The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(58)
Noting his gaze, Soldier Wailun leered and said, “We’ve been traveling all night and morning, boy. I deserve to relax.”
Nok went to Omair’s side. He watched as the old man cut the soldier’s pant leg to reveal unnaturally pallid skin, the color of a fish’s belly, crusted rust-brown with dried blood. Lim let out a shuddering hiss.
Nok looked away. Not because he was squeamish; he had seen far worse. He didn’t look because the sight would have sent a pang of sympathy through him, and he didn’t want to feel sympathy for the Hu or the Hana. Especially not a soldier.
Omair turned to Soldier Wailun, still lounging atop the table. “I need your help. Can you hold Soldier Lim still while I sew the wound closed?”
Nok heated a needle over the open fire before handing it to Omair, along with the thread. After he located the salve and stood with the jar in his hand, he saw Wailun staring hard at him.
The man sat up, propping up the bulk of his body with his elbows. “Where’s that boy from? He don’t look a thing like you; can’t be yours.”
“Doesn’t he?” Omair smiled quizzically at him. “Well, he is. Our family is from Ungmar, a little farming village just beyond the Southwood, near the foothills of the Gongdun Peaks. Nok, where is that salve?”
Soldier Wailun pulled at a leather strap across his chest until the water bladder attached to it emerged over one massive shoulder. He ripped the stopper from the bladder with his teeth and took a short, hard swig. “Southerners, eh? He looks an awful lot like the slipskins we see in the labor camps up north.”
Thud. Nok scrambled after the dropped jar of salve. It rolled across the floor, the glass mercifully unbroken. His neck reddened, even as he caught the jar and handed it to Omair.
“How is everything going on the front?” Omair asked the soldiers lightly.
Soldier Wailun snorted. “Who knows. Haven’t been there in weeks. When I was, my job was rounding up stray slipskins for the camps. Rumor is some of them can still caul, so we were ordered to kill every animal we saw on sight, even if it was just a marmot. Made for strange hunting—and even stranger eating.” He laughed raucously.
Nok froze. Don’t do anything stupid, he told himself. In any case, what the soldier had suggested wasn’t even possible. Most Gifted lost their caul in death, returning to their human forms.
Most of them.
“It must be harder up there now, without Commander Li—that is, Emperor Set,” piped in Soldier Lim. “He knew how to run things. We never would have been able to convince the Ohmuni to surrender and relocate without him.”
“The Ohmuni?” Nok blurted.
Soldier Lim scarcely spared him a glance. “The last slipskin tribe still intact—they took on the form of these little yellow deer. Easy enough to kill one at a time, but hard to eliminate. They kept hiding in this chain of caves . . .”
Nok knew who the Ohmuni were—he’d spent enough sleepless nights thinking on the irony that a clan of pacifists with herbivore cauls were the last surviving Gifted Kith, when warrior stock like the wolves of the Ashina and the red bears of the Varrok had long since been massacred.
“Anyhow,” Soldier Lim continued, “I liked serving under Commander Li. He will make a fine emperor.”
“Better than that arrogant Girl King, that’s for sure,” snorted Soldier Wailun. “At any rate, it’s about time we Hana retook the throne. I tell you, things were better back when we had the reins.” He looked Omair up and down for a long moment. “Isn’t that right, old man?”
Omair only smiled blandly. “I will administer the poppy tears now,” he announced to Soldier Lim.
He fished inside his robes, extracting a small glass bottle strung around his neck by a leather thong. From the bottle he gingerly tapped three drops of milky-white liquid into a cup of tea. Then he proffered the cup to Soldier Lim.
Soldier Lim licked his lips, then tipped the steaming contents of the cup down his throat. He shook loose the last drops at the bottom of the cup before handing the empty vessel back.
“Just rest,” Omair told him. “I will begin in a moment.”
Soldier Wailun stared with his sharp, mean eyes. “You sure you two ain’t got some northern blood in you? You look it.”
Omair smiled. “Do you think? Well, who can know! Perhaps long ago our ancestors came from the North. Blood is longer than memory, as they say.”
The soldier grunted doubtfully as though he hadn’t heard that expression before.
Omair began stitching up Soldier Lim’s leg while the man lolled his head against the back of the chair, nearly chewing a hole in his bottom lip to stifle a scream of pain. The poppy tears must have been working; there’d be no stifling anything if they weren’t.
Nok could feel Soldier Wailun track his movements as he crossed the room. He knew this soldier’s type: a natural bully. Stupid and uncurious, but with a sharp nose for weakness in others. Show any, and out his claws would come.
Everything in Nok wanted to flee, but to do so would only arouse more attention. He settled for scooping a basket of mint from the table and sitting as far away as he could—not far enough, the room was so small, and the soldiers so big—to separate leaves from stems.
“Pretty herbs,” the soldier sneered. Nok gave a noncommittal grunt and went about his work, trying to quell his growing panic. The man was bored, and he wanted something to torment.