we’ll be laid up for days while she recovers. So unless you have a mind to sit here and wait for the Sephrians to come and cut our heads off, I suggest you think of this quite seriously, Liam,” Jeremy told him sternly.
Liam glanced up at him, and for a moment they locked eyes, but it was Liam who looked away first. “Aye,” he muttered, and then stood and moved away on some nameless task.
Ryan slipped away to look for drinking water while Jeremy saw to people’s wounds. Darren went first, even though it seemed to Taya that David was the worst hurt. Liam had blistered his hands fighting with the raft, and Sarah had a host of tiny cuts, but none as deep as David’s. Jeremy had taken an arrow to the thigh, but it hadn’t cut deep and Taya helped him bandage it before she let Jeremy bandage her own burned hand. She sat beside him on his bedroll as he worked, and watched the activity of the camp. Darren was asleep, his face pale and worn. Liam and Sarah were sharpening and oiling weapons, cleaning them after the rough battle, and David was seated beside Ryan. They were ostensibly getting a quick meal together, but they were whispering furiously, and it seemed something weighty passed between them.
“Do you know their story?” Taya whispered to Jeremy, careful not to let her voice carry across the small campground.
Jeremy followed her gaze and then looked back at her, smiling softly. “When you live and work so closely with people you know so little, there are nothing but rumors. Some are true, some not at all. Take Sarah, for instance—it is said that she can gut a man in under twelve seconds.”
“Mmm, I know. David told me.”
“Well, and did he also tell you it is a complete fabrication?” Jeremy asked, and laughed at the disappointed look on her face. “She is a rough sort, fierce when threatened, and a good warrior, true. I have known her for several years—I was organizing this revolution long before we found King Darren—but in all that time, I have never known her to use unnecessary violence. She will disarm a man before she will kill him, and if she must she will kill swiftly and with the least amount of pain.”
Taya rested her head against her knees, watching Jeremy as he finished with her binding. His fingers were quick and agile, and for a moment she entertained a daydream of him sitting at the counter in her shop, helping her with fancy stitching for a wedding order.
“And what are the rumors about me?” she asked, and he grinned.
“Oh, there aren’t any,” he said, too cheerily for it to be true.
She frowned and shook her hand, causing him to lose hold of the bandage.
He scolded her and caught it back up.
“Well, then David and Ryan again. What are the stories told of them?”
“I thought we already ascertained that the stories are false?” he chided with a smile, tucking the bandage into place. “There. All done.”
“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”
“No. It is easy to spread rumors when you have no idea know how much of them are true and how much false, but when you do…I dislike spreading the lies, but I hate spreading the truths. If they want someone to know, they’ll tell them.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be a gossip. They just…it seems like there’s so much there. I was curious.”
“And I didn’t mean to scold,” he said with a gentle smile. “Let’s hope their cooking lives up to their mystery, hm?”
Breakfast was, of course, cold, and she called into question Jeremy’s notion of “cooking,” but it filled her empty stomach in such a comforting way that she doubted she would ever be as happy as she was in that moment. She was freezing, but all of her clothing was as wet as what she was wearing, so she took out a shirt and trousers and hung them in a tree to dry before slipping away. Sarah had dug a hole nearby for the company’s use, which could be covered later so that scouts would not find signs of their presence.
Taya was settling her skirt back into place when she heard a low, animal growl from the bushes nearby. She froze, wary, and took a step back. A small black snout protruded from the bush and sniffed the air, and then it gave another low, dangerous growl. She took another step