Shadow's Son (29 page)

They rode west past sleepy villages and isolated homesteads. As the
miles wore on, the farms and vineyards fell behind and they entered into
a vast tract of wilderness. Still, Caim kept one eye over his shoulder. Even
though they hadn't seen a living soul in hours, he couldn't shake the
feeling they were being pursued. Invisible phantoms prickled his imagination, and not all of them originated from the events in Othir; with each
passing mile he slipped deeper and deeper into his past.

A yawn broke the morning silence as Josey stirred and stretched.
Caim watched her without embarrassment. The last few days had taken
their toll; she was thinner than when they'd met; her face had lost some of its color. Still, there was a core of iron in her that could not be
denied.

She caught him staring. "What are you looking at?"

"Maybe we should talk about it."

"Talk about what?" But a blot of color crept into her cheeks.

"About what happened in your father's house when you kissed-"

"I was overwrought," she blurted, "and you had one foot in the grave.
It was just a moment of weakness."

"Weakness, huh?"

She fixed her gaze on the road. "It won't happen again."

"That's good to know."

He shifted in the saddle. He wasn't used to riding anymore. His
thighs would be sore tonight. Up ahead, trees limned in shades of bronze
and gold emerged from the flatness of the plains. Far in the distance,
rounded hills pushed back the horizon, and beyond them towered the
shoulders of lofty gray peaks.

They passed an old marker beside the road. Half hidden by weeds,
there was no telling what it said, but Caim didn't need to read it. A cardinal perched atop the stone marker watched them as they passed. Caim
tried to remember the last time he'd seen a bird besides the filthy pigeons
that infested Othir.

"So where are we?" Josey asked.

"Dunmarrow."

Josey stood up in her stirrups for a better look around. "I've never
been so far outside the city walls. Do people actually live out here?"

"Few. At least, not many you'd want to meet. We're getting into
bandit territory."

"Caim, are you sure about this? We could turn back. There might be
people who would help us in Othir."

He snapped the reins. His gelding trotted for a few steps before
falling back to a lazy walk. Josey caught up a moment later, handling her
mount with practiced ease.

"This person you're taking us to," she said. "He can help us? Who is
he? Your teacher?"

"Not exactly. But I trust him, and I don't trust many people. Neither
should you."

"All right. So where does he live? On the other side of this wood?"

The path entered a stand of red maples. Cool shadows played across
the ground. These woods were no mystery to Caim. He had explored their
length and breadth extensively as a boy. They had been his refuge, his
castle, his haven from a host of memories that refused to fade, but he had
never considered returning until now.

Half a mile after they passed under the leaf canopy, a humble dwelling
appeared beside the road. Caim pulled his mount to a halt. Not much had
changed since the last time he'd seen the place. A tendril of wood smoke
rose from the clay-brick chimney. Roughed logs formed the walls, insulated with thick layers of wattle. The roof was bundled thatch.

"Is this it?" Josey asked. "How long since you've been here?"

"A long time."

Their horses whickered as a heavyset man came around the corner of
the cottage. He had a wood axe with a black iron blade in one ham-fisted
hand and a load of firewood tucked under the other arm. He looked to be
somewhere in his fifties. His broad frame was clad in a homespun tunic
tied with a rope over buckskin breeches. His face was uneven from an old
war wound that had smashed in the left side of his jaw, giving him a menacing appearance, like a mangled wolf that'd been in too many fights.
Watery blue eyes watched their arrival without expression.

Caim leaned forward in the saddle. The old man had changed. His
beard, as scraggly as always, had grown down to his chest, and he'd lost
some hair on top. Extra weight now clung to his middle, but his shoulders were still massive, rolling on either side of his head like tumbling
boulders. Caim supposed he had changed somewhat himself. He'd been
little more than a half-grown boy when he left. Would the old man even
recognize him?

Those fears evaporated with a nod. "Caim."

Caim returned the nod. "Kas."

