“It’s so obvious,” Ilsit said as we both watched him disappear down the lone line of wagons, horses, and infantrymen.
“What is?”
“That you want a good, hard screw with him.”
“Ilsit,” I moaned.
“No shame in it. Take him for a ride.”
I glared at her. “We are literal outlaws, half of us pagan, parading as penitents on a pilgrimage run by men of the church, smuggling women’s drugs around the camp at night, on our way to rescue my niece from what is likely a bad marriage in a country where divorce and desertion are illegal. I don’t have time for swiving good-looking men.”
“So youdothink he’s good-looking.”
33
NOW: BROTHERS
Reed did not replace Evangeline again, but I would see him early in the mornings, reporting something to Thane or an army officer and then riding his roan far past the first wagons. I wondered when he slept as he also seemed to prowl around the campfires at night, his eye roving over both penitents and soldiers.
I began to regret my dismissal of him when he had visited our wagon that day. We had yet to decide whether or not we were “at peace” as I had not taken his offer to ride his horse. But we had been in a somewhat decent humor, a tentative truce, before I had said the cool words,Off with you. I lay awake at night wondering why I let this bother me so, why my dismissal of him weighed on me like something I should regret.
And I could not seem to forget the glimpses of his tattooed skin I had seen, wondering how his naked shoulders would look and how the snakes’ design looped over them. I could not forget the lean angles of his face, the hollows in his cheeks making his close-lipped smile—whether it was genuine or not—more pronounced than another person’s open smile with aflash of teeth.
Finally, I caved and brought him up to Evangeline.
She was riding her horse alongside me and I was on Zara, a rare choice on my part as I did not like to tax her. Ilsit was driving with Jade beside her while Fox napped; and Tessa, swearing her legs were cramped from having driven the whole day before, was walking at the back.
We were between our wagon on the left and another wagon on the right, the dust road thinner on this stretch and not as wide.
Evangeline was telling a story about her “brothers” as she called them. I could not understand the exact story because it mainly seemed to concern Dermid—the big Helmsman—and Keir. I was rudely only half listening for Reed’s involvement. And so, due to the sun on my face, the nights of sleeping on the ground or in the wagon, I was drowsy, and when she said his name I turned quickly and said without thinking, “Reed was there too?”
His name on my lips, spoken for the first time, used as a name should be, felt sinful, decadent. I was grateful the sun had made my face pink already and that the lady warrior faced away from me.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Well, he was there and he wasn’t. That’s how he is.”
“How he is?”
She leaned over as much as she could in her saddle. Low voiced, she said, “He told me of your—you know. I myself am full-blooded.”
I nodded. “I don’t know my blood. My mother was a foundling.”
“Well, he and I are both blessed by Brother Air.”
“In your body or your mind?”
“We both have soundless steps. I am excellent with a sword. He has such balance. I’ve seen him walk along a rope. But he is best at not having to even fight.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is so relaxed. So when someone else is aggressive, he becomes even more relaxed. Every time I have seen a man in a tavern give him a hard time, he has them talked out of their ire before they know it. Or if they throw a punch, when he throws one back, he acts as if it is amere inconvenience. He never reveals much. So when I say he was there and he wasn’t there, I mean he likely crept in and crept out and as this is a drinking story, I really cannot remember the details.”
I chuckled. “So you are both recipients of air. I see.”
“Just our bodies really,” she corrected me. “I have no visions and nor does he, but his actual sight is air blessed. And maybe his hearing too.”
“What do you mean? I thought air—” I cut myself off, having just been about to say “air Tintarians.” “I thought those blessed by air either had physical stealth and speed or were prophetic in nature?”
She shook her head. “Some can see beyond a horizon and hear a word spoken in a room in a house next to their own house. I think it is that—Well, the gods try to make up for being so cut off from us. After he lost his eye, he was able to see past a horizon. He might just have good hearing.”
