“Cursebringer?” The voice belonged to Ilkea. Aile clenched her jaw in annoyance but let her hand slide from the hilt of the dagger. “I have worries.”
“What worries?”
Her attention returned to the powdered blades as Ilkea began. She wiped them clean again and held each up to inspect the edge and length of it.
“Shahuor… he is not as I expected. The stories told of charisma and fearlessness.”
“Eight-hundred years changes many things.”
“What if he is weak? What if he cannot save us?”
Aile put a drop of oil at the base of the smaller knives and two on the larger, one at the base and another midway to the point. She wiped them firmly, spreading the oil thin across each blade before putting it gently back with the others.
“He was to be our savior,” Ilkea continued when no answer came. “To lead us against the centaur. The faun agreed it was time. But what if he has lost his will for the fight? He sat with an elf girl, even. What of the Halushek?”
“Your people,” Aile’s voice curdled with disgust. “Are indolent, disgusting, stupid, honor bound livestock. One goat slipping its chains is as apt to change the state of the others as a falling leaf changes the seasons.”
“You talk ill of our greatest hero?” There was the slightest quiver to Ilkea’s squawking. Aile pulled a phial of light green liquid from her leathers.
“Heroes serve only to make idealists less afraid of death.”
She put a green drop to the linen and wiped it down her blades before returning the phial.
“Heroes give hope.”
“Hope.” Aile scoffed. “Is it hope, or do the pathetic and fearful simply become bold seeing the success of another and imagine it for themselves? They unite behind diminished risk, not surging hope. Hope becomes a justification for the cowardice that kept them docile before.”
Aile replaced each of the blades in her leathers and returned her supplies to the pack before pulling some small bits of food and sitting back on the tent floor. Both satyr had annoyed her into talking more than she preferred and so she was done. It seemed Ilkea was as well. The disgruntled chuff at her tent’s flaps and the light sound of hoofed feet moving away were welcome.
The forced conversation made the salty provisions all the more displeasing. And wine would not serve her well. Not with a creature like Shahuor so close. Sleep could neither be allowed.
There was nothing to do now but let the hours slowly creep past, pondering over why a faun would have a Drow free a satyr who hates faun. Perhaps her employer did not know. Or something deeper was at play. A trade with the centaur, maybe. Or a peace offering. Or simply exploiting the naive satyr like Ilkea to have them lead an uprising.
The politically-minded never seemed to value leaving those who did their work alive. Aile thought of the gold and warm baths and hot food. A faun, however ambitious, was a small problem in so many ways.
Part Six
T
Z
Socair
Socair woke before the others and well before the dawn. She dressed quietly and left to see to Rionn. He had been quiet and withdrawn since Vód was taken. She barely knew him, but the change in personality had been a sharp one and the loss still nagged at Socair as well. She was responsible for him, whether anyone would agree or not. Vód’s loss tore at her, as did the mission and the forced decorum. Had she simply ridden with Práta, there would have been no loss.
She walked the halls of the inn and left, breathing out a warm fog into the cold air of the pre-dawn desert. Práta may well have been the one taken, she allowed herself to think. Her mission would have fallen to the wayside then, so why not for Vód? There was so much that she had been forced to take on in spite of her discomfort at it. Political games and enemies she could not even see, much less fight. Worse, enemies she could see but against whom she could use no steel. Words, she thought. Always words. An undying nag in the back of her mind told her the truth. She made light of the weapon politicians used because it was a weakness for her. But they were weapons. Strong ones. They could calm the enraged or sow unrest. Destroy lives or make them. If she did not learn to use them, she would be useless to Deifir and to Abhainnbaile.
A light poured into the empty streets from the stables. She rounded the corner and found Rionn seeing to the carriage. She looked it over and drew a weary breath. Rionn gave her a nod as she came close.
“I loathe that thing,” she said. “I would rather find myself walking than be seen in it.”
Rionn kept to his work. “Carriages for nobles, is it? But you’re not noble, eh Bearer?”
She had not been called Bearer for nearly the full of the season since she’d been given the title. Even Práta seemed to have forgotten about it.
“It stirs my heart to hear that title, though I fear I no longer deserve it.”
“It’s worth more than the other they’ve saddled you with.” Rionn wiped clean the door he was attending and turned to her. “I know why you have come. Vód was my friend. He was your responsibility, yes. But also mine. And also his own. I respect the title and all who have held it. My father fed me with the stories until I was sick of them.” He looked down at his hands. “We are warriors, Bearer. I slept as lightly as you that night. Neither of us heard him taken.”
“I should have.”
Rionn turned from her and moved to check
