Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(35)
In spite of everything, I found myself smiling. “I already did hit him once,” I said. “But it was more of a really hard shove.”
“Did you, now? He has that effect on people. I’ve gotten a few over on him myself. Mostly when we were children, but still. It counts.”
“That’s because you’ve always been a bully.”
I hadn’t heard Zan arrive, but there he was in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against the frame.
“And where’s my husband?” Kate asked. “You’ve got him doing your dirty work again, no doubt. If I have to clean blood out of any more of his shirts . . .”
“You know it’s never his blood on his shirts.”
“And that’s supposed to make it better?”
He shrugged. “Yes, a little.”
She put her hands on her hips. “I still don’t like it.”
“Don’t worry; tonight it’s nothing dangerous. He’s making my excuses to the king about why I won’t be attending the Petitioner’s Day banquets.”
“Not dangerous?” Kate snorted. “That’s only ‘not dangerous’ because he’s telling Domhnall what he wants to hear.” She leaned over to me and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “Zan’s not really welcomed at any courtly dealings. They used to try to get him to be involved, but he made himself a terrible nuisance and blundered everything he touched until no one could stand it anymore and they quit asking him to come. And that’s really saying something, considering Domhnall is king.”
“It was a calculated effort,” Zan said. “I did it to gain the freedom I needed to get real work done, unhindered by courtly politics and the irrational whims of that very stable genius.”
“Of course it was,” Kate said sweetly. But Zan didn’t answer; his attention had turned to me.
I did not look up as he approached me, choosing instead to stare at his boots through the escaped tendrils of my hair. On our last encounter, I’d been deliriously burning two deviant brutes half to death. The time before that, I’d dragged him into a hedge and draped myself all over him like a lovesick lunatic. At this point I could go dance a naked jig in the town square and my humiliation could not be more complete.
Still, I was intensely aware of his proximity now. Those seconds together in the rose hedge had shifted something fundamental between us, exposing a strange and unsettling connection we’d been oblivious to before. Zan came to a stop a margin closer than should have been comfortable for our limited acquaintance, as if he sensed the connection too and was now testing its borders.
Determined not to be cowed by him or my own newfound curiosity in him, I forced myself to look him full-on in the face. He reached toward my cheek but paused a mere fraction before touching my skin.
“You’re not going to kick me again, are you?” he asked.
“I’m still deciding,” I answered.
Accepting the possible consequences, he tucked my hair back before crooking a finger beneath my chin, moving my face gently to the side so he could survey the bruises along my cheekbone and my swollen lip.
Pursing his lips, he asked, “I know you’ve been through a lot, but do you feel well enough to take a walk? There’s something I’d like to show you.”
* * *
Moving was much more difficult than I anticipated, but Zan tried to be patient, retaining his air of casual uncaring but still putting his arm around my shoulders to help me when I winced or gasped as we picked over the rough terrain. And it was rough; we left Kate’s house by the back door, skirting past an old hut and a small pond where a dozen geese watched us with lazy disinterest. The environment was quite different from the center of the city. Old King Achlev had wanted to make his wall into a perfect circle, and that meant enclosing parts of the cliffs and forest and mountain.
“Where are we going?” I asked, looking up at the towering pines.
“Not long now,” he replied, helping me down into a depression that must have been left by a creek on its way to the fjord, before it was dammed to make the pond.
“That’s not an answer.”
“Look.” He parted some tall reeds and pointed to the underside of the bridge.
“I don’t see—?”
He moved me two feet forward, and an opening came into view. It was little more than three feet high, framed into a square by old timbers. Probably some kind of defunct culvert. “It requires a slight change of perspective to find it,” he said, ducking inside and motioning me to follow.
The interior of the passage was dark and musty, smelling strongly of mold and muddy soil. “After the wall was erected, a system of canals was built under the city to irrigate the vegetation growing on the inside of the wall. As the city grew, the earliest system was no longer sufficient, so three hundred or so years ago they blocked off some of the old water lines and built newer, stronger ones. Watch your head there. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time reading old books from the archives, and I came across the plans for the old system.”
“That’s what this is? Some old canal?”
“Yes. This is one of the better ones. Most are collapsed or flooded, and impassable. This way.”
The passage forked, one side slanting off sharply to the right, the other carrying on straight forward. We took the right passage, which seemed to descend for a long while before angling back up and winding in a narrow circle. Then, with little warning, we stepped out into the light.