“Not many anymore, but I’m familiar.”
One of the first animals to go in the famines. Anything in the cities with meat on its bones was captured and eaten by starving families. Domestic animals never made much of a return after that.
“Well,” Erekkus said, “he’s like a cat. He doesn’t have friends. He just tolerates your presence.”
I said, with exaggerated disbelief, “And yours is the one most tolerable to him?”
He scowled at me. “I could say the same about you, Sister. Apparently he managed to ‘tolerate’ you all day long.”
“Nothing salacious. I swear.” I raised my hands and barely managed to stop myself before I added on the Weaver to that statement. “He just needed my help with something.”
“I’m sure he did. I imagine the dress helped. If one could call it a dress.”
I scoffed. “Not like that.”
“Told you,” Erekkus grumbled. “Just his type. Beautiful trouble.”
That was a little flattering.
I found myself wondering if whomever Atrius had been dreaming about had been beautiful trouble.
Erekkus rose with a series of grunts and groans. He made his way to the door and paused there.
“Well, whatever you did, thanks,” he said. “He was in a much better mood tonight.”
Then he left, closing the door behind him, and the room was silent. I crawled to my bed and fell into it. My body and soul were exhausted. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to take me.
And then, in the secret silence, where no one could see me, I trailed my fingertips up my own arm. Just out of curiosity. Just to remember how it felt.
A meaningless touch.
Strange thing to crave.
A knock jolted me awake.
I forced myself upright, awareness settling around me. Someone was at my door. Not Erekkus. Not Atrius, either.
I rose and opened it, revealing one of Atrius’s errand boys.
“Apologies for waking you, seer,” he said. “He requests you.”
Nothing more needed to be said. I found Atrius near the fire again, slumped in that chair. This time, there was no talking. He gave me a mildly embarrassed look and opened his mouth, and I stopped him before the words made it out.
“It’s alright,” I said. “I know. You don’t need to explain.”
The compassion in my voice surprised me.
The progress I’d made last night had loosened the knot inside him, though the pain was bad again tonight. We didn’t speak as I worked at it, freeing what little I could of his threads from the hold of the curse, then afterwards ushering him into sleep. This time, I followed him there not long after.
He came for me the next night too, and the next. And then finally, on the fifth night—the last night we would remain in Alka—I went to his door of my own accord when dawn approached.
When he opened the door and stared at me, I said, “I thought I would save us the time.”
He was silent for a long moment, then nodded and let me in.
Helping him was hard work. It did not come naturally to me. It left me drained and depleted. So why was it that a small part of myself was relieved when he let me inside? Why did I find an uneasy comfort in the warmth of his soul next to mine? I had no nightmares of my own in his room. I didn’t know what to make of that.
Maybe we’re all just animals, I thought to myself, as I dozed off that night, my grip still loosening around Atrius’s presence. It’s nice not to sleep alone.
20
“Vasai?”
I choked on the word, like it went down my throat the wrong way. I took a sip of water to disguise it, letting my hair hide my face as I ducked my head with the movement.
The name should have meant nothing to me.
Fifteen years should have reduced it to nothing but a distant memory that I wasn’t even supposed to have. Once one became an Arachessen, the time before was meaningless. That’s why the Arachessen preferred to recruit very young children. Clean slates. But at ten years old, my slate had been very, very dirty, and I never forgot that. I kept trying to scrub it blank.
This involuntary reaction was a stray mark that never should have been allowed to remain.
I swallowed another gulp of water. Atrius stared at me. I couldn’t rely on the darkness to hide my face.
“Yes,” he said, tone adding an unspoken, Obviously.
He sat cross-legged, straight-backed, on his bedroll, which was covered with open books and papers. His tent was mostly bare. We were moving fast these days. He didn’t bother wasting his time or his men’s setting up furniture. Actually, he seemed more comfortable this way—on the ground surrounded by a chaotic sea of plans. He barely appeared to pay attention to them, anyway. From what I saw, captains handed him papers and he glanced at them and then made some kind of deranged decision based on whatever direction the wind was blowing that night. It made the mission of trying to understand his strategy much more difficult—even from such intimate spaces as his tent.
I spent a lot of time in strangely… intimate situations with Atrius, now.
We had left Alka’s capital weeks ago, and still, every night, I went to his tent. I helped him with his curse. I helped him sleep. I fell asleep beside him. The routine had grown rote, second nature. Now we barely spoke while we did it. When nightfall came again, we awoke without a word to each other, and I returned to my own tent. I never brought it up. I knew he didn’t want to acknowledge it, and this was the time to build his trust in me.
I would wait, I decided, before I started to push. It would be better if he was the one to start talking first. For now, I knew that every night I went without asking questions he didn’t want to answer, he’d trust me a little bit more.
Tonight, he’d started to talk. And now I scolded myself for having the reaction I did.
“Vasai is the only natural next target,” he said. I could feel his stare—the curiosity in it. He was, I’d gathered, unexpectedly perceptive when he wanted to be. I wished he was a little less so.
He was right, of course. We’d traveled north at a quick pace. The Alkan territory was large—a substantial win for Atrius, as it provided an important corridor north, one that his army could use to travel for hundreds of miles. Over the last several weeks, Atrius had sent splinter groups of his army to secure some of the smaller cities in Alkan territory, but none of them would pose much of a threat with Aaves gone and Alka’s capital under Bloodborn control.
But now, we were reaching the edges of the land that Alka could help us traverse uncontested. Atrius would need to continue further north—continue to the Pythora King himself.
That meant crossing through Vasai.
“Of course.” I took another sip of water in an attempt to clear the lump in my throat. It didn’t work very well.
Vasai was only another city on a map. Nothing more.
“I expect it to be more of a challenge,” Atrius went on. “I hear that its warlord is a formidable man.”
“Tarkan.”