Markswoman (Asiana #1)(54)

Kyra bent down and tied the flap with a double binding knot. Let’s see them untie that one. She shook her head in exasperation. Men. Thought they could walk in on her whenever they wanted, say whatever came into their arrogant heads, and stroll out without even an apology. Give her spineleaf oil for her bruises, would he? She picked up the little bottle Rustan had left behind and glared at it before tossing it into a corner. Serve them right if they were caught leaving her tent by one of the elders, preferably by Ghasil. He didn’t like her at all, and he would pounce on any Marksman he thought was getting too familiar with her.

Kyra damped down the stove—the tent seemed warmer somehow—and lay back, still seething. She closed her eyes, trying to empty her mind. What had Shirin Mam said? A well-trained Markswoman should not need more than four hours of sleep a day. Well, she didn’t have more than four hours before dawnlight anyway, so she didn’t have much of a choice. A few hours and Rustan would once again be standing in front of her, flaunting his infinitely advanced dueling skills.

This thought was so irritating that her eyes flew open. She stared at the roof, at the round patch of night sky visible through the smoke hole, and wished with all her heart that she could for once knock Rustan down and wipe that superior smile off his face. Not that he smiled much, she had to admit. Most of the time he seemed to be gritting his teeth in an effort not to yell at her. Which was just as bad. Thought she was like a child playing with fire, did he? She’d show him. She’d win that duel and make him eat his words, and drink that bottle of spineleaf oil too.

*

Rustan walked out into the cold night, trying to calm his mind. The wind had died down and the tents were dark. There was no light except the light of the stars. Marksmen conserved their fuel for when it was really needed: the heart of winter, when the cold could freeze the breath in your lungs, the words on your lips.

It was quiet and still and everyone was asleep except for that idiot scrambling after him, making enough noise to wake the dead.

“I don’t know why you had to come in and ruin everything,” Shurik muttered. “Another minute and she might have let me kiss her.”

Rustan snorted. “Another minute and she might have punched you, more likely. Have you taken leave of all good sense, or just most of it?”

“Maybe I have. But she’s so pretty. Don’t you think she’s pretty?”

“Not half as pretty as you will be after a switching,” said Rustan. “I don’t understand what’s gotten into you and the apprentices, mooning after her like a bunch of camel-boys. Don’t think the elders don’t see what’s happening. You’re digging a pit to bury yourself.”

“Don’t lump me with the apprentices!” snapped Shurik. As the youngest Marksman in the Order, who had achieved his first mark more by accident than design, he did sometimes get lumped with the apprentices, and this was a sore point with him.

“Then don’t act like them,” Rustan retorted. “Don’t forget who you are.”

“I know who I am,” said Shurik. “But who are you? My friend went to Tezbasti to take down a mark, and a stranger came back in his skin.”

Rustan wheeled around to face him, anger and sadness building up until they wanted to burst out of him in a corrosive flood. But he managed to tamp them down. Not Shurik’s fault, he reminded himself. Shurik was hurt and puzzled by the loss of his best friend. And didn’t Rustan too miss those easy days of companionship and laughter? Wasn’t his anger directed more at himself than at his friend, who had only pointed out the facts, and given voice to his pain?

Rustan forced himself to relax. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Perhaps you’re right. I am different from who I was when I left that morning. Everything we do changes us, for good or ill. But I still remember the vows I made to my Order. Do you?”

He turned before Shurik could respond, and walked away without a backward glance. He could feel Shurik’s eyes following him, and he almost paused. But what could he have said? The truth would only hurt, him to speak of it, and Shurik to hear it. And so he continued walking—past the tents and the grove, out into the dune field beyond.

When Rustan had walked far enough away that the grove of shrubs had melded with the dark shadows behind him, he sat down on a boulder and looked up at the star-studded sky.

He raked a hand through his hair and pressed it against the tense muscles of his neck. He had known fatigue before, but nothing like this soul-deadening sense of hopelessness, this surety that no matter what he did, he could change nothing. His very existence was meaningless. Everything he had worked and trained for, all the hours spent meditating in the grove or dueling in the sun—none of it mattered. The dead stayed dead, no matter how much he regretted the past.

The face of the innocent man he had killed floated in front of him once more—but now it was superimposed by another face, older than he remembered, but with the same serenity, the same smile.

He jerked to his feet, startled, but the vision changed and now it was Kyra’s face in front of him, empty-eyed and bloodstained.

“No!” he choked out, holding his hand up to ward it away. The apparition vanished, leaving him alone in the dark.

Rustan collapsed on the boulder. The end was already written, with or without him. Kyra would die, Shurik would be heartbroken, and the Order of Khur would be even more isolated than before. And he—he would get no answers from the woman who had once promised him that she would acknowledge him to the world.