The axe man scratched his leg with the blade. "Looks like your taste
in company has improved. You two jumped a broom yet?"

Calm's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. "Uh, no. Kas, this is
Josey. Just a girl I know."

The old man started toward the door. "Well, come inside. I've got a
pot of
cha
on the fire. It should be about ready."

Caim climbed down and moved to help Josey from her horse, but she
beat him to the ground.

"So I'm not good enough for you?" she asked, wearing the same feral
smile Kit gave him whenever she wanted to pull his tail feathers.

With a grunt,
Caim headed toward the cabin, hobbling with every
step from the long ride.

Caim ran his hand across the surface of the table in the larger of the cabin's
two rooms. The whorls and knots brought back memories. He and Kas
had spent a lot of time at this table, conversing over meals of homeground sausage garnished with whatever they could coax from the garden.
Well, Kas had mostly talked while he listened. He remembered less
pleasant things, too: angry words and all-out battles, the bitter winter
when everything in the cabin except themselves had frozen solid. Caim
could still imagine the chill in the tips of his fingers after all these years.

The interior was just the way he remembered it, except smaller. A
layer of dust covered everything. Cobwebs hung from the rafters and the
old spear over the fireplace, and the window shades looked like they
hadn't been cleaned since the cabin was built. A pile of threadbare blankets was stacked in the corner where he used to sleep. The smells of wood
smoke and Kas's joint liniment hung in the air.

The old man hadn't said much since they arrived, just dropped his
firewood by the hearth and puttered around the squat iron stove. Josey sat
back in the homemade chair and studied the two of them like animals in
a menagerie.

Caim shifted to alleviate the stitch in his side.
Maybe this wasn't the best
idea.
He was trying to come up with an excuse to leave when Kas came
over with a steaming kettle, a rag wrapped around the handle. He poured
a cup for each of them and lowered himself onto a stool made from a tree
stump. Josey offered to give up her chair for the third time since they
arrived, and for the third time Kas refused.

"No, I'm fine. I made those chairs, you know. Hope you don't get a
splinter." He made a smile at that like it was a private joke.

Caim took a sip from his cup and winced. The cha was just like in the
old days, horrible, but it was hot.

"So," Josey said, "are you and
Caim related?"

Kas glanced across the table with raised eyebrows. Caim shrugged.
They were past the point where his secrets could do him much more
harm.

"Not exactly," Kas replied. "I served his father for a time after my soldiering days. After his father and mother were killed-"

"She wasn't killed."
Caim squeezed the cup tight. The old resentment
bubbled to the surface as quick as marsh gas. "She was taken."

Kas nodded. "All right."

Josey looked
Caim. "Your father was killed, and someone took your
mother? How old were you?"

Caim took another sip. "Eight."

Josey reached out as if to touch his arm, but stopped before her fingers made contact. "I'm so sorry,
Caim."

"Ancient history."

"Who did it?"

"We never found out," Kas said. "Caim ran off during the attack. I
searched for weeks before I found him scrounging around the streets of
Liovard, skinny as an alley cat and almost as feral. I brought him out here
and we built this cottage."

Caim could feel Josey's stare. He could guess the thoughts running
through her head, trying to piece together the shambles of his life, to trace
the journey from that small forlorn boy to what he'd become. He could
have told her not to bother, that he had chosen his path with his eyes open
wide, but it didn't matter what she thought. Nothing could change the
past, so the past didn't matter.

"We had some good times here," Kas continued. "That is, until he up
and ran out on me. You were what, Caim? Fifteen?"

"Thirteen." He remembered the day like it was yesterday. They had
argued over something; he couldn't remember what, but it had seemed
like the most important thing in the world at the time.

"We had a fight," Kas said with a shrug, as if that explained everything. "I can't even recall what it was about. Anyways,
Caim turned in
early that night. The next morning, he was gone. You know, I went back
to Liovard searching for you."

"No one asked you to."

"Dammit, boy. I thought you were long dead by now."

