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Her eyelids grew heavy, drifting further down with each blink until she slid into sleep. She dreamed of her father and the Nunari who chased her through Wellspring Holt, of Estred holding up her favorite comb with her toes to ask Siora if she would plait her hair, of Gharek, who in one stunning moment that made Siora forget to breathe, laughed at something Estred said. A booming guffaw of unrestrained amusement that altered his entire demeanor and gave her a glimpse of the man he could have or might once have been.
“Ah, Estred,” he said in the dream, still wearing the grin that was more than just a baring of teeth. “You do make me laugh, love.”
He repeated her name and then again and again until Siora clawed her way up from the fog of dreams and memory and found Gharek still beside her, his own sleep troubled. He twitched, handsclosing and opening on the empty space where his precious charm would have rested had Rurian not taken it to give to Zaredis.
“Estred,” he muttered as a frown carved a trio of lines into his forehead. “Estred.”
Siora didn’t dare touch him, afraid of an inadvertent blow if she startled him awake. Instead she whispered to him, hoping he heard and would settle once more into a peaceful slumber. “Safe, Gharek. Estred is safe.” She prayed to the mercurial gods she wasn’t lying.
CHAPTER FIVE
They set out just before dawn, wakened by a rough voice ordering them to get their lazy arses up and on the road. Gharek had already been awake for a good hour, staring up at the fading stars while he crafted and just as quickly discarded plan after plan for escaping, for beating Zaredis’s man to Estred’s caretakers and fleeing with her into the Empire’s hinterlands, even stowing aboard a ship to the lands across the Sevelon seas.
He wanted to blacken his own eyes for not doing that in the first place. He’d always told himself that Estred came first. She was the impetus for his every action. He’d lied to himself. Vengeance had become the thing that drove him most, sent him down a foolish path because of pride, rage, and an odd hurt he refused to dwell on for any length of time. Thanks to that recklessness and a chain of events that defied the idea of random coincidence, he’d ended up here, once more a puppet to a master, his daughter the weapon used to yoke him.
He glanced at Siora next to him, half asleep in the saddle as they rode toward Domora to fulfill impossible demands for a general who’d thank Gharek’s efforts by killing him fast instead of slow. She was a sorry sight. Bedraggled and dirty, her hair finger-combed and only half tamed into a plait, she looked much like shedid when he rescued her and Estred from a stone-throwing mob in a Domoran back alley. She didn’t smell much better either. Then again, neither did he.
The memory of that awful night was engraved on his mind’s eye. It had taken only a moment to spot the mob’s ringleaders, and as he cleaved his way through the crowd, he knifed two of the three, sinking the blade fast, deep, and lethally. He killed the third man the next day as he was taking a piss against the back wall of a tavern house. The crowd itself scattered in short order once a few within it recognized him.
He’d pulled a sobbing Estred into his arms to soothe her and ascertain there were no more threats. He then addressed the bleeding beggar who’d shown compassion and a foolhardy courage. She paused in backing away from him when he told her to wait. “Follow me if you wish repayment for your bravery.” She’d followed wordlessly, a ragged scrap of a woman possessed of more kindness than any he’d known. Until she betrayed him and sank a dagger between his shoulder blades.
She must have felt him staring at her now for she lifted her head from a half doze and gave him a faint, sleepy smile that startled him. No one except Estred truly smiled at him, and the sight of Siora doing so sent a familiar frisson through his body. She might be an unkempt mess now, but he’d seen beyond the dirt and fatigue and remembered how she looked when she served in his household a lifetime ago. He’d been surprised by what a bath, food, and clothes that weren’t rags did for a person. Small, too thin, and with an odd gaze that made the hair on his nape rise on occasion, she was pretty, with big eyes, wide cheekbones, a pointed chin, and a bottom lip that begged to be suckled.
Gharek blinked and shook his head to clear the cobwebs of memory and focus on his companion’s words. She gestured with her chin to the two soldiers Zaredis had sent with them. They rode close enough to discourage a sudden race for freedom but still far enough away that they only caught scraps of conversation from her and the cat’s-paw. “I thought it would just be us traveling to Domora.”
He’d assumed differently and had been right. “Zaredis is a man with a lot at stake and who’s not particularly trusting. Even with Estred as his hostage he wouldn’t trust me enough to send us to the capital without a guard or two. Rightfully so.”
