Free The Stumpwork Robe (The Chronicles of Eirie 1) by Prue Batten Page A

way became greater than the need to overly chastise.
    ‘Ana, there are people at home who ache with loss for you. How can you do this?’
    Ana sat for a moment watching Ajax’s huge shaggy mane blowing in the cool morning breeze. His ears flicked back and forth at the voiced inflections from behind and his tail swayed from side to side in an equine version of a Raji dance of the seven veils. ‘I can do it because I ache more than they do.’ Ana spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I can do it because they abrogated any familial right to my respect and affection with their actions.’ She sighed and looked directly at Adelina, eyes glistening. ‘And I can do it because my father is dead and I have been assaulted. Adelina, I ask you as my friend; accept my decision to leave and be my highway kin.’ She touched Adelina’s hand. ‘Please, I can’t go back.’
    The Traveller put her own hand over Ana’s, keeping her sighs to herself. ‘For now then, but we’ll talk again later.' She jerked her shoulder in Liam’s direction, hands bunched into the horn sign. ‘What about him?’
    ‘What about him? He’s Liam. He saved my life. I suppose he’s a friend too.’
    ‘Ana,’ Adelina looked scornfully at her friend. ‘Liam is Faeran. Yes, I realise you know this. But do you understand what that means in our language? In your language when it comes to that.’ Sarcasm fell from her lips like droplets of water onto a tranquil pool, the purpose being to set up uneasy ripples in Ana. Adelina stared at Liam with dislike, certainly disdain. ‘It means danger, peril, ambush, harm, distress, deceive, terrify, frighten. All those words translate to ‘Faeran’ in the Travellers’ tongue. I am horrified you journeyed with him.’
    ‘Oh stop it. Look at him.’ Ana glanced toward Liam and Kholi who were laughing together at some shared joke, so deplorably normal that Adelina’s attempt at unhinging Ana’s view looked doomed. ‘He saved my life. I was by a pool and had been mesmered by a waterwight. I was a hair’s breadth,’ Ana measured with her fingers, ‘from being drowned. He saved me, just the way Kholi saved me from...' She stopped and her face darkened and Adelina knew immediately she was thinking of Bellingham's assault.
    Nevertheless, she had to make the girl realise this new danger. ‘And did he tell you that if he saves you three times, he can call in the debt. That you must live in Faeran for all eternity?’
    Ana rubbed her bruises. ‘Well, so what? It must surely be better than my life has been of late.’
    ‘Oh Ana, I am sorry to bully you so. You’ve been through the worst of times and it is unforgivable of me to harass you, I apologise. But it is just that Kholi and I are worried. To have an Other in such close quarters is extremely disturbing. Anyway, you must sit and rest, there will be time later to talk.’ As Ana took her place on the van stoop, none of Adelina’s reservations eased. Ana was behaving like a hurt animal - fleeing to survive and without rational thought, for surely to have run so far from her hearth and in the presence of an Other smacked of irrationality. Adelina shook the reins over Ajax’s broad back - the back broad enough to be that of the unseelie Cabyll Ushtey. And that is something else I must tell her . She did not relish the task of explaining Bellingham’s gruesome demise.
    As they continued on their slow journey, Ajax’s weighty hooves matching the ponderous stride of the camel’s, Liam’s fine stallion danced alongside the sapphire and emerald coloured van. ‘Adelina, your van is the only beautiful thing here on this grey morning, present company excluded of course. If only the heavens could match the colour, the day would improve immeasurably.’
    ‘Aye,’ called Kholi Khatoun from high up on the swaying back of Mogu. He was swathed in his grubby cloak, the travel caplet pulled down hard on his head. ‘I swear I shall freeze before I get to the Celestine