“I don’t know that you have much choice,” Rojer said. “If he’s right, the Daylight War will find us whether we support it or not.”
Leesha sighed, hugging the shawl tightly even though the heat wards around her yard kept things comfortably warm. “Do you remember the night in the cave?”
Rojer nodded. It had been the previous summer, a few days after the Painted Man had rescued them on the road. The three of them had taken shelter from the rain, and while there, Leesha had learned that Rojer and the Painted Man had killed the bandits who had robbed them and ravished Leesha. She had been furious with them, and called them murderers.
“Do you know why I was so angry with you and Arlen?” Leesha asked. Rojer shook his head. “Because I could have killed those men if I’d wanted.” She reached into her dress pocket, producing a slim needle coated in some greenish mixture.
“I carry these needles for putting down mad animals,” Leesha said. “I keep them in my dress pocket because they are too dangerous to leave lying in the herb cloth, or even my apron, which I take off sometimes. No man would long survive a puncture from one of these, and even a scratch might kill him in time.”
“I’ll ware my tongue around you in the future,” Rojer said, but Leesha didn’t laugh.
“I had one in my free hand when I threw the blinding powder at the bandit leader,” Leesha said. “If I had struck the mute with it when he grabbed me, he would have been dead before the leader recovered, and I could have struck him, too.”
“And I could have handled the third,” Rojer said. He lifted an empty hand, and suddenly a knife appeared in it. He thrust quick and twisted the knife in the air. “So why didn’t you?”
“Because it’s one thing to kill a coreling,” Leesha said, “and another to kill a person. Even a bad person. I wanted to. Sometimes I even look back and wish I had. But when the time to do it came, I couldn’t.”
Rojer looked at the knife in his hand a moment, then sighed and slipped it back into the special harness on his forearm, rebuttoning his cuff.
“Don’t think I could, either,” he admitted sadly. “I started learning knife tricks when I was five, but it’s all mummery. I’ve never so much as cut someone.”
“Once I knew I couldn’t do it, I just stopped fighting when they pushed me down,” Leesha said. “Night, I even spit on my hand to wet myself when the first one fumbled with his breeches. But even when they left me sobbing in the dirt, I didn’t wish I’d killed them.”
“You wished they’d killed you, instead,” Rojer said.
Leesha nodded.
“I felt the same way, after Master Jaycob was killed,” Rojer said. “I didn’t want revenge, I just wanted the pain to end.”
“I remember,” Leesha said. “You begged me to let you die.”
Rojer nodded. “That’s why I went with the Painted Man to the bandit camp.”
“For me?” Leesha asked.
Rojer shook his head. “Those men needed to be put down like any mad horse, Leesha. We weren’t the first folk they robbed, and we wouldn’t have been the last, especially once they had my portable circle. But we didn’t kill them. The Painted Man walked in and stole your horse, I grabbed the circle, and we ran. They were all breathing and relatively unbroken when we left.”
“Food for the demons,” Leesha said.
Rojer shrugged. “The Painted Man had killed most of the demons in the area. We didn’t see a one when we walked to their camp, and dawn was only a few hours away. It was a better chance than they gave us by far.”
Leesha sighed, but she said nothing. He looked at her. “Why do folk call an Herb Gatherer to put down an animal? Any axe or mallet will do the job.”
Leesha shrugged. “Can’t bring themselves to kill a loyal animal, or they hold out hope I can heal it. But sometimes I can’t and the animal is suffering. The needles are quick and kind.”
“Maybe the Painted Man is, too,” Rojer said.
“Are you saying you think we should fight the Krasians?” Leesha asked.
Rojer shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think we need to keep a needle in our hand, even if we don’t use it.”
CHAPTER 16
ONE CUP AND ONE PLATE
333 AR SPRING
LEESHA WATCHED AS WONDA and Gared faced off in the Corelings’ Graveyard, circling slowly. Wonda was taller than any other woman in the Hollow, including the refugees, but giant Gared dwarfed her regardless. She was fifteen, and Gared near to thirty. Still, Gared wore a look of intense concentration, while Wonda’s face was calm.
Suddenly he lunged, grabbing for her, but Wonda caught his wrist in one hand and pivoted, pressing his elbow hard with her other hand as she sidestepped and used the force of his own attack to throw him onto his back on the cobbles.
“Corespawn it!” Gared roared.
“Well done,” the Painted Man congratulated Wonda as she gave Gared a hand to help him up. Since he had begun giving sharusahk lessons to the Hollowers, she had shown herself to be his best student by far.
“Sharusahk teaches diverting force,” the Painted Man reminded Gared. “You can’t keep using the wild swings you would against a coreling.”
“Or a tree,” Wonda added, bringing titters from many of the female students. The Cutters glared. More than a few of them had found themselves defeated by female students, something no man was used to.
“Try again,” the Painted Man said. “Keep your limbs in close and your balance centered. Don’t give her an opening.
“And you,” he added, turning to Wonda, “don’t grow overconfident. The weakest dal’Sharum still has a lifetime of training against your few months. They’ll be your true test.” Wonda nodded, her smile disappearing, and she and Gared bowed and began to circle again.
“They’re learning quickly,” Leesha said as the Painted Man came to join her and Rojer. She never trained with the other Hollowers, but she watched carefully each day as they practiced the sharukin, her quick mind cataloguing every move.
Again, Wonda threw Gared onto his back. Leesha shook her head wistfully. “It really is a beautiful art. It’s a shame its only purpose is to maim and kill.”
“The people that invented it are no different,” the Painted Man said. “Brilliant, beautiful, and deadly beyond reckoning.”
“And you’re sure they’re coming?” Leesha asked.
“There isn’t a doubt in my mind,” the Painted Man said, “much as I wish otherwise.”
“What do you think Duke Rhinebeck will do?” she asked.
The Painted Man shrugged. “I met him a handful of times in my Messenger days, but I know little of his heart.”
“There’s not much to know,” Rojer said. “Rhinebeck spends his hours doing three things: counting money, drinking wine, and bedding younger and younger brides, hoping one of them will bear him an heir.”
“He’s seedless?” Leesha asked in surprise.
“I wouldn’t call him that anyplace where it might be overheard,” Rojer warned. “He’s hung Herb Gatherers for less insult. He blames his wives.”