Chosen (The Warrior Chronicles #1)(85)

“How is she?” Leilius asked as he walked up. He looked like a peacock dressed in rumpled clothes.

Marc shook his head. “She won’t eat.”

“I am sitting right here, and I am fine. Leilius, this was one easy battle. If you get over-confident, you will get dead. Popularity goes farther when you are modest. Women will come calling regardless, but the good ones will leave soon after. Get wise, keep your discipline, and stay alive.”

“Yes, s’am.”

“Oh, we are back to that title, are we? Well good, that one made the most sense.” Shanti leaned her head against the tree trunk and closed her eyes. A tear slid out of the corner of her left eye.

Leilius jumped as if he’d been poked in the backside with a fire stirrer. He looked at Marc with wide eyes.

“I am sad. Therefore, I cry,” Shanti said unabashedly. “I realize big strong men are trained not to show emotion in this land. It is a shame. It makes you brittle. But I am not from this land. And I am a woman, which your people have decided can shed a few tears in public. So…there you go.”

“S’cam, it weirds me out that you can read my thoughts,” Leilius mumbled.

“I cannot read your thoughts, Leilius, I can read your emotions. You are now embarrassed, but you were shocked and…freaked out, I think you say, a second ago. If you projected less, I wouldn’t be accosted by that information.”

“Can you teach me to do that? Stop projecting, I mean?”

Shanti sighed. “I have never heard of teaching anything to someone without the Gift. I don’t know that it can be done. But until I met the Inkna, I didn’t know of a few other things that can be done. It is worth a try, I suppose. We don’t have much time, however. I will be moving on as soon as my shoulder heals.”

Marc said, “What do you mean?” at the same time as Leilius said, “Wha—err?”

“I need to be on my way.” It was unclear if she was answering them, or just continuing with her monologue. “This battle will draw attention. The Inkna will wonder how someone beat their Sarshers. They will wonder if it was in-house. From what I heard over the last year, Sturgane was more ambitious than the rest. People might think the Graygual removed him, which will keep the Inkna quiet for a time. They will figure it out eventually, though. Then they will raise the alarm and the Graygual will be drawn here. They will search harder for me. That will lead them to you. Then to the discovery of Cayan. Then to war.

“I need to get help. I also need to be on my own. It is better. For me. I have lost most of my people already, and the others will stay lost unless I can get help. I do not want to make friends just to lose them. I will never again have the one I loved. He didn’t go with them. And my Chance died. So I’m a nomad until I get help. Or I am dead. I feel dead already. I’m not sure which I dread more—alive with this pain, or dead and answering for my sins. It’s all the same, maybe. I will eternally get no rest. What a terrible job, this Chosen.”

“Does the Captain know?” Marc asked, not sure what to say about the rambling. She was, without a doubt, spilling secrets. Marc knew that. But he didn’t know how they were important. Or why.

She shrugged. “Not from my mouth, but I’m sure he suspects I must go. Or maybe that I will go. Who’s to say what goes on in that head of bricks?”

Marc got up slowly. He didn’t know much, but he knew that if she died or left, they were sunk. That Inkna army would have taken them down without her battling with her mind. She needed to train the Captain to do it. If there were more people that used that type of fighting, which it sounded like there were, she had to stay on their side. She had to. Or they would end up like the people here—poor, distraught, or used for unspeakable things. Marc wouldn’t see his sister handed over, or his father starving. He wouldn’t!

“Leilius, watch her. I’ll be back,” Marc said as he turned.

“But—“

With her eyes still closed and her head leaning back against the tree, the sun sprinkling her face through the leaves, a smile soaked up Shanti’s face. “I only bite during sex, Leilius, and you are too young for that.”

Marc paused when he finally found the Captain. The man was sweat-stained and exhausted, but he wasn’t giving up. He was helping the townsfolk with the manual labor, right alongside his men, cleaning up the destruction that the battle caused. The strength of the man was awe-inspiring. He could lift twice what the man next to him could manage, and could work for longer. That fact didn’t help Marc’s desire to be somewhere else besides where he was, stiffly walking up to the large man with a plea on behalf of a foreign woman that the Captain probably didn’t care about in the least—other than to laugh at her clumsy execution of their language and confusion of their customs. Marc had never understood his leader’s humor where it concerned S’am, but then, he had never understood the Captain, full stop. It was best to just steer clear.

But here he was, tremors from head to foot, wringing his hands like a maid caught stealing, shuffling up and clearing his throat. “Sir?” he said weakly.

After a moment, watching the Captain wrestle a giant beam to the side, Marc tried again. “Captain, sir?”

The large man turned and looked down at him. He wasn’t that much taller, but it certainly seemed that way now, or any time Marc had been stupid enough to get a dose of the Captain’s full attention.