Kitabı oku: «The Godblind Trilogy», sayfa 7
DOM
Eleventh moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Wolf Lands, Rilporian border
The air had the silent weight of snow when Dom half woke and rolled over. He snuggled into the warmth of a neck and back and drifted back to sleep, dreams flitting behind his eyelids like swallows. The images became clearer, and then stranger, darker, tugging at him until he gasped and jerked awake. He flailed and broke contact with the girl, and the images vanished. She moved too, rolling over and pressing her back against the freezing canvas, her breathing harsh.
The knowing swelled and burnt its way through his skin where he’d touched her, worming its way towards his skull. He stretched out a foot and kicked at the tent flap, allowing a spear of daylight and a blast of freezing air into the gloom. They stared at each other by its light, Dom turning over the images he’d seen, probing at them like a tongue at a rotten tooth.
The tent was so small they were still practically touching, even when they were both straining away from each other. He caught a whiff of old sweat and rain from the ragged plait of her hair that lay across the space between them, but he didn’t move it. Right now he didn’t know if even that much would bring on another knowing and he wasn’t risking that here, with only her for help and company.
Normally I can’t tell when a knowing will happen. Why is it with her I know one’s coming? Why is everything twisted around her? She’s like an oak and the world is ivy, climbing her, revolving around her. He scrubbed at his face. So what happens to the ivy if she falls?
He forced the images to the cage at the back of his mind. ‘I’ll kindle the fire. Pack up,’ he growled and wriggled out into the snow. He reached back in for his jerkin and coat and brushed her arm. She yelped and he huffed in irritation, at her and at the tingle that shot through his fingertips. ‘Hurry up,’ he snapped, anxiety and grief and anger making him sharp, ‘we should reach the plain by noon if we don’t dawdle.’
Dom squatted by the embers of the fire and laid more wood on it until it blazed and he could melt snow for tea. He threw some dried rosehips into the bowls and went to piss while it heated.
I’m afraid of her, that’s what the problem is. She’s going to change everything. ‘No,’ he said aloud, ‘she’s going to set in motion old plans I thought I’d escaped.’ He stared unseeing at the melting yellow snow, then shook himself like a dog and returned to the camp.
Rillirin had collapsed the tent and screwed it into a bundle three times its proper size and was struggling to tie the leather thongs around its bulk. Her face was red with the effort and he watched her in silence, the echo of the glimpse he’d seen through her throbbing behind his right eye.
‘You’re making a mess of that, aren’t you?’ he said when he couldn’t bear to watch any longer. Sharp again, when he shouldn’t be. Couldn’t help it. She squeaked in alarm and spun to face him, the bundle dropping from her arms and unfurling again.
‘Forgive me, honoured,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll do better, I promise.’
‘This is the third time I’ve shown you how to do it, isn’t it?’ he said. He didn’t wait for an answer, but spread out the tent and showed her how to roll it. ‘Got it this time?’ he asked. She bobbed her head. ‘Good. Check the tea.’
She’d made the bowls from pine bark and resin their first day out from the village, when Dom had been too numb to do anything but stumble through the woods. Crude but effective and lightweight, they slipped easily into the tent folds for carrying and had come in handy every day since.
‘You ready?’ he asked when he’d finished his tea, and she drank the rest of hers and stowed the bowls. She hefted the tent on to her shoulders and Dom adjusted it, teasing one corner out of the ties to hang down to her calves and keep off the worst of the wind. They hadn’t even had time to find her a coat before they’d left. Before they’d been banished. He killed the fire, buckled on his sword and headed east. Rillirin limped along behind him, bent slightly beneath the tent but unprotesting, dogging his heels like a whipped cur.
They walked all day, reaching the edge of the Western Plain by late afternoon. The sun was already fading when they made camp. Rillirin was pinched with cold and Dom built up the fire, then put out a hand to stay her. ‘Get warm, lass, I’ll do the rest.’
He could see her instinct to obey warring with her fear that he would punish her for laziness, so he threw her the pigeons he’d brought down with his sling. ‘Pluck these, will you?’
She hunched by the fire, working quickly and piling the feathers in her lap. When she was done and the tent was up, she held up the handfuls of down. Dom raised an eyebrow. ‘No thanks.’ He put his head on one side, curious. ‘You keep them,’ he said.
Her eyes flickered to his face and away; then she carefully separated the feathers in half, took off her boots and stuffed her socks with them. He could see the tiniest smile graze her lips as her toes warmed up.
