Honor Raconteur - Lost Mage (Advent Mage Cycle 06) Page 6

  “Come again?”

  “What you’ll be to her,” Aletha repeated, eyes studying my face. “No, I can see you haven’t given it a thought. Seriously. Men.”

  “Darling, before you go on your usual rant about a man’s denseness, do you mind explaining? With lots of small words, if you will.”

  Even as she rolled her eyes, she was smiling at my dry tone. “Shad, my love, you do remember how hard it is to leave behind everything you’ve ever known, going off with complete strangers, into a world that makes no sense to you?”

  “Ahhh…”

  “She’s only around eight years old and that’s a lot for an adult, much less a child, to handle. Wouldn’t it be better for both you and her to have a firm grasp on what your relationship will be to each other? If she knows what you are to her, she’ll trust you more, but it’ll also give her a foundation. Say, an older brother, or an adopted father, or a crazy uncle.” She paused before adding thoughtfully, “You’d excel in the role of crazy uncle, actually.”

  I preened at the praise. “Why, thank you, darling.”

  “My pleasure,” she returned with a coy bat of the eyelashes.

  I thought about her suggestion and realized that she was right. I’d been so focused on trying to find the girl that I hadn’t really considered what to do with her once I had her. But the feeling of being lost in a new world, surrounded by people I didn’t know…oh, I remembered that vividly. “Which should I offer to be, do you think?”

  “I’d let her decide, actually. It’ll sit better with her if she has the choice.”

  Women hated having decisions made for them. Even miniature ones. I would be wise to take that advice. “Right. I’ll ask her, then.”

  “If at any point, you feel lost about how to raise her, I’d ask Garth for advice.”

  Yup, she’d lost me again. “Uhhh…why Garth? He’s not a father.”

  “No, but he has an amazing example. His father is one of the best I’ve ever seen.”

  One of the reasons why Aletha had joined the military at such a young age was to escape her home life. Her father had been an astonishingly cold and domineering man up until the day he died. I’d met him once, and I didn’t have a favorable impression of him. Aletha hadn’t shed a single tear at his funeral, and after hearing what her childhood was like, I didn’t blame her. So saying this about Arden was high praise indeed. “I’ll do that.”

  Silence fell for a time before Aletha spoke again, voice strained and thin, “You’re so set on moving to Strae, but…you won’t regret leaving?”

  I sensed by the tone in her voice that this was not the moment to joke and so gave her a straight answer. “Of course there will be some regrets. I’ll miss you terribly.”

  Aletha lifted up onto an elbow to look at me. “You mean you’ll miss me cooking for you.”

  “And covering for me when a prank goes wrong,” I continued with a growing smile. “And having a ready sparring partner, not to mention someone willing to sneak into places no sane person would attempt. It’s hard to find someone who matches your own brand of crazy, after all. Life is going to be so much more boring without you.”

  “Thank you.” A beat. “I think. But even knowing that, you’ll readily jump into this?”

  Should I tell her this or not…. Well, Aletha and I didn’t really keep secrets from each other, and it might let her accept my decision more if she understood what I was thinking. “I was actually going to take Garth up on his offer before I even made contact with the Gardener,” I confessed.

  “What?” she demanded sharply.

  “Aletha.” I rolled onto my side to meet her eyes. “I love working with you, and the rest of the Hand, but Ascalon is not home. I’ve tried to make it so, but it just hasn’t ever felt right to me. Chahir is in my blood, I guess. It doesn’t feel right living on foreign soil.”

  She slapped a hand against the ground, looking frustrated, but at the same time, she didn’t really look surprised. More resigned. “Xiaolang said we wouldn’t get to keep you for long. Curse him and that empathic ability of his. He’s never wrong about things like this.”

  So Xiaolang had seen this coming, eh? That didn’t surprise me. The man knew a lot about the people around him but was amazingly good at keeping secrets. I was surprised he’d said as much as he had to her. Well, him already suspecting where my heart was would make it easier to hand in that formal resignation later.