"Well, I'm not." Caim got up. The room was cramped and stifling,
the air thick with regrets.

"I know I made mistakes," Kas said. "I couldn't replace your family.
The gods know I tried."

"Save it."

Caim left the cabin. He went around back to the wide meadow lined
by a bulwark of ancient boles. This had been his playground, the place he
went to escape with his thoughts. Years had passed, but the sights and
smells of the cabin brought it all back like he was still just a boy,
wrestling with the same problems, asking the same questions. And still
finding no answers. What had really happened all those years ago on that
cool spring night? Was he truly alone in the world?

Footsteps crunched on the carpet of dry leaves behind him. "I come
out here a lot," Kas said. "In the evening with my pipe. It's relaxing."

"Where do you find tobacco this far out?"

"A trader comes by every few months. I got a new adze last spring."

Calm's gaze wandered to a boulder at the edge of the woods. Almost
as high as his waist, half sunk into the earth and covered in gray lichen,
it had to weigh as much as a prize steer, if not more. He remembered
watching Kas lift the boulder and toss something underneath before
dropping the stone back into place. It had happened so long ago, and yet
the memory was as sharp as a knife.

"You're thinking about your parents," Kas said.

Caim nodded.

"You think you're strong enough to lift that stone yet?"

Caim considered the boulder, and the mountain of history heaped
upon its craggy face. "I don't know if I'll ever be strong enough."

"I think about your father a lot," Kas said. "Your mother, too. I
wonder if I should have searched longer for the ones who did it. Maybe I
didn't try hard enough."

Caim scuffed the toe of his boot in the dirt and kicked up a pebble.
It landed beside his foot, flat and smooth like a river stone. A band of red
twisted through the white surface. What could he say? Nothing. He had
his own reservations about the past.

"But you know,
Caim, I'm glad I didn't go back, because then I'd
never have found you. Your father was a great man, the best I ever knew. He would have wanted me to take care of you until you were old enough
to look after yourself."

"What about what I wanted? What if I'd been willing to trade a few
years on the streets in exchange for the knowledge that what happened to
my parents had been made right?"

"You still want revenge? Boy, listen to me. I've seen war and more
than enough killing for a lifetime, and I can tell you from experience,
that's an endless hole. You can pour everything you got into it, but every
morning it's still going to be empty. It doesn't matter how many men you
send to their graves, what's past is never going to change. It's time you
learned that and moved on."

Caim ground his teeth together until sharp tingles of pain ran along
his jaw. "I still see him in my dreams, Kas. He dies again and again right
in front of me, and he keeps asking for justice, but I can't give it to him.
What am I supposed to do? Just let it go and forget they ever existed?"

Kas sighed. "Caim, you've been walking a line between light and
dark your whole life. Maybe it's time to choose a side and stick with it."

Caim stepped away. A sick feeling uncoiled in his belly. Suddenly, he
didn't trust himself. Was he doing the right thing? How could he know?

"There are no sides, Kas. Just everyone looking out for themselves.
That's the truth my father couldn't face."

"You don't see it, boy. You're in trouble."

"It's nothing I can't handle." He turned to face the man who had
raised him. "But I need a safe place for Josey to stay. It'll just be for a
couple days."

"Of course, she's welcome. What about you?"

Caim headed back to the cabin. "I've got things to take care of."

Josey stood in the tiny kitchen area. She looked over as he entered.
"I'm not staying without you," she said as if reading his thoughts.

"It's for the best."

She crossed her arms across her chest. "You don't get to decide where
I go and how I live."

He waited for the anger of her outburst to subside. The blush of her
cheeks faded, but her fingers were knotted now, into a hard, white ball.
She looked like she was searching for something to throw at him until Kas
stepped through the door.

"We'll have a grand time, lady. We can talk about Caim while he's
gone. I'll tell you all his childhood secrets."

Her eyes bore into
Caim. "What if you don't come back?"

"I will."

"But what if-?"

He came around the table and wrapped his hands around hers. "I will
return. Believe that."