craned to look at her with new respect. “You escaped the wizard…and you’re going back to kill him? That’s…kinda cool, actually.”
Zaara gave an unwilling chuckle. “I wish. If I’d escaped, I would know what was in that tower. No, I…ran away.” When she caught sight of his frown, she explained, “To kill the wizard.”
“Then why does your father think you were kidnapped?”
“He doesn’t but he’s embarrassed because I ran off.” She shrugged, a motion that yanked the rope on Justin’s arms and made him hiss with pain. “If he says I went to fight Sephith, people will ask why he didn’t send anyone with me. But if he says I ran away, they’ll ask why. So he’s trying to get adventurers to help without telling them what’s going on.” She blew out an annoyed breath. “Let me tell you that you don’t know how little you should trust some men until you hear them discussing how a woman should repay them for being rescued. They had no idea I was listening when they said it.”
“What did they say when you told them?” He was interested but could feel his cheeks burning with the knowledge that he might have said something similar.
“I didn’t,” Zaara said. “I was going to ask their help and tell them what I knew of Sephith, but when I heard that, I didn’t. And the next day, they went off to the tower and got themselves killed. I feel kind of bad about that one.”
“Well…they did go into the tower,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but I could have helped and I didn’t.”
“They didn’t ask.” He shrugged, then paused. “I would have gotten killed, wouldn’t I?”
“Cheer up,” Zaara told him. “You still might.”
That surprised a laugh out of him. The more she spoke, the more he was curious about her. “Why did you do it? Run away, I mean.”
The three members of the PIVOT team were hard at work when DuBois chuckled quietly. Nick looked up from his financial spreadsheets as the doctor leaned closer to the screen with another low laugh.
“Here we go,” the man said. He stretched his hand sideways without looking, picked up a new bag of popcorn, and opened it with his gaze fixed on the monitor. As he watched the readouts on the screen, he began to eat.
Jacob watched him for a moment, put another tick on the popcorn consumption chart, and went back to his schematics.
Justin listened as Zaara explained her history. Her father had wanted her to marry well—perhaps go to the city and marry a lord—so he had paid for every type of tutor he could think of. She knew how to play a lyre and a harpsichord, could speak three languages, had been taught to keep household accounts, could recite several entire epic poems by heart, and knew every court dance.
These things, however, had bored her. Although she enjoyed dancing, she had convinced the instructor to teach her tumbling as well. When her mathematics tutor ran out of accounting to teach her, she had asked the woman to teach her cryptography.
On her own, she had studied magic, thinking she might someday find a way to rid the nearby valley of the drifting embers. Although she had never gotten far enough to do that, she was able to do several spells, as Justin had seen. She had even bribed the blacksmith to give her an old, battered knife so that she could study how to wield daggers from one of the books in her father’s library.
As the daughter of the town’s mayor, Zaara had the freedom to do almost anything she wanted, but when her father found out about the lessons, he put a stop to them. Although Yannick, her elder brother, was allowed to continue his studies, she was expected to confine herself to ladylike pursuits.
When news of Sephith’s triumph had come to Riverbend, she was only twelve. Wizard duels were few and far between but usually, a wizard did not try to take over additional territories, so no one worried very much. There were scattered reports of Sephith’s cruelty, but it had only been earlier that year when word reached Riverbend of the abductions.
Yannick and Zaara had both begged their father to send someone to help East Newbrook. Unlike the villagers there, he could send word to one of the cities. He refused to help, however. Finally, he grudgingly posted a sign for an adventurer, but none of those sent ever returned.