intrude upon him.
James and the rest remain in the camp and wait for the others to return. No one feels like talking, each is lost in their own reflections.
In a little bit, Jiron and the others return from burying Qynn. He looks around and asks, “Tinok hasn’t returned yet?”
“No,” Delia replies.
He turns and looks out toward where he disappeared into the night with Cassie, worried for his friend. An hour later, Tinok comes back to camp. Eyes red and swollen from crying, and covered in dirt from where he dug her grave, he looks a pitiful sight. The necklace he had recently given her hangs around his neck. His knives are caked with dirt, obviously what he used to dig her grave. That above everything else gives Jiron cause to worry for his friend. Nothing has ever before meant more to him than his knives and for him to not have cleaned them cannot bode well.
He sits near the fire and stares vacantly into the flames. They try to engage him in conversation, telling him of their sorrow for his loss, but he doesn’t respond. Eventually he just goes over to his bedroll and falls asleep.
The others stay up for a little longer, discussing their worries for Tinok and the loss of their friends. But soon they all grow tired once again and one by one, drift off to sleep.
In the morning, Tinok is gone.
Chapter Seventeen
“What do you mean he’s gone?” Jiron exclaims after James gives him the news of Tinok’s disappearance.
“He’s gone,” James tells him again. “Sometime last night, he must’ve saddled a horse and taken off.”
“And no one heard him?” he asks, looking around at everyone.
They all shake their heads indicating they hadn’t.
“We must go after him!” he says.
“No, we shouldn’t,” Delia tells him. She grabs him by the arm and stares him straight in the eye as she continues. “With the wagons we will never be able to catch up with him. And if we abandon them, we lose the reason we’re in the Empire.”
He looks at her in anguish and she says softly, “Let him go, you have more immediate concerns.”
“Like what?” he cries.
Pointing to his sister she says, “Like her.”
Defeated, he nods his head acknowledging she’s right. “Let’s get the horses hitched up and get out of here,” he says miserably. He climbs to the top of one of the nearby hills and turns toward the desert, standing there as he looks out across the rolling, desolate hills. “Tinok!” he yells as his eyes scan the horizon. “Tinok!”
Nothing, dejected at the loss of his friend, he climbs back down and helps the others with getting the caravan ready for the road.
“He’ll be okay,” offers Yorn as he comes up behind him, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah,” adds Scar, “he’s a tough one, he is.”
He turns and looks into the faces of his friends and says, “Thanks.” Then he turns back and finishes saddling his horse.
It’s a somber group that heads down the road this morning. Each remembers the fallen in their own way.
“Remember when Qynn was going up against that sailor who thought he was hot stuff?” Potbelly suddenly says, breaking up the silence.
“Yeah,” Stig replies, chuckling, “the guy thought that Qynn was going to be easy pickings.” Laughing, he continues, “He sure made him respect the quarterstaff that day.”
“I remember,” adds Scar, nodding. Then breaking into a smile, he says, “Remember that tune he would always hum as he was whacking someone to its beat?”
Laughing, Potbelly exclaims, “And how he started doing that stupid dance, making the poor guy even more humiliated!”
Everyone from the pits starts laughing at that, James looks over and can see the beginnings of a grin appear on Jiron’s face.
After several more stories of Qynn’s antics in the pits, the mood is lifted somewhat. Apparently, he had been quite the clown at times.
A little past noon they leave the foothills and are once again in flat desert. The river curves to the south, as does the road and after another two hours they begin approaching another sizeable city. From a fellow traveler on the road they learn its name is Morac.
Even though it’s not getting dark yet, they decide to stop for the night here. Pulling to the northeast of town, they find a suitable spot for a camp and proceed to arrange the wagons and picket the horses for the night.
Delia says to James, “I’m going to take Scar and Potbelly with me to deliver a couple packages. Roland too.”
“Alright,” he says, “just be careful.”
“I will,” she assures him.
Once the others are aboard the wagon, she turns it and begins rolling on into town. In the course of her deliveries, she comes across a temple to Coryntia, The Hooded Lady. If you light a candle in one of her temples after a loved one’s passing, it’s said that she will help them to find their way to the afterlife and not be stranded or lost along the way.
She pulls up to it and tells them, “I’ll just be a moment.” Getting down from the wagon, she goes inside the temple and approaches a table with many candles. Sitting in the middle of the candles is a single silver bowl. Placing a coin into the bowl, she takes a candle and carries it over to where a statue of a veiled woman stands. A couple candles are already lit there at her feet and she lights hers from one of the ones already burning, before placing it alongside them. Kneeling down, she says a prayer for Cassie, that she will find her way.
After several moments, she gets up and turns as she walks back toward the exit. Once outside, she climbs back aboard the wagon and then continues on with her deliveries.
Jiron has been moping around the camp ever since Delia left, hurt that Tinok ran out on him. Tersa comes over to James and asks, “What should we do?”
“About what?”
“About Jiron,” she says as she gestures toward him. “I don’t like seeing him like this.”
“Not much we can do other than just be here for him,” he replies. “He’ll work it out on his own, all we can do is to simply allow him the time to do it.”
“I suppose,” she says, not entirely happy. “But I feel so helpless.”
“I know,” he assures her.
Yorn comes over and joins the conversation, “When the others return, we’re going to take him to get drunk.”
“Why?” she asks.
“To help him forget about things for awhile,” he replies. To James he asks, “You want to come?”
“No, I’m not into that sort of thing,” he tells him.
“Your loss,” he says as he wanders back to the others.
From the wagon where Ezra and Arkie are, they can hear poor little Arkie crying. “He misses her,” Tersa says. “She always played with him after we stopped.”
“We all do,” he admits, “she was special.”
A little while later, when Yorn sees Delia approaching, he grabs Jiron and the pit fighters all head into town. They pause momentarily at the wagon and soon Scar and Potbelly join the group as it continues on its way.
When Delia gets to the camp, she asks James, “Where are they going?”
“To get drunk,” he explains, “at least that’s what Yorn said.”
“Hope they don’t get into any trouble,” she states as she watches them go.
