“I don’t understand what the flip Sama wants with the stone. Why can’t he just let me do my thing and let it go? Everyone’s dying in Terraway without the stone. What’s the point of an army if everyone else is dead?”
“You’re forgetting that his whole army’s made up of the dead. The more that die, the more bodies he controls.” His tone switched to a conversational one as we walked at a brisk pace. “Do you know much about Silo?”
“Just that there’s been a drought for a few years, and everyone here looks like Kabayo.”
“But that wasn’t always the case. There used to be centaurs here, too.”
“Centaurs? Like, legit centaurs? Cool. What happened to them?”
“They only come with the rainclouds, so they’ve been extinct far too long. They’re fierce – the original protectors of Silo. All the lore traces back to the centaurs holding the borders and making sure Silo never saw war. Now that the centaurs are gone because of the drought? Silo is wide open. Quite the advantage for Sama, don’t you think? You can bet he won’t let you bring the stone to Silo without a fight. If the stone gets delivered, then the rain will come. That means the centaurs will come back, and Sama won’t stand a chance at taking over Silo.”
“Awesome. So we’re really racing an army of zombies?” Bruce Campbell would so know what to do right now.
“Amalanhigs,” Finn corrected me. “If there’s a battle that needs fighting, the centaurs are relentless. They come down from the clouds when they’re needed. It’s why we’ve only done battle with Silo when there’s not a cloud in the sky. And yeah, it’s why Sama’s no doubt going to do everything he can to stop us. I don’t know how he figured out we were here. Someone on the council must’ve talked.”
“Wish it was raining right now, then. I don’t like the feeling of an army breathing down my neck all the livelong day. I like to think we’re helping make things better, but if Sama’s marching on Silo anyway because he’s chasing us, what chance do they have?”
Finn reached out and brushed the outside of his fingers against mine. “Oh, little Omen. Don’t you know? Sometimes all we have is the promise of a chance. We can sit back and do nothing about it, then spend the rest of our days in regret that maybe we could’ve done something, or we can fight for change.” He looked sideways at me. “Something tells me you love the fight, even when the chance comes with a deadly risk.”
“Yeah, that sounds like me. And you just like winning.” I looked up at his hard expression, taking in his stern jaw and thick lips that were set in a tight line. “Must be hard to obey King Banak when he took advantage and twisted your sense of duty like that. Taking Bel from you? Not cool.”
He brushed his fingers against mine again. I couldn’t tell if it was by accident or on purpose. “Yes, well, I’ve moved on. I’m fine.”
“I know that ‘I’m fine’, and I’m sorry you have to fake it. I wish you had a safe place.”
He reached out and held onto my hand, like we were close and did things like this all the time. My OCD did its usual flare-up, but I suppressed it. I was a champ at hand-holding now, thanks to Mason and Von. “Sometimes I wish that, too.”
I blinked up at him, searching his face for lies. “Are you a safe place?”
Finn lifted my hand to his chest so I could feel his heartbeat. “You get to decide that. It depends on who you’re asking, I guess.”
I shook my head slowly. “Not good enough. Be better. If you want better, you have to be better.” I smirked as Ollie’s lessons flowed out of my mouth without me stopping to examine who was really speaking – Ollie or me.
“Are you actually scolding me?” He sounded torn between affronted and amused. “No one scolds me.”
“I’m not no one. I’m the girl who’s going to smoke you on our next run. You ready, old man?”
“Old man? I’m only a year older than Mason, and he was your boyfriend.”
I cringed at the label. “Mason was never my boyfriend. I’m not a fan of that word. We were figuring things out. Don’t make it weirder than it was.” I stretched out my legs in anticipation of speeding up our journey. “Quit stalling, gray hair. Let’s go!”
Finn’s grin was wide, his full lips stretching across his face to reveal his perfect teeth and a streak of glee he rarely got. This wasn’t being on the run; this was going for a run, which made a big difference. We weren’t being chased; we were doing the chasing, gunning down the well as we tried to outrun each other like children on a race to the swing set. Though the world was a grim place, for a small slice of time we were free from the constraints of it all. We weren’t a soldier and a nurse. In the laughter of the moment, we were young.
