She wished she could tell him yes for certain.I hope so.
“I can’t defend Kalun against an enemy I can’t see and don’t understand,” she admitted to Zaredis. “I’m of no use to you here in that capacity. I said before I think it’s you who’s the one anchoring him here, but maybe I can be of use to you both if I go to Domora with the cat’s-paw. If something in the palace has changed and Gharek’s knowledge is no longer accurate, I can coax a spirit to help.” The idea sounded far-fetched to her own ears, and she feared Zaredis would think so as well.
Support for her suggestion came from an unexpected source. “I can ward this camp against whatever this thing is.” Rurian swept a hand to encompass the tent and all the camp in his gesture. “I banished it before. If it comes back, I’ll be ready.”
Zaredis tapped his chin, swooping black eyebrows pitched toward each other as he frowned. “Nothing is free. What price for helping my brother, shade speaker?”
Triumph made the blood sing in her veins though she kept her excitement behind a stoic mask. “Protection for the child Estred while she’s under your care. You’ve told Gharek she’d come to no harm while she was here, but a bargain struck is better than assurance given, no matter the trustworthiness of the person giving it.” She offered the last to him, praying she didn’t give insult for not accepting his declaration as an unalterable truth.
His gaze flickered back and forth between her and Gharek. “Why such concern for the cat’s-paw’s get?”
“I was once her nurse.”
This time his eyebrows winged upward. “You failed to mention that earlier.”
He sounded very much like his milder-mannered twin at that moment. “You didn’t ask.”
“Why isn’t she Estred’s nurse anymore?” He aimed the question at Gharek, who gazed at Siora as if trying to comprehend what she was doing and why.
“She betrayed me.”
Such a wealth of dark emotion in those words. Worst of all, it wasn’t the anger that made her guts knot, but the disappointment, not so much in her but in himself. Had he truly trusted her? Let down the wall of suspicion thicker than the curtain walls surrounding Domora and placed some small measure of faith in her? She tried to swallow around the lump in her throat. No wonder his fury ran so deep. It encompassed himself as well as her.
Zaredis snorted. “Discovered your true character, did she?”
“I’ve always known it,” she said softly.Though not nearly as well as I assumed. She kept that only in her thoughts. Gharek was a study in conflict, a man of shifting character, gaping wounds, and a frayed soul. He possessed one defining, consistent trait—absolute, unwavering devotion to his daughter, even at the cost of anyone else, including himself.
The general tucked the charm of Estred’s hair into a hidden space inside his tunic, ignoring Gharek’s feverish regard. “I’ll give you my answer tonight.” He waved a hand toward her and Gharek. “Take them outside and feed them. Loosen his bindings but changeleather for iron.” He answered the cat’s-paw’s unspoken question. “You won’t run. I don’t possess a shackle stronger than the one you made for yourself, but I’ll not leave you completely free.”
Before the soldiers escorted them out, Zaredis brought them to a halt. “Will my brother return, shade speaker?” The hope in his inquiry reminded Siora that while he acted as warden, extortionist, and possible executioner, he was also a man grieving for a murdered brother.
“I believe he will, lord, though I can’t say for certain. He was at your side when I arrived. You’re why he’s drawn here, not me. I’m merely the means by which you can speak with him. Remember, when you grow cold in the heat, he’s nearby.” Zaredis nodded and waved them away.
Once outside, they were marched to a spot near the middle of the camp, out of the way of traffic but still in a space visible to all from every direction. There were no structures to hide behind or use as cover, even if they could get free of their bonds. Gharek’s leather shackles were exchanged for iron ones, though now he wore them with his hands clasped in front of him. The leg irons they clasped around his ankles were connected by a short length of chain with another one hooked to it and staked to the ground by a peg hammered deep into a tree stump. Siora was tethered as well but by rope and only at one ankle. Zaredis was far less concerned about her escaping than his primary quarry. She just happened to be in the wrong place with the wrong person and managed to make herself useful to him.
