“I’ve got what I like,” she said.
I nodded and dug my tin cup from my pack, stepped outside to fill it with snow, then set it beside the tiny fire. Opening the packet of herbs came next. Her scorn scorched my back as I fumbled at it in my heavy gloves. Finally I got a pinch of the finely crumbled leaves and dropped them in my cup that was only a quarter full of water once the snow had melted—scarcely two mouthfuls. Sighing at the delay, I retrieved another handful of snow and slipped it into the cup.
“I won’t cook for you,” said Lara, her pointed chin stuck out defiantly. “You’ll have to do for yourself, even if you have to get your hands dirty.”
“I would never expect you to,” I said. “I’ll do my share of whatever’s needed and try not to get too much in your way.”
She snorted as she threw one of my sticks on the fire. “These will burn for exactly no time. Do you understand what an ax is for?”
“I have a vague notion.”
Things didn’t seem to be going well. At least she didn’t complain about my using the fire. For a little while, every time she turned her back I’d throw on another branch until the fire was big enough to put out a little heat and get my precious cup steaming. The tea was pungent, and I felt it settle pleasantly into my cold extremities. It made me slightly less inclined to abandon the whole enterprise and take my chances in Camarthan.
Lara soaked her dry bread in warmed honey. I munched on a cold oatcake and used my cup to melt more snow. While she spread the rolls of dark leather out on the floor, I cleaned my knife and took my cup of warm water outside. Time for my daily ritual, and I wasn’t about to do it where the woman could gawk. A careful half hour and no nicks later, I had my gloves back on and no beard, and I was huddled by the hearth trying to decide if Lara would be any more hostile if I burned up all the wood in one day. Better think about something else.
“So what is it Narim wants you to teach me?” I said.
“The whole business is idiocy.” She was kneeling on the floor beside her materials and she raked me with a scornful eye. “I’m to instruct you in the lore of dragons. He wants you to learn the words, ritual words that should never be used by anyone outside the Twelve, and other words he’s got written in his book. And we’re supposed to fit you out with Riders’ armor.” Her hatred for this idea had her hands clenched so tight, I thought she might cut her flesh with her fingernails.
“Riders’ armor?”
“He thinks it’s going to protect you when you walk into that cavern and the kai tries to burn you. I told him it’s a waste of time. Why would you need it, if you’re so friendly with the beast?”
“You’re right. It doesn’t make sense.”
I think she was astonished that I would agree with her about anything. I certainly was.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ve given my word, so there’s no getting out of it until you realize this is slightly more dangerous than playacting and decide your noble skin is too precious to risk.” She dragged her bag into the middle of the floor and pulled out stiff, charred leather greaves that stank of the same grease I’d hauled up the mountain—something like rotted hay and lamp oil. “Hold these up to your legs so we’ll know how much bigger we’ll have to make them.”
All that morning, while I found a dented pail by the woodpile and proceeded to clean out her firepit, Lara cursed and measured and cut. I tried on every piece of her armor so she could see where she needed to make changes to fit me. But when she thrust her gauntlets at me and said to take my own gloves off and put hers on, I gave her my spare pair of gloves instead, saying they would do as a pattern.
“You must be a tender flower indeed who can’t take off his gloves inside. Or is it you’re afraid of dirtying yourself with a Rider’s touch?”
“Modesty,” I said, then scraped another shovelful of ashes from her hearth into the pail and swore to myself that the next time I saw Narim I would shake him until all his secrets fell out of his head. It was going to be a long five weeks.
By the time darkness fell I had a healthy fire and a fine bed of coals, and Lara had a good-sized stack of shaped leather pieces. Her floor was littered with scraps. I had thrown some of my beans into a pot of hot water, and they had simmered enough to make decent soup. Only as a concession to habit drilled into me by my lovely and gracious mother did I offer Lara some of my soup. The woman grimaced, pulled out a strip of dried meat, and began chewing on it. I took that as a refusal.
“I suppose you’ve never worn real armor, being protected from fighting as you were,” she said.
“No.”
“Probably don’t even know how to hold a sword.”
“I was taught.”
“Ah, yes. Senai think of themselves as warriors and play at it when they’re children. I suppose even you did that.”
“Yes.”
“Will you spar with me? I need practice. Elhim are too small.”
“No.”
She nodded knowingly, as if she had expected nothing else, then leaned her back against the legs of the table and stuck her boots near the fire.
“I heard you sing, you know. People fought to get closer to you. To touch you. To give you rings and letters and locks of hair to take to their families and lovers. They begged you to sing again and again until dawn came. I never understood it.”
I finished eating and kept my eyes on the fire. “What words are you supposed to teach me?”
“Narim says you know the true language.” She had switched to the tongue of the Ridemark, the odd inflections and slurred endings blunting the harsh edge of her speech.
“There was a time when I was fluent. I’ve forgotten a great number of words, but not the sounds of it.” I, too, used the old speech and did not pretend to fumble with it as I’d done in Cor Neuill. Sometimes you have to enjoy what petty triumphs you can scrape together.
“Hmmph.” I had the feeling she was disappointed that I’d said it right. “Well, first lesson then. You are to address the dragon as ‘teng zha nav wyvyr.’ ”
“Child of fire and wind.”
“You know it already?”
“I know the words. You said them when you woke Keldar.”
“Right. So I did.” Absentmindedly she brushed the wisps of hair back from her face, exposing the ugly remnants of disaster. “So you understood all of what I said that night?”
I repeated the commands she’d used in the old speech and also in common speech. Remembering words was as much a part of me as breathing.
“I’m surprised you remember it so exactly. You were a puling mess that night.”
I decided then that it was not the scars or the drooping eye that marred Lara’s face, but her ever-present sneer—the curling lip and the acid tongue so ready to wound with the greatest possible pain. Or perhaps she bore scars that were worse than the ones I could see. Of all men I should know how the damage inside could distort the face one showed to the world. I wanted to be angry with her and wipe her sneer away. But like the fool I was, I sat there feeling inordinately guilty that my existence could cause such hatred as to twist a well-proportioned face into meanness. No point in getting angry at her digging. She had no reason to understand. “That was after,” I said.
She opened a small tin box that sat on the floor next to her pallet and pulled out Narim’s worn leather book. The light was long gone, but she refused to move closer to the fire. Likely trying to stay as far from me as possible. The flames cast an angry red glow on her terrible scars and gleamed on the shining, dark brown braid that fell over her shoulder.