6
Slave Girl and Harem Boy
Finn laughed as I shoved him when he tried to run in front of me to block my path and keep me in second place. “You’re cheating!” I cried, though that was about all I could eke out. We’d been running much too long, though neither of us would be the first to admit it. We were equally stubborn, which meant that we were making excellent time.
When the suns finally fell and we couldn’t race anymore without fear of tripping, we made our way inland toward the village. The barns were close together and made up a commune of quaint rural buildings grouped in clusters of twenty or so. “It’s not long until we reach the main city. If we keep on, we’ll make it there in only another half a night or so.”
I wanted to groan obnoxiously, but knew that would seriously hurt my street cred. I didn’t want to knock us off the equal footing I’d tried so hard to get us on by keeping pace with a soldier. “Sounds good.”
“You’re such a liar. I can see you’re almost ready to fall over. Why won’t you just admit it?”
I scoffed. “I could do this all night. I was holding back for your sake. You look a little tired, old timer.”
“Tired and hungry,” he admitted. “I’m thinking we should see if we can’t borrow a couple of the horses to ride the rest of the way.”
“Um, that would be great, except I don’t know how to ride a horse. And I can’t really picture hopping on Kabayo’s shoulders.”
“No, no. An actual horse,” Finn laughed. He’d been doing that a lot around me, and looked surprised each time it happened, as if he wasn’t used to enjoying any part of his life. “The horses you have Topside are safest in Terraway. They’re well-cared for by the Tikbalangs. Since they share common traits, most horses count themselves grateful to land themselves here in Silo.”
“Okay. Just don’t let me make some big political statement without knowing it. If I’m not supposed to ride a horse here because they’re beloved, don’t let me do it. I don’t want to embarrass Ezra. He’s likely to be pissed enough as it is.”
“A little worried about hearing it from dear old dad, are we?” Finn tsked me as if I was a disobedient child, which I guess I was. I mean, I did run away from Ezra without telling him where I was going. “That’s alright. Though it might be easier if no one knew who you were. Then Sama’s soldiers can’t torture it out of anyone.”
“That can seriously happen? I don’t want that. I couldn’t live with myself if more people got hurt because of me.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Walk behind me. Pretend to be a slave I’m taking through Silo. Slaves aren’t allowed to speak without permission, so no one will ask you questions you don’t have the answers to.”
I shot him a dubious look. “You can guess how I feel about being your slave girl, harem boy.”
Finn looked down on me with partially lidded eyes and half a smirk that needed slapping. “Say it again. Say you’re my slave girl.”
“I’m not your slave girl, Finn.”
He faked a shiver. “Just as sexy as I pictured it. Let me bind your hands behind your back.”
I grimaced, punching his arm and holding up my fists to deflect his in case he retaliated. “I’ll straight up lay you flat out if you don’t get ahold of yourself. I’m just a friend you’re tra
veling with. It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.”
He put his hand over my fist, lifted it to his mouth and kissed it just to patronize me. “What’d I tell you about punching me? Don’t make me take a switch to your sweet little backside.”
“I barely chucked your shoulder, you baby. And don’t talk about my butt.”
“I won’t talk about it, but I’ll spend the next few minutes thinking about it. Why do you guess I let you run ahead of me those few times? Great view. That’s the one thing missing from Dagat – girls who run.”
“You’re a dirty old man!”
I shoved him, breaking my indignation with a much-needed laugh when he grabbed his side in feigned agony and cried, “Oh, my hip! Take it easy on me; I’m so old!” Then he mussed my hair and permitted me to bump my hip to his to knock him off his path.
After a few beats of silence, Finn sobered marginally. “Seriously though, you don’t know this world, and it’s best you remain forgettable as long as possible. Sama can’t know where you are. Slaves aren’t allowed to speak, so that’s your best bet.”
My shoulders slumped. “I don’t like it.”
“Do you like getting captured and tortured by an undead army? How expensive is your pride?”
