“Oh, for Ianthra’s sake,” Fahtin said. “Let’s feed her and let her leave.”
“Fine,” Aeden said. Turning to Aila, he added, “You can help with the cooking.”
Aila Ven’s face lit up and she went to Fahtin. “Hi, I’m Aila. I’ll help you,” as if it was her idea. “What’s your name?” The women went off to find firewood as the others set their packs down and prepared a ring of rocks. Aeden rolled his eyes. Women!
Once the rabbits Tere had killed earlier in the day were dressed and put over the fire, the party sat down to enjoy their rest. Each of the men introduced themselves to the newcomer—Urun with excitement, Raki with shyness, and Aeden with grudging politeness. Aila Ven was charming and beautiful and just a little too pleasant. Aeden didn’t need to see the set to Fahtin’s jaw to know this one would not be a good addition to their party.
“So,” Aila said, scooting up to sit next to Aeden near the fire. “What is this big quest of yours? Does it involve those black creatures that are everywhere nowadays?”
“Aye, it does,” he said, refusing to move and let her see she was affecting him.
“What is that accent you have? Are you one of those barbarians over to the far east, up in the mountains?”
“Highlands. They are called the highlands, and we are not barbarians just because we can fight.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I meant no offense. Tell me about your people, then, so I won’t be ignorant.” She snuggled closer to him as if she was cold, but the night was mild, even without the fire.
Aeden moved over to gain some space from her. So much for not showing her she was affecting him. “I would rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, come—”
“Aila,” Fahtin said, “his parents were both killed by those black creatures recently. Leave him be. It’s painful to talk of his home.”
The woman’s eyes went wide and then softened as she looked back at Aeden. “I’m sorry, Aeden. I lost my parents, too, so I know a little of what it feels like. I won’t press you.” She paused for a moment, but then her eyes danced. “But I do love the accent.”
Aeden moved around the fire to sit near Urun, asking him about his service to the goddess. He wasn’t really interested in the subject, but it kept Aila from getting closer to him and trying to monopolize on his attention. As the priest began talking, his enthusiasm was infectious, and the Croagh got wrapped up in the conversation. He hardly noticed when Aila and Fahtin put their heads together and began chatting.
“…and it was just my parents and my older brother—he was nine to my five years old—on our small farm just outside the village,” Aila was saying to Fahtin as Aeden’s conversation with Urun had wound down. Tere and Raki sat quietly, listening to the newcomer as well. The Croagh had found that it was hard to ignore the presence of the small, dark-haired woman.
Aila noticed that the others were listening. Eyeing Aeden sideways, she raised her voice. “So the bandits came in force. My father and mother didn’t stand a chance. They were killed almost without thought. My brother, too. Bandits had no need for a little boy. A girl, though…” Aila took a drink from her waterskin.
“I was too young for them to do anything with right then, but their leader was a planning sort, always looking years ahead. He saw that I could be valuable—either to him or to someone else—in a few short years, so he took me with him back to his lair.
“He raised me, treating me like some sort of pet at first, locked up and fed and watered, but gradually he treated me like a person. I was still a captive, but he had taken me so young that he figured I had forgotten what he did to my parents and my brother. I played along, acting like his daughter, even calling him Papa. He gave strict orders to his men that any who touched me would be killed, so I was relatively safe.
“He grew to have affection for me, not as a plaything as he had originally planned, but as his own child. The bandit king had no patience for women, so had no other children that he was aware of. He treated me with about as much respect as he treated anyone.
“When the time was right, I used the skills he had taught me and escaped. Rortam still searches for me, I’m sure, but he’ll never get me alive. I’d rather die than be kept by him, even if he didn’t let his men touch me in the way they wanted to.”
“Wait,” Tere Chizzit said. “Did you say that your adopted father’s name was Rortam?”
“Yes.”
“Rortam the Cruel, bandit king of the south?”
“Yes,” Aila said. “That’s him.”
