“It’s hard to sleep if you don’t lie down,” I finally said.
She reluctantly lay down, but her eyes remained open, her chest rising in deep, controlled breaths as if she were counting them. Her arms trembled, but the night was warm. This was no trick.
“Are you cold?” I asked. “I can add more branches to the fire if you need it.”
She blinked several times, like she was embarrassed that I had noticed. “No, I’m fine,” she said.
But she wasn’t fine at all.
I studied her for a minute, then said, “Tell me a riddle. To help me sleep.”
She balked, but only a little, and it seemed she was happy to have something else to occupy her mind besides what had been lurking there. She rolled onto her side to face me, settling in, comfortable. “Listen carefully,” she said. “I won’t repeat it a dozen times like I did for the hunter.”
“You won’t need to. I’m a good listener.”
She said the words slowly, deliberately, like she was imagining the world behind the picture she painted. I watched her lips as she formed each word, her voice relaxed and soft, once again confident, her golden eyes watching mine, making sure I paid attention and missed nothing.
“My face is full, but also slight,
I pale in the bright of light,
I whisper sweet to the forest owl,
I kiss the air with wolf’s sad howl,
Eyes follow me from sea to sea,
Yet alone in this world … I will ever be.”
I stared at her, swallowed, my thoughts suddenly jumbled.
“Well?” she asked. I knew the answer but I drew it out, offering several wrong answers, making her laugh once. It was the first time I had seen her laugh, genuine, without any pretense, and it filled me with a strange burst of heat.
“The moon,” I finally answered.
Our gazes held, and she seemed to know what I was doing.
“Tell me another one,” I said.
And she did. A dozen more, until her lids grew heavy and she finally fell asleep.
Prepare your hearts,
For we must not only be ready
for the enemy without,
but also the enemy within.
—Song of Jezelia
CHAPTER TWELVE
KAZI
I woke to weight pinning me down. The heat of skin on mine. A hand over my mouth. “Shhh. Don’t move.” Jase’s face hovered next to mine.
I jerked but his weight pushed harder. And then I heard it.
Footsteps.
The crunch of leaves.
A breath.
Jase’s mouth pressed close to my ear. A bare whisper. “Don’t move no matter what.”
Leaves stirred, careless footsteps. Heavy steps that didn’t care about noise.
The sky above us was still dark, just tinged with dawn, the black silhouette of trees barely lacing an outline above us. Jase’s face was a shadow near mine, and his heart pounded against my chest.
Something large lumbered toward us, hulking, a mountain of swaying black. Each footfall trembled though me. Jase couldn’t speak now; it was too close, but I felt the strain of his muscles willing me to freeze. It went against every instinct I had. Run, Kazi, hide. But I froze beneath his weight, sweat springing between our bodies. The creature sniffed the air, saw us, and its mouth opened wide, a gaping cavern of enormous teeth, and a terrible roar split the forest. My muscles tensed but Jase held me tight, still. It drew closer, so close that its heaving breaths touched our skin, the smell noxious and suffocating, like all the furnaces of hell bellowed from within. A warning grumble vibrated from it, its mouth tasting the air, tasting us, its tongue rolling over our skin. It huffed, as if disappointed, and turned away. We didn’t move as dawn crept over us, but when the creature’s footsteps had finally faded, Jase let out a long-held breath, and his hand slid from my mouth.
He looked down at me, our faces still close, and the moment splintered, out of step, tumbling into long, frozen seconds, his chest still beating against mine. He blinked as though he was finally oriented again, and rolled off, lying on the ground next to me.
“I didn’t mean to crush you,” he said. “There wasn’t time to wake you up. Are you all right?”
Was I? The fear was ebbing, and yet my pulse still raced. I still felt the pressure of his body on mine and the burn of his skin.
“Yes,” I said, my voice hoarse. “What was that?”
He explained it was a Candok bear and they preferred fish to people, but there was no outrunning or killing them if they perceived you as a threat. If you made no sudden moves, they would usually leave you alone.
Usually. I felt like Wren now, understanding the certainty she wanted when it came to racaa and their meat preferences—especially when I still had the memory of the bear’s hellish wet tongue sampling my face.
“We should go in case it comes back,” Jase said, getting to his feet, but in two steps he stumbled and fell, the chain jerking between us. He cursed. “I forgot about this thing.”
He got back to his feet and grabbed his shirt from the rock where he had laid it to dry the night before. I watched as he put it on, seeing the inked feathers on his skin disappear beneath the fabric, and I thought about how he had forgotten about the chain and the dead weight he was attached to, and yet he had protectively hovered over me anyway.
*
Over the next few days, we fell into a surprisingly easy rhythm. There was rarely silence, and for that I was grateful. He told me about other animals that lived in this region. There were several deadly ones I hadn’t yet had the pleasure to meet. He hoped we would come across a meimol mound, a sign of a meaty, tasty bird that tunneled and nested beneath the soil in this area. He eyed the sharpened end of his walking stick, saying the bird wasn’t hard to spear.
“How do you know so much about this region?” I asked, my hand sweeping the horizon.
“It’s Ballenger territory too.”
“Way out here? This has to be more than a hundred miles from Tor’s Watch.”
“Could be.”
I grunted but said nothing else. My silence poked and stabbed between us.
He finally sighed and a sardonic grin pulled at his mouth. “All right, Kazi of Brightmist, tell me, just what is your definition of a thief?”
His tone wasn’t angry. It seemed more like a genuine entreaty to understand me, and I wondered if he had been pondering it ever since I called him a thief a few days ago.
“The Vendan definition is no different than anyone else’s. You take things that don’t belong to you.”
“Such as?”
“Livestock.”
“You’re talking about the shorthorn we took from the Vendans? It was payment for trespassing.”
“You weren’t entitled to even one shorthorn, but it was far more than that. It was everything. You burned their fields. Destroyed their pens. Took their supplies.”
He shook his head. “One shorthorn. That was it. The rest is Vendan embellishment.”
“I saw the damage myself.”
“Then someone else did it. Not us.”
I glanced at his profile, wondering if he was lying. A vein twitched in his neck, and he seemed absorbed by what I said. This news troubled him. Or maybe it was just me who troubled him. I didn’t let up. “What about the merchant caravans you raid?”
“Only under certain circumstances when they cross into our territory.”
“You mean if they cross you?”
He stopped and faced me. “That too.” There was no apology in his expression. His easy tone was gone.
“But you have no defined borders. You aren’t even supposed to be settled in the Cam Lanteux at all. You’re breaking the law. It’s a violation of the ancient treaties. How can you lay claim to all of this?”
“Well, maybe the ancient treaties never bothered to consult us. Tor’s Watch has been here longer than any of the kingdoms—including Venda. And we do have borders, but maybe our lines are drawn differently than yours. They extend as far as it takes for us to feel secure. We’ve lived by our laws and survived by them for centuries. Venda has no right to be meddling.”