*
Over the next week we settled back into the life of the caravan, but it took me a long time to feel strong again. The monotony of the road and the lack of immediate danger carved out an emptiness in my thoughts that would have been welcome, were it not filled with a constant replay of my last moments with Ethalia. She had offered me happiness and instead I’d chosen – what? I couldn’t call it honour. Traitors can’t lay claim to honour. I couldn’t even blame it on the King’s final stupid request. I still had no clue where his Charoites might be, nor what I would do with them if I found them. Were they magical? Even if they were, I didn’t put a lot of faith in magic. It was always something other people used against me, not something I could ever wield as a tool myself. If the Charoites were precious, where could we ever sell them if we found them? And what were we supposed to do with the money – finance a revolution? Rally the people around … who? Us? My experiences in Rijou had emphasised how fractured a people we were. The crowd had supported me, but only because I had appealed to their sense of being unique, of being better than the rest of the country, and really, that made me no better than the Duke himself, except that he had overreached. If I ever tried to rally them to the cause of the Greatcoats, I had no doubt I would find myself with less support than if I tried to bring back the Blood Week.
So I spent my time on the road recuperating. Ethalia had healed my wounds in ways I couldn’t begin to understand, and yet, with her absence and my guilt over leaving her, I felt as if the effects of her ministrations were fading too fast; as if my own inability to take pleasure in my short time with her was nullifying her treatment. I think she would have been sad if she had known that.
I felt even worse that I couldn’t bring myself to talk about her to Kest and Brasti. A gulf was growing between us. Kest was still maintaining that he would put a sword in Valiana before she took one step inside Castle Aramor, and I was equally determined he would not. Brasti tried to make a joke of it by offering to put an arrow in the back of whichever one of us brought it up next, thereby solving the dilemma. We laughed at that, and pretended these arguments could be put aside for a while, but it felt to me as if every day our friendship was fading a little more. I sometimes wondered why Kest and Brasti even stayed with the caravan, except that there was only the long, straight road now, and nowhere else to go.
Valiana was the only one who behaved as if she were truly happy about our return. She took to Aline immediately, as if the child were a new pet, showering her with attention and making her ride in the carriage with her.
Aline herself became very changeable, her mood veering from giddy young girl to sullen, angry young woman, from happy to sad, to very quiet. She spent no time with me at all and for a while I thought she blamed me for our capture, despite everything else I’d done. But she stayed away from Monster too, though the great beast had saved her life. I felt an odd kinship with the Fey Horse. She wouldn’t stay near the other horses, much to their relief, and we often ended up keeping a distant vigil on the girl together.
‘You make an odd pair of guards,’ Trin said, eyeing Monster carefully as she brought me some hard bread and a piece of harder cheese. Monster and I were at the back of the caravan so perhaps that’s the reason why I noticed several of the other men with better fare in hand.
‘Thank you,’ I said as she was leaving.
She turned back to me. Does she think I’m mocking her?
‘I mean, for trying to help us,’ I said. ‘Brasti told me that you tried to take a horse back to Rijou.’
‘I was merely … It was nothing. A foolish impulse, quickly forgotten.’
‘Would you like to walk with us for a while?’ I asked.
‘If it would please you.’
We stayed quiet at first, watching the long stretch of the Spear laid out in front of us, the mass of close-growing trees and shrubs somehow making everything feel too closed in. I felt awkward, almost as if I were being unfaithful to Ethalia, despite the fact that I was unlikely to ever see her again.
‘You’re different,’ Trin said after a while.
‘Oh? How so?’
She looked at me, her eyes examining every part of my face. ‘You’ve lost something. There was something there before, in the folds of your eyes and the furrow of your brow. It seems lessened.’
‘You sound disappointed.’
Trin looked as if she had just realised she’d given some kind of insult. ‘No … it’s just that you’ve proven to be different from what I had expected when we first met.’
I thought back to the day at the market in Solat. ‘What precisely were you expecting then?’
‘Whatever it was, I can’t be faulted for underestimating you. Who could imagine men like you really existed?’ She smiled at me, her eyes locking on mine.
If I were younger and less cynical, or if I were Brasti, I would think that smile a sign of adoration.
‘I have to get back,’ she said. ‘The Princess will wonder where I am.’
As Trin walked away, Monster’s eyes seemed to follow her. So did mine. ‘Do you suppose that a beautiful woman half my age – and for no particular reason – is falling in love with me?’ I asked.
Monster snorted.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think so either.’
Was she simply playing the odds – looking for protection from whoever could give it to her? What else did I have that she could want? Perhaps it was simply a game for her – but from what I’d seen, she wasn’t really the type to play such childish games.
Kest came and joined us. ‘Am I interrupting something?’ he said, noticing the expression on my face.
‘Just calculating the odds,’ I said.
Kest raised an eyebrow. ‘Of a fight?’
‘Possibly. I don’t know yet.’
‘Is this about Aline?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Though I suppose that is another problem waiting to be solved.’