‘Clever,’ he said approvingly. The silence stretched between them as the pigeons roasted in the top flames and chestnuts cooked in the coals. Dom turned his back to the fire and looked up at the sky, tracing the constellations sprayed across the velvet of the night. His fingers tapped against his vambrace and he hummed softly. ‘Would you like to talk?’ he asked.
There was no response so he turned back and she looked away hurriedly. ‘Of course, honoured. What do you want to talk about?’
‘No,’ he said as he poked his knife into a pigeon, ‘do you want to talk? You have the choice.’
‘Of course, honoured,’ she said again.
‘All right. What do you want to talk about?’ he pressed.
‘Whatever you desire, honoured.’
‘Please stop calling me that, lass. It’s a Mireces term and neither of us is Mireces.’ He pulled the pigeons off the spit and put one in her bowl, juggled chestnuts from the fire and split them evenly. ‘Here you are. All right, can you tell me your name?’
She was quiet, staring at the food, and for a second he thought she was praying. Who to? Had she fooled them all? Was she praying to the Red Gods? Then she looked up and there was a wet sheen to her eyes. ‘Rillirin Fisher,’ she whispered and he knew it had been a long time since anyone had asked or cared.
‘Rillirin Fisher,’ he repeated. ‘That’s a beautiful name. Rillirin. Rill.’
‘Not Rill,’ she snapped; then she cringed. ‘Forgive me, honoured, I spoke wrong.’
The vehemence, the sudden sick expression, told him that Rill was associated with some bad memories. ‘I apologise,’ he said formally, ‘Rillirin. And I’m Dom Templeson. I know I’ve told you that before, but now we’re properly introduced. We’ll be at Watchtown tomorrow. Stay close to me, all right? It’s our town, a Watcher and Wolf town. People might be a little … hostile.’
She paused with the pigeon’s leg in one hand, her eyes wide, fingers suddenly white.
‘But you’re under my protection and I’ll keep you safe,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to visit my mother – my adopted mother. She’s high priestess at the temple of the Dancer and Fox God. She can cleanse you, if you want it.’
He concentrated on eating, pretending he couldn’t hear the muffled hitches in her breathing, the sniffs as she fought tears. How desperate for cleansing would I be after nine years in the hands of Mireces? His eyes drifted to the vambrace on his right arm and what it concealed, and then he turned his thoughts carefully in another direction, like a parent steering a recalcitrant toddler away from danger.
‘And Liris? Can you tell me why you killed him?’ he asked as he sucked the meat from the last of the bones.
The silence stretched even longer this time and she dropped the chestnut she was holding back into her bowl. ‘He was’ – Rillirin’s hand rose to her throat, fell back into her lap – ‘he was going to rape me. He still had his dagger in his belt, so I, you know …’ She made vague stabbing gestures and then stuck her hands in her armpits and hunched over, nostrils flaring.
Dom wiped grease from his mouth and studied her. ‘That took real courage, Rillirin,’ he said, ‘to resist him like that. To keep yourself safe.’ Her mouth twisted and he knew that it was probably the only time she’d managed to fend him off. Still, it was the last time he’d ever try, she’d made sure of that.
Yes, and her actions led to dozens of Wolf deaths.
She wasn’t to know that.
But I could’ve. I could’ve known that, if I’d pushed, if I hadn’t wasted those two days in the village on feeding her, making her feel safe, I could have saved us all.
Dom stared into the flames, almost daring the knowing to come. Do I want to be that man? he asked himself. Someone who’d frighten a woman for his own gain? Wouldn’t that make me another Liris to her?
Dom grunted, blinked, looked away. He finished the pigeon.
CRYS
Twelfth moon, the seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
The road to the West Rank Forts, Cattle Lands
Godsdamn fucking winter wind, Crys thought as he unloaded the princes’ tent from the wagon. Will it ever stop?
As if in answer, a finger of cold slid beneath his scarf and tickled his neck. He shuddered, pulling it tighter. Even the north had been warmer than this.
Tacking up the River Gil for days on end against the current and wind had been a misery despite the plushness of the royal barge, the weather worsening every day until they were all at each other’s throats. Crys’d been relieved when they made it to the Rank harbour and could get back on land. He knew what he was doing on land.
But then they’d commandeered horses and a wagon and struck out into the Cattle Lands where the wind seemed to come straight off Mount Gil itself, carving into any exposed flesh in an unrelenting attack.
