Warrior's Touch (Deadly Touch book 2)

Turhmos didn’t make a habit of sending carts this close to the border; that much was clear.

Jonas walked, leaving Chino to follow untethered, breaking off dead branches, cutting back dense, dead clumps of grasses and ferns, and hurling rocks out of the way. The most cart-friendly path didn’t go near the clearing with the Turhmos bodies, so at least no one else needed to think about that. All Jonas wanted them focused on was keeping moving, letting the horses and riders dry a bit before they stopped for the night. Path-clearing was turning out to be a smart choice as, even in the wintry chill, he was breaking a sweat. Llew was bundled in several layers of blankets, but at least she hadn’t got too wet on the crossing. Braph had pulled his leather coat back on, but he still looked cold.

All going well, they were only perhaps a week from Llew’s tree.

The airy silence seemed to drive the words from their own tongues as they pushed on through. The state of the landscape was a harsh reminder of why the rest of the world loathed what Llew was.

The forest was dead, so at least they had plenty of firewood to choose from. In a large clearing, they built a good, hot fire and even the horses stood close, absorbing the heat into their hides.

Jonas took first watch, waking Hisham some hours later. He’d laid his own bedroll on the cart beside Llew. She stirred enough to press herself into him and make him feel welcome but, mercifully, she didn’t wake. She still had a lot of healing to do.

Llew woke still in Turhmos and still in pain if she moved the wrong way. But Jonas lay beside her, which was nice, even if they had two layers of bedroll between them. He had kept his gloves on, too. It was a good idea in the overnight and early morning chill, but of course the risk to his life when he lay beside her was very real. A flash of her pa’s stiff body came to mind, and Llew didn’t resent the gloves so much.

Braph was close to useless with his one arm. That fact became glaringly clear now they were without their Quaven escort. He couldn’t fit tack and he could barely help with the cooking, leaving Jonas and Hisham to do all the work of preparing breakfast and breaking camp. He hadn’t had to go on watch, either, because he simply couldn’t be trusted.

He stayed bundled in his bedroll until breakfast was ready and stretched out to absorb the morning sun while Jonas and Hisham cleaned away the dishes and saddled the horses.

Llew had almost forgotten her hatred of him as they’d made their way from Taither to the border. Surrounded by Karan soldiers, he had just been one of many potential threats. But now, with Hisham and Jonas busy, it was just Braph and Llew. She didn’t like it.

He peered at her from the corner of his eye. She didn’t look away. Any time she was alone with him, she would not let him out of her sight.

“You think I have a death wish?” He closed his eyes again, turned his head to receive the full force of the weak, patchy sun.

“That’s right.” She let her glee at his caution curl her lips. “Come near me and I will kill you if Jonas doesn’t get to you first.”

Braph chuckled. “You fear me getting close to you, and yet it’s you who can kill everything for miles, just by placing a bare foot on the ground. Or a single finger.” He looked at her again. “Oh, you’re perfectly safe. No one can touch you.” His smile was subtle, but spoke volumes. Thought Llew and Jonas’s situation was hilarious, did he?

Llew glared at him.

Braph sat up and brought his feet under him to stand, and Llew’s entire body tensed with a desire to run. He walked towards her, and she scrabbled back on the cart until she reached the edge. Her belly was healed enough she could swing off the back and run, but she remembered all too well her fall on the Quaven side of the river. It would only take one wrong footfall.

“You think me a monster, don’t you?” He rested his hand on the cart floor.

“Think? I know.”

Braph puffed out a chuckle at that, so like Jonas’s laugh.

“He and I aren’t all that different,” he continued. “Do you know what divides us?”

Llew could think of a dozen things Braph had done that Jonas would never do, and vice versa; but held her tongue, curious what Braph’s theory might be.

“Love, and our experience, our knowledge of it,” Braph said.

Llew listened, prepared to give him the benefit of her ears while he tried to make excuses for himself. Wasn’t as if she had a choice.

“Fact is, he doesn’t even know what love is,” Braph continued, and Llew nearly laughed out loud. But laughing would hurt.

“And you do?”

“Do you know when the seeds for our belief in love get planted?”

He was serious. Llew swallowed, as fascinated by the ravings of a madman as she might be to watch a poisonous spider crawl across a sleeping body.

