I had turned to offer assistance to the others, Roderick materialized from the trail behind us. He had three game birds slung across his saddle, tied together at the feet, and a pair of rabbits over his shoulder.
“Had a little luck,” he said, when Jaxon admired his kills. “Should feed us all.”
Bryan looked miffed, but Damien and Kent crowded around Roderick to help him dress the game. That left me to set up a spit across the fire and see what else Jaxon had brought in the way of food. Despite the frequent breaks for refreshment along the way, I was suddenly starving, and the smell of the roasting meat made me nervous with hunger.
Although it seemed like hours later, it was really not too long after the fire started that we were ready to sit down to our meal. We all ate like barbarians, devouring bread, meat, and dried fruit without saying a word. Only Bryan ate with caution, ten minutes behind the rest of us, after Damien had tasted his food. Even I thought this was a little too cautious, since only the five of us could have had a chance to poison the food before he ate it, but perhaps we were among the people he suspected of having designs on his life.
Well, he had already as good as accused Jaxon of considering such treachery. Kent had admitted to me that he would inherit the throne if something happened to the prince. And who knew anything of the young guardsman, so fresh from Veledore? Perhaps he was right to risk nothing, even at a campfire in
the middle of the woods.
Jaxon was the first to finish, emitting a loud belch and leaning back against his saddlebag in loose satisfaction. “Ah, that was a good meal,” he sighed. “Hunger is the spiciest seasoning.”
Kent raised his canteen in my direction, since we had nothing so fancy as wineglasses at our disposal. “A splendid job done by the chef,” he said, although all I had done was turn the meat on the spit.
I gestured at Roderick. “And the hunter.” Roderick grinned, shrugged, and said nothing.
Jaxon reached behind him and pulled up an oddly shaped fruit or tuber, something that glowed deep red in the tricky light of the fire. “Found this earlier as we were riding along,” he said. “Any of you know it?”
Kent took it from his hand, examined it, and passed it along. “No,” Kent said. “Is it edible?”
Bryan gave it a cursory look and handed it to Damien, who almost immediately laid it in Roderick’s palm. The guardsman looked at it curiously, turning it over and hefting it to gauge its weight.
“Nothing I’ve seen,” Roderick said, and gave it to me.
“It’s edible,” Jaxon said, answering Kent, “but worth your life to eat it if you aren’t careful.”
I smothered a yelp and dropped the smooth, waxy globe on the ground before me. Jaxon laughed.
“This dayig fruit’s the sweetest you ever tasted—like honey and strawberry and melon all packed in one,” he said. “You could gorge yourself on it and not care if you ate another thing in your life. Only grows a few places in the eight provinces, this being one of them. But nobody farms it and nobody harvests it, because you can’t sell it. Everyone’s too afraid to eat it.”
“Why is that?” Kent asked.
Jaxon held out his hand, and I laid the dayig in it. He’d pulled out a pocketknife, and now he slit the fruit in two. “See that?” he asked, holding up one of the halves. The inside was feathered with oblong white seeds too numerous to count. “Poison, every single one of them. Eat just one of these seeds, and you’ll die in ten minutes. Fifteen at the most.” He shook his head. “Pity, for the fruit is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever tasted.”
Kent took the dayig from him and studied its interior structure, holding it closer to the fire to get a better look. “If it’s so dangerous to eat,” he asked, “how is it you know how it tastes?”
Jaxon’s laugh boomed out. “Because I ate it several times before I knew what the risks were, and obviously the meal had been prepared by a careful hand. But let me ask a question of all of you. Say you wanted to try a dish of dayig fruit—but you knew the seeds were poison. What would you do? How would you avoid the chance of death?”
“I would have my taster eat several bites first,” Bryan said instantly. “Only if he survived would I try the food.”
Jaxon nodded. “Fair enough. What about the taster—eh, Damien? Suppose you weren’t eating on Bryan’s behalf. What would induce you to take a bite?”
Damien looked pale and defiant by firelight. “Nothing,” he said. “I would not take the chance.”
“Even for the most delicious forkful of your life?”
Damien shook his head vigorously. “Not even then.”
Jaxon looked at me. “Corie? I know you’ve got courage.”
I took the dayig back from him and tilted it this way and that. Under my grandmother’s tutelage, I had learned the names and properties of a good number of poisons, and this was not one I was familiar with. I half-suspected he was tale-telling, just to watch our reactions, but I intended to show some caution nonetheless. “I’d want to know if any antidotes existed before I risked the poison,” I said. “If I had the remedy at hand, I’d probably sample a portion.”
“There’s a good answer,” Jaxon approved. “Kent? What about you?”
Kent laughed. “I’d eat it,” he said, “if I prepared the recipe with my own hands. I would trust myself to remove every last seed.”
Jaxon liked that answer best of all, though Bryan snorted. “Cook for myself,” the prince said. “I never expect to see that day come.”
“Well, then, resign yourself to the services of a taster the rest of your life,” Jaxon said pleasantly. “But I do think every person’s answer illustrates something about the individual.”
“You haven’t answered,” Kent pointed out, but I spoke up before my uncle could.
