27th of Nema, Continued

I swatted at a thick black insect on my left arm, then pinched my lips into a grim pucker of disgust when a bloody smear appeared on the sleeve of my blouse. I felt the telltale sting-and-yank of another bloodsucker biting my shoulder and swiped my hand at it, only to follow that by clapping my palm quickly to my neck to squash a third one.

"We need to make camp."

For two hours I had followed Arramy up wooded hills and down brambled gullies, putting as much wilderness between us and Nimkoruguithu as possible. Two hours spent lurching and stumbling through underbrush and tripping over rocks while the shadows lengthened, and my blisters broke and reformed in my stolen boots.

Two hours without a single word between us, and I didn't even glance up when his deep brogue finally broke the silence. I just put one foot in front of the other and slapped at my right temple to kill another blood-sucking insect. I didn't have enough energy to think beyond those two things, and it took much too long for his voice to register in my brain.

"There's water on the other side of that rise," he was saying. "A river or a creek, maybe. We can find a spot to make a fire and bed down for the night."

I brought my head up and looked at him, realization dawning. We weren't going to reach the plantation before dark. That was what he was saying. We were going to have to sleep in the woods. Unchaperoned. My foot caught a tree root and I stumbled, hissing in a breath as my toes crammed themselves into the point of the half-boot and pain shot up my shin.

Ahead of me, Arramy came to a stop. "Need a rest?"

I ground my teeth and shook my head.

Arramy didn't say anything more. He waited for me to catch up with him, then turned and began moving again, limping toward the rise he had just mentioned.

