A bell chimed in the distance, signaling that it was time for the feast in the main building.
Callon reached for the black jacket he wore, dropped it over my shoulders, and then pulled it closed. “If anyone asks why you’re wearing that, tell them I told you to.”
The jacket dropped nearly to my knees. I shoved my hands through the arm holes and rolled up the sleeves. He wasn’t going to hear any complaints from me.
* * *
From the outside, the main brick building of Cardach looked like it originated in the Glory Years. Inside was a completely different scene. There was only a single room with the same brick walls showing; everything else had been gutted. There were three long trestle tables that formed a U. A fire burned in the center, venting through a large hole in the roof.
The fire kept the place warm enough that I would’ve shed Callon’s jacket under normal circumstances. Rex’s wives, all five of them, were dressed similarly as they sat in a line to his left. Callon was to Rex’s right, and I’d been shoved in between Callon and Dax. Koz, Hess, and Zink were farther down one of the side tables, which may or may not have indicated their value in Rex’s eyes.
Young men came around, filling the bowls and plates that were in front of us while I leaned back out of vision range, thankful for the extra-wide tables.
Callon and I only had one plate and bowl in front of us. There were stews of some sort, one soupier and in the bowl. The other was more of a blob that oozed. Neither looked very good, but the smell made me salivate. But were they mine or his? Considering my earlier treatment, I wasn’t sure they even fed women around here.
Callon was turned, speaking to Rex. “No other sightings?”
I couldn’t hear what Rex said over the din of chatter and eating, and I wasn’t hungry enough to interrupt.
“Partners share a plate,” Dax said from my other side, pointing to the food in front of us.
I looked about the group and saw several other couples sharing. “Thanks.”
Callon was still busy talking to Rex, so I slid the plate, which was closest to me, over and began devouring it with the single spoon provided. It was as good as it smelled. I finished half the plate before switching to the bowl.
The only thing threatening to ruin my appetite was the way Dax’s eyes were burning my skin as he pretended to not look at me. I’d thought he wasn’t a starer, but I’d been fooled. I had a long history with the no-look starer, people who pretended to be gazing at everything else when the only thing they were actually watching was you. He’d probably counted every misplaced hair on my head by now while he pretended to be amused by the fire dancers who’d begun performing.
I wished I could feign such interest in the dancers. Circus acts didn’t do it for me, and the memories that came along with them made it hard to pretend otherwise. They reminded me of Baryn. He’d always been looking for off-the-beaten-path amusements. The sicker and twisted, the better, even if Baryn had to contribute to get them down to his standards. It was ingrained in me to fear that one of the dancers would trip and be badly burned because of an ill-placed item.
“How long have you been with Callon?” Dax asked, jerking me roughly from memories that had begun to swallow me whole.
“Just a while,” I said, keeping it sparse and depriving the conversation of any oxygen so it might die a quick death. I shifted my chair slightly closer to Callon.
“He didn’t mention you specifically in any of his messages. I was merely curious,” Dax said, now transfixed on the way I held my fork.
“You’d have to ask him about that.” I put the fork down and replaced it with the tankard of ale in front of Callon.
“Do you always do that?” Dax asked.
“What?” Was I eating weird or something?
His eyes narrowed and he leaned closer, pointing at my lips. “That. You roll your bottom lip in and bite it when you’re unsure.”
I stopped biting instantly. I leaned back the same distance he’d just leaned forward.
“No. I don’t.” Did I do that all the time? I had no idea. I’d never noticed. Better question, why did he notice? Why was he paying such close attention to me? In a room with thirty or forty people, there had to be someone more interesting who wanted to participate in conversation.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?” Dax asked, dropping all pretense of eating or looking anywhere else.
Callon tensed on the other side of me, as if nerves were a cold you could catch.
“Of course not.” The last thing I’d admit to the person trying to unsettle me was that he was succeeding. I might not have seen or done that many things in life, but I had a stellar education on being at a disadvantage.
“Your mannerisms remind me of someone.” His gaze locked on me; he wasn’t even trying to pretend he was distracted by the entertainers anymore.
“Thank you for the dinner, Rex, but we’ve had a long trip,” Callon said. There was a rough timbre to his voice, like roughened nerves had chafed his vocal cords.
Guess he wasn’t enjoying the dinner either. I was about to jump up, insisting “my man” needed me to attend him like the good little woman I really wasn’t. Callon grabbed my hand before I had to bother. He pulled me up with him as Rex was nodding his goodbye.
“Of course,” Rex said.
Callon had already looped his arm around my waist, pulling me close, as he nodded to some of the other people in the room. He steered us away from the table without a glance at Dax.
“Are you all right?” he asked as we put some distance between the feast and us.
“I’m fine. Are you?” I asked. I thought I’d had a bad dinner. What had Rex said to trigger the beast?
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth, not looking at me. The question might as well have been “Are you planning on killing someone tonight?” with the way he answered.
We made it back to the room, the fire already tended to, my cleaned leathers lying on the bed. Relieved to have one worry off my mind, I turned to study Callon. I took in the hard lines, the tendon that ran down his neck and seemed to merge into the ridge that made up his shoulders. I backed away until we were on opposite sides of the room.