I hung my head. “Oh, fine. But don’t make cracks about my body, and don’t push me around.”
“I won’t. You have to walk behind me with your head down. You can’t look up at me. No talking at all, or I have to shut you up, and you won’t like how I do it.”
I chewed on my lower lip, wishing for another way out. “Seriously? I don’t want to be your slave, Finn. This is gross. All of this is like, the lowest common denominator.” I started raking at the skin on the backs of my hands, scratching deep wells that felt good as they stung. I didn’t like someone owning the deed to my life, even if it was all for show. It was a bad show, and I wanted no part of it.
Finn reached out and held my hand, not bothering to wipe his palm off first. “Hey, putting the sagrado stone where it belongs is more important than your pride. Let’s get through this, and when we go Topside to take a break, I’ll let you boss me around for a day to make up for it.” He shivered again with a teasing smile. “Yes, that’s definitely happening.”
“Quit being gross. I’m psyching myself up here.”
Finn stopped when we reached a fence post that wrapped around one of the clusters of barns. He turned to face me, and dropped the backpack with the stone off his shoulder onto the hard ground. Then he cupped my cheeks with his filthy hands, tipping my face to look up at him. My breath caught in my lungs, uncertain if it was safe to exhale my anxiety, or inhale his masculine scent. “It’s time to walk behind me now. And remember, no talking, and keep your eyes on the ground. And you should carry the stone. I’m an official. I don’t carry bags. That way there’s an excuse for me not to bind your hands.”
“Yes, Master,” I whispered, hating the words.
“That’s my girl.” Finn kissed both my cheeks and released me to go stand behind him.
“When did we get on terms where you’re the guy who kisses my cheeks?”
I expected something sarcastic, but was surprised when he eked out a wary, “I’m not sure myself. Mason and Von do it all the time. You’ve just got one of those faces, I guess. I don’t have to, if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“You don’t have to stop,” I blurted out. I instantly regretted the words that gave birth to the curved smile he shot me over his shoulder. “I mean, I don’t care one way or the other. Whatever keeps us from a fistfight.” When he started sniggering, I glared at him. “Shut up about it.”
“You want me,” he said, strutting like the cocky son-of-a he was.
“Yes, that’s exactly right. I’ve got a thing for arrogant jackfishes who don’t have the first clue of how to speak to women.”
“I knew it.” I don’t know why this made us both chuckle, but we shared a smile before work-mode descended on our shoulders, weighting the mood with our sense of duty to get the job done.
I slid the backpack on as I burned with all the things that were wrong in the world. I walked steadily behind Finn, keeping his regal pace as he made his way to the biggest stable in the cluster. Everything smelled like hay and manure. There were flies that swarmed around me, yelling at me that they knew I was filthy. They knew I’d been born in trash, for they sensed their own. I fought against whipping my arms around like a madwoman and kept my head down, letting the flies buzz around me and crawl on my skin when I moved too slowly. The whole thing made me want to scream, but I remembered I wasn’t allowed to speak.
Finn knocked on the door, and when the brown half-horse, half-woman answered, she immediately gasped and fell to her knees. “Captain Finn, how can we serve you?”
Finn’s voice was grand, but there was always that sliver of cruelty that sharpened his words enough to cut, if one wasn’t careful to obey him. “I need horses to ride to the palace. I’ve got a slave with me, and have to bring her to King Kabayo as a gift from King Banak. I’m supposed to be there before the suns rise, but I’m afraid she’s too weak for the journey.”
The woman looked past Finn to take a peek at me with her bulging black glassy horse eyes. “Oh my, she’s a little thing.”
I gritted my teeth and tried to play the part of the weak little girl, slumping my shoulders and letting my squared gait go lax, though everything in me wanted to scratch my arms until they bled. I hated being called both “little” and “thing”.
The woman wore dirt-crusted knee-length jean overalls I could tell she made by hand. Her horse head dipped down as she bowed again and again to Finn. Her horse tail swished at the flies that swarmed inside her house and at the entrance of the red barn. “Of course, Captain. We know it’s you who sent Dagat soldiers to bring us fresh water. We owe you a great debt for your kindness. You can take whatever you need from my home. My horses would be happy to take you wherever you wish to go.”
