Garith touched the rising welt on his cheek as he watched Kaira stalk away. The girl can slap. Garith sighed hard and shook his head. Nearly killed and disgraced by his order, and now he was a cad for trying to act with honor. If this day had anything further to offer him, it certainly could be nothing in his favor.
“I won’t be the one to tell her, but she’s more like her mother than she knows.” From the darkness beyond the campfire came Reeve’s voice, heavy with drink.
Garith sighed again. People tended to think otherwise, but Garith hated when he was right.
“And how is that?” Garith replied, stepping around the fire to the drunk merchant. “It seems to me that they could not be more different.”
“That lady’s a hell of a woman,” Reeve swore, reverently. “They both are,” he took another swig of his bottle, “in each their own way, I suppose.”
“I see. And is everyone getting drunk tonight?”
Reeve smirked. “I don’t think the boy is. Sit down, would you? Can’t enjoy the fire with you looming over me.”
Garith took a seat, and shook his head when Reeve offered the bottle to him.
“Just like your father. Gods.” The old man chuckled darkly and took another long drink.
Garith felt the familiar sting that came with any mention of his father. Anxious to turn the discussion elsewhere, Garith said, “Not to be indelicate, but I’m surprised you enjoy fire of any kind after…” Garith trailed off, seeing the flame’s shadows playing with the scarred flesh around Reeve’s hardened eyes.
“Well, you’ll notice I’m a fair distance from it,” Reeve finally said, nodding to the campfire. “One thing I’ve learned these long years is that beautiful things can burn yeh. I suspect that’s something else the girl and her mum have in common, though I wouldn’t advise telling her that, neither.”
Garith touched his still-stringing cheek and said nothing, suspecting for once that Reeve might have a fair point.
“The girl don’t know bad parents,” Reeve continued. “Mine would slap the piss out of me just as soon as speak a kind word, and that was on a good day. But they taught me something. Every parent does. Even the ones that ain’t around anymore.”
Garith grimaced. “I don’t wish to speak of my father tonight.”
“But I do,” Reeve grinned, “so where does that leave us?”
“With five hours’ sleep, if we’re lucky,” Garith said, starting to rise, when a large hand clamped his shoulder, forcing him back down.
“Your dad wasn’t nothing like what they say about him. That he led the prince astray, that he missed the signs that the prince was changing? We all did. Your dad was no different.”
“He was Prince Tirone’s tutor,” Garith responded, evenly.
“And I was his personal guard,” Reeve barked back. “I could have seen it just as easily, but the signs were too small. What prince isn’t arrogant? Reckless? Huh? How were we supposed to know that he was under the thrall of some powerful artifact and not just becoming an arsehole?”
Garith’s eyes searched the flickering dark for Darren, found him nearly outside the fire’s light… his eyes closed, his right hand draped protectively over the ornate bracelet shackled to his other wrist. Was that a faint smile on his lips, or a grimace of pain from the blow he took at the butcher’s shop?
“I won’t miss the signs,” Garith finally said, his eyes still on the boy. “I won’t make his mistake. Or yours.”
“Arrogant fecking…” Reeve muttered several more expletives and then spat into the fire, which snapped, loudly. Across the flames, Darren did not seem to notice. “The mistake would be to watch and wait, wouldn’t it? To let the trinket whisper to the boy that he’s powerful, that he’s special, huh? Until we can work it off him, we have to train the boy how to use that thing, or it’ll do that for us.”
“We do, do we?” Garith said, standing. “No, Reeve, we don’t.”
“No, not we,” the merchant agreed, looking up at Garith with utter seriousness. “You do.”
Garith said nothing.
“And when you finally come around to my side of things, which you will,” the merchant continued, “you’d better hope it wasn’t too late. Ach. Enough of this piss.” He tossed the last of the spirits into the fire, then stood to leave.
Across the surging flames, Darren was watching them now, his face expressionless.