“You didn’t think to mention this to us earlier?” she asked. “Or Esak?”
“He wouldn’t have taken my advice.” Govorn grinned. “And neither, it seems, will you. Which means I must give you advice on what to do as you continue west.”
The twins tilted their heads at the same time and regarded him attentively.
He raised an eyebrow. “You know, in the elven lands. They’ll have you two killed.”
“Because we killed one of their tax collectors?” she asked.
There was a silence while her brother gave her a look.
Govorn gaped like a fish, then burst out laughing. “You did? Oh, heavens. That’s wonderful. You two. Little sprites and not born to the sword at all unless I miss my guess, but you have some fire in you. Don’t worry. No one here would do aught to help the new elven king. No, I meant they’d kill you for being…what is it they say—ur’sag tril, I believe. Split soul.”
“Do you mean twins?” Jamie asked.
“Aye, that’s what humans would call it. That, or a mother’s bad luck.” He chuckled again. “But the elves think there’s only one soul bestowed in each pregnancy. If there are twins, the priests decide which has the greater share of the soul and kill the other. Then, if they think the other didn’t get the rest of the soul back, they kill it, too.”
“That’s horrible!” Taigan burst out in protest.
“It’s why you’ll only see elven twins as exiles,” the man said with a shrug. “They believe they share a soul too, but they use it as a strength. They often sell their services as scouts—two pairs of eyes bound by a common mind.”
“That’s bullshit,” she muttered.
“Or it’s not,” Jamie said meaningfully, “and we could make a ton of money.”
Govorn watched them in amusement. “Regardless, you’ll want to keep any elves you meet from knowing you’re twins. Now…” He pointed ahead of them. “Midway through tomorrow’s ride, we’ll turn north and you’ll need to continue west with the boy. By nightfall, make sure to leave the road.”
Taigan frowned.
“The western roads have bandits,” he said, “and every year, they come farther east. Not many go past the Rylkor Mountains and those who do are heavily laden.”
“But anyone could see we aren’t rich,” Jamie protested.
“Aye, and they’d make the two of you into their fighters.”
“We wouldn’t fight for them.”
“You have much to learn about leverage, boy. They’d hold your sister at the point of a blade to make you fight, or the other way around.” Govorn shrugged at the looks on their faces. “So stay off the road. North of the road, a short distance the whole way, is a river. Cross it at a shallow point and continue on the far side. The bandits will water their horses there, but they do not need to cross it. Keep some greenery between yourself and the river and they likely won’t see you, but keep your eye out.”
“Right,” Jamie said. “Anything else?”
“Don’t buy anything in the last town before the mountains,” the caravan leader advised. “They think anyone who goes that way is half-dead already, so they sell you spoiled meat and moldy bread—and for a fortune, at that. Forage for your food.”
The twins nodded.
“You know,” the man told them, “I find myself hoping you’ll survive this. I like you two. I must be getting soft-hearted as I get older.” He nodded to the two of them and rode off whistling.
“He’s unsettling,” Taigan said.
“Because you wuv him?” Jamie asked.
“I will kill you.”
“Her changes in heart rate and breathing patterns would fit both Jamie’s theory and Taigan’s.”
“I’ll kill you, too,” the girl said and glared at the sky.
Her brother snorted into a glove. Then, he looked at Esak as he dropped from the roof of the caravan.
“Govorn said I needed to speak to you.” The boy looked resentful about this. “I said I didn’t want to and he said I had better unless I wanted to die on the mountain. So, what’s this about?”
Jamie gave silent thanks to the man for helping them. “He told us we shouldn’t go up the mountain.”
“He’s right. You shouldn’t.” Esak folded his arms and sat with a glare. “I don’t need you and I don’t want you there.”
“I’ll buy the second one but the first one might not be true,” Jamie pointed out. “What do you know about the Rylkor Mountains?”
“They’re supposed to be haunted.” The mayor’s son waved his hands in a way that said he didn’t believe it for a second. “People go crazy or something. Or the ground swallows you. It’s all a load of crap. My grandpa’s barn was haunted too—everyone said so. Nothing ever happened to prove it.”
Despite himself, Jamie was beginning to like this guy.
“And the bandits on the road?” he asked.
“They’ll see I have nothing and let me go,” Esak said with a shrug.
“Ah. There, you’re wrong. They’ll make you fight for them.”
Now, at last, the other boy looked uncertain.
Gently, Taigan asked, “Are you sure your only option lies on that mountain?”
“I warned you,” Esak said sharply. “I told you that as soon as you started trying to persuade me—”
“Yes,” she said wearily. “As soon as I try to persuade you, you’ll cut your nose off to spite your face. I’m not trying to do that, though, I’m asking you if there are any other options.”
He wavered. Jamie watched him waver before the boy shook his head resolutely. He was afraid but he also wouldn’t back down.
“No,” he said. “No, it has to be the key. It’s the only thing for me.”
“You aren’t afraid?” Taigan asked. There was something real in her voice now and even Esak could hear it. “It doesn’t scare you—the idea of never seeing anyone you love again?”
