think; I won’t. You and Telhami work it out yourselves. Zarneeka’s Quraite’s problem, not mine.”
“You are a templar. You’re a templar in the blood and bone. You’re broken and will never change.”
He walked away in silence, got himself a bowl, and got on line for supper.
Chapter Twelve
“It’s morning,” a voice announced, accompanied by a sandal-shod nudge in Pavek’s floating ribs.
He groaned, a deeper and more painful sound than he expected. His eyes opened grittily to light streaming through the bachelor hut’s reed wall and to a flood of memories: Last evening he’d made a fool of himself with Akashia, first with his oafish templar humor, then by arguing with her about druid affairs: zarneeka and Urik. After that, he’d plopped himself down within reach of the Moonracer’s barrel and drunk too much honey-ale. Not as much as he would have when he’d done his drinking in Joat’s Den, but too much for a man no longer accustomed to it. He remembered everyone else leaving for their beds, even the elves, and rising oh-so-carefully to his feet for the treacherous walk to his bed.
But, if he could remember all that and bear the light without cringing, then he could probably roll over without his blood sloshing painfully from one side of his skull to the other, the way it did after a night at Joat’s.
So he rotated, and the face of the man who’d awakened him resolved into Yohan’s leathery features.
“How long past dawn?” he asked working his mouth to get rid of its sour taste.
“High time for you to get your lazy bones off the floor. The Moonracers have folded up their tents and raised a cloud of dust over the salt flats. Sun’s two hands above the trees.”
Now he remembered exactly why he’d taken refuge beside the ale barrel. With a single syllable oath of despair, he sat up. “The meeting in Telhami’s hut. Is it over? What did Akashia say? Did she convince the others to keep on taking zarneeka seeds to Urik?” His tongue still tasted like the inside of a slop bucket, but there was nothing he could do about it until he got to the well, which seemed, suddenly, a long walk away.
“They’re waiting for you,” Yohan informed him, dropping a hide-wrapped travel flask into his lap. “You’re the one who knows Urik and its templars.”
He unstoppered the flask and passed the opening quickly beneath his nose: old habits, again. Mention had been made of Urik and templars, and when Urik was in a templar’s mind, no amount of caution was excessive. But the piercing scent of bitterroot filled his nostrils, and he took a full-mouth swig. The days-old taste vanished. After another pull, he returned a half-emptied flask with a grunt of thanks.
Yohan tossed him a freshly washed and still damp shirt. Six days’ of unshaved beard snagged the cloth as he tugged it over his head. He stroked his chin with a thumb. If he didn’t want to face the druids looking like squatter-scum, he needed a lengthy session with a razor and lump of pumice.
The veteran dwarf extended his arm and made a fist, having apparently read his thoughts. “No rime for that. They’re waiting.”
“I don’t understand why they’re waiting,” he complained. I’ve got nothing to say. Akashia knows what I think.”
“And what do you think, Just-Plain Pavek?” The question held a hint of challenge.
He grasped the dwarf’s wrist and gained his feet with a clean jerk. “Burn it all, every last bush and seed, then pray no one comes looking. Same as I thought last night. Akashia thinks otherwise. I told her I won’t argue with her. I’m not getting myself caught between her and Telhami.”
All the bachelor bedding was neatly rolled against the outer walls as they walked down the center of the long hut. All except his own, which needed airing, and—he counted twice to be certain—Ruari’s, which hadn’t been touched since someone spread it out the previous evening. “Where’s he this morning?”
“You won’t get caught between Akashia and Grandmother,” Yohan ignored his question completely. “They agree with each other.”
Quraite was quiet outside the bachelors’ hut, with no visible signs of the recent festivities. A few farmers were using the morning’s last few cool moments to do the heavy work of arranging the evening’s fire in the pit-hearth. They hailed Yohan and him with unusual friendliness—or so he thought; he still had trouble measuring these things.
The men said nothing until they reached the well where they were beyond anyone’s