Free Thornlost (Book 3) by Melanie Rawn Page A

They’d travel in summer and autumn from now on, and spend winters in their own warm beds at home.
    Aware that any thought of who would be in his own warmbed at home was dangerous when it would be a fortnight before he saw her again, he scooted his chair closer to the fold-down table and rummaged in a drawer for a deck of cards. Cocking a hopeful eyebrow at Jeska, he riffled the cards—just as a wheel bumped over a particularly emphatic rut in the road. The cards went flying all over the wagon.
    “Oh, well done!” Cade snapped.
    “It wasn’t my fault!”
    “It never is.”
    “What’s
that
s’posed to mean?”
    “You figure it out!”
    “I’m the stupid one, remember? You’re the smart one, with all the books and writing and deep profound thoughts and Elsewhens and—”
    Rafe growled. Mieka reached over to the little glass knob hanging from a wire and pulled it, alerting Yazz with the tinkling of a bell that they wanted to stop.
    A roar came through the wooden walls. “Five miles!”
    Mieka rang the bell again, more insistently this time.
    “Use yer pisspot!” Yazz bellowed.
    “Love to,” Cade snarled at Mieka. “Right over your head!”
    “Fuck you!” Mieka slid from behind the table, flung open the back door, and scrambled up the side ladder to the roof, ignoring alarmed shouts and the frantic ringing of the little bell. It was a slow crawl to the coachman’s bench, windy but not especially dangerous if he was careful with the railings to which baggage could be secured for long journeys. He settled beside the unstartled Yazz, folded his arms across his chest, and glowered at the splendid spring afternoon.
    A mile or so passed in silence. At last Yazz cleared his throat with a sound like a landslide. “Temperish, eh?”
    “He’s always like that.”
    “Not hisself, Miek. You.”
    “Me!”
    Yazz nodded his massive head. Mieka leaned back and tilted his face up to get a look at the Giant. Craning his neck was the only way he ever saw his friend’s expression; standing, his eyes were about on a level with Yazz’s elbow. The amused tolerance quirking that wide mouth briefly irritated him. But then he sighed and relented.
    “He and me, we always know just the wrong thing to say to each other.”
    “Happens thatwise.”
    “But it’s kind of the only time I can be sure what he’s feeling, y’know? Every other while, he’s a step or two back from everything and everybody.” He raked the hair from his face, enjoying the breeze. “It was more fun last year, and the year before, traveling to Trials with the Shadowshapers. At least around that lot, he talks and laughs and all that.”
    “Good friends, them.”
    “The best, outside the four of us.” Traveling together had been pleasanter for the Shadowshapers, too, because Vered and Rauel rarely sniped at each other when other people were present. Best, though, was that Cade exerted himself to actual conversation. “There’s times when I think we know each other too well, him and me, but—it’s like, I can always tell when he’s lying, but as for the rest—”
    Yazz ruminated on this for a time. Then, with another nod, he asked, “Black Lightning’s show at Trials?”
    It took a moment to work out what Yazz meant. Then he gave a bark of laughter. “I’ll give it a try, shall I? Tell him we ought to go, find out what the competition’s doing these days. Get an honest reaction from him, at least.”
    “Competition,” Yazz echoed in a musing tone that told Mieka he’d understood the Giant’s implication correctly. “Won’t like that much, hisself won’t.”
    Not by half, Mieka agreed silently. Not that anybody but the Shadowshapers could be considered competition for Touchstone. But irritation would at least get Cayden to the theater. Not that it would make any difference, he reflected sourly. The more relentlessly Black fucking Lightning bludgeoned with sensation and emotion, the more unyielding Cade’s resistance to it would