Jacobo cleared his throat. “Craigson, this is Kyra of Forge.”
The older trader dismissed Jacobo’s introduction with a wave and swaggered over to where they stood. He then proceeded to look Kyra over from head to toe, as if evaluating a packhorse. Kyra was just about to make a rude comment when the man crossed his arms and nodded in satisfaction.
“She’s not Kyra of Forge, Jacobo. She’s Kyra of Mayel.” Then he looked Kyra in the eye, and his gaze softened. “Your face brings up many memories, lass.”
Did he recognize her? Though this was why she had come, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was impossible. She was an orphan. Her past was unknowable. To accept his words would be like putting on a glove that belonged to someone else.
Craigson took a step closer. “I’ve startled you. I apologize.” He reached for Kyra but lowered his hand when she flinched. He spoke again, his voice thick with regret. “In fact, I must beg your forgiveness for many things. You were under my care when I lost you to the Demon Riders, and I was never able to find you.”
Kyra’s tongue was dry in her mouth. She felt dizzy, and she probably could not have formed words even if she’d known what to say. The most she could do was nod when Craigson suggested they go somewhere quieter to talk and follow him until they found a fallen tree some distance from the camp. As she sat and looked more closely at his face, she remembered a dream she had the first time she was in the forest with Tristam. There had been demon cats all around her, and a man had been carrying her and running away.
This man, Louis Craigson.
“I was on your caravan when it was attacked,” she blurted. “You fled with me, and you smeared my face and clothes with some kind of pitch.”
Craigson sat as well, holding one of the fallen log’s protruding branches for support as he lowered himself down. “You remember, then,” he said, eyes trained on her face. “What else do you remember?”
Kyra shook her head slowly. “I don’t remember much else.”
He let out a bark of a laugh. “Of course you would only remember the worst moments. You did have some good times with us, you know. You used to climb around my textile wagons and burrow under the blankets.”
Kyra imagined burying her face in pungent silk as he said this, but who knew if it was a memory or just something she’d conjured?
Craigson continued. “The pitch you remember was to hide your scent from the felbeasts—demon cats, as you call them here.”
“You’re from across the Aerins?” Kyra asked.
“I hail from Edlan, but I was a Far Ranger much of my life, as I never had much use for dukes or cities. I crossed the Aerins often and traveled a route that went as far as your mother’s village.”
Her heart skipped a beat at the word “mother.” The one person she’d forbidden herself from thinking about because she’d seemed so out of reach. “Who is my mother?” She was light-headed with the eagerness to know. And there was a second question, one that frightened her with its possibilities. “Is she alive?”
Craigson let out a long breath, looking down as if having a hard time picking the right words, and Kyra feared the worst.
“The answer to your second question is that I don’t know,” he finally said. “She was alive the last time I crossed the Aerins a decade ago, but we lost touch after I stopped traveling. But let’s start from the beginning. You were born in a desert village called Mayel, about as far from here as you can get. Your mother’s name was Maikana.”
“Maikana,” Kyra repeated, sampling the syllables. “It sounds like a different language.”