The Kiss of Deception (39 page)

When I stood between my brothers as a required witness, straight and tall, still as stone, as was expected, my hair perfectly pinned and arranged—with each step, each proclamation of guilt, the tightening of the rope, the pleading and tears of a grown man, the frantic wails, the final call, and then the quick thud of a floor falling away, a short humble sound that drew the line between his life and death, the last sound he would ever hear—through it all, I kept my eyes open.

When I returned to my room, I threw the clothes I was wearing into the fire and pulled the pins from my hair. I brushed and brushed, until my mother came in and pulled me to her chest, and I cried, saying I wished I had helped the man escape.
Taking another life
, she had whispered,
even a guilty one, should never be easy. If it were, we’d be little more than animals.

Was it hard for Kaden to take another life? But I knew the answer. Even through my rage and despair, I had seen his face the night I asked him how many he had killed, the heavy weight that pressed behind his eyes. It had cost him. Who might he have been if he hadn’t been born in Venda?

I continued walking, working at the knot until it was gone. When I reached the brook, I took off my boots and laid them on a low wall. I wiggled my toes, appreciating the small freedom of cool sand spreading between them. I stepped into the water, bending to cup some in my hands, and I washed the dust from my face. The things that last. I felt the irony among these crumbling ruins. It was still the simplest pleasure of a bath that had outlasted the sprawling greatness of a city. Ruin and renewal ever side by side.

“Refreshing?”

I startled and turned. It was Malich. His eyes radiated malice.

“Yes,” I said. “Finished with the horses already?”

“They can wait.”

He stepped closer, and I saw we were hidden from view. He unfastened the buckle of his pants. “Maybe I’ll join you.”

I stepped out of the water to head back to camp. “I’m leaving. You’ll have it to yourself.”

He reached out and grabbed my arm, yanking me to him. “I want company, and I don’t want your claws going anywhere they shouldn’t this time.” He jerked both my hands behind me and held them with a single crushing grip until I winced. “Sorry, Princess, am I being too rough?” He pressed his mouth down hard on mine, and his hand groped at my skirt, yanking at the fabric.

Every inch of him pressed so close I couldn’t lift either leg to kick him off me. I thought my arms would snap as he wrenched them up behind me. I twisted and finally opened my mouth wide enough against his to bite down on his lip. He howled and released me, and I fell backward to the ground. His face contorted in rage as he came at me again cursing, but he was stopped by a bellowing shout. It was Griz.

“
Sende ena idaro! Chande le varoupa enar gado!
”

Malich held his ground, putting his hand to his bleeding lip, but after a few heated breaths, he stomped away.

Griz put his hand out to help me up. “Be careful, girl. Don’t turn your back on Malich so easily,” he said in clear Morrighese.

I stared at him, more shocked at his speech than his kindness. He kept his hand extended, and I hesitantly took it.

“You speak—”

“Morrighese. Yes. You’re not the only one with secrets, but this one will remain between us. Understood?”

I nodded uncertainly. I had never expected to share a secret with Griz, but I’d take his advice and not turn my back on Malich again, though now I was far more curious why Griz hid his knowledge of Morrighese when the others openly spoke it. Clearly they didn’t know of his ability. Why did he reveal it to me at all? A slip? There wasn’t time to ask. He was already tramping back toward camp.

When Kaden and Finch returned with two hares for dinner, Kaden noticed Malich’s swollen lip and asked what had happened.

Malich only briefly glanced my way and said it was the sting of a wasp.

Indeed it was. Sometimes the smallest animal inflicts the greatest pain. He was in a fouler mood than usual for the rest of the night and lashed out at Eben for fawning over his horse. Kaden took a look at the horse’s leg, carefully examining the hoof that Eben had been checking again and again.

“He raised it from a foal,” Kaden explained to me. “Its front fetlock is tender. Maybe just a strained muscle.”

In spite of Malich’s jabs, Eben continued to check on the horse. It reminded me of how he was with the wolves. The boy was more connected to animals than people. I walked over to look at the horse’s leg and touched Eben’s shoulder, hoping to counter Malich’s harsh words with more hopeful ones. He whipped around and growled at me like a wolf, drawing his knife.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarled.