I was glad. I didn't want him to see the tears brimming between my lashes as I kept moving my burning feet and my aching legs. One more hill. Climb one more hill. Then you can stop.

~~~

An hour later, I dropped another armful of sticks on the pile Arramy had started and turned to find him on his knees beside a freshly dug pit in the sand.

He had a piece of driftwood on the ground in front of him.

It was a bit like some sort of barbarian ritual; he crumbled a bunch of dead leaves into a wad of stems, then he picked up a smooth, slender stick, skewered the wad on one end of the stick, put that end of the stick in a dip in the piece of driftwood, and began rolling the stick between his hands, spinning it fast enough that the wad became a blur.

I let out a little laugh as smoke began rising from the driftwood. Arramy kept spinning the stick as he bent over and blew on the wad a few times, and a bright flame popped up as if by magic. Quickly, he began feeding the flame small twigs and bits of grass, then, when those were burning, he added bigger twigs, then branches, and then he had a pleasant little campfire going.

"Won't they see the smoke?" I asked.

He glanced at me, then quirked an eyebrow and got to his feet. "Maybe. If they're looking for it out here. We're a mile beyond the range of the Nim K long glasses, there's a big hill behind us, there's going to be fog tonight..." He dusted off his hands and looked up at the high-piled clouds scudding across the sky. "And I'm hoping they think we're sane and took the road."

With that, he turned and began walking along the river, head down, examining the stones in the sand. Mystified, I watched as he chose several flat rocks, then began throwing them against a boulder until they broke. He fished through the shards, picked out a good-sized piece, ran his thumb over the edge, then went limping up the bank and into the trees without another word.

I stared after him for a moment, then took a breath and looked around. 

The river curved into a small, quiet eddy overhung with trees. The sand gave way to stones, then boulders closer to the waterline, but along the top of the bank it was quite smooth, only dotted here and there with tufts of grass. 

I may not have been able to make fire out of nothing but the things that burn, but I wasn't a complete loss. I spotted waterchokes growing in the shallows. It took a bit of work, but I managed to yank up two big ones. I had stripped off the leaves and was cleaning the tubers in the water when Arramy came striding back down the hill onto our little 'beach,' dragging a small tree behind him.

He proceeded to use that shard of river rock to hack all the branches off the sapling, leaving three of the stubs a bit long. He sharpened those to points, then waded out into the deeper water in the middle of the river.

I squinted at him. For a man who loved the sea so much, he seemed right at home in the forest.

Several minutes later there was a splash as Arramy stabbed the sapling into the water like a spear and brought it back up with a fish caught on the prongs. He tossed the fish up on shore and went back in, spear aloft, apparently not done catching supper.

I skewered my waterchokes on one of the sapling branches and set them over the fire, then finally... gratefully... sank down beside the firepit and took my weight off my feet.

It was all of a minute before I could do anything other than sit there, dumbly appreciating the sensation of not walking.

After a moment I checked to make sure the binder and the notebook were still tied to my waist. They were. The weight of them had never moved from my thigh, but I ran my fingers along their edges through my skirt anyway, reassuring myself that this hadn't been for nothing. Then, gingerly, I unlaced the wastrel woman's shoes and eased them off.

Nothing was broken, but my heel bones felt like they were coming through my skin, and there were angry, open blisters where I had stepped in hot tar. The worst were the ones that had been torn, then remade where the shoes rubbed. Those were bleeding.

I was dabbing at my raw toes with a bit of pennyroyal weed I had found among the boulders when Arramy came back with three fish, which he proceeded to gut, then spit on a branch, all without paying me an ounce of attention.

He finished and came tromping up the rocks to the firepit. He took in the roasting water-chokes and grunted, then propped the fish over the fire and eased himself down onto his rump in the sand next to me. "So where did you learn about plants?"

I glanced at him. It had been four hours since we had left the wastrel house, and I still had to squash an annoying flutter in my heartbeat when his eyes met mine. "My aunt," I murmured, focusing again on my feet.

"Ah. Would this be the same aunt who conquered the Ogre king?" Arramy asked slowly.

"What? No," I said, perplexed, then I frowned and brought my head up. "Wait. That's how you knew I was lying?"

Without a word he leaned forward, using his makeshift spear to stir the fire.

I eyed him askance, biting my lip, trying and failing to hide a sneaky smirk. "You..." I lifted a brow, "Have read Ladesky's novellas."

Arramy went still.

"Hah! You have!" I couldn't help it. I started laughing. "How many?" I stopped laughing abruptly and drew in a dramatic breath. "Do your men know?"

He heaved a long-suffering sigh, his mouth curving in at the corners. "When you get older, you'll learn that you don't have to jump into a sewer to know it stinks."

"That's not a no," I pointed out, grinning like a fiend.

His lips twitched slightly, hinting at a pair of dimples.

My grin faded, and I swallowed, suddenly wondering what a real smile would look like on him. Which was dangerous territory. Very dangerous territory. I went back to examining my feet.

"So... is there really an aunt?" Arramy asked.

I hesitated for a moment, old suspicions digging in. But if he was Coventry, he was doing a fine job not acting like it. Besides. The Coventry already knew everything there was to know about my tiny family tree. So I nodded. "My father's sister, Sapphine Warring." I picked a blotch of tar off my right instep and winced as it took a layer of skin with it. "She's a bit of a Rosephyrra Daquerre, really. She's independently wealthy thanks to my grandfather, and she travels all over. But she doesn't conquer things. She studies them."

Pressing the fleshy end of a broken pennyroyal leaf to the new open sore I had made in my foot, I went on. "We were going to spend this summer in Al-Ipan. A professor friend of hers from the University of Arritagne organized a search for Ipanyr artifacts on Mount Barik-ai-oulu... She thought I would enjoy the experience."

I stared absently into the fire, seeing a long ago afternoon in our front parlor, Aunt Sapphine sitting on the long couch, that sly, 'I-know-something-you-don't-know' smile on her lips as she sipped her tea and watched me open the letter of acceptance from the University's department of research.

She had been right. I had wanted to visit quaint mountain villages where the people spoke a lost language, and all the girls wore hand-embroidered dresses made of tiktik wool and had bright blue feathers woven into their braids. It had seemed so important at the time. I was supposed to learn those lost dialects of Ipanese when we reached the research base so I could help the expedition team understand the locals.

