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(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)
70: Jorin
We passed along the edges of blighted fields the next night, where the crops had already been plowed under when they should have been in full fruit. We ate well enough of spawning fish the next day, though, while resting and watering our horses. I knew little of how to survive off the land and I wondered where Sergetten had learned it, but I did not ask.
I also did not ask, when we stopped to get some sleep in the hour before dawn, when we would next attempt a spell. Instead, I held my tongue, and waited for him to say.

We set up a small shelter in the trees in case of rain, suspending an oiled cloak slantwise above is, another below us on a bed of leaves and ferns. He slipped from his clothes and then asked for mine, stowing them in the dry pack and then beckoning me into his arms.

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(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)
69: Kenet
If ever I doubted that one man’s milk tasted different from another’s, I doubted it no longer after taking as many as I did as a mouth whore in Port Aris.

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69: Jorin

We rode for two days west, and then turned northward, moving parallel to the Serde but not daring to go all the way to the river. We traveled slowly at night, but with less fear of discovery than in the daytime. We could trust no one. We were both wanted criminals now, traitors to the crown, and there was no way to tell where the loyalties of those we might encounter lay.

As we settled to sleep at the edge of a copse of trees, with dawn just lightening the sky, I asked, “How did you get to camp that first time?”

“Be more specific, my dear,” he said mildly, “lest men of intelligence think you a dunce.”

“When Kan summoned you to bond with me,” I said. It seemed so long ago. “You arrived fully dressed, and without a… a horse.”

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67: Kenet

I never did learn Dursht’s master’s name, but he brought us to a place up the hill from the docks that he said was reputable, and paid for the three of us to eat the evening meal (Jort happily devoured my share) and to have a well-appointed room on the top floor for the night. He also introduced Roichal to the owner of the place, a man named Siphal, and while Jort and I enjoyed dessert and honey wine (well, I had only a few sips of the wine) the two of them talked in low voices.

The room held a large bed in the center and a small pallet off to one side. Jort took the pallet, while Roichal and I settled into bed together. Honey wine made Jort snore, but I did not mind. I buried myself into Roichal’s arms with a sigh. It was not quite like being in bed with Jorin, but it was the most comfortable I had been in months, and I knew now to appreciate the luxury while it lasted.

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66: Jorin

I woke in the late afternoon to find my stomach complaining of hunger but the rest of my body feeling remarkably well. As I sat up and stretched I did not feel the pull of taut cuts across my back. I felt no ache, no soreness anywhere. Had the salve been that powerful? Or was this more of Sergetten’s magic? I was grateful regardless.

I looked around the room for the first time. This was a bedroom I had not visited before and I presumed it was Sergetten’s private room at the keep. His side of the bed was empty, the blanket and pillow already smoothed. As my bare feet touched the floor I was surprised to feel the stone was cold. Summer was ending here, too, and a chill must have stolen in during the night.

I wondered if I should just emerge in nothing from the room, recalling what he had once said to me about the local folk and servants being accustomed to bare-arsed boys wandering here, but then I caught sight of the clothes laid out upon a chest.

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65: Kenet

Just as no one had told me how the sea would sound, no one had told me how a ship would smell. Like salt and spray, and like the sweat of men working, that I expected. But the sails and deck in the sun had a scent of their own, sweet in the way that some of the fragrant trees in the deep woods smelled.

As we sat on the deck in the sun, I remarked upon this to Roichal, who merely looked at me curiously.

We were not the only passengers aboard.

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(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

64: Jorin

I could feel my own heart thundering in my chest, hear the rush in my ears, as Sergetten stepped away. I thought for a moment that he went to open the door to the guards who would surely just run me through this time, rather than give me a chance to escape. I tugged on the bonds around my wrists, dangling me from the end of Sergetten’s bedpost, but it was some strong stuff he’d bound me with, neither rope nor leather. I was on tiptoe and could not get much purchase.

The next voice I heard was the Lord High Mage’s. “I know not what plot might have brought you under the thrall of this traitor, Sergetten,” he said. “But if you surrender him now, you shall have every opportunity to explain yourself.”

The next sound was a sharp bang, and the voices were muffled. He had slammed the window shut, though I knew not if he had used magic or merely his hand. His boot scuffed the stone floor near me.

“Sergetten–” I began.

“Silence, you fool!” He punctuated his command with a lash across my shoulders, sharp as the slash of a knife and all the more painful for being unexpected.

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(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

63: Kenet

I woke to the sound of Roichal’s boots making the stones and shells crunch as he made his way back to the shelter. There was barely enough light in the sky to see by, and I could make out the colorless shape of Jort, still asleep on the far side of the shelter, leaning against the wall with his hands bound behind him.

I could hear Roichal was limping. He groaned as he heaved himself up onto the platform with one large step of his good leg.

“Sir?” I sat up.

He slid down the wall beside me tiredly.

“May I rub your leg? I know we lack the salve… Could some be procured in the town?”

His hand fell heavily to my hair, stroking. “It is nothing to concern yourself with, Page.”

“Isn’t it? How much more country have we to cross?”

“That depends on where we decide to go.”

“Sir, forgive me if this is improper to suggest, but I do not think it is all the walking that has taken its toll on your leg.”

“I assure you, the same idea has crossed my own mind,” he said as his hand slid to my neck and kneaded gently at the tops of my shoulders.

The last time Roichal had experienced release had been back at the military encampment. His leg was at its best when Marksin and I had been triggering him to come nightly, by whatever magic had allowed that to happen. Could it even be done without the field general’s help? I did not know.

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(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

62: Jorin

The next morning Sergetten hooded me again, and broke his fast upon the terrace outside his rooms. Besides the hood I wore only a drape of cloth that covered my privates, and he bade me kneel beside him while he ate, favoring me with morsels from time to time as the hood left my mouth free. A bit of meat, then a crust of bread sweetened with honey, and so on. The autumn chill was starting to creep down the mountains and I shivered some while trying to hold an obedient pose, warmed only by his quiet praise when I succeeded.

A knock came at the door. He answered it, leaving me where I was, and I could hear him raise his voice but not make out the words. He returned to me a few moments later and led me back inside.

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61: Kenet

What was that unfamiliar rushing sound? I could not name it, but it came and went, even as the familiar sensation of Roichal’s hand stroking me told me all was well.

Or was it? I opened my eyes to find him leaning over me, swearing and then pulling me close, crushing me to him. Then he let me go, and I collapsed back onto the blanket.

We were no longer in the cave where we had sheltered. A damp wind touched my face and I could see in the sunset glow that I was lying in a shelter the looked for all the world like someone had built only half of a house, leaving one side completely open. I sat up partway and could see the beach sloping gently away from us, toward the water. The rushing sound was the waves, I realized, as I watched them roll, one after another, up the sand. No one had ever told me the sea would make a sound. A particularly large wave came then and it sounded like thunder.

“Where is Kinsall?” I asked.

“He is safe,” Roichal said, as he knelt beside me. “Do you remember nothing of today?”

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