Starside novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

Sorrel sets two rules for her Warden, then lets him bind her cut hand, and three stars fall at once.

We made camp under a leaning stone where the black grass ended.

Dain wouldn't light a fire.

"Fire draws things," he said. "Sit against the stone and keep your back to it."

I sat down as far from him as the cord allowed, which was twenty paces.

The cord pulled at my wrist until I gave in and moved ten steps closer.

He didn't comment on it.

The boy from the river had gone off with a group from his own village, still coughing.

Tilda had found us instead, with her own Warden trailing her, a silent young man who sat down at the edge of the dark and watched the sky.

"I'm sorry," Tilda said, dropping beside me. "I'm talking too much. I always do when I'm scared. Can I stay with you? You pulled a boy out of a river and told a goddess she should die. I think you're the safest person here."

"That's the least safe thing you could say," I said.

"I know. But I like you."

I looked at Dain over her head.

"Tilda stays," I said. "Now you and I are going to settle this."

"Settle what?"

"Terms."

Tilda closed her mouth very quickly, and for once she said nothing at all.

I held up my wrist with the cord around it.

"Two rules. The first is that you don't touch me. Not unless the cord or a monster makes you."

"Agreed."

He said it too fast, and it annoyed me.

"The second is that you don't say one word about Emberfold until we reach the Pool. Not an apology, not an explanation. Nothing."

For a moment he looked at the grass.

"That one is harder," he said.

"Then it's a good rule."

He nodded slowly. "Then I have one."

"You don't get one."

"When something comes at us in the dark and I tell you to run, you run."

"No."

"Sorrel."

"No. You wrote my family's names on a list, Dain. You don't get to give me orders."

His jaw moved, and I thought he might argue, and I wanted him to.

He didn't.

"Then I'll say it quietly and hope," he said.

I turned my face away from him and found that my right hand was bleeding.

I had cut my palm on a river stone, pulling the boy out, and I hadn't felt it.

Dark blood ran down to my wrist and under the silver cord.

"Give me that," Dain said.

"No."

"It's your hand, not a favor. If it gets dirty, you'll lose it in three days, and then you can't hold a sword."

He had a clean strip of cloth in his coat already.

I looked at Tilda, and Tilda looked very hard at a star.

"Rule one has an exception for injuries," I said. "I'm making it up now."

"Noted," said Dain.

He knelt in front of me and took my hand in both of his.

His fingers were warm and dry, and the cut stung when he wiped it.

I made myself watch his hands and not his face.

They were the same hands.

The same long scarred fingers had once pushed hair out of my eyes in a hayloft, and I could still have told you how they felt against my ribs.

He wound the cloth around my palm and tied it off. Then he didn't let go.

For a moment his thumb moved across my knuckles, once, very slowly.

His breath went uneven.

It was cold out. That was all it was.

"Done," he said, and let go all at once, and stood.

My palm was warm for a long time afterward.

I leaned back against the stone with my wrapped hand in my lap and said nothing.

Tilda cleared her throat.

"I'm going to sleep now," she said, "and I didn't hear any of that, and I'm very asleep."

I laughed, and it surprised me.

Then the sky changed.

A star fell across the black above us, a long white line.

Another went after it, and a third, so close together that the whole dark flashed.

Tilda sat up with a gasp.

"That's three at once," said her Warden, the first words I had heard from him. "Three more have died."

Dain was looking up with his face drawn tight.

"That's nineteen dead since the Gate," he said. "Nineteen of fifty gone, and we haven't reached the second trial."

I got to my feet, and the cord tugged, and he rose with me.

"Someone is killing them," I said.

"Yes," said Dain. "And I think it's the same someone who walked across a boy's back to cross a river."

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