The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles #1) - Mary E. Pearson Page 0,138
task was to slit my throat. I looked at Kaden without expression. He met my blank gaze. He wanted to be proud among his comrades. Venda always came first, after all. He nodded at those who patted his back and acknowledged their praise. His eyes, which I’d once thought held so much mystery, held none for me now.
The next day, Eben’s horse grew worse. I heard Malich and Finch tell him he was going to have to kill it, that there were plenty of other horses in the captured booty for him to ride. Eben swore to them in a voice rising like a child’s that it was only a strained muscle and the lameness would pass.
I said nothing to any of them. Their concerns weren’t mine. Instead I listened to the rattle, the chipped rock tumbling inside me. And late at night as I stared at the stars, sometimes a whisper broke through, one I was too afraid to believe.
I will find you.
In the farthest corner, I will find you.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
I brushed my hair. Today was the day we would enter Venda. I wouldn’t arrive looking like an animal. It still seemed important. For Walther. For a whole patrol. I wasn’t one of them. I never would be. I pulled at the tangles, sometimes ripping at my hair, until it lay smooth.
Surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, I knew there was little chance of escape. Maybe there never had been one, unless the gods themselves decided to plunge another star to earth and destroy them all. How were these who sat proud upon their horses beside me any better than the Ancients, whom the gods had destroyed long ago? What held the gods back now?
We rode behind wagons piled high with swords, saddles, and even the boots of the fallen. The bounty of death. When I buried my brother, I hadn’t even noticed that his sword and the finely tooled leather baldrick that he wore across his chest were already gone. Now they jostled somewhere in the wagon ahead.
I listened to the jingle of the booty, the jingle, jingle, and the rattle within me.
Kaden rode on one side of me, Eben on the other, with Malich and the others just behind us. Eben’s horse stumbled, but managed to correct itself. Eben jumped from his back and whispered to him. He led him along with his hand clutched in the horse’s mane. We had only gone a few more paces when the horse stumbled again, this time staggering twenty yards off the road, with Eben chasing after him. The horse fell onto his side, his front legs no longer able to support him. Eben desperately tried to talk him upright again.
“Take care of it,” Kaden called to Eben. “It’s time.”
Malich came up alongside me. “Do it now!” he ordered. “You’re holding everyone up.” Malich unclasped the leather sheath that held his long trench knife from his belt and threw it to Eben. It fell to the ground at Eben’s feet. Eben froze, his eyes wide as he looked from it back to the rest of us. Kaden nodded to him, and Eben slowly bent over and retrieved it from the ground.
“Can’t someone else do it?” I asked.
Kaden looked at me, surprised. It was the most I had said in three days. “It’s his horse. It’s his job,” he answered.
“He has to learn,” I heard Finch say behind me.
Griz mumbled agreement. “Ja tiak.”
I stared at Eben’s terrified face. “But he raised him from a foal,” I reminded them. They didn’t respond. I turned around to Finch and Griz. “He’s only a child. He’s already learned far too much, thanks to all of you. Aren’t any of you willing to do this for him?”
They remained silent. I swung down from my horse and walked into the field. Kaden yelled at me to get back on my horse.
I whipped around and spat. “Ena fikatande spindo keechas! Fikat ena shu! Ena mizak teevas ba betaro! Jabavé!” I turned back to Eben, and he inhaled a sharp breath when I snatched the sheathed knife from him and pulled the blade free. A dozen bows were raised and arrows drawn by onlooking soldiers, all aimed at me. “Have you said good-bye to Spirit yet?” I asked Eben.
He looked at me, his eyes glassy. “You know his name?”
“I heard you whisper it in camp. They were wrong, Eben,” I said, tossing my head in the direction of the others. “There is no shame in naming a horse.”