Ust spat again.
“We should stop,” Ōbhin said. “It’s about to be blacker than a gem mine.”
“What would you know about black mines?” the leader muttered.
Ōbhin’s jaw tightened. He didn’t like to think about the mines beneath Gunya. His gaze flicked down to his gloves. He’d cleaned off Carstin’s blood, but some crimes soaked so deep they could never be scrubbed away.
“You want to be setting up camp when you’re tripping over Stone’s big feet?” Ōbhin asked.
“Fine,” Ust grunted. “Let’s camp.”
“You heard ‘em, boys!” Hook said. “Let’s make camp. Creg, don’t think you can slink off to find ‘firewood.’ If you do, I’ll ram my hook so deep up your bunghole, you’ll be my feast day puppet.”
Ust paced as the camp was arranged. Soon, a thick stew boiled on a bright flame. Fog spilled out of the woods, the chill creeping through the air. Ōbhin sank down on his wagon beside Carstin, wrapped up in his blanket, and watched his friend as the fire slowly died. Night’s chill grew. He found himself nodding off.
The dreams of the mines didn’t find him.
When Ōbhin awoke the next day, he felt a change in himself. The world didn’t weigh so heavily on him. Avena was checking on Carstin. His friend still lived.
After passing his water behind a tree, he climbed up into the wagon bed and chewed on hard jerky for his breakfast. He worked the salted beef with hard bites, his jaw muscles growing sore with the exercise as he guided the wagon slowly ahead.
Ust steamed as he marched up and down and around the wagon. His shoulders squirmed. His eyes glared at Ōbhin again and again. Fury burned in them, Ust resonating with Otsar’s fiery Tone perverted by Niszeh’s Black disharmony. Ōbhin didn’t care. He’d faced worse than a bully like Ust could mete out.
At noon, the explosion came.
Ust’s sword whipped out of its scabbard. He rounded on the wagon and snarled, “If none of you Black-damned boys have the stones to do it, I’ll put him out of his misery.”
Ōbhin hopped down from the wagon bed, the horses coming to a stop. He stood before Ust, black spittle running out of the corners of the bandit leader’s mouth to stain his beard. Bloodshot eyes fixed on Ōbhin.
“Out of the way, dirt-stained heathen!”
Chapter Four
Ust’s words offended Avena.
She hadn’t spent a sleepless night attending to Carstin to let him die. She’d woken up time and time again to give him fortified tea and honey, nursing him through the night while Ōbhin snored, oblivious to the world. The weariness she felt vanished in a flash of hot black. The dark flames kindled in her. Anger went against Patience and Compassion. It led to harm. To loss of self-control.
Right now, she didn’t care.
“You are not about to put down my patient!” she hissed as she leaped off the side of the wagon, uncaring that her skirt flared up and flashed stocking-clad ankles. She landed on her heeled boots in a crunch of hard soil and crinkling pine needles. “Have you no Compassion coloring your heart? Huh? Is it too Black to have any Orange bleeding through?”
She came up alongside Ōbhin and faced the odious Ust.
“You sure you want to do this?” Ōbhin asked, his voice quiet.
Avena gave a fierce nod, a lock of brown hair sliding over the scarlet blazing in her fair cheeks. She glared at the bandit leader with the intensity of the summer sun beating upon an uncovered head. She did not care that he stood a cubit taller than her and weighed easily fifty or more stones. She didn’t care about the foul Tethyrian root staining his bristling beard or the look of murder gleaming in his bloodshot eyes.
“Huh?” she demanded. “You think you can just mete out life and death? That you’re above the judgment of Elohm?” Frustration at the entire situation boiled through her. “Just attacking us! You could have spoken to us. Asked us to meet with this ‘boss’ that has you pissing your britches like a runt cowering before his littermates.”
“Runt?” snarled Ust, his sword twitching in his grip, muscles bulging in his forearm.
“Yes, runt!” she hissed. “Just barking and barking, trying to look tougher than all these dangerous men around you.”
Ōbhin arched an eyebrow beside her, his entire body tensed in the fashion of a man prepared to commit violence.
“Put that sword away so we can continue on to your ‘boss’ and maybe, just maybe, your friend will survive,” she continued. “Then you’ll have someone you can easily bully. A cripple!”
A bandit sniggered.
“Who did that?” Hook snarled, rounding on the others while a dangerous shade of puce suffused Ust’s cheeks, bleeding through his thick beard in spots. “Huh?”
Ust’s arm tensed.
“You know she’s his daughter,” Ōbhin said, his voice cool like a dark shadow on a hot day. “Don’t want to harm her. Lose out on the ransom for the Boss.”
Ust’s grin grew. “Won’t hurt a single hair on her head. Now Carstin, he—”
Ōbhin’s gloved fist slammed into Ust’s jaw. Avena gasped at the blur of violence as Ōbhin followed it up with a low blow to the bandit leader’s guts.
*
Ōbhin had had enough.
The night before, he’d slept without nightmares. Now life stirred in him again. Concern. Not for himself, but Carstin. He took responsibility for his friend. He wouldn’t let the bullying, strutting, swaggering, Tone-deaf Ust swell his ego by stealing away Carstin’s chance for life. To breathe. To love. To mourn. To have all the experiences Ōbhin had squandered away since
