Roar (Stormheart #1)(60)
She picked at a piece of bread and said, “I’m not sure where to begin.”
“Come now. I am sure there are a thousand things you want to know. Open your mouth and ask.”
She bristled at the command, regaining some of that fire that blazed so brightly when they argued. “Fine. I want to know about you.” Locke stiffened. “All of you. How did you come to be here? Where are you from? How did you all meet?”
He had expected her to ask about storms, but he was learning that she rarely behaved as he expected.
Bait answered first. “I grew up in a village in the forest north of Finlagh and west of Falmast.” The novice’s accent thickened as he talked about his home. “Our homes were built up in the trees to avoid runoff from the rains. The trees provided good cover from the storms, and being between the two Stormling cities meant that we rarely had to worry about storms from the south or east. Mostly it was the snows that came down from Durgra that gave us problems.” Locke had never been as far as Durgra, the city built atop the icy tundra in the north. His southern skin was too thin for that kind of cold. “It was as good a place as any to try to survive while we petitioned for citizenship in Finlagh and Falmast.”
“Neither had room?” Roar asked, and Bait shook his head. She continued: “How then do you all go into cities now to sell your wares?”
Duke answered, “Often we pay our way in. We know guards willing to look the other way for the right price. Other times we must sneak in.”
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, a habit Locke had noticed far too much. She turned back to Bait and asked, “How did you come to be a hunter?”
“Two Rage seasons past there was a thunderstorm that steered perfectly between the protection zones of Finlagh and Falmast, as if it knew the borders and snuck between them. Once it reached the forests, it seemed to stall right over us. It rained for days. Until the earth turned to muddy soup, and I forgot what it was to be dry. The mountain became a riverbed, water rushing down the land in never-ending streams. And then it was more than water coming down the slopes … it was mud and rocks and uprooted trees. The mountain itself came down on us.”
Roar’s hands were curled into fists atop her knees, food forgotten. “I heard about that. The mudslides took out the northernmost section of Finlagh.”
With a light shrug that belied the heavy expression on his face, Bait replied, “That it did. After it took my home first.” Locke had not even heard the entirety of this story; usually Bait stuck to the wild and outlandish tales of what came after the loss of his home. Roar, it seemed, had a way of pulling emotions out of more than just him. Bait continued: “I waited outside Finlagh for days, covered in muck and soaked through to my bones. I’d been separated from my parents when the mountain came down, and I just kept waiting for them to climb from the muck as I had. They never did. I met a group of pickpockets, and they snuck me into Finlagh, taught me the trade. One day, I was working with a partner. I’d distract, while he made the grab. Only I tried to distract the wrong girl.”
Jinx snorted. “Yes, you did.”
“Jinx caught my partner before he ever even got close, and he took off. I tried to do the same, but somehow tree roots had grown up from nowhere over my feet, trapping me in place.”
Slowly Roar’s sad expression transformed to one of delight and she finished for him, “That’s why they call you Bait.”
The novie grinned. “I still cover the distractions, but it’s much more fun to steal magic than coins.”
All of Roar’s earlier reticence had disappeared, and this time she turned to Jinx. “And you?”
Before the witch could answer, Duke cut in, “Another time.”
Duke gestured toward the sky to the southwest. Locke turned, and in the distance, he saw dark clouds building. If he were a more superstitious man, he might have thought Bait’s story conjured the thunderstorm.
Duke said, “While we’re here, we might as well do some hunting.”
Locke stood to go pack up his tent, but Duke raised a hand. “Not you, Locke. You need to heal.”
“It’s a thunderstorm,” he countered. “A little torrential rain won’t hurt me.”
Duke’s bushy gray eyebrows drew down into a flat line. And the old man continued: “We’ll take the horses. You and Roar stay with the Rock. If a storm strikes in our absence, you batten down the Rock and ride it out.”
Both Roar and Locke began to argue at the same time, but stopped when Duke growled, “Enough.” Duke fixed his eyes on Locke and said, “Don’t be reckless. She’s learning not just from what you say but what you do. If you want her to make safe decisions, you must make them too.”
Locke’s mouth snapped shut, teeth clacking together. Scorch it all. He hated when Duke was right.
*
The stench of death blanketed the craggy mountainside. Blood flowed down the slope like a river from the mass of bodies that had fallen under his attack. The stench of burning flesh stung his nostrils as he studied the bodies that had been scorched by his skyfire.
He heard a rattling breath, a low moan, and charged down the rocky land and found one body set apart from the rest. A soldier was sprawled facedown, short and slim, probably little better than a boy knowing the Lockes’ coldhearted ways, but he saw the sharp rise of the body as the soldier struggled to breathe. With his foot, he kicked the boy over onto his back. Blood speckled his mouth as he gasped for breath. There was a scorch mark at his shoulder, and he guessed the boy had not taken a direct hit. At least not there. A festering, charred wound marred the boy’s belly, and bloodied hands clutched at the seeping sore.