Chapter Eighteen
Twelfth Day of Patience, 755 EU
Ōbhin studied the three suspects as they left behind the village, the Upfing Woods a dark smear on the horizon. After three days of traveling, he still wasn’t sure which one was the impostor. Fingers, Bran, or Dajouth.
His eyes flicked between each of them before frustration drove his attention to Avena. She sat on the wagon’s driver bench beside Miguil. He leaned back, a wide felt hat on his head cocked to the side to shield his eyes from the sun rising on their left. Avena hadn’t donned her bonnet, her loose hair swaying in the breeze.
He smiled as he watched the strands dance around the back of her neck.
Avena hadn’t shared his bed since that night. She’d had no more signs of signal interference. He ached for her. It had been two years or longer since he’d been with a woman. With Foonauri. What had been minor urges now consumed him. But Avena was a modest woman. He would be patient with her.
It made her kisses all the more special.
If she were Qothian, he was certain her mask would have the purple-red hue of rose as an accent proclaiming her love and commitment to a man. The color of a maiden’s promise. He closed his eyes, picturing her in a mask, only her brown eyes peeking through, a mystery begging to be unwrapped.
His fingers remembered the feel of Avena’s face. He flexed them beneath his gloves, the fire swelling in his veins for a moment before a cough from Fingers snapped his eyes open. The sound stretched a tightness taut across his shoulders like the skin of a mountain bear mounted on a frame of alder being scraped off all the fat and flesh clinging to it.
Who was the impostor? The grumliicho who’d stolen his friend’s face? What would happen to them when they reached the Red Heart of the Forest and the ruins of Lost Koilon? Legends abounded of the great cities destroyed in the Shattering and places in the world where strange events supposedly happened. In Lay, a country east of his mountainous Qoth, there was said to be a valley stained an unnatural orange that hummed with a note whenever Mother, the orange moon, shone full. Those who ventured to the Shattered Islands often uncovered bits of strange architecture, stones shaped in impossible ways, alloys of metal stronger than steel and lighter than tin.
After an hour, the edge of the woods appeared, marked first by a swath of stumps surrounded by the grass before the thick edges of the woods. The lane narrowed and grew rougher. Only woodcutters ventured this far to coppice the trees, cutting them down to near their stumps and allowing them to sprout new growth to be harvested in a decade or two.
Ōbhin straightened and climbed over the bench, settling on Avena’s left. She scooted over closer to Miguil to give Ōbhin room, favoring him with a smile. A foolish grin spilled across his lips. There was something to a woman showing off her face all the time, to witnessing her emotions shining bright.
“There’ll be a sidetrack coming soon,” Avena said. “We’ll want to take it.”
“Yes, yes,” Dualayn said from the back. “She is quite correct.”
Avena stiffened. “Thank you for thinking I’m a dullard. You might have cut out my brain, but it still works just as sharply.”
“I meant no offense, child, I jus—”
“Avena!” she hissed. “My name is Avena. Not ‘child.’ Not ‘daughter.’ Not ‘girl.’ Avena.”
“Ah, yes, I forgot. Old habits are easy to fall into.” He chuckled.
Ōbhin stared ahead, ignoring the foul man. If he didn’t, his hand would start to drift to his sword, his mind considering those darker paths. No justice would ever be delivered on Dualayn if Ōbhin didn’t kill him when this was over. He had too many powerful friends protecting him from the courts and proper justice.
It would be so easy, a part of Ōbhin thought.
He knew it for a treacherous lie. Killing never was. Oh, plunging a knife into a heart or cutting off a head took no more effort than swinging an ax to fell a tree or wielding a hoe to weed a field, but the weight lingered. A man didn’t think about the tree he felled for firewood to keep his family warm or the field he furrowed to provide food.
But the man he killed . . .
Ōbhin thought about it over and over and over, an echo trapped in the cave of his thoughts resounding time and time again. Sometimes, it was worth it. Necessary. Would Dualayn’s death be another echoing in him?
Near noon, Bran gasped, “The trees! They’re really red!”
Ōbhin looked up to see the same oaks and alders and spruces they’d ridden through, only now their barks looked leached from brown to white and their leaves stained by violence. The brush held the same scarlet hue.
“This is amazing!” the boy shouted, ripping off the first oak leaf he rode past. He held it in his hands, marveling over it.
*
“So many rubies were used in Koilon that I think their essence has leached into the soil, affecting the plant life,” Dualayn was saying as they traveled through the Red Heart of the Forest.
Avena rolled her shoulders as she sat between Miguil and Ōbhin. She had to hone her anger against Dualayn. She had spent many years living with him, respecting and even loving him as her father. He would have been her father-in-law. If she wasn’t careful, she would forget what he’d done to her. She’d fall into old patterns, wanting to hear what he had to say, to learn from him.
She seized the pain of the betrayal. He had violated her as surely