Tere looked at her with those white eyes. “How old are you, girl?”
“Twenty and four.” A look of discomfort flitted across her face, but her neutral expression replaced it almost immediately.
“I see. Your story does not make sense. I…that is, Rortam the Cruel was killed more than twenty years ago, a few years before he would have taken you.”
“Oh, that,” Aila said, chuckling. “He wasn’t the first Rortam. I learned later that the first one was killed, but then his lieutenant took up the name to keep continuity. It was easier than using his own name and convincing the men he deserved to lead them.”
Everyone was silent for a moment. Aeden studied Aila’s face, trying to look beyond the way her cheeks rounded when she smiled that wedge-shaped smile of hers. She looked to Tere Chizzit expectantly.
“My father told me,” Fahtin broke the silence, “that it often happens that way. Being a bandit king turns out to be a short-term proposition. Others send assassins, and often their reign is cut short. He said that it causes less confusion for the new leader to simply take the name of his predecessor and continue on as if nothing had happened.”
“It doesn’t happen nearly as often as you make it sound,” Tere said, “but granted, it does happen on occasion.” Fahtin and Aila shared a significant look, almost triumphant.
“So, that’s how I came to be on my own, making my way however I could. I have stolen when I needed to eat, and I have done violence, for I was trained to do so, but I mostly just react to what life throws at me. A girl can’t be blamed for trying to stay alive, right?”
“Well,” Aeden said. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Aila Ven. You have shared our meal and rested. It is past time for you to be going on your way.”
Fahtin gasped. “Aeden. You would turn out a woman in the dark of night, forcing her to travel alone and unprotected?”
Aila put on a pitiful face, as if she was defenseless and scared. Aeden didn’t buy it for a minute.
“Maybe she can just stay the night and leave us in the morning when it’s daylight,” Raki said. “There would be no harm in that, right?”
Aeden sighed, looking around at the others. They all nodded slightly as his eyes passed over them. “Very well. She can stay tonight, but in the morning, it will be time for her to leave.”
“Thank you, Aeden,” Aila said as she and Fahtin left the campfire to lie down a little way off from the rest of them. The way she tilted her head and blinked slowly at him, he thought maybe he was missing something. It didn’t matter. He nodded to her and set about smoothing a place to lie down.
Tere Chizzit took first watch that night, waking Aeden after a few hours so he could take a turn. Halfway through his watch, he felt a presence, as of someone watching him. He loosened one of his swords in its scabbard and scanned the area for the cause. He soon found it. It was Aila, standing twenty feet away, motionless as a stone, the moonlight just barely lighting the whites of her eyes. When she saw that he had seen her, she walked toward him. She made as little noise as Tere Chizzit.
“I was restless,” she said, sitting on the rock next to him. “Do you want me to take a turn at watch?”
He kept scanning the surroundings, taking a peek now and then at her through the corners of his eyes. “No. I’ll be fine. I will be waking Raki in an hour or so to take his turn anyway.”
“I’m already up, though,” she said. “There’s no need to wake him.”
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He turned to look at her and found her staring at him. For a moment, he forgot what he was going to say. “Aila, we don’t know you. You seem like a nice girl—”
She laughed. It was a distinctive “uh, heh-heh” that he found pleasant. “Do you really think so?”
He cleared his throat and continued, ignoring her question. “But we don’t know you. I, for one, am not about to hand over the responsibility for keeping watch to someone I just met, no matter how tight your clothing.”
“Do you like my clothing?” she said, opening up her cloak and swaying her torso in a way that he would not have thought possible while sitting. With an effort, he dragged his eyes back up to hers.
“What do you want of us?” he said, changing the subject.
She shrugged, drawing his eyes back to what her snug tunic revealed with that motion.
“Please put your cloak back on,” he said. “It’s…chilly out. You may get sick.”
