Daybreak (17 page)
“What would you like me to do? I don’t carry weapons, but I’ll be able to fight off any trouble for you.”
She astonished him by throwing her head back with a merry laugh. “Oh, my, you are a brave soul, aren’t you? Skinwalker and bristling wild, but you haven’t lost yourself to it yet.”
Tru stared at her, puzzled.
“Don’t worry about us, boy. I’m a fair hand with a charm. That’s how I knew your nature. And this place is hidden.”
“But I found it.”
“Because Burke told you about us . . . and he set our mark on you.” She indicated his palm. “I’m Mary Agnes, by the way.”
Though he saw nothing on his skin, he remembered the old man’s odd handshake. A huff of breath escaped him. He hated some things about the Changed world—like spells dumped on the unsuspecting. But that thought circled him right back to Pen. He was determined to wall her off like that crazy dude did in the Poe story. Maybe with more successful results.
“So you don’t need me to stay, then.” He didn’t know why he felt so downcast.
She cast a friendly smile over her shoulder. “Need, no. Not per se. But willing hands are always welcome. Come or not, as you will.”
SEVENTEEN
Pen joined the morning calisthenics as she had for the previous seven days. Routine was good. Routine meant she was getting stronger, not just in the way her body responded to daily exercise. Zhara drilled the troops with a combination of tai chi, strength training, and yoga. A niggling voice in Pen sounded very much like Tru’s usual derision, so she worked all the harder. Anything to get him out of her head.
She could go for whole ten-minute stretches without thinking about him. Without reliving the betrayal in his voice when he had accused her of witchcraft. Without wondering why she hadn’t begged him to stay.
Well, that last was easy enough to figure. She didn’t make a habit of haggling with the clouds or pleading with a quiet copse of evergreens. Useless.
Adrian, however, was a different matter. He did his exercises like all the other teens, blending with the adults by way of their bodies, if not their maturing minds. But a surly reserve had taken the boy over.
She felt partly responsible.
As morning turned to full day, sweat streaked down her spine and between her breasts. She finished the last sun salutation and followed the others to find refreshments. Adrian slouched along behind her, his posture that of a kid told to take out the trash.
She forced cheer into her voice. “You want to help me today? I’m on fishing-net detail.”
“No, thanks. I have lessons. Then two hours in the galley with Jules.”
“Which one is he?”
“The condor. His wife’s a crow.”
“Xialle. That’s right.”
A wistful look softened his features, making him appear even younger than usual. “Can you imagine? Flying like that?”
But in a well-practiced maneuver, he shut down his wistfulness and trudged away.
Pen wanted to help him, but she didn’t have Tru’s rapport with the boy. At least Adrian was with other children, cared for and treated with respect. His lessons thrilled her the most. Actual books. Wherever Arturi’s people had traveled, all coalescing on that little island, they seemed to value reading material as much as weapons. Every child learned to read and do their sums. Even some history, although that had already changed. Oral traditions took the place of established fact, but Pen could hardly tell the difference. She hadn’t been to school since she was nine. Mason and Jenna had given her what formal education she could claim.
All she knew was that Genghis Khan had not been Russian, as Adrian’s teacher claimed. Turkish, maybe?
She watched the boy slink off toward the classroom on the north side of the island. Head bowed, his freshly shaved scalp gleamed chocolate brown. He hadn’t had a drink of water after his exercises, but nagging him would do no good. She knew from six days of experience.
Not for the first time, she wished Tru had stayed. Yes, for her. She missed him in ways that snuck up on her in the middle of the night. The way light caught the blue of his eyes and turned them nearly transparent. The soft gravel of his voice, especially those moments when he teased her and his grin surprised them both.
But she also missed the way he had managed Adrian. Almost . . . effortlessly. As if he knew exactly how to reach past the boy’s pride and his occasionally sullen shell. Although she liked to assume that was because of Tru’s own nature, she knew that did him a disservice. Not everyone took the time. Tru had.
