Free River Secrets by Shannon Hale Page B

person. Never again.”
    Razo’s hands were orange and strange in the firelight. He turned them over, looking for an answer. Something to say. He settled on, “I’m sorry.”
    Enna frowned. “I guess if people suspect me, it’s my own fault.”
    “But, Enna, if you don’t burn, if you won’t let yourself, then what good…I mean, why are you here? Why’d you demand to come when—”
    “During the war, it took me just a few moments to burn down homes that took weeks to build. I ended lives like snapping a twig in two. That can’t be all I am, Razo! There’s got to be ways I can help without… without hurting.”
    “Isi thought it was too dangerous.”
    “She worries too much for me, but she believes I can do it, too.” She bit her lip. “Do you?”
    I want you to,
he thought.
I hope you can. I’ll help you try.
He just nodded. “If it’s not you burning people, that means it’s someone else.”
    “Brilliant,” said Enna. “You always were the brightest sheep boy I knew.”
    Razo gave her a playful knock with his elbow and tried to enjoy the moment, but he had just accused one of his best friends of murdering three people in her sleep.
    Finn was waiting outside the door, his hand on his sword hilt, and Razo greeted him without meeting his eyes.
    “I’m sorry, Finn. I’m a wooden-headed dummy.”
    “Don’t be so hard,” said Finn. “You’re just a straw-brained scarecrow.”
    Razo left hurriedly, claiming an urgent need for a privy, and went to find Talone on his own. It frightened him a bit to face his captain. What could he possibly do to earn his place among Bayern’s Own after being so wrong about Enna?
    He’d turned a corner in the quiet corridor when he saw Tumas. Razo cursed into his teeth, wishing Finn and Enna would come this way, and in a hurry. He started to turn back, but Tumas grabbed his shoulder.
    “Well, if it isn’t the knee biter,” Tumas said in his stuffed-nose whine. “Care for a rematch? Come on, right now, you with a sword and me with a feather.”
    Razo kept his eyes down, as he would if running into a Forest wolf. He stepped to the side, and Tumas followed, blocking his way.
    “Don’t think I forgot how you pushed my friend Hemar into scratching you. He didn’t deserve a slow death in a desert.”
    From behind a closed door came muffled voices laughing, and Razo let himself believe they were laughing at him, too. He took those laughs like punches, absorbing their impact, feeling the ache they left behind. He sidestepped again, and Tumas blocked.
    “If you wanted to dance, you could’ve asked,” said Razo, eyes still down.
    “Bayern scum.” Tumas glanced around as if afraid that others might come this way any moment, and he let Razo sidle by.
    Razo was going to let it go, he should have let it go, but he was so tired of rolling over for the bullies, belly up like a puppy. As he walked away, he said, “You still sore that a Bayern boy whipped you with a wooden sword? Pathetic.”
    The strike hit Razo’s back. A fist? A boot? He crunched to the floor, his breath in knots. Tumas picked him up by his tunic and yanked him into a dark room.
    “Pathetic?” said Tumas.
    A punch to the belly. A deep, groaning kind of pain.
    “Pathetic?” said Tumas.
    A jab to the nose. A shattering pain, piercing, blinding.
    Razo’s voice was caged—he could no more yell for help than he could stop the low moaning in his gullet. He thought he’d been knocked around enough by his brothers to take any good pummeling, but there was murder behind Tumas’s strikes that left Razo breathless. He tumbled to his feet, pitching about, desperate to hit back before the next blow killed him. Laughter rumbled through the walls, and a single set of footsteps passed by the door.
    Tumas spat a curse. “This is not over,” he said.
    It was many dizzying moments before Razo realized that he was alone, slumped against a wall in a dim room, and, if the pain was any indication, still