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Now, she could think only of Betty bleating in distress. If Betty was even still alive.
“We can’t stay,” Sebastian answered softly to the pleading look she gave him. “You know that as well as I. We have to be on our way.”
She looked back to Tom. “But I told you before, about Betty.” Desperation drove into her voice. “I told you that Irma had our horses and my goat, Betty. I told you—I know I did.”
Tom couldn’t meet her eyes. “You did, ma’am. I’m sorry, but I just forgot to ask her. I can’t lie to you and tell you anything else or make an excuse. You told me. I forgot.”
Jennsen nodded and put a hand on his arm. “Thank you for getting our horses, and all the other help. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“We have to get going,” Sebastian said, checking his saddlebags and securing the flaps. “It’s going to take time to work our way through the crowds and out of here.”
“We’ll give you an escort,” Joe said.
“People get out of the way of our big draft horses,” Clayton explained. “Come on. We know the quickest way out. Follow us and we’ll get you through the crowds.”
Both men pulled a horse over so they could step up on a barrel and mount up bareback. They deftly guided the huge horses out of the narrow way between the stands and barrels without so much as jostling anything. Sebastian stood waiting for her, holding the reins to their horses, Rusty and Pete.
On her way past, Jennsen paused and gazed up into Tom’s eyes, sharing with him a private, wordless moment among all the people around. She stretched up and kissed his cheek, then held her own cheek against his for a moment. His fingertips just touched her shoulder. As she drew away, his wistful gaze stayed on her face.
“Thank you for helping me,” she whispered. “I’d have been lost without you.”
Tom smiled then. “My pleasure, ma’am.”
“Jennsen,” she said.
He nodded. “Jennsen.” He cleared his throat. “Jennsen, I’m sorry—”
Jennsen, holding back her tears, touched her fingers to his lips to silence him. “You helped me save Sebastian’s life. You were a hero for me when I needed one. Thank you from the depths of my heart.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets as his gaze sank to the ground once more. “Safe journey to you, Jennsen, wherever you may go in your life. Thank you for letting me join you for a small part of it.”
“Steel against steel,” she said, not even understanding why, but it somehow sounded right. “You helped me in that.”
Tom smiled then, with a look of intense pride and gratitude.
“That he may be the magic against magic. Thank you, Jennsen.”
She patted Rusty’s muscular neck before putting a boot into a stirrup and boosting herself up onto the saddle. She cast the big man a last look over her shoulder. Staying with his things, Tom watched as Jennsen and Sebastian followed Joe and Clayton out into the sea of people. Their two big escorts, yelling and whistling, moved people out of the way, creating a clear path ahead. People stopped and looked when they heard the commotion coming, then stepped aside at the sight of the huge horses.
Sebastian, flashing a heated scowl, leaned toward her. “What was the big ox babbling about magic?” he whispered over at her.
“I don’t know,” she said in a low voice. She let out a sigh. “But he helped me get you out.”
She wanted to tell him that Tom might be big, but he was no ox. She didn’t though. For some reason, she didn’t want to talk about Tom to Sebastian. Even though Tom had been helping her to rescue Sebastian, what they had done together for some reason felt very private to her.
When they finally reached the edge of the marketplace, Joe and Clayton waved them a farewell as Jennsen and Sebastian urged their horses ahead at a gallop, out onto the cold, empty Azrith Plains.
Chapter 30
Jennsen and Sebastian rode north and west, across the Azrith Plains, not far from where only that morning she had ridden back with Tom in his wagon from the swamp around Althea’s place. Her visit to Althea only the day before, along with the treacherous journey through the swamp, seemed remote to her, now. She had spent most of the day getting up into the palace, talking her way past guards and officials, getting Sebastian released, bluffing the Mord-Sith, Nyda, into helping them, and getting down and out of the plateau with Wizard Rahl at their heels. With so much of the day already gone, they weren’t able to travel a great distance before darkness descended and they had to make camp out in the open plain.
“With those cutthroats not all that far away, we don’t dare make a fire,” Sebastian said when he saw her shivering. “They could spot us from miles away and if we’re night-blinded by a fire we would never know they were sneaking up on us.”
Overhead, the moonless sky was a vast glittering mantle of stars. Jennsen thought about what Althea said, that a bird could be seen on a moonless night by noting the stars it blocked out as it passed overhead. She said that was how she could see one who was a hole in the world. Jennsen saw no bird, just three coyotes in the distance, trotting along on a night patrol of their territory. In the flat, empty land, they were easy enough to spot by starlight alone as they went on their hunt for small nocturnal animals.
With numb fingers, Jennsen untied her bedroll from the back of the saddle and pulled it down. “And where would you propose we get the wood to make a fire, anyway?”
Sebastian turned and stared at her. A smile stole onto his face. “I never thought of that. I guess we couldn’t have a fire even if we wanted one.”
She scrutinized the empty plain as she dragged the saddle off of Rusty’s back and laid it on the ground near Sebastian. Even with only the cold starlight, she could make out things well enough. “If anyone approached, we could see them coming. Do you think one of us should keep watch through the night?”
“No. Without a campfire and not moving, they’d never find us out in this great dark expanse. I think it would be better to get some sleep so we can make good time tomorrow.”
With the horses picketed, she used her saddle for a seat. As she unfurled her bedroll, Jennsen found two white cloth bundles inside. She knew she hadn’t put any such things in her bedroll. She undid the knot at the top of one bundle and discovered a meat pie inside. She saw, then, Sebastian making the same discovery.
“Looks like the Creator has provided for us,” he said.
Jennsen smiled as she stared down at the meat pie in her lap. “Tom left these.”
Sebastian didn’t ask how she knew. “The Creator has provided for us through Tom. Brother Narev says that even when we think someone has provided for us, it is actually the Creator working through them. We in the Old World believe that when we give to someone in need, we are really doing the Creator’s good works. That’s why the welfare of others is our sacred duty.”
Jennsen said nothing, fearing that if she did, he might think she was criticizing Brother Narev, or even the Creator. She couldn’t dispute the word of a great man like Brother Narev. She had never done any good works like Brother Narev had. She had never even left anyone meat pies or done anything else helpful. It seemed to her that she brought only trouble and suffering to people—her mother, Lathea, Althea, Friedrich, and who knew how many others. If any force worked through her, it certainly wasn’t the Creator.
Sebastian, perhaps seeing something of her thoughts in her expression, spoke softly. “That’s why I’m helping you—I believe it’s what the Creator would want me to do. That’s how I know Brother Narev and Emperor Jagang would approve of me helping you. This is the very thing we’re fighting for—to have people care about others by sharing their burdens.”
She smiled not just her appreciation, but also at the notion of such noble intentions. Noble intentions, though, which, for reasons she didn’t even fully understand, felt to her like a knife in the back.
Jennsen looked up from the meat pie in her lap. “So, that’s why you’re helping me, then.” Her smile was
forced. “Because it’s your duty.”
Sebastian looked almost as if he’d been slapped. “No.” He came closer, going down on one knee. “No. I…in the beginning, of course, but…it’s not just duty.”
“You make it sound like I’m a leper you think you have to—”
“No—that’s not it at all.” As he searched for words, that radiant smile of his came to his face, that smile that made her heart ache. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Jennsen. I swear, I’ve never laid my eyes on a woman as beautiful as you, or as smart. You make me feel like I’m…like I’m a nobody. But then when you smile at me, I feel like I’m someone important. I’ve never met anyone who made me feel this way. At first it was duty, but now, I swear…”
Jennsen sat in shock at hearing him say such things, at hearing the tender sincerity, the earnest pleading, in his voice.