“Neither has Roderick,” I said.
Roderick looked over at me in surprise, though a smile quickly gathered up the corners of his mouth. “I can’t imagine anyone going to the trouble of preparing a fancy dish to kill me off,” he drawled. “I’m more likely to die with a sword in my belly or a knife in my back.”
Jaxon roared with laughter and the rest of us smiled. I urged, “But if you were offered such a concoction—”
He merely shook his head. “It will never happen. I don’t fret over things like that.”
“So how about you, Jaxon?” Kent asked again. “What would you do presented with the dilemma of the sweet and bitter fruit?”
Jaxon took the dayig half from me and balanced it in his hands. “Why, what I’ve done before,” he said, and crammed the entire portion in his mouth. The rest of us gasped with horror as he chewed noisily and swallowed. I half expected him to fall dead at our feet within the minute, but the instant his mouth was clear, he began laughing again.
“I’ve never seen such faces,” he said. “If I only had a mirror so you could stare at yourselves.”
“Uncle Jaxon!” I burst out. “The seeds—the poison—you’ll die—!”
“It was a lie, meant to test us,” Bryan said loudly. “Your uncle Jaxon makes a game of all of us.”
“Not so. The poison’s very real, as you’ll find out soon enough if you try it,” Jaxon said. “It’s just that I’ve a hardy dislike of being at somebody else’s mercy. So over the years I’ve fed myself the fruit a little at a time, seed by seed by seed, till I grew immune to its toxin. Now I can eat a whole one and its hundreds of seeds and suffer no ill effect. But more than one”—and his grin gleamed through his beard—“and I am sick for days. I have learned to be content with that little taste, though that I am determined not to give up.”
“Nothing could taste that wonderful,” Damien said with conviction.
“Oh, but it could,” Jaxon said, and caught up the other half from where it lay on the ground. With his pocketknife, he scraped all the seeds out, then cut a sliver of the ruby fruit and offered it to Damien.
The taster shivered and leaned backward. “No. Thank you. No.”
Jaxon offered the slice to Bryan. “A taste? It’s safe, I assure you.”
Bryan came fluidly to his feet. “I think this game has gone on long enough,” he said. “I’m for bed.” And he stalked the few yards over to his tent.
Jaxon watched him go, then shrugged. “Anyone else?” he asked.
“I’ll try a piece,” Kent said, holding out his hand. When he put the dayig in his mouth and chewed, an indescribable expression crossed his face. “Ah,” he said finally. “I understand why you would risk so much.”
“Let me try some,” I demanded, and Jaxon peeled off a piece for me. I ate it, and everything Jaxon had said was true. Honey and wine and late summer flowers and the special cake that your grandmother bakes to celebrate your birthday—these things and more were rolled into the taste of this one small piece of fruit.
“Let’s pick some more,” I said, when my mouth was free for more mundane things, like speech.
“We’ll look for it tomorrow,” Jaxon promised. “But be very careful when you bite—”
“I’ll have another taste right now,” Kent said.
“Give Roderick a piece,” I suggested.
Again, the smiling look of surprise on the guardsman’s face. “You don’t have much left,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you.”
I leaned across the fire to lay the slice in his hand. “I’m a country girl myself,” I said with a smile. “I know what
it’s like to have a rare treat. Eat it.”
He thanked me and ate, then his eyes widened with astonishment. Wiping his mouth he said cheerfully, “I know what I’ll be hunting for tomorrow,” and we all laughed.
There was a sliver left, and it was in my hand. Once again, I turned to Bryan’s taster. “Damien?” I asked. “The last piece?”
But he shook his head and, like Bryan, climbed hastily to his feet. “Not tonight,” he said. “I’m tired. I think I’ll go to sleep.” And he headed to the other tent set aside for the men.
So we cut the remaining slice into four tiny pieces and each took our final share. But even the wonderment of the dayig fruit couldn’t keep me awake much longer, for I yawned through my final swallow.
“Bedtime for me, too,” I observed, rising. Then I laughed. “Snug and comfortable in my own roomy tent. The rest of you will be a little crowded.”
Jaxon shook his head. “I’ll be sleeping by the fire,” he said. “I prefer it.”
Roderick nodded. “Me, too.”
Kent glanced at the two of them. “Then so will I,” he said. “Bryan will prefer the solitude anyway.”
Jaxon hauled his sleeping blankets out of his saddlebag. “Whoever wakes in the night, throw another branch on the fire,” he said.
The others also began unrolling their blankets and looking for flat places to spread them. I stooped over to kiss my uncle on the cheek.
“Goodnight, Uncle Jaxon,” I said. “Goodnight Kent—Roderick. I hope you all sleep well.”
Five minutes later I was curled in my own blankets, not entirely comfortable on the cold ground. I wondered if the others would stay awake a few hours, talking idly around the glowing fire. I wondered if they would send me back to my tent if I ventured out to join them, laying my blankets alongside Jaxon’s for additional warmth. I wondered if we would really find more dayig in the morning, and if there would be enough to have a whole one for myself. I fell asleep.
