My arm had been bitten hard. I shifted the shoulder up and down. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel right either. Nervous butterflies danced in my belly and throat. What lay beneath the thick cotton bandaging?
Aella was the first to come back to the room. Seeming almost surprised to find me awake, she hovered uncertainly in the doorway for a moment. She looked worn and drawn, with dark circles under her eyes. Her thick hair stood up at odd ends. I supposed mine wouldn’t be much better when I looked at it.
“Hey,” I said. I smiled at her cautiously. Was she going to be afraid of me after what I had done?
Her lip quivered, and then she was at my side. Kneeling beside the bed, she wrapped her arms around me, burying her face in my middle. “You silly bird. I thought I lost you,” she muttered into the blankets.
Surprised to hear tears in her voice, I stroked the top of her head. “I could say the same of you. When you went under the water, I thought—Aella, are you all right?”
She drew away from me, wiping wet eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m fine. It got me in a few places when we went under. Nothing deep though. Belinda patched me up, and of all things the sewer water flushed out the acid, which kept them from being too bad. She was about spitting fire herself about me getting so much muck into my wounds though.”
There was a knock on the doorframe, and we both looked to see who had come. “All right?” Lucas asked.
Aella and I looked at each other, and after a moment’s hesitation, we nodded. There were things we needed to talk about, but we would figure that part out. Aella rose to sit on the edge of the bed next to me. I leaned against her side, and she curled an arm around my shoulder.
“Good. You two are scary when you’re mad.” He ambled in, taking a seat on the end of the bed by my feet. “How are you feeling, Taryn?”
“I’m ok. Surprisingly ok, actually,” I told him. “My arm…”
“Yeah, it was messed up.” Lucas shook his head. “That thing must have got you good. The skin was sloughing off and—”
“Lucas!” Aella said sharply.
Lucas looked at me, and his expression grew apologetic as he seemed to notice how green I had become. Woozy, I tried to turn my head to better see the whole of my shoulder. My skin had been falling off? I reached to let my hand hover over the bandaging. I touched it gently and rubbed my fingers across the bandage overtop of the bicep. I felt the pressure but no actual pain.
“What happened?”
“When you—” Aella bit her lip, as though trying to decide how much to say, “After you passed out, no other drakes came. We killed the other two, and then we found the nearest maintenance entrance. Lawrence and Victor carried you out. Once we were up top, Lawrence went back under to find the others and keep hunting. Victor got us to the inn. A healer was fetched, and she went to work on the both of us. A lot of healers around here are experts at treating drake wounds, and the one the inn has on call is one of those. Not a master, but she was strong. Belinda couldn’t have even done better on her own. She pulled the acid out and burned out any infection you might have gotten. By the time Belinda got out of the sewers, I was as good as could be expected, and you weren’t getting any worse.”
“The local healer was done in by then, and I took over mending you the rest of the way.” Belinda had returned. She had a tray of what looked like soup, bread, and more to drink. My mouth watered, and I reached for it greedily. When the tray rattled in my left hand, Aella took it from me and gently set it in my lap. I dug in the moment she took her hands away.
“So, my arm is ok?” I asked around a mouth full of lentils and beans.
“You’ll have a scar, and it’ll be sore, but with some work it will be back to fighting condition sooner than later.”
My soup was half gone. I took a swig from the mug. Juice. I hummed in pleasure and took an even deeper gulp. I was starving. “Is everyone else ok?”
Aedith and Ito filed in through the door. It was the commander who answered my question. “Normal bumps and bruises, as to be expected. You had the worst of it, I’m afraid. It’s good to see you awake, Taryn.”
“After the week she’s had, did you really think a little thing like a dragon was going to keep her down?” Luke asked. I grinned at him and then at the commander.
Her lips twitched in what might have been a smile, but then she was all business once more. “Now that you’re up, Ito has something for you.”
