“So tell me what you meant, then.” Taltaz’s voice was low and level, as if conversing with a person he’d maimed and then seared with a hot blade were an everyday occurrence for him.
Rahlizje puffed a sigh into the grass tickling her chin. “Why do this now? Why didn’t you shoot me in the tavern? That would have cut through any pretenses.”
For the first time since their paths first crossed, the merchant chuckled at something Rahlizje herself had said. “I thought I’d made my intentions quite clear from the beginning.”
“Not at all.” Finally, Rahlizje managed to push herself up, turn on the ground, and sit fully to face him. She sucked in a sharp breath at the pain it caused her leg, which she now saw the man had wrapped with what might have been the cleanest strips of cloth he owned. “I’ve not seen many prisoners led on their own tethers toward baths and meals and ale and a private cupboard.”
“I do not doubt you’ve seen your fair share of prisoners.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but the jest was founded in truth, and they both knew it. “But I’m worth only what it cost you to find me. So why did you wait?”
Taltaz sniffed and dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Each of us deserves a chance to first recognize and accept our fate. That was what I offered you. Which, clearly, you rejected.”
“So this is your punishment for me, then,” she spat.
“No.” That single clipped, harsh word carried more weight than any other he’d exchanged with her in the last few days. “You did this to yourself.”
Rahlizje snorted. “That was your bolt in my leg, merchant. From your weapon. I believe that gives you more agency in shooting me than I could ever claim.”
Stroking his wild black beard now, Taltaz regarded her with an apathetic gaze before pointing at her. “And yet you’re far more agitated by your assumption that I’ve been false with you than by the fact that my bolt from my weapon brought you down.”
“You have been false.” What agitated her even more was the fact that this man had found her, captured her for his own gain, and still saw her more clearly than anyone. It was more than she liked, but it would not have mattered if Rahlizje could see him in return. She could not. “I understand inflicting pain. I understand enduring it.” She tried to shift her wounded leg enough to relieve the ache of her awkwardly twisted knee, but the pain flared up again. “I understand you pulled your weapon to keep your prize. I cannot fathom why you gave me the chance to do anything at all.”
“Because I could.”
She scoffed. “That’s an answer for idiots and weak cowards.”
Taltaz blinked his single eye. “My kindness isn’t a weakness, thief.”
“Your kindness is a snare,” she snapped, “and you still think you can trap me in it.” The force of her words sent her leaning forward, and another dull ache wrapped in tight, searing pain flared through her leg. She grimaced in the silence and forced herself to breathe.
“I see.” Taltaz tilted his head and nodded. “You take no issue with kindness itself. Merely the belief that you might actually deserve it.”
Rahlizje hung her head and gritted her teeth again. “Merchant, mercenary, arbalist. I’d wager you’ve had a number of professions, but you make a piss-poor philosopher.”
Taltaz grunted. “Aye, and I sealed your wounds up fair enough too.”
Despite herself, the thief smirked. “Is that what you did to your eye?”
“Something like that.”
Slowly, she looked up to meet his one-eyed gaze, her lips twitching into not quite a smile. “At least I can hide my leg.”
“Well, I’ve had the good fortune of always being this ugly.” With that, the man stood and walked a slow, careless path to the cart from which his captive had almost made her escape. Taltaz retrieved the horse blanket without pause and did not comment on the frayed end of the lead rope lying among his crates. When he returned, he tossed the blanket toward her this time so she might cover herself with it instead and muttered, “Sleep.”
He’d followed his own advice within minutes.
Rahlizje did not find it so easy to slip back into that same darkness. Her injured leg throbbed beneath a constant burn. Her neck and shoulders ached. When she trailed her fingers over the stinging circles around her wrists, she felt a bit of sticky dampness there drying quickly beneath her touch. She’d spoken true to the one-eyed merchant of Gethlem; dealing and enduring pain were two sides of her life’s coin, flipping endlessly over each other time and again. Most likely, Taltaz had believed he’d spoken another truth and called it one of hers. But she’d known from the minute he’d uttered the words that he was wrong.
