The Silver Siren (Iron Butterfly, #3)(43)

The soft nudging against my shoulder brought me out of my sorrowful reverie. Faraway forcefully bumped me and I almost fell forward. He kept on with his onslaught until I was on my feet again and moving away from Donn. A few seconds later, two of our guards had come to carry his body away.

I walked back into the camp and searched for Garit. He was wrapped in brown burlap and already tied up with twine. But I had to know. What if he carried some clue about the Septori—something we’d missed? I had lost my knife last night in the battle, so I borrowed Hemi’s to saw away at the twine.

It took every ounce of my strength to not look into his face as I searched inside his pockets, boots, and socks. Looking for instructions, plans, a name. I found nothing. I started to pull up his shirt and Hemi put a warning hand on my shoulder.

“What are you doing, li’l Thalia? You should let the dead rest.”

“I need to know if he bears the mark. The brand of the Septori. It looks like this.” I picked up a stick and quickly drew a circle in the ground with two slashes through it. “I need to know if he was telling the truth.”

“Searching the body of a dead man is not for our clan leader’s daughter. I’ll do it.” Hemi leaned forward and very carefully began to search Garit’s body for a brand.

It was a rash idea, but I needed to know how long Garit had been betraying me. He couldn’t have hidden the brand on his back, otherwise his soldier friends would have seen it. Hemi searched carefully, shielding Garit from me. I could tell when Hemi found the brand because he let out a long sigh. He re-wrapped the body and came to stand beside me.

“Where was it?” I asked.

“Upper thigh,” he answered and turned to walk away.

“Was it an old mark or new?” I called out loudly after him.

“Li’l Wolf, you don’t need to know. He’s your enemy.”

I spun on Hemi and raised my voice. “Old or new?”

Hemi looked at me, his voice filled with sadness. “It’s newer, a few months old, I’d say.”

My hands trembled and I grounded myself with hate—with fury toward Garit and Donn. Both men had gotten under my defenses so easily, with a joke, with a gift, with friendship. Donn’s mark had been old, Garit’s betrayal recent. Both deaths had been hard, but I couldn’t let them be my weakness.

“Call everyone that is left to gather. We will check everyone for the brand. Now!”

Hemi gave me a long look before he nodded his head to obey. Minutes later everyone had been gathered. Hemi helped check the men, while Syrani and I checked the females. We had hung up makeshift clotheslines with blankets over them to keep some privacy. After the two little girls were checked, Syrani stepped into the changing area and started to unbutton her dress.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I may not trust you. But I want to give you no reason not to trust me.” She pulled her long hair up over her shoulders and subjected herself to the same humiliation that we had put the others through. I could see her swallow in nervousness, but she was clean. No mark upon her.

Not to be outdone by Syrani’s bravery, I let her check me. Satisfied, we started to get dressed.

“You match now.” Syrani’s back was to me as she ran her fingers through her hair and began to braid her long blonde hair. I had no idea to what she was referring. “You know, your eyes. They’re not so freaky now. They’re actually quite pretty.”

I hadn’t known that my other eye had changed. Inwardly I groaned, but I was able to be nice. “Thanks, I guess.”

“Do you know why they do that?” she asked causally. Her hands deftly wound the braid into a bun on top of her hair, and with only a few hairpins she was able to keep it secure. The style, though simple, made her look less like a spoiled girl and more like a meek young woman.

“No, it started happening when I lost control of my power.”

“What’s the chance of it happening to me? I think I would look nice with silver eyes. It takes some getting used to, but they are quite fetching.” She turned to look at me, her head cocked sideways as she studied me.

“Pretty slim,” I sighed.

“Oh well. I would hate to be too beautiful.”

I snorted in reply. Syrani didn’t notice. Loud voices greeted us as we headed back to the group.

“What’s going on?” I yelled over the din.

One of the soldiers had a male kitchen servant on his knees, a sword pointed at his neck. “Narn. He’s burned the mark off.”

“I did no such thing. I burned my arm this morning when I was moving the hot coals from one fire to make another…away from them,” Narn wouldn’t look in the direction of the few dead bodies of the Septori or of our own, laid out very close to the central cooking fire.

“Yeah right. You dropped the coal on your upper arm?” the soldier said sarcastically. The soldier pulled up Narn’s sleeve to reveal a large red circle burn. It was still swollen, an angry red blister had appeared, and the edges had burned black. The smell was rank and the sight of the yellow pus made me sick, but I tried to look closely for any sign of a previous mark. It was just too hard to tell.

I wasn’t like Adept Lorna and I couldn’t read him.

“Kill him,” Karni spoke softly.

I was surprised at her young voice and the certainty with which she demanded death. Syrani looked to me with a question in her eyes. Neither of us knew what to do.