A Girl and Her Monster (Rune Breaker) (10 page)

BOOK: A Girl and Her Monster (Rune Breaker)
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“Yes sir.” She said, unsure how to address him.

He scrutinized her a moment before proffering the bundle. “The villagers have little to wear that will fit you. The best they could do was a good, heavy dressing gown and winter robe. It's hardly something you'll want to fight in, but it should do for the night.”

Taylin unwrapped the bundle to find the aforementioned items, plus what looked to be a solid slab of leather. She looked at him questioningly, earning a mildly embarrassed sigh for her troubles.

“There is also little in the way of armor here that can be adjusted for you before tomorrow. I managed to procure the smith's leather apron.” He shrugged off the wagon wheel from his back and rolled it up beside hm. It was covered in layered bands of stretched hide and sported leather straps that looked suspiciously like bridles on the back. “One of our tinkers also put this together. It won't stop sword thrusts, but it should foul arrows.”

He grimaced. “It isn't much, I know. Neither Grandmother nor I would fault you if you chose to leave rather than fight tomorrow.”

Taylin looked down at the offerings. This was the best these people could offer because it was the best they
had
. Much like her, they had barely anything material to their name. Unlike her, they had families and friends and loved ones who they needed to have protected. How could she put her own life ahead of theirs when their deaths would hurt many more than themselves, while the only mourning at her demise would be Ru over his lost sliver of freedom?

“I didn't ask for anything. You didn't have to...” She said in a small voice, still looking at the relatively fresh, clean clothes. Hers were stiff with dry blood and torn all over. She looked up at Grandfather and met his eyes, which showed none of his age. “I was going to help regardless. But thank you.”

Grandfather nodded with a ghost of a smile. “You are welcome. Now if you will excuse us...” He gestured to Kaiel. “Keese Kaiel, the scouts will return soon. We would like your input for the battle plan.”

Kaiel nodded smartly and got to his feet. “Of course, Grandfather.” To Taylin, he said, “I'll probably be gone for the night. If you need anything, you're welcome to anything in my wagon that is not in a satchel or under lock and key.”

“Thank you, but I was probably going to try and sleep anyway.” Taylin said to them. Grandfather was already off, forcing Kaiel to hurry after him.

Once they were gone, Taylin took stock of what she had now: A broken sword, a wagon wheel pretending to be a shield, a leather apron which was about as good as the boiled hide armor hailene slave soldiers were given, and a new set of clothes. Knowing it always paid to be resourceful, she also counted the clay cups she and Kaiel had been drinking from.

She didn't know why she took stock, exactly, but it felt natural to her and anyway, it was a good habit to get into now that there was no quartermaster to issue her what she was allowed from mooring to mooring. First thing was first, she shucked off her ruined clothes and put on the gown and coat. They were both made of stiff, itchy wool, but they were warm and that mattered most. Warmth had been a luxury for so long.

Afterward, she sat back down by the fire; actually sat, because she was allowed, and contemplated her old clothes. An entire lifetime of experience told her not to waste them. The worst part of the blood could be washed out. As for the holes and slashes; on the ships, there were always the valets, also slaves, but the runts of the warrior litters. A friendly valet would sew up a tear and save a clumsy soldier from the quartermaster's wrath.

There was no valet around and she had no idea how to sew, but even destroyed clothing made softer, more comfortable bedding than straw...

She didn't know how long he'd been there, but she was suddenly aware of Ru's presence by the fire, just a few feet to her right. He appeared without greeting and the whole of his focus was on the three fat, still gasping fish he was carrying by a cord passed through the gills.

Without a word, he gestured with his free hand and caused a flame to leap from the fire and spread into a perfectly rectangular area a few feet to a side. The new fire burned with such intensity that the core flames turned blue and deeply comforting waves of heat struck Taylin where she was sitting.

The earth beneath dried, cracked, melted and fused, at which point Ru dismissed his working and sent all the heat created from it back into the original fire, which flared white once before calming. Satisfied with his newly forged and cooled work surface, Ru sat the stringer down and freed one fish from the line. His fingers became impossibly long, sharp talons and with smooth, practiced strokes he began the process of scaling them.