His chest rose and fell a few times before the tension softened a little.
I took a step forward, waffled, and took a half step back. It had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with control. He was teetering on the edge of it, and I knew how that felt, how badly you sometimes needed space in those moments. The thing that bothered me most was that I didn’t know why he was like this.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
He might be now, but he definitely wasn’t a few minutes ago. Still, it had gotten me out of that dining hall. I should let it rest and be grateful.
My fingers played with the edge of his coat I still wore. “Did he say something about the Magician? Does he know something about the meeting tomorrow?”
Callon’s gaze went to my hands. “No. It was a personal matter. Not important.”
I let the subject drop. I wasn’t delusional enough to think we were at a place where I could press the issue. Personal confessions would not be on the menu. Most days, we barely talked.
Callon’s frame went rigid again. A second later, there was a knock at the door.
Callon walked over and answered, “Not a good time.”
“I didn’t mean to upset Teddy at dinner. She did something that reminded me of Dal, and it caught me off guard.” Dax’s gaze shot over Callon’s shoulder to me for the briefest moment.
“Not right—”
“Who’s Dal?” I asked.
Callon looked over at me, his hand still on the door, ready to shut it in Dax’s face. I didn’t know what had set Callon off, or why I’d gotten so uptight either, but I knew we needed this man tomorrow. Callon couldn’t drive him way, not now, even if I wanted him to.
Truth was that I didn’t want Callon to drive him away. All Dax had done was
ask me a couple of questions, and I’d gotten my back up. I’d walked into the feast like a warrior walked into battle, waiting for an attack. When I hadn’t gotten one, I’d imagined it. I might’ve lost the visible scars of my abuse, but the real ones were still carved into my soul and always would be. That didn’t mean I’d let them rule the rest of my life if I could help it. The Dax guy had ten more beasts hiding in the woods for the confrontation tomorrow. I wasn’t letting him go anywhere until things were normal between us again.
“She’s my wife,” Dax said. He loved her. It was in the way his voice softened when he spoke of her.
I’d let my unease at the feast heighten my reactions, but I’d been right about this guy. There was an honesty in his face, his voice.
I took a few steps toward the pair of men, both of them watching every step I took.
“I’m sorry if I was short with you. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m on edge.” I wrapped Callon’s jacket a little more firmly around me.
Dax nodded. “Understandable.”
Callon moved his shoulder a little more toward me.
“Truce?” I asked, and then held my hand out to Dax. It was the first time I’d willingly touched a stranger since I could remember.
“Of course,” he said, as he grasped my hand.
I glanced at Callon, his eyes a nice, calm hazel. He opened the door a few inches wider. “Come in.”
Dax walked in slowly, as if I were a spooked horse that might stampede away.
“You never told me how you managed this meeting,” Dax said, looking from Callon to me. “I saw the way you tried to steer clear of people at the feast. You’ve got Plaguer blood, don’t you?” His eyes shot to my hand.
Although they had all but phased out that marking by the time I was born, I knew what he was looking for. A scarred P burned onto the top of my right hand that would indicate I’d survived the Bloody Death. The practice of marking Plaguers had originated back in Newco, long before I was born. If someone managed to survive the Bloody Death, which was almost never, and they weren’t killed by those around them who feared a contagion, the kindest outcome was to be scarred with the letter P.
You were an outcast for the rest of your days, if you weren’t rounded up into an asylum-type jail. I didn’t know what my mother had gone through, but it had been known she was a Plaguer when she sold me. People didn’t normally announce that, so she might’ve had the mark. Although I’d been sold for whatever magic I’d prove to have, so maybe she did announce it.
“No, I’m not. My mother was. Her magic passed down to me.”
Dax’s eyes narrowed. “A lot of Plaguers I’ve met have trouble bearing children. We don’t have much information. I didn’t know that the talents passed down in that way.”
“As opposed to another way?” I asked, catching the unsaid alternative.
“As opposed to our way,” Callon said.
It took a minute before what they were both saying clicked. And once it did, it didn’t lock down tightly.
I turned to Callon. “Wait, beasts are born to Plaguers?”
“As far as we know,” Callon said.
Dax scratched his chin. “The sex of the person must alter the way it expresses.”
It made as much sense as putting an apple in a bowl beside a pear, but suddenly I felt like I belonged, because we were all fruit. It was a connection when I was used to having none. A link to a shared past. Like, maybe, just maybe, I’d been meant to end up with these people? The same thing that had changed me had changed them. In a completely different way, but it bonded us somehow.
Callon walked to the door and opened it before Koz had to knock.
“Heard there was a meeting going on?” Koz joked as he entered. Hess and Zink came in behind him. I nodded at the guys, even smiling as Zink passed me.
Zink’s gaze skimmed over me, as if he was about to ignore the smile directed at him, but he couldn’t seem to get past it.
“What?” he asked, as if he suspected I’d stuffed his socks with leeches or something equally heinous.
“Nothing.” I continued to smile. Of all the people, Zink was the last beast I’d explain my reasons to. Still, he was my people, so even if I disliked him a lot, I was going to make an effort henceforth to be cordial. Until I couldn’t stand it, anyway.
