The Kiss of Deception (The Remnant Chronicles, #1)(25)

“Morning, ladies. You’re off early.”

“As are you,” I answered.

We exchanged niceties, and he explained he was off to take care of some matters that might keep him several more days at the inn, though he didn’t say what the matters were.

“Are you a pelt trader as Gwyneth suggested?” I asked.

He smiled. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. Small animal skins. Usually I trade out of Piadro, but I’m hoping to find better prices up north. I commend your friend on her skilled observances.”

So I was wrong. He did trade in pelts. Impressions could be deceiving. “Yes,” I agreed. “Gwyneth is quite perceptive.”

He untied his horse from the rail. “I’m hoping that when I return this afternoon, a real room might be available.”

“It’s not likely until after the festival,” Pauline said. “But there might be a room at another inn in town.”

He paused as if he contemplated looking elsewhere, his eyes resting on me for several beats longer than was comfortable. In the brightness of day, his blond hair shone, and his deep brown eyes revealed more color, a striking spectrum of bronzed flecks, rich and warm like freshly tilled earth, but disquiet still lurked beneath the apparent calm. A short growth of stubble on his chin caught the morning sun, and I didn’t even realize I was studying his well-chiseled lips until an amused grin spread across them. I quickly returned my attention to Nove, feeling my cheeks blaze.

“I’ll stay here,” he answered.

“And your friend? Will he be staying as well?” I asked.

“I don’t know what his plans are, but I suspect his nose is too finicky for him to last long in a loft.” He bid his good-byes, and I watched him ride away on a horse as black as night, a strong wildish beast, even its breaths fearsome, as though a dragon lurked in its lineage. It was a beast that could splinter a stall and would never be mistaken for a broodmare. I smiled at the thought, wondering at the way Rafe had goaded him. They were an odd pair of friends.

When he was well out of sight, Pauline said, “So it’s Rafe.”

I swung up on Otto and didn’t answer. Today Pauline seemed to have woken up bent on bolstering relationships, first me and Berdi, and now me and … whoever. Was it because she so desperately wanted to fortify her own relationship with Mikael? I wasn’t prone to calling on the gods outside of the required rituals, but I touched two fingers to my lips and sent up a prayer that Mikael would return soon.

*

Terravin was small, which was part of its charm. From Berdi’s inn tucked back in the hills on the south end to the first clusters of shops on the northern end, it was a fifteen-minute journey at most—faster if you weren’t riding three asses that were in no hurry to get anywhere. I wondered at all the brightly colored homes and shops, and Pauline told me that it was a tradition that had started centuries ago. The women of the small fishing village painted their homes a bright color so their husbands who went to sea could see their own house from afar and remember that a wife waited for them to return. It was believed to be a way to protect their true love from being lost at sea.

Could anyone really travel so far that they might not find their way home again? I had never been farther out in the ocean than my knees, a freezing dip in the waters of the Safran Sea on a rare family excursion, where I chased my brothers on the beach and picked up seashells with … my father. The old memory gusted through me like a startling cold wind. So many other memories had piled on top of it that it was nearly extinguished. I was certain my father had no recollection of it at all. He had been a different man back then. I was different too.

Pauline and I made our way north along the narrow upper trail that paralleled the main road below. Ragged stripes of light squeezing through the trees played across our path. Besides the main road, there were dozens of narrow lanes like this one that wound through Terravin and the surrounding hillsides, each leading to unique discoveries. We cut down one of them to the center of town, and the Sacrista came into view, a large imposing structure for such a small hamlet. I surmised that the people of Terravin must be ardent in their devotion to the gods.

A graveyard bordered one side, riddled with markers so old they were only thin flat slabs of stone. Any adornments, words, or grand tributes had been washed away long ago, leaving their honored occupants lost to history, and yet candles of remembrance still glowed in red glass lanterns in front of a scattered few.

I watched Pauline’s gaze flutter across stone and candle. Even Otto slowed as we passed, his ears twitching as though he were being hailed by the residents within. A breeze skipped across the headstones, pulling at my loose tendrils, snaking them around my neck.

Gone … gone …

My flesh crawled. Fright closed my throat with sudden ferocity. Mikael. Something is wrong. Something is hopelessly and irretrievably wrong.

Fear seized me unexpectedly and fully. I forced myself to remember the facts: Mikael was only on patrol. Walther and Regan had both been on dozens of patrols, and sometimes they were late returning home due to weather, supplies, or any number of inconsequential things. Patrols were not dangerous. Sometimes there were skirmishes, but rarely did they even encounter a trespasser. The only injury either one of them had ever returned with was a crushed toe when a horse stepped on Regan’s bare foot.

Patrols were only a precaution, a way of asserting borders not to be crossed and a way to ensure no permanent settlements were established in the Cam Lanteux, a safety zone between kingdoms. They chased bands of barbarians back behind their own borders. Walther called it mere chest beating. He said the worse part of it was enduring the body odors of unwashed men. In truth, I wasn’t sure that the barbarians were a threat at all. Yes, savage by all the reports I had heard at court and from soldiers, but they’d been kept back behind borders for hundreds of years. How fierce could they really be?