Page 70 of The Sorcerer's Alpha
“I thought you could do anything. And you can, so I wasn’t wrong.” Marut tied a knot to hold the bandage in place. “Always the hand with you. Next time, I recommend the forearm.”
Sycamore laughed, quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping scouts nearby. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Marut had some stuffed flatbread in his bags from the camp kitchens at Beas. Sycamore needed no urging to eat. They shared the food and passed Marut’s water skin back and forth as the sun rose above the hills to the east. Marut felt Sycamore’s mood shift as they ate, increasingly somber. He was afraid to ask, but he did, finally: “What’s troubling you?”
Sycamore frowned down at his bandaged hand in his lap. “It frightens me,” he said. “What I can do. It frightens me what I’ll be asked to do for Chedi, now that these scouts will return with a tale of how I single-handedly brought down a fort. And it will only grow more exaggerated in the telling.”
Marut laid his hand on Sycamore’s knee, wishing he could offer some comfort. He knew Sycamore wasn’t wrong.
“I’m so sick of this war,” Sycamore said, low. “It makes me sick. All of these wasted lives for some metal in the hills. Let the Skopoy have the mines if they want them so badly. We’ll take them back in another hundred years.”
“That’s treason.”
“Yes. I’m full of treason these days.” Sycamore shook his head. “Don’t listen to me.”
Marut offered him the last piece of bread and was pleased when Sycamore took it without argument. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know.” Sycamore chewed, his eyes downcast. He was working something over within that vast vault of his mind, but Marut could get no sense of what it was. “Are you going back to Banuri after this?”
“I don’t know. I suppose there were orders in the letter the king sent to the commander at Beas. He didn’t tell me anything, though.”
Sycamore put the cap back on the water skin and passed it to Marut. “I’m going to sleep for a while,” he said, and wrapped himself in a blanket and lay down without further comment.
Marut sat for a while longer, watching Sycamore’s face relaxed in sleep, before he lay down as well. A bird was singing in the brush nearby, a lark of some kind, high and sweet.
CHAPTER26
Sycamore’s head felt somewhat clearer when he woke. He hadn’t slept long. Marut was asleep beside him, and over Marut’s shoulder he could see the other scouts still asleep as well, and past them the men standing at watch. His eyes were gritty with exhaustion, but the wild exhilaration of his escape had passed, leaving him cold but sober.
He sought out the small spark within him. No harm had come to it amidst all of the blood magic and setting the Skopoy fort on fire. He needed to tell Marut, but he hadn’t found the words.
If he returned to Banuri and went back to his life as a sorcerer, the baby would be taken from him. He knew it like he knew his own name. He would give birth and the baby would be lifted from his arms and wrapped in swaddling blankets and given to some noble to raise, or sent to the temple. He would never see it again.
Even that might not have been enough to bend him. He had never longed for children or thought much of them at all, and he felt no longing even now, only an animal sort of protectiveness, deep in him as bone. But he thought of how happy Marut would be—how Marut’s eyes would widen, and then he would smile the way he did, his whole face lighting. Marut wanted children. Marut would be a good father, and that was what Sycamore longed for, to see Marut patiently teaching their child to ride a horse. He wanted to give Marut a family.
He eased one hand from beneath the blankets and pressed it to the earth, which welcomed him at once. They were still in Skopa, but the earth knew nothing of human borders and didn’t care to.
They should have stayed in Twin Rams. That was clear to him now. He loved Chedi and always would, but he loved Marut more. If he couldn’t have Marut, then Chedi couldn’t have him.
He did manage to sleep a little longer, and woke to Marut’s hand on his shoulder, his gentle half-smile as he crouched at Sycamore’s side.
“Time to go,” Marut said.
Their detour to the north added time to the journey. The sky was purple and orange in the west by the time they returned to Beas. Sycamore was so weary he could hardly stay on his feet. He sidled around to Marut, pretending to check Rhododendron over as they waited for the scouts ahead of them to clear out of the stables. In a low voice, he said, “Don’t let them send you away.”
Marut blinked at him. “All right.”
“I have something to do tomorrow as soon as I wake. And then make my report to the lieutenant general. Look for me after that.”
“What are you planning?” Marut asked, a surge of hope lifting within him like an eager horse raising its head to ride.
The lieutenant was watching them. Sycamore shook his head and moved around to Rhododendron’s other side. They would be monitored just as they had been in the Sarnoy villages. Fine: Sycamore would work around it.
He was too tired even to exploit his status as sorcerer to demand a hot bath. His windowless room was uncomfortably like his prison cell, but even so he fell into sleep at once, a plunge directly down into the black well of unconsciousness.
When he woke he had no idea what time it was or how long he had slept. He made a light and dressed and went out. The sun had risen but wasn’t yet visible above the hills. The air was cool and dry. A soldier standing guard by the door nodded to him and he nodded back. Yes, he was being watched.
“Is it safe for me to walk up to the ridge?” he asked the man, pointing toward the slope above the mines. Of course it was safe for him, but he wanted to convey what he was doing without revealing that he knew his movements were being tracked.