The rock gave them the view Cub had selected it for. High ground, with a sight line both up and down the trail for hundreds of yards. There was no sign of their follower, but Shaina knew he was still there. He could be simply another traveler, but that he was keeping out of sight bothered her.
“Are we staying?”
“For a bit,” he said. “We can talk.”
She grimaced inwardly, fearing he was going to bring up the strangeness that had sprung up between them.
He dropped down to sit on a smooth section of the rock, facing back the way they had come, pulled his knees up in front of him, and rested his elbows on them. Shaina chose not to comment on the fact that he had chosen the direction from which they were being followed for himself to watch. Instead she dropped down facing the other direction, close enough that they were able to lean their backs against each other. It meant they could not see each other’s faces, but she wasn’t sure that was not a good thing at the moment.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
“When do you not?” she retorted. “You are always thinking.”
“Yes,” he answered, mildly given the snippiness of her answer. Which had the effect it always did, making her feel chagrin. She had merely been trying to avoid what she feared he wanted to speak of, not to mock him.
“You have your father’s patience.”
“Without which he would never have survived.”
“I know that.” She let out a sigh. “And I have none.”
“I received a double measure, since my mother has it as well.”
She couldn’t help smiling at that. The queen indeed had it as well. Often it had been Shaylah she had turned to for deeper counsel, on things she didn’t wish to discuss with her mother, things she needed a woman’s view on. In fact, it had been Shaylah who had first called her beautiful, a declaration that had unsettled her more than pleased her.
“It is a good trait, patience,” she said quietly, wishing to make amends. “Worthy of—and necessary for—a king.”
“Just as courage and spirit are necessary for a warrior,” he said, rather pointedly. “It’s as well you have both in abundance.”
Warrior. There was the other sore spot she’d been nursing. She wasn’t sure which she wanted to talk about less. She stared up the mountain, where the shadows seemed to grow longer even as she looked.
“You have been thinking much yourself.” His voice was quiet. She didn’t bother to deny it, he knew her too well. In fact no one knew her as well as Cub.
“And it’s annoying,” she said dryly. “I don’t know why you do it.”
“For the same reason the kingbird flies. It is my nature.”
He had that, too, she thought. That quiet sort of wisdom that didn’t seem like much until he somehow understood the nature of something—or someone—better than anyone else. In that again, he had the best of both his parents, that thing that made them beloved of their people.
She had gradually become aware of the growing warmth on her back, where they touched. It was comforting, as any touch between friends, but other thoughts continued to intrude and disconcert her.
“I know sometimes you wish I would not think so much, and just do.”
“And if you did,” she said, “we would wind up in even more trouble than usual.”
He laughed. She felt it through that connection between them before she even heard it.
“Honesty is, as always, another of your admirable traits.” The laughter echoed in his words.
“There are those who would say I am excessively so.”
“Then they have not come to treasure it as I have.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, only knew that his words again stirred those odd, unwanted feelings.
“Perhaps,” Cub said, as casually as if he were merely making an observation about the clouds that were rolling in, “your own honesty is why you feel so strongly about your father’s choice to hide your destiny.”
“Call it what it is,” she said sharply. “He lied. My entire life, he lied.”
“Thank you for proving my point.”
She wanted to clout him, but she would have to turn around to do it, and she still didn’t want to face him. So she settled for an elbow to his back.
He laughed again. “Now that seems more familiar.”
She couldn’t help it, she laughed as well. Cub could always do that for her, restore good humor. And for some reason that made her realize the contradiction here, that someone supposedly so honest was avoiding confronting what she feared he wanted to discuss. She didn’t like the feeling, didn’t like being afraid of such a simple thing as spoken words. She made herself face it.
“What is it you wanted to talk about?”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said again, and she resisted the urge to retort with the usual teasing. “Remembering, really, now that my head’s clear after that thugger’s blow.”
Concern spiked through her. “Only now? We should have stopped, let you rest.”
“No,” he said. “It is better that we kept moving. And no fussing now, please, not when I’ve been so thankful you don’t.”
“Because I trust you to tell me if you’re truly hurt.”
“Thank you. And I would have, had I been. It has been an aggravation, nothing more.”
She considered that, accepted it. For Cub was as honest with her, she thought. She had always just assumed that, but perhaps he was right, it was something to treasure.
“What is it you remembered?”
“Something one of them said, when they had me in that room. That they were waiting for ‘the man with the coins’ to arrive.”
She sat up straight, whipped around to look at him. “What? When?”
He turned as well. Grimaced as he explained. “An instant before you bashed his partner with that rock. I didn’t recall it until now.”
“So someone paid them,” she said. “And they did know who you were!”
“Not necessarily, they may have just had me pointed out to them as the target,” he said. “But it seems someone did.”