  Speaking of Xiaolang…that enigmatic smile of his when we’d first set out still played in my head. I wasn’t able to make sense of it even now. I had no doubt he sensed something that I needed to know. In fact, that smile put me strongly in mind of the one he’d had back when I’d confronted Garth about his touchy-feely policy with Chatta.

  I blinked at my own thought and played that memory through my head again. Yes, remarkably similar.

  Huh. I looked down at the woman lying next to me with new eyes. Aletha had fallen silent, but the downward curve to her mouth said that despite the answers I had given, she was still upset about this whole thing. Could she…possibly be…?

  I wet dry lips and tried to subtly test my theory. “Have you ever thought about leaving Ascalon?”

  Whatever she’d expected me to say, that hadn’t been it. She gave me a very blank expression. “Leave Ascalon?”

  “I know you’ve lived there most of your life, and you even enlisted when you were sixteen, but…well, you seem to enjoy it whenever we travel into a different country. Have you ever thought of trying to live somewhere else?”

  “I have, actually.” There was an odd note in her voice when she responded, and she gave off the impression that she was carefully choosing her words before speaking. “Recently, I’ve thought about it a great deal.”

  “Is there anything holding you back from trying it?”

  “It’s more like, I don’t have the right motivation to try it. I would need some compelling reason to leave behind the life I’ve built. Besides, if Xiaolang lost both of us at once, I’d better have a very good reason ready before resigning.”

  “Good point.” That was an interesting response. She sounded open to the idea, but not, at the same time. I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t know what to think of any of this, actually, or how to respond to what she’d said, so I fell silent.

  Once again, it was Aletha that broke the silence, although this time she had a teasing smirk on her face. “Shad, there’s something I think you’ve failed to consider about all of this.”

  I’d been thinking about it for a fairly long time, actually. I couldn’t imagine how I’d forgotten any angle of it. “What’s that?”

  “When you become a professor, you’ll have to be a role model to your students.”

  I blinked at her stupidly. “Role model? Me?”

  “That means you’ll have to obey all the rules and set a good example,” she clarified. In this dim lighting, it was hard to tell, but I’d swear a devilish twinkle was in her eye.

  I put a hand to my forehead, groaning. “Perish the thought!”

  “I’d sooner bet that the moon will turn red than you can manage to behave for more than five minutes,” she continued thoughtfully. “I wonder how long it will take before Garth regrets offering you a job.”

  “Ten minutes, surely.”

  “If that.”

  A moment of silence fell before Aletha once again broke it. “Now that I think about it, you as a role model scares the light right out of me. What was Garth thinking?”

  I just laughed.

  How had this happened again?

  With a curse and a cough (the latter being a futile attempt to get fur out of my mouth), I abruptly sat up, dislodging my furry bed partner. Tail gave a disgruntled hiss at being so rudely jarred awake. I glared right back at him. “How did you get inside my blankets?”

  Issuing me a haughty stare, he turned his chin up at me and ignored the question. With an arch of the back, he stretched his way out of the blankets before saunte
ring off, no doubt in search of breakfast.

  I followed his retreat with my eyes. Obviously, drastic measures were called for in order to keep him out of my bed. I would have to be careful about it to avoid inviting revenge.

  Thinking evil thoughts, I went about getting my own breakfast cooked, feeding Cloud, and generally breaking camp. Aletha never laughed aloud, but I knew she was laughing on some level, as she kept having to turn her face away from me, like she was fighting a smile. I aimed a glare at her back. Somehow, in the course of the past nine days, she had succeeded in making some sort of deal with Tail that kept him out of her bedroll. How, I didn’t know, as it certainly didn’t involve food. He was regularly bringing me things to cook for him.

  I kept an eye on her as we worked, still wondering what last night’s conversation really meant. Aletha had been on the verge of telling me something, I felt that to my bones, but what? I could hazard a guess or two, but wasn’t sure. What she had said last night, and Xiaolang’s sideways hint, had me thinking though.

  It made me question for the first time: What did I really want?

