hold,” Tauran said, hissing as he rubbed a biting bug from its chosen spot under his left eye.
“Let’s hope so,” Kalai murmured.
Arrow had long since taken to the skies, soaring just under the clouds where the bugs couldn’t reach him. Kalai longed to join him, but it wouldn’t be fair for Tauran and Leyra stuck on the ground, despite Tauran having already made the suggestion.
At least they hadn’t seen any monstrous predators yet, short of the six-gilled marsh skipper Tauran had speared with his knife and hung from his saddle. Tauran had tried to convince him it’d be delicious once properly grilled, but Kalai still hadn’t decided if he would take the chance.
The midday reprieve was far too brief.
They made camp on a dry stretch of land once the sun began to sink and the mosquitoes returned full force. To Kalai’s delight, Tauran had packed the tarp from the wagon and used it to build a tent that would keep them at least mostly bug-free. It wasn’t the sturdiest construction Kalai had seen, especially when they also had to fit Leyra inside, and a flick of her wing kept uprooting one of the corners from the loose soil. Leyra’s legs and belly were covered in mud, like the horses’. So were their boots, despite spending most of the day in the saddle.
As they sat side by side with their heads ducked, Kalai tried not to think about the two weeks they still had ahead of them, traversing the wet, humid, foggy, bug-filled landscape. Already, he was exhausted. What if he couldn’t keep up? The familiar fear of being a burden left a tight knot in his stomach.
His thoughts were interrupted by Tauran shifting toward the tent flaps. When he reached for them, Kalai stopped him with a hand on his elbow.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside,” Tauran said. “To keep watch.”
“You’ve been awake all day.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Your leg’s been bothering you. You need sleep as much as I do.”
“My leg’s always bothering me,” Tauran said and shrugged.
“Well, maybe we can help that.” Kalai held out his hands, palms up.
Tauran looked at them for a long moment.
“Arrow can keep watch. He’s up there, anyway,” Kalai said. “Not everything has to be your responsibility, you know.”
Tauran sighed and sank back onto the bedroll beside Kalai. He remained tense, and Kalai had a feeling watch duty wasn’t truly what bothered him. He opened his mouth to ask, to knock at least lightly against the gates Tauran kept so firmly shut, but the cowardly side of him won out once more. Instead he said, “Roll up your trouser leg.”
Tauran managed to expose his leg as far as above the knee which Kalai supposed would have to do, since he wasn’t about to ask Tauran to undress in this land of nasty bugs.
Kalai settled in as comfortable a position as he could, and placed both hands above Tauran’s knee, rubbing slow circles into the bulk of muscle there. Without oil, his hands couldn’t slide properly, but it was better than nothing.
“If I didn’t trust Emilian to be the most level-headed and reasonable person I’ve ever met,” Tauran said, “I’d have thought they were taking the piss sending us all the way out here.”
“They technically didn’t send us anywhere,” Kalai reminded him. “All that note said was ‘answers’. That could be anything. We never got the chance to ask.”
Leyra shifted, resting her half-stretched wing against Kalai’s back.
“At least we put some distance between us and Falka,” Tauran said, although he didn’t sound happy about it. When he blinked, he was slow to open his eyes again.
Kalai discreetly let go of Tauran’s leg with one hand and shifted the bag of clothes toward him. Tauran rested his head on it. Slowly, he softened under Kalai’s hands.
“You really are used to handling everything on your own, aren’t you?” Kalai asked, quietly. He stroked down the cool skin of Tauran’s lower leg, pressing his thumbs into the side of his calf where the scarred skin was tight.
Tauran frowned at the tarp. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
Kalai almost didn’t catch a startled laugh of disbelief in time. “You’re not.”
Tauran’s eyes flicked back to him, the smallest of smiles tugging at his lips. He closed his eyes, and Kalai turned his attention back to his leg.
Tauran was so capable, so strong. It was beyond Kalai how he could ever consider himself a burden to anybody. Kalai, on the other hand, with his stupid addiction and his useless survival skills... How he’d