Crys shivered again and the grey mule stretched its neck towards him. Crys skipped sideways out of range of its yellow teeth. ‘Bastard animal,’ he grunted, ‘you think pulling a wagon for a couple of days is tough, try riding alongside your stinky hide the whole way and still having a night watch to stand. I swear, you bite me one more time and I’ll knock your teeth out.’
‘He doesn’t understand you, you know.’
Crys whipped his head around to see Galtas leaning against the back of the wagon. ‘Lord Morellis, I beg your pardon, but that bloody animal understands every word I say. He’s a devil sent by the Red Gods.’
‘All because he tried to bite your cock off. Some men pay for that sort of thing.’
You probably would. ‘From a wench, aye, not from something with teeth as long as my finger,’ Crys said instead.
‘Shame you weren’t able to put it to good use at that whorehouse in Yew Cove,’ Galtas said, a sly smirk in his eye. ‘Your cock, I mean, not your finger. Though if your finger’s bigger …’ He trailed off, smiling again. ‘But you weren’t interested, were you?’
Crys reckoned Galtas had been the author of that particular piece of gossip. Crys’s lack of needs; Crys preferring to spend the evening with Prince Janis. Were Prince Janis and Crys …
He’d put three men on a warning for repeating that one. Janis’s reputation had to be beyond reproach, and Crys wasn’t particularly impressed that his name was being dragged into it either. An evening of chess with Janis hadn’t been high on his list of ways to pass the time, but as he’d explained to Commander Koridam back in Rilporin, you don’t refuse a prince.
‘I’ve got my hand if all else fails,’ he said, aware Galtas was awaiting a response.
Galtas smiled, the effect much like the mule’s baring of teeth. ‘Just not on watch, eh, Captain?’
Crys hauled the tent on to his shoulder. ‘You take the fun out of everything, milord.’
‘One of the privileges of rank, soldier. On you go.’
Crys flicked a salute and marched past Galtas; he dumped the tent in a dip in the landscape that did fuck all to cut out the wind. Privileges of rank? Gods, he was an arse. At this pace, they had two more days to reach the forts, though if the weather carried on like this they’d all freeze to death well in advance. Didn’t all have ermine and wolfskin cloaks like the princes. Maybe I could win one of Rivil’s next time we play cards.
The thought cheered him and he set about laying out the tent frame as he imagined swaggering through the honour guard dressed like a prince. But no. Word of that would definitely find its way back to Durdil.
Godsdamnit, he thought again. Godsdamn winter and commanders and bloody soldiering too. The wind blew wet snow in his face. ‘You motherfuc— Your Highness. Er, we’ll have the tent up in no time, Sire. The men are lighting a fire just over there if you’d care to warm yourself.’
Janis nodded. ‘Need a hand?’ he asked instead, and before Crys could fumble a reply, took an end of the tent and shook it open, held it against the wind while Crys put the frame together. They slung the material over the top and started pegging it down. ‘It’s bloody freezing, isn’t it?’ Janis said when they were done. ‘Bit of exercise warms the blood, eh?’
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ Crys said. ‘Allow me to get the rugs and bedding from the wagon.’
‘Come on, Rivil,’ Janis called, breaking the intense conversation his brother was having with Galtas. They both looked over, identical expressions of guilt quickly masked. ‘Lend us a hand and we can all get warm that much quicker.’
Flustered, Crys led Janis to the wagon and jumped inside. He began handing the prince the rugs to lay on the tent floor against the chill. Rivil and Galtas wandered over a moment later and Crys noticed Rivil’s unconcealed irritation, but he took the proffered bedding and carried it to the pavilion, dropping it inside. The pair disappeared soon after and Crys called a few men to spread the rugs out and fetch the three cots for the princes and Galtas. He lit the brazier and set it in the centre, beneath the smoke hole; then he laid out the bedding.
‘Thank you, Captain,’ Janis said as he sat on his cot with his portable writing desk. ‘Let me know when supper’s ready.’
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ Crys said and made his escape. The wind tugged at him as soon as he was outside, but Crys ignored it now. They might still be in the Cattle Lands, but the mountains loomed black in the blackness, feet covered with thick, concealing forest. Just because an attack by men or wild beasts was unlikely didn’t mean Crys wouldn’t prepare for it. He did the rounds of the sentries already walking the perimeter in pairs.
