Yethyr was bracing himself to push me away. All morning, I could feel him planning for it, coming to terms with it. He had spent an entire day and night in painless convalescence, but he knew that peace would disappear without my careful control over his body’s nerves.
He couldn’t trust me with that control. He knew that. He had to break away while he still could, and yet he could not help but hesitate.
His hesitation gave me time to contemplate my own conundrum: what to do when he actually did break away.
I knew I couldn’t stop him, not yet. My first instinct was to keep playing the role of friendly, innocent sword and not stop him at all, but would that not make him more suspicious? He was expecting resistance, and if I did not give it, he would be unsettled. He needed the comfort of knowing he could still reject me, and he certainly would not take any passivity at face value. We were in the middle of some sacred Brinn duel as far as he was concerned.
I was supposed to fight him, but if I resisted too much, I’d undo all the strange trust I had garnered in healing him and standing up to Spryne. It was tricky, balancing between pretending to be both a helpful innocent ally and a weaker adversary than he thought I was.
Two different deceptions, and I needed him to believe both.
When Yethyr finally started to reassert his control, I fought him, lightly, petulantly, like a clingy, concerned child.
“The sword wants to help!” I said in his voice. “I’ll be in pain without it!”
“My pain was my friend before you,” Yethyr whispered to me softly. “I trust it more. If you want me to trust you, let me go.”
Oh.
That was clever.
And what a trap it would have been if I had fallen for it. Yethyr had communicated that deal in words, only words. If I stopped fighting, I would be confessing once and for all that I did understand speech and was overhearing his every conversation.
That was hardly something I was ready to admit, so I kept on resisting as if I hadn’t heard, making sure to use only half strength.
Let him be fooled into thinking my hold on him was weak.
He overpowered me easily, and his constant aching returned to him all at once. He sucked in his breath, sensitive to the pain he usually ignored now that he had tasted its absence.
He tried not to think about how I could make it go away at any time.
Jaetheiri helped him put on his armor. The poison had faded from her scratch, and now it was healing well. Dimly, Yethyr considered how I could have healed her even faster, but he rejected the thought as if he thought it came from my influence. He didn’t trust me, and he particularly didn’t trust me with Jaetheiri.
“Don’t you dare touch her,” he thought at me fiercely, which of course, I did not answer. He watched her put on his mother’s bone circlet and squeezed me from where I hung at his side. Together, they left the tent for the first time in two days.
The camp was desolate.
Nisari and Kvelir were putting out the campfire, while Mandorias, Wes, and Ruzar the Cook were awkwardly trying to pack up the tents.
They were the only thralls who remained.
Mandorias and Wes had to because their existences literally required the Prince and Ruzar…well. Yethyr wasn’t sure.
Rightfully paranoid now, he went straight for him.
“You did not leave with the others?”
“No, Master. I…I did not.”
“And why is that?”
Ruzar was a jovial sort, but he looked the Prince in the eye seriously. “Because then you would have to rely on Jaetheiri—Lady Jaetheiri's cooking, and you would starve, and I am certain Maethe would devour me for allowing that.”
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“Ruzar!” Jaetheiri sputtered. “My cooking is fine!”
“You almost burned down the royal—”
“That was one time! And even you said my tea is—”
“Aye, your tea is better than mine, of course. That, I’ll readily admit. But you can’t feed a hunting party off tea, Mistress.”
Jaetheiri huffed and shot a glare at Yethyr.
“Your food is excellent,” he lied loyally.
Jaetheiri glared harder. “That wasn’t permission to deceive me.”
“Then what exactly do you want from me?” Yethyr asked testily. When Jaetheiri only gave him glum silence, he focused back on Ruzar. “I appreciate both your concern for my appetite and your faith in our success.”
“Oh, I have no faith in our success,” he said cheerfully. “We’re all going to die terrible deaths! Me especially!
“Ah.” Yethyr did his best to keep disappointment off his face.
“But we are Brinn, no?” Ruzar shrugged. “The Angel commands and the Angel devours.”
Yethyr nodded like this was a perfectly sensible explanation for going on a suicide mission.
