She laughed again. “I like that.”
I stood and nodded toward the tent. “You should rest. Your clothes from the ship are inside. I'll be in shortly.”
She hesitated. Then nodded once and slipped inside. I watched the tent flap fall behind her before turning back to the fire. Korran was waiting with his usual grim expression. He didn’t speak until we’d stepped out of earshot of the others.
“We found tracks,” he said. “Fresh ones, right there on the north side of the ridge.”
My spine stiffened. “Renegades?”
He nodded. “Could be. Could be from other travelers too, but there is no trace of nictas."
We both knew what that meant. Renegades didn't have many nictas, not like travelers did. I took a long look around. This stretch was too exposed. Too empty. My instincts had been clawing at me since we left Ackaron.
“Double the guards,” I ordered. “No one sleeps on shift. Rotate in pairs. Wake me if anything moves.”
“Zyn, Vissigroth.” Korran hesitated. “You think they followed us from Ackaron?”
I shook my head. “Ney. They were already here. Waiting.”
He muttered a curse under his breath. “You think they knew you'd take this route?”
“I think someone always knows more than they should.”
It might be just a group of opportunistic Renegades, but with the attack on Bantahar, I would rather be too cautious than surprised. I watched Korran leave to carry out my orders and stood for a long moment under the stars. The wind had cooled. The Pyme River murmured against stone, like a voice trying to warn us.
Behind me, Daphne was in the tent. Alive, but oh so vulnerable. If anything came for her tonight, gods help them, because I wouldn’t stop until the earth ran red with their blood.
Iwas asleep and yet I wasn't. In the dream, I woke in a house… not the charred husk we’d fled. This one was much more luxurious. The walls were smooth, the floors swept. The air smelled faintly of herbs and something freshly baked. There were no holes in the roof. No soot on the windows.
My mother lay on a cot near the fire, her arm bandaged in pale cloth. A real bandage. Not torn shawls soaked in fear. A healer knelt beside her, murmuring something gentle while folding up supplies. She was asleep, but it wasn't the troubled, exhausted sleep that comes from being kept up by pain. This one was restful, healing. Her breathing was even, without a trace of the labored wetness that had scared me the days before. For a moment, I couldn't move; I only stared, with my heart aching. I had been so worried about losing the only person in my life I had left.
“She’ll be alright.”
The voice came from the far side of the room. Over the last few days, it had become familiar. Mallack stood near a table, unstrapping a pouch from his belt. He pulled out a silver disk and placed it beside the healer’s hand, payment for services rendered. The physician bowed low and left silently.
"Thank you," I said in a rough voice, wondering what kind of payment Mallack would expect from me—what kind of services he would have me render. I might have been young, but I had learned the hard way that nothing in life on the Fourteen Planets was free. I couldn't give words to my thoughts; I could only stare at him. Drink in how handsome he was. Like a hero from the books my mom would always find for us. In those books, the heroes came with no strings attached, but I didn't think Mallack would fit that bill.
“Sit,” he pointed at the chair by the table. A table filled with so much food, it made my mouth water. A clay bowl of thick stew. A sliced round of bread. Dried fruit and a tin of something hot that smelled delicious and comforting. My legs gave out before my brain caught up, and I sank into the chair like a ghost suddenly given flesh.
The irresistible smell of cooked meat made my stomach rumble. It was only fear of the unknown that made me not fall over it like a starving mess, shaming myself.
"When was the last time you ate?" Mallack asked.
Even before the siege, food had been scarce for my mother and me. I mean, she provided enough that we didn't starve, but it most certainly hadn't been as delicious-looking as this stew and bread.
That wasn't what Mallack was asking, though.
"Food ran out about a moon phase—month—after the siege began," I answered carefully, swallowing down the building saliva in my mouth. I would not fall over this food like a wild animal. I would not.
He tilted his head and waved at the food. My hand was trembling when I grabbed the spoon and brought it to my mouth. It took more willpower than I thought I possessed, but I managed to open my lips and close them around the spoonful of food. A moan tried hard to escape, but I suppressed it. It was nearly painful having the stew come in contact with my tastebuds. They came alive like a symphony.
Willpower or not, I swallowed without chewing and put my spoon back into the stew.
"That must have been hard," Mallack observed, knowing fully well that the siege had lasted another moon phase before Kennenryn's troops entered. Finding little to no resistance from the dragoons still under Susserayn Groyk's command—even though they had been better fed than us, since they had been calledvital.
I nodded, "It wasn't easy." Thankfully, my mom had been deemed essential enough to receive some scraps of food. She kept the nicta records, and she was good with the beasts themselves, knew how to heal them, and helped them give birth.
"I suppose not," he stared at me through his unsettling black eyes, “especially since you are one of the few humans in this town."
