Farlanders' Law (The Rose Shield Book 3) Page 24

Whitt swung around. At a table against the wall, Lian reset the pieces on a game board. The guardian vanquished in the previous match patted Whitt on the shoulder as they traded places. “Good luck. Don’t wager your gold.”

  “I scarcely remember how to play.” Whitt slid into the vacated chair. The part of the game that had baffled him in the past was the ability to strategically reposition the land’s features. It confounded him still.

  “You understand it more than you did.” Lian’s smile narrowed his slanted eyes into slits and wrinkled his scars. “You may begin.”

  Whitt tossed the die. He positioned the lake at the board’s center with a river running west. The first of his bowmen occupied a random square in the east. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

  “A place to measure Ellegean unhappiness.” Lian ignored the land features and concentrated on positioning men and horses.

  Tavor swung a chair around and straddled it, a mug of tipple in his fist and sloshing over its rim. “Unhappy is the word for it.”

  “I met Pike and about ten riders in the east timberlands.” Whitt added archers and randomly placed a mountain ridge where Lian had removed his lake. “He reminded me that Farlanders die as easily as Ellegeans.”

  “We are harder to kill,” Lian assured him.

  “That wasn’t the point,” Whitt said. “And to be honest, I don’t know if he suggested we beware of guards, ordinary citizens, or both.”

  Tavor swigged half his drink. “They blame the Farlanders for the weather, for failing crops, for stubbed toes, curly hair, and torn trousers.

  “Stiff wives, and soft husbands,” Cale drawled, pulling up a stool. She grinned at Tavor’s frown.

  “The bad luck’s running deep.” Tavor glanced up at Lian. “They need someone to blame, and the clans make a fine target. They want your people out of the Far Wolds, and this isn’t helping.”

  Lian bolstered his fighting force on the board, the opposite of Shafter’s old strategy geared around altering the landscape. Whitt tapped his mug of spike and lost his focus, assuming he owned any in the first place. He hadn’t spilled Gannon’s plan to Tavor or Cale. Nor had he told them about the kari or the power inherent in the Farlanders’ gifts. Gannon insisted on secrecy, especially when it came to Guardian, and Whitt understood. Yet the silence felt deceitful.

  “Speaking of bad luck…” Tavor gestured at the game. “Let’s trade places.”

  “Gladly.” Whitt and Tavor danced around each other, switching chairs. Whitt signaled to a serving woman who skirted four Farlanders heading for the door. “A round of tipples.” She nodded as across the room two tables of Ellegeans emptied. Whitt glanced at Tavor.

  “Forget that order,” Tavor called to the woman and found his feet. Whitt was halfway across the floor, Lian two steps behind him. Another table of guards and laborers cleared, the men blocking the door, one of them the timberman with the red scarf. Whitt strode forward without pause and slammed a fist into the man’s flared nostrils. The cartilage crunched beneath his knuckles, and the room exploded.

  A guard bulled into Whitt from his right, knocking him from the path of a hook that would have broken his jaw. The fist brushed his cheek as he fell backward into Cale and the nearest table, his assailant partly on top of him. Whitt jabbed the man’s temple with an elbow, knuckled an eye, and kicked the gasping man off. Cale scrambled to her feet while Tavor smashed a stool on a guard’s back.

  Sucking in a breath, Whitt scrambled up, grabbed a broken chair leg, and caught a glimpse of a Farlander throwing a table. A fist caught him under the chin, whipping his head around; a second blow emptied his lungs of breath. The timberman hauled back for another punch. Whitt ducked, throwing his weight forward and his shoulder into his attacker’s ribs. The force thrust the timberman to the wall. Whitt head-butted him in the bleeding nose and drove a knee into his gut.

  Someone barreled into his side and knocked him into another fight. His fist connected with a guard’s jaw, and he heard Tavor ordering the guardians to break up the fight. “Get out there,” Tavor bellowed to Cale. “I’ll handle this one.”

