The Griever's Mark (The Griever's Mark series Book 1) (22 page)

I look at him sharply, then clutch at my head. I must remember not to make fast movements.

I hear him sigh as he pushes away from the wall. “Come on.”

Because I have no energy to argue or to make my own decisions, I follow him down the hall. We move from sconce to sconce, passing through overlapping circles of light. His shadow is tall and straight. Mine is hunched ridiculously, limping from a sore foot. I exaggerate the posture, chuckling at the answering shadow. Varus’s eyes slide to me.

“What?” I demand, my voice too loud.

“Through here.” I follow him along another passageway.

Light fills a doorway ahead, and I smell fresh bread baking. It must be later—or earlier?—than I thought if they’re already starting the day’s bread.

Varus leads me into a huge kitchen, where a girl no older than fourteen crouches in front of a huge fireplace. She looks up when we enter, stifling a yawn.

In the center of the kitchen, an enormous work table is already set for the morning’s work with a bowl of eggs at one end, spring onions and cured ham beside it. Empty mixing bowls, knives, and spoons lie clean and ready. The firelight draws gleams of copper from pots and pans that hang in neat order above the table. Along one brick wall, arching, open-faced bread ovens glow.

An older woman emerges from a far doorway carrying a tray laden with a porcelain tea service. Like the girl, she wears a set of golden bracelets, but she is dressed for work with a red apron over her blue dress. Her hair is pulled up in a graying bun.

“What’s this? Can’t anyone wait for breakfast?”

She sets the tray on one of the tables and bustles over to the fireplace, shooing the girl away. She uses a fire poker to swing an iron bar away from the flames. The bar holds a heavy black kettle, which she lifts with surprising ease.

Varus clears his throat. “Any bread ready yet, Melora? This one needs something in her stomach.
Other
than wine.”

I glare at him, but he ignores me with that irritating Earthmaker imperiousness.

Melora fills the teapot with water. “Rolls in two minutes. Roxana, you may take this to Arcon Aronos.”

The girl stifles another yawn and lifts the tray, making the porcelain clatter together.

“Careful, girl.
”

The girl dips her chin and hurries from the room.

So. Aron is awake.

Because everything still sways a little, I stay where I am, surreptitiously leaning against a counter while Varus wanders over to the fireplace to warm his hands. His back is to me, as though he doesn’t need to worry that I’ll run or attack. I can’t help but feel annoyance. Just because I’m a little slow right now doesn’t mean I’m not still dangerous.

With a cloth protecting her hand, Melora reaches into one of the bread ovens. She draws out a tray of rolls, and the smell wafts through the kitchen. Though the sweet smell of ham has been making me a little nauseous, the rolls bring a rumble from my belly. Huh. Who’d have guessed?

When Melora hands me two steaming rolls wrapped in a cloth, I take them eagerly. Only when she turns away do I remember to say, “Thank you.”

She starts taking pans down from their hooks, and the scraping sounds of metal make my head scream. I turn for the door, and Varus follows.

“So,” I say around a mouthful of bread. “Where can I find Aron?”

“What do you want with the Arcon?”

His tone chides me for using such a familiar name for Aron, as though I should bow in awe of the mighty Arcon. But I have lost my awe. “Did he say I couldn’t see him?”

Varus hesitates. “No.”

“Then take me to him.”

Varus lets out a noisy breath, but he leads me from one hallway to another.

I try to memorize our route, but my head is too fuzzy to acknowledge more than that we are moving. I finish the second roll and stifle a belch. Varus goes stiff, but he doesn’t say anything. By the time we reach a lighted doorway, some of my nausea has subsided, and I send grudging mental thanks in Varus’s direction. My head, though, still pounds.

Varus puts up a hand to stop me while he goes through the doorway, but I follow him anyway. He glares, but I do my best to ignore him with an Earthmaker-like imperiousness of my own.

The room is gorgeous, its stone floor softened with thick, colorful rugs, and its dark wood shelves stacked with books in endless shades of dyed leather. A fireplace crackles along the far wall, and a pair of swords is crossed above it. Huge, open windows look out to what I take for a garden, though shadow cloaks it too heavily to be certain.

