of his right hand against his chin, a gesture that conveyed silence and respect and something more that she could not interpret. Then he took a step backward and quickly disappeared into the maze of tents. “What was that?”
Yohan muttered under his breath before answering: “An old debt. Very old. But debts have to be paid, Kashi. Never forget that. We can collect at sundown.”
“He called you friend.” Friendship was not casual among elves, especially nomadic tribes. “Who was he?”
“Never met him before.”
He started back the way they’d come. Their enemy hadn’t given up. The sense that they were being watched or followed lingered throughout a long, frustrating afternoon. It ebbed occasionally—Yohan could walk in her protection without holding her hand—and intensified when they tried to return to the alley where they’d abandoned the cart and their companion. She fretted with guilt about the farmer, but, the dark pressure against her defenses never let up completely, and she understood that there were rescues she didn’t dare attempt.
And there were those she had to plan immediately.
“If he attacks again, you must get away,” she told Yohan when they were resting behind a sausager’s oven.
“No—”
“I’m serious, Yohan. Absolutely serious. Whoever is after us—” In her mind she’d begun identify the mind-bender as the templar Pavek had named Elabon Escrissar, the man who’d put a price on Pavek’s head, the man who turned their zarneeka into Laq “—whoever he is, he’s a mind-bender. A powerful mind-bender. He’d get Quraite out of you, Yohan; you know that. But I can keep the secret—to the death, if I have to.”
“Kashi—”
“I can. I must. I will. And you must get back to Quraite. You were right all along. Pavek is right; the Moonracers are right. This is about Laq, about a deadly poison and a madman—two madmen: Elabon Escrissar and that halfling alchemist. It’s not about zarneeka or Ral’s Breath. I should have listened. We should have stayed away. You must warn Grandmother. You must tell her to protect Quraite.”
Yohan stared into the heat waves shimmering above the oven. “I’d sooner die than leave you, Kashi.”
“No—”
The word slipped out as a sigh, but she knew, from way he’d said the words that the suspicions she’d had since childhood were, indeed, true. Yohan’s dwarven focus wasn’t his devotion to Quraite or his devotion to Grandmother and the other druids. It was devotion to her and her alone. She’d become the center of his life. Whatever happened to her, he took it as his personal guilt. If she died, Yohan was doomed to the half-life of a banshee, haunting the wastelands forever because he’d failed to protect the one thing above all others that was important to him.
“Then we must return to Quraite together.”
He clapped her once on the knee before rising again to his feet, a signal that their rest was done and it was time to start moving again. “That, we must.”
* * *
The sun descended, growing as large as the bulging dome tower atop King Hamanu’s palace and glowing like fresh-spilled blood. Yohan, whose sense of direction had never faltered, returned them to the nomad encampment alongside the walls. They were both exhausted, and Akashia’s mind still rang with a mind-bender’s probe, but she allowed herself to believe that they would escape through whatever door the austere elf would provide. And once they were out of Urik, she had no doubt that they could make their way safely to Quraite.
She wasn’t foolish enough to think that the danger was past, but her breath came easier, and there was new strength in her legs.
The elf with straw-colored braids was nowhere to be seen when they entered the tent-covered expanse between the market and the wall. She turned to ask Yohan a question and caught a flicker of movement among the tents. Her eyes alone saw nothing untoward: the encampment was crowded. There were movements everywhere. But her mind’s eye, made a vigilant pan of her defenses by the Unseen Way, had seen a smear of templar yellow. Not the color of the walls, but the more garish color worn every day by every templar and that, coupled with the continued mind-bending pressure against her defenses, was not to be ignored.
She shook Yohan’s wrist and pointed to the place where her mind said the yellow had appeared and disappeared. “Danger!”
Yohan swept her behind him and stood chin-out, facing the tents, ready for whatever fate blew their way. A fast heartbeat later the ugliest, hairiest dwarf she’d ever