  Whitt’s rush for the door fell short. Two men held Lian pinned to the wall while a third pounded him with fists meant to break bones. Whitt’s makeshift club pelted the heavy-fisted thug in the small of his back. The fellow spun, only to howl as Whitt’s club snapped into his groin. Lian shook loose, shoving one man into the overturned tables, while Cale kicked out the other’s knee. She leapt through the doorway, skipping the steps altogether, Whitt on her heels. He stumbled briefly, reinjuring his weak ankle. Lian grabbed his arm, steadying him, and then the two of them dashed after Cale who sprinted down the dark road.

  The fight ahead echoed the fight behind. Three men and a woman hurried from an alley, their clothes splotched with the morbid evidence of death. They paused for a heartbeat and then ran toward Cale, knives bared. Whitt shouted, and she dodged right, rolled, and landed on her feet, her club whacking the back of a thick neck. The man skidded on his face and groaned. A second man, faced with Lian’s charge, pivoted and ran. The Farlander spun and took out the third with a sharp elbow. The man’s knife clattered against a wall.

  Whitt calmly circled the last of the assailants, a woman who slashed wildly, missing with every strike. He parried with ease, blocking each inept thrust of her knife with the wooden chair leg and refusing to follow through with a kill.

  Cale shouted and sprinted toward his opponent’s back. The woman pivoted to meet the assault, and Whitt smacked her on the side of her head. Cale’s first victim scrambled to his knees and darted off, Lian jogging on his heels for twenty paces before he turned back.

  Whitt knelt over the downed woman, checked for life, and sighed with relief to find her breathing. Cale disappeared around a corner, staggered back into view, and vomited in the road. Whitt shared a frown with Lian, and the two of them loped into the alley. The four Farlanders were dead, their heads sawed from their bodies and placed between their legs.

  ***

  Whitt spent the night on watch with a score of guardians. They assumed stations on the outskirts of the Farlander district in case the evening’s violence spread. The moons set and the sun woke to a lavender sky. He yawned, stiff and sore, and headed to the guardians’ quarters for a few hours’ sleep on Lodan’s cot. Near midmorning, he hunted down Lian, borrowed a horse, and the two of them began their long ride home, lengthened by their choice to stick to the wilderness.

  Pike had warned of violence, and his words proved prophetic. A total of eight clansmen and three Ellegeans lost their lives. It was only the beginning.

  The land seemed not to care. Summertide flowers bloomed in the rocky soil, and migrant starwings flitted through the branches like feathered sunlight. The pale leaves of the talprin fluttered against the deeper needles of ancient eldergreens. Sitting atop his thick-boned horse, Lian blended into the landscape. Not visually, though the mottled pattern of greenish spots on his arms often resembled the play of light through the trees. Rather, to Whitt’s thinking, Lian was intimately part of the world, he and the land inseparable. Would Ellegeans find a place within the whole? Or would they always be aliens on a foreign world? Was it simply a matter of choice? The Farlander rode in silence, his gaze distant, and Whitt left him to his thoughts.

  The next day, shy of dusk, they met the sentries outside the rebel camp that gradually transformed into a village. He walked the horses to the paddock, stowed the gear in a recently constructed shed, and brushed down the thick coats. Well past suppertime, the fires dwindled in their pits. Whitt sat on a log and gnawed on a heel of bread, too bedraggled to bother with anything more complicated.

  “Whitt?” Sim said behind him.

  Rose squealed, “You came home.” Her elation flooded him, and he swiveled around.

  Sim stood outside their home with a half-naked squirming girl in her arms. The woman’s face fell, and she pressed her lips together. He imagined his black eye and bruises were a sight. He smiled at
Rose and gestured to his heart. “My feelings are mine. I’m happy to see you without your help.”

  Rose pulled back her influence, and at his nod, Sim put her down. The child scampered over to him and crawled onto his lap, her little hand stroking the purple marks on his face. “Owies.”

  “Yes, they hurt.” He kissed her hand.

  Rose gazed at him, her delicate eyebrows pinched, teeth clamped on a fingernail.

  “You may ask him,” Sim said, taking a seat beside them on the log.

  “Can I fix your owies?”

  Whitt nodded, and Rose concentrated. The tip of her tongue poked out the side of her mouth. He felt a gentle easing of his achiness and fatigue and a bout of pleasure that drew a chuckle. “Thank you. That’s enough. I feel much better.”