The battle mage came forward. He was holding something in his fist, the attached cord dangling between his closed fingers. When he was close enough, he offered it out to me. It was a small charm, no larger than my thumb-nail. It seemed to be made of iron with intricate swirls inlaid into the surface. To my mind it felt heavy. As though it carried more weight than an item that size ought to have.
I squinted at it. I’d seen this before. I couldn’t remember where. Carefully I reached out to take it from him—and the bottom dropped out from my stomach. The very little strength I had seeped away from me, just out of my reach. I jerked my hand away and glared up at Ito reproachfully.
“What is that?”
Ito scratched the back of his head with his free hand, looking guilty. “It’s a charm. As long as you have it on, you won’t be able to channel your magic.”
I looked from face to face, trying to figure out what was going on. “But, you said I had to learn to use it.”
“And you will,” Belinda hurried to reassure me. “It’s just that, you have so much more strength than a normal novice might, and almost no control over it.”
“Aella told you what happened in the sewers. With the drake?” My shoulders were creeping up to my ears.
“No,” Aedith said. “Lawrence did when he rejoined the hunt and informed us where you three had gone.”
I nodded. “I didn’t mean to do that,” I said. I couldn’t keep the whine out of my voice. “It just happened.”
“We know that, and it’s partially our fault, more likely than not. We’re the ones who taught it a new pathway to take besides running in a loop through your skin.” Ito said. “You remember what I told you? About magic following paths it knows? When you became overwhelmed, the magic reacted. You couldn’t have expected that.”
He held out the charm again. This time I took it from him, bracing myself against the feeling of my magic fleeing me. I didn’t like it. I wanted to whip the thing against the nearest wall or into the hearth to melt away. Instead, I slipped the cord over my neck, letting the charm fall under my nightshirt. It rested cool and solid against my skin.
“How does it feel?” Aella asked.
I didn’t know how to describe it to her. It was as though I had plunged my head underwater. Not in the sense of wet or cold, but it was as though one of my senses had been noticeably dulled, in the same way sound was muffled underwater. I could feel that magic was around me, but it was removed from me. It was also unnerving how accustomed I had become to the magic buzzing inside of me. I kept thinking how quiet it was inside my own head. I hadn’t realized it had been so loud before. There was also something that I needed to remember, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.
I looked at Aella, and then around the room at the congregation, and shrugged. “It’s ok. It’s weird. Will I always have to wear it?”
“Training will continue,” Belinda said, “as soon as you’re well enough for it, once we’re out on the road. Once you’ve had more training, the charm will be unnecessary. At the very longest, we’ll need to take it back by the time we get to our next job.”
“Why’s that?” I asked distractedly. I’d had a dream. What had it been about? It felt important.
“The charms are used primarily for containing mages who have proven to be a danger to themselves and others. They’re expensive, and we only have three on hand. We used to have four, but one was used this past autumn.”
I stiffened as I remembered the dream that had shocked me into waking. It hadn’t been a dream at all though, had it? It ha
d been a true vision, like the flash of one that had struck me in the desert as I tried to bring fire to the candle. All these months I’d thought seeing fire and smelling the smoke had been my mind filling in the blanks. I had thought my guilt was plaguing me with dreams of what it might have been like to burn as Michael had.
“You used it on my brother.” My lips felt numb.
Misunderstanding my discomfort, Ito shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “Yes, I’m sorry. Since I knew we’d have to leave quickly, I gave Kaleb one of the charms to keep Michael from causing any more trouble once we had left. It was as much for his safety as the rest of the village’s. I thought if he was contained, the rest of the village might have become calm enough to be rational.”
“Taryn, are you all right?” Aella squeezed my knee. “You’ve gone pale again. Is it the charm?”
“Yes, I think it just feels strange. I’m fine though. Tired.” I said, my voice sounding distant and strained. “Is there anything else I need to know? What have I missed since I’ve been asleep?”
