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Chapter Three:
Jayla
It was another fifteen minutes before they’d gathered Jayla’s sparse belongings and arrayed them near Pietro’s campsite. Cody built a small fire and they parceled out supplies. The dried meat was surprisingly tasty and the bread was delicious, or else Jayla was hungrier than she’d realized.
“So did any news come across the canyon with the supplies?” Jayla asked. “How long will it be before the bridge is rebuilt?”
Cody spoke around a mouthful of food. “I heard they might not repair it right now,” he said. “They might put a temporary bridge across the fissure instead.”
“The fissure?” she repeated.
Pietro waved toward something invisible in the gathering dark. “The crevasse on the southern edge of our campsite here.”
“A lot narrower than the canyon,” Cody said. “If people can cross that, it’ll just take them a couple of hours to travel to one of the Maratan bridges.” He leaned back on his elbows, too far for the firelight to reach his face. “So I know Jayla’s coming to the city to find work as a soldier. What brings you here, Pietro? Unless you don’t feel like telling.”
“I lived here for a long time. I left for ten years. I missed it, so I’m coming back.”
It was an answer that left out more than it included, but since that was obviously deliberate, Jayla was careful about posing the next question. “Do you plan to take up your old life or look for something new?”
“I don’t think my old life is open to me,” he said, and then shrugged. “I may find that I don’t want to stay more than a week or two. I might be crossing back over the chasm before the dust even settles on my shoes.”
Cody lifted a lazy hand to gesture in Pietro’s direction. “Sojourner.”
Pietro touched the twisted silver bracelet on his wrist. “Precisely.”
Jayla jerked her head back, her attention caught by a sound beyond the circle of firelight. All around them, other travelers talked and rattled pans around their own campfires, but this noise was different. Closer. Hesitant. Stealthy?
“Who’s out there?” she called. Cody rolled to a sitting position, and Pietro casually dropped his hand to his ankle. She wondered if he carried a concealed dagger.
There was another soft footfall and then a small shape moved out of the darkness. It was the little ginger-haired girl who had showed up earlier at the makeshift infirmary. She looked even more ragged and forlorn than she had this morning, her hair unkempt and her face smeared with dirt. She held her bandaged hand carefully against her heart and glanced at each one of them in turn, saying nothing.
“Aussen?” Pietro said in his gentle voice. “That’s your name, isn’t it?”
She immediately fixed her eyes on him. “Pietro,” she replied.
“That’s right. Let me introduce you to Jayla and Cody.” They all nodded gravely to each other, then Pietro asked, “Are you lost, Aussen?”
“Where are your friends? The women who are watching out for you?” Jayla demanded. The girl just looked at her and didn’t answer.
“I don’t think she understands Cordish,” Pietro murmured. “Or at least not well enough to speak it.”
“Who is she?” Cody wanted to know. “She looks Zessin.”
“That was my thought as well,” Pietro said.
“She was with two women this morning, but they said they barely knew her. They’d started caring for her when the woman she was traveling with died,” Jayla explained.
“So she’s all alone?” Cody said.
Pietro held up a piece of bread. “Have you eaten? Are you hungry?”
She came deeper into the firelight, her eyes still on Pietro. She didn’t answer, but when he leaned closer to offer her the bread, she took it from his hands and quickly stuffed it in her mouth.
“Hungry,” Jayla said. “Probably thirsty.Whereare the women looking out for her?”
Pietro was busy making up a plate of food for Aussen and pouring water into a cracked mug. The girl sat beside him and immediately began eating. “They might not even have noticed that she’s wandered off,” he said.
“They might begladshe did,” Jayla said darkly.