  She snuggled into him, her baby skin unflawed and soft. He spread his knees, pretending to drop her through, and she laughed as he saved her. After jostling her back into his lap, he did it again. The game continued with much teetering and near tumbles while Sim brewed tea and made him a nut-spread rolled in river cress.

  “What did you do today?” he asked, between bites.

  “Picked up wood.” Rose stole one of his treats out of his fingers and stuffed it in her mouth. “We told stories.”

  “New stories?”

  “About the snow bears that live on the ice.” She hunched her shoulders, and her round eyes bulged.

  Sim offered them each the last of her rolls. “You should tell Whitt our story, so he knows what to do if the snow bears come.”

  “Once there was a family that lived in a hut,” Rose said. “And the snow bears came and wanted to eat them, so they ran away.”

  “Why did the snow bears want to eat them?” Sim asked.

  “They wanted to eat them so they could own the mountains and forest and the huts and the food.”

  Sim stole a glance at Whitt and prodded the story along. “Were all the snow bears mean?”

  “Some were nice,” Rose said. “So the family learned a signal for quiet and one for running.” Rose pressed two fingers to her lips.

  “That’s the one for quiet,” Whitt guessed. He appreciated the story, but it broke his heart that Rose needed to learn it. “What’s the signal for running?”

  “Like this.” Rose rolled her hands around each other like a waterwheel.

  “That a good signal,” he said. “What happens if you make noise when the snow bears come?”

  “They gobble you up, and you’re dead.” Rose hid her face in his chest. He tickled her ribs, and she squirmed, throwing her head back and laughing.

  “We taught all the children today.” Sim sat again beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. “Then we practiced running into the woods and hiding from the snow bears.”

  He stared into the embers of the dying fire, rocking Rose. Except for the throaty call and reply of tufted owls, the forest settled into the hush and peace of night. Was it too late to simply pack up and trek west? What kept them in the Far Wolds besides pride? The answers addled him, more complex than he could parse out: pride, yes, righteousness, love of home, an innate connection to the kari, a sense of belonging with the land of their ancestors. The Farlanders had waged war before, signed a treaty in good faith, and trusted Ellegean law. Perhaps Gannon’s win would result in something that lasted, make the deaths of his friends easier to tolerate, knowing a better life lay ahead.

  Sim touched his arm, tilting her head to the drowsy child in his arms. Rose’s eyelids fluttered as she fought sleep. “She had a full day,” Sim whispered and kissed his cheek. “I need to know what’s happened.”

  “Snow bears,” Whitt replied. He struggled to his feet, stiff from sitting, and limped to the hut, cradling his girl. Sim held aside the camgras door, and he hobbled in. Rose didn’t wake when he tucked her into her blankets. With a sigh, he stripped his clothes and scratched his fingers through his hair, the messy locks reaching his shoulders after a lifetime cropped within a finger of his scalp. Sim inspected him for open wounds and applied a salve to his scrapes and cuts. When she finished, he sank to their pallet, facing her.

  “Last night, eight Farlanders died in Tor.”

  Her face twitched and jaw clenched. “I should have been there. Not hiding in this camp.”

  “You wouldn’t have been able to stop it.” He feared her reaction when she learned the details but had to tell her nevertheless. “The Hound took the worst of it, Sim, but fights broke out in the streets as well. Four Farlanders were beheaded.”

  Sim blinked at him, her body shaking as tears sprang to her eyes. She gritted her teeth, palms pressed to the ground, barely containing the agony and fury breaking from her skin. The ground around him began to tremble.

  “We have a child,” he whispered, reaching for her hand. She jerked away. “We have a child,” he repeated. Her body went rigid and she gasped. She sagged into him with a sob, and the ground stilled.

  “Sim?” Cylas asked outside the door.

  “We’re fine,” Whitt whispered, and the mage retreated. He stroked Sim’s silky hair. “It’s going to get worse. Which is the point, isn’t it? I’m worried about Rose. Her power is raw and unpredictable. She has some control when she’s calm and happy, but she shares every nuance of fright and fury. There were times as we headed south, that she paralyzed me with her fear.” He lifted Sim’s chin with a finger and met her eyes. “It’s not only that. She’s a little girl.”

  Sim sat up and wiped her eyes. “What are you asking me?”