She smiled at him and he felt himself warm. “Okay. Thank you for your concern.” She wrapped the cloak around her, but he could still see the outline of her curves.
Aeden locked his eyes on her face, resisting the urge to look at the rest of her. There was a glint in the moonlight, and he put his head closer to hers, focusing his eyes.
Her eyelids dropped slowly and she pursed her lips expectantly. When nothing happened, she opened her eyes again and, seeing him within inches of her face, tilted her head back to focus her eyes on him. “What are you doing?”
His finger came up and traced a thin silver line on her left cheek. It was a scar, so fine he had missed it when talking with her during the day. Only now, this close, with the light of the moon slanting across her face, did he see it. She seemed to shudder as his finger softly moved over the line.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“I don’t even know. I’ve had it as long as I can remember. I wish I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“It’s ugly.” She dropped her eyes to her hands, which were in her lap. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“It’s not ugly,” Aeden said. “My people prize scars because it means you have been in danger and have come out of it alive, if not unscathed. But aside from that, I think it is beautiful. It suits you, almost invisible except in the closest scrutiny, a mark of distinction among the perfection of your beauty. I like it.” He realized his finger was still touching the skin of her cheek and he dropped his hand. His reluctant eyes scanned the camp and the darkened plains around them.
Thankfully, Aila didn’t say anything. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked out into the darkness with him.
It was soon time for Aeden to wake Raki. As if sensing it, Aila got up and silently made her way back to her place next to Fahtin. Aeden could just make out her wry smile as she rolled herself in her cloak and turned to face away from him. He wondered for the tenth time that evening what she was about. And then he wondered if he was better off not knowing.
Raki took his turn at watch and Aeden got a few more hours of sleep. When he woke, first among the sleepers, Aila Ven was gone.
“I have no idea when she left,” Raki said. “Honest, I was keeping a good watch. Why do all these things happen when I’m on duty?”
“There is no shame, boy,” Tere Chizzit said, kneeling to inspect the ground. “She is very good at moving without being detected. I should know. No, do not blame yourself. Even I didn’t wake when she left, and that’s saying something.
“She headed off to the southwest. I’m not sure what she’s about, but I do believe it’s better that she’s gone. I’m not sure how far we can trust that one.”
Fahtin opened her mouth to protest, but the tracker cut her off.
“That’s no judgment on her worth as a person, Fahtin, so don’t argue with me. I’m just saying that there is more to her than she lets on. We have a job to be about and do not need the added mystery. Perhaps another time, she would be an interesting puzzle to solve, but not right now. Not with everything else.”
Fahtin closed her mouth and seemed mollified.
“Is there anything missing?”Aeden asked, though he could hardly think past the image in his mind of her in the moonlight, eyes heavy-lidded and lips pursed. Had she thought he wanted to kiss her? She seemed not to be bothered by it if she had. Who knew with women, though?
The others checked their packs and supplies. There was nothing missing, not even food or water.
“I hope she’s all right,” Fahtin said. “It’s dangerous out there.”
“Not nearly as dangerous as being with us,” Tere said. “Besides, the woman can take care of herself. I’ve seen it firsthand.”
He told them about witnessing her late-night rendezvous with the five attackers and how she handled herself. Aeden was suitably impressed. He wondered what weapons she had used. The blind man had not seen what were in her hands.
The party ate a quick breakfast and headed off to the west, making straight for the mountains looming ahead of them. As they went, Aeden wondered if he’d ever see Aila Ven again. He wondered if he ever wanted to.
Chapter 41
“They’re called the Heaven’s Teeth,” Tere Chizzit said, pointing to the mountains that ran from north to south as far as they could see. “Those who know them best, though, just call them the Molars.”
Fahtin could see why. She had seen these mountains before, of course, as they traveled by them in their wagons, but she had never been so close before. They did look like molars, blocky rounded mountains that appeared to have been flattened by a great weight dropping on them. Alone among all the mountains she had ever seen, these seemed to have no real peaks to them, no sharp points. How old must they be to have had their tops worn off like that?
