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“Thrown?” She flicked her wrist to illustrate.
“Rammed into someone's back and left there for a faster escape, more often.” Gil sat back and watched as the fire rose and then settled into a steady burn that would last most of the night.
“Oh.” Thea lowered her eyes. That should have been obvious.
A moment passed before Gil spoke again. “In the morning, when we can see clearly, we will practice with your knife. In the meantime, you should rest.”
She wasn't about to refuse. “What about you?” It wasn't hard to guess the camp would make them vulnerable to thieves.
“We're not far from the next waypoint. Kentoria's rangers walk this area often. This spot is probably the safest place you've been since you closed shop to attend your audience.”
“Am I not safe with you?” she asked.
He turned toward her as if startled.
Thea tilted her head, requesting an answer.
“Do you think you are?” Had he asked that sooner, it might have struck her as threatening. Instead, she read the curiosity in the way his chin angled to one side. A subtle shift in body language, but he was steadfast and stoic. Every softer action stood out against his usual tightly-regulated behavior.
“I feel safe. Or, now I do. I didn't at first.” She drew up her knees and folded her arms atop them as she offered him a slight smile. “But I suppose that isn't a surprise.”
“Hmm.” He didn't sound pleased. “I may have made a mistake in choosing not to constantly threaten you.”
“Do you think this trip would be easier if I were terrified?”
“I think I've damaged your sense of self-preservation. Considering I mean to abandon you in a foreign country, that may not be to your advantage.” He dropped his chin and cast her an earnest look across the fire.
Thea grinned back at him, and he looked so aggrieved by her reaction that she almost laughed. “Don't misunderstand me, I don't doubt that you're dangerous. I've seen exactly what you can do.” Not only because she'd seen him strike down the king. He'd refrained from doing more than cutting one of the bandits they'd faced, and there were the guards at the ferry, too. She'd watched her brother spar, sometimes; Ashvin once told her it sometimes took more skill to show restraint than to push to a merciless defeat. Everything Gil did was measured, controlled. A calculated game of risk, a constant determination of how much force was necessary for his desired result. That tempered her smile, but traces of it still lingered on her lips when she lowered her eyes. “But there was what you said earlier, too. That the path you would have chosen would be different. You can be dangerous and frightening without being a frightening person. You can use violence without being a violent man.”
“And you can be nosy without ever asking a question,” he replied dryly. “Remarkable, isn't it?”
She should have figured he'd guess what she was up to. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” He didn't need to be told; he was too smart to have missed what she was angling at.
She humored him anyway. “The kind of life you'd choose for yourself.”
Gil drew a breath as if to speak, then hesitated. It escaped him as a sigh. “You'd laugh,” he murmured.
“Oh, now I'm more curious.” She shifted closer to the fire, studying the pattern of the shadows and light that played across his face. She'd done him no kindnesses with the illusion she'd forged. He appeared too ordinary, bordering on unpleasant. It was a useful disguise, to be sure, but part of her longed to see his face—his true face—as she worked to lay some part of his thoughts bare. “I won't laugh. I promise.”
He snorted. “You tell me first, then. Your most secret ambition. We'll see how honest you're being then.”
“That's not fair,” Thea protested.
“It's no more than you're asking of me,” he said, a hint of teasing returning to his words. “Answer. You wanted to be a Threadmancer?”
“No.” Her answer came easy. “I wanted to marry. To be someone's cherished wife and have a handful of children. And kittens to sit on my lap as I embroidered.”
Gil raised a brow. “That hardly seems like some scandalous secret.”
“It is when you're a noblewoman. If you rub elbows with nobles as often as you've tried to make me think, then you know what it's like. Everything is about the advancement of your family. Marrying for power or wealth instead of love. A family's children are bartered about in marriage, used as tools to gain as much as possible. How, then, was that supposed to earn me a husband who truly liked me?” She lifted her chin, challenging him to answer.
He raised a hand, palm out, to concede. “Fair. I take it such goals never came to fruition.”
“My father wished me to marry. He made an attempt. He saw a union as something that could save the family's fortune. But nobody wants to be used. Not me, and not my betrothed, either.” A hint of bitterness still coated her tongue whenever the situation crossed her mind. She rubbed her arms as if to ward off both chill and frustration.
“I'm sorry,” Gil said simply.
