Unbound (The Griever's Mark series Book 3) (23 page)

Chapter 33

LOGAN

THE SUN IS rising when I shape us from the wind on a hilltop some thirty miles north of Tornelaine. This is about where Astarti and I got to the day I tried to follow Kronos.

Belos stretches, cracking his back. Suddenly his hands snap together behind him, bound by faintly glowing Drift-energy.

He raises a pale eyebrow. “Child, unless one of you wants to hold it for me, I’m going to need my hands.”

I growl, but Astarti doesn’t seem fazed. She releases the bond and informs him, “You may turn away, but you’re not to leave my sight.”

“Is there any need for this paranoia? I wouldn’t get a hundred yards before you caught up to me from the Drift.”

“Call it a jailor’s prerogative.”

Belos makes an appreciative grunt and turns away. There is something far too personal about the sight and sound of him unlacing his pants, even if I can only see his back. I look away, but I can’t block out the sound of him relieving himself or of his contented sigh.

He laces his pants back up, and I return my eyes to him. He smirks.

“Since we’re all rather bound together at the moment, it might be best if we get a bit more comfortable with one another.”

“This isn’t about you being comfortable,” Astarti retorts. “This is about you doing as we say to extend your miserable existence a little longer.”

He observes casually, “You never would have spoken to me like that in the old days.”

Something snaps inside me. I don’t even feel myself move. All I feel is a lash of fury and suddenly I am pinning him to the ground, driving my fist into his face. The crack of contact, the slickness of blood against my knuckles lets something unclench inside me.

He doesn’t fight back. After a few punches, that makes me aware of myself and my actions. I pull him up by his shirt and yell, “Fight me!” but his head lolls back. Blood streams from his nose and split cheek. I drop him roughly and shove to my feet. I stalk several paces across the hilltop, away from both him and Astarti.

I stare out across the hilly green landscape, not really seeing it. I try to catch my breath, but something is too tight in my chest. I sit and draw up my knees, resting my forearms on them. I drop my head and force the air into my lungs, once, twice, three times. When I raise my head, I find Astarti seated beside me.

She says, “We don’t want to kill him yet.”

“I know that.”

The truth is that even had we already gotten what we need from him, I wouldn’t want to kill him that way. I have killed many men, but I’ve never beaten one to death. Belos has already polluted me enough; I can’t let him leave that last mark on me. I won’t let him make me into that.

Astarti asks, “Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Are you being honest?”

“I don’t know.”

“He is going to taunt us the whole way to Kronos. That is the only power he has left, and he will make use of it.”

The truth of that makes me feel foolish. “And I’m giving him just what he wants.”

“Well, I’m not sure he wanted his nose broken,” she says wryly, “but he did want to rile you.”

Her humor breaks the hold that shame has on me, and I can look up now.

I study her, as I love to do. Her hair is still braided from the feast, bound high on the back of her head. It brings the shape of her face into focus. She is so beautiful, though it’s not the fine lines of her jaw and forehead that make her so to me. It is the calm strength, the gentleness that can flow into deadliness like a river can pour itself into a roaring waterfall and flow on again with grace.

“How do you do it, Astarti? Why are you so much stronger than I am?”

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

Her face scrunches in thought as she works through an answer. She won’t dismiss my words, but she won’t accept them either. When she speaks, she looks out across the hills, not at me. “My struggles are different from yours. And I expect different things from myself and from the world than you do.”

“What does that mean?”

She thinks a little longer, then says, “I expect evil, and I slide around it. I even work with it sometimes because I don’t believe it’s possible to eradicate it. When I find things that are good, I try to recognize them. I don’t always succeed, but I try.”

“Is it as simple as that?”

“It’s not simple at all, but it’s the way I am.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You don’t need to, Logan. You and I are not the same. You tolerate fewer evils, both in yourself and in others. You recognize good more quickly than I because you’re not as distracted by the details. I worry about them. I sort through them constantly, but for you they are irrelevant. Even when you met me, knowing what I was, you cut through the details to the heart of me. That is something I was never able to do for myself, a clarity I could never achieve. Without you, I don’t think I would ever have seen it at all. You find the essence of things, and the rest doesn’t matter to you. I love that about you—truly I do, though it’s not the way I am.”

I take in the sight of her, everything in me starving for it. I need her; it terrifies me how much I need her. And it awes me how much I love and respect her. How can she be so wise? She is young, younger than I, far too young to have eyes that look so old. She can be playful, youthful, wonderfully silly—but she is no child. She is wise and strong and able to look at things that most cannot.

Because she can handle it, and because I’m afraid of what’s happening to me, I tell her quietly, “I keep...snapping. I don’t know how to stop.”

“You’re getting better, Logan.”

Even though she doesn’t say it dismissively or as a false reassurance, I still don’t believe her. “But I’m not.”

She hesitates to answer, as though unsure how I will take it, then she says, “You’re starting to calm yourself down. More importantly, you’re starting to accept a little help. Believe me, Logan, you’re getting better. But we’re not in a rush. You have to give yourself time; you have to be patient with yourself.”

Her words make me uncomfortable, though I’m not sure why. I don’t have a response.

Astarti doesn’t expect one. She lets me think on this for a moment, then she pushes to her feet, silently telling me to let it go for now.

I follow her to Belos, who is lying in the grass with his head tilted back, trying to get his nose to stop bleeding. It’s definitely broken. He struggles into a sitting position at our approach. I notice for the first time that his chest is also bleeding. That, I didn’t do. That is from an old wound Astarti dealt him. Now that he doesn’t have the energy of others to patch it up, it seeps blood.

He squints up at me. “It feels good, doesn’t it, Logan?”

