the stairs up to her quarters. It was evening, after all-
“Hey,” came the quiet voice behind her, the low baritone of Vaste.
“What do you want?” she snapped at him, unaware of how much raw emotion she was putting into her voice until she heard it.
Vaste came up behind her, a slow walk, his feet making soft footfalls on every stone. “He’s not dead, you know.”
“I bloody well know that,” she said, lashing out again with her voice. “Not that I care. I don’t, actually. I don’t bloody well care.”
Vaste gave her a subtle nod. “You’re a liar and a thief.”
“What?” She stared at him, perplexed and irritable. “I am not a thief!”
“So you admit to being a liar?”
“I admit to nothing,” she said, “save for that you are a baffling, exasperating sort of fool whose flabby green arse is ripe for a good thumping.”
Vaste raised an eyebrow at her then turned around, sticking out his backside and looking down as though to inspect it. “It does look wonderful, doesn’t it? Ripe for thumping indeed. The way you say it makes it sound so kinky and appealing.”
She let out a harsh breath, as though it could contain some magic that might strike him dead on the spot. “I am in no mood-”
“You’ve been in no mood for quite some time,” Vaste said. “I don’t expect the news that he’s sleeping with other women will do much to improve it.”
She let out a mirthless laugh. “If it is as you say it is, why would you bother to put yourself in my path when you know that I’ll be ready to spray whoever annoys me with nothing but the sharpest acid?”
Vaste didn’t grin, didn’t smile at all, for once. “Because somebody should be there to take it.”
“What?” She didn’t quite boggle at him but was only just shy of it.
“I expect you’d think I would argue for Cyrus, or something of the sort,” Vaste said, straitlaced. “But I’m not. Cyrus did what Cyrus did, I won’t defend or condone it. But neither is he my concern at this moment. My concern is you.”
“I’m fine,” Vara said, letting her mouth stretch into a thin line, like the bricks in the wall.
“With as much lying as you’re doing, I can’t imagine it will be much longer before you cross into the domain of thieving simply from sheer boredom at having mastered the lying.” He raised an eyebrow again. “Would you say you’re also getting better at lying to yourself with all the practice you’re getting?”
“What do you want from me?” She felt a great wall of overwhelm, of fatigue, and suddenly going to her bed didn’t seem so outrageous.
“I would like to see,” Vaste said, “my favorite paladin stop taking it on the chin and start being honest with everyone.” He shrugged. “But since Alaric is probably going to continue to be mysterious-”
“A joke,” she said quietly, and felt the push of the emotions within her. “So excellently timed, too.”
“I’ll settle for getting you to admit that you’re in love with Cyrus and that with every bit of word from Luukessia you die a little inside, and every month without word from them kills you a little more.” Vaste stared down at her, and the humor was gone. “The truth is probably the hardest part to admit; especially for someone as …”
“Reserved?” She said, her voice brittle. She stared into his eyes, which were immense and brown, warm, something that she had always found favorable about him.
“I was going to say tragically repressed, but why don’t we meet in the middle and say stoic?” He awkwardly put a large hand on her shoulder and rested it there lightly on her armor. “I know that you must be going through some sort of mental obstacle course of epic proportions, and that with the death of your father, and before that your mother, that you must be-”
“She warned me away,” Vara said at a whisper. “Before she died, the last conversation we had, we were yelling and screaming at a fever pitch. I told her I loved him, and that I didn’t care about my responsibilities as the shelas’akur, and she threw it back in my face. I said some very unkind things, some very crude things meant to shock her. She warned me away, told me that he would die before me and that I would mourn him all the rest of my life.” She clenched her eyes tightly shut, as though doing so would mean all the emotion she was feeling would vanish like the world when they were shut, “and I listened to to her. I knew she was right, and so I told him goodbye, that it would never work …” She heard her voice break a little, “and I sent him into the arms of her-that harlot.”
“I would try not to think of it that way if I were you,” Vaste said. “You attempted to make the best decision you could at that moment. Sure, it turned out to be monumentally shortsighted on an emotional level,” he grimaced when she looked at him, disbelief at what he had said. “Sorry. But your mother had the right of it, if we were only looking at the long-term ramifications. Everything she told you is true, on a purely logical level.” The troll looked strangely sage as he spoke. “But the problem is that love and logic are the poorest of bedfellows. Not unlike you and Cyrus.”
“How am I supposed to comport myself in this circumstance?” She shuffled two steps to the right and put her back to the wall, between two sconces. The clink of her armor against the stone was enough to remind her that she wore it to protect herself from harm.
She dissolved, then, and he caught her in his massive arms, enfolded her in them, and she sobbed into his white robes, felt the tears trickle down her cheeks in a way that was still foreign to her. She felt safe and warm, wrapped up with him there, and she held onto him for quite some time, just like that, in the middle of the hallway.
Chapter 71
Cyrus
They rode south for more than a month, and the autumn hounded them the whole way as though they were the prey and it was a predator. The steppes near Filsharron were low, and the yellowed grass went green for a time as they rode west to avoid the swamps southeast of Enrant Monge. It was a long, drawn out course, but they saw no sign of scourge as they went, and after a week’s travel, Longwell looked ahead upon the apex of a small hill and pointed; ahead of them was a short wall, and tucked behind it was a stone house.
“Guard house,” Longwell said. “At least a couple men manning it. They should have seen us already; though they may report to a larger watch, which would be …” he held a hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun, “over there.” He pointed to a nearby hill that was taller, covered with trees. Cyrus could see man-made structures breaking up the symmetry of the woods atop it, but it wasn’t easily defined. “We’re at the crossing for Gundrun; they’ll be wanting to know who we are and for what purpose we’re coming to Galbadien there at that house.”
“Might I suggest we not tell them we’re here to overthrow the King?” J’anda said it with a wry smile, but it caused a pallor to settle over them all.
The smell of autumn was in the air; the wind came from the east, the stink of the scourge was gone for at least now, and the leaves were turning all along the road. Reds and golds were full fledged, and the shock of them together was something Cyrus couldn’t quite recall. The air was crisp, like the first bite of an apple, and the briskness spread across his skin, the sweat from riding giving him the chills. The woods had been quiet around them, this intermittent sea of trees and fields that was something much less desolate than the steppes had been.
“Are you ready for this?” Cyrus asked Longwell, as they trod along the road on horseback. It was only the
