Teer looked back into the fire. He could feel Kard’s bone-deep weariness and decided against asking how old the El-Spehari was.
“Why do you work for ’em, then?” he asked. “You hunt bounties for the Unity. Doesn’t that help ’em?”
“I hunt men like Boulder,” Kard told him. “Boulder is a monster. Other people aren’t real to him, so he kills and hurts without thought or care. The only way to stop a beast like that is to put him in the ground.
“So long as the Unity and I agree on what counts as crimes, I can hunt the criminals who harm their people. There are writs I burn,” he conceded with a sad smile, “but in the main, the Unity and I agree on who needs to be stopped.”
“And I guess I have to trust you on that,” Teer said. “I don’t get much of a choice now.”
“I warned you it was a Spehari’s bargain, Teer,” the El-Spehari told him. “That there were things I couldn’t tell you. That was the biggest of them, a secret you’ll need to take to your grave.”
Teer could sense enough of the power of the bond to know that wasn’t going to be a problem. He suspected he had more resistance to it than he was supposed to, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to betray Kard’s secrets.
“Which brings us to my biggest curiosity, I suppose,” Kard admitted. “If we’re going to travel with each other, we need to learn the powers of your sight. You see things even Spehari should be blind to.
“I figure that can only be helpful!”
9
The stew interrupted the conversation for a few minutes after that, bubbling from the pot requiring their attention to make sure they didn’t wreck their dinner. Teer took over managing the stew from Kard to buy himself some time to think. Plus, he knew his mother’s dried stew mixes better than anyone else.
Once the meal was ready, he poured it into two bowls and added some water and soap to the pot, putting it aside to soak to make the dishes easier later. He might not be used to long-distance rides, but he’d spent more than one night out on the prairie with a cattle herd.
More than a hundred nights, really. Hardin’s herds were only partly free-range, but they could still wander pretty far before it became a problem.
And Alana’s stew mixes were a quiet legend among the ranch hands by now. Teer grinned to himself in a complete lack of surprise as Kard took his first bite, the El-Spehari’s eyes opening wide.
“This has no business coming out of a bag of dried meat,” Kard observed before taking another heaping spoonful. He didn’t let it cool enough and, the next moment, was making incoherent noises as he swallowed too-hot food.
“Ma says it’s all in the spices,” Teer told his new boss. “Everyone else just says she’s magic.” He shrugged as that brought him back to the conversation he’d been dodging with the food.
“Might be more to that thought that I’d have guessed,” he admitted.
“Are all of them this good?” Kard asked, glancing at the stacked saddlebags. Teer had counted almost forty of the bagged stews.
“Yes, but they’re also all the same,” Teer warned. “It’s beef or it’s chicken. Same veggies, same spices. They last half a turning in a cold cellar. Not sure how they’ll last in a saddlebag.”
“My supplies are cans, jerky and trail bread,” the older bounty hunter pointed out. “We won’t be worrying about how long the stew mix holds up. I can see why Hardin asked your ma to come cook for him.”
Teer grinned as he finished his own bowl. Dropping it in the main kettle, he added a bit more water from the bucket Kard had filled earlier and starting scrubbing. He’d always been one to take care of his own dishes and such, and, well, he was pretty sure the servant part of his new job title was relevant.
Kard stepped over and slid his own utensils into the pot. There wasn’t enough space for them both to clean the dishes, so he stepped back to give Teer room to work.
“Thanks. I’ll grab the dishes tomorrow,” Kard told him. “It’s jerky and trail bread on the road outside dinner. We need to make it to Odar soon.”
“We’re not shuffling a hundred head with us,” Teer replied. “We’re flying.”
“Yeah, but Boulder isn’t herding cattle either,” the older man reminded him. “He doesn’t know we’re coming, but a man like that knows he draws eyes. He’ll be figuring someone’s coming. I’m figuring he’ll be gone when we find his camp, but it’ll give us a place to start.”
Teer nodded slowly, extracting dishes from the pot and putting them on a rack to dry. He gave the pot itself a solid scrubbing to finish it off before laying it aside to dry as well.
“Take a seat, Teer,” Kard told him. He offered a flask. “Whiskey?”
“I’m better without,” Teer said grimly. “One mad, drunken moment in a life is too many.”
“Fair,” the El-Spehari agreed. He gestured at the fire, the same red sparks as before flickering across the campsite and sparking it up.
“I can see that,” Teer admitted. “I think I’ve seen every time you’ve done magic.”
“I’ve known two men ever who could see another Spehari’s magic,” Kard told him. “Both El-Spehari, now I think about it. It’s a rare gift among the Spehari. We can all see our own magic but not other people’s.”
He studied Teer for a long moment.
“Here, try and catch this.”
A ball of pale orange light appeared in Kard’s hand for a moment before he sent it gently floating across the campfire. Teer didn’t know what it was supposed to be,
