Manaran tipped his chin toward Siora, busy rolling scrolls and returning them to their proper place. “What about your shade speaker?”
Siora smiled. “My skills are limited, master. I talk with the dead, but no ghostly mages have paid us a visit to help while we were here.” Her teasing lightened the mood in the room.
Manaran sighed. “Ah well, maybe your notes will offer what you need.” He moved around the table to help gather scrolls. One of his robes’ voluminous sleeves dragged across the table like a wave, sweeping ink, parchment, and books to the floor.
Siora scrambled to catch some as they fell and returned them to the table. Manaran cursed and bent to help. Gharek crouched down beside him, offering his forearm as support for the older man to stand.
“I grow clumsy with old age,” Manaran muttered on a sour note. He gave Gharek an unexpected wink and suddenly the weight of something pressed to his side. He glanced down to discoverManaran shoving a small book at him. He took it, using the sleight of hand that had always been one of his most useful skills, to tuck it into his tunic.
He gave Manaran a nod of thanks. Even if he and Siora found nothing useful in their notes, he was certain they’d find it in the small tome the librarian had sneaked to him. He waved to Siora. “Let’s go. The scribes can put the rest of this away.”
Before they left, Gharek clasped forearms with Manaran, noting the thinness of the other man’s arm, remembering him as a younger, more robust figure who filled his ears with fantastic stories and loaned him precious books to read. “Any alarms I should worry about when we leave?”
Manaran shrugged. “Unless you stole something, not at all.” A melancholy smile flitted across his mouth. “You still have your mother’s eyes. It’s how I recognized you under that beard. Good luck, Gharek.”
Gharek thanked him again, and soon he and Siora were once more riding pillion on the free trader gelding through Domora.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to stay any longer in the city,” she told him.
“Nor I.” He guided the horse toward one of Domora’s gates. “We’ll camp farther away from Domora and take the paths leading to Kraelag. Fewer travelers that way, and Zaredis will have moved his army toward there to delay clashing with any of Tovan’s troops before he’s ready.”
He released the breath he’d been holding once they were through the gates and beyond the siege walls but stayed tense and ready to bolt until they were on the road leading to what remained of the old capital. Nothing of that city remained except soot marksand charred bone, which suited him fine. No crowds of people to contend with, and while it might be haunted, it wasn’t cursed like Midrigar. God-fire, in all its ferocity, had destroyed Kraelag; a cleansing immolation unlike the poison of old spells laid upon Midrigar to trap her dead inside, as much prisoners of calculated evil as the trap shadows in their fabric cages. No curse would have dared settle on Kraelag, and if fortune favored them, neither would a ghost-eater.
They rode until nightfall, stopping on the edge of a farmer’s field where a small lean-to with barely enough room for a pair of sheep stood empty under a sky speckled with stars and scudding clouds. It was as good a place as any, providing shelter in case it rained, and a floor cushioned with a layer of hay not too infested with insects and other vermin. “Pray whoever owns this land won’t chase us off before we can get some sleep,” he told Siora. “If we’re out of here before dawn and don’t build a fire, we might be gone before they even learn we were here.”
Siora unsaddled and tethered the horse this time, crooning a few words so that its ears flickered back and forth. “Good idea. Besides, what we have left from the foodstuffs Halani packed for us doesn’t need to be cooked. It’s too warm anyway to huddle up to a fire.”
Once they settled down for the night and shared a meal, Siora unpacked the other satchel one of the free traders had tied to their saddle. Two tunics, heavily embroidered but that had seen better days, were inside, along with a handful of drying cloths, a coin-size round of soap, and a corked pot of ointment for tending the scratches she and Gharek had sustained courtesy of the trap shadow.
Gharek paged through the book he’d taken from his tunic; asmall grimoire with some of the spells translated into languages he could read and some he couldn’t. His burgeoning excitement over what he read was difficult to contain, and Siora paused in her task to give him a puzzled look. “Whatever you’re reading, it’s done what I doubt few besides Estred have managed: made you truly smile.”
