Healer's Touch (10 page)

The following morning, Aris sent Jonas with Llew to get decent tack for her horse. The highwayman’s gear would have rubbed the poor animal raw if she’d ridden the length of the country on it.

On the way to the tack shop, they stopped in at a tailor’s for Llew to buy a new shirt, jacket, and trousers that actually fitted, along with the finest boots that had ever graced her feet, with money Aris had given Jonas for the purpose. Aris had called it an advance on her fee for her –
his
– part in the job of getting Anya safely to Rakun on Phyos. Llew’s eyes had boggled as he divvied the money out to Jonas. If it was only an advance, and not the whole fee, she wouldn’t have to rush to find work in Phyos. How much was the man carrying? Instinctively her fingers had tingled at the prospect of a fat wallet, but she’d shoved her hands into her pockets. She would earn her money honestly from now on.

Later, strolling down the street, carrying her parcel, Llew realised Jonas was not keeping pace with her and turned round to look for him. He stood studying something in a store window. Llew walked back to join him at the dressmaker’s.

“Looking for something for yourself?” she gibed.

He turned a sour look on her, then his expression settled into something she hadn’t seen on him before – a kind of gentle consideration.

“You ever miss wearin’ ’em?” He nodded to the dresses in the window.

“I never did wear ’em.” She didn’t figure the one she’d been hanged in counted. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Pants are more practical, anyway. Come on.” Pants were a damn sight harder for someone else to get off, at least. “I think the store up here might sell hooks. Maybe I’ll catch us dinner one night.” She started walking away.

“A better view, too.”

“What?” She turned, quite certain she knew what he’d meant, but feeling a need for clarification. Plus, the comment made her very conscious of her cheeks – and not those on her face. They clenched.

“Trousers. They–” he started. Llew blinked a few times. It was both amusing and astonishing to see Jonas, usually so confident, flustered. “I was just sayin’ they look nice. Let’s go.” He strode past her.

She caught up with him and they walked together in silence.

Llew wasn’t sure how she felt about Jonas admiring her arse. True, she had assessed him in kind that first day, but that was different.

Anya had insisted Llew purchase a fishing hook should she get the opportunity to do so, so the Orn General Store had been added to their list of destinations. Once her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the store after the bright morning sunshine, she scoured the shelves for the store’s collection of fishing gear and set about sorting through it. Jonas gave every impression of casually inspecting the store’s wares without showing any real interest in any of it, all the while keeping himself just a step or two away from Llew.

“I’d like to see you in one.” Suddenly his breath tickled the hairs on the back of her neck and Llew swallowed, as though she’d been caught once more with his knife in her grasp. Recovering, she pinched her chosen hook between her fingers, but stopped short of turning from the shelf. Her breathing and heart rate quickened. He was far too good at sneaking up on people. “Think you’d look pretty,” he continued.

Llew froze. The storekeeper watched them suspiciously.

Jonas’ hand slipped round beside her, brushing her ribs and sending a jolt through her, and placed the coin she needed to pay for the hook on the shelf. Then, as silently as he had come up behind her, he moved away and left the store.

Heart pounding, she took the hook and the coin to the counter to pay before following Jonas out. As soon as she emerged squinting into the daylight, Jonas stepped onto the road, heading for the livery stable.

“What was that?” she asked when she caught up to him.

“What was what?”

Llew scowled at his back. She grabbed his arm, turning him to face her. There was the smallest of smiles on his lips. Thought it was funny, did he?

“Don’t play innocent with me. I know innocent, and you ain’t it. You were flirting with me.”

“I’s just playin’, is all.” He continued walking, his hands clasped behind his back. The ‘V’ drew Llewella’s eye down and she was struck by how easy it was to notice the nice fit of his trousers. She recalled noticing the same when she had first seen the knife at his side. Her eyes moved to the weapon and she admonished herself for her thoughts. This man had the means to kill her and, by his account, would have thought nothing of doing so if they’d met under different circumstances. In fact, he probably would have done it when they first met, had he known what she was.

But he didn’t know. And she would be long gone before he found out.

CHAPTER SEVEN

When they returned to the inn the boys, Llew and Aris set about preparing the horses and hitching up the carriage. Llew’s horse was a solidly built, gold and white-patched hack, far too beautiful for some highwayman to run into the ground. He dozed quietly while Llew attached her bedroll and canteen to the saddle.

“Here.” Alvaro offered a wide-brimmed hat. It was rumpled, as though it had been shoved in the bottom of his belongings. “It’ll keep the sun out of your eyes. And rain, if we get unlucky.”

“Thanks.” Llew took the hat and pushed it down on her head. Her eyes instantly relaxed from their squinting in the bright morning sun. She headed across to help Aris with the final check of the pack animals while the cousins carried on some sort of game between them, throwing punches and feigning injury.

“Hey!” Jonas exclaimed as something kicked up the dust at Llew’s feet. She stooped to gather up the small object which, on inspection, proved to be a gryphon carved from a hard, dark wood. A shadow fell over her and she looked up. Jonas had an expression similar to the first she had ever seen on his face: this time his attention was focused on the object in her hand, not on her. She held the wooden creature out to him.

“What is it?” she asked as he took it.

“Nothin’,” he said, returning to his own horse and pushing the object deep inside a saddlebag.

She glared at his back. A gryphon, again: same as the design on the handle of his knife.

“Cut your foolin’, boys,” Aris admonished. “We’re late enough getting on, anyways. Go and help the ladies down.”