Gharek squatted on his haunches, bowing his shoulders forward and wincing as the muscles there unstitched slowly from their strained position of earlier. He regarded Siora in the aging evening’slengthening shadows. “Your offer to help me changes nothing. You’re still treacherous, and you’ll still kneel before Estred and beg her forgiveness.”
“Take it anyway. Even bearded, you’re recognizable by some. If we travel to Domora, there are places in the city I can go that you can’t. Only you hunt me. Many hunt you.” He scowled but didn’t argue her points. She gave a deep sigh. “I wish I’d known you hunted me for a reason other than to kill me. I wouldn’t have run.” His disdainful snort told her he didn’t believe a word of it. The effort to convince him otherwise would fall on deaf ears.
She changed the subject. “Did you feel the entity’s pull on you when it entered the tent?” Why he fell to its bewitchment in the first place puzzled her. She’d first thought her own resistance to such darkness was because she was a shade speaker, but none in the tent, except dead Kalun, suffered any effects.
Gharek gave a contemptuous sniff. “Proximity,” he replied. “We’re far enough away now. I felt nothing when it entered the general’s tent.”
“That’s a lie,” she told him, disregarding the hostile sparks in his narrowed eyes. “I saw your face. You felt the draw of its power just like Kalun did. Maybe not as much, but you felt it.”
Before Gharek could snap back with an answer, a guard brought them food and water. Arguments and accusations fell by the wayside in favor of eating, and Siora devoured her bowl of cooked fish and scorched flatbread with relish. Gharek did the same, frowning into his bowl as he did so, as if the food revealed some displeasing foretelling of future events.
They’d barely finished their meal when they were escorted back to the tent. Zaredis once more sat on the stool placed on thesmall dais near the tent’s center. All had been put to rights, and except for the burn patterns and tattered holes on one side of the tent’s covering, there was no visible reminder of the ghost-eater’s visit. A few of his counselors hovered nearby, and directly behind him, the pale, tattooed Rurian regarded them with a hooded gaze.
Zaredis addressed her first. “I agree to your terms, shade speaker. You leave before dawn. Two horses with supplies. You don’t have limitless time.” He then spoke to Gharek. “I expect you both back here in a fortnight at most with every detail of the palace’s hidden accesses as well as something that will deliver the Windcry into my possession. I’d prefer that you brought the Windcry itself, but that isn’t realistic. If you haven’t returned by then, you better be dead because if you aren’t...” He left the threat hanging unspoken and didn’t he wait for a verbal agreement from either of them before dismissing them from his presence. Once more they were tethered to the tree stump and each given two blankets to use for bedding.
Siora might have crowed at their improved circumstances except they weren’t truly improved, just changed. Zaredis still intended to kill Gharek, and soon he’d have Estred in his custody. There was also an abomination out there, its darkness long and becoming longer as it stretched questing claws into new territory searching for prey. But she and Gharek were still alive, still able to affect or change the course of their fate in some small way, to pray to the gods for mercy or intervention or both. Gharek’s task was a difficult one to fulfill, fraught with numerous perils. She hoped she could truly help instead of hinder him.
As if he heard her thoughts, he lay down on one of the blankets given to him and balled the other one up to act as a pillow. Hereclined on his side, facing her. Endless long legs, wide shoulders, high cheekbones bruised and thin mouth still swollen from Zaredis’s earlier strike. His eyes were dark as ink in the camp’s dull torchlight. “If you betray me again and endanger Estred, I’ll show you no mercy, Siora,” he said in the sultry tones of a lover.
All the hairs on her nape rose. She swallowed, her mouth devoid of saliva and her throat tight. “I won’t betray you, Gharek. I swear it.”
He studied her for several moments without speaking, and Siora refused to break their stare. Finally he rolled onto his back, hands relaxed and palms flattened to his chest, and closed his eyes. She stayed in her reclining position a little longer, unabashedly admiring his profile with its prominent nose and hard jawline. An unforgiving face for an unforgiving man.