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“Eh, it’ll cook off. Oh, wait—” Eavus looked at her, concerned, and Revni stopped. “Wait, hold on, you have something—turn around.”
Revni’s heart sped up.
“What is it?” A bug? A snake? Revni held herself as still as possible while Eavus’ hand, gently, carefully, inched closer to her back.
“Hold absolutely still.”
No wonder he hated this country. “What is it?” Her mouth had gone dry.
In one quick motion, he lifted the ax out of its sheath on her back and plopped it into her hands.
“Time to chop firewood.”
She turned to face his grin.
“You made the rules.”
Eavus climbed the small ridge back to the clearing. For a moment, she imagined Eavus’ head as a target, the thwack of the tree trunk right at the back of his skull. Her heart stuttered.
That was too much for the gods to ask, wasn’t it? The soldier had been too kind, sharing his food, trusting her with second watch. Even today, stopping early without ridiculing her.
Drawing maps in the dirt.
He had sworn to take her to Colcium, but along the journey he had slipped and shown her the way to get there, more than once while he talked his thoughts aloud. And now they’d come to the river he’d spoken of and she didn’t need him any longer.
He had said from the beginning she was his evidence—a broken needle, an old bucket. A piece of property to be used, argued over, forgotten. She had sworn to him and he to her, but staying with him longer than necessary was foolish. The signs from the gods that she needed to leave—Now. Tonight—were all too clear, but she hadn’t seen any sign at all as to how she was supposed to manage it without Eavus simply chasing her down and recapturing her.
Because the answer is obvious.
She stomped to the splintered tree, expending her anger on the repetitive crack, crack, crack of breaking it into usable parts. She knew what her parents would have had her do, what they would have done already, and the defiant twist in her belly made her feel childish again. How was she supposed to know the gods’ will? The gods had returned his sword to him more than once. Did this make him one of their children? Or were they just letting him die with honor? The gods were fickle, she knew that. So why ask of her something so permanent? She wished she had a seer, an altar, a goat, something to tell her whether the outcome she was considering made her clever, or brave—or a terrible betrayer.
By the time she was done, her muscles were screaming. Sweat had added to the moisture in her boots and clothes, so she was clammy hot and cold all at once. What she wouldn’t give for the hot springs at Gudrun right now. She could strip to her nothingness and slide into the steaming water, that smell of sulfur and the slip of algae at her back. Someone would bring her hot gigul, spiced with cloves and juniper, sweet with birch syrup, and she could lean back into the rock, the cold promise of frost kissing her eyelids, and forget that any trouble existed.
Clouds had rolled in while she worked—not thick, but shifting, flirting with that bright moon—and in the new darkness she bit her lip, torn again with indecision. The play of Eavus’ lips when he’d teased her flashed in her mind, quickly replaced with the blue lips of the dead boy on the beach, waves licking at his hair. Revni shoved the thoughts away with a hard return of her ax to its strap.
Either you trusted the gods or you didn’t.
The gods were clearing a path. If she needed to kill Eavus to take it, then the gods would show her how.
Revni hefted the wood into her aching arms and followed the distant flicker of firelight until she saw the plane of Eavus’ back. She almost didn’t see him at first. He’d put the hooded blanket over his shoulders, and the gray wool blended too well with the trees in the fading light.
Did the big idiot even know how to scale a fish? He was just standing there, holding the fish in one hand and his tiny little knife in the other, like someone had just plucked him out of the ice.
Revni opened her mouth to make fun of him, then froze as the other man emerged out of the shadows, a ghost suddenly solid in the light.
“Silve, soldier.”
SIXTEEN
Eavus tensed at the address in Aleterian, but held himself in check.
“Silve.”
The stranger carried a short spear—not Aleterian-issue, locally made—and while he wasn’t exactly preparing to use it, by the set of his shoulders, it wouldn’t take much. His eyes flicked behind Eavus, holding on to whatever he saw there just long enough that Eavus knew it must be Revni.
“Going to be a cold night.” He gestured to the fire.
Eavus hesitated, then stepped back. The stranger squatted, and Eavus matched his movements, realizing as he did that the man was a soldier. Or had been. It was the way the man kept his weight on his toes, the way he held himself slightly left, leaving room for the sword on his right that no longer hung there.
