Free The Instruments of Control by Craig Schaefer

her.”
    Werner shrugged. He didn’t make eye contact.
    “I took her under my wing. Tried to set her on a good path. Trying to keep her safe, that’s all. I just want her to be safe and happy.”
    “And that’s why you’re afraid of what’s waiting at the end of this journey.”
    Now he looked at her.
    “If we find the last knights of the Autumn Lance,” she said, musing aloud, “Mari’s dream will come into hard contact with reality, perhaps shattering it. And shattering her. Or, here’s a possibility, perhaps they’ll be everything she hoped and prayed for. And she’ll join them. Achieving her dream means leaving you behind. Which of these two possibilities is the one keeping you up at night?”
    “The first one,” Werner snapped. “Obviously.”
    “Right.” A faint smile hid at the corners of Nessa’s mouth. “Obviously.”
    Werner was quietly thankful when Nessa wandered off. Then he had time to contemplate her question, and suddenly he wanted to be distracted again.
    Mari was a fast hand with a knife, and she had two fat trout cleaned and filleted in no time. As darkness fell over the forest, the three travelers sat around a crackling fire and cooked Mari’s catch on the ends of sharpened branches.
    “I’ll put on some tea,” Werner told Mari, pushing himself to his feet and ambling toward the wagon. “Something to help you sleep.”
    Crouched at the stream’s edge and filling their kettle, he realized Nessa was beside him again. Standing at his shoulder like a ghost.
    “Making tea, hmm?”
    His brow furrowed as he stood. “That’s right.”
    “I studied history in Verinia. I also studied herbcraft. Bit of a hobby of mine.”
    “Is that so?”
    Nessa nodded. “It is. It’s amazing the little things you learn. Like the difference between elder bark and riverwood moss, or how powdered jackflower can soothe a headache. Or how certain roots have
very
distinctive smells.”
    She stepped closer to him. He felt her warm breath on the back of his neck as she stood on her tiptoes.
    “Like salamander root, for instance.”
    He froze.
    She walked around to stand in front of him, plucked the kettle from his hand, and unceremoniously poured it onto the grass at his feet. The icy water splashed over his boots.
    “Go back to the fire. I’ll be taking care of Mari’s evening tea from now on, I think.”
    “Nessa—”
    “
Go
.”
    He paced near the fire, trying not to look anxious, until Nessa returned.
    “Mari, once this warms up, I’d like you to try something. It’s a tea of my own devising, and I’m rather proud of the recipe. I think you’ll find that it eases your slumber quite well. Why don’t you put the kettle on, and I’ll get the bedrolls off the wagon?”
    As Nessa walked past, she paused beside Werner. Their eyes locked.
    “I’m just trying to—” Werner started to say. Nessa’s eyes narrowed.
    “If I
ever
see you slipping that filth into her food again,
Imperial
, I’ll tell her exactly what it is and what you’ve been doing to her.”
    “Nessa, you don’t understand—”
    “Mark my words, Werner Holst: we’re in Imperial territory now, but in a few days we’ll stand on Terrai soil. Soil her family, and mine, bled and died for.
Don’t
test me.”
    *     *     *
    Long after the fire had burned down to faint embers, Mari laid back on her lumpy bedroll and stared up at the canopy of stars. Nessa’s tea had tasted faintly of hyssop and left her with a warm, tingly sensation in her stomach that slowly spread out to her arms and legs.
    Werner snored soundly on the far side of the dying fire. She’d gotten used to the noise by now. About eight feet away, Nessa was a motionless blot of darkness.
    “Which one are you looking at?” Nessa whispered.
    Mari turned her head. She’d thought the other woman was asleep.
    “Which what?” she whispered back.
    “Which constellation? I see you searching for something up there.”
    “Just looking. I don’t know the