Perhaps she really did think she was not worthy of kindness, though she also knew quite well that it did not make her unworthy of it. None of it mattered, of course, because the merchant was clearly up to something with this ruse. If Rahlizje could not run from it, she’d do her damnedest to discover exactly what it was Taltaz still hid from her. Then she’d play his game in turn and make her next move.
Chapter 9
She woke at dawn from a few hours of fitful sleep. The cool night air would have been comfortable under different circumstances, but Rahlizje’s current circumstances offered her a wounded leg exposed to the chill but which ached even worse when she covered it with the horse blanket. So she’d settled for the woolen blanket over her thighs and wrapping her torso as best she could within her cloak.
By the time she gave up on trying to force herself back into slumber, Taltaz was already up and moving about their small, temporary camp. He pissed on the fire, though there was little of it left needing to be put out, gathered up his bedroll, and led his horse back to the cart to be hitched and ready to press on. The animal grazed while she waited for her master’s next command, and for a moment, Rahlizje found herself envying the beast of burden’s simplistic course. Of course, once a horse was broken, it very rarely searched for opportunities to run. The thief could not escape the fact that for now, fate had dealt her the complete opposite dilemma.
“I have places to be, thief,” Taltaz muttered as he approached. Despite his abrupt and effective awakening in the middle of the night, he seemed as rested as if he’d slept through the whole thing.
Rahlizje grumbled and tossed aside the horse blanket, which he was then forced to retrieve himself to return to the cart. She waited until his back was turned before she pushed herself up on her good leg and tested her weight on the other.
She shouldn’t have. The merchant’s bolt had pierced straight through her muscle; whether it was that damage there or the excruciating pain of trying to use such a shredded part of her body, Rahlizje found herself once more with her face pressed against the dew-studded grass.
Taltaz said nothing as he watched her, but when Rahlizje collected herself again and attempted to stand, he offered her his hand. She batted it away with a grunt and rose completely on her good leg again. So he merely grabbed the knot of the severed lead rope still tied around her waist and pulled on that to half drag her toward the cart while she hopped on one foot. “I’m starting to believe you actually prefer making things more difficult for yourself,” he said through gritted teeth and a few grunts before they finally reached the back of his cart.
“I prefer to have the use of both my legs.” Rahlizje scowled at the back gate while the merchant unlatched it and lowered it fully. “For a man who never meets them, you spend far too much time considering my preferences.”
Taltaz snorted and stepped away from her. “I have little else to consider on this journey.”
“That dim-witted, are you?” Gritting her teeth, she turned around against the back of the cart but could now use her hands to hoist herself up onto it instead of rolling back into her prison on wheels. The mere act of lifting her wounded leg high enough to set inside the cart almost made her cry out again.
The merchant hooked his hand under her knee and lifted her leg the rest of the way for her before dropping it q
uite suddenly. Fortunately, Rahlizje could grab it again herself and settle it like a fragile trinket amongst the man’s boxes and crates and tarps and unknown wares. The back gate thumped shut, and he latched it closed again. “Hardly. I already know what I want.”
“You think too much of yourself, merchant.”
“And you underestimated me. Which one of us still walks freely, eh?” He raised an eyebrow at her, then climbed up onto the driver’s bench. The merchant paused there just long enough to toss a heel of bread and a cloth-wrapped block of cheese into the back for her, which she could finally catch and eat with her own two hands. Then he flicked the reins, clicked his tongue, and headed north on the road again with all his possessions in tow.
Rahlizje was nothing more than that to him, she was certain—a possession. As soon as she could manage her own weight again on this butchered leg, she’d prove him wrong one more time. After all, she’d had a lifetime of practice doing just that.
She spent the entire day on the back of that wagon in daydreams of the myriad ways she’d finally make her escape. Every scenario did, of course, take place before they arrived at whichever destination Taltaz meant to for them to reach.