I backed away, remembering that though he might look like a child, even one who might forget himself from time to time and listen to a story around a campfire, an innocent childhood was not something he had ever known. Was he destined to be like Malich, who boasted how easy it had been to kill the coachman and Greta? Their deaths had cost Malich nothing more than a few thin arrows.

That night Kaden laid his bedroll close to mine, whether to protect me or Malich I wasn’t sure. Even with my bandaged fingers, Malich had taken the brunt of our mutual animosity, though certainly this afternoon he had intended to even the score. If Griz hadn’t come along, it could easily have been me with the bruised and swollen face, or worse.

I rolled over. Even if I ended up starved in the middle of nowhere, as Kaden predicted, I had to get away. Malich was dangerous enough, but soon I’d be in a city with thousands more like him.

We can’t always wait for the perfect timing.
Pauline’s words seemed truer now than ever.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

KADEN

We stopped midday at a shallow watering hole to fill our canteens and water the horses. Lia walked along the dry streambed that had once fed it, saying she wanted to stretch her legs. She’d been quiet all morning, not in an angry way that I might expect from her, but in some other way, a way that I found more worrisome.

I followed, watching her as she stooped to pick up a rock and turn it over. She examined its color, then skipped it along the dry bed as if she pictured it skimming along water.

“Three skips,” I said, imagining along with her. “Not bad.”

“I’ve done better,” she answered, holding up her bandaged fingers.

She stopped to slide her boot along a sandy patch, noting the gold glitter of the sand. Her eyes narrowed. “They say the Ancients pulled metals more precious than gold from the center of the earth—metals they spun into giant lacy wings that flew them to the stars and back.”

“Is that what you’d do with wings?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. I’d fly to the stars, but I’d never come back.” She picked up a handful of the sparkling sand and let it sift from her fist to the ground as if trying to catch a glimpse of its hidden magic.

“Do you believe all the fanciful stories you hear?” I asked. I stepped closer and closed my hand gently around her fist, the warm sand slowly escaping between our fingers.

She stared at my hand clasped on hers, but then her gaze gradually rose to mine. “Not all stories,” she said softly. “When Gwyneth told me an assassin was on his way to kill me, I didn’t believe her. I suppose I should have.”

I briefly closed my eyes, wishing I could bite back my question. When I opened them, she was still staring at me. The last of the sand slid from our fists. “Lia—”

“When was it, Kaden, that you decided
not
to kill me?”

Her voice was still even, soft. Genuine. She really wanted to know, and she hadn’t yet pulled her hand away from mine. It was almost as if she’d forgotten it was there.

I wanted to lie to her, tell her that I had never planned to kill her, convince her that I’d never killed anyone, to take back my whole life and rewrite it in a few false words, lie to her the way I already had a hundred times before, but her gaze remained fixed, studying me.

“The night before you left,” I said. “I was in your cottage, standing over your bed as you slept … watching the pulse of your throat with my knife in my hand. I was there longer than I needed to be, and I finally put my knife back in its sheath.… That’s when I decided.”

Her lashes barely fluttered, and her expression revealed nothing. “Not when I bandaged your shoulder?” she asked. “Not when we danced? Not when—”

“No. Just in that moment.”

She nodded and slowly pulled her fist from mine. She dusted the remaining traces of sand from her hand.

“
Sevende!
” Finch called. “The horses are ready!”

“Coming,” I yelled back. I sighed. “He’s eager to get home.”

“Aren’t we all?” she answered. The edge had returned to her voice. She turned and walked back to her horse, and though she didn’t say it, I sensed that maybe this time, she had wanted me to lie.

Let it be known,

They stole her,

My little one.

She reached back for me, screaming,

          
Ama.

She is a young woman now,

And this old woman couldn’t stop them.

Let it be known to the gods and generations,

They stole from the Remnant.

Harik, the thief, he stole my Morrighan,

Then sold her for a sack of grain,

To Aldrid the scavenger.

