Wanderling (Spirit Seeker Book 1) (17 page)

She stopped as she heard the sound
of voices from within Burano’s tent.

“Has she described any other odd
behaviors or abilities of the child?” came Burano’s demanding voice.

“Not really,” came Tobin’s voice
in response. “She seems more skeptical than anyone else about him having any
sort of gift in the first place. She doesn’t want to believe Shem is right
about her father being dead.”

Adala froze, her pulse racing in
her ears. She was at the back of the tent, unable to peek through the door. But
she heard the muffled voices through the canvas walls.

“Ah yes,” said Burano. “A woman who
loses her father is in a precarious state. I need to be sure she is complacent
for a few more days. It’s not just because her presence here ensures the boy’s
cooperation—she is actually helping me prepare for what’s to come. Her readings
about the desert tribes will be helpful for the negotiations to come.”

“
I
have been telling you
about the desert tribes,” Tobin’s voice said defensively. “I know more than
what your scrolls can tell you.”

“So you keep telling me,” Burano
snapped. “Your knowledge is useful, but vague. My scrolls hold valuable
information specific to Shem’s role in the coming war. And you certainly cannot
read the script to me, now can you?”

“No, I can’t.” Tobin’s voice was
curt.

“Your role will come when we meet
with the tribes,” Burano said. “You’re certain you can translate? Good. Until
then, your job is to keep Adala occupied.”

“She is impatient to make her
escape, Sir,” Tobin said.

Adala’s stomach churned, and she
brought her hand to her mouth to keep from choking. She could feel the conversation’s
direction, and silently begged that she was wrong. That somehow she was hearing
things incorrectly.

“I don’t care what you need to
do,” Burano continued, “make her guilty, promise her freedom if she just waits
a couple of weeks, seduce her even. I’m depending on you for this. Jarod thinks
we should beat or threaten her into submission.”

“It wouldn’t work,” Tobin
interrupted quickly. “I will occupy her. She wouldn’t respond well to physical
intimidation.”

“I assumed as much,” Burano said.
“She’s as bull-headed as the worst of my soldiers, but she’s a woman all the
same. Romance her; continue offering your sympathies and promise her freedom.
She can be trained, just like the rest of them. And keep up your companionship
with the boy as well. He is fond of you, and if he is keeping any secrets from
me I want to hear them.”

“Yes, sir.”

A burning fire rose in Adala’s
ribs, and she clenched her fists. She turned on her heel and stalked away, face
burning with anger and shame. Her joy from earlier in the day, planning her
escape with Tobin, turned to a stab of pain and humiliation.
I’m just a
foolish girl,
she thought,
believing anything a man tells me just
because he acts like a friend. For the sake of the gods, why did I trust him?
She recalled how exhilarated she had felt when he promised to escape with her
and Shem, as they lay in the desert together. She had experienced such warmth
and joy, she could have kissed the man. Now she trembled with fury at the
thought.

Her eyes stung with tears, but she
clenched her teeth and willed herself not to cry.
Not over him,
she told
herself.
Don’t cry for him.

It is a mistake to wait,
Tobin thought immediately as he emerged from Burano’s tent.
Burano said that
we are less than days away from our meeting with the desert tribes. I cannot
let that happen.
He thought of Shem. The boy clearly had some kind of gift
that Tobin did not understand, but if he knew one thing it was that the desert
people would react in the extreme when presented with something beyond their
understanding. Whether the extreme reaction would be positive or negative, he
did not care to discover.

We must leave tonight,
he
thought, looking around.
But we have to get a head start. First, I saddle
the horses. Then maybe a diversion… a brush fire in the bushes maybe? We can
fetch Shem in the chaos and ride away.
His mind raced with the
possibilities, and he walked faster. His heart pumped rapidly when he realized
the risk he was about to take.
There’s no turning back,
he thought,
striding towards the campfire where Adala sat perched next to the coals.

“Where’s Shem?” he said, surveying
the area. Adala sat alone by the fire, the rest of the men in a circle on the
other side of the fire, deep in a card game and not paying attention to them.

“Jarod had him taken to the tent
for the night,” Adala said shortly. She sat with her legs hugged into her
chest, wrapped in the blanket he had given her on the first night of their
journey.

Tobin crouched next to her and
said quietly, “We need to work out a plan.”

Adala’s jaw muscles clenched
visibly, and she finally turned to look him in the eye. “Let me make one thing
clear,” she said through her teeth.