Fury rose in her—fast, fierce, and hot. In the first instant it was that her best friend had been targeted. But it was only a moment later that the bigger picture struck her. And the rage rose even higher.
“Someone who seeks to profit from capturing the Prince of Trios,” she said grimly.
Cub sighed. The weary sound of it reminded her that the load he carried was so much heavier than hers, even with the weight of her father’s deceptions.
“Let them try again,” she said.
And there was nothing of recklessness in her words, only an intense, unmovable determination.
. . . the only thing left for me to take care of is you.
Her own words came back to her. And for the first time in her life she realized just how much more there was to being the flashbow warrior than simply a magical crossbow and some powerful, glowing bolts.
Chapter 20
“RAIN COMING IN,” Rina observed as they walked.
Tark’s mouth twisted slightly. “Indeed.”
“It was merely an observation,” she said, frowning.
“One I could have told you hours ago.”
The frown deepened. “Hours ago it was sunny and clear.”
“Except in my head,” he muttered.
“Your head,” she said sweetly, “is muddled by more than the weather.”
To her surprise, he laughed. And not to her surprise, she felt that warmth again, that she had caused it.
“Indeed,” he said again.
“Your head hurts when the weather changes, truly?” she asked.
He hesitated, as if loath to admit to even this pain.
�
�Not hurts, exactly,” he said finally. “More a . . . tightness. And only with coming rain.”
She glanced at the clouds still building, about to crest the mountains and roll down toward them. “An hour, I’d guess, maybe two.”
“Feels about right.”
She looked back at him. There was a slight furrow between his brows, which only emphasized the twisted scar above his patched eye. An outward sign of that tightness, she guessed. She should have noticed that before.
“Does it remain?”
“Only until the rain actually begins.”
“Handy, then,” she said.
He gave her a wry, sideways look. “In the nature of a weather prediction, yes.”
“Enough warning to get under cover,” she said. “Assuming one has the sense.”
“Was that a general observation, or a personal assessment?”
His tone was a bit prickly, and she realized her words could have seemed aimed at him.
“I’ve been accused of a lack of sense more than once,” she said with a purposeful grin at him.
Tark stopped dead in his tracks. He stared at her, his gaze no less intense than it had ever been when he’d had two good eyes. She wasn’t sure what she’d said to cause it, only knew that the power of that stare unsettled her.
And then she remembered. That day, long ago, at the height of the battle for the Council Building, the deciding clash in the Battle of Galatin, when he had been the one to accuse her of that lack of sense.
If I can get to Dax, he will come!
You cannot.
I can, if I go to the kitchens and out the back.
We are surrounded. You’ll never make it.
I can do it.
Have sense, Rina! For once. Their blood is up and if you are caught, they’ll show no mercy. They would rape and torture any female, but a woman as beautiful as you would be a rare treat for them. What they would do to you . . .
It hit her now much as it had then, the simple fact that in that moment, no matter how he denied it, he’d seen her as a woman. And a beautiful one.
She’d never had any illusions about her appearance, in fact had cultivated the lost waif look, the short, tousled hair that made her eyes seem huge. That and her slight stature had often allowed her to be dismissed as a child, and when flying with Dax it had more than once saved her life. Even after Dax had brought her home, she had stayed the same, defiantly. It had taken all her energy just to adjust to her new life, to learn anew about the home she’d nearly forgotten in the years since she’d been gone. Dax had tried, speaking to her of her home world often, but nothing compared to actually being there.
And when she was older, she had ignored those few Triotian males who had the nerve to approach the ward of the flashbow warrior. By the time the Triotian resistance and their success had sparked an echoing rebellion on Arellia, she had been old enough to insist on joining the force sent by Dare to assist, and her navigation skills were ever worth having.
And it was then that she met the man who changed everything.
When Tark had said those words that day, something basic and primal had shifted in her. It had been a revelation. And it had unleashed all the unchildlike thoughts she’d been fighting, thoughts that had begun the moment she’d set eyes on the tall, rangy Arellian fighter.
“I made it, that day,” she said softly.
“Only by sheer luck.” The line of his mouth tightened. “And you disobeyed a direct order. I told you not to go.”
“My only orders back then came from Dax,” she pointed out. “I was with you by my choice.”
For an instant something flickered in his gaze, something hot that flashed and was gone so quickly she couldn’t name it. And didn’t dare speculate.
He turned away suddenly, as if aware he’d revealed . . . something.
“If we do not hurry, we will be very wet when we arrive,” he said gruffly.
They picked up the pace, stopping only once when a young boy darted out of a building right in front of them, followed by an older woman screeching at him. He didn’t even look at them, merely dodged around them and kept running. The old woman glared at them, as if she’d expected them to stop the boy.