Aron sits at a wide table in the center, one piece of paper in his hand and a stack in front of him. The teapot leaks steam from its spout, but he hasn’t poured any to drink. Light pools on his table from the brazier beside it, highlighting his handsome face. As he squints at me over the top of his paper, his eyes are pinched with fatigue. Strange how much he both does and doesn’t look like Logan. I shake that away.

“Astarti.” Aron lays the paper neatly into the stack.

“You’re up late. Or early. Depending on whether you’ve been to bed.”

He says nothing, and I blush. His sleeping habits are none of my business, and it’s not like I care anyway.

He looks to Varus. “You may go.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Varus?”

“Sir?”

“Your orders are unchanged.”

Varus clicks his heels together in acknowledgement.

I frown. What orders?

While Varus’s footsteps fade down the hall, Aron fingers the stack of papers, and I make my way toward a chair that faces his desk. I accidentally sit on the arm and have to slide awkwardly into the seat. Aron’s face swims in front of me. I blink him back into focus.

“Are you drunk?”

“Sort of.”

He closes his eyes for patience.

One thing I actually like about Aron: he’s not as cool and collected as some of his kind. He’s got nothing on Logan, of course—why do I keep thinking about him when I’m determined not to?—but he does have a little fire. I suddenly recall the way he controlled the flames during the fight. Maybe that’s his element. What did Logan say about those who favor fire? Damn it, his name
again
.

“What do you want, Astarti?”

Somehow, I had been hoping he would start this conversation. I’m better at reacting than prompting. Since he’s staring at me, though, I leap right to the big question.

“What will you do?”

He raises an eyebrow. “If you’re trying to get information from me, you’re not being very sly.”

Between that comment and the presence of Varus outside my door, I think I know approximately where I stand. Not in prison, but just above it. Highly suspect.

I stare at Aron, knowing that if I blink he might go out of focus again. His short, red-gold hair is combed straight back, making his face severe. His jaw is squarer than Logan’s, as Bran’s is. Gaiana, like Logan, has a more angled jaw, so that squareness must come from their father. An image of Arcon Arothos’s severed head threatens to shape in my mind.

“You and Bran look a lot alike.”

“Many say so.”

“But Logan looks more like your mother.”

Aron stills, staring at me, then he leans his elbows on his desk and steeples his fingers. “A little bit of questionable Earthmaker blood doesn’t make you acceptable here. Or for him.”

That might hurt if I allowed it to. It might even carve a hole in my chest. But I let it roll off me, refusing to feel it. For good measure, I snarl. If I’m a dog here, I’ll be a dog.

Aron regards me steadily, unmoved by my curled lip. “If anything, it makes things worse. The mixing of blood is forbidden.”

That annoys me. “Well, I didn’t mix my own blood. My parents did that for me.” Parents. The word feels strange in my mouth.

“True,” he admits, “but it doesn’t matter. You are what you are.”

We stare at each other for too long, neither of us wanting to look away first. But he is more uncomfortable with me than I am with him, and his eyes slide away. My victory, though, is empty because we both know that he actually has the power here.

“So, then. What’s to be done with the unacceptable Drifter?” I throw the question off lightly, as though I don’t care, as though it doesn’t drive a spike of fear through me.

Aron picks up the stack of papers and squares it on the desk, still not looking at me. “The Council will have to debate it. Until decisions are made, you may remain here.”

So. I will not be kicked out. Yet.

Relief floods me, but embarrassment comes fast behind it. And that makes me ask myself: can I tolerate the waiting, the uncertainty? Can I stay here like a beggar, a stray dog, hoping they don’t throw me back to Belos? Part of me screams desperately,
Yes!
but another part speaks over it with a resolute,
No
.

“Is that
may
remain? Or
must
remain?”

Aron leans back in his chair, raising deep blue eyes to mine, his confidence back. “You cannot enter the Drift from here. How would you leave?”

I don’t answer his question, and he doesn’t answer mine.

“Why did you help us, Astarti? You took me safely through the Drift, to see Martel’s Leash. If you are not just trying to get into our confidence to betray us later, what is your motivation? Drifters and Earthmakers have long been enemies, even without the added complication of you being a servant of...his.”