The princes had an honour guard of twenty men, men he hadn’t known well before this assignment. They were amiable enough, he supposed, but there was a clear division between those who served Janis and those with Rivil. Am I Rivil’s, too? Or am I captain of the honour guard and without bias, as I should be? He followed the perimeter trail silently, looking for fault and unable to answer his own question.
Mac and Joe were bickering again. He ghosted out of the darkness and got within two paces before Mac spun, startled, his hand dropping to his sword. ‘Too late for a sword now, Mac,’ Crys said, making his voice harsh. ‘By the time you’ve drawn it your guts’ll be tangling around your knees. You should have dropped me with an arrow twenty paces back.’
Mac licked his teeth and scuffed at the snow, silent.
‘Mac doesn’t like first watch,’ Joe supplied with friendly malice.
Crys eyed the pair of them. ‘That so?’ he said, and Joe realised his mistake. ‘Then you can have the third watch.’ Third watch was the darkest, coldest and most miserable of the watches, in the small hours before dawn when it was hardest to wake and to stay alert. ‘But that leaves me short of a pair of guards now, doesn’t it? So you should probably take first watch as well. The others are already settling down with supper and some warm blankets, after all. I wouldn’t want to disturb them.’
Mac was still silent, but Joe’s mouth opened in protest. Crys stepped very close. ‘Yes, soldier?’
‘I, ah, so that means a pair gets the night off?’
Crys winked. ‘Well done, soldier, yes it does. Who do you think that pair will be? Well, I can tell you, one of them will be me,’ he added before Joe could speak. ‘I plan on sleeping all night long, warm and cosy and full of supper. My first full night’s sleep since we set out. Ah, lads, I can’t wait,’ he said, slinging his arms around both of them and steering them along the perimeter. ‘And it’s not even one of the privileges of rank. It’s a privilege of not being a silly twat like you two.’
He dragged them to a sudden halt and turned them to face him. ‘If I hear one more argument or angry word between you, I’ll have General Koridam flog you both when we get to the West Forts. We have charge of the safety of the princes of this land. They are our only concern. I don’t care if one of you screwed the other’s wife, daughter, mistress, sister or mother. I don’t care if you owe money, stole or killed someone’s grandma. Do I make myself clear? Whatever this disagreement is, it is done. Understand? Done. Now do your fucking jobs or I will make you live to regret the honour of being chosen for this posting.’
‘He said Prince Janis was—’ Mac blurted and Crys’s fist buried itself in his gut. Mac doubled over, gagging.
‘What did I just say?’ Crys demanded. He glanced at the rest of the camp, scanning the perimeter, trying to see through the darkness for threat. ‘You are endangering the princes. I’m an easy-going sort, but I will not stand for that. I will not.’ He paused to make sure they got the message.
‘Now, I don’t give a runny shit for who said what. Next man to say anything at all gets a beating now and a flogging at the forts. Do not test me on this.’
Joe’s mouth closed on whatever retort he had, and Mac pushed against his knees and forced himself to stand straight. He glared into the darkness, wheezing.
Looks like my warm and cosy bed will have to wait, despite the boast, Crys told himself. Lead by example, Durdil had said, don’t make them do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. He pulled his cloak tighter around himself and took a single pace back, leaving the pair ostensibly in charge of the perimeter, but staying close enough to make them uncomfortable, backs of their necks prickling with his gaze. He counted off the seconds until one of them would cast him an anxious glance, betting on it being Mac. Still, I’d love to know what it was Joe said about Janis.
RILLIRIN
Twelfth moon, seventeenth year of the reign of King Rastoth
Watchtown, Western Plain
Dom and Rillirin approached Watchtown’s main gate across a vast white plain and Rillirin slowed. High wooden walls, thick gates barred with iron, and the scents of woodsmoke and cooking.
The nest of vipers, Liris had called it, home of their enemies. Watchers and Wolves and devils, prophets and killers, Watchtown was the centre of all that was evil. According to the Mireces.
But Rillirin had shared a tent with a Wolf, walked with a Wolf, for five days and nights now. She’d listened to him breathe in the dark, had woken from nightmares of Liris’s corpse coming to claim her and Dom had been there, asking if she was all right. Seeming to care.
Liris lied about so much. Of course he lied about this too. But still Rillirin stopped and Dom left her behind, oblivious, his stride eager. Walk into the nest of vipers, or wait for Corvus to find me. She looked across the blanket of snow. She could see the temple grounds a mile or so from the town, and a copse of trees. Everything else was white, as far as she could see, under a sky as blue as a robin’s egg.