“What’s wrong?” Tobin met her
eyes, confused at her body language. She quivered, glaring at him enough to
make him shift uncomfortably.

She continued in a hurry, words
tumbling out over one another. “You have no right to intervene in my brother’s
life, no more than you have a right to mine. You are a vicious backstabber—a
mutineer at heart, playing every side.”

Tobin balked at her words,
struggling to intervene and ask what on earth she was talking about, but she
continued without so much as a breath.

“First I thought you were Burano’s
man out of necessity, guarding me because it was your only option,” she spat,
anger flashing in her eyes. “Then I hear you’re a sympathizer with the desert
dwellers. Then you say you’re on my side. It’s all a farce. You’re one of them,
through and through, and I don’t want you confusing my brother with your false
kindness. Everything about you is a lie, and I bought all of it because it’s
what I wanted to hear. You are deplorable, and you can fall on one of your
arrows the next time you go hunting for all I care.”

“You heard my conversation with
Burano,” Tobin said, suddenly realizing the source of her anger. He sighed,
struggling to find an explanation. He felt himself flush with shame; he was
truly embarrassed to have accepted Burano’s order to grow close to Adala in the
first place. But he had to explain everything to her—she needed to understand
his position.

“You’re perceptive,” she exclaimed
before he could get a word out, voice rising. “You aren’t even denying
anything! The game’s over, Tobin. No use still trying to play. Leave me alone
and try to keep out of my sight, or I might be sick.”

“You don’t understand,” he said.
“Even when Burano asked me to keep an eye on you, I resented him. I only tried
to protect you!”

“That’s sure what it sounded
like,” Adala said, standing up to leave.

Tobin rose quickly and grabbed her
arm, pulling her close so only she could hear him. “Adala, please. I meant what
I said. We can escape. Together.”

“That’s exactly what he told you
to say, you bastard!” she said, prying her arm away.

“Please, just listen!” Tobin
pleaded, grasping her hand this time.

“Don’t you
dare
touch me!”
she seethed in a low, trembling voice, leaning in to meet his eye with a
hateful glare. “I heard everything. There’s no point in pretending. Jarod was
right all along—you’re just a lowly desert rat.”

Tobin blinked, feeling as if she
just slapped him in the face. He had heard that insult from the mouths of many
soldiers. But it had never hurt the way it did when she said it just then. He
turned away, looking into the fire instead of at her. He cleared his throat and
said slowly, “If that’s what you think of me, there’s nothing more I can say.”

“I suppose not,” she said, turning
on her heel to leave.

Tobin crouched next to the fire
and stirred it with a stick, still fuming at Adala’s insolence.
If she would
have given me a minute,
he thought,
I would have explained everything.
But he realized that there was probably nothing he could say to gain her trust.
He hadn’t given her reason to trust him.

I still have to get them out of
here. If I don’t, dozens may die. Or thousands, if Burano succeeds in bringing
a force against Gerstadt.
He thought about Shem’s quiet, honest
disposition. The boy needed to go home, and even Adala, in all her recklessness
and backstabbing comments, deserved to have some sort of control over her future.
And Tobin was their only hope. Their last chance for freedom.

And they were his last chance for
freedom as well. Freedom from Burano’s rule and from the shadows of his past
with the desert dwellers. Tobin envisioned a future by the sea, with endless
waters at his feet. If he returned Adala to the city, perhaps her connected
fiancé would allow Tobin and Sarah to become part of Gerstadt’s community.
Maybe even get their own cottage, close to Adala and Shem.
Her fiancé, the
master of arms,
he thought, imagining Adala’s future, playing house with
what was sure to be an older, politically powerful man. It was difficult and
somewhat painful to envision.
No,
he thought.
I won’t take any
charity for bringing Adala back to her beloved. Sarah and I will make our own
way, maybe sailing to a different city. There is so much of the world for us to
see, without being witness to Adala’s happily ever after.

Tobin resolved to continue his
plans for escape. When it came time for action, he knew Adala would have no
choice but to trust him.

***

Tobin prepared himself for more of
Adala’s hateful remarks and glares the next morning, but received neither. Her
fuming demeanor was replaced with cold ambivalence and outright avoidance, as
she barely acknowledged his presence while he led her to Burano’s tent in the
morning for a reading. In fact, she brightly greeted almost everyone besides
him, causing him some amusements at the lengths she went to in ignoring him.