I’m not detached enough to let that roll off me, but I let it roll through. It did feel good, but it felt awful, too.

Astarti snags the pack from the ground and slings it over her shoulder. “The direction?”

“North.”

She takes my hand, and I lean down to grip Belos’s shoulder. This time, I am braced for it, ready for the sick churning in my gut. This time, it’s easier to endure.

*     *     *

We stop periodically to confirm direction. I make occasional adjustments to our course, but Belos is guiding us in a general northerly direction. We are near the border between Kelda and Heradyn when he collapses.

Astarti crouches beside him and lays a hand on his sweaty forehead. “I could try to Heal him.”

Bile slides up my throat at the thought. “Please don’t.”

Her eyebrows draw together as she stares down at him, undecided.

I argue, “He doesn’t deserve your energy.”

“It’s not about deserving. We need him.”

She tugs his vest aside to reveal the half-healed wound in his chest. She takes a steadying breath then presses her hands to the wound and closes her eyes. It is agony to watch her give anything of herself to him.

She is still for a long time before she pops up suddenly. She shudders, shaking out her hands. “I can’t,” she says, wiping her bloody hands in the grass. “I just can’t.”

Belos’s eyes open. He sits up, pulling his vest aside to stare down at the wound. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he comments, voice distorted by his broken nose.

The wound is still there, but it’s closed somewhat, and much of Belos’s color has returned. Even so, he’s too weak to get to his feet on his own, and Astarti helps him up before I can protest or spare her by doing it myself. Honestly, I don’t know if I could have.

She says, “It’s late afternoon. We should find food and a place to stay for the night. We’ll start again in the morning.”

Somehow, I imagined this as a one-day venture. I hadn’t thought ahead to spending a night in the same room as Belos. I close off the thought, shutting it into a dark corner of myself. If Astarti can do it, so can I.

By early evening, I find a town with enough traffic to support an inn. I shape our bodies from the wind well beyond the town, and we approach along the packed-dirt road. Carts and tents are gathered at the edge of the town, indicating some kind of event.

We have some coin Astarti pilfered from Heborian’s treasury before we left. “Soldiers’ pay,” she called it. When we enter the inn, which is busily serving dinner, the innkeeper declares us “very lucky” because he has only one room left. Apparently, the local market is tomorrow. Of course, this means he charges us double what the room is worth.

The room is clean but simple. It has no windows, which I don’t like, but it does have two beds. Belos thumps down on one.

A chambermaid in a white apron brings towels and hot water for washing. She arranges these on the washstand and crouches to start a fire in the hearth. It’s surprisingly chilly for the time of year, and the promise of a fire is welcome.

Astarti unbuckles the pack and digs through for toiletries, tossing a cake of soap onto the empty bed. I lean against the wall, wishing I had something to do. I put my weight on my right leg, letting my aching left knee rest. Belos is watching me, so I stare back at him.

His gaze travels to my resting leg, and he comments, “I couldn’t help but notice the way you walk, and a deaf man could have heard your knee clicking when we climbed the stairs. It didn’t heal very well.”

It delights him that he did permanent damage to my body. He weakened me and gave me pain that will remind me of him every day for the rest of my life. And he loves to see that understanding in my eyes.

Belos may be cowardly, but he’s not stupid. I can’t lay into him with the girl here. I’m not coolheaded enough to return a clever response, so I have to keep silent. My teeth are clenched so hard my jaw starts to ache. Though I may not say anything, the air thickens with tension. The chambermaid rushes through the rest of her tasks, wincing when the fire poker scrapes noisily on the hearthstones. When the fire is crackling, she hustles to the door, lurching to a stop when she realizes she hasn’t asked us about food.

Her eyes never go to Belos, and I would like to think she can sense the wrongness in him. Her eyes do skim over me, but she doesn’t raise her gaze above my chest. She looks shyly to Astarti. “Will you come down for dinner, or would you like food sent up?”

“Sent up, please,” Astarti replies, her tone smooth as though to say that nothing is wrong here. Of course, the effect is somewhat ruined when she asks for clean bandages and more hot water. Not that anyone could have failed to notice Belos’s blood-crusted face.

The girl shifts uncomfortably but offers a polite, “Yes, miss.”

“Kicked by a horse,” Astarti explains, as she did to the innkeeper.

Whether the girl believes her, I don’t know, but she dips a shallow curtsy and leaves.

The extra water and bandages arrive first. Though Astarti makes Belos wash himself up, she does wrap a bandage tightly around his chest. The bleeding has mostly stopped, but he’s gone white in the face again. Between that and his swollen, bruised nose, he looks pathetic; he really does. I don’t know why he’s still getting to me.

When dinner arrives, we eat our stew and bread in silence. The only sounds are of chewing and the scraping of our spoons against the bowls. As before, these small, personal sounds creep under my skin. I cannot believe I am eating dinner with him. It is the most unnatural thing I have ever done.

As soon as Belos has laid down his spoon, Astarti binds his hands with Drift-energy and anchors him to his bed. A faint thread of energy flows from his bindings to her hand.

“Isn’t that a clever trick,” Belos says appreciatively.

I pretend not to hear him: his casualness, his comfortableness with this situation as though he is still the one in control. I
pretend
not to hear it, but I do. I’ve felt mildly nauseated all day, and the food churns in my gut at his tone.

It’s a good thing I’m so tired; otherwise I would never be able to sleep tonight. Maybe I won’t anyway. But I do long to lie down. The day’s tension, the effort of taking us all through the wind, and the sleepless night—or nights?—before have me yawning. Astarti and I kick off our boots, but we don’t remove our clothes.