Waterdance by Anne Logston Page B

much figured as a temple-bound mage, brave enough perhaps, but soft. Still, there’d been the empty scabbard and his reference to sword training. And sheltered or not, he’d obviously done something sufficient to warrant all this pursuit.
    And tonight she’d find out exactly what that was.
    At sunset they camped at a crossroads; the merchants and their caravan took the fork in the road which presumably led to Darnalek, and a small group of pilgrims coming down the same road joined the camp. At Peri’s surreptitious urging, Atheris traded another hammered bit of gold for a sturdy javelin carried by an ex-soldier with a withered arm. Carefully broken in half, the javelin made two serviceable tent poles and gave Peri a little badly needed privacy.
    Peri checked Atheris’s wound immediately, while there was still enough sunlight to see by. She was relieved—and Atheris amazed—to see that both the entry wound on his side and the exit wound on his back were well on the way to healing with no sign of infection. She made a new poultice and dressed the wounds again. The cuts on Atheris’s hand and her arm were healing well also, and the exercise had largely eased the stiffness from her bruised ribs; all in all, she felt rather proud of her efforts.
    When Atheris had secured the flaps of their tent for the night, however, and Peri would have unwound the rags hiding her face, he shook his head.
    “No,” he said, very softly. “There is too much danger of discovery. You must stay hidden so long as there are people around us.”
    Annoyed, Peri sighed, but she left the rags in place, settling herself back against her pack.
    “Can we at least talk?” she whispered.
    “How can we?” Atheris returned just as quietly. “You are supposed to be mute. And even were that not so, anything we could say to each other must not be overheard.”
    “Look,” Peri whispered, nearly inaudibly. “I’ve done an awful lot, come an awfully long ways, on trust of somebody I’ve got no reason at all to trust, and a couple hundred years of reasons not to. I’ve gone about as far as I’m willing to go without some explanations. Now, either you’re going to find some way to tell me about these Bone Hunters—who they are, why they’re so interested in you, what’s going to happen—or tomorrow this pilgrim’s going to take her chances on this disguise in the city long enough to get hold of a horse and head back south. And you can take that to the market and trade it for ten sacks of grain and a cask of good wine.”
    “Ten sacks of—” Atheris said blankly.
    “Never mind,” Peri said irritably. “Agrondish saying. All it means is I’m deadly serious.”
    Atheris was silent for a long moment.
    “Lie down,” he said at last.
    Peri took a deep breath to calm herself and settled herself on the ground as comfortably as she could. She almost bolted upright when Atheris curled up against her side, his arm around her waist. She could feel the wiry muscle in his arm, his chest against her side. She waited for a moment, breathing hard, her body tingling where he touched her, fearing some unthinkable advance on Atheris’s part, but he made no further move and slowly she relaxed.
    “We can talk now,” Atheris murmured in her ear. “If anyone discovers us like this, two men apparently lovers, we will be driven out of the pilgrimage as deviates, but that would be less disastrous to us both than the course you suggest. You have no idea what the Bone Hunters would do with you if they captured you, and if you were to strike out on your own in this land, that they most certainly would do.”
    “All right,” Peri whispered. Part of her ached to pull away from him, but another part perversely took comfort in his solid human presence. “Tell me.”
    “I am under sentence of death by torture by the Bonemarch,” Atheris said simply, “for forbidden magical practices.”
    Peri waited, but Atheris said nothing further, as if he had explained