Kaelen’s lovely mouth quirks, as if he’s repressing a smile, and he and the others ride off to go back to what they were doing.
Trick rides up next to me. “Are you okay, Soli? You should rest in the wagon. I’ll ride up here near Lady Elianna and watch for danger.”
“I’m good. But you can hold the reins.”
Before he can protest, I toss him the long leather lines, jump down from the other side of the wagon seat, and follow Elianna into a standof Harlequinberry bushes. I resolve to pick some of the unusual black-and-white berries for Trick after I take care of urgent business. They’re a delicacy at court, from what he told me. He used to go berry hunting on days he wasn’t doing any jobs for the Thieves’ Guild.
The thought reminds me I need to have a conversation with him to winnow out the truth about his place in the Guild. Has he been telling me the truth all these years? Or was Elianna right, and it’s all been a lie?
Maybe he didn’t lie exactly, I decide as I carefully avoid thorns and pluck berries. Maybe he ran into some trouble and was too embarrassed to let me know. After all, I was the naive girl who hero-worshipped him for years. Maybe it was too hard for him to tell me he’d fallen from favor?
I pop a few berries into my mouth and bite down on an explosion of sweetness in sharp contrast to the bitterness of my thoughts, then sigh and trudge back toward the wagon, clusters of berries in both hands. Maybe I’m making excuses for Trick so I can keep away any unwanted truth about our friendship.
After I follow Elianna onto the wagon seat, Trick smiles at me, his brown eyes warming with appreciation when I give him a handful of berries. I put the rest in a cloth I have in my pocket and carefully wrap them up to share with everyone later.
“Thanks, Soli.” He pops them into his mouth and chews with obvious pleasure. “Even better than citrus candies. Remember the day I brought you a whole bowl filled with these that I’d kept back from the ones I sold to the palace cook?”
“How could I forget?”
“Enough chat. Time to move,” Elianna says, snapping the reins.
Trick gives me a brief salute and rides forward, maybe to catch up with Andras, which makes me wonder about the binding.
“When you bound him, what did that mean? Is there an objective distance away from you beyond which he can’t go? What does magical binding actually involve?”
She glances at me and presses her lips together. For a moment, I think she’s going to ignore my question.
“If it’s a secret, never mind. I didn’t mean to pry into Guild business.”
“It’s not necessarily a secret. It’s just that the parameters aren’t fixed. It’s a minor magic, though both the magical strength of the binder and the strength of will of the person being bound matter. Someone with a powerful will won’t be subject to some parts of the binding. A person accustomed to being subservient will fall more deeply under control.” She shrugs. “What I know is this: he won’t be able to run very far away from us, and he won’t be able to disclose any information about us that could harm our quest.”
Anger builds inside me with every word. “So it’s a kind of magical imprisonment. You had no right. Release him.”
“Soli, I have every right, and I won’t release him until I’m sure of his loyalty. We’re trying to save Altarra. If you don’t see that now, I don’t know how to get it through to you,” she snaps.
“Here’s what I see,” I tell her coldly. “If you’re resorting to magical imprisonment to control Trick or anyone else, how is that any better than what Corvynne did to her people? And if that’s true—ifwe’reno better—does our quest even deserve to succeed?”
The silence between us rings so loudly in my ears that I’m suddenly terrified she’s going to smite me for daring to reproach her.
I really, really don’t want to be smited, but I won’t take it back, and I won’t forgive her for this.
After that, we travel on with a heavy silence between us, throughout the long day and into the purple shades of dusk.
That’s when Kaelen rides back to us to say he’s calling a halt. “The horses won’t be able to see the road much longer. I’m fairly sure we’ve not been followed, either.”
“I amsoready to get off this wagon,” I groan, shifting in place on the hard wooden seat. The relief from Elianna’s ointment only went so far.
“Pull into the break in the trees just up there to the right,” he tells us. “We need food and rest. And, even more important, it’s past time we hear Andras’s story. Theentire story. I want to know how he was in Pyrrh at exactly the time the king formed this company.”
I agree. But I also know that trying to force a Sylvan high lord to betray a confidence has as little chance of success as trying to teach a toad to fly.
“I know some of it,” Elianna volunteers reluctantly, and the prince and I both stare at her.
“You didn’t think to share that before now?” he asks, his voice hard.
“The Sylvan isn’t the only one with secrets in this group,” she says sharply. “Best you remember that, Prince Kaelen.”
Fire is essential.