“Good to hear. I also need a bucket.”
She ran back into the house and brought him a large basin that was at least two feet deep and two feet wide. Her big, glassy black eyes were bugged and hopeful as she offered the empty bucket for him. Finn spread out his fingers and shot water down into the steel basin until it was filled, much to the Tikbalang woman’s elation. She stammered her thanks, her servitude, and her lasting praise for the Merpeople. “The horses who stay with us are in the back. You’re welcome to take your pick. They can find their way back here on their own when you’ve finished with them. Thank you, Captain. May you live forever on a thousand hills and a thousand oceans with your magnanimous king. The city will hear of your generosity.”
“Actually, if you could keep our visit quiet, I’d be grateful. The king wishes for me to travel in secret.”
“Oh, of course. Then no one will hear a word of your visit, your grace.”
7
All the Things Wrong in the World
Finn snapped his fingers at me. “Come along, slave.”
I obeyed, swallowing my pride and everything Ollie and Allie had instilled in me to ensure that I never went running when a man snapped his fingers. I followed behind Finn, my eyes on the ground and my mouth shut as we walked behind the house to the barren grazing area. The horses munched on hay and a sparse mixture of oats and corn, which, judging from their slow, uninterested chewing, they didn’t like. The dust was everywhere, and so were the flies. Horse tails flicked from side to side, and I could tell they were all a little irritable.
Finn motioned to two tall animals that were horses as I knew them, though I guessed these were more sentient than the average Topside horse with the way they held my downturned gaze. “We’ll take these two.”
“Yes, sir. If you have water to offer, I’m sure they’ll have the strength to take you wherever you like.”
The woman drew two horses over to us in the moonlight that was helped only by the torches posted on a few of the barns. One was positi
oned in front of me, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. There wasn’t even a stirrup to hoist myself up with, or a saddle to grab onto. I couldn’t really picture myself John Wayne-ing myself up there. The midsection was taller than my shoulders. I didn’t know how the guys in The Princess Bride made it look so easy. I looked up toward Finn, at a loss.
That was my first mistake.
“I don’t know how to ride,” I said quietly.
That was my second mistake.
Maybe I should’ve anticipated Finn’s solid backhand across the face that knocked me down to my hands and knees, but it caught me completely by surprise. Judging by the woman of the house’s squeak, she hadn’t been ready for the violence, either. “Slaves don’t have a voice unless their master grants it. Don’t make me tear out your tongue before King Kabayo even meets you.”
I couldn’t process anything beyond the shock of the unmerciful violence. I’d socked him that morning because his hand needed to learn a few manners and stay off of my breasts. That was an obvious offense. Telling him I didn’t know how to get up on the horse? What else was I supposed to do? It started to dawn on me afresh that I knew nothing about this world or the rules I was subject to.
My cheekbone was ringing, but I refused to make a sound about it. I couldn’t look at Finn, and knew I wasn’t supposed to, so to compensate for my total confusion and Finn’s stinging smack of betrayal, I laid in the dirt in fetal position and covered my head with my hands. I hoped he didn’t feel the need to kick me or something to prove he was a big man and that I was very, very small.
I felt small, and I didn’t like it.
I told myself when we left Bev’s trailer that I’d never let anyone hit me again. Suddenly without my permission, I was back in the trailer, unwilling to hit back and unable to escape.
“Fine, I’ll take you on mine if you can’t manage something as simple as riding a horse. I hope you prove more useful to King Kabayo than this.” Finn lifted me up out of the dirt and placed me on the horse’s saddle-less back, his hands firm and feeling all wrong on my hips. The backpack was worn around my front, giving me something to hold. I don’t know how he mounted without a saddle or stirrups, but he managed just fine, scooting up behind me and wrapping his arms around my sides as the woman handed him the reins. The leather straps were attached to the bit, and I could tell by the irritable twitch of his ears that the horse wasn’t used to the gear and didn’t like it at all.
Tempt (Terraway Book 4) Page 4