After a time the trees thinned, the road smoothed, and the wildness of the ride subsided. Soon after that, they turned onto a road with a smooth surface, one made by humans in better times, and they followed its winding stretch through the high desert heading north. The mountain peaks receded behind them, their jagged tips distant and stark in the midday sunlight. Kirisin glanced back and then away, thinking that like those peaks his Elven past was already a long way behind him.
He looked over at the Knight of the Word, studying his still-angry face, hard and intense and filled with hints of thoughts too dark to reveal. He looked more dangerous than ever, a man who might do anything.
Logan caught him looking and glanced over. “What is it?”
Kirisin shook his head. “Nothing.” He was silent for a moment, and then suddenly, impulsively, he said, “You shouldn’t have left Sim behind.”
“I shouldn’t have, huh?”
“You could have said something to her. It looked to me like she was paying an awful lot of attention to you. Why didn’t you tell her she had to come with us?”
The dark gaze shifted away, fixing once more on the road. “Ask yourself this. Does she always do what you tell her to do?”
“No.”
“So what makes you think it would be any different with me?” He sounded really angry now. “I just met her yesterday. I’m not the one who could change her mind, even if I wanted to. Anyway, she’s not my responsibility. You are.”
Kirisin felt a sudden surge of anger. “It probably helps that you’re a Knight of the Word and don’t have to answer to anyone for your decisions!” he snapped.
Logan Tom glared at him. “Is that what you think? That I don’t have to answer to anyone? You don’t know anything.”
“I know that you left my sister behind!” Kirisin was furious. “I know that there wasn’t any good reason she couldn’t have come with us! I know I didn’t see you try to change her mind! You just left her!”
They sat in silence after that, the AV bouncing and sliding along the weather-damaged road, the sounds of their passage cocooning them away with their anger. Kirisin was furious, but he was also afraid. He knew next to nothing about Logan Tom, and now he was in the Knight of the Word’s care. He might have been smarter to keep his thoughts to himself. But he could hardly stand it that they had abandoned Sim.
“She insisted on staying,” Logan Tom said suddenly, his voice unexpectedly calm. “We talked about it last night. I asked her to come. I told her you needed her. But she refused. She said you would be all right with me. She said she was the only one who would know how to guide those Elves who stayed outside the Loden to where they need to go. She refused to leave them on their own.”
Kirisin was quiet for a moment, his own anger dissipating. “That sounds like Sim.”
“You would know.”
“I still think you should have insisted she come.”
Logan Tom gave him a look. “Would that have worked?”
Kirisin hesitated. “Maybe.” Then he sighed. “All right, no. Probably not.”
“Then stop talking about it. It’s over and done. She made her choice, even if it was the wrong one. She stayed behind and she has to catch up on her own. Maybe she can do it, I don’t know. She seems to think she can.”
All at once Kirisin realized that Logan Tom was afraid for Simralin. For reasons that the boy could scarcely fathom, the Knight of the Word cared a whole lot about what happened to her. Why that should be was hard to figure out. He supposed it had something to do with Sim’s effect on men, the same thing he had thought earlier when he watched them standing together before he used the Loden. But his reaction this time seemed so intense, so much stronger than it should have been.
They were silent again as the AV rolled on, the road noise from the big tires a steady rumble. Kirisin squirmed in his seat, glanced over his shoulder. Those sitting in the back of the AV couldn’t have heard what he and Logan Tom were saying even if they had wanted to. Still, talking about Simralin like this made him decidedly uncomfortable.
“How do you feel?” Logan Tom asked suddenly.
He was so surprised by the question that for a moment he didn’t answer.
“After what happened,” the other said. “After using that . . . what do you call it, a Loden?”
Kirisin almost didn’t answer the question, unsure of the other’s motives in asking it. But then he decided that not answering was pointless. “I don’t know. It happened so fast.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll know better later. Right now, I just feel relieved that it worked.”
“Did you know you could do that? Your sister didn’t seem to think so.”
He didn’t like hearing that: that Sim had talked about him with Logan Tom. But he let it pass. “She was right,” he admitted. “I didn’t. I didn’t know what would happen. I’d never used the Loden before. No one had.”
“What if you hadn’t been able to summon the magic? What would you have done then?”
Kirisin looked at him. “What would you do if you couldn’t make your magic work?”
That produced a tight smile. “Die, probably. It’s what keeps me alive. Same with you, I gather. So Simralin says.” He paused. “I was just wondering if using magic feels the same to you as it does to me. Call it professional curiosity. I think it must. I think magic works the same, no matter if it’s a human or an Elf using it.”