Struck, he tried to retreat into his stoicism. “Do you have any other commands, Lady Deel?” His voice imbued her title with mockery.
She chose to ignore it. “Yes. Give me your hand. I’m going to show you something I’ve hidden behind my walls for decades. I haven’t let anyone see this, but you will.”
He didn’t move. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I could give you any number of reasons. Why not? We’re nothing more than animated dust with burdens to be shared. I’m tired of dragging a secret around with me. I have more cheap justifications, if you want to hear them.”
“Why do I feel like none of those are the real reason?” he asked.
“Because you’re insightful,” she said. “The truth is I’m tired of you wallowing in your self-pity and depriving me and the rest of the world of the hope you brought to us. The gift didn’t make you precious, Fess. You already were, just the way Aer made you. Imagine it, a boy who grew up in the urchins who managed to find joy in everything. You have no right to let your self-pity deprive others of such a gift. Yes, I said gift.”
He laughed at her, but the sound carried no joy, only breath. “Do you think I want to be like this?”
She nodded. “You are choosing this. It might not seem that way to you, but you are. You’ve wallowed in your grief until the tears dried and there was nothing left but self-pity.”
Her words struck him like axe blows against a sapling, shaking him until his expression crumpled. “I don’t know how to get back,” he cried.
“Oh, Fess,” she said, enfolding him in her arms and putting her head on his chest. “You were like a breath of wind that captured our hearts. Let us love you.”
“Bronwyn loved me and she died.”
She reached out for his hand. “We all die. Here, let me show you something sad and foolish and funny.” She took his wrist and guided his hand to her cheek. Then she opened the locked door where she’d stored the memories she’d collected, recollections she’d prized above all others and taken care to keep secret.
She didn’t see the pupils of his eyes dilate as the gift took him, but he grew so still he might have become one of the surrounding trees. When he came out of the delve, he held her, his embrace willing and voluntary. She thought she might cry, but he needed more than that. She let his warmth cover her, a welcome hearth fire on a cold night.
Then she laughed. “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
He chuckled. It sounded ghastly, like a man who’d never made the sound before, but it loosened after a moment. “That is funny to you?”
“Elanians are possessed with an ironic and rather tragic sense of humor compared to those of the other kingdoms,” she said, knowing Fess had to realize that wasn’t the whole truth. He’d delved her. He couldn’t help but know the shame she attached to those memories.
“Bronwyn taught me that the church holds the rite of confession as sacrosanct,” he said. “There’s little privacy in the urchins. Our lives are too crowded and desperate for it. I’m not a priest, but I will honor your confession. I don’t know what a priest would say, but I think courage comes in many guises.”
Then the tears did come and she clutched at him until she could laugh again. Pushing away, she started for the guards at the perimeter of the outpost, leading Fess and the sentinel toward the gate. “Come. We have much to do on our ride west.”
Wag padded at her side, but after half a dozen strides, he stopped, his legs stiff and the ruff of his neck standing on end. A rumble of promised violence throbbed deep in his throat, and he scented the air, his nose twitching.
“Stop,” Toria called to Fess. Quickly, before they could draw the attention of the soldiers manning the gate, she put her hand on Wag’s head. “What do you smell?”
The forest, Mistress. There are men here who reek of it.
For Fess’s benefit she spoke out loud. “You can smell evil?”
No, Mistress. There are men here who smell like those who attacked the man-pack.
“We have to be sure, Wag,” she said. “Do you know what you’re smelling?”
Mud.
Realization and fear coursed through her. She licked her lips, fearing the answer to her next question. “Were there any men left in the man-camp who smelled of this mud?”
None living, Mistress.
She pulled a shuddering breath into her lungs, let her fear drift away with it as she exhaled. “Fess, have your weapons ready. There are men here who have gone to the forest.”
Without seeming to move, a dagger appeared in his free hand, hidden behind his forearm. “How many, Lady Deel?”
She stopped, horrified at her unwitting mistake. “How many in this camp have the smell of the forest on them?”
Wag’s nose twitched before he answered. Half the pack, Mistress.
Chapter 28
I marked the passage of time by the intervals of light and darkness outside the small window of my room. Maybe five days had gone by. I couldn’t be sure. My healer, a short stump of a man with prominent eyebrows, didn’t talk much except to tell me how stupid I’d been.
“I’d say you’re lucky you didn’t bleed to death,” he groused, “except it wasn’t luck at all. It was my skill, and even at that, it was a close thing. It’s just plain stupidity, going out in the city at night.”
During my stay, I’d learned not to argue. “Thank you,” I said.
The healer glowered at me, his eyebrows trembling with suppressed indignation, but he could find nothing in my gratitude with which to take exception. “Humph. Stay out of trouble, Lord Dura. There are two things I don’t enjoy—repeating myself and restitching wounds.”
I knew the