‘I’m not a slave any more,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I don’t have to do what they tell me. I don’t.’ She faltered and turned to stare northeast, as best she could reckon it. ‘I could go home.’
Rillirin had heard the others talking about her before the village was attacked, heard Dom refer to her as a messenger, but whatever message she was supposed to give was hidden from her. Unless it was death – if so she’d delivered that one already. Maybe that was why Dom watched her all the time, not with lust, or hate even, which she deserved for the catastrophe she’d brought on him, but with an intense curiosity and something she’d swear was fear.
Liris is dead too, though, she reminded herself. I did that. I killed him and I did it on purpose this time. I wanted him dead and he is. And I’d have killed the Blessed One too if she’d been there.
That was bravado, though, and Rillirin knew it. The Blessed One terrified her in a way Liris never had. The Blessed One could condemn her soul to the Afterworld as easily as look at her. Raising a hand against the Voice of the Gods was the surest way she knew to forfeit her soul and her life.
‘Are you all right?’
Rillirin jumped. Dom was standing a few paces away. She had no idea how long he’d been there. ‘Forgive me, honoured,’ she whispered.
Dom clicked his tongue. ‘Come on, let’s get into town. There’s a storeroom just past the gate; we can leave the gear there.’ He led off and then slowed his pace to match hers.
‘Watchtown is the home of my people, the birthplace of the Wolves. We’ve been here for a thousand years, you know, descended from the warriors who defeated the walkers on the Dark Path and freed all Gilgoras from the tyranny of the Red Gods. Full of history, full of strength, this place. If there’s anywhere you can be safe from Their hateful influence, it’s here.’
It was the cleanest-smelling town she’d ever been in. Just smoke and food, and the hint of hops when they passed a tavern. The wide roads were packed earth cleared of snow, river stones forming paths along the shop fronts where customers stamped their boots free of mud. In the centre of the street was a long mound of snow, shovelled there to keep the rest of the road clear for wagons and horses. Rillirin watched a group of children on the mound, running up and down it, shrieking laughter and hurling snowballs.
Her mouth curved in an approximation of a smile and then she saw the crowds of Watchers strolling the streets, talking, shopping. She gulped, her stomach clenching. But Dom walked at her side, pointing out alehouses and fletchers, butchers and tailors, with such enthusiasm and pride Rillirin began to relax. It’s pretty. And everyone’s so friendly with each other.
They passed a shop squeezed in between a wool-seller and a wood-carver, the table in the window stacked with golden loaves of all sizes. The baker, an old woman who leant on a spear in the doorway, smiled and gestured. ‘Fresh baked today, my dear, still warm from the oven. Only a copper for two.’
Rillirin’s mouth flooded with saliva, but she’d no money. She shook her head and stepped back, bumped into someone and turned. ‘Forgive me, honoured,’ she said automatically and the stranger’s face hardened. He squinted down at her and she looked away fast, heart leaping like a salmon.
‘Say that again,’ he demanded.
‘Forgive me, honoured,’ she whispered as the baker grabbed her spear, all hint of welcome gone from her features.
‘Mireces,’ the man said loudly and everyone on the street turned to look. ‘Listen to her. Uses that fucking “honoured” thing to address people. Mireces, I tell you, right in fucking town.’ He grabbed her by the shoulder and wrapped his other hand in her hair.
Rillirin thrashed and then fell still, a rabbit before a stoat, waiting for the end. Time to die.
‘Morning, everyone, and isn’t it grand to be back in town?’ Dom strolled into the gathering mob and pulled Rillirin out of the man’s hands, draping an arm across her shoulders. The man was so shocked he let her go. The muscles in Dom’s neck tensed but his smile was easy.
‘Hello, Stott. I’d like you all to meet Rillirin Fisher of Rilpor, a young lady who escaped from slavery in Eagle Height itself and made her way alone down the Sky Path to our scout camp. We took her in and I’ve brought her here to speak to the council of elders and be cleansed in the temple.’
There was a rustle of noise, a few smiles sent in her direction. He was making her sound clever and resourceful, as though she’d planned it all. She darted a glance at him, confused. Wasn’t this his opportunity for revenge?
‘You vouch for her, Dom Calestar?’ Stott asked and Dom turned a hard grin in his direction.