Muttering about the doom this younger generation was leading them toward, she walked back inside and slammed the door.
True to Tark’s prediction, the skies opened up just as they reached the rear door to an establishment that had, from her view in the darkened, trash-strewn alley, little to recommend it.
“Nice place.”
“We avoid notice as much as we can. Some dislike what we say enough to take action if they knew where we met.”
For a long moment they stood in the downpour, until a small cutout in the heavy wooden door, at about eye level, slid open. A pair of Arellian blue eyes peered out, these a lighter shade than Tark’s deep, dark, midnight blue.
“Been waiting on you,” a raspy voice snarled out, stirring further memories from years ago. “But who’s this? You’ve actually brought a woman? I didn’t know you even knew any, anymore.”
She placed him then. “How quickly you forget, Crim.”
The eyes narrowed, then widened. “Rina? Rina Carbray, is it truly you?”
“Whereas I have no doubt it is you. I’d recognize that voice and nasty mood anywhere.”
The door swung open. The man standing just inside stared at her. He had been old when she’d known him, during the war here, when he’d been Tark’s good right hand. To be truthful, he didn’t look all that much older now. A bit more hunched over, a bit more grizzled, but his perpetually aggrieved expression hadn’t changed at all.
That is, until now. To her amazement, the old man smiled, revealing a row of teeth still notable for the crookedness of those in the front.
“Well, now, you’ve changed, child! You went and grew up on us.”
“I was grown up before,” she pointed out.
“Not like this,” the old man said with a laugh. His gaze slid to Tark. “So, you two have finally found each other again.”
There was an instant of silence that seemed electric to her. And then Tark reached out and gave the old man a gentle nudge on the shoulder. “Will you make us stand here in the rain, Crim?”
The old man let out a sound that was half laugh, half cough. The cough didn’t sound good, and Rina frowned at the old man’s back as he led the way inside the building.
“Is he well?” she whispered as they followed.
Tark shook his head. “He’s never been the same since that disrupter blast he took.”
“Yet he’s one of you? I would think he would be among those who want to believe it could never happen again.”
“What we want to believe does not change the truth.”
He said it harshly, and she realized belatedly that no one would have more reason to want to believe it was over and done forever than Tark. The battle for his home had cost him more than many, but she had the sense yet again that deep down, he would have preferred to have joined those who had lost all in the fight.
The room was dark, shadowed. The only light came from a few sconces on the walls, and those were live flames. The room got warmer as they stepped further inside, and she saw a fire also burning on a stone hearth on the far wall. Was there no power to this place, then? Was that part of avoiding the notice of those around them?
Tark had spoken true, she realized; more than one person present recognized her, and she saw a few more she knew as well. Some looked much the same, some much the worse for the time passed. A couple of them, as Tark, bore visible, although lesser scars, or moved in ways that spoke of scars hidden. All looked weary, but none more than him.
And they all, other than some smiles and hails when they saw her, looked grim. It was all the m
ore marked when compared to the revelry and celebration taking place outside, mere yards from here.
“Why have you brought her here? We have things to discuss.”
The voice came out of the shadows, demanding, authoritative. It sounded familiar, but when she turned to look she could see only a shadowy shape sitting in the corner, just out of the light cast by the fire.
She felt a hand at her back, Tark’s hand. She was a stranger to them, so she’d expected some resistance to her presence. At the same time Tark’s silent support moved her, stirring something deep inside. Or perhaps it was simply that she was entranced by the warmth of his touch. In fact, she was barely able to resist the urge to lean into that touch, to turn just slightly, move near enough that they would touch even more. And that this was neither the time nor the place—if there would ever be either—didn’t do much to alleviate the urge.
“She fought with us,” Tark said sharply. “Stood beside us when the days were darkest. She has the right.”
“So did Onslow,” the voice came back, dry and bitter. “Now look at him.”
“I’d rather not,” Rina said. “Hard though that is for him to believe, I’m certain.”
There was a startled laugh from the shadows, echoed by more than one around the room.
“Ease up,” Crim called out. “I remember the girl. She did well, stood fast. And if Tark vouches for her now, that’s enough for me.”
A rumble of assent went around the room. Here, at least, Tark had the respect he had earned.
“You would all do well to be hospitable,” Tark said. “She has given us something we would be hard pressed to obtain otherwise.”
“And what’s that?” The voice sounded a bit less harsh.
“The ear of King Darian. And Dax.”
The room went silent.
The figure in the shadows rose. Rina smothered a gasp as the face came into the light. Kateri.
She had never met the old woman who stood there, but she knew the face. Everyone who had spent any time on Arellia knew of her. The woman with the uncanny vision, who had sounded the warning, years upon years ago, before the first incursion of the Coalition—had sounded the warning and been ignored.
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