The silence rings in my ears as I study my knee. I’ve been avoiding this question even in my own mind, and now it hangs in the air. Why did I help them?

Instead of answering, I ask him, “Why did you save me? From Straton’s fire. You could have let me burn.”

No answer.

I look up to see Aron staring blindly at the stack of papers, a finger propped against his temple, thumb curled under his jaw.

I say softly, “We don’t always know why we do what we do.”

I can’t bring myself to thank him for saving me, as he can’t bring himself to thank me for showing him Martel’s Leash. But I know my debt is the greater one, and I hate that I owe Aron my life. If only I had saved his instead. How nice it would be to hold that over him. But, as usual, it is others who hold power over me.

To get away from this topic, I ask Aron again, “What will you do?”

He picks up a pen, rotating it slowly with the fingers of one hand. “The Council will have to debate it.”

“Is that how you do everything? You talk and talk. Meanwhile, Belos gives his orders, and things happen. Kelda burns.”

“Why should we care about Kelda?”

“You want Belos to have it?”

Aron’s pen stops. “Of course not.”

“Then you must warn Heborian. Immediately. Do you have any idea how soon Belos could act? Martel’s army is gathered, and they will occupy Heborian’s troops while Belos and the Seven go after Heborian and his Drifters. Belos was waiting before, waiting for Martel, waiting for your Wardens. Don’t you see that he has nothing else to wait for?”

Aron frowns at the pen in his hand, a line wedging between his brows.

“They could be moving right now.”

“Heborian is a Drifter.”

“He is. And he’s also the only thing that stands between Belos and Kelda.”

Aron’s thumb presses hard against the pen, and I wait for it to snap. But Aron’s grip loosens. He sets the pen down neatly.

I ask impatiently, “Do you think Belos won’t use his new center of power to attack you?”

“What do you want, Astarti?”

Each moment of his indifference leeches away at my patience. “I want you to warn Heborian! Why wouldn’t you? You have nothing to lose.”

“What do you care about him? About Kelda? What has Kelda ever done for you?”

My hands are clenched on the arms of the chair. I loosen my fingers with an effort, but they clench again of their own accord. “Why should Belos have everything he wants so easily? Snap his fingers, tug this Leash or that, speak one order, and we all fall on our knees before him. It’s disgusting.” I am on my feet now, hands like hammers at my side. I want to use them to break something, to smash Aron’s calm face, to punch the brazier and watch the sparks fly, to rip the books from their shelves. “Every single one of us that stays silent, stays hidden, looks to our own selfish interests, is throwing that power at him.”

Aron asks softly, almost wonderingly, “How can you still be so proud?”

I grit out, “You will do nothing?”

“The Council will debate it.”

I swipe my hand across his desk and send the papers whipping into the air. One spins into the brazier. The fire flares, and the paper curls blackly within it.

Aron’s jaw hardens with anger, but he refuses to respond, refuses to act.

I point a shaking finger at him. “When Belos is tearing this house stone from stone, I hope you will remember that you had the chance to fight him, to stop him—at least to try!—and you
debated
it.”

“The Wood—”

“Is not the only way to get here! Are you not surrounded by ocean? Can he not sail here with an army of Keldans in his thrall?”

“These are the
Floating
Lands. There is a reason for that.”

“So it’s impossible for him to sail here? Utterly impossible? Even if he sends out every ship in Kelda? Even if he extends his reach into Valdar and Ibris—which you’re an idiot if you think he won’t do—he still couldn’t get any ship here? None? Ever?”

The corner of Aron’s eye twitches. His silence is answer enough.

My anger fades, and I am chilled by the same fear that I just worked so hard to inspire in Aron. Nowhere is safe from Belos, not even Avydos.

I harden myself, and the fear rolls away. Belos gave me many years to practice this: you turn your thoughts in such a way that they don’t absorb anything from the outside, distance yourself so that you feel nothing. Like entering the Drift. It is the key, I learned long ago, to conquering fear. You don’t allow it to touch you.

“You know we must stop him.”

“What could you possibly do? You are Leashed, Astarti. He owns you. You cannot fight him.”

There is no malice in his words, only simple fact. He is right, and I am hollowed by the truth of it.