Obviously he’d forgotten the book. It would mean nothing to thieves wantingbelshasand jewelry, but its value was great to her and Gharek, even if she disliked its contents. And of course they had Suti. “We have things worth stealing.”
His knowing smile told her he hadn’t forgotten either item. “True, and it will be a sorry morning for any who try to steal from me.”
Not a boast or a threat, just a statement of fact. Siora was reminded of why the cat’s-paw had been feared throughout the Empire.
They shared the orange and bread, soaking the second in a cup of the plum wine to make it more palatable. Siora’s stomach still rumbled when they were done, and Gharek’s eyebrows rose at one particularly loud protest emanating from her belly. “I can trap something and bring it back to dress and cook if you’re still hungry,” he said.
She waved away the offer but thanked him nonetheless. A hunger pang or two wasn’t the end of the world and nothing new to her. “Neither of us will fade away before morning. I’m more tired than hungry, despite what my belly is saying, and I’m eager to reach Zaredis’s encampment.”
Light from the fire brightened the anticipatory gleam in Gharek’s eyes, as well as the fear. “I dream of Estred every night and wake up in a sweat of worry,” he said, exposing a vulnerability someone else might use against him. She wasn’t one of those, and if he admitted that small but revealing detail to her, he knew that without her even saying so.
“She’s your daughter,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you wake afraid for her?”
His broad shoulders flexed and he tilted his head to one side, studying her. “You judge me yet never ridicule. Your sympathy is never pity, and you don’t hesitate to wield the whip if you think there’s an injustice done. You’re an endless puzzle, Siora.”
She could very well apply the last to him too, and somewhere in that observation she heard criticism, praise, admiration, even disapproval—all the things she felt for him. “I’m just me,” she said.“I follow where my spirit leads, even if that’s off a cliff sometimes.” She offered him a wry smile.
He chuckled. “I think your spiritual failures are more honorable than the successes of others.”
She blushed but refused to look down or look away. “Thank you, Gharek,” she said softly.
He inclined his head before gesturing to the wagon. “Go inside and set up the bedding as you prefer. I’ll join you soon.”
The way he said that sent another wave of heat through her that had nothing to do with the night air. A promise in that voice and in those eyes, usually so cold and now hotter than the sun at noon.
She gathered the things that had dried and could be layered into a makeshift mattress and laid them down on the elevated portion of the wagon that had once served as a bed. The space wasn’t as confined as she’d assumed before she entered, with room for two people. It snugged up against a wall with a cut-out that could be removed and allow the circulation of air to flow through the interior from one end to the other. The musty scent and heat soon washed away on the breeze, leaving the space cooler and far more pleasant. Best of all, it was dry.
Without the horse blanket as a mattress, the layers of clothing she used in its place were a poor substitute for softening the wooden platform’s unforgiving surface, but it was off the floor, and as Gharek had pointed out earlier, a lot cleaner than some of the rooms for rent in Domora, or elsewhere for that matter.
She crawled onto the platform and stretched out, hiking her shift to her knees so the breeze would cool her skin. Her positionallowed her a view through the back wall’s cut-out of a piece of sky full of stars.
The wagon creaked and shifted once more when Gharek entered, his features in shadow, his tall frame a black silhouette that seemed to fill the space from wall to wall, though he had room to stretch his arms straight out on either side.
A flutter of movement and the sound of fabric rustling, followed by the sudden weight of a warm blanket falling across her lap told her he’d shed the covering he’d worn either for comfort or modesty, though she had doubts about the last. “Wrap in it to keep warm if you get cold, or use it as a pillow,” he said. A thread of amusement wove through his next words. “Or to cover your eyes if the sight of me offends you, but I’ll sweat to death under that thing in here.”
“I can’t be offended,” she said, scooting closer to the wall to make room for him as he climbed onto the platform and lay on his back beside her. “It’s so dark in the wagon, I can barely see you.” Not that she’d be offended if the moon illuminated him in a blaze of silver light. He was a pleasure to look upon, to lie beside, even here in a dilapidated free trader wagon.
He crooked his outside arm to cradle his head in his hand as a makeshift pillow. The position offered him the same view she had, and the moonlight caressed his face, casting shadows under the hollows of his wide cheekbones. He glanced at her, then at the cut-out with its view of the night sky. “What do you see?”
Her answer might seem macabre to others but was a comfort to her. “All of those who died before us. I’d like to think every star is the light of a person who looks down upon the world, waiting fortheir loved ones to join them up there. I don’t believe we ever truly die. We just change into something else.”
He didn’t debate or mock her, remaining silent, his gaze fixed on the heavens as if he counted the stars. How many belonged to those he’d once loved and lost? Did he fear counting Estred’s there before she could count his? Siora pointed to a spot in the sky where the pattern of stars everyone called the Lady Slipper decorated a space in the celestial fabric. “Did you know Estred can name every constellation and how they got their names?”
Gharek turned his head to regard her, his expression enigmatic, eyes dark and guarded. “No, I didn’t know. Did you teach her?”
She nodded. “Sometimes after the household went to bed and you were gone for an evening, the two of us would climb to the roof with a blanket and lie down on our backs to stare up at the sky. My father taught me about the stars when I was a little younger than Estred now, and so I taught her.”
Once more they slipped into silence, but while Siora returned to her observation of the night sky, Gharek’s gaze never drifted from her. The weight of it finally made her look back at him. “What?”
The moon’s light on him wasn’t gentle any longer and carved his features into even harsher angles as he continued to study her. “She cried for days when you left, even in her sleep. I could do nothing to comfort her. It didn’t help that we were fleeing Domora for a safe place to hide, away from the chaos after Herself was eaten by the draga.”
Siora cringed inside, and she didn’t stop the tears suddenly blurring her vision from trickling down her cheeks. “I never wanted to hurt her. Truly. Sometimes when I wield the whip you describe, I strike others by accident.”
Leaving Estred without explanation had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done and had troubled her most. The little girl had suffered abandonment before and terrible mistreatment when she was still young enough to be on lead strings. Such a trauma remained throughout one’s life even if one didn’t remember the details. How much of that pain had Siora resurrected for Estred when she left and didn’t return?
She tried to wrestle her emotions—a whirlwind of anguish and guilt—into submission, to shove them under a layer of reason that told her she couldn’t change past actions, only try to rectify them in the present or future. She latched on to something Gharek had said that didn’t make her bleed or cry. “Malachus said he didn’t eat the empress.”
He snorted, his legs shifting restlessly, sliding against hers. “I would have. Even if she’d tasted vile, I would have devoured her, then shat her out.”