Taylin watched in silence. It was almost hypnotic how much grace the Rune Breaker, the supposed most powerful weapon of all time, prepared his meal with.

He scaled them all at once and disposed of the detritus in the fire. By that time, the fish were dead, so it was less of a horrific act when his arm became a cleaver; a miniature version of the one he so recently used to nearly split a hound in twain; and lopped the heads off. And just as quickly, the talons were back to aid in filleting and boning.

The entire act almost passed entirely in silence. Almost. For Ru then nearly committed a cardinal sin in Taylin's mind: he attempted to discard the innards and heads.

“Don't waste those!” She said with utmost urgency the second she realized that the remains were headed for the fire.

Ru's reaction, felt through the link, told her that he'd nearly forgotten she was there. His eyes snapped in her direction, his gore covered hand poised above the fire, allowing the meat to start to cook. At first, his expression showed surprise, and then annoyance at having his efforts interrupted.

What?
He didn't even waste the breath to speak.

“You can't throw away the insides.” She said urgently as the fatty fishes' innards began to sizzle. “There's a lot of good meat there.”

Ru huffed indignantly. “I will not reduce myself to devouring organs. Especially not piscine tripe.” A bit of fat popped in his hand, forcing him to transform the appendage into something with the consistency of petrified wood to avoid pain.

Later, Taylin would assure herself that she did what she did next to keep him from getting hurt, not to protect the precious meat from overcooking. It wouldn't be the first time she lied to herself.

With speed honed on the battlefield, she reached through the fire and grabbed the mass of cooked meat from his hand. In pulling it back, her hand passed through the center of the heat, setting off a small grease fire. She didn't even notice as she instinctively shoved the captured prize into her mouth.

Eating in a relaxed manner with Kaiel hadn't set off her instincts, panicking over wasted food had. The first rule she remembered learning on the ships: if you've managed to take food, it goes into your mouth, lest someone take it back.

Ru had no intentions of taking the smoldering detritus back. Even if he did, he would have forgotten after watching her put a flaming hunk of meat in her mouth and swallow it in one gulp. He stared hard at her for a moment and imagined that he willed into existence the sudden look of embarrassment that fell over her face like the final curtain of a play.

“Didn't the chronicler feed you already?” He finally asked.

She looked, if it were possible, more embarrassed. “I didn't want to make him feel bad; but no, not enough. I have to eat more than normal. They said I run hot.”

“More so now that you've swallowed flame.” Ru said dryly, but his amusement was clear in the link. “Was that entirely necessary?”

“Waste not, want not.” She replied instantly. It had never been clear where she'd gotten that phrase from; every other soldier and valet abroad the ships attributed it to her if they themselves recalled at all. Not that it mattered; a valuable phrase was valuable no matter who said it.

“Is that why you have that bundle of rags beside you?” Ru asked offhandedly. He held out his right hand and the scythe from earlier appeared in a flash of eye-confusing black light.

“No... well yes.” She babbled, her earlier self-debate flooding back. “I can wash the blood out, and maybe someday I'll learn to sew and then I can wear them again. But until then, I can put them under my head when I sleep.”

Ru gave the handles of the farm implement a contemptuous look and snapped both off. Leaning the scythe on his shoulder, he thrust the point of one of the new 'stakes' into the end of a fillet and held it over the fire. “Or.” He suggested in a bored tone, “You can order me to use magic to clean and repair them. I can even improve them.”


No.
” She said firmly. “And stop trying to make me, please. Don't you understand that I don't want to make you do things you don't want to do? Why do you even want to me to? And don't say it's because you're not a person. Weapons don't need to eat.”

Glaring his defiance, he took the fillet off the fire, seared but not fully cooked, and took a large bite. “I enjoy eating. That doesn't mean I need to eat.”

“That doesn't feel like the truth.” She countered.

A small growl rumbled in his throat. Damn the link, and damn her unusual sensitivity to it. “I wouldn't need it normally. However, my power was critically drained in sustaining your torpor as well as facing what both the charlatan and the halfling elder tell me was the power of a god. I do not know how long I will need to regain my full strength; this has never happened before.”