He’d told the old traders at Gileath Junction something about Arahaz, and temples, and Rahlizje would have thought him just as much of a liar as Mattheus had if the old woman Nina hadn’t contradicted her brother’s doubts. Rahlizje herself knew nothing of these temples or what the old man had called ‘the temple witch’. Her childhood had afforded very few children’s tales, if any at all. But the merchant’s mention of going to this place called Arahaz had unsettled the white-bearded Matthias. And she did not think Taltaz a man who uttered many lies in his lifetime, especially now. So what business would the man have with a temple witch? And what would a temple witch possibly want with a thief?
As far as she knew, anyone calling themselves a witch was capable only of the lies they told to make themselves bigger than they actually were. And anyone who called someone else a witch was a fool. Trickery and deceit were fine tools, sure, with sleight of hand and illusory manipulations. Rahlizje had used them all. If magic itself had ever been a part of this world, it was gone from living memory. Whatever people called magic these days was nothing but a wild story; one might as well have called Rahlizje a witch for all she’d done to baffle, fool, and bend men’s minds to her own whims.
Not with the merchant of Gethlem, of course, but Taltaz possessed his own form of nonexistent magic, didn’t he?
Only when the wagon came to a rolling, bumpy halt did she realize she must have dozed off at some point. Rahlizje’s head jerked up on its own, bringing a sharp pain of protest from the sore, weary, strained muscles in her neck. The merchant’s horse whickered, Taltaz offered the beast a gentle word of reassurance, and the thief peeled herself off the canvas-covered crates against which she’d rested. Then she noticed the light.
“There a storm coming?” Her voice was dry and scratchy, and she cleared her throat but somehow couldn’t clear the fog of drifting into what hadn’t at all felt like sleep.
The merchant didn’t turn around from his place on the driver’s bench. “Not that I can see.” He leapt from the bench and set to work unhitching his horse.
Rahlizje swallowed thickly and stared at the darkening sky. “Then why did we stop?”
Taltaz paused in leading his horse toward one of the larger, stronger trees to tie her there and frowned at the thief in his wagon. “Day’s end. Darkness. Most travelers choose this is as the time to turn in.” With a nod, he turned slowly again and led his animal toward the trees, where she grazed contentedly with a much greater length of slackened rope than Rahlizje had ever been afforded. Not that the merchant needed the rope for his prisoner anymore.
“That’s not amusing in the least.” She followed the man with her gaze, despite how much trouble it gave her as she tried to focus her vision.
“Why would it be?”
Blinking heavily, she had to pause to gather her thoughts for an answer. “I’m not a fool, merchant. There’s been no midday meal.”
Taltaz stopped where he was and regarded her with his full attention. “Because you refused it.”
A sudden, overwhelming heat flared through Rahlizje’s body, and when she swiped her hair away from her forehead, her fingers came away slick with sweat. Irritation mixed with an urgent need to cool down—either that, or she thought she might vomit—and she could think of nothing else until she hastily tore open the clasp of her cloak and flung the garment beside her in the wagon.
The merchant’s waterskin appeared in front of her, and she hazily blinked up at the man leaning over the cart to offer her a drink. “As much as you can,” he told her, studying her face and the beads of sweat on her brow with a critical frown. Then he glanced down at her wounded leg. “And hope that time will do the rest.”
He left her there in the cart to set about making camp, and Rahlizje found her head spinning. She had more than her own confusion to blame for that; when she glanced down at the seared flesh of her calf, she found the bandages stained with dried blood and something vaguely yellowish. The shape of her leg had swollen and was nowhere near healing. It hadn’t yet been a full day, of course, but there was no denying it looked bad.
Perhaps she would have been content with his suggestion—to let time do the rest of the work on that unnecessary wound—if that was her only concern. But the fact that she’d lost an entire day to her imagination or the first embrace of a fever or both did not bode well for her. Swallowing thickly, she unstoppered the waterskin and drank deeply before even that seemed an exhausting feat.