“It’s in the way our parents dote on us. Not just us, each other. In those early years when they show us there is no safer place to fall than their arms.” Braph turned to the forest, his eyes seeing something only he could see. “I knew love because my parents loved each other, and my mother loved me. I can barely remember her.” He looked at Llew again. “She died when I was little over three years, but I remember how I felt in those arms, the miracle of those kisses. I don’t blame my sister for killing her.” He returned to his reverie. “A babe can’t help the circumstances of its birth, but I’ll never forget the change in that house the day Aris brought Jonas’s mother to meet our father. It was a match made for a purpose, and they served their purpose. And that woman was proud of their creation. She talked of what a great hero he would be, how strong, how fast, how powerful. Sometimes, as she told Jonas how great he would one day be, she would look up at our father and see before her the man she wanted her son to be, and for a moment, she felt something for him. I remembered my mother looking at him like that. But my mother had never needed to talk herself into it.” He peered at her again, his eyes boring into her. “Jonas has never known love for simply being, only for being Syakaran. What do you think—” He leaned his elbow on the cart. “—would happen if that were taken away? What would Quaver think of him then?”

He was talking nonsense. And yet, a chill ran down her spine.

“How could it be taken away?”

Braph shrugged, but it was with nonchalance, not ignorance. “Aris lost his at one time.”

“Hey!” Jonas’s shout rang across the clearing and Braph stood again, taking a step back from the cart and Llew.

Jonas splayed his hands. What’s going on? Llew waved him off. She was fine. He turned back to his work slowly, letting his doubt linger on Braph until the last moment.

Braph returned his attention to Llew.

“So protective,” he said. “At least you know he’s got that right. But, while Jonas grew into the fighting machine he is, I lived love every day.”

He was talking about her mother. Llew let all the disgust she felt show in the look she gave him. “You don’t keep those you love in chains.”

Braph’s face darkened. “Don’t presume to judge what I have with Orinia.”

“Listen to yourself! You love her because of what you can get from her, because she’s Syaenuk. You spout off about real love when you won’t even take your own advice.”

He blinked slowly. “And here I thought we were sharing a moment.”

“I wouldn’t share anything with you.”

“You already have.”

Llew redoubled her efforts, glaring every ounce of hatred she had for the man, aiming directly for his soul. He had achieved what Llew suspected his goal had been. He’d proved her words were little more than bravado. She had hoped saying the words would make them true. Come near me and I will kill you. Come near me and I will kill you. But even spoken, they were insubstantial. Fact was, when it came to Braph, her skin crawled so bad she could never bring herself to touch him. Not even to kill him.

“Braph.” Jonas stalked up behind his brother. “Mount up. We’re about to go.”

Braph gave a small bow. “As you wish.” With a wink over his shoulder, he headed to his horse.

“What was that about?” Jonas took Braph’s place by the cart.

“Nothing.”

“You looked like you were handlin’ it. I didn’t want to break it up if you were...” He shrugged bashfully. “You know, if you were gettin’ on.”

“Braph and I will never get on.” She kept her voice light.

Jonas opened his mouth to speak, realized, perhaps, that it was futile, nodded, and it was time to move deeper into Turhmos.

They avoided towns for fear people might recognize the three Kara. Braph had been tolerated within Turhmos for many years, but he hadn’t made a habit of getting out much. Most small town Turhmosians wouldn’t know who he was, and there was every chance that simply his Karan-ness could get him, and the rest of them, in trouble. As far as the group knew, Turhmos believed Jonas dead, so as long as he didn’t go around advertising that wasn’t the case, he should be safe. His short hair would help with that. Llew had yet to see them, but Hisham had informed her of the many likenesses of Jonas available to fans of the Great Syakaran of Quaver – a term that always earned a derisive head shake from Jonas. To date, all images depicted him with his trademark long hair and wide-brimmed hat. At least a little of his tattoo was usually visible, too, depending on who the intended audience was.

“My brother, the model of male perfection,” Braph commented in the middle of such a discussion around an evening’s campfire.

“You weren’t so bad yourself before you started alterin’ yourself,” said Jonas. “I reckon I recall a few shenanigans when we was young, before steel caught your eye.”

“Well, you were still so young, and I was the next best thing,” Braph said with a hint of contempt. “Actually, I seem to recall a certain uncle showing some interest in you. You weren’t too young for him.”

Jonas fixed Braph with a warning look. He’d mentioned an incident once before, so Braph wasn’t lying. “Nothin’ happened. He was just an asshole alpha-type feelin’ threatened by a kid not yet come full into his strength. You think I let that slide?”

Braph eased back, his usual smug smile teasing his lips.

“Why did you bring that up?” Llew asked.

“Hm?” Braph turned to her, eyebrows raised and a lazy look in his eye, almost as if he didn’t know what she was talking about.

“You think we brought you along as a voice of reason? Like we need someone to keep our feet on the ground? Maybe it’s an older brother’s job to keep his little brother humble, but that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to help us figure out what to do about Aris. And I reckon it’s about time you stopped stirring and came through on your part of the bargain.” She sat back, realizing she’d leaned towards Braph during that little speech. Satisfied as she was in finding the strength to speak up to him, being near him still gave her sickening chills.

Braph’s gaze traveled over her with a shade of something approaching respect.