Cassidy and Alvaro scooted indoors, still trying to beat each other at whatever game they played, and Jonas steadied Llew’s horse while she figured out getting the correct foot in the stirrup and boosting herself into the saddle. Settling in place she felt pretty proud of her accomplishment. Then she watched him vault effortlessly onto the back of his own bay and white horse. She vowed to teach herself the same trick as she watched Cassidy and Alvaro repeat the feat moments later.

The group nudged their horses forward and soon they were on the road north. Alvaro and Cassidy took the lead again, followed by the carriage and the pack horses, with Jonas and Llew taking up the rear.

Glancing over at him, she could see the scar that extended around his throat. It was as though someone had gripped him with a burning hand, leaving the marks of their fingers. But if they had been burning, how had he not been more injured by the fire? She took a breath to ask him, but thought better of it. Instead, she made idle comments on the weather. After a taste of winter’s chill a few mornings earlier, summer had come knocking once more and the heat was almost stifling. She had no need for her new jacket just yet. Jonas stared straight ahead, outwardly acknowledging little around them, much less Llew’s chatter.

“How old were you when you . . . lost your folks?”

For a moment longer she thought he was still ignoring her. Then he gave her a glance and started talking, going back to watching the road ahead.

“I was seven,” he said.

She was about to ask what happened when she realised he was already preparing to tell her.

“We lived in Aldia, in northern Quaver. Turhmos, south of Quaver, had taken to raids targeting families on farms and isolated homesteads instead of facing us on the battlefields.” He paused. “I was outside playin’ with – I was outside playin’, when riders came to our house. This knife was my pa’s. But the Aenuks turned its power on him and my ma. By the time I realised what was goin’ on and ran back to the house, it was too late. They drained them.”

She watched him a while, imagining the little boy seeing his parents like that, drained of life like the man in the Cheer alleyway.

“How long you been on your own?” he asked.

“If I tell you, will you tell me about your gryphon?”

“No.”

“Alright. Five summers, maybe.” She shrugged. “I stopped counting.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged again. “My pa took to regular evenings in the saloon. I woke one morning and he hadn’t come home. And he wasn’t at the saloon, either.”

“So, you don’t know he’s dead.”

“I don’t know how I’d feel if he isn’t.”

Jonas nodded.

When she gave herself the time to ponder on it, she knew exactly how she’d feel and, if she was honest with herself, she felt anger more often than she’d care to admit.

“Phew! It’s hot,” she said, taking off the hat and fanning her face with it before returning it to her head. The wet band was cool to the touch, at first. She pulled at the front of her shirt, trying to get some air on her skin.

It was hard to walk after her first few hours in the saddle. Muscles she didn’t know she had cried for her attention until she sat in the lush grass to eat her lunch and all her little aches and pains eased.

They took an extended lunch, sheltering from the relentless midday sun in a tree-lined clearing just off the road. Horses and riders were struggling equally in the heat.

“How was your first ride?” Cassidy asked with a broad grin.

“Good.”

He shrugged, evidently disappointed by the response.

No one noticed the two hand-shaped patches of dead grass where Llew had been sitting.

They travelled late into the night, taking advantage of the cooler evening air and making up for time lost in the middle of the day. When they did stop, it was for a quick meal of jerky strips and staling bread. The night air cooled rapidly and Llew slept curled up tight in her bedroll with her jacket on and the collar drawn up.

Jonas woke her a couple of hours later for her turn on watch, and she woke Cassidy a couple of hours after that, glad of the chance to return to sleep.

She felt she had barely slept at all when she was roused by the morning cacophony of a fire being lit, horses nickering for attention, and metal plates hitting the ground. Jonas, Cassidy and Alvaro each took their turn to shave by the shallow creek a few minutes away through the trees. Alvaro, the first to go, brought back a potful of water to be boiled for breakfast. When Jonas emerged clean-shaven, Llewella’s breath caught in her throat and she forced herself to concentrate on giving her horse a rub down. The animal appreciated it and she hoped it would encourage him to be good to her as they continued their journey together. She just had to think about something other than Jonas. She had heard girls gushing over this boy or that young man and had always been dismissive. What girl needed some boy to like her? What girl gave up her own dreams just to follow some spotty youth around? But Jonas wasn’t a spotty youth. And she didn’t need him to like her, did she? Well, besides the kind of liking that might keep him from putting his knife in her if he ever found out what she was.

They rode together in a companionable silence, and she found that riding came quite easily – her horse had a desire to follow the others, and so long as she relaxed and let her hips swing with the movements of her mount, he relaxed and carried her comfortably along the road.

The sun was not conducive to their comfort, however. Clear skies dominated the next several days, cooking the riders by day and freezing them at night. It wasn’t so bad on the one night they spent in a small inn (Darus: Population 474) but settlements were few and far between and most were too small to have an inn.

By mid-afternoon on the sixth day out of Orn they were all exhausted and sweating profusely, and Llew was relieved when Aris announced that, since it would likely do more harm than good to continue, they would make camp early that afternoon and be up and moving before sun-up the following day.

Much to everyone’s delight, they pulled off the road close by a river with a deep, slow-flowing swimming hole. There were just enough trees between where they would make camp and the river to afford privacy while the women, and later the men, took their swims.

“We’re in the heart of Zaki territory here, boys,” said Aris. “So I need you all to be vigilant. They’re not known for unprovoked attacks, but who can judge what they count as provoking?”

“What’s a Zaki?” asked Llew.

“Why, they’re your natives.” Aris sounded surprised. “They’re Aghacia’s first folk, before the new settlers discovered gold. They live in tribal communities and don’t bother your folk, so long as your folk don’t bother them.”

Llew felt a little stupid for having to be informed of her country’s history by an outsider. She had never had cause to think on it before. She nodded, embarrassed.