For some reason, he went white as a sheet at that. His eyes widened. He tried to catch his breath and he turned without another word, scaled the wall, and swung up onto the roof.
“What do you think that was about?” Jamie asked.
“I have no idea.” She frowned. “Maybe he hadn’t thought of that before?”
“Maybe.” He shook his head. “I don’t think so, though. No one decides to leave the world without considering that they’ll never come back—do they?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I never thought about it at all. I simply went comatose.”
He snorted into his waterskin. “You’re right, it wasn’t your best plan.”
“Not even slightly,” she agreed. “Prima, any opinions?”
“None in particular. Side note, if you had to try to keep a nosy man from learning about you, would you use obfuscation, blackmail…”
“Why do you ask?” Taigan asked suspiciously.
“No reason. It’s for a friend.”
“You may have more processing power than us but you don’t have life experience,” Jamie said. “No one ever believes ‘it’s for a friend.’ That, and ‘I fell.’”
“Noted.”
Chapter Fourteen
The twins steered clear of Esak that night. As if to show them that they wouldn’t miss anything, the caravan guards sang songs that were not merely raunchy but truly on another level.
“I didn’t even know that was possible,” Taigan said, after a particular verse. She stared into the middle distance. “Ergonomically speaking, I mean. Unless I mean…what do I mean?”
“It’s a dragon and a unicorn and you’re focusing on the ergonomics?” Jamie demanded. “Seriously? You might as well ask, ‘But wouldn’t the unicorn get fried to a crisp?’”
“That’s a good point.”
“No! No, it’s not. Neither of them is a good point.” He waved his hands. “Good God. I hope Mom and Dad aren’t listening to this.”
“Nah,” she said. She took a swig of the bourbon the caravan members were passing around an
d grimaced. “You hope they weren’t there when you went gaga over that old widow.”
“Hey!”
Prima snickered.
Taigan grinned and handed him the bottle. He had always been both gregarious and fiercely private. Almost anyone at their school would say they liked him but very few could say anything about his likes or dislikes. Only a few friends over the years had seen his true self and to her knowledge, he’d never had a girlfriend.
Their relationship was a weird mix of sharing everything and keeping certain things very private. Other people tended to have trouble determining which fit into which category, and she felt no obligation to explain it to them. If she was closer to Emilia in some ways than to Jamie, that was their business, not anyone else’s.
Sometimes, she did feel sorry for her brother, though, not having another boy in the family. Their father was a wonderful father but he wasn’t the type of person who had ever been very motivated by crushes or sports.
At least, as far as she could tell.
She looked at Jamie. “Do you miss her? The girl you like? Or…boy?”
“I’ll let you wonder about that.” He grinned at her. “She’s—oh, dammit.”
“That intrigue lasted a good half-second.”
He laughed. “I’m shit at keeping secrets. You know that.”
“I do. Every time you sneak out, I’m the one who has to come up with a good one because you’d sink it if Mom and Dad ever asked you.”
“Thanks.” He nudged her with his elbow. “And…yeah. A little. Okay, a lot.”
Taigan looked at him.
“I want to show her this.” He smiled slightly. “I didn’t have time to miss her when we were attacked by bear-cat-things earlier, but…this kind of adventure? Magic? Crystal trees, sleeping under the stars? I wish she could see it.”
She smiled as she focused on the fire. Her only experiences had been passing crushes, and they always came with the internal certainty that the object of her affection would never go for her—not the weird girl who kept falling into a coma. And even if they did, what would happen when she was gone? What if they got tired of waiting?
But Jamie didn’t seem worried at all. It was enough to make her wonder if she’d had crushes the wrong way.
Still, she didn’t pry. If he wanted to tell her more about his relationship, he would. She honestly didn’t know if he was dating someone or if he merely liked her, but he seemed happy about it and that was enough. The stars turned overhead, the fire died down, and the two of them sat together as people began to go to bed. When they slept, it was close to each other under one of the carriages, listening to the snores of the other merchants and guards. They fell asleep quickly. Tomorrow, danger would have to be faced.
The sense of safety in which they fell asleep left them utterly disoriented when the attack occurred.
A scream woke Taigan. It wasn’t calculated, merely a quick cry of deep pain. It was immediately followed by the whiz and thud of arrows into the wood of carriages and wagons. She jerked awake and hit her head on the underside of the carriage. Tangled in the blanket, she thrashed and looked through both sets of wheels but encountered only blackness.
Except, she realized after a moment, some of it was moving.
She had propped her head on her pack and kept her staff next to her. Now, she met Jamie’s eyes in the darkness—or the gleam of them in the dark space that was him—and the two turned to crawl toward the end of the carriage.
Feet raced past outside and she couldn’t tell whose were whose.
Taigan hadn’t bargained on how disorienting fights could be—a constant stream of information and too many variables to count—and she had only fought in daylight after knowing who her enemy was and where they were.
Now, it was dark, she had been thoroughly surprised, and she had no idea who to target and who not to.
