“I will, but when he gets here.” Vi followed behind, rounding the corner of one of the tent’s six sides. “Perhaps I can help set up your tent?”
“I’m fine, Vi, really. I’m setting up right here by you. So if I really need help I’ll ask someone else… andthenthe crown princess.” Vi didn’t even bother hiding a grin at that particular smart remark. “Go get off your feet, you said they were hurting.”
“You’re so stubborn.”
“I have to be to contend with such a stubborn princess,” Jayme said, deadpan. Vi fought a snort at the quiet words. Jayme looked around; luckily none of the other soldiers had been listening in on their conversations. It reminded Vi they were in public once more. “I’ll catch up with you soon, Vi. I’ll be posted out front as your guard most of the time—you’re not going to escape me.”
“All right,” Vi relented, and rounded the corner of her tent to leave Jayme to her work. She was right: Romulin would be there soon enough and then—
She stopped the moment she lifted her tent flap.
An unfamiliar man stood inside.
He was stocky, biceps as big as her thighs. Usually, Vi could look a man that large in the eye and match his height. But this man was so tall she had to crane her neck to look up at him. A mess of shaggy, ruddy hair was cut just above his shoulders. He stood at her table, a box of her things before him, a journal in his hands—the journal into which Vi had copied Sehra’s words of power.
“May I help you?” Vi asked coolly. A smug smile pushed his stubble—a brighter red than his hair—across his cheeks.
“Merely unloading your things.” He set the journal down, slowly reaching for another. He was wearing the tabard of a foot soldier… but there was something markedly different from the other head-down soldiers she’d seen during the day. They’d looked at her through stolen glances and from the corners of their eyes. This man stared at her outright.
Like a challenge.
“I can do it, thank you.” Vi stepped to the side. The canvas flap closed behind her, casting the tent in twilight. She lifted her hand, motioning toward it. “You are dismissed.”
“Are you certain, princess?” The man lifted another book. “I am here to serve.”
“You may serve me by leaving me.”
“Very well.” He shrugged and started for the door. The ground seemed to rumble under his massive, booted feet.
She shouldn’t let him leave… yet. “What’s your name?”
He stopped, turned, looked down at her. The man had a massive nose, almost beak-like, and thick black eyebrows that looked painted on. In fact, she was fairly sure theywere, and they were in unnatural contrast to the brown-red of his hair.
Where was shaving and painting one’s eyebrows considered fashionable?
“Fallor.”
“Fallor…” Vi repeated, trying to mimic the hard way his tongue landed on the O. “Where are you from?”
“I doubt you’ve ever heard of it.” He smiled wider.
“Try me. I am a hobbiest cartographer.”
“It’s not a place you can draw on maps.” The man folded his arms over his chest, looking down at her with eyes that were such an icy blue-grey, they looked nearly purple.
“What does that mean?” Vi’s voice dropped lower.
“That—”
“Sister?” The tent post by the flap rattled as Romulin knocked from the other side.
“Excuse me, princess.” Fallor ducked his head and stepped out, giving a nod to Romulin as he passed. “Your highness.”
“Who was that?” Romulin asked, seeing her on the other side of the tent flap and stepping inside. Vi was more focused on the soldier leaving.
“I don’t rightly know. He called himself Fallor.” Vi walked over to the table, picking up the journal Fallor had been holding. Copying Sehra’s book on Lightspinning had been a liability—how had she not seen that before now? “I was hoping you might have seen him around before.”
“There are so many soldiers, my head would explode if I tried to remember them all.” The tent flap closed behind Romulin, casting the space in deeper darkness. Vi lit the brazier in the center of the room with a thought. Night was falling, and the heavy canopies of the jungle made it dark on the forest floors below.
