AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Not at the Arcanum. The rest of the world is a goddamn mess, but the University is a place of sense and reason. I won’t see that tarnished.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Raider untwisted himself in his saddle, putting his back to Seth. “How can you be so naïve?”
“Why are you so cynical?”
“So you want to be on this mission?” Raider challenged.
“Answer my goddamn question.”
“Answer mine.”
Seth glared at Raider’s back. Seth had asked his question first, but pointing that out would sound childish—and Raider was the childish one, not Seth.
So Seth took a (somewhat) calming breath and said, “No, I don’t want to be on this mission. I wish someone else had been assigned to it. But I was assigned to it, and I will complete it. Now answer my question: why are you so cynical?”
“We’re not done talking about your mission”—infuriating man!—“and how ridiculous it is. Too ridiculous, Seth. Something else is going on. I refuse to believe that the Arcanum would send you haring across the Kesh just because one weaselly scholar killed another.”
“And why do you think one scholar would murder another, Raider?”
“Rivalry? Lovers’ spat? How the hell should I know?” Raider stopped his mare and turned her to face Seth. “Why? What haven’t you told me?”
“Nothing that affects you. But since you won’t let this go, the Arcanum is full of dangerous objects and dangerous information. Julian may have a book in his possession that belongs in the care of the College.”
“So this isn’t about a murder, not really. It’s about something the Arcanum wants—big surprise. Why the hell do you trust them so much?”
“I’m done answering your questions until you answer mine: why are you so cynical?”
From within the shadowy hood of his dark red kaffiyeh, Raider’s right eye flashed. “Because good people rarely hold power. It gets taken from them by others who are greedier and crueler. Good people get killed.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Why should I need to answer your question? You’re hunting a scholar who murdered another over a book that may have dangerous information. Isn’t that what I just described?”
“Don’t twist this around. We’re talking about you, not about my quarry. Is this why you refuse to attach yourself to anything? Because you don’t trust anyone for more than a meal or a fuck? Is that why you’re a—what did you call it?—a feather on the wind?”
Rather than answer, Raider made a sound of disgust and wheeled his mare around, leaving Seth to watch that red silk and wonder: what the hell was Raider, a man who healed so fast, a man with quicksilver in his body, so damn afraid of?
When they stopped during the heat of the day and put up the tent, Seth could no longer hold back his question. It was a compulsion of his, to dig at mysteries. It was what he did as a Curator. He opened doors and boxes and tombs. He looked inside at the secrets. So even though this was the very door he’d been afraid to open with Raider, Seth couldn’t stop himself.
His question was a thousand pieces and parts but only a few simple words. He asked, “What happened?”
The silvery tent was propped up as an awning, unsided but high and wide enough to shade both men and horses. Its arcane material not only dispersed the sun’s heat but also drew heat upward from within, keeping the interior cool.
The horses were dozing in their loosened tack. Seth was using the alembic to purify urine that he’d managed to collect from the animals. With the oasis nearly a week away, nothing could be wasted.
The alembic hummed softly and pure water splashed from its dispensing hose into the clean leather bucket.
Raider, who had been lying back on his sheepskin, bare from the waist up, hands clasped behind his head, jolted at Seth’s question.
“I told you,” Raider said quietly, his gaze locked on the awning above. “I don’t know.”
“You said you don’t remember. You don’t remember the reason for the quicksilver? Or who implanted it for you?”
Raider shuddered but didn’t shift his gaze from the awning above him. He didn’t answer.
“What about your life before it?” Seth asked. “There must be some clues.”
“I don’t remember anything. From before.”
