Anna Stephens - Godblind

‘You ready?’ he asked when he’d finished his tea, and she drank the rest of hers and stowed the bowls. She hefted the tent on to her shoulders and Dom adjusted it, teasing one corner out of the ties to hang down to her calves and keep off the worst of the wind. They hadn’t even had time to find her a coat before they’d left. Before they’d been banished. He killed the fire, buckled on his sword and headed east. Rillirin limped along behind him, bent slightly beneath the tent but unprotesting, dogging his heels like a whipped cur.

They walked all day, reaching the edge of the Western Plain by late afternoon. The sun was already fading when they made camp. Rillirin was pinched with cold and Dom built up the fire, then put out a hand to stay her. ‘Get warm, lass, I’ll do the rest.’

He could see her instinct to obey warring with her fear that he would punish her for laziness, so he threw her the pigeons he’d brought down with his sling. ‘Pluck these, will you?’

She hunched by the fire, working quickly and piling the feathers in her lap. When she was done and the tent was up, she held up the handfuls of down. Dom raised an eyebrow. ‘No thanks.’ He put his head on one side, curious. ‘You keep them,’ he said.

Her eyes flickered to his face and away; then she carefully separated the feathers in half, took off her boots and stuffed her socks with them. He could see the tiniest smile graze her lips as her toes warmed up.

‘Clever,’ he said approvingly. The silence stretched between them as the pigeons roasted in the top flames and chestnuts cooked in the coals. Dom turned his back to the fire and looked up at the sky, tracing the constellations sprayed across the velvet of the night. His fingers tapped against his vambrace and he hummed softly. ‘Would you like to talk?’ he asked.

There was no response so he turned back and she looked away hurriedly. ‘Of course, honoured. What do you want to talk about?’

‘No,’ he said as he poked his knife into a pigeon, ‘do you want to talk? You have the choice.’

‘Of course, honoured,’ she said again.

‘All right. What do you want to talk about?’ he pressed.

‘Whatever you desire, honoured.’

‘Please stop calling me that, lass. It’s a Mireces term and neither of us is Mireces.’ He pulled the pigeons off the spit and put one in her bowl, juggled chestnuts from the fire and split them evenly. ‘Here you are. All right, can you tell me your name?’

She was quiet, staring at the food, and for a second he thought she was praying. Who to? Had she fooled them all? Was she praying to the Red Gods? Then she looked up and there was a wet sheen to her eyes. ‘Rillirin Fisher,’ she whispered and he knew it had been a long time since anyone had asked or cared.

‘Rillirin Fisher,’ he repeated. ‘That’s a beautiful name. Rillirin. Rill.’

‘Not Rill,’ she snapped; then she cringed. ‘Forgive me, honoured, I spoke wrong.’

The vehemence, the sudden sick expression, told him that Rill was associated with some bad memories. ‘I apologise,’ he said formally, ‘Rillirin. And I’m Dom Templeson. I know I’ve told you that before, but now we’re properly introduced. We’ll be at Watchtown tomorrow. Stay close to me, all right? It’s our town, a Watcher and Wolf town. People might be a little … hostile.’

She paused with the pigeon’s leg in one hand, her eyes wide, fingers suddenly white.

‘But you’re under my protection and I’ll keep you safe,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to visit my mother – my adopted mother. She’s high priestess at the temple of the Dancer and Fox God. She can cleanse you, if you want it.’

He concentrated on eating, pretending he couldn’t hear the muffled hitches in her breathing, the sniffs as she fought tears. How desperate for cleansing would I be after nine years in the hands of Mireces? His eyes drifted to the vambrace on his right arm and what it concealed, and then he turned his thoughts carefully in another direction, like a parent steering a recalcitrant toddler away from danger.

‘And Liris? Can you tell me why you killed him?’ he asked as he sucked the meat from the last of the bones.

The silence stretched even longer this time and she dropped the chestnut she was holding back into her bowl. ‘He was’ – Rillirin’s hand rose to her throat, fell back into her lap – ‘he was going to rape me. He still had his dagger in his belt, so I, you know …’ She made vague stabbing gestures and then stuck her hands in her armpits and hunched over, nostrils flaring.

Dom wiped grease from his mouth and studied her. ‘That took real courage, Rillirin,’ he said, ‘to resist him like that. To keep yourself safe.’ Her mouth twisted and he knew that it was probably the only time she’d managed to fend him off. Still, it was the last time he’d ever try, she’d made sure of that.

Yes, and her actions led to dozens of Wolf deaths.

She wasn’t to know that.

But I could’ve. I could’ve known that, if I’d pushed, if I hadn’t wasted those two days in the village on feeding her, making her feel safe, I could have saved us all.

Dom stared into the flames, almost daring the knowing to come. Do I want to be that man? he asked himself. Someone who’d frighten a woman for his own gain? Wouldn’t that make me another Liris to her?

Dom grunted, blinked, looked away. He finished the pigeon.

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