“Yes. They can.” I watch my magic knit the final wound back together. “And there’s no point in keeping your voice down. He’ll hear anything you say.” I point at where we stashed our saddlebags. “Go find some fresh clothes.”
Malin sits up and rubs a hand across his jaw, as if startled to find it whole. But when he stands, he looks at the scraver, and the air thickens with hostility. He might be half coated in blood, in a shredded tunic, but he’s still wearing half of his weapons.
Another cold wind rushes through, kicking up dead leaves. “Do you want me to cause an injury hecan’theal with magic?” says Nakiis.
“Go ahead and try.” Malin slips a knife out of the sheath on his bracer. “I think my odds are pretty good now.”
The scraver begins to uncurl from under the tree.
The day has been too long. I step between them. “No.Malin. Find a new tunic.”
His eyes don’t leave the scraver. “I’m not leaving you alone with . . . ?that.”
“I’m going to healhisinjuries the way I healed yours, so you should.”
Malin looks like I just told him I’m going to set myself on fire. “You’re going towhat?”
“He didn’t attack us. We attackedhim.” I draw a heavy sigh and look across the clearing at the scraver. “And I was already in his debt, so I’m also going to see if I can make amends.”
CHAPTER 20
TYCHO
The first time I met Nakiis, I was fifteen years old. He’d been shot much like this, taken down by one of Grey’s soldiers. I remember finding him wounded and shaking in the dirt, afraid of Grey, worried about being bound to another magesmith if he accepted any help.
I consider how far he’s pulled away from the fire, fromme, and I don’t think it’s very different now. Especially since he took our bows.
He’s fallen to a crouch again, and he’s still breathing hard—but he’s watching every move I make. The day I broke him out of that cage at the tourney, he didn’t even want to leave at first. He didn’t want to risk me trapping him with magic. It makes me wonder if he’ll even let me help himnow.
I take a long breath and hope I’m not going to regret this decision, then pull my breastplate back over my head. The scraver watches this, the firelight bouncing off his eyes. The knife-lined bracers go next, then I drop to a crouch to loosen my greaves. The only weapon I keep is a dagger strapped to my thigh, because I’m going to need it. I drop everything in the dirt as I walk, then lift my hands.
“This reminds me of the night we met,” I say as I approach.
A cold breeze pulls through the space between us, and he uncurls to stand at his full height. Every muscle on his frame is taut. “Your soldiers shot me then, too,” he says.
“They weren’t my soldiers.”
His eyes flick past me. “That one is.”
The air hangs with something a little too close to hostility, so I stop. “It’s dark. Malin doesn’t know you. We’ve been attacked by scravers several times now.”
“Several times? Where?”
“In Emberfall. Once when we were traveling with the army, and again when we were returning to Syhl Shallow.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. “I had nothing to do with that. It does me no good toattackyou.”
“I know.”
“You should have known I was not attacking younow,” he says. “If you cared to try, you would recognize us by the feel of our magic, magesmith.”
I wonder if Grey knows that. “It’s not that I don’t care totry; it’s that I don’t know how.”
He regards me silently, so I lift my hands again and take another step.
He pulls back toward the trees. “I will not be trapped by your magic,” he growls.
I’ve never dealt with someone like this, someone who seems to operate solely in counterattacks and retribution. Someone who bargains for things that should be a simple kindness. I have no idea how I’m going to keep my vow to him if every interaction is going to carry this adversarial weight.