Now that there were only seven people on that mission, they had to abandon most supplies. Before, the thralls carried all the baggage. Without them, everyone carried a pack stuffed with bare essentials.
Except Nisari. She flatly refused to do “thrall work.” She huffed on ahead of the party, finding paths through the pine forest for everyone and scowling all the while.
She had been short-tempered since the shipwreck. She had lost her headdress and all but one of her windsong horns in Lake Huldrai. She was trying to replace them by making bone flutes she could scavenge from Kettir’s kills, which put her in conflict with Wes, who was also using bones for his deathsong practice.
“I don’t see why I must share with a demon-worshipping thrall,” she spat over the campfire that night.
“You are sharing with me,” Yethyr said curtly. “The fact that I command my thrall to use those bones is not your concern.”
“It is my concern! You give spoils to no simple sinner!” She gestured violently at Wes. “He is an arcanist of Datrea! They slaughter their own. They slaughter the holy. I know what they are. I have fought them longer than all of you combined!” She sneered at Wes and then said in broken, but frighteningly understandable Datrean. “How many have you sacrificed to Hell, master smith?”
Wes startled. Everyone did. No one had known she knew words in Datrean at all.
Nisari ignored the stares. She glared at him, expecting him to answer even though she couldn’t hear his deathsong voice.
Wes squared his shoulders, and raised two bony fingers.
“Two? So few? Do you think that makes it better?”
“Nisari, enough,” Yethyr said in Brinn. “We need him for this hunt to succeed.”
“His help will only taint the hunt!”
A flash of fury passed through Yethyr. He knew so many thought of his own help that way. “Look around, Nisari.” He gritted his teeth. “We are four hunters and three thralls. There are 36 arcanists up in those mountains. Do you really think that we are going to overcome them by any standard means?”
“Of course not, but we can at least die honorably.”
Yethyr blinked. Of all their companions, he had assumed at least Nisari would believe that this was winnable.
He looked from one face to another around the campfire. The flame could not brighten the despair that darkened all their eyes. None argued with Nisari.
It was comical. I struggled not to laugh as Yethyr finally realized he was the only one who believed victory was possible.
He swallowed, sick and queasy and furious. He was relieved when he could retreat to his tent. He wasn’t really alone. It was the only tent they could afford to carry, so both Jaetheiri and Kettir slept within it as well, but Nisari didn’t. She wanted to sleep under the open sky, which was a relief. Letting her in would require explaining the whole Spryne nightly possession situation, and Yethyr didn’t feel ready to deal with the consequences of that.
He didn’t want to deal with her at all.
“You need to sleep,” Jaetheiri said, echoing what he had told her only days before. “Don’t think I have not noticed that you have not slept since the assassination.”
“I did not want Spryne to disrupt my healing and no doubt he would. He is surely eager to punish me for Bonesong’s interference that night.”
Yethyr stared down at his cot glumly, but did not resist Jaetheiri’s help getting him in it. I had gathered that sleep was somehow just as necessary as food or water for the human body. The Prince could not avoid his dreams, but for a moment, he considered what would happen if he wore me while he slept. Would I save him from the torture he knew he was about to feel? He longed to try, although he did not dare. Giving himself a weapon like me while he could be possessed by Spryne was too stupid a risk, even for him.
I was relieved when he set me down instead. I was definitely not ready to fight Spryne in earnest.
Yethyr slept fitfully, and I stayed very carefully out of his dreams. Even when he screamed, horrible though the sound was. Even when I felt the bones of his knees grow more porous.
He was being eaten alive, from the inside out, and I could do nothing. Sure, I could try. I could go into his dreams and look at the horror of Spryne through his eyes, but then what? I had no idea what I was supposed to do to exorcise a demon, and Spryne had already proven he knew how to push me out his strange dream Hell that was both real and not.
Eventually, minutes, hours, and an eternity later, Yethyr’s breath evened out, and he was in a semblance of peace.
Alive, for now.
I realized with some irritation that I was going to have to figure out how to fight him. At this rate, Spryne was going to kill Yethyr before I was through with him.
If I wanted my vengeance, I was going to have to beat Spryne.
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If you were a thrall, would you....