“Very well.” He stood and brushed the crumbs of his dinner from his leather. “I had better sleep on it.”

Aris hadn’t slept a wink when Karlani returned.

“No sign of it,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll reach it today, either.”

“You don’t think?”

“I swept out fifteen miles ahead, even zigzagged a little here and there.” She lay down beside him, drawing her own bedroll over her long body, perching herself up on one elbow. “There is no white tree within a day’s travel at the rate they’re going.”

“There better not be.”

Karlani smiled. “Such faith.” She rolled on her back and pulled the woolen cover up to her throat. “But I am spent. All this running had better mean a decent sleep. I don’t do forest floors.”

Aris pushed back his bedroll and slid a hand inside hers. “Not too spent, I hope. There’s something about the thought of pounding you into the forest floor that is very appealing.”

“Well, I’ve just run thirty-some miles. Just so long as you don’t mind doing all the work.”

“Oh, I don’t mind.” Aris peeled back Karlani’s cover and moved over her.

One thing Llew noticed as they traveled across Turhmos was that the country was not obviously preparing for war. They had all been certain that news of Jonas’s demise weeks earlier would have spread and that Turhmos would see it as an opportunity to attack Quaver, possibly destroying it for good. And, if that hadn’t worked, then surely news of Aris running across their country with a vendetta against Aenuks would stir something. It would be so easy to blame Quaver for Aris.

“Don’t look at me,” said Braph when they passed close by a sleepy Turhmosian town and the topic was once more raised. “What makes you think I know anything about the military?”

“We noticed there weren’t any Aenuks in the patrols we ran into last time,” Hisham said. “Maybe they’re really suffering. A Turhmos army without many Aenuks against the Quaven army with all our Kara? They’d have no chance. Maybe there really is a chance for peace between us.”

“Is that how it starts?” Llew asked. “Quaver waits around for Turhmos to decide it’s strong enough to start a fight?”

Hisham had the good humor to laugh a little at that. “I don’t know about Turhmos, but us Quavens have been wearying of the fight for a while, now. We don’t go looking to start anything anymore.”

“Why do they fight, anyway?” Llew asked. “I mean, why did it all start?”

“In Quaver, we’re taught that Aenuks used to sweep through the land, killing vast areas of forest and field.” Hisham smiled wryly at her. “They taught us it was our duty to protect the world from Aenuks and their destruction.”

“But you said it was Quaver that cut down all the Ajnai trees. Aenuks wouldn’t have done that kind of damage while they had the trees. So why did you cut down the trees?”

“To be honest, I don’t know.”

“Our history lessons get murky before then.” Jonas turned Chino to face the cart, signaling for them all to stop.

“No wonder,” said Llew. “Do you think the Quaven leadership realized their mistake?”

“No doubt,” said Hisham. “But it’s better to keep forging on, convincing yourself you’re right than admit you’ve made a mistake, right?”

“I still don’t understand why Quaver would want the trees destroyed. As far as I can tell they do nothing but good; allow Aenuks to heal others without damaging anything or anyone and gave us good weapons against the Immortals... Oh.”

Braph smirked at her from where he sat behind Jonas. She glared at him. She hated the way he behaved as if he had it all figured out before anyone else. She was sure the realization was new to him, too. How dare he look at her like she was slow? How dare he even look at her?

Hisham and Jonas’s mouths hung half open, both realizing what she had concluded. Quaver had been duped.

“We fell for it…” Hisham mused. “We’re all idiots.”

Jonas said nothing; turned Chino and rode on.

“You couldn’t have known,” Llew said when they paused for a rest and something to eat about an hour later. “I don’t care how well you think you were meant to know Aris. No one could have guessed he’s however old.”

“Someone must’ve known somethin’,” he said. “People don’t live and live and never age. How come no one saw it before?”

Llew shrugged. “I s’pose it helps he’s already middle-aged. It’s like people get to a certain point, and then they just look the same, pretty much until right before they die.”

Jonas laughed. “You’re not wrong,” he said. “And I suppose he would’ve had enough chances to reinvent himself. I wonder how many times he faked his own death.”

“That, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“Somethin’ tells me the next time Aris and me see each other we won’t be doin’ much talkin’.”

“No. I guess you won’t.”

They never talked past the point that Jonas and Aris would one day stand face-to-face as enemies. It was bad enough Aris had betrayed them all, but the fact was, as far as they all knew, Jonas would face him as the underdog.

A little over a week later, Llew’s excitement grew as certain trees and fields became familiar. So much had happened in this part of Turhmos, she could never forget this forest here, or that farmhouse over there. She told Jonas and he urged them onward, as fast as Llew could manage and later into the evenings.

Coming around to the edge of one forest, the Ajnai tree came into view. Aris was already there.