The cloth was stained black in patches by the time she was done, as were her fingertips and the underside of her nails, but she’d managed to get all the kohl off his face. His hair wasanother matter. That would require soap and more water than they had to spare.
She recalled the bed maidens who’d come to their rescue when Cimejen confronted them in the alleyway. A man and a woman, both beautiful, both adorned in finery and exquisitely painted to enhance already stunning features. She wondered which of them had applied the kohl to Bron’s face. It had been a wise move and made with the knowledge that cosmetics had the ability to change a person into someone nearly unrecognizable.
“Tell me about your friends,” she said, wringing out the cloth until it was nearly dry and setting it aside. “You called them Elal and Uzmina.”
He shrugged. “They’re the two most popular bed maidens in the Nesting Grounds and the best sources of information for anything that goes on there, as you saw for yourself when they explained how they ended up our rescuers.”
She uncorked the waterskin to coat her suddenly parched throat. The question she most wanted to ask was one both inappropriate and none of her business, and she swallowed it back with a drink of water and passed the waterskin to him. “It was generous of them to help us, especially if Cimejen finds out it was them who brought him low.”
His throat flexed as he drank, and Disaris found hard not to lean forward and press a kiss on his neck. He might swat her aside for the impertinence. Depending on the situation, his behavior toward her alternated between protective affection to reserve and suspicion. Lust as well, she thought, remembering those stunning moments in his tent he’d kissed her senseless and almost swived her standing up before a messenger halted their frantic foreplay. They may have been estranged for years, but they were still spark and tinder together.
Her curiosity about the pair of bed maidens stemmed from more than just casual interest. Were either of them more thanjust friends or helpers? Was Bron a patron or a lover of one of them? The idea that he might be a lover to one of them made her queasy. Jealousy was a hard taskmaster, and she had no right at all to feel it. Too bad her heart refused to listen, and her mouth refused to stay quiet. “They both seemed like friends. Have you known them long?”
He corked the waterskin and set it next to him. His eyes were no longer the glowing green from the night before as he peered at her. “Quit dancing around, Disa. Say what you want to say. I can hear it in your voice.”
The problem with a long-term relationship like theirs was he knew her far too well. She closed her eyes and inhaled a breath for courage. When she opened her eyes again, he was still watching her, now with that maddening stoicism he always reverted to when he expected to hear something unpleasant or painful. “Is one of them your lover?” she asked in a rush, cringing inside with each word spoken. Regret for the question rose up her neck and into her face on a heated tide.
The stoic mask remained in place as he continued to stare at her. “Why would you ask such a question?”
Her gaze fell to her hands, knotted in her lap and white-knuckled. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe because I’m a little jealous, a little envious. Someone has taken the affection that was once reserved for me.”
She let out a startled squawk when he suddenly lunged for her, pushing her onto her back so that his looming figure blotted out the sky above, and his hair curtained her head in a white drape. Fury flashed in his pale eyes, ice-blue a moment earlier and now red. “No one,” he said between clenched teeth, “stole my affection from you, Disaris. You threw it away. On a rainy afternoon in the second week of the month of Saminos three years ago. Do you not remember? Because I do.”
They stared at each other for several moments, Bron’s body heavy on hers, his face a mural of rage, anguish, and confusion that slowly blurred in the film of tears filling her eyes. “I never threw it away,” she whispered, daring to touch a finger to his cheek. “I just set it aside for safekeeping.”
“Bullshit,” he said just as quietly and flung himself off her. He stood in one graceful motion and looked beyond her to a spot somewhere in the bluestem. “Get some sleep,” he said, in a voice devoid of any emotion. “I’ll wake you to ride in a few hours.”
He disappeared into the veil of grasses, leaving her lying on his cloak as tears spilled into the hair at her temples. She allowed them to fall, indulging in a fit of silent weeping in the hopes that when she was done, she’d be clearheaded enough to explain why she’d once turned her back on him in the cruelest way.
Sleep overcame her fast, even as she planned how she might answer his earlier question as to why she’d married a man she’d always disliked and one Bron had called friend. She woke when he returned to their resting spot and tapped her on the shoulder. “Time to leave,” he said and disappeared into the bluestem once more.
Standing up was an exercise in agony as every muscle in her back, hips, and thighs went into open revolt at having to move. Squatting to empty her bladder was more torture. “The one and only time I wish I were a man,” she muttered as she limped toward the spot where Bron waited with the horses.
He’d already saddled them, retrieved his cloak from their resting place and eyed her with a pitying look, despite his anger, as she approached. “You aren’t used to riding for long stretches, are you?”
Her huff of laughter sounded brittle to her ears. “I’m not used to riding at all. Consider it a victory that I haven’t yet fallen off that sweet mare’s back.” Her gaze fell on her horse who seemed extraordinarily tall today, the stirrup set even higher thanbefore. “I don’t think I can mount on my own,” she admitted, hating her helplessness.
She gasped when Bron lifted her in his arms and carried her to the mare. “It will be less painful each day you ride,” he said, and deposited her into the saddle.
It was hard to believe him when pain flared along her inner thighs, but she took the reins he handed her without protest and thanked him for the help.
Unlike her, he was obviously used to hours on horseback and mounted the gelding with effortless grace. He guided his horse to where hers stood and handed Disaris a waterskin and ration cake. “You’ll have to break your fast while we ride,” he said. “We need to make up time.”
The first league was a session in torture until her lower body finally gave up its objections to her continued abuse and went numb. At least her stomach stopped growling after she ate the ration cake, and the sun on her shoulders was warm instead of scorching.
Bron rode ahead of her, no longer cloaked, though he’d exchanged the hood for a cowl that covered his head and neck. Bits of broken bluestem clung to the sleeveless leather mantle he wore over a dark caftan and trousers.
He must have felt her gaze on him and glanced over his shoulder. “Do you need something, Disa?”
She tapped her heels to the mare’s side, coaxing her into a faster trot until they rode alongside Bron’s gelding. “Tell me about the Hayman Stone and how you think it will take us to Luda.”
He’d briefly explained where they were headed the previous night and why. Eager to get away from the Nesting Grounds, she’d simply nodded and trusted that Bron had a solid plan for finding and saving Luda. Now, she wanted details.
She really wanted to address their most recent clash, but the look in Bron’s bloodshot eyes warned that now wasn’t a good time, so she asked about the Hayman Stone instead.
“Some of the Erakutsi manuscripts describe how entire armies once moved troops through the stone’s portal using incantations like the one you used to open the gate at Slaekum’s temple,” he explained. “The Hayman is much bigger, a monument of lim origin. It’s written that before Daes and Kefinor existed to war with each other, the kingdoms before them battled for supremacy. They used the stone to move back and forth between territories. It stopped when both sides began losing entire battalions. They’d pass through the gate but were thrown back, all corpses instead of living men.”
The image his description wrought sent chills down her arms and back. “Will that happen to us if we try it?”
