that they hadn’t broken his skin, he uprooted a handful of scraggly grass and, with no regard for what was left of his dignity, swiped the radiant slime from his legs.
Several pulse-pounding moments passed before he heard Ruari laughing. It was one insult too many. He hurled the soggy grass in the half-elf’s direction. His aim was off: the faintly glowing wad missed that wide-open mouth and splattered against his chest instead.
Ruari’s laughter died in his throat. “You’re dead, templar!” His teeth were visible in the lightning as he cleaned the mess from his shirt. When he was done, his fingers were curled into claws. “Because I’m going to kill you—”
But Akashia thrust her open hand between them. Her wrist waggled slightly. First, Ruari staggered backward, then a gust of wind punched Pavek’s chest, knocking the fight out of him, too. Magic or mind-bending had somehow redirected the storm’s gusty winds. The display was all the more impressive in its subtlety and casualness.
Pavek let go of his injured dignity. A templar knew when to lay low. A half-elf, apparently, did not.
“You saw what he did—”
Akashia’s hand flicked again. Ruari sat down hard, wide-eyed with astonishment.
“Enough! Both of you. Behave yourselves or we’ll leave you both behind… together.”
“Kashi—”
“Don’t ‘Kashi’ me,” she warned. “Just stay here and stay out of trouble. Can you manage that?”
Ruari scrambled to his feet. “He’s a templar, Ah-ka-she-a,” he snarled each syllable of her name. “He’s no good, and you know it. He’s lying and deceit disguised as a human man. Look what he’s done to us already. I say we leave him right here. Let the storm take care of him.”
Through the tail of his eye, Pavek watched Akashia’s hand fall slowly to her side and a variety of soft emotions parade across her face. She might be a druid and a mind-bender, but she wouldn’t survive a single day or night in the templarate. Ruari, with his back to the storm and everything else, wouldn’t last an hour. That left only the dwarf, at whom he dared a glance.
Yohan stood between the traces of the cart. His expression was properly opaque. If the dwarf had not been a templar, he’d spent enough time around them to learn their ways. Still, Yohan was waiting, not doing. He might be the shrewdest and wisest of his new companions, but he was the third of three in rank.
“What about you, templar?” Akashia asked. “Is Ruari right, are you lying and deceit disguised as a man, or can we trust you?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “That’s a foolish question. Why would I say no? Why would you believe me if I said yes? You’ve got to decide for yourself.”
“He’s right,” Yohan added, to Pavek’s surprise. “And we don’t have much time, if we’re going to get ourselves out of this place before the storm’s on top of us.”
Akashia flattened her wind-swept hair against her skull and closed her eyes. Pavek braced himself for another mind-bending onslaught, but none came—at least not into his mind. When the druid reopened her eyes her calm and confidence had been restored.
“You’re coming with us,” she said. “If you even think of lying or deceit, you’ll wish you’d never been born. You’ll do what you’re told to do, when you’re told to do it. And you’ll leave Ruari alone, no matter what he does or what he says. Understand?”
He nodded. “In my dreams, great one. In my dreams.” Akashia cocked her head. She seemed about to ask a question when Yohan called from the doorway of the kank-keeper’s shed, and she joined him there without saying anything more.
* * *
Yohan and Akashia emerged from the shed leading four kanks. Three of them carried curving leather saddles that promised a secure, if not always comfortable, perch. The fourth, a soldier-kank half again as large as the others and; with numerous spikes growing out of its gnarled chitin, was rigged with a cargo harness. A large bone rack rose above the rear of the harness. Pavek spotted the curved brackets where the zarneeka amphorae had been slung and knew immediately where he was going to be riding out the storm.
At least he didn’t have to worry about controlling the creature. There was no way he could reach the bug’s antennae once he’d gotten himself wedged beneath the rack.
“We’re not going any farther than we have to,” Yohan assured him as he threaded a supple leather rope through man-made holes in several of the soldier-kank’s spikes.”