She saw a dwarf charge across the field nearby and that, at least, was simple enough. There were some half-breeds in the caravan but no full dwarves. Certainly none with brass beads threaded through their beards. She motioned for Jamie to stay back and thrust the staff out.
The attacker tripped obligingly over it with a curse and his battle-ax embedded itself in the dirt.
“Get the ax!” she called to her brother.
The twins scrambled from beneath the carriage. The dwarf had caught hold of the ax as soon as he heard her voice, but she set about beating him with the staff until he took his hands off it to shield his head. Jamie ran to hide it and she realized she would have to defeat the diminutive but strong enemy on her own.
She redoubled her efforts without a break. Thwack, thwack, thwack…track the dwarf who was rolling…kick him to keep him on the ground…thwack. After another blow, he wrenched the staff out of her hands.
There honestly was no time to think. The blacksmith’s dagger slid from its sheath and buried itself in the dwarf’s chest when he launched himself up. It was dark but there was enough light from the stars to see his surprised expression.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you attacked first.”
He slid off the blade, dead, and she staggered to her feet with the bloody dagger clutched in one hand.
A blow from behind knocked her to the ground and she screamed with pain. Dust in her mouth and her eye hampered her but she twisted in time to see a man standing above her with a club raised. Taigan rolled desperately out of the way seconds before the club came down and she pushed to her feet, only to be shoved back into the dirt.
She couldn’t die like this. That was the one thought in her head as she lashed her feet out. She knew she struck something because her attacker yelled, but she also caught a club to the leg.
Every part of her seemed to be smarting. With dust in one eye, she couldn’t see properly. She scrambled to her knees, swaying, but didn’t know which way to turn from there.
The yell came from behind her. Something whooshed over her head, immediately followed by the sound of fighting and steel on wood. She wrenched her head up to see.
“Esak?”
He fought like a man possessed. If she looked closely, she could see that his strikes expended too much energy and his aim wasn’t very good yet, but it wasn’t easy to look closely. He fought with purpose and speed and looked to do damage in any opening he could find.
That gave her the time to try to get the dust out of her eye and circle behind the fight. No matter how much she blinked, though, she had no depth perception.
Well, she’d keep stabbing until she hit something and hope that something wasn’t Esak.
Luckily, the attacker was far taller than her fellow fighter was. She dodged out of the way as Esak stumbled past her, whirled, and thrust her dagger at the other shape. The man screamed and almost fell, which gave her teammate the opening to beat him around the head with his staff.
The man sank to his knees and fell, giving Taigan the opportunity to plunge the knife into his chest. She wanted to be sick but the young man pulled her up.
“Come on!”
They fought back to back as she called for Jamie. He seemed to have formed a similar pairing with Govorn, and the two of them did significant damage.
At last, too many bruises later to count and too many close calls to remember comfortably, the remaining bandits fled. One or two stopped to snatch necklaces and bracelets from their fallen comrades, but she couldn’t tell if that was sentiment or greed.
They left a dramatic silence behind them that lingered for a long moment before the night sounds resumed. Crickets in the grass seemed incongruous and water burbled nearby, now accompanied by the agonized breaths of the wounded.
There was little time to talk. One of the healers pressed Taigan and Esak into service. They applied pressure to wounds and held the injured down while bones were set or arrowheads were removed. They worked by the flickering light of torches and she passed through nausea to blank, uncaring exhaustion.
When it was over, she stumbled to Jamie and fou
nd Esak there.
“You saved my life,” she said bluntly. Her eye was clear of dust now, but she still couldn’t see properly. “He had me on the back foot. I wouldn’t have won that fight.”
“I know,” the young man said. There was wonder in his voice. “I don’t…understand. It wasn’t like any fight I had been in before. I knew someone needed to help you. For once, I didn’t think about whether I could do it, only that I needed to. I could see everything I was doing wrong but it didn’t matter as long as I got the right hits in too.”
“Exactly,” Taigan said quietly. “Exactly, Esak. I’m not good at fighting because…well, because I’m good at it. I win because I want to end the fight.”
“I get that.” He stared into the distance. “You know, my father used to tell me that when I became mayor, I’d need to set my pride aside because the only thing that mattered was doing the right thing for the town. I think maybe fights are the same way—what matters is that you win, not that you look strong or brave.”
“I think so,” she agreed. Jamie’s warm, comforting presence was at her side—one of the first things she had been aware of in life and one of the things she counted dearest. She looked at him. “How are you?”
“Safe,” he said. He gave her a crooked smile but it was enough. It had to be as it was all there was. “And I’m glad Esak was there for you.” He looked at the other young man as he hugged her close. “She’s my other half. I’m not whole without her. Thank you.”
Taigan could tell something was shifting inside Esak. He nodded, opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head and smiled at them before he disappeared.
“He’s a good kid,” her brother said finally.
“I think he’s older than us.” She wrapped an arm around his waist and squeezed. “I’m glad you’re okay. I felt better knowing someone had your back.”
“And I felt better knowing someone had yours.” He looked over the camp. “I think there has to be something else—some other reason he’s going to the Rylkor Mountains. He wants to help people. I don’t think he’d try to leave only for himself.”
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