In traveling with her family, Fahtin had seen many mountain ranges, but they usually took the roads going around the hilly country. Mountain roads could be treacherous, not just because of weather that could change in an instant, but because bandits seemed to prefer them. The Gypta could take care of themselves, but why chance fate? They were bound to no schedules and so could afford to go around instead of over the peaks.
If Fahtin was honest with herself, she was excited about their path. Her Gypta blood loved seeing new places, doing new things. Despite all the constant dangers they had faced, she looked forward to going through the Heaven’s Teeth.
“It’s a fairly straightforward path,” Tere continued. “We’ll get onto the road in a dozen miles and then follow it through the Cleft of Surus. It is a small, winding path, but well-traveled, so there should be no troubles. At this time of year, we probably won’t even find snow except on the highest part of the pass.”
It took the party three days to make it to the other side of the mountain. As the tracker had expected, there had been no troubles. Twice the party saw other travelers on the road, both groups going the other way. Tere shared news with them, warning of the black creatures spreading across the east. None of the road-weary folk they talked to had heard of such a thing to the west. That was good, at least. Maybe Aeden and the others would be able to make it to the Academy without running into any more animaru.
“How do you think Aila is doing?” Raki asked as they ate their evening meal the first day out of the mountains. “Do you think she made it safely to wherever it was she was going?”
Fahtin had been thinking about the woman quite a bit herself. “I’m sure she’s fine. She seems to be very competent. After what Tere told us, I believe it even more. It’ll take more than common dangers on the road to trip that one up.”
“True,” Urun Chinowa said, “but the world holds more than common dangers now, doesn’t it?”
“Do you think the animaru caught up to her?” Raki asked, concern painted on his face.
“That’s not what I meant, Raki. I—”
“They would not bother with a lone traveler when they are so close to catching up to us,” Aeden said. “She’ll be fine. We’ll see
her again.”
“And why would you say that?” Fahtin said sharply. She wasn’t sure why, but irritation chafed at her over what Aeden had said. Or how he said it. Or something.
Aeden met her eyes. There was no emotion there. He was relaxed and poised. “I don’t know. I just think we will. There’s really no reason for me to feel that way.”
“I agree,” Urun said. “There’s something about that one…” He got a faraway look in his eye. “I mean, other than her obvious, uh, charisma.” The priest looked over at Fahtin and saw the glare starting to form and the edges of her mouth turning down. He quickly finished. “I’m sure she’s fine, Raki.”
Fahtin ground her teeth. She didn’t know why she felt like slapping the men. The woman was beautiful, after all. And the way those tight clothes showed off her body, she couldn’t blame them for taking notice. Did she not play on the same attitudes with her loose, flowing clothing and her sensuous movements? Was she jealous of the smaller woman? Yes. She definitely was. It wasn’t fair, but she was.
Fahtin sighed. Well, if she met Aila Ven again, she would have to work on not acting like a jealous little girl. She did genuinely like the stranger. She thought they could be friends. As long as she didn’t hang all over Aeden and paw him like a wild mountain cat with a hunk of meat.
The next morning, Tere Chizzit used a stick to draw a crude map in the dirt. “We’re right here.” He pointed to a spot just to the west of the mountains they had crossed. “There is a river, the Alvaspirtu, that has its source from several tributaries north of here and is fed by mountain streams and runoff. We’ll be needing to cross it, no mean feat at any time of the year, but even more so right now.
“There are bridges, but none close. I suggest we go west until we get to the river itself and then follow it north a bit until we get to the bridge at Solesena Aurem. That one is closer than the one to the south, and the terrain is easier. As the river goes south, the land around it becomes a mass of sharp hills and cliffs that could slow us considerably. From the bridge at Solesena Aurem, it’s straight on toward the island on which Sitor-Kanda is situated.
Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 135