  He inhaled and took her hand, uncurling her fingers. “To give up the fight, Sim.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “This is my fight more than yours.”

  “I won’t argue that point, but there are more than two of us now. There’s Rose.” He angled his head toward the sleeping girl. “I have to talk to Gannon. It may be time for us to get word to Guardian, and I want you and Rose to go with whoever he sends. If something happens to me, I need you both safe.”

  Sim scowled at him, the tears returning to her eyes and tracking down her cheeks. At that moment, she was the most beautiful he’d seen her. More striking than when her eyes shone like emeralds, and her skin glistened with light. “I love her,” she whispered, all the agreement he needed to hear.

  “I love you, Sim.” He kissed her hand. “I don’t know how Farlanders propose, but if you’ll have me, I can’t think of anything I’d desire more than to bond with you, and when this is over, we can have babies of our own.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Rose slept in another family’s shelter, snuggled in a nest of children, leaving Whitt and Sim with a hut to themselves. Whitt swirled the green liquid in his cup and gulped it down, his third time inviting the visions of the Farlanders into his consciousness. Sim sat cross-legged on the pallet, her knees abutting his, her bright eyes eager. He traced a finger over the pale green pattern of prints adorning her shoulders and arms, running down the center of her back and along her legs to her toes. A beautiful creature, gifted by the planet, she glowed with luminescence, and he supposed she’d been gleaming all day.

  A smile split his face. If he were to tumble back in time, this moment would have struck him as improbable. As a skinny little sprout, he’d doted on Sim. While Bromel, Shafter, Tum, and Brid communed with his parents and older sibling, Sim was the queen of the sprites, leading him and Mouser on adventures around the stead’s tame wilderness. He’d been enamored with the Farlander girl and would have bonded with her then if Zadie hadn’t giggled at his four-year-old ambitions.

  Then, his heart had fallen for Catling, and they’d made a childhood pact, one he took seriously, though their stars crossed and destiny played a heartless hand. Sim’s family lost their lives, and nothing was ever the same again for any of them. The boulder of fate that dislodged in Mur-Vallis bounded down the hillside. It loosed a deadly slide that ripped and smashed everything in its path. Catling had been swept away in the debris, and despite his efforts, he couldn’t win her back
.

  For a long time, he’d felt helpless to save those he loved. Yet, that changed with Sim, with this moment, with her agreement to flee. She and Rose were his family, the start of something larger if he survived, and he intended to survive.

  “Your head is full of thoughts.” Sim’s smiled, the statement begging a reply.

  He struggled through the wooziness and roiling stomach that marked the first symptoms of poisoning. His eyelids sagged as he gazed at her radiant body, desire making him reach for her, his own hands and arms glowing in a kaleidoscope of hues. She met his hands with hers, pressing palms together. The colorful light moved between them, blending. With her exhale, she pushed the waves of energy into him. He threw his head back and laughed.

  “We share spirit.” She kept up the pressure, and he shuttered his eyes, opening to the flow’s intensity, inviting her to deepen her presence. He breathed her in like air, felt her intimately inside him, streaming through his veins and nestling into his mind and heart. The nature of her being, the emotional core of her, left its imprint in profound awareness, understanding, and love. Then the intensity eased. “Do the same,” she said, the softness of her voice closer to a plea.

  He opened his eyes and focused, pushing the luminescence that lived in his body out through his hands. It pulsed with this heartbeat, diving into her being, slippery and fluid, so fast he worried he’d lose consciousness. The gift broke down barriers, blasted him to the far reaches of her body, to the power flowing from her fingers and eyes. The differences between them, for those intimate breaths, faded away. He knew all of her: the hurts, the loves, the anguish, her hopes and dreams. He knew how she drew saplings from the soil, called the birds, moved the rock and water. Blending with her, he reached through her and called the seeds from the soil.

  Green shoots sprouted, weeds and flowers, sweetgrass and curling vines. To Whitt it was effortless, his light merged with the verdant spirit of growth, drawing it up and out, feeding its life. Sim threaded her fingers with his, and crawled toward him on her knees, wrapped her legs around him and bonded, but not as they did in the quiet darkness of night. This blew beyond the physical sensations of sex. He shifted beyond body consciousness into the universal presence of soul.