Free Half Discovered Wings by David Brookes

him … go away for a
while.’
    Gabel took a moment to digest that. ‘What do you think the magus’
objective is? The job he’s given us?’
    ‘ I wouldn’t know,’ Caeles replied. He looked at the lines he
was making in the earth with a stick – an eight-pronged
star.
    ‘ Do you think the lake will kill her?’
    Gabel thought Caeles looked surprised at such a flat
question. He watched Caeles stand, rubbing his thighs, and wondered
if the cyborg saw in Gabel what Gabel tried his hardest to hide:
stubborn stoicism and an unhappy vulnerability.
    ‘ I don’t know,’ Caeles said simply.
    The hunter
looked over at the young woman and nodded. ‘I would not wish
it.’
    ~
    The next week was still cold, but the chill seemed to have
reached a peak. The only change came exactly a week later, when the
magus opened his eyes in the morning to find his vision blurred by
frost on his eyelashes, and a thin sheet of soft white snow all
around him. The clearing was patched with it, as only some of the
snow had slipped through the canopy of trees. It had only been a
light shower, but something that put foreboding into the magus’s
heart.
    He stood and brushed his blankets down. He hung them up to
dry. His fingertips were cold, and he clasped them tightly in his
wrinkled fist, heating them. The magus rarely felt the cold like
this.
    ‘ Gabel suggested we set off as soon as possible,’ Rowan said,
walking up. In her hand was a large piece of stiffening bread,
which she passed to him. ‘I hope we arrive in the next town
soon.’
    ‘ São Jantuo is still a while off, unfortunately.’
    ‘ Is it a large place?’ She asked it as she strapped her
blankets to Gabel’s backpack. Each time she did so, the magus felt
a pang of guilt emanate from her, that Gabel should be burdened
with her luggage.
    ‘ Not especially,’ he said. ‘It’s barely a city, if you ask me.
But larger than a town, and bustling; the market places there are
pleasant and full of interesting things.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll
buy you a trinket if you keep it quiet from the hunter.’
    She offered a grim smile. ‘I’d like that very much, sir. But
I sincerely doubt … What I mean to say is that I’m weakening, more
so than when I was home, to be sure. There I lay in bed and could
recover my strength, but out here…’
    The magus nodded. He
had noticed the same deterioration in strength and energy. He had
similar doubts that Rowan would succumb to her illness all too soon
on this journey.
    The four ate breakfast, and it was that day when Gabel
finally removed the bandages from around his torso. The wounds
given to him by the Scathac had been deep, but he recovered
quickly. The bandage around his shoulder, however, would remain
there until they reached the city by the Lual.
    Caeles sat close to the fire. He didn’t need warmth –
everything his body needed was always inside him – but neither did he
need food, yet he still ate, in moderation .
    ‘ I’m not willing to give up food,’ he said, passing around the
cheese he brought from Pirene. ‘It is one of the Three True
Necessities.’
    ‘ What are the others?’
    ‘ Warmth,’ he said, ‘and justice.’
    He no longer seemed to mind sharing; the cheese would have
turned green if he’d kept it with his cold, frost-covered blankets
any longer, and it was squashed from being in the bag too long.
Yet, following that he fell silent, as if contemplating a difficult
problem that would soon need to be overcome.
    ~
    They
travelled the rest of the day, and they camped several hours after
sundown.As he set the fire going, Caeles told them of his
problem.
    ‘ I can’t go to São Jantuo.’
    Gabel and the magus turned around suddenly. Rowan, who was
sitting nearby watching him make the fire, looked up.
    ‘ What are you talking about?’ said Gabel.
    ‘ I’m not allowed to go there.’
    ‘ Not allowed ?’
    ‘ No. The Regent is an enemy of mine. After the Conflict, when I
found out that our new