him an order, so he fell in step a few paces behind. The shimmering white expanse of the salt wastes was visible from the far side of the tree ring around the village. A few clumps of rock and scraggly bushes dotted the wilderness. No druid could nurture a grove this close to the Sun’s Fist. But Yohan kept going, following Quraiters strung out in a sparse line until they were indistinguishable from the wilderness itself.
* * *
They gathered in a place without trees or water, where the salt flats seemed a bit closer and the village behind them was reduced to a line of half-sized trees. Pavek, at the rear of the gathering, was as ignorant as he’d been at the hut. But the crowd parted for him—or it parted for Yohan—and he was able to flow to the center in the dwarfs wake.
Telhami sat on an unremarkable stone beside a shallow, round, and apparently empty hole. She sifted gritty dirt through the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. Her neck was bent deeply: Pavek remembered that sunlight hurt her eyes, and remembered her broad-brimmed, veiled hat hanging in its place by the door. He wished he’d thought to bring it with him; a foolish, sentimental wish since, when he left the hut, he hadn’t known where he was going.
The sifted grit’s color, yellow-like the thin cloud of dust over the hole—and its bitter—turning-numb taste as it invaded his nose and mouth, answered all the other questions bubbling in Pavek’s mind.
A downcast Akashia approached them. “Ruari,” she whispered to Yohan, loudly enough for Pavek to hear. The dwarf spat into the yellow-flecked ground.
“Can’t be,” he countered. “That doesn’t square with Telhami collapsing right when she did. The moment was too perfect. You were going to take zarneeka to Urik; now you can’t. Ruari couldn’t be eavesdropping and undermining at the same time. Don’t blame the half-wit scum just because your guardian got the upper hand.”
Akashia gave him a sharp-edged glower. “He was sitting here, in the ruins, waiting for Grandmother when she arrived. He confessed everything. He’d talked to the elves; he knew everything we knew. He was afraid you’d persuade us to take the zarneeka to Urik, or steal it yourself, if you couldn’t. He decided to take matters into his own hands. He hates you, Pavek. Hates you with a passion that blinds him to everything else. He thought he was the only one who could stop you.”
“But he stopped you instead,” Pavek snorted with irony and earned himself another bitter look.
“We’re right, Pavek, and you’re wrong. You’re all wrong: both of you and Ruari, as well.”
“The guardian disagrees.”
“This was Ruari’s doing: his hate, his blindness.”
“Where is he? This time I do want to talk to him.”
“I don’t know.” Akashia flinched toward Telhami as she turned away.
Pavek had learned the language of guilt and anxiety before he left the orphanage. It was an early, essential part of a templar’s education. Instructors made certain their students learned to read the truth on the faces around them, and—if they were wise or clever—to hide their own emotions behind an enigmatic, intimidating sneer. Pavek wore a templar sneer when he cast a shadow over Telhami and called her name.
The instructors had never claimed he was wise or clever. They’d repeatedly said he was a fool who didn’t know when to keep his big mouth shut.
“Where’d you send Ruari?” he demanded.
She opened her hands. The yellow-stained dirt streamed to the ground. “I didn’t send him anywhere. He’s hiding in his grove.”
“Where’s his grove?”
“I can’t tell you,” her voice was faint and listless. “He wished for privacy, Just-Plain Pavek. I grant it to him. He wants to be alone for a while. I told him what you said. He needs to be alone.”
“The guardian wouldn’t suck his bones into the ground, for you?” He could hear the foolishness in his voice. He wished he could swallow his tongue, but recklessness was another old habit, impossible to resist when righteousness fanned its flames. “He wished for privacy, instead, and you granted his wish. For how long, Telhami? How long does Ruari need to be alone in his grove. Until he starves?”
“A druid can’t starve in his grove,” Yohan said from behind. “Mind yourself. Ruari’s safe enough in his grove, if mat’s where he is.”
Recklessness, it seemed, was catching.
He spread his feet to shoulder width and propped his fists atop his hips. “Where is the scum? I want to tell