She gulped water, then pressed a palm against her breastbone, as if she could seal the hurt into a corner. Nothing about Tru had ever said he would stay. But that didn’t keep her from wanting impossible things.
Idiot.
How long had she waited for her mother to come back? In a world of magic, where she used her mind to talk to a young man she’d never met, where she could heal the wounded and sick, where she could teleport in times of trouble—
why
shouldn’t her mother return? She’d held to that belief for years. Just waiting for Angela Sheehan. In a way, she wanted it just to prove Mason and Jenna wrong. They could shift. What right did they have to say her fantasy was any less plausible than their abilities?
How long had she waited for her mother to come back? In a world of magic, where she used her mind to talk to a young man she’d never met, where she could heal the wounded and sick, where she could teleport in times of trouble—
why
shouldn’t her mother return? She’d held to that belief for years. Just waiting for Angela Sheehan. In a way, she wanted it just to prove Mason and Jenna wrong. They could shift. What right did they have to say her fantasy was any less plausible than their abilities?
The moment she’d grown up was the moment she accepted that even in the Changed world, death was permanent. And those girls . . . they would never come back to life.
“Pen?”
She huffed an exhale and turned to face Zhara. “Yes?”
“Arturi would like to talk to us both this afternoon. He has a task.”
“A test, you mean. For me.”
The woman’s smile was slight. “One could say that, yes.”
Pen bridged the question that had been bothering her for days. “You . . . you don’t trust me, do you? Not like he does.”
With a nod, Zhara led the way back through camp. They crossed between the lodging huts, passed the practice yard, where instructors already worked with students in martial arts and magic, and came to a small clearing down by the dock. The dark woman looked out across the ocean. Pen couldn’t help but admire her sleek lines. She looked like a warrior goddess, all pride and secrets.
“Arturi has been my husband for three years. But he’s known you intimately since childhood.”
Pen blushed at the use of the word “intimate.” In truth, she’d imagined Arturi—or Finn, as she’d known him then—as her first lover. They had traded secrets for years. She’d only later assumed that her imaginings were the product of an insane adolescent imagination. But knowing a real man had been on the other end of those first impulses lent a peculiar awkwardness to their new relationship.
She trusted Arturi. Being around him, however, was a different story.
“I have,” she answered carefully. “But I can’t help what came before. And I have no intention of allowing any of it to manifest in real life.”
Zhara actually laughed. “Oh, I believe that. You look elsewhere for companionship now.”
Pen bristled, wanting to protest Tru’s hold on her. But Zhara had eyes, and her sight went deeper than mere senses. If Pen wanted the woman to trust her, she needed to admit the obvious. Or at least not lie about it. She held her tongue, squinting at where the water sparkled with bright orange streaks of sun.
“What I’m concerned with is that Arturi has never been wrong in his estimation of people.”
Zhara squatted. From a bag slung over her shoulder she withdrew a set of carved runes. She cleared a flat space in the dirt, then tossed wooden tiles with a simple fl ick of her wrist. She pointed, circled her palm over the ground, mumbling something indistinct.
The hair on the backs of Pen’s forearms stood on end. Zhara could probably articulate which parts of her ritual were essential and which were mnemonic devices. One day she might, if she found the right apprentice. More oral information, yet to be passed down.
“He has yet to misjudge a person’s intentions,” Zhara said, her voice slightly lower pitched. “Between his knack for reading people and my runes, we have yet to be betrayed. But we are no longer in agreement.”
“What do you mean?”
She turned to look up at Pen. Her dark eyes held an equal measure of wariness and determination. “He insists that everyone here is aligned with our work. I say that someone on this island intends to betray him. Betray all of us.”
The wind off the ocean was warm, but Pen shivered. She rubbed her hands along her upper arms. “And you think I could be that person.”