Zink sneered and made his way to where Koz was scribbling on a paper he’d brought, discussing war plans for tomorrow. I barely heard him. I had one thought on my mind: what were Dax’s stakes in the game ahead? It was the only way to know how easily he’d fold or how hard he’d hold his ground when we met the Magician tomorrow. Had the Magician killed someone he loved? Was he here for vengeance or for sport?
I inched my way over to Dax’s side, determined to get some answers. I didn’t get a chance. He lobbed a doozy at me first, and in the process stopped all other conversations in the room.
“You’re the one the Magician has been looking for, aren’t you?” Dax asked.
Callon’s eyes blazed, and there was an immediate friction in the room. I reached a hand out toward Callon, laying it on his forearm.
I’d regrouped. I could handle this. We both had questions and both deserved answers.
“Tell me first why you’re willing to get in this fight,” I said.
Dax smiled slightly. “I have no secrets, at least not among friends. The Magician runs Newco. If he’d stay there, I’d leave well enough alone. But he’s not. He’s been slowly expanding south, and he doesn’t plan on stopping until he makes it down the southeastern coast, where my home is, where my wife sleeps at night. This is my fight too. If I can take him out now, it’ll be easier than dealing with his troops later.”
Again, it came back to his wife. It was why I believed him.
“And if we do kill the Magician, what about the person who takes his place?” I asked. Chopping off the head of this snake would solve my problem, but another one always grew back.
“The fear of the Magician is what keeps most in line,” Dax said. “Once he’s gone, his replacement will be too busy trying to keep control of the territory they have to think of expanding.”
“We hope, anyway,” Callon said, moving to stand behind me but calm again. Callon’s moods lately were getting more unpredictable than mine.
Dax was waiting for an answer to his question. He wouldn’t ask again, but if we were going into battle together, I was going to have to trust him. He’d probably hear tomorrow anyway, right?
“I’m the one he’s after,” I said. Callon’s hand moved to my shoulder.
Dax didn’t miss it either, glancing there before he said, “I’ve heard rumors of what you can do. I was wondering how we were going to kill him once we got him.”
“I can and I will, given the chance,” I said. “I’d rather not get into specifics, but it’s true. I have an odd relationship with the living and the dead.”
Dax laughed. “You know, you looked a little meek before, but I might’ve misjudged you. You certainly don’t shy away from blood, and that’s not an insult.”
“I’m going through a bit of split personality at the moment. I’m fairly certain the person who’s winning is the one who’ll rip the Magician’s head from his body without hesitation.”
The room laughed. I wasn’t sure why that was so funny, but it was better than the tension of a few moments ago.
“Tomorrow, hang back until I give the signal,” Callon said. “If we can get a clear shot at him, we take him down. Teddy will finish him off.”
Dax nodded. “Can’t wait. We’ll be there,” he said, before nodding at the rest of the guys and exiting our room.
Koz pocketed his paper and then left with Zink and Hess.
Callon shut the door and turned to me, a finger to his lips. I’d forgotten that there was a new set of ears that could listen in.
Callon stood by the door, as if he were listening to Dax walk away. It was altogether possible, and a bit alarming when you thought about it.
He finally turned his full attention back to me, giving the all-clear sign.
“Do you trust him or not?” I asked. Callon was the one who’d invited Dax, but I couldn’t tell one minute from the next whether he trusted the guy or not. I thought we should, but Callon had barely let Dax in the room earlier.
His brow furrowed. “I trust him with my life.”
Okey-dokey, then. Callon being hot and cold with the guy wasn’t helping my trust issues any. I might be in the same bowl of fruit with them, but I was fresh from the vine and hadn’t thoroughly checked out the rest of the pieces for rotten apples yet. I trusted one person, Tuesday, and it would stay that way, even if she weren’t fruit, maybe closer to a veggie.
“Koz mentioned we’re meeting the Magician near one of those Hell Pits. Do you think Dax will get weird if—”
“If he knew the mud followed you around? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter because he’s not going to know. When we get there, you’re going to steer clear of it.” Callon walked to the bed, grabbed a pillow off it, and then stretched out on the rug beside it.
“Glad we’re on the same page, then.” I walked around him and climbed onto the bed, staying close enough to the edge that I could keep an eye on him in case he tried to leave.
Nine
I should’ve tied Callon to me with a rope last night. He was gone, and I was about to go crazy. Didn’t he know you should at least leave a note? He’d either been abducted, which couldn’t be that easy to do, or he’d be back, because his bag was still here. Still, he’d been gone for an hour.
There was a bang at the door before it swung open. Callon walked in and grabbed his bag.
“Are you ready?” he asked, as if I hadn’t been sitting there ready for a good twenty minutes.
“Yes,” I said, while I squinted and shook my head. Lips pursed, I grabbed my bag and walked from the room. Are you ready? That was what he said on possibly the worst morning of my life after he went missing?
Hess, Zink, and Koz were waiting outside. I gave them the friendliest nod I was capable of and continued walking. I was going the right way because there was only one exit out of this place of spikes.
Savage One: Born Wild Book Two Page 5