  Ever since escaping that crystal, I had more or less been jumping from one situation to the next, trying to find my footing in this strangely familiar world. Perhaps I had developed a bad habit over the past two years of simply reacting. Being the guardian to a Weather Mage would certainly limit my choices for the next decade at least, granted, but I still had room for wants and desires of my own, surely.

  Maybe it was time I really started to think about things instead of simply going where the wind blew me.

  By the time I was saddled up again and ready to go, Tail had reappeared from his venture into the grasslands, licking his mouth clean in obvious satisfaction. Aletha and I mounted up and headed onto the road again.

  As the morning progressed, it became increasingly obvious that we were not on a major highway and were well outside of any city’s boundaries. The road winded about on a whim; it was full of potholes and the grade was far from even. Since it was still better than trying to forge through the briars and brambles in the grasslands, we stayed on it.

  We left the grasslands completely somewhere around noon and abruptly hit forests. In fact, we had so many trees and such around us that I was beginning to doubt Vick-the-fisherman’s directions. The image in my head didn’t have any trees in it whatsoever. Were we really supposed to go this way?

  By midafternoon the mystery solved itself. We left the last of the trees behind and exited out onto a semi-rolling country that seemed to be an endless stretch of grass and outcroppings of dark brown boulders. I took in a deep breath, surprised to finally see the land I had been searching for. When I did, the distinct smell of water and the slight tang of salt filled my nose. The smell of the place, the look of it, the feel of it, clicked into place with me like a missing piece fitting into a puzzle.

  “Aletha.”

  She reined to an abrupt stop, her head whipping around, eyes wide with surprise. But then, I only ever used her name when it was important or somehow serious.

  “What?” she asked sharply.

  “This is it.” My mouth curled in sharp satisfaction. “We’re here.”

  When the Gardener had said that she was ‘lost,’ he hadn’t been kidding. Just where by all the saints and gods was she?!

  I scrubbed the back of my head, beyond frustrated. This was the right area, I was sure of it. It matched the picture that the Gardener had given me. But we’d walked all through this fishing village without even a hint of a girl that looked like our Weather Mage. For that matter, it didn’t look like they even had any girls the right age to be her. So what was going on?

  Aletha sidled up next to me and whispered in my ear, “Maybe this isn’t the right place?”

  I shook my head. “It’s right.” Well, no, not quite. I took a slow turn in the middle of the street, looking all around me. Something didn’t feel right. The people here weren’t welcoming of us, and we were getting a lot of wary looks from the locals, but that was to be expected. What I couldn’t explain was how they shied away from all contact with us. We were on the coast, they couldn’t be that cut off from the rest of the world to where any stranger was an oddity.

  This vibe felt familiar. Wrongly familiar. It reminded me of when we were in Jarrell, and Choi, where the people were so harsh and closed off. I silently motioned Aletha to remount, and she gave me a grim nod of agreement before swinging back onto her bay stud. I climbed back onto Cloud as well, Tail lightning leaping out of my way and onto his usual perch as I swung the stallion around and quickly left the village.

  As soon as we were out of earshot, Aletha let out a loud, pent-up breath. “Phew! I didn’t like the feel of that place at all. You know what it reminded me of? That village in Farless that was executing whole families left and right on the suspicion of having magical ancestors.”

  “Me too,” I agreed grimly. I twisted about in the saddle and gave the village another long look. It was a semi-prosperous place actually, and some would have called it a proper town. It even had a few brick buildings instead of every house made of wood and seastone. This place had the first paved streets I’d seen, although it was crude stonework and cement, nothing fancy. Still, they were doing well enough from outward appearance. So why did it feel so disturbing?

  “Shad, something that Asla mentioned to me a week ago has come to mind.” Aletha inclined her head toward the village. “She said that a lot of the southern villages, the ones far from the capital cities, still harbored Star Order Priests and teachings.”

  I blinked at her. “I thought that was all settled.”

  “Oh, the main priests and ringleaders are all accounted for. But the initiates? The followers? The devotees? There’s no way that you can find all of them. Right now, the Star Order won’t look kindly on anyone they don’t know, especially since Vonlorisen has been borrowing a lot of manpower from Hain in order to hunt them down.”