‘I do, yes. Rillirin is no threat.’ His fingers tightened on her shoulder, digging hard into the muscle. ‘Lydya, two loaves for our guest, please,’ Dom said and flipped a copper through the air. The old woman caught it and selected the bread, passing it back to him with a wary glare.
Dom had one arm around her and the bread in the crook of the other, but Rillirin sensed the danger lurking beneath his skin. Stott must have seen it too, for he grunted and moved out of their way. Dom smiled for the crowd a last time. ‘Dancer’s grace upon you all.’
That seemed to do it; the men and women began to disperse, muttering and huddling into knots, casting hostile glares at her despite Dom’s words. They hate me because I was a slave, because I aided the Mireces. They’ll never trust me; I’ll never be welcome. And once the news about the village reaches them … She swallowed past the constriction in her throat, feeling as though she was breathing through a reed, not enough air, her head light, stomach heavy.
Dom’s arm slipped from her shoulders and he shook himself like a dog. ‘Here, eat some of this while it’s still warm,’ he said and tore a chunk from a loaf, his voice strained. ‘Give Lydya another copper – here you are – and you can smear that with as much honey as you want.’ Rillirin did as she was told. The old woman gave her another smile, and if this one wasn’t so genuine Rillirin didn’t blame her. She couldn’t taste the bread, the honey thick as hate in her throat.
‘We’ll see Elder Rachelle now. She’ll have questions for you, and I’d advise you to answer them well. After that I have a few things to buy, and then I think we need a cup or two of ale, don’t you?’ Dom said as they resumed their walk. She didn’t answer, watching as he flexed the fingers of the arm that had been around her shoulders.
‘Thank you for saving me. I know it must have been hard to go against your people for the sake of a Mireces. Here and – and back at the village.’ Rillirin didn’t want to talk, didn’t like talking, talking was dangerous, but he deserved her thanks.
She gulped ale. She’d answered Rachelle the way she did the Blessed One, eyes down and with absolute honesty. Anything else and she could tell the woman would sense it and kill her. Afterwards, they’d left her alone in Rachelle’s big kitchen while Dom gave the names of the dead.
When he came out he was hollow and he hadn’t spoken a word as he led her through town to buy what he needed. They’d all stared at her, everywhere she went eyes on her and all of them hostile. At least in Eagle Height they ignored me when they didn’t need anything. I didn’t exist to them.
Dom looked up from rubbing his hand and gave her a brief smile, his eyes preoccupied. ‘My pleasure,’ he said and she felt a loosening in her chest. Was forgiveness that easy with these people? Or with him, anyway? ‘Though you shouldn’t name yourself Mireces. It’s not your fault you were captured.’
She exhaled a tiny snort and stirred the froth on her ale with a fingertip. ‘It took them three years to make me stop calling myself Rilporian. I suppose now I have to relearn it all over again.’
‘How did they make you stop?’ he asked and Rillirin cursed, but it was too late: his question dredged up the memory and before she could distract herself it flooded over her.
Liris’s hand on the back of her head, his awful strength as he forced her face into the barrel of water. Fresh from a mountain stream and cold as knives, cold enough to scorch as it flooded into her eyes and nose. Lungs burning as above her they chanted the count and laughed at her struggles until she started to drown. Then they’d pulled her out, given her a couple of seconds, and back in she’d gone. Again. And again.
Rillirin took another swig of ale. Her hand shook. ‘Every time I said I was Rilporian they beat me and held my head under the water ’til I thought I’d die. Some days it went on for hours, even after I’d said I was Mireces. It was a sport. They used to bet on me, on when I’d break. When I’d start to beg.’ Her mug was empty and she pushed it away, wiping her hand over her mouth.
‘Another?’ He pointed and signalled before she could respond. ‘Two,’ he called. ‘How old were you?’
She swallowed. ‘Eleven.’ Though by fourteen, they had other uses for me.
‘I’m sorry they did that to you, Rillirin.’
‘You don’t need to be sorry, you weren’t the one who did it.’ She dared to look him in the eye. ‘I’m the one who’s sorry. So sorry for everything that happened, all those deaths. You should hate me – everyone else does. You should never have saved me.’
Dom watched her over the rim of his cup as he drank. ‘I will always save you,’ he said and then cleared his throat, spoke on before she could ask what he meant. ‘The scouts up by the Final Falls gave us a few hours’ warning of the attack. That meant we could decide what to do. We decided to fight, though most of us were already here or in our small family settlements throughout the foothills. It was our decision. We could have scattered; we could have fled. We could have given you back to them.’
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