Aedith nodded briskly. “All the drakes were disposed of during the last hunt. Your group found the larger portion of the clutch, and then we found the other two.”
“Vicious little brutes,” Belinda intoned, curling her nose.
The commander shrugged. “Without their parents to get them anything bigger than rats, they were hungry. At that size, they had more of a chance of taking down large prey if they worked together. In a way, it made tracking them down easier.”
“I suppose.”
“Regardless, that makes this job done. We have been paid.” Aedith unhooked a small satchel from her belt and tossed it to me. It landed with a cheery chink on the bed. “There’s payment. We ride east as soon as you’re well enough. There’s no hurry though. We scried with Seventh Company, and they’re still about a week’s ride west.”
I nodded and yawned hugely. I didn’t even need to fake it. Now that I was full of food, exhaustion had swept back over me. “Sorry,” I said, covering my mouth as a second one came on.
“No need to apologize. You had quite the healing put on you, and your magic coming out in such a way was probably even more draining. We’ll leave you alone to rest,” Belinda said. She began gathering up the items she had brought to pass the time as she watched over me and then made her way to the door. She even herded Ito out with her.
Aedith also seemed prepared to go, but before she did, she reached around her daughter to clasp my shoulder warmly. “I am glad you’re all right, Scrap.”
I flushed as, from the doorway, the rest of them gave their own exuberant sentiments to that effect. Then they left, closing the door behind them.
When it was just Aella and me again, I drooped back against the pillows. To my heavy head they felt like the softest pillows I’d ever lain on. Not for the first time since coming to Dabsqin, I was grateful that we had decided to stay in the inn, and not to camp.
For a few moments, neither of us spoke, savoring the silence and the fact that neither of us was dead. It was warm in the bedroom, but not unpleasantly so, and the scent of whatever they had used to wash my blankets was gentle and crisp.
Still, there were things that we needed to discuss, especially if what I suspected was true. A thought had been ruminating in my head since the moment I realized that my more vivid dreams were connected to my brother—a problem all on its own. But the discussion with Aella had to come first, even if breaking our cozy silence to discuss hard things like secrets and lies seemed like the worst decision in the world.
Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to begin. “No more secrets between us, Aella,” I said. “No more leaving me in the dark about things—especially things that have to do with my life. I need to be able to trust you, otherwise this,” I gestured to the two of us, “it falls apart.”
Aella’s eyebrows had drawn together as I spoke. She chewed at her lower lip, not looking at me. “Maybe you’ll think it’s daft of me, but I really didn’t even think you’d be mad about me following orders.”
“How?” I asked, honestly flummoxed. “It was my body—my magic.”
“Yeah, I know that,” she said quickly. “It’s just that, when magic stuff comes up, Ito and Belinda know what’s best. They’re trained in it. If they said that you needed time, then I figured that they were right. They were orders, and they did intend on telling you eventually.”
I was torn. Part of me wished she had just thought about it from my side. It seemed like such a simple thing. The other part of me understood that following orders was Aella’s whole life.
She picked a few pieces of lint of off the blanket that covered me. Her eyes were downcast and full of her own frustration. I almost wanted to let her off the hook at that… but I couldn’t.
“They were bad orders, Aella,” I said. “I trust Belinda and Ito, but neither of us can afford to not think about our actions because someone else told us they were right. I had that kind of blind faith in someone I’d known much longer than either of them. That’s what almost got me killed last year.”
She looked up at me, startled. “Ito and Belinda would never hurt you.”
“And I believe that, but do you understand what I’m saying? I know you thought you were doing the right thing, and I get that. But I deserved some thought. My opinion counts too.”
“I know that.”
“And do you believe that I’d never knowingly put them in danger?”
“You know that I do.”
“You can’t just say that. You have to actually act like it too. If you don’t have faith in me, at least enough to talk to me and tell me the truth, whatever it is… then I can’t believe that you trust me, and that means we’re broken from the start,” I trailed off.
