Bannon was remarkably withdrawn, showing little interest in their journey. His usual eager conversation and positive outlook had vanished, still festering from what the Adjudicator had made him see and suffer. Nicci had faced the consequences of her dark past, and she had overcome that guilt long ago, but the young man had far less experience in turning raw, bleeding wounds into hard scars.
Nathan tried to cheer the young man up. “We’re making good time. Would you like to stop for a while, my boy? Spar a little with our swords?”
Bannon gave an unusually unenthusiastic reply. “No thank you. I’ve had enough real swordplay with the selka and the Norukai slavers.”
“That’s true, my boy,” he said with forced cheer, “but in a practice sparring session you can let yourself have fun.”
Nicci stepped around a moss-covered boulder in the trail, then looked over her shoulder. “Maybe he thinks the actual killing is fun, Wizard.”
Bannon looked stung. “I did what I had to do. People need to be protected. You might not get there in time, but when you do, you have to do your best.”
They reached a fast-flowing stream that bubbled over slick rocks. Nicci gathered her skirts and splashed across the shallow water, not worried about getting her boots wet. Nathan, though, picked his way downstream, where he found a fallen log to use as a bridge. He carefully balanced his way across and arrived on the other side, then turned to face Bannon, who crossed the log with barely a glance at his feet.
Nicci kept watching the young man, growing more troubled at his worsening inner pain. A companion so haunted, so preoccupied and listless, might be a liability if they encountered some threat, and she could not allow that.
She faced Bannon as he stepped off the log onto the soft mosses of the bank. “We need to address this, Bannon Farmer. A boil must be lanced before it festers. I know you’re not telling the truth—at least not the whole truth.”
Bannon was immediately wary, and a flash of fear crossed his face as he drew back. “The truth about what?”
“What did the Adjudicator show you? What guilt has been eating away inside you?”
“I already told you.” Bannon stepped away, looking as if he wanted to run. He turned pale. “I couldn’t stop a man from drowning a sack of kittens. Sweet Sea Mother, I know that may sound childish to you, but it’s not your place to judge how my guilt affects me!”
“I am not your judge,” Nicci said, “nor do I want to be. But I need to understand.”
Stepping up to them on the stream bank, Nathan interrupted. “You would not have us believe that the Adjudicator considers the loss of kittens to be more damning than losing your friend to slavers?” He gave a wistful smile, trying to be compassionate. “Although, truth be told, I do like kittens. The Sisters in the Palace of the Prophets let me have a kitten once—oh, four hundred years ago. I raised it and loved it, but the cat wandered away, happily hunting mice and rats in the palace, I suppose. It’s an enormous place. That was centuries ago.…” His voice degenerated into a wistful sigh. “The cat must be dead by now. I haven’t thought about it in a long time.”
Nicci tried to soften her stern voice, with only marginal success. “You are our companion, Bannon. Are you a criminal? I do not intend to punish you, but I need to know. You are a handicap to our mission and safety in the state you are in.”
He lashed out. “I’m not a criminal!” He strode away, following the stream and trying to avoid them. Nicci went after him, but Nathan put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head slightly.
She called after the young man. “Whatever it is, I would not judge you. I could spend months describing the people I’ve hurt. I once roasted one of my own generals alive in the middle of a village, just to show the villagers how ruthless I could be.”
Bannon turned to stare at her, looking both surprised and sickened.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You failed to prevent someone else from killing a sack of kittens. That may be true. But I don’t believe the Adjudicator would condemn you forever because of that.”
Bannon splashed cool water on his face, then left the stream and began climbing uphill through a patch of meadow lilies. “It’s a long story,” he sighed, without looking at her.
From behind, Nathan said, “Maybe it can wait until camp tonight, after we find some food.”
As Bannon moved through the brush, he startled a pair of grouse. The two plump birds clucked and waddled quickly for a few steps before they exploded into flight.
Nicci made an offhand gesture with her hand and released her magic. With barely a thought, she stopped the hearts of the two grouse, which dropped to the ground, dead. “There, now we have dinner, and this is as good a place to camp as any. Fresh water from the stream, wood for our fire—and time for a story.”
Bannon looked defeated. Without a word he began to gather dead branches, while Nathan dressed the birds and Nicci used her magic to ignite the fire. While the meal cooked, Nicci watched Bannon’s expression as he dredged through his memories like a miner shoveling loads of rock, sifting through the rubble and trying to decide what to keep.
At last, after he had picked part of the grouse carcass clean and wandered back to the stream to wash himself, Bannon returned. He lifted his chin and swallowed hard. Nicci could see he was ready.
“On Chiriya Island,” he began, and his voice cracked. He drew a deep breath, “Back home … I didn’t just run away because my life was too quiet and dull. It wasn’t a perfect life.”
“It rarely ever is, my boy,” Nathan said.
Nicci was more definitive. “It never is.”
“My parents weren’t as I’ve described them. Well, my mother was. I loved her, and she loved me, but my father … my father was—” His eyes darted back and forth as if searching for the right word and then daring to use it. “He was vile. He was reprehensible.” Bannon caught himself as if he feared the spirits might strike him down as he paced back and forth. Then that odd look came to his face again, as if he were trying to paint over the memories in his mind.
“My mother had a cat, a female tabby she loved very much. The cat would sleep on the hearth near a warm fire, but she preferred to curl up on my mother’s lap.” Bannon’s eyes narrowed. “My father was a drunken lout, a brutal man. If he had a miserable life, it was his own fault, and he made our lives miserable because he wanted us to bear the blame. He would beat me, sometimes with a stick, but usually with just his hands. I think he enjoyed the idea of hitting.
“I was always his second choice, though. I could outrun him, and my father never wanted to make much effort, so he hit my mother instead. He would corner her in our house. He would strike her whenever he lost a gambling game down at the tavern, or he would strike her when he ran out of money and couldn’t buy enough drink, or he would strike her because he didn’t like the food she cooked, or because she didn’t cook enough of it.
“He made my mother scream and then he punished her for screaming and for screaming so loudly that the neighbors might hear—although they had all known how he abused her for many years. But he liked it when she screamed too, and if she didn’t make enough sounds of pain, he would beat her some more. So she had to walk that narrow path of terror and hurt, just so she could survive—so we could both survive.”
Bannon lowered his head. “When I was young, I was too small to stand up to him. And when I grew older, when I might have defended myself against him, I simply couldn’t because that man had trained me to be terrified of him.” He sat so heavily on a fallen tree trunk that he seemed to collapse.