Page 36 of House of Dusk
“Sleep, Brother Timeus,” she told the boy.
He glanced toward Nilos. “Are you sure?”
She nodded, and he dutifully curled himself into his corner. Trusting her.
Sephre propped herself upright with a sigh. She’d spent plenty of sleepless nights. Not just during the war, but at Stara Bron, when she had bubbling tinctures to oversee, and nightmares to avoid.
She cupped her hand, willing the flames to subside, drawing the darkness in.
• • •
Her first sluggish thought was that the captain was going to murder her for falling asleep on watch. Then she remembered that, no, she was the captain now, so she would have to murder herself. Sephre blinked, groggily, and saw the dim outlines of a stone structure, smelled straw and a faint whiff of something sweet. Figs.
Then, finally, she remembered herself fully, and shoved herself upright. Her muscles protested, weary from a day of travel and unused to sleeping on the ground. But it was nothing to the pounding in her skull. Furies’ tits, she hadn’t drunkthatmuch.
Her mouth tasted like old cheese. And now her heart was galloping too, because the gray morning light made plain that something was missing from the barn.
Nilos. The man was gone.
Timeus lay curled in his bed of straw. She watched him for a moment, until she caught the rise and fall of his shoulder. Sleeping. Safe. A tiny knot of tension in her released.
Wincing, she ran her tongue over her teeth, tasting the lingering sweetness of the wine. How much had she drunk? Surely not enough to knock her senseless.
But there was something else. A sharp herbal note clinging to the back of her tongue. Not mint. Not chamomile.
She swore as it came to her, finally.Dreamfast. Fates, she was a fool. She’d doled it out often enough to others at the temple, if they were having trouble sleeping. She’d trusted the holy flame to purify the wine, but dreamfast was no poison. An infusion of the leaves was, however, more than enough to ensure a heavy slumber. Especially combined with wine. And the weariness of a long day.
“Timeus,” she called. “Time to get up.”
A muffled groan came from the novice. “Is it time for morning devotions already?”
“No,” she said. “It’s time to chase down some answers.”
• • •
“Butwhywould he do it?” asked Timeus. “He didn’t take any of our things. Not that we have much, of course, but if he were a thief he might’ve taken our cloaks. And if he meant worse, he could’ve slit our throats while we slept.”
Yes, and it galled her to admit it. “You don’t drug someone out of kindness and good intent,” she said, quickening her pace. They were nearly to Kessely. She could see the outline of structures above. Several small, blocky houses clung to the rough ridge, bare to the bright blue sky that had swept in to clear the last shreds of the storm. Like many of the villages in these parts, the folk of Kessely had built their homes in the heights, in memory of a more violent age, when Helisson had been a fractured land of city-states, and no peace had held back the Scarthian war bands.
She led the way up the last of the switchbacks. In the village, they were greeted by a man hoisting water from a well.
“A stranger? Yes, I spoke with him, an hour past or so,” he said. “Said he was looking for friends, had come with a gift for their newborn babe. I sent him up the old hunter’s path.” The man pointed to a trail that wound away into a bit of scrubby wilderness, still higher up the hillside. “Charis birthed her first last month. Fine, healthy child.”
Sephre thanked him, then tugged Timeus after her, jogging now. “What does he want with a baby?”
“He didn’t seem like a bad person,” said Timeus.
Sephre gritted her teeth. The boy wasimpossiblynaive. “You mean he didn’t have glowing eyes and smell like death and cackle at us with malevolent glee?”
Silence then. When she glanced back, the novice had his head down, focusing on the narrow, rough trail.
Well, he had to face the truths of the world someday. Life wasn’t a story like the Golden Boar, full of handsome heroes and loathsome villains. They called her a hero, and look what she had done.
“There’s a house,” panted Timeus.
Sephre surged onward, ignoring the tearing of her quick breath, the heat that burned in her chest. Inside, she found a woman, curled on the floor as if asleep.
And she was, in fact, asleep. Not dead, thank the Fates. There was another woman a few feet away. A heavy staff, the sort used by shepherds in these parts, lay tumbled beside her, as if she’d been holding it.
