“I know enough. I’ve read the long list of your violations. Skimming merchants. Caravan raids. Stealing livestock. Intimidation.”
I stepped in front of her path, blocking her again. “Ah, so there you have it—a list with the Vendan twist. Do your kind have any idea how hard it is to survive out here in the middle of everything and everyone? Surrounded by kingdoms on all sides? Everyone thinking it’s their right to enter your territory and take what they want? Moving in at the slightest sign of weakness? My world is not your world.” My temples burned and my voice rose. “Vendans sit behind their high, safe walls at the far edge of a continent, scribbling out new treaties and training their pretty, smart-mouthed, elite soldiers who have no idea what it’s like to fight to survive!” I lowered my voice to a growl. “And you, Kazi of Brightmist, have no understanding of the trouble you’ve caused me. I should be home with my family, protecting them, and instead I’m out here, chained to you!”
My chest heaved with anger, and I waited for a caustic comeback, but instead she blinked slowly and replied, “I may know more about survival than you think.”
Her pupils were deep black wells floating in a calm circle of amber, but her hands betrayed her, stiff at her sides, ready to strike. A war raged inside her, one she held back, biting it off like a poisonous snake with disturbing self-control.
“Let’s go,” I said. Our worlds had an impassable gulf between them. It was useless to try to make her understand.
We walked in silence, the clank of the chain between us suddenly amplified.
Her steely control made me angry at myself for losing mine. It wasn’t like me. That was one of the reasons my father gave for naming me Patrei. I wasn’t the oldest, but I was the least impulsive. It was a strength my father valued. I weighed the advantages and costs of every word and action before I acted. Some saw me as aloof. Mason said, with admiration, that it made me a stone-cold bastard, but this girl had pushed me to a reckless burning edge I didn’t even recognize, and her calm reply only pushed me further.
She knew something about survival. I wondered if she might even know more than me.
Each other. Hold on to each other because that is what will save you.
I hold back tears because others are watching, already terrified. I pile handfuls of dirt, brush, rocks, thing upon thing until his body is hidden. It is the best I can do, but I know animals will find him by nightfall. By then he will be far behind us.
How many more will I have to bury?
I shout into the air, a rush of tears and anger breaking loose.
No more of us, I scream.
The anger feels good, saving, a weapon when I have nothing else.
I shove a stick into a hand. And then another, and another, until even the youngest holds one. Miandre balks. I squeeze my hand around hers until she winces, forcing her to take hold of her club. If we die, we will die fighting.
—Greyson Ballenger, 14
CHAPTER TEN
KAZI
I should be with my family.
He’d been silent for an hour now.
His father’s death had come as a surprise to me, and now I guessed it had been unexpected for him too. Even if Karsen Ballenger was the ruthless outlaw who harbored a stable of ruffians as the King of Eislandia had reported, he was still Jase’s father and he’d only been dead for two days.
I doubted that Jase cared whether I liked him or that I called him a thief—but he did care about his family and he was not there with them to bury his father, or whatever it was they did with the dead in Hell’s Mouth.
In the last months of the Komizar’s reign, I had watched Wren when she grieved her parents’ deaths. I saw her fall on their bloody bodies, slaughtered in the town square, screaming for them to get up, hitting their lifeless chests and begging for them to open their eyes. I had seen Synové days after her parents’ deaths, her eyes wide, unseeing, numb and beyond tears.
It had been odd to envy their grief, but I had. I envied the explosion and finality of it—their sobs and tears. At that point, my mother had been gone for five years and I had never grieved her death, never cried, because I never saw her die. Her passing came slowly, over months and years, in the dull bits, pieces, and mundane hours that I worked to stay alive. Day-by-day she faded, as every stall I searched turned up nothing, and another piece of her drifted away. Every hovel and home I snuck into held no part of her, no amulet, no scent, no sound of her voice. The memories of her became disconnected blurred images, warm hands cupping my cheeks, a tuneless hum as she worked, words that floated in the air, her finger pressed to my lips. Shhh, Kazi, don’t say a word.
I wondered if Jase had missed his chance to grieve too. A one night drunk was hardly a good-bye.
“I’m sorry about your father,” I said.
His steps faltered, but he kept walking, his only reply a nod.
“How did he die?”
His jaw clenched and his reply was quick and clipped, “He was a man, not a monster, as you imagine. He died the way all men die, one breath at a time.”
He was still angry. He still grieved. His pace quickened, and I knew the topic was closed.
*
Another hour passed. My legs ached trying to keep pace with him, and my ankle was raw from the shackle. The thin fabric of my trousers was little protection against the heavy metal. I kept my eyes open for some bay fern or wish stalks to make a balm, but this forest seemed to have only trees and nothing else.
“You’re limping,” he said, suddenly breaking the silence. Those weren’t the first words I expected from him, but everything about him was unexpected. It made me wary.
“It’s only the uneven terrain,” I answered, but I noticed his pace slowed.
“How’s your head?” he asked.
My head? I reached up, gently pressing the knot and wincing. “I’ll live.”
“I watched you in the wagon. Your chest. For a while, I didn’t see it move at all. I thought you were dead.”
I didn’t quite know how to respond. “You were watching my chest?”
He stopped and looked at me, suddenly looking awkward and young and not like a ruthless killer at all. “I mean—” He began walking again. “What I meant was, I was watching to make sure you were still breathing. You were out cold.”
I smiled—somewhere deep inside so he wouldn’t see. It was refreshing to see him flustered for a change.
“And why would you care if I was breathing?”
“I was chained to you.”
The hard reality. “Oh, right,” I answered, feeling slightly deflated. “No fun being attached to a corpse. Dead weight and all.”
“I also knew you might be useful. I’d seen your quick—”
He paused as if he regretted the admission, so I finished his thought for him. “Takedown? When I nailed you against the wall back in Hell’s Mouth?”
“Yes.”
At least there was some degree of honesty in him.
*
When we came upon a brook in the afternoon, we stopped to rest. The forest was thinning and there was little shade, the sun unforgiving. Jase said he thought we’d soon be out of the forest altogether and crossing the open plateau of Heethe. I looked up, judging the sun’s place in the sky. Only a few hours of daylight left. The cool of night would be welcome, but the prospect of an open plateau, a wide night sky, and sleeping without a tent was already a beast running a warning claw down my back. A tent. It was ludicrous to think of that now. Get a grip on yourself, Kazi, I thought, but it wasn’t that simple and never had been. It was not something I could just talk myself out of no matter how many times I tried.
“Maybe we should stop here for the night?” I suggested.