Aline’s situation was bound to become complicated. She was still a noblewoman, though it was unclear what that meant, given that she no longer had property or retainers. I wasn’t even clear on what her title was now. The City Sage hadn’t called it out; I supposed that meant Tiarren had been simply a Lord and not anything higher. Valiana was acting enthralled with the girl for now, but when we got to Hervor things would begin to change, and soon the child would be discarded. Would her enemies still pursue her? If so, how was I supposed to protect her? ‘I don’t think she wants anything to do with me,’ I said aloud.
‘She’s young,’ Kest said. ‘I think she just wants to be a normal girl for a while.’
‘She wants to be away from broken things,’ I replied.
‘In her heart she understands. In her heart, she might even love you and the horse. She knows you saved her life. But in her head she’s still reliving everything they did to her. It will take time.’
I patted Monster’s rough, scarred hide absently. She let me ride her more often these days, but I preferred to walk now that my leg had finally healed from the crossbow wound.
‘The King lied to me,’ I said, absently.
Kest looked at me. ‘How so?’
‘The soft candy – the girl ate it. When they took her, when she realised we were caught? She ate it, and yet she lived to endure the horrors they inflicted on her. I think she blames me for that too.’
‘Perhaps it just went off – it’s been years since they made it—’
‘The hard candy still works,’ I pointed out. ‘The King never wanted it made in the first place. He lied to me.’
‘I doubt it was the only time. Let it be, Falcio. The King did as he thought best, just as you did. The girl is alive, after all, and she will heal, as children do – but it will be in her own time.’
Aline might have nothing but disdain for me, and a slight wariness about Kest, but she had taken an immediate liking to Brasti.
‘Show me again! Show me again!’ I heard her squeal.
I could see Brasti’s broad smile. He loved to show off to a receptive audience. ‘Fine then, what this time?’
Aline put a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun and pointed. ‘Over there, on that tree – do you see it?’
He leaned forward on his horse. ‘What? I don’t see it.’
‘The apple, silly,’ she said.
Brasti peered at the crooked tree that half-encroached on the road far off in the distance. The rest of us watched them while we ate our bread and cheese and rested the horses.
‘There’s no apple there,’ he said after a dramatic pause. ‘Why, it couldn’t be bigger than a pea – a little red pea.’
Aline giggled. ‘It’s an apple, anyone can see that.’
‘Well, even if it is – and mind, I’m not yet convinced it isn’t a tiny red pea – it’s much too far.’ He rolled his right shoulder back and shook his hair out of his face. ‘What manner of man, what manner of great, great man, we must ask, would have the strength, the skill, the iron-forged courage, to attempt a target like that?’
Kest looked at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘Courage? You think the apple is going to try and bite you?’
Aline giggled.
‘Quiet, swordsman,’ Brasti said haughtily. ‘This is real man’s work.’ He rolled his right shoulder a second time and nocked an arrow. At first he sighted down the arrow and pulled back hard on the bowstring, then he lifted his point up and away to the left.
‘You’re aiming the wrong way,’ Aline said, concern in her voice, but Brasti ignored her and let the arrow fly.
At first I thought he might have overshot, but there was a light wind and as the arrow began arcing back down it veered a little to the right and took the apple clean off the tree.
Aline clapped excitedly. ‘You did it, Brasti!’
Brasti was checking his fingernails as he said, ‘Truly, what manner of man must do such great and terrible things?’
‘One who’s too lazy to pick the apple off the tree himself?’ I offered.
Aline ignored me studiously and focused her attention on Brasti. ‘But how did it work? You aimed too far to the left.’
‘Wind,’ he said. ‘You have to factor in the wind.’
‘But the wind isn’t very strong at all.’
‘Look at the small branches on that tree over there. You see how they’re swaying? This part of the road is protected by that ridge, but up ahead there, the trees are in the open.’
She looked at him with awe. ‘Can you—?’
‘What, hit something else? Uncle Brasti needs to save a few arrows for miscreants, sweetheart.’
‘No, I don’t mean—Well, what I’m wondering is …’ She swallowed hard, and with hope shining out of her eyes, asked, ‘Can you maybe teach me to shoot like that?’
Brasti looked down at her and then over at me. I shrugged. It wasn’t my decision.
‘All right,’ Brasti said, ‘but you learn my way, not yours. Agreed?’
Aline nodded very solemnly. ‘Agreed.’
‘You’re going to need a bow.’
The girl thought about it for a second. ‘I don’t have a bow,’ she said, ‘and I don’t have any money.’
Brasti crossed his arms and looked around at us, then he said, ‘I suppose if I’m to be your archery master then I should give you the bow my master gave me when I became his student.’
‘Really?’ she asked, her voice full of awe.
He walked over to the rear wagon several feet away and rummaged around in the back. When he returned, he held out his hands as if he were holding something incredibly precious. There was nothing there.
‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Your first bow.’
It looked like the joke had gone too far, for the girl looked as if she might start crying.
‘Oi, now, no need to be cruel,’ Krug said, waving his big bear arms towards her. ‘You come here, little girl. I’ll make you a nice wooden sword to play with.’
I could tell that Aline didn’t want to learn to play with wooden swords, but she started to turn towards the man anyway.
‘Is that your decision then?’ Brasti asked.
‘What?’