She dropped the waterskin and leaned her head back against the cart’s siderail with a sigh. Removing her cloak had done very little indeed to alleviate her discomfort. “You don’t also happen to dabble in healing, do you?” Her voice felt so weak in her throat now that she wondered if he’d heard a single word.
“No.” Taltaz dropped another armload of fallen branches beside the pile of kindling he’d gathered and sniffed. “That’s more than I can offer you.”
Rahlizje turned back over the side of the cart to look at him and lifted the waterskin with a heavy arm. The man merely shook his head and stooped to build his fire. “And what if I need more than time?” she croaked.
“Pray you have enough of it to get you where you need to be.”
She lowered the waterskin into her lap again and grunted. “I don’t pray, merchant.”
He nodded. “Neither do I.”
Chapter 10
Rahlizje did not sleep well that night, even after the merchant broke bread with her again and shared his meal. A lifetime of sleeping in uncomfortable places by necessity made it quite clear that her restlessness did not stem from trying to stretch out among the crates and packages in Taltaz’s cart.
She’d watched a man lose his mind from fever once, back home in Holjstruke. Rahlizje had barely seen her eighth nameday, but she’d been old enough to know that the old traveler’s suffering had not been his usual state. He struggled for three days before the end—three days of crazed mutterings, vulgar shouts in his fitful sleep, and the scattered rise of agonized groaning between the occasional whimper. Apparently, he’d been set upon by some brigand or another before he reached the village, boasting a knife wound in his belly. Then the fever killed him. Rahlizje had sworn to herself that day that she would always be faster than those from whom she stole; even at eight, she made a fine pickpocket.
And she’d kept that promise in every regard. She just hadn’t anticipated a one-eyed merchant’s crossbow in the middle of the night.
The next morning, though, fared no better for her. She had enough awareness about her still to think her leg looked dangerously swollen, and it ached with every roll of the cart’s wheels as they headed north once more. Taltaz said nothing else, and his wounded prisoner could think of nothing but her pounding head and the fire in her leg and how damnably she still sweated.
&nbs
p; By the end of that day, she couldn’t think at all.
“Is she dead?”
“Not likely.”
“She stinks like she’s dead.”
“Aye. Is there anything you can do?”
Rahlizje’s eyes fluttered open, and she winced against the brightness of day streaming down on her. At least, she thought it was sunlight. It could have been moonlight for all she knew, or a lit torch brought too close. She had no idea how long it had been, but all light gave her a pounding headache.
Taltaz’s shape leaning toward her over the cart was unmistakable, including the wiry mane of black beard around his face. She thought she’d caught his gaze, perhaps, but it seemed more likely that the light she’d seen flashing in his eyes was nothing more than that same light reflecting off her perpetually teary, swimming vision.
The figure standing beside the merchant, though, was completely unknown to the thief—wild hair, decades of wrinkled flesh, fine dots and thin lines of some blue-gray ink tattooed around every crease in the wizened face. The stranger’s teeth were an alarming shade of blood-red, but that couldn’t have been correct. Rahlizje knew she was fevered, if she knew nothing else, and that helped her to not question whatever it was she thought she saw.
“Nae.” The aged voice was so dusty and low that it was impossible to tell its owner’s gender. “Her ailment is beyond what I can offer.”
Taltaz stared at his prisoner—or perhaps he merely cast his gaze over whatever new wares he’d acquired in his cart. Rahlizje was certain he’d added more to his provisions; she felt cramped and hot and crowded from all sides. The merchant grunted. “Do you know a healer who can offer it?”
The tattooed elder wheezed out a hum of consideration punctured by a laugh. “There’s a healer in Brilyr. I hear she’s very good. I hear she turns no one away.”
Taltaz grunted again, this time in irritation. “Brilyr is too far east.”
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