He went back to work, searing the other fillets. Taylin watched in silence, trying not to see and smell the cooking meat, but finding herself entranced by it all the same. To keep her mind off it, she continued her argument.

“Maybe you aren't a person. I don't understand magic well enough to say. But you think, you feel, you eat. I assume you sleep. I don't see why I shouldn't treat you as one anyway.”

“Because I'm not.” he said harshly, punctuating the sentence by tearing off a hunk of fillet with his teeth and chewing savagely. He felt her hunger quite keenly when he did that, could tell that if he left some space between himself and the seared morsels, she'd move to take one. “If you want me to give you any of this, you know what you must do.” He said cruelly.

Taylin cringed and withdrew into herself. “Stop that!” She snapped. Then another stroke of genius cut through the link like finely honed blade. A faint guilt followed, by her face settled into a self-satisfied smirk. “Fine. If you want an order, Ru, I will give you one.”

Winning didn't exactly make Ru happy, or even relieved. This was the natural order of things, the start of a natural progression; a dance whose steps he knew well. But something told him that it wasn't going to be that easy. He wasn't going to like this. He turned his baleful gaze on her and waited, chewing on a piece of fish as he did.

It took her longer to steel herself against her own guilt than even she expected. But it needed to be done.

“I know that there are some things you have to do because of the link.” She started, “And that can't be helped. But I don't want to be your master. I'd like to be your friend though.” She ignored his scoffing, plunging ahead. “So here's the order: I order you to not try and trick or force me to give you orders. And I order you to only do things for me if the link makes you, or because you actually want to do it; no assuming something I ask is an order. Understand?”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the cold movement of the command array filled the link, like bolts sliding home in a lock. Ru weathered it with stoic banality, but his mind was working in overdrive. He wondered if she knew exactly what she'd done; while both quashing his act of rebellion and asserting his freedom, she also vastly limited the link's own operations. It now required explicit orders instead of interpreted ones; a small thing until one was in a situation where they didn't have the time to say 'I order you'.

“Yes, Miss Taylin.” He finally acknowledged.

“Good.” She said, sounding as if she'd just laid aside a great burden. “Now... would you be kind enough to give me a piece of that fish? I am still a little hungry...”

The 'a little' part of that was a lie. Ru could tell. But she wasn't starving to death at the moment and it wasn't an order, so...

“No.” He said curtly and was shocked to see her smile. It wasn't just a fake one either, it carried over in the link too.

“Good.” She leaned back on her hands and looked up at the sky. “It worked.”

He snarled a little at her and stood up, keeping the scythe leaned across both shoulders. “I need to find a whetstone if this will be of any use tomorrow.”

***

When he returned twenty minutes later, he wasn't at all surprised to find that the remaining fish was gone. Taylin was lying on her side, watching the fire with her old clothes folded into a crude pillow beneath her head. He didn't say a word, only sat down and began to remake the scythe blade with effort and spellwork. The hissing sound of stone on metal filled the air for more than an hour.

Finally, the weariness that had been dogging him since he awakened in the chamber after putting Taylin to sleep caught up to him. It wasn't necessarily a need to sleep, only to rest and be comfortable. Just as he now needed food to regain energy, so too did he need periods of inactivity to conserve it.

Reluctantly, he set the scythe aside, making a note to himself to later smooth out the splintery knobs where he had snapped off the handles. Then he shifted into a form in which he could make himself comfortable. He wasn't in that form long before a tired voice questioned it.

“Ru?” Taylin asked, shifting her position slightly to make sure she saw what she thought she was seeing. “Why are you a cat?”

A cat can make himself comfortable anywhere, Miss Taylin.
The gray and white splotched tom with familiar, yellow eyes, flicked a notched ear and sprawled before the fire.

“Oh.” She lay back down and closed her eyes. “Ru? Can I ask a favor?”

By your own order, I don't have to fulfill it
. He replied smugly.

BOOK: A Girl and Her Monster (Rune Breaker)
13.53Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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