There was another instant’s stillness, another slow sigh in the darkness. “Where do you wish to go?” he asked, his voice very even. “Back to this man?”
This man. Lord Kaspar. And Rosa’s head was wildly shaking, hard enough that sparks flashed behind her eyes. No. Not Lord Kaspar. Never. The man who’d taken a child out of school, andstarvedher, because…
“Back to my library,” she managed. “To Dusbury. Without” — she swallowed — “Lord Kaspar knowing it. Or following me.Please.”
Tristan was silent for another breath, and there was the sudden, rising certainty that he would say no, I can’t, you’re worthless, useless, you deserve to go back to this man —
“Ach,” he said, the word a shouting, shuddering relief. “We shall go.”
31
Tristan led Rosa through the corridors in silence. While a dark, desperate misery descended upon her, dripping from her eyes in a steady, bitter-salt stream.
John had lied. He was a monster. She wasleaving.
But the tears only dripped faster, Rosa’s feet staggering on the smooth stone below, her body kept upright only by the hard clench of her hand to Tristan’s solid arm. She would go back to Dusbury. And then…
“Little teacher?” cut in a voice, deep and vaguely familiar.Simon’svoice. “Where go you?”
“North,” Tristan replied, clipped. “I take Rosa back to Dusbury tonight.”
Simon’s growl was immediate, feral, sending more fear scattering up Rosa’s spine. “You no do this,” he hissed. “Break captainrule. Men lie in wait. Menattack.”
“Then we shall stay underground, until we have passed the men,” Tristan said testily. “This is important, Simon. To John-Ka. Tome.”
He sounded surprisingly fierce, suddenly, and his body against Rosa’s didn’t even flinch at Simon’s harsh, answering growl. “Then I come,” Simon replied, voice flat. “Keep little teachersafe.”
Tristan huffed out a breath, his hand clenching against Rosa’s arm. “You may only come,” he snapped, “if you go find Salvi, and bring him with you. And tell him to bring a lamp, and human food, and a warm cloak for Rosa. Ach?”
Simon muttered something back in Aelakesh, something about false medics and useless humans who couldn’t survive a one-day journey without coddling — but Tristan snarled again, and finally Rosa could hear Simon muttering his assent, and loping off into the darkness.
And then it was just more walking, endless miserable walking for what felt like anage, while the tears kept streaking down Rosa’s face, dripping off her chin. John had lied to her. John had never truly cared about her. John was a monster.
She had never been worthy. She had never been cared for. It had all been a lie.
She only faintly registered a rising clatter behind them, a distant dance of light — and suddenly Simon appeared again, jogging through the corridor, a gleaming scimitar slapping against his side. Close behind him was Salvi, tall and grim-looking, with his huge pack strapped to his back, his narrow eyes fixed to Tristan’s face. To where Tristan looked wan and tired in the lamplight, but also unmistakably relieved.
“Hey,sæti,” Salvi said, his voice rough, as he strode straight toward Tristan, and yanked him bodily into his chest. “You’re okay. Ach?”
Tristan’s eyes briefly closed, his claws curling into Salvi’s tunic. “Ach,” he murmured back. “But we need to take Rosa-Ka to Dusbury. Tonight.”
“I have heard,” Salvi said, into Tristan’s hair. “These women causing us nothing but trouble. Again.”
Rosa’s cold, numb-feeling body had already backed against the nearest wall, blinking between Simon and Salvi, shivering with more jolting, rising fear. Because maybe they knew too, and what if they yelled at her, or overpowered Tristan, made him change his mind —
“Peace, woman,” Salvi said, his eyes flicking toward her over the top of Tristan’s head. “You have naught to fear from us. Now, put this on, before you catch a chill, and thus gain us John’s undying wrath.”
His free hand threw something toward her — a cloak, Rosa realized, grasping for it, staring blankly at its thick wool weight. John’s wrath. But John didn’t care. Not anymore. She wasn’t worthy. Wasn’t wanted. He’dlied.
“John won’t care,” she heard her hollow voice say, even as she somehow yanked the cloak on, curling herself into its scratchy warmth. “He wants me to leave. With good reason, because” — she gulped in air, scrubbed at her face with the cloak, she could say it, they had to know — “I was here to spy on you. To help start awar.”
But there wasn’t a trace of surprise in Salvi’s eyes, or even Simon’s. And good gods, theyhadall known, all this time?
“Ach, woman,” Salvi said, as he hooked his arm around Tristan’s neck, and began drawing him down the corridor. “You ken we didn’t guess why a powerful lord’s cleverest, most favoured wench was suddenly so eager to serve anorc? Why she could never stop quizzing us about our mountain, and our ways? Why she fought so fiercely to worm her way onto John’s prick, and thus into his cold dead heart?”
He actuallywinkedat Rosa over his shoulder, as if to soften the blow of those shocking words, but it still felt like he’d struck her straight in the chest, knocked all the air from her lungs. They all knew, and they thought — they truly thought —
“But I just — I only asked questions because I wanted tolearn,” Rosa said, her voice abominably plaintive, wavering, again on the very verge of weeping. “And IlikedJohn. Icaredabout John.”