  True, if looked at from another perspective, Aletha and I could easily be mistaken for a pair of investigators or Hainian informants. I said a few choice words under my breath. “That explains it. But if that’s the case, then our girl mage can’t be anywhere near the town.”

  “She’d have been discovered long ago and killed if she had stayed,” Aletha agreed. “So, she’s well out of the sight of the town. Now, you said she looked like she was about eight or nine?”

  “Right.”

  “So where would a child hide from the scary priests?”

  Now that was the question of the year. “She has to be somewhere in this area,” I said slowly. “The Gardener would not have pointed me here unless he knew she’d be here for me to find. I know he said she was lost, but I think he meant she was lost from the eyes of men.”

  “But lost how?” Aletha threw out a hand in an expressive manner. “I mean, look at this place! It’s all low hills and grass until you reach the coastline! You can’t hide anything out here.”

  “And the coastline is riddled with nooks and crannies, probably quite a few caves.” I shared a speaking look with her. “A girl who grew up in this area would probably know a few of those caves.”

  “It’s the most logical place to start looking.” She rubbed at her chin thoughtfully. “But if you were a priest, wouldn’t you look there too?”

  “Well, sure, as it’s the logical conclusion. But I have the strangest feeling that she hasn’t been caught yet. Maybe she knows the area well enough to hide away from them. Or maybe they’ve assumed she’s drowned, or run farther away.”

  “That’s a lot of maybes,” she pointed out.

  “Don’t I know it. But my gut says to check the coastline.”

  She raised her shoulders in a shrug. “We might as well. We have to start somewhere, and it doesn’t look like anyone in that village will talk to us.”

  Unfortunately true. We could’ve really used a little information right now. Just a hint would have sufficed. I blew out an irritated breath and guided Cl
oud’s head around. “Let’s go spelunking, shall we?”

  We found a switchback, narrow trail that meandered from the top of the rocky shoreline to the equally rocky beach below. With care, we descended, the sea breeze whipping our hair against our faces as we went. It felt good in a way, as it cooled off the intense heat of the summer sun, but it also felt like the salt was stripping a layer of skin off. By the time we reached the beach itself, my clothes were slightly damp from the spray and stuck to me unpleasantly.

  Tail let out a mewl of disgust and snorted, ears flat against his head.

  “Believe me, we don’t like it either,” Aletha informed him, her nose wrinkled. “What is that smell?”

  “Dying-sea-creature, I do believe,” I informed her mock-cheerfully. “Flavored with decaying kelp and rotting-something-or-other, all for your sensual pleasure.”

  “I’ll skip the delight, thanks.”

  Surely our noses would get used to it and we wouldn’t notice it anymore. Until then, I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose as well.

  “I wish our scented handkerchiefs were still working.”

  “You and me both,” I muttered.

  Scent.

  I blinked as the thought hit me. “Tail. You can smell better than humans can, right?”

  He gave me a long look that said, Duh.

  “As strong as a dog?”

  Tail flipped a paw up as if saying, More or less.

  “Then, can you smell if there’s any people down here?”

  “Oh, that’s a good thought!” Aletha chimed in. “Tail, maybe you can find her. Do you sense any human children down here?”

  Tail’s nose lifted and he sniffed into the wind for a long moment. Then he lightly leaped down onto the dark shoals and started off, heading directly west.

  I cackled like a mad hen. I had a Jaunten cat and I knew how to use him….

  If anyone had been watching they’d have thought we were barmy for sure. Two humans leading their horses while following after a white cat as it leaped confidently from one boulder to another, crossing over little tide pools and going around small waterfalls. We had to slow down several times, calling for Tail to wait, as we figured out how to get the horses through the area. Sometimes the beach disappeared completely, leaving only narrow footing in shallow water, so by the time we’d gone any distance at all, Aletha and I were soaked from the thighs down. Tail, unfairly, still managed to find a way to lead us without dipping a single toe into the water.