“We should stop well before dawn,” she whispered to Chane. “Nikolas is done in already. He’s not used to shifting time frames, day to night, like the rest of us.”
Chane raised an eyebrow but nodded. “We should put another league or two behind us, perhaps go on until the high moon, but I will watch for a suitable place to camp. We can make the young sage comfortable once we stop. I asked the stable master to loan us canvases, poles, and blankets along with the wagon.”
Wynn glanced sidelong at Chane, who kept his eyes ahead on the road. She couldn’t clearly make out his irises in the dark, but perhaps they had lost all of their color, and their pupils widened to see far better in the dark than the living could.
He had changed in strange ways over the past season. Much as he had always watched over her and even Shade, his devotions as a protector had spread to any member of the guild as well ... even for all the misery and obstacles the premin council had heaped on her.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, looking back over the cliff.
“You do not have to thank me.”
As promised, and well before dawn, Chane spotted an adequate clearing off the road. They stopped there, and he allowed himself to get lost in mundane tasks, such as tending the horses and setting up two makeshift tents. These chores kept him busy until the moon was past its highest point. Only when Chane went to see whether Wynn needed help with the fire did he notice something else.
“Where is the elf?” he asked.
Shade lifted her head where she lay beside Wynn and peered all around the clearing.
Wynn straightened up on her knees from blowing on embers inside moss laid over spindly branches.
“I thought he was helping you,” she said, looking about as well.
Nikolas had already crawled into one tent, but Osha was nowhere to be seen.
As Wynn got to her feet, Chane focused on listening to every sound around them as he let hunger slip through his flesh to increase his hearing. Beneath the sounds of surf over the cliff and wind in the trees, he heard the gurgle of water, like a stream. Perhaps the sullen elf had gone for freshwater.
Chane did not actually care where Osha went. His purpose was to protect Wynn and aid in her pursuits. But any member of their current group who suddenly vanished without his awareness unnerved him. And then he heard the light footsteps approaching.
In less than a breath, Osha came around a near tree into camp. With his hood down, his long white-blond hair hung loose and bright in the dark. His sleeves were pushed up, exposing his tan and scarred arms, and he carried three large silver fish on a cord strung through their mouths and gills.
He could not have been gone long, and he had no hook, line, or pole. Had he caught the fish with his bare hands? More annoying was that Chane had not even heard the elf’s approach until the last instant.
Wynn sighed, which pulled Chane’s attention in time to see her smile.
“Oh, good,” she said, closing on Osha. “I managed to buy some bread, cheese, and a few apples, but those will help our supplies last.”
She was praising Osha for providing food.
Chane hated most human emotions. They were beneath him. He especially hated anything petty, even when he heard himself saying ...
“There is still plenty of time before dawn. Shade and I will hunt for other game.”
Osha looked him up and down, held up the fish, and said in Belaskian, “Wynn does not like meat. She likes fish.”
Chane went cold. The beast inside him, the monster of his inner nature chained down within him, thrashed at its bonds as if wanting blood. He struggled to hold himself in place.
Perhaps his own hunger was why his emotions surfaced so easily. How long had it been since he fed?
Wynn stepped up to him, placing herself between him and Osha, and touched the sleeve of his shirt. “You’ve been looking paler the past few nights,” she said quietly. “There should be ... wildlife here. Perhaps you could go and ...”
Chane dropped his eyes from the elf to her. Some time ago she had made him swear never again to feed on a sentient being. He had kept that promise so far, and she believed he subsisted on the blood of livestock and large wild game.
This was half-true.
“I’ll cook the fish,” she said. “You go while you have time.”
She was correct, though it felt as though he was being dismissed. Still, before they reached the duchy, he needed to be at full strength.
When traveling, he always carried two packs: one was his own, and the other had belonged to his old mentor, Welstiel Massing, now dead for the final time. No matter how long Chane possessed that second pack, he would always think of it as Welstiel’s.
Without another word, Chane grabbed the second pack from the wagon’s back and walked off into the trees. He felt Wynn’s eyes upon him but did not look back.
Osha watched Chane vanish into the woods, and he fought to keep his own expression still.
Wynn ran a hand over her face. When her hand dropped, her eyes flashed with anger.
“You did that on purpose,” she accused. “You tried to humiliate him.” Then her tone softened. “That’s not like you.”
No, it was not, but it was unthinkable that one such as she would keep company with that thing. Obviously she had also changed.
“Where is he going?” Osha asked in his own tongue, perhaps too sharply. “What is he doing?”
“Hunting for himself,” she answered, keeping to Belaskian.
Osha knew that was not the whole truth.
She stepped closer, looked at the fish he held, and sighed. “Nikolas is already asleep. We should cook and eat some ourselves, saving one for when he wakes. I’ll share mine with Shade.”
Grateful for a simple focus, Osha nodded. While she stoked the campfire, he scavenged and whittled until he had forked branches planted at the fire’s sides and a thicker green bough stripped of bark for a skewer. He cleaned one fish and handed it to her, and while she skewered and set it over the flames, he started on the second one.
“You always were good at catching fish,” she said.
He looked up. “It is not difficult,” he answered in an’Cróan Elvish.
“Not for you.” She glanced away, lingering in looking to the wagon.
His curved bow rested on the wagon’s end with his quiver.
“You’ve become quite the archer,” she said. “But that’s not the bow of a ...”
Osha turned his attention back to cleaning the fish. No, it was not an anmaglâhk’s bow, which would be assembled from parts hidden away in the back of a forest gray vestment beneath a matching cloak. He no longer possessed any of those things.
He had told her most of his story, at least for what had happened before he left his people. But he was uncertain that it had done her any good. It had not done anything for him.
“Why did you leave?” she asked, and then hesitated. “Why did you come all the way here ... with Brot’an ... after what he did and ... What possible reason could you and Brot’an have for bringing Leanâlhâm?”
“What is it you want?” he snapped, growing angry now. “After all that I have told you—the shame of it—and still you want more from me?”
Her face calm, she rocked back on her heels. “Yes, I want all of it.”
Frustrated, he let his mind roll back to what had happened the night his ship reached Ghoivne Ajhâjhe.
“When I left the ship and was about to step off the dock, I saw Brot’ân’duivé standing there in the sand ... waiting for me! He was the one who forced me to answer that summons, who sent me to the Chein’âs! And there he stood. But before I could curse his name, I heard someone cry out ... and I looked down the shore to see Leanâlhâm being assaulted by three of my caste.” He gazed into Wynn’s shocked face. “Yes, they attacked her. One of them lifted her off the ground.” He shook his head. “They were willing to hurt one of our own people, a helpless girl.”