and sat. “Oh, not long. A few months, maybe?” Waelyn chortled and flourished a cloth napkin into his lap. “I don’t think the Katrosi miss this place.”
Still, they are disturbingly close to Jadenvive. Ryon reached for a piece of flatbread. “You must have built this pyramid very quickly then.” He nodded to the four empty chairs. “And had some help.”
“Yeah, the others did all the work,” Waelyn said.
Sylendrin snorted through his tea and set his glass down with a loud clack. “You’re not funny, old man!”
Waelyn snickered. “Sylendrin is our architect. That’s why he’s so worthless now that he doesn’t have anything to do.”
“I can do plenty of things.” Sylendrin picked up his fork and furrowed his brow at it. Two outer prongs wilted downward in graceful swoops, the air around them warbling in the sudden heat. Sylendrin picked up his knife and used it to press the upright middle prongs together. Metal hissed as the two bottom edges of the fork melted downwards, then froze in place with frost crystals decorating their edges.
Sylendrin handed his creation, which suddenly looked like a tall, slender woman in mid-dance, out to Kira. Her mouth fell open as she reached out with hesitant fingers.
“It won’t burn you.” Sylendrin leaned further across the table until Kira took it with awe-filled eyes. “Amazing,” she whispered.
“Did you ruin another fork?” Waelyn yelled.
“Any Phoeran elementalist can do that,” Ryon grumbled. He sliced into his flatbread and stuffed a forkful of meat inside. This sludge puddle was pushing every button he could think of.
“On the contrary, it takes a master.” Sylendrin smiled out of the corner of his eye, and Ryon did his best to ignore it. “I suppose you can do better.”
As Waelyn reprimanded Sylendrin about his treatment of silverware, Ryon glanced at Kira’s empty plate. “Never had pitas before?”
Kira blinked away from the fork-turned-figurine. “Oh, um, no.” She looked at Ryon’s plate, and he held up his stuffed flatbread for her to see. She bowed her head and took a small loaf, then cautiously cut it open with her knife.
“So what are these others out doing?” Ryon asked. He took another drink of tea and swallowed hard. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. Or maybe sitting still was easing his pain.
“They’re out hunting,” Waelyn said through a mouthful of yellow peppers. “Be back soon.”
Ryon watched Kira gingerly slip vegetables into her flatbread. An architect among silk traders doesn’t sound right. “And what other kind of specialties do they have?”
“Well, we’re all just scavengers now.” Waelyn scratched his beard, leaving a drop of juice to speckle in the soft light from the windows. “But one guy’s an herbalist, one’s a tanner, one of them’s good for nothing but muscle.”
“An herbalist?” Kira said. “I’ve been looking for an herbal remedy for my mother. She’s very sick.”
Waelyn’s thick silver brows furrowed. “I dabble a little myself. What kind of sickness has she got?”
“I don’t know. The doctors in Navarro can’t figure it out.” Kira’s face fell. “She’s just become more and more tired and pale. She doesn’t want to eat, but when she does, she has problems digesting. She used to work hard, but she seems to have lost her strength. She tries to help around the ranch but normally ends up giving up and just staring at the sky.”
How terrible to watch a parent wither away like that. Ryon took another mouthful of savory flavors. At least Kira would get to tell her mother goodbye before she passed. The Emberhawk assassins hadn’t given Ryon the same courtesy with his father.
“Hmmm.” Waelyn tapped his fork on the edge of his plate. “Those are pretty generic symptoms, I’m afraid. I’m not sure what it could be, but perhaps our herbalist could treat the symptoms, at least. Lysander knows every species in this place.”
Ryon nearly choked on his last bite. He coughed and took a long swig of tea to force the food down his throat. “Lysander? As in the rightful king of the Emberhawk?”
“Don’t let the queen hear you say that,” Sylendrin murmured. “Lysander abdicated the throne, and it turned out to be for the best when he lost his hearing. The tribe would not have stood for a weak leader.”
Anger flashed like a solar flare in Ryon’s chest. The fact that his cousin had fallen deaf had no connection to his ability to lead. But more importantly, Lysander’s involvement with this group cemented the fact that they were up to no good.
His cousin wasn’t an herbalist just because