—The Last Testaments of Gaudrel

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

We broke camp before sunup. They said they wanted to reach our next destination well before sundown without any further explanation. I could only wonder if some of the wild animals that Kaden had spoken of weren’t so skittish. We trekked across the flattest part of nowhere, only the occasional distant knoll and malnourished thicket breaking up the endlessness.

We hadn’t been traveling long through grass that swept just below the horse’s knees, when my chest grew tight. A strange foreboding pressed down on me. I tried to ignore it, but after two miles, it became unbearable, and I stopped my horse, my breaths coming shallow and fast.
It is a way of trust.
This wasn’t just my apprehension of being dragged across the middle of nowhere. I recognized it for what it was, something mysterious but not magical. Something circling in the air.

For the first time in my life, I knew with certainty that it was the gift. It had come to me unsummoned. It wasn’t just a seeing, or a hearing, or any of the ways I had heard the gift described. It was a
knowing.
I closed my eyes, and fear galloped across my ribs.
Something was wrong.

“What is it now?”

I opened my eyes. Kaden frowned as if he was tired of the game I played.

“We shouldn’t go this way,” I said.

“Lia—”

“We don’t take orders from
her
,” Malich snapped. “Or listen to her babble. She only serves herself.”

Griz and Finch looked at me uncertainly. They waited for something to materialize, and when nothing did, they clicked their reins lightly. We continued at a slower pace for another mile, but the oppressive weight only grew heavier. My mouth went dry, and my palms were damp. I stopped again. They were several paces ahead of me when Griz stopped too. He lifted up in his saddle, then roared, “
Chizon!
” He snapped his horse to the left.

Eben kicked the sides of his horse, following Griz. “Stampede!” he yelled.

“
North!
” Kaden shouted to me.

They whipped their horses to full gallop, and I followed. A dust cloud rose in the east, thunderous and dark, immense in its width. Whatever was coming, we would barely outrun it, if we could at all. It rumbled toward us, furious and terrible in its power.
Now!
I thought. A fist pummeled in my chest.
Now, Lia!
It was suicide to turn around but I pulled hard on the reins. My horse reared back, and I changed direction, heading south. There was no turning back. I would either make it or I wouldn’t. In the split seconds before Kaden realized I wasn’t behind him, it would be too late for him to turn and follow.

“
Yah!
” I yelled. “
Yah!
”

I watched the horizon roll like a growing black wave. Terror clutched me, it was coming so fast. The landscape ahead became a jostled blur as we raced to beat the enormous cloud. I spotted an elevated knoll and aimed for it, but it was still so far away. The horse knew the terror too. It pulsed through both of us, blinding hot.
Sevende! Hurry! Go!
Soon it wasn’t just a single dark mass coming at us but a thrashing jumble of bodies, churning legs, and lethal horns. “
Yah!
” I screamed. The heat of death bore down on us.

We aren’t going to make it
, I thought. The horse and I would both be crushed. The roar became deafening, smothering even my own screams. All I could see was blackness, dust, and a gruesome end. The knoll. Higher ground. And then thunder boomed at our backs, and I braced for the crush of hoof and the gore of horn, but they charged past …
behind us.
We made it.
We made it.
I kept the horse going until I was sure we were a safe distance away, and once we were on top of the knoll, I stopped.

I turned to see what the crushing mass of hoof and horn actually was, because I wasn’t yet sure. The sight took my breath away. A wide stream of bison, reaching east as far as I could see, pounded past us.

They moved as one unified deadly force, but as my heart slowed, I saw the details of the animals, magnificent in their own right. Enormous humped shoulders, curved white horns, bearded chins, and anvil heads streamed past. They bellowed a moaning war chant. I swallowed, struck with astonishment. It was a sight I would never have seen in Morrighan and one I’d probably never see again.

I looked over the charging animals, trying to see to the other side, but clouds of dust obscured my view. Did the others all make it? I thought of Eben and his horse’s tender leg. But surely if I had made it to safety and with farther to go, they did too.