Free Soulwoven by Jeff Seymour Page B

strange question for him to ask, especially since the Aleani had left.
    “Then we’ll take him,” Quay said.
    And she understood in a flash what Quay and the Aleani had been talking about, and she and Litnig and Cole were all speaking at once.
    “My prince—”
    “Quay—”
    “But he—”
    Quay stood to his full height, and she snapped her mouth shut. Even short as he was, the prince managed to look down on her, on all of them. His gaze was withering and condescending, and she was suddenly very aware of just whom she was speaking to. She wanted to kneel again, to apologize, but he had forbidden it. The most she could do was incline her head and listen as he spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the rain.
    “If he is not a soulweaver, he is less dangerous with us than away from us. Whether he recognizes me yet or not, he is smart, and that is a problem.”
    Ryse lifted her head and found a tightness in Quay’s jaw and something that looked like worry in his eyes.
    “If he sells us out,” the prince continued, “we will never reach the city gates.” His hand rested on the pommel of one of his swords. “If he is honest, he could be a great help. Either way, now that he has seen us, I want him close.”
    There was silence next to her, and she wished she could wet her dry mouth, ease the knots that plagued her stomach. The prince nodded to Litnig and Cole. “You two will watch him as we sleep.”
    She heard Cole sigh.
    “And me?” she asked.
    The thunder in the prince’s eyes rolled over her.
    “You will not leave my sight,” he said.
    A moment later, Cole had passed beyond them and into the rain. The fire smoked and cracked and hissed. Cole returned with the Aleani, and they sat on the benches around the fire. The others all spoke, but the mood was somber and thick with mistrust. Rain spattered against the leaky thatch roof in fits.
    Ryse didn’t speak. Ryse stared at the fire in silence, and in that silence she felt very, very alone.

NINE

    Len’s eyes snapped open. The air smelled of smoke. Cold mud stank beneath him, and he could see the colorless gray of the sky just before dawn through a ragged old curtain in front of his eyes. The sleep sounds of human children drifted gently through the air from his left.
    I am coming.
    He touched two fingers to his forehead to soothe a sudden ache. Twice in three days he had seen the dragon’s face, heard its voice. And these children said that the Heart Dragons of Mennaia had been destroyed.
    Dark, such dreams, such rumors.
    The tangy, metallic smell of the axes near his head gave him comfort. The thinly runed blades and the worn smoothness of their grips had been his companions for thirty years. They had made good company.
    Now he was saddling himself with a bunch of human children.
    That fact did not bother him.
    The reason he was doing it did.
    They would not be much use. Maybe the one with the swords on his hip and the eye of a nobleman, maybe the soulweaver, but the others were unimpressive. They would slow him down.
    But the little one reminds you of Raest, doesn’t he? And the girl of Maegan.
    Len had learned to recognize his own foolishness years ago. He had yet to learn how to fully control it.
    A small skin of water sat next to his bedroll. He straightened up and squeezed its chilly contents over his head, gently scrubbed his face and beard clean while the curtain grew lighter with the coming dawn. The children had given him an idea of where D’Orin Threi might be headed. They would draw attention away from him once they reached Aleana. And, unless Yon and Chesa had changed during his years away, the fenuan would be glad he had brought them when he arrived.
    Surely, that was enough to justify traveling with them.
    Len’s arms felt heavy, and he stood and stretched, working his way from the muscles in his forearms through his shoulders, then down his back to his feet and up again through his neck. There was just enough left in his skin of water to