Chapter 58. Hiding Shaking Hands From the Girl Who Notices Everything

Chapter 58: 58. Hiding Shaking Hands From the Girl Who Notices Everything

Millie started to cry again, and Bonette gathered her into her arms and rocked her gently... murmuring something into her hair.

I sat back and let them have the moment. I felt like I was intruding on something private, and even something sacred.

But there was another part of me, the sharp, cold part, that was still thinking.

Millie had said something else, between the sobs, in a voice so small that Bonette, wrapped up in her own grief, hadn’t heard it.

She’d murmured it into my shirt, as if she were describing a fragment of the dream that she wasn’t sure was real.

"There was... a hand," she’d said. "A man’s hand..."

"He was holding out a sweet... a little honey sweet."

"And he was laughing... a nice laugh... and a warm one."

I’d asked her, quietly, who he was. She’d said she didn’t know.

She hadn’t seen his face.

I filed it away in the back of my mind... in the place where I kept all the things I didn’t want to look at, and I held her until her breathing slowed.

"You don’t have to be the princess right now," I murmured. "You can just be Millie... That’s enough for now."

She nodded against my chest and curled into me, and I felt her relax by degrees. As she did, I saw something flicker at the edge of my vision, a faint pale shimmer along the tip of her ear, like moonlight skimming across water.

It lasted for half a heartbeat and was gone.

From the far side of the camp, I felt a pair of eyes on me. I looked up and saw Sylvara sitting wrapped in her white coat beside the moon-stakes, watching us.

When she met my gaze, she nodded very slightly and turned away.

Ding!

[Lust Energy: 55/100]

I closed my eyes and tried not to think about it.

I woke before dawn with my hands shaking.

It wasn’t the same kind of shaking I’d had after the canyon, the wet, heavy trembling of an overworked muscle.

This was something thinner and more insistent, a fine, constant tremor in my fingertips that I couldn’t stop no matter how hard I clenched my fists.

I held them out in front of me in the dark and watched them vibrate.

’Ah,’ I thought. ’There it is... The first sign.’

I curled my fingers inside my sleeve so that Millie, still asleep against my shoulder, wouldn’t feel it.

I wasn’t going to tell her. Not yet.

There wasn’t anything she could do, and I didn’t want to put another weight on those thin shoulders.

I lay there for a long time... watching the canvas roof lighten from black to gray.

And that was... when the horn sounded.

HOOOOONNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKKK!

It came from far away, from somewhere north, high up in the mountains.

A long, low, mournful note that rolled across the valley like thunder. It was followed by a second, falling in pitch, and a third, deeper still.

Three notes, descending, slow and heavy and hauntingly beautiful.

It didn’t sound like Maldric’s horn.

Maldric’s had been a single, clean, high tone, a note that cut like a knife.

This was something else entirely. It sounded old.

And it sounded like the kind of horn that people blew at funerals or to announce the arrival of a king.

I was up in an instant. Around me, the camp was waking, with riders scrambling for their weapons and horses whinnying nervously.

Bryn burst out of her tent with her face white and her hands trembling.

"I... do not know that call," she said. "I have never heard it before, but...! I know what it means..."

"What...?" I asked.

"They know Maldric is dead." She swallowed. "They felt the root break... And whoever was above him has come to see what happened."

Sylvara stood motionless at the edge of the camp, staring north. The little lights that circled her head had gone out, one by one, until only a single dull ember remained.

She spoke very softly, without turning her head, so that I was the only one close enough to hear.

"The holder of the root felt it break," she said. "And whoever stands above the root is now moving toward us."

I looked at the black line of the northern mountains, at the pale gray sky above them, and felt every hair on my body stand up.

Velora was already pulling on her gloves. She’d moved fast; I saw it, faster than anyone, and she had her katana belted on and her hair tied back before the last note died.

She turned and looked at the camp, and her voice rang out, sharp and clear.

"FIVE MINUTES...! Saddle up! We ride now!"

The camp exploded into motion. Riders ran for their horses, packs were thrown across saddles, and someone started shouting at the cooks to put out the fire.

Velora’s gaze swept across the crowd and landed on me. She looked at my shaking hands, which I hadn’t managed to hide, and her eyes narrowed very slightly.

She didn’t say a word about it.

"Keep up, debtor," she said.

It was the first time that she had spoken to me like a colleague and not like something she’d scraped off her boot.

I nodded, and she turned away.

I climbed onto my horse on the second try. Millie climbed up on the gray mare beside me, her white hair tousled and her face pale, and without a word she reached across the gap and took my free hand.

Her fingers were cold. She held on tightly, and she didn’t ask me why my hand was shaking.

We rode out in the gray light, thirteen riders and a handful of survivors, toward a place none of us wanted to go.

Behind us, from the mountains in the north, the horn sounded again.

HOOOOOOOOOONKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK~!

It was closer this time.

The horn sounded a fourth time before we were out of the foothills, and by then... I had stopped pretending it didn’t bother me.

It was the kind of sound that settles into your bones. Every time it rolled across the valley, the horses flattened their ears, the Nightclaw riders went a little quieter, and I felt my hands shake against the reins like a pair of nervous birds.

Somewhere far to the north, other horns had started answering it, one after another, passing the call along a chain of ridges like a rumor in a small town.

It didn’t take a genius to work out what that meant. The chain was gathering, and they were gathering at the same place we were going.

Ding.

[Lust Energy: 53/100]

[Passive Decay: 2 per day.]

Fifty-three.

I did my best to look like a man who had never seen that number in his life, and I tightened my grip on the reins until my knuckles went white. And it helped a little.

It also meant that I looked like I was trying to strangle a horse, and the horse... a tall bay mare with the personality of a disappointed schoolteacher, turned her head and gave me a look of deep reproach.

"I’m sorry," I whispered. "I’m having a rough week..."

She snorted and went back to ignoring me.

Millie rode up on my left, and she didn’t say a word about my hands.

She just nudged her gray mare a little closer until our knees nearly touched, and then she stayed there, a small warm presence at my side, looking straight ahead with her ears flicking back and forth.

I understood what she was doing, and I loved her a little for it.