She snatched up her gun and stood. The rest of the party remained gathered around the woman. Anya waited for them to notice her, knowing they might never.
But Sabina emerged, dressed in an ethereal nightgown. She started to reach for one of Anya’s hands, but seeing they were wrapped tightly around her gun, deferred. “Miss Degen, we owe you a great debt. You’ve saved the day.”
“It was only here because you left out your food.”
“It attacked us,” someone called.
“Someone provoked it,” Anya accused. “You should have left it alone.”
“It was invading our camp,” came a voice from the dark. Aquila’s, she thought.
“Please, Miss Degen,” Sabina said, reaching for her shoulders this time. “Perhaps a glass of brandy?”
Anya stepped back. “This animal is dead because of you, all of you. You laid a feast before him, said come, eat what you can, then shot him for daring. Sylas was – someone might have been killed. Do you value nothing?”
Count Aquila stepped forward. “I regularly hunt bear for sport. I should have had it. Someone must have tampered with my gun.”
Anya heard the accusation in his voice and barked an incredulous laugh. Sabotage, yes, before she had fallen asleep – but never another’s weapon.
“I wouldn’t touch your expensive toys. It’s a poor hunter who blames another for his own weapons’ keeping.”
His placid face melted into an ugly sneer, ghastly in the lantern light. “Thieves like you will strip the forest bare. I don’t care who you say you are. There’s a proper way to hunt, and it isn’t sniveling about like a rat, stealing precious resources. One word and I could have you arrested for poaching.”
“Have me arrested for murder,” Anya snarled, slinging her gun over her shoulder by the strap and rearing her arm back as she stepped forward. Someone caught it.
She spun around. Sy. Looking at her not with suspicion or with practiced calm, but with worry. She lowered her arm.
“It’s over,” he said, quiet but urgent. “Let’s go.”
He was right; the bear was dead, and anyone hurt was tended to. She took a breath and followed him back to their small camp. With the spectacle of the wild woman and the threat of a fight passed, the party quickly lost interest. Anya threw a parting look over her shoulder. Aquila watched them go with that same ghastly sneer.
As Sy pulled off his ripped shirt, she kept her thoughts, and her eyes, to herself. He put on a clean shirt, then pulled something to eat from his bag. He ate without relish. He moved stiffly, slowly. Without speaking, she pressed her water skin onto him. He drank long and deep, and she let him, pulling her barrel brush from her bag and setting about cleaning her gun.
“I know you’re upset,” he said when he finished, “and you’re right to be. But I’m sure no harm was intended.”
“It doesn’t matter what was intended.”
He handed her back the water skin. The tips of their fingers, hers gloved and his moonlight pale, brushed. That airy openness in his voice again, as when he had spoken so candidly in her kitchen. “Doesn’t it?”
Brusquely, she set the water skin aside and busied her fingers brushing the gunpowder out of the barrel. “These are your people. Careless and selfish. They’re going to get all of us killed.”
“You were perfectly capable. It is why I hired you.”
At the curt reminder of the nature of their relationship, she bristled. “I shouldn’t have had to be. They use us, use you. Don’t you understand? They didn’t have to listen to me because they knew someone else would clean up their mess, fix what they broke. Someone else always does. And I did – we both did.”
“Someone has to.”
“That isn’t the point!” She waved her brush in the other camp’s direction. “Any one of them was better situated to help that woman, but they let you, because they knew you would.”
“Shall I be pilloried for exercising compassion?”
“For stupidity. Your blood is your only asset out here, and now you’re–”
“Useless.”
She balked.Hurt. “I didn’t say that.”
“Rest assured, you didn’t have to.”
