They didn’t come across another rabbit, but after twilight they stopped at the banks of a small creek, and Darya quickly caught them three helmhead fish, small and violet and, as Amris recalled, delicious.
Amris built a pit for their fire while she cleaned the fish, relishing the chance to use his strength and the skills he’d learned as a young infantryman, then built the fire itself while she and Gerant put up the warding.
Darya nodded approval at the result of Amris’s work, which was low and almost smokeless, and propped two sticks full of fish over the flames. “You’ll want to watch them,” she said, and went down to wash her hands at the creek. “I’ve been told I eat meat when it’s practically still moving, so I don’t cook to my taste when I’m with company.”
Her gifts,Gerant added,do make her a somewhat hazardous dining companion. I’m surprised you’ve not tried nightshade stew yet.
“You’ve just given me ideas,” said Darya. Her voice came back from the water, mingled with the running creek and the splashing of her hands. “Though maybe I’ll wait until we’ve finished with Thyran’s army.”
“Yes, one dance at a time is best with the Lady of Flames. You might mix up the figures otherwise.”
That made both of his companions laugh, and Amris sat back on his heels and turned the fish, happy in the out-of-proportion fashion that arrived at times after great sorrow, or in the midst of it. The sun was just below the horizon in a clear lavender sky, the trees were rustling in a faint warm breeze that strengthened the scent of cooking meat, and he was with friends—and one lover, with whom the physical impossibility of that word seemed minor just then.
Had the world not been in danger, it would have been a wonderful evening. Even so, Amris whistled as he turned the spits, and shrugged when Darya gave him a quizzical look. “There’s yet plenty of good in the world,” he said, “and if we don’t know for certain that we’ll save it, that’s all the more reason to enjoy what we have, true?”
You forget,Gerant added to Darya,if we haven’t beenherebefore, we’ve both dwelt many years not too far distant. You know life goes on after pain, and…well, it goes onbeforepain, too, or around it, or generally proximate.
Worried that the two of them sounded too much as though they were lecturing her, Amris fell silent until Darya’s puzzled expression turned thoughtful, and then to amusement at herself. “I’ve felt that often when I risked my own neck,” she said. “Makes sense to expand it… I just never had occasion before.”
“You risked your neck in aid of others,” said Amris.
“But if I died, the Order would send another Sentinel, and Gerant would rebind himself to another bright young thing.”
Not right away. There’s a period of rest, of…recalibration, you might say.
“Iwouldn’t. But thank you for not contradicting the ‘bright’ or the ‘young.’” Darya sat with her legs folded tailor-style, elbows on her knees, and watched the fire: not brooding, just interested. “My point stands. A couple of people would miss me. A couple dozen would be inconvenienced. Maybe one or two others would die, and that’d be sad. But the world would keep turning.”
“Nobody’s heart would break?”
Darya glanced up, surprised, and Amris in truth wasn’t sure why he’d asked. “Nah. No partner. You can’t have children once you’re a full and bound Sentinel, and I wouldn’t know my parents on the street. A few of my teachers would grieve, and some of the other Sentinels, but they’re used to the risks. We all are.”
The chunks of fish were turning from white to silver. Amris watched them, unsure how to put into words the question that came most readily to his mind. “Is that so for all of you?” he finally asked.
“More or less. People do partner outside the Order, but it’s rare as hell, especially long-term. And most of us are bastards, or foundlings at any rate. Once in a while, you get a legitimate fifth daughter, or a family makes some odd bargain with the gods. Most people don’t want to hand their babies over to this life. Can’t say I blame them,” Darya added, with no trace of self-pity.
“The Order takes infants?”
“Takes in, sure. We don’t go through the Forging until we’re thirteen or thereabouts, and any who want can swear out before then.”
Yes, Gerant added, patiently anticipating what Amris would say next,after being raised with the expectation of being a Sentinel. Some do stay in because of what they’ve been told, and don’t question what they truly want—but the same is true of apprentices and cabin boys the world over, isn’t it? Not to mention acolytes.
Since Darya was waiting as well, face turned upward a trifle and body deceptively relaxed, Amris paused before he replied. He was a stranger to debate with her, as he wasn’t with Gerant, and she was one of the people being discussed. Still it bore saying: “Apprentices and cabin boys don’t have their bodies reshaped.”
Not immediately, at any rate.
“No,” said Darya calmly, “they don’t. I don’t say it wouldn’t be kinder to wait longer or to start training older. It’d be better, in a better world. This isn’t.”
There wasn’t much Amris could say in return.
Darya took pity on him. “What I do is necessary,” she said, “and I like it better than I’d like being a scribe, or a farmer, or probably even a princess—though the feasts and the hot baths would be nice. And I like it a great deal better than the life I’d probably have had otherwise, given how it started. I’ve no complaints. And I think dinner’s ready.”
* * *
They ate, rid themselves of armor and boots, and lay down. The ground was softer than the floor in Sitha’s temple had been, but also cooler and lumpier. Darya folded her arms behind her head and looked up at the forest through the green veil of the ward, slowly willing herself toward relaxation and sleep.
It wasn’t easy. She knew every sound around her, from the chirping crickets and the running creek to the shriek of a hunting owl and the growl of a badger defending its territory. Amris’s breathing was the only exception, and even that was becoming familiar, sinking in with help from Gerant’s spell. Darya listened for other sounds, those she’d heard only on a hunt and those she didn’t think she’d recognize, and watched the treetops for twisted shapes.
The wards would keep out most direct attacks, but a powerful enough mage could likely break them, and they wouldn’t help against, say, a forest fire.