Siora sat straighter in the saddle as she came more awake. “If holding Estred couldn’t stop you from betraying the general to the usurper, how could a couple of his soldiers? They wouldn’t make it out of Domora alive to warn Zaredis of any treachery.”
That was true. They wouldn’t make it alive to Domora if they were the only ones he’d have to contend with. “They’re not here to keep me in line. They’re just an escort until we reach the capital. I’d wager Zaredis has a number of spies in the city already. Once we get there one of these men will meet with one of the spies who’ll then take over in monitoring the two of us and relaying information to another who’ll feed that information back to the camp. If I dared say anything to the current emperor of the day, the general would know it in a matter of hours. If his sorcerer can work various magics, he’ll know it instantly.”
Zaredis’s mage Rurian was a force he hadn’t expected to contend with. The general was a near insurmountable obstacle himself. He’d have to adhere to their plans and complete his task, at least until Estred was safe. But he did not have any intention of meekly submitting to his own execution.
Siora interrupted his musings. “Have you ever seen the Windcry?”
He nodded. “Herself kept it under heavy guard with both soldiers and outlawed sorcery and brought it out for the court and visiting dignitaries to admire on certain feast days. A reminder of the Empire’s strength. The Windcry isn’t much to look at on first glance, but once you get close enough you can feel the power radiating from it.”
He’d seen it more than once, a humble apparatus lacking any ornamentation except for the inscription of symbols he couldn’t translate. They were engraved along the side of some type of lever attached to a disk that looked as if it would rock up and down, picking up speed thanks to the lever. He knew nothing else about it beyond the stories of its usage. And he had no idea what, if any, spell could break the powerful wards placed on it to deter thieves.
Siora was still speaking, keeping her voice low so as not to annoy their escort, who looked as if they’d take any excuse to use their cudgels on Gharek. “I remember listening to a free trader entertain a crowd in a village square with a story of some great magical item and how Emperor Attahulin used it to conquer the old Soquay kingdom by shattering its cities. If it’s still under guard, how will you reach it?”
Another question whose answer was still nebulous. “I have a connection at the royal library who may be willing to help me. To a point.”
They lapsed into silence that held through a brief stop at a farmer’s well, where the man offered to water their horses. Though the farmer didn’t invite them into his house, he offered a place for them to rest as well as a basket containing a pair of plucked chickens, two loaves of bread, and a few vegetables for a small price.“You’re welcome to this, but you’ll have to cook your own. We’re not an inn for travelers.”
One of the soldiers tossed him a small bag of coins with a grunt of thanks while the other started a small fire in the shade of a tree whose trunk spiraled in a tight pattern before spreading a canopy of green leaves that whispered in the hint of a breeze.
The soldier who’d taken the basket rifled through it before giving both Gharek and Siora a gimlet look. “You want any of this, you have to cook it.”
Siora shrugged and held out her hands for the basket. “I’ll do it. I don’t mind.”
In no time, she had the poultry spitted over the fire and vegetables roasting in the coals. The guard who’d started the fire followed her as she foraged nearby for wild herbs she could use to season their supper. While both guards gave her a nod of thanks, neither showed an inclination to share their company and they sat away from their charges, close enough to keep an eye on them but far enough to discourage any attempts at conversation or eavesdropping. Gharek was perfectly fine with such an arrangement.
He slowly ate his share of the food, savoring each bite though the vegetables blistered his fingers and he had to wipe grease smears on the grass next to him from the roasted poultry. “This is good,” he told Siora, gazing wistfully at the bare leg bone he held and wishing for more. “I’d forgotten your talent with a cook pot.” Not only had she been a good nursemaid for Estred, she’d shown a deft hand in the kitchen when she could sneak past the cook. Her pleased expression lit an unexpected spot of warmth inside him.
“You had a well-stocked larder,” she said. “It was a joy to workin the kitchen, at least when your cook wasn’t glaring daggers at me for invading her territory.”
He tossed the leg bone toward the fire. “She probably feared for her position, and rightly so. Had not Estred kept you busy as her nurse, I’d have tossed Cook out on her backside and installed you in her place. Maybe if I’d done that, neither of us would be in our current straits now.” He couldn’t resist throwing a barb. His anger ran deep, and the short history between him and this woman had made a significant impact on his present. She’d told him why she’d betrayed him, but he still couldn’t find the sense in it. Betray him to save him. He worried at it like an abscess.