Now that dream glittered behind me like a mirage, empty and surreal. My life had veered so wildly away from it that I could barely remember details that once occupied all my time. The route we were to follow, all the research on Ipanese culture I had done, the arrangements I had to make with the Travel Bureau. All of it had been lost in the fire, and now none of it mattered. I couldn't go back. The Coventry knew about my father. They undoubtedly knew about Aunt Sapphine, and if they hadn't found her yet, having me turn up on her doorstep would be the last thing she needed. Unearthing the history of a forgotten mountain tribe seemed ridiculous when I didn't even know if I could ever go home again.

I inhaled quickly, dragging myself back to the present, my throat aching.

Arramy was gazing into the fire, his expression unreadable.

I finished rubbing pennyroyal on my blisters and shifted my legs out straight, loathe to put those borrowed shoes back on. The fresh air felt good.

It was turning out to be quite a pleasant evening after all the oppressive heat of the day. The smoke from the fire was keeping the biting insects away, the river flowed by in an eddy of rich turquoise, the golden sawgrass on the far bank rippled and rustled in a balmy breeze, a fiery pink sun was sinking into its vibrant purple bed beyond the mountain range in the distance... and an almost peaceful stillness had snuck up between us, lulling the forest into forgetting we were there. A trio of birds were calling their evening songs to each other in the branches high above us, a sweet, silvery trill that echoed from the other side of the river. Insects began chirring in the weeds along the bank again.

Unbidden, my thoughts turned to a bowlegged figure running down a shadowed alley... "So!" I burst out, my voice fracturing the silence. "Are the fish ready?"

Arramy sat forward and tested the biggest fish with quick fingers. He shook his head and returned the skewer to the fire. "We'll get a three-day belly-ache and a gutful of blackworms if we eat them now."

I wasn't entirely sure I cared. The scent of them was making my hunger pangs worse, and after running all day on nothing but breakfast and a bit of cheese, my stomach had lost the few standards it had left. I had spent a week eating Starre and Sons survival biscuits. Not much could be worse.

Arramy lay back, easing carefully onto his right side, and his muffled hiss of pain had me looking at him. He was pale beneath his tan, his jaw tight. He had stopped leaning on me after we left the wastrel's inn, and I had been grateful for it, but all the walking was obviously taking a toll on him.

I gnawed my lower lip. Someone should probably check those bandages.

He glanced up as I scooted around to sit directly in front of him. For some reason, my tongue wouldn't form words with him looking at me, so I just brought my hands up, my eyes barely meeting his. He didn't move, and I began unbuckling the top strap of his vest, ignoring the thunder of my heartbeat when he lay there and let me do it, regarding me quietly while I peeled his vest away from his skin.

Neither of the bandages had moved, thankfully, and the wound in his shoulder had stopped bleeding. The pad below his ribs was soaked through, though, and still wet. I sat back and tore another ruffle off my petticoat, folded it up, and placed it over the soaked bandage. I refastened his vest, then turned to put my feet to the fire again, pretending not to notice that glittering icy gaze on my face.

After several long minutes, Arramy checked the fish again. This time he took two of them, handed me one, and started pulling the skin off the other.

Like a good barbarian, he sucked the flaky fish meat right off the skeleton.

It looked easy enough. I tossed my manners, stripped the skin off my fish, held the skewer two-fisted, and took a bite. Then I let out a groan and devoured the rest of it, relishing every juicy scrap.

I heard a soft snort from Arramy's direction when I finished and tried to be ladylike about wiping my mouth with a flounce of my skirt, but I didn't bother looking at him. I went after the water-chokes instead.

They were soft and squishy on the inside, and we had to settle for scooping the pulp out of the tough skins with our fingers, but they tasted pleasantly of lemon and honey, just like the survivalist's guide had said they would.

Arramy got up and threw the fish bones into the river, wrapped the third fish in several large leaves, then stoked the fire, adding a few more branches – green ones, this time, that sent up curls of awful smelling white smoke. Then he came back, stretched out beside me, pillowed his head on his right arm, and closed his eyes.  

Quiet descended.

I stared at him. Was I supposed to keep watch?

"Get some sleep," Arramy muttered, eyes still closed.

"Are you sure?" I whispered. "What if a wildcat comes – "

"They don't like gallsmoke."

Silence.

"What if... what if the fire goes out? Shouldn't someone make sure it — "

Arramy opened his eyes and gave me a weary glare. "I'm not gonna let it go out. Sleep while you can. I'll wake you when it's your turn."

I bit my lip. Slowly, I slid down to lie on my back next to him.

His lashes lowered again.

The sunset began fading, overtaken by a sky full of billowing clouds. A slender mist began rising from the water, and the world shrank to our little circle of firelight.

I stared upward for a while, fighting the exhaustion that coiled through my body. I didn't win. I tried telling myself that both of us couldn't just fall asleep in the middle of the wilderness, but my eyelids kept drifting shut anyway. In spite of all the things we had been through, I felt safe for the first time in months. That was my last thought before I floated into a thick, wonderfully peaceful oblivion: I was finally safe.

~~~

True to his promise, Arramy woke me sometime during the middle of the night, jiggling my shoulder.

"Your turn, kid," he rasped as he lay down, stretching out next to me. "I just added fresh wood. Should hold you till dawn. Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open."

I blinked at him. He must have gotten up at some point, but I hadn't even been aware he was moving. With a sigh I pushed myself into a sitting position and peered into the darkness beyond the light of the fire.

Beside me, Arramy's breathing deepened.

The night air was crisp and chilly, and I huddled a little closer to the fire, rubbing my hands up and down my arms.

~~~

Arramy's rough shout had me sitting bolt upright, my heart hammering in my ribs as I came all the way awake to the sound of swearing and a series of high-pitched animal yelps coming from the top of the riverbank.

Then it was just Arramy muttering a single curse word.

He reappeared, limping heavily, jaw tight, lips pressed into a terse line. He saw me sitting there, and raised an eyebrow, his gaze flicking from me to the cold fire pit. He shook his head and came all the way down the bank, moving to where he had stashed our extra fish. He dug beneath the boulder, then held up a tattered leaf and swore under his breath again.

I closed my eyes, realizing what must have happened.

I had fallen asleep.

The fire had gone out.

Our breakfast was gone.

And I had disappointed the Captain.

...........................................................