As they stepped into Burano’s tent
where he and Shem stood pouring over the maps, the commander looked up only for
only a second.

“Please, sit down. Shem will be
charting while you read. I am anxious to hear more about the desert tribes
before we begin our negotiations with them. Tobin, you should stay too. I want
to hear what you think about the writings and if they are accurate.”

Shem greeted them with an eager
wave from a map spread out on an overturned water barrel. “Are you going to
read to us about the monk today?” Shem asked excitedly.

“I guess I am,” Adala said,
sitting on a blanket across from him and taking a scroll from Burano, never
allowing herself a glance at Tobin. She paused to look at Shem’s work on the
map. Pebbles appeared to be cast across its surface, as usual.

“You see what I’m doing, Adala?”
Shem said. “The rocks are where people are. This one over here is home, where
Mum is.” He pointed to a stone next to Gerstadt on the map. “This one is where
we are.” He reached over to touch a little button a few inches into the desert
portion of the map.

“We aren’t even halfway across the
desert,” Adala exclaimed, dragging a finger across the expanse of the desert on
the map.

“We have a clan close by,” Tobin
remarked, surveying the map. Dozens of rocks were scattered across the desert
area, but one was particularly close to the button that represented their
location.

Shem pointed to the one Tobin
referred to, maybe an inch and a half away from their location. “This one
switched directions when we made camp yesterday. Burano says they must have
seen the smoke from our campfires. They are coming to meet with us.”

“Meet with us,” Tobin repeated
with a bad taste in his mouth.
Slaughter us for stealing their water, more
like,
he thought.

“Adala, please begin,” Burano
urged, kneeling next to Shem. “We will be tracking their movements as you read,
but you may ignore us.”

Adala’s words were clear and crisp
with twinges of annoyance. The monk’s writings described how, even though the
desert clan that he traveled with was fierce and slaughtered any enemy
encroaching their hunting region or stealing water, the desert people were
quite generous to him as an outsider, never turning him away when he was
thirsty. Tobin listened with mild interest, always amused by the exaggerated
accounts of the Roharian customs. The monk described a blessing ceremony as
though it was a violent affair, but to Tobin it sounded like it was a feast in
his honor.

While Adala read the words, Tobin
watched Shem. He tweaked the placement of the rocks every now and then, closing
his eyes in concentration. Tobin could hardly guess what went on inside the
child’s head. He didn’t understand it, and realized that he probably never
would. But he did know that he wanted to protect Shem if he could.

The reading went on to describe
the different weapons of the ‘savages,’ deadly accurate bows with long range,
plus arrows and spears that were dipped in poison.

“How many of these desert dwellers
are coming to greet us?” Adala asked abruptly, when she read the part about the
poison spears.

“It doesn’t concern you,” Burano
said; but at the same time, Shem blurted, “Thirty five or so.”

Tobin knew their party was made up
of a hundred men. He shifted uncomfortably at those odds though. The Roharian
bows had longer ranges than the Wanderling crossbows. He wished they had caught
the attention of a smaller clan.
We should leave before they get here,
he thought.

“Don’t concern yourself about our
negotiations and strategy,” Burano said, studying Adala’s face as she looked
nervously at all the rocks strewn around the desertlands portion of the map.
“You and your brother will be kept safe,” he said. “I think we’ve had enough
for the day, however. You’re distracting your brother from our work.”

Adala rose reluctantly and nodded
farewell to Shem. “I will see you tomorrow then?” she said to Burano.

“In the morning,” he said. “Bright
and early.”

“I’ll be here.” She stalked out of
the tent, brushing past Tobin roughly.

“Tobin, you stay,” called Burano
as Tobin began to follow her.

The commander continued looking at
the map while he spoke. “I want to see you tonight so we can go over some
things. I’m interested to hear your thoughts about the reading, and also get an
in-depth look at how we should approach the meeting with this clan. I know I
suggested you keep an eye on Adala, but things have changed now that this tribe
is on its way here. I want to instruct the men on how to not seem imposing to
the desert people. I will instruct them to heed your word and seek you out if
they have any questions.”

Tobin let out a long sigh, realizing
that his freedom of the camp had just been restricted.
Now I will draw
attention wherever I go,
he thought.
But maybe with my guidance, he
won’t provoke the clan into a battle that we would likely lose.