“Then I find amusement in dark things.” He held up the book. “Manaran must be more terrified than I first thought, that what struck the Maesor will strike Domora. He thinks I’ve already found a sorcerer to work the right spells. He slipped this to me before we left. A spellbook with certain pages marked.” He passed the book to her.
She turned it over in her hands, flipped through some of the pages, perused their contents, and returned it to him, her expression guarded. “Him knocking things off the table. That was a ruse and distraction to pass it to you. I thought it was just being clumsy.”
“Clumsy with purpose.” Gharek cracked the book open once more to one of the pages Manaran had marked with a folded corner. A spell for how to break a ward that required the spittle of a leper. His lip curled. Who, he wondered, thought up some of this tripe? Why couldn’t potions involve the juice of fruits or a nicely aged wine? “Manaran isn’t anything like the cloudy-minded mystic he enjoys playing for the entertainment of others.”
She eyed the book as if its contents had been written with the spit of a leper. “I hope it will have what Zaredis needs and what we all need to stop the ghost-eater.”
After experiencing the blood-freezing compulsion to race to his own death and devouring, Gharek couldn’t agree more. The thoughts made him remember the empty Maesor. Not completelyempty—if one counted faceless hunters pale as corpses and demented trap shadows freed. He shoved the memory aside. They had a place to sleep, something to offer Zaredis when they returned, and the chance to retrieve Estred. His own fate remained a question, but for now he’d set aside that grim thought as well and enjoy the squalid comforts of a lean-to for the night alongside a woman he once considered his enemy.
“How’s your back?” he asked.
While she’d physicked the deep scratch on his cheek, it had been Halani who’d done the same for Siora. The free trader woman knew her herbals. The ointment she’d made possessed near miraculous healing qualities. It had already done wonders to the wound on his cheek as well as his bruises, and less than two days had passed since they left their camp.
“It still stings,” Siora said. “I’m glad there was only one trap shadow to deal with in the Maesor. Between it and the hunter, we were in a bad spot.” She rubbed her shoulder and winced. “Halani’s salve stopped the sting most of the day, but I think it’s worn off. She sent more to use if I needed it.” She pointed to his face. “Your cheek looks already half healed.”
“Do you want me to wash the scratches again? I can check to see if they’re poisoning. I noticed the free traders kindly put a flask of spirits in the packs. It’s good for cleaning wounds, though it’ll make the sting worse for a moment.” He fully expected her to refuse but asked anyway. Even a small part of him questioned why he’d made the offer. He wasn’t a kind man or a charming one or one to display compassion, yet he was moved to do so now, to repay Siora’s own generous well of kindness with something she might appreciate, something that didn’t involve violence or ferocity.
She gazed at him without expression before giving a quick nod and turning her back to him. She unwound the sash snugging her tunic to her middle and set it aside. Her small hands gathered the garment at its hem and eased it up her legs and hips, past her waist, to bunch it under her arms. Her back, pale in the moonlight, was a mural of scabbed scratches marring a smooth landscape of skin stretched taut over the bridge of her spine and swoop of her shoulder blades.
Arrested by the sight, both elegant and harsh, Gharek could only stare for a moment before scooting closer so that he sat behind her, one leg splayed on either side of hers. His fingers traced the air just above the scratches, and though he didn’t touch her skin, the goose flesh rose there in reaction to his nearness. “They’re red,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t give away the rush of desire spilling through him. “But healing well. I won’t need the spirits to cleanse them unless you wish it. I can just reapply the salve to relieve the stinging.”
She turned her head to see him. “Yes, please. I’ll sleep better.”
Gharek suspected he could swim in a vat of the stuff and still not sleep at all this night, not with the beautiful shade speaker stretched out beside him. The thought made him freeze for a second as he reached for one of the satchels containing the salve. He glanced at her, but she remained with her back to him, quiet and contemplative. He was going as mad as the trap shadow in the Maesor if such thoughts were scurrying about in his mind.
He made small talk to distract himself and relieve the odd anticipatory tension that had settled between them when he’d foolishly offered to tend her back. “The free traders are generous to those who render aid to them. They gave you two tunics.”