I didn’t know how to explain it any better than that. Last year, I hadn’t known that I’d deserved the trust I was asking for now. I’d felt so closely tied to Michael that I’d thought if he was untrustworthy then I was as well.
All along it had been Aella saying I was wrong. She said I wasn’t like him. Not in those ways. I wanted to believe her. Had she only been humoring me?
She met my eyes with her own hazel ones. They were serious and thoughtful. She seemed to be searching for something. Slowly, she nodded. “I’ve taken for granted over the years that I could trust that my mother had my own best interests at heart. It didn’t occur to me that you might not feel the same way.” Before I could reply to that, she hurried to speak over me. “But that was wrong. This time the mages were wrong. My mother was wrong.”
I looked at her, a little slack-jawed. That was more than I had been expecting. Aella thought her mother hung the moon.
“You had every right to know what was happening to you, regardless of what my orders were. They… they were bad orders. They were bad orders because they hurt you, and even though we said we trusted you, we didn’t act like we did, and that hurt you all over again.”
A few months ago, I had been so afraid of picking fights with her. Even when I’d found out she had taken my suspicions about Master Noland’s connection to the menagerie back to Kaleb. I had been willing to let that go, even though it hurt me. I’d thought that if we fought over it I’d lose her. I could see that had been wrong. Aella cared about me as much as I cared about her. I wouldn’t lose her for talking about things that bothered me.
If I had any energy left, I probably would have felt a little foolish. I’d always been able to talk to Nai about everything, why had I thought things should be different with Aella? Just because it was romance and not friendship? Talking about things like this could only make our relationship better. I didn’t want to be a part of any relationship, romance or friendship, where I couldn’t talk honestly about what I was feeling.
I sniffled a little then, partly because I was relieved, and partly because I was so exhausted, but my day was not close to being over.
“Could you—” I gestured to the drawer where my handkerchiefs were, and Aella grabbed on
e out and handed it to me. I took it awkwardly with my left hand.
“Sorry. Thank you,” I said, dabbing my eyes. “It’s the healing. It makes a person sappy. I, um, I want to thank you though, for understanding. I know these past few months since I was thrown into your life have been intense. I know you did the best you knew how to do. I really do appreciate you.”
When I set the square of cloth down on my knee, she took my right hand gently in her left, careful not to jostle the arm itself. “I know better now, and I’ll do better. From now on, you get the truth from me. No secrets.”
I bobbed my own head once. “I believe you, and I want to give you the same. You and Twelfth Company have my loyalty. I’ll have your backs, no matter the fight.”
Her other arm, still around my shoulder, tightened. “I never doubted that Taryn. I’m sorry we made you doubt us.”
The handkerchief Aella had grabbed for me was the one Lady Famai had lent to me when I’d run into her in the barn. As I lay with Aella, I fiddled with it, thinking.
A part of me was ashamed that I had not realized it sooner but being behind Michael’s eyes as he burned on the funeral pyre was not the only vision I’d had since leaving Nophgrin. There had been another, right after Benjamin’s attack. In that dream—or rather, vision, a strange woman I could not see had offered to bring me to justice. I hadn’t known Lady Famai’s voice to recognize it at the time. There had been no reason to suspect that it had been any more than a dream.
Because I had not thought much of the dream, the details of it had long faded or been discarded. However, the way it had felt had not, and I knew with a strange assuredness that it had felt the same as when I was looking through Michael’s eyes as he burned. In fact, I suspected I had been looking through his eyes in this one as well, hearing what he heard.
The exact wording the dream woman had used were lost to me, but if I remembered right, they had been very similar to the ones Lady Famai had said to me on my way to the stables. They were similar enough that the more I thought about it, the more certain I was that it had been her. The women had spoken of powerful forces being behind her. She had expressed a seemingly completely altruistic wish to help. Perhaps it was a script she often used to conscript people into her service.
Of Dragon Warrens and Other Traps Page 30