Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (36 page)

She remained silent.

“However, I understand that it’s hard to scrape a blade across something you can’t see properly. Perhaps you’d like assistance?”

“No, thank you, my lord.”

“It’s really no problem. You just ask away when you’re ready.” Bashan laughed at his own joke.

The tip of the sword quivered and cut her once more. She sucked in air between her teeth.

“Oh, look. I’ve made you a woman. You’re bleeding a bit.” Bashan chuckled. “I’d say I relish these little chats of ours, but really, I don’t. It would be far simpler if I had the guarantee you’d keep your mouth shut and behave decently for a change. But we both know you’re not very good with obedience.”

He sighed dramatically, removed the blade, and tapped Nora on the shoulder.

She turned to face him dutifully, gathering saliva in her mouth to hawk into his eye at a convenient time. He looked her up and down like a butcher assessing a cow for slaughter. She didn’t swallow the spit but just stared into his dead fish eyes, scanning his face for a good target. Directly into the right eye, she decided.

“Just so we’re clear…” Bashan leaned in closer. “I don’t mind you coming along if your only purpose is to warm Shade’s bed. The boy is going to die for me, so whatever makes the rest of his short life pleasant is fine. What I do mind is that you’re a tragic accident waiting to happen. Unless Diaz is always there to save you, of course.”

He moved in closer, pressing her against the tree behind her. She could feel the tenseness in his muscles, ready to uncoil and strike fast with the sword still in his hand. He bent down to whisper in her ear.

“I like when things go smoothly. So let me tell you now in good faith that your pull on him is nothing in comparison to the power of Shinar.”

She did swallow the spit then, reaching slowly for her knife instead.

“Are you a man of faith, then, lord?”

“Faith is the evident demonstration of realities not yet beheld. My life’s motto, one could say. Bear with me just a moment longer, as I will bear with you.” Bashan tossed his head back and frowned at the celestial bodies twinkling into appearance. “I’m trying to prove a point.”

“And what point would that be?” Diaz stepped out of the shadows, his deep voice broken and raspy like the bark of the thorn trees.

Bashan smiled down at Nora.

“Aren’t you lucky?” He turned to Diaz. “Oh, it’s nothing. Nora tried to seduce me with her peasant wiles. It seemed like fun. But I refused.”

He walked away, and Nora wished she still had the spit. From where she was standing she’d get a good shot at the back of his head. She pulled up her trousers, face hot. Tears swelled in her eyes, but she would not cry now. She fumbled with her belt and stalked past Diaz, head held high. A trickle of blood ran down her leg and itched in the hollow of her knee.

“Are you hurt?” Diaz asked in a low voice and caught her arm. “You’re limping.”

“I’m just fine.” Nora ripped her arm away and walked to her bedroll next to Shade, who was already sleeping. Owen looked up briefly from his book.

“You all right?” Owen whispered.

“Just peachy,” she said, rolling up in her cloak with her back to the fire.

She stared out into the deep dark blue. Three months of this ahead of her, every single night, she thought.
Yeah. Nothing to it.

T
he Suthron Pass was a
narrow stretch of rugged terrain that separated the north from the south, a land bridge left over from ancient days. They crossed the high pass on a forgotten wagon road. It was so narrow that the rocks, though weathered by age and howling winds, still bore the wheel marks that had rolled over them in exactly the same spot. Smuggling wagons, for sure. Anyone else would use the imperial road below and not risk the narrow path, not risk the landslides tumbling to the ocean far, far below. The peak opened suddenly before them, and Nora took a deep breath from the rushing wind that tried to claw it from her lips. She looked out upon the world at her feet.

To her right, mists hung over the western sea below, roughing up the cliffs on the far shore. The vast body of water stretching beyond the horizon shimmered a dark blue as though reflecting a summer night sky. To her left, another sea lay long and silent, its waters cobalt blue, and in some places, emerald green. Many days’, maybe even weeks’ travel into the sunrise by boat, somewhere in that enchanted ocean, lay the Blessed Isle of Nessa, Master Cumi’s point of origin, a kingdom of blood witches and mermaids. The otherworldly color of the water made it easy to believe the stories she’d heard.

The country before her broadened after the pass, rolling gently into a plain with small fields and whitewashed settlements touching the land with human hands, though in two days’ travel on the main road, they’d passed not a single soul. The way descended through woodlands of pine into forests lined with oak and juniper. Spring had reached the south. Green invaded everywhere Nora looked. Blackbirds and robins twittered. Crows croaked when they walked along the endless plowed fields where sprouts of wheat greeted the warmer sunshine. The lands of Rheged were often called the breadbasket of the empire. If they followed the main road farther inland to the east, where mountain ranges paled in distant blue, eventually they would come upon the imperial City of Arrun, heart of the world. Whether Bashan was tempted to see his home, his city, was hard for Nora to tell. But she saw his gaze fix on that direction for days while they walked ever toward the south.

She often woke before dawn, listening to the chatter of the birds in the semi-darkness, watching the last embers of the fire die slowly before she rose. In the quiet time before the others awoke, she trained with Diaz out of earshot.

Today, a deep crease wrinkled his forehead as though he were plagued with headache. He had borrowed Garreth’s shield for his protection, so she knew this lesson would be intense. At least she didn’t have to roll anymore, and though they weren’t practicing with swords, it was much closer to the training she had imagined when she had first asked Diaz to train her. She swung her wooden baton for feel as he took up his position opposite her.

