Page 52 of Kept to Kill
He quirked a brow at Mal. ‘Probably best if she rides with me today.’
Mal smirked in response and clicked his horse into a gallop immediately, riding ahead of them to scout as usual.
Quin and Bastian kept their horses at a canter for most of the afternoon. They’d left later than usual, so they didn’t stop for an afternoon meal, and by the time the day was starting to wane, she realized she hadn’t eaten anything.
At her stomach’s incessant growling, Quin finally produced one of the hard biscuits from his saddlebag and handed it to her without a word. She nibbled it slowly.
‘You seem to need more food than anyone I’ve ever known,’ he muttered next to her ear.
She was aware that this was probably the first time Quin had ever begun a conversation with her. ‘The first few months I was with Vineri, I was very thin,’ she began. ‘One day, after a few weeks had passed, he came to my tower – to have a look at his acquisition, I suppose. He was furious when he saw. Thought they weren’t feeding me. I think he had some of his kitchen staff taken to the hole … His lowest dungeon,’ she clarified. ‘He had them bring me twice as many meals after that.’
‘I thought he would have mistreated you,’ he murmured to himself.
She looked back at him, giving him a weak smile. ‘I suppose there are many ways to mistreat someone. I was useful to him. Part of his ever-growing collection of powerful artifacts. He needed me hale, but I’m under no illusions that he saw me as much more than a tool for his own ends.’ She left it at that, the correlation between Vineri and the Brothers whose power she was now in, unspoken.
Quin didn’t say anything more and, as they traveled on, she began to notice the land around them slowly changing until the foothills appeared in the distance. Kitore waited for them on the other side.
‘How long will it take to get through to Kitore now?’ she asked Quin
‘Tomorrow, perhaps early the morning after.’
She nodded, trying to still her heart, which had begun to quicken. What would they want her to do there? Who would they want her to kill? She hadn’t really allowed herself to think about it properly. It had seemed a long way off, but now here they were, within a day of the largest of the northern cities. The city she was from.
Would she remember it, she wondered? Would she recognize streets, gutters where she and the others had played? Would she see the places where they’d cuddled up to survive the cold? She swallowed hard, willing herself not to cry as she thrust those memories away. They were from another life, another person entirely, and she didn’t want to think of them.
But now they were here, it would be impossible not to. She’d remember little Toman’s blond hair tickling her nose as he slept in her arms. She’d think of—No!
She wrenched her thoughts away, thinking of the hills, how they were already almost upon them. That her fears of the open seemed to have waned as they’d traveled, or perhaps as she’d begun to feel safe with these dangerous sell-swords.
They ascended the winding paths slowly, the horses seeming to already know their way somehow. Mal appeared in front of them for the first time since they’d left the inn and nodded, leading them off the path and into a small copse sheltered by trees. Here, a fire already crackled merrily and there was meat cooking on a makeshift spit. Mal had been busy. She could hear water close by as well.
‘Stay here,’ Quin said to her as she slid off the horse. She watched him and Bastian dismount and, as if by some unspoken command, all three of them left her with the horses to walk silently from the clearing. She watched them go, unsure of whether or not she should follow, but Quin had told her to stay and she didn’t want to go against another of his orders …
She took the bags off the horses and unbuckled their harnesses, unpacked the bedrolls and put them out on the dry ground around the fire.
Sometime later, after the sun had set and she was beginning to worry, the three men emerged from the trees. She drew in a quick breath as they came closer and she saw that Bastian and Mal had been beaten. Bastian had a split lip and was favoring his right side. Mal’s left eye was swelling and he was dabbing at his bleeding nose with the sleeve of his tunic.
‘What happened?’ she gasped.
All three of them looked surprised that she’d asked, or perhaps it was that she seemed to be worried.
Bastian grinned at her, even throwing her shocked face a wink and settling on his bedroll by the fire to pick at the meat, which was smelling done.
Mal didn’t look at her, just sat close to Bastian and began to eat as well.
‘They ignored my orders,’ Quin said from just behind her and she whirled.
‘You did that to them?’ she asked, her mouth falling open in disbelief.
‘It is the Brothers’ way. When the punishment is needed, the unit gives it. They’d do the same for me if I’d done wrong.’
‘Bu-but …’ she stuttered.
Clearly finished talking, Quin walked past her and sat down.
‘Eat,’ was all he said, and she did as she was told, plonking herself down ungracefully near to the fire just as they had and pulling her cloak around her.
As was their typical custom now, one of them gave her a portion of food, though she noticed that she seemed to have more than the others; not a lot more, but enough to notice. She gazed at Quin questioningly across the fire, remembering what she’d told him earlier, but he ignored her.
