I swallowed. I remembered how he refused to take his shirt off at the games. Now I understood why.
“Some of your victims fought back?”
“On my back? Hardly. Don’t worry, these scars are old and long healed.” He laid out the bedrolls and motioned to the space beside him, waiting for me to lie down. I moved forward awkwardly and lay as close to the wall as possible.
I heard him stretch out next to me and felt his eyes on my back. I turned to face him. “If you didn’t get the scars from your work, how did you come by them?”
He was propped up on one elbow, and his other hand absently stroked the lines on his ribs. His eyes were unsettled as if he was recalling each lash, but his face remained calm, well practiced at burying his secrets. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter anymore. Go to sleep, Lia.” He rolled to his back and closed his eyes. I stared at his chest and watched it rise in slow careful breaths.
It mattered.
Two hours later, I was still awake, thinking about Kaden and the violent life he led, more violent than I even knew. The scars frightened me. Not their appearance but where they had come from. He said they were old and long healed. How old could they be? He was only a couple of years older than I was. I wondered if Eben had scars beneath his shirt too. What did the Vendans do to their children? What would they do to me?
For the first time in what seemed an eternity, I was chilled. I was soaked to the skin, but I had nothing else to put on. The hard ride from Civica to Terravin had been luxurious compared with this. The thunder continued to boom, but Kaden slept soundly, oblivious to the noise. He hadn’t shackled me at night since we left the City of Dark Magic, probably figuring my cut and bruised feet were enough to keep me from traveling far. That had been true—at first. They were mostly healed now, but I made sure I continued to limp generously enough to make him think otherwise.
The wind and rain still raged, and the thunder vibrated through me. It was all so deafening it easily masked the roar of Griz’s snores. I rolled over and eyed the saddlebag lying at Kaden’s feet. My pulse sped. My knife was still in there. I would need it. The mad beating of rain could mask a lot more than snores.
My chest pounded as I sat up slowly. With the forest around us, there were places to hide now, but could I ride an unsaddled skittish horse in a furious storm? Just trying to get up on its back without stirrups would be a challenge if I could manage it at all. But if I could lead one of them to a downed log …
I got to my feet, crouching at first, and then I stood, waiting to see if anyone noticed. When they didn’t, I took a deep breath and walked to Kaden’s feet, then stooped, never taking my eyes from him as I carefully lifted his saddlebag. I was afraid to even swallow. The storm covered any sound I made, but I’d rummage through his bag for my knife once I was outside. I took a shaky cautious step—
Don’t go. Not yet.
I stopped. My throat pinched shut. My feet were ready to run, but a voice as clear as my own warned me not to. My fist shook, tightly clenching the bag.
Not yet.
I stared at Kaden, unable to move. Damn whatever spoke to me. I forced air into my lungs and slowly, against every other demand screaming in my head, crouched again, inch by inch, to set the saddlebag back at his feet. And then, just as slowly, I stepped back and lay down beside him. I stared up at the stones above us, my eyes wet with frustration.
“Wise move,” Kaden whispered, without ever opening his eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
RAFE
I was twelve when Sve
n began teaching me to track. I had complained bitterly, preferring to spend my time training with a sword or learning maneuvers on the back of a horse. I couldn’t be bothered with the quiet, careful work of a tracker. I was a soldier. Or I was going to be one.
He had shoved me, sending me sprawling to the ground. The enemy doesn’t always march in great armies, boy, he said with contempt. Sometimes the enemy is just one person who will bring down a kingdom. He had glared down his long, sharp nose at me, daring me to get up. Shall I tell your father you want to be that person who fails the kingdom because you only want to swing a long stick of metal? I scowled but shook my head. I didn’t want to be that person. I had been tossed aside early, given over to Sven to make a man of me. He had zealously attended to his job. He gave me a hand up, and I listened.
Sven knew the ways of the wilderness, the ways of wind, soil, rock, and grass, and how to read the tracks the enemy left behind. The clues were in more than just the litter of fires or excrement. In more than blood dripped onto soil. In more than footprints or horse tracks. You were lucky if you had those. There were also trampled weeds. A snapped twig. The barest bit of shine across vegetation that had been brushed by a shoulder or horse. Even rocky ground left clues. A pebble crushed into the soil. Gravel mounded in irregular patterns. A ridge of dirt caused by a newly pitched stone. Dust tossed by hoof and wind where it didn’t belong. But right now I pondered his long-ago instruction, rain is both friend and foe, depending on when it comes.
Sven had been able to garner only a modest squad of three men on such short notice, especially since Dalbreck was amassing a show of force at the Azentil outpost. They had caught up with me on the third day. They’d made better time than I did, because I left clear signs for them to follow, sometimes stacking stones they could easily spot from a distance when the ground became rocky.
I guessed we were two full days behind Lia now. Maybe more. The tracks were becoming thinner. We’d had to spread out or backtrack several times when we lost the trail, but we had found it again just outside the City of Dark Magic. As we got closer, we saw that the tracks had been obliterated by dozens of horses traveling in the opposite direction. A patrol, but whose?
We had picked the tracks up again down a narrow trail between towering walls. At the end of the trail was a ruin, where I now sat huddled. I wanted to break something, but everything around me was already broken. I stared at a bloody toe print on a slab of marble near a pool, and I listened to the fierce pounding of rain, every drop of which was foe, not friend.
Sven sat on a tumbled pillar across from me. He shook his head, looking at his feet. I knew the reality of trying to pick up tracks that were at least two days ahead of us. It might be a hundred miles or more before we found fresh tracks. If we did at all. The torrential rains would have washed away everything between us and them.
“Your father will have my head for this,” Sven said.
“And one day I’ll be king, and I’d have your head for not helping me.”
“I’d be a very old man by then.”
“My father’s already a very old man. It might be sooner than you think.”