“Hit me when you can,” he said.

Nora nodded.

The drill was the same routine they had gone through the last few days. They’d start gently, circling each other. Sometimes there would be an opening, but she was a pace or so out of reach. Other times he’d tease her by turning his open side to her thrust, only to close it fast as she darted in. Whenever she managed to touch him, he nodded or gave commendation. When she made a wrong move, she got smacked on her upper arm. The resulting bruise was dark purple, surrounded by yellow and greenish spots. She didn’t mind. It would fade sooner or later. Every day he tapped her on the arm less and less.

After a few minutes of warming up, Diaz increased the difficulty, striking back at Nora to make her watch her footing, throwing unexpected blows where she was ill-guarded. He swung his baton in a wicked curve that would have opened her stomach if it were a real sword, spilling her guts. But she sidestepped and skipped back to have more room, more time to rethink her approach. He watched her over the rim of the low shield, waiting at ease. She gave the baton a twirl. It was longer than her knife, but lighter, if only a little.

“How did you know?” she asked, stalking around him to find an opening.

“Know what?”

“That I’d come and follow you,” she said. “You had these batons made when I was still in my sickbed. So how did you know?”

He lifted one shoulder a fraction.

“You dragged yourself half-dead across the Plains in winter to get to your brother.” Diaz cocked his head to the side. “What could stop you?”

Nora tossed her head back, grinning.

“How do you know I followed Owen and not you?”

Exactly as she had hoped, his face froze over while he was thinking of a reply. She charged in then, but his baton came up ready and they connected in a flurry of blows and counterblows. After a minute or so, he signaled for a pause.

“You don’t cover yourself. That makes you vulnerable,” he pointed out.

“I thought I was supposed to be on the offensive, acrobatic, like a cat.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “But your over-commitment is too much of a risk in a real fight. We’ll have to work on that balance more.”

“All right,” Nora said and took up a fighting stance once more.

Diaz removed the shield from his arm.

“Not today,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s past dawn.”

“And you’ve had a rough night.”

His frown deepened. “I did not.”

Nora shrugged. “You look like it.”

“Two days south from here is a settlement,” Diaz said, ignoring her observation as they walked back to the camp where the others were stretching and waking. “I want you to go and scout ahead, maybe pick up some supplies while you’re there.”

“On my own?”

He looked down at her.

“Women don’t travel on their own. You may take Owen and Shade.”

“What does this have to do with my training?”

“The way we act in times of calm determines how we act in times of crisis. Keep your eyes open and your mind sharp. And, Noraya…” He paused. “You’re here because of Owen. So talk to him.”

“He’s the one not talking to me,” she huffed. “I don’t know why he’s so mad. It’s not like he doesn’t want me to come along, because I know he does. I can feel it in my bones.”

“He does,” Diaz agreed. “But every time he sees your face, he feels guilt. And it weighs heavy on his mind.”

“But it’s not his fault.” Nora touched the scar under her eye.

“I never said it was.” He raised his eyebrows high. “So talk to him.”

F
rom a rise in the
land a few miles out, the three of them looked down upon the settlement that lay along the crook of a river. It looked much like every other settlement they had seen from afar, sprouting alongside the imperial roads every day’s worth of miles. Smelled like them, too—of cooking and human waste.

“Hmmm.” Owen scratched his nose. “Looks like a military encampment with the fence around the compound, but there shouldn’t be one this far south. According to the map, we’re already in the no-man’s-land between Shinar and the southernmost borders of Kandar.”

“It’s not military,” Shade said.

“How can you tell?” Owen peered at the settlement.

“See the central structure? The large house with the domed roof? It’ll belong to the matriarch, the woman in charge here. We have to enter the settlement from the side. It’s customary for travelers to not enter through the main gates. That’s reserved for family. And we’ll have to ask the matriarch for permission to stay the night.”

“You seem to know a lot about this settlement,” Nora said, tugging her hood up around her face. It was traditional for married women to cover their hair, and that was their guise. Also, it kept the sun from burning on her head, irritating the scarred skin.

Shade grinned. “Not this one in particular, but if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. And I grew up here. And have seen them all.”

“You grew up here? In the south?” Owen looked over Shade’s light hair and his blue eyes. Shade could have been a street urchin from Dernberia in the north. Owen and Nora, with their dark hair and tan skin, looked more like they came from these parts. “You don’t sound like it. No accent.”

“I had good training. But, yeah, I can do the talking.”

The settlement was shored up on the red alluvial plain and had been built among the ruined pillars of a town or a temple, slumping back into the mud of the meandering riverbank. The three of them crossed a wooden bridge leading over the brown sluggish waters to the white square houses. The poorest-looking houses on the bank were roofed with tight-set planks if they weren’t sporting the typical flat roofs of the better homes, with their second living room under the open skies. Toward the center where the domed building stood on its own, the houses were set with mortared stones, some with intricate carvings, probably pillaged from whatever ruins these were around them.

The fattest woman Nora had ever seen came out of the domed house and approached them, her skin a rich brown like the river, black tattoos on her forehead and cheeks matching her black dress. A widow. Or, well, she could be a charcoaler, but Nora didn’t think that likely.