“You don’t say that as a question. No one ever doubted that you were clever.” After quickly collecting her runes, Zhara stood. “But the Orchid is the stuff of new legend. Your reputation and your magic mean that no one can separate the woman from the myth. Least of all the man you befriended when he was a lost boy.”
Licking her lower lip, imagining the salt she’d licked from Tru’s sweat-slicked chest, Pen pushed her shoulders back. “This test, then. It’s yours, isn’t it? Arturi doesn’t think I need it.”
Zhara nodded, just the barest dip of her sharp chin. “And if you hurt him, I will have to kill you.”
She made it so plain, so basic. Pen admired that honesty. If she were false, Pen would deserve that fate for betraying these people. Her intentions had always been pure, but now she needed them to be selfless, too.
When had that become a problem? Selflessness had always been an essential part of her unwanted reputation as a living goddess.
That was before Tru had revealed her as a woman who wanted more than adoration from afar.
The two did not need to be incompatible. She could be selfless and a woman who’d opened herself to the passion of a man. But only if that man was Tru.
Who wasn’t coming back.
She acknowledged Zhara’s threat with a direct gaze. “Understood. But there will never be a need. I am here only to help.”
The air shimmered between them as they took stock of each other. Then Zhara’s smile returned, the broad one that spoke to the generous nature beneath her military bearing. “He always said you were tough.”
“You sound surprised that he told the truth.”
“Not at all. Only surprised I like you as much as I do.”
Pen offered a smile of her own, one much more rueful. “And you fight it, don’t you? To try and keep him from succumbing to a blind spot.”
“Like I said, no one else claimed you weren’t clever. Come. He’s expecting us.”
But instead of walking back to headquarters, she continued on toward the dock. To Pen’s surprise, Arturi sat on a rough-hewn bench. A fishing net stretched over his lap. He used a bone needle to restring the netting, patching holes. Taking his turn with the chores, just as everyone else did.
“Penny,” he said, making room on the bench. “Glad you could join us.”
Everyone called her Pen but him. She made a conscious effort not to refer to him as Finn, but he seemed reluctant to give up their old connection. Or maybe it was a nudge to ensure that
she
never forgot it.
she
never forgot it.
She shrugged. “It was my turn.”
“That it was.” He nodded to the others assembled in a small circle. “You remember Jack and Shine. This is Preacher, Reynard, Miranda, and Koss.”
Pen nodded to Preacher first, out of respect for his position as one of Arturi’s most trusted advisors. The giant man had coppery hair and a beard that stretched down to mid-chest. She’d heard of Preacher, of course, and had even taken in his sermon two afternoons before. But that had been at a span of several hundred meters, with the whole of the island’s population between them. Arturi was the brains of the organization, but it seemed Preacher was its spiritual center.
Reynard was a thin, wiry man with a bald head. The way he looked out through hooded eyes reminded her of Mason. A man who had seen too much, yet tried to carry on with life—if only because others expected it of him. A scar the shape of an upside-down horseshoe wrapped from his cheek around to the back of his skull. A brand of some kind? Pen tried not to stare.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said with a grin and a thick accent. “‘That man is surely Cajun.’”
Although Pen blushed, she joined in the others’ laughter. “Would you mind telling me what you can do? All of you, actually, if it wouldn’t be too rude.”
“I’m a turkey vulture,” Reynard said. “But I’m really an all right guy.”
“Especially if you need someone with a wicked crossbow,” Jack added.
Reynard touched the hilt of the weapon strapped across his back. “What, this old thing?”
Pen’s grin widened. She liked him, even his inviting aura, which glowed with a rich earthen brown.
With a shamed blush, the woman named Miranda confessed to being a baboon. Pen couldn’t understand the woman’s reaction. Powers brought about by the Change were to be respected and feared, not thought a cause for chagrin. She wished she’d spent more time learning people rather than cultivating distance and awe. Tru would’ve been able to explain such a woman to her—a translator even among allies.
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