It came to her then, with the suddenness of lightning, that Ruari was jealous. He cared for her, not as she cared for him-a tag-along orphan, a temperamental younger brother who needed an older sister's unquestioning affection until he learned the manners to return it-but in the way Telhami had feared she'd cared for Pavek.
If the air hadn't been so charged with betrayal, she would have laughed. Even so, she couldn't keep a smile from ghosting across her face as she reached for his arm. "Pavek hasn't poisoned my mind, Ru. And there's nothing-nothing at all-between us. He's afraid of the water, afraid of the grass, can hardly smile or laugh. He's just a man completely out of his element. Just-" She caught herself before she completed her thought, completed the comparison her mind had accidentally made between a hapless, sullen Pavek standing at the edge of her pool and Ruari himself not many years ago.
"Just what?" he demanded, an ugly sneer curling his lips. "Just another raping, murdering, yellow-robe templar! I'm glad he's dead, hear me. I'll swear an oath in Grandmother's grove. I'm not afraid: I killed him and I'm glad. I'll show the guardian what's in my mind: the way he looks at me-'cause I'm wise to his templar games, the way he looked at you when we were in Urik, the way he looked at you today-"
"The way-" Akashia began to say The way he saved your life in the storm, but that would only feeding a futile argument. "Pavek's not dead," she said instead. "We saved him, Grandmother and I-"
Ruari lashed out with his fist, freeing himself from her hand and striking her across the chin in the same movement. She'd never been hit before, never in anger. The pain lasted an instant; the shock echoed in the depths of her being. Her hands flew to her face-all Yohan's self-defense instructions forgotten.
"Why? Why, if he's nothing to you?"
Ruari's fist rose to shoulder level, but whether for another blow or mindlessly, as her own hands had risen, no one would ever know. A muscular shape surged between them: Yohan coming to her rescue. Yohan, who'd followed her as he followed Pavek, on Telhami's orders. Yohan who had, undoubtedly, heard everything. He easily lifted the half-elf and hurled him against the nearest hut, where he slid to the ground and held stilclass="underline" eyes open, conscious, thinking, scared. The dwarf folded his massive arms over his barrel-ribbed chest, fairly daring Ruari to move.
"You've got to leave, now," she pleaded. "You've crossed the line. Go-before it's too late. Leave. Pavek's alive; no one will stop you. The guardian won't stop you. But you intended murder. You can't stay here any longer. Renounce your grove, Ru-it's the only way."
"Renounce it... so a damned templar can trample through it?" Ruari challenged, defiant even in defeat.
The sound of stumbling and staggering intruded before she shaped an answer. Yohan raised a finger to his lips and dropped into a crouch. Another few heavy, flat-footed steps and a seedy-looking Pavek was among them.
"Trample through what?" he demanded, steadying himself against the wall above Ruari's head, looking down and making it clear that only Ruari could give him a satisfactory answer.
Which Ruari would not do.
"This is no concern of yours, Pavek," she said into the lengthening silence, trying to sound confident and in command. "Ruari's done wrong. He-he's the one who tried to murder you with poison. He's got to leave Quraite. He's got to leave now, before-"
"Before Telhami starts asking questions?" Pavek asked- seedy or not, he was the one in command of the situation. Grandmother must have suspected Ruari and shared her suspicions with her patient. Yohan, apparently, approved, because he straightened his legs and folded his arms over his chest again. "Druids don't murder," she said, feeling that she was the one under attack. "Quraite doesn't shelter murderers. The guardian won't tolerate it."
"He meant to murder you. It's the same thing."
The ex-templar smiled, a cold and frightening smile. "Not where I come from. Seems to me a druid wouldn't make foolish mistakes measuring out his poisons. If some druid wanted me dead, some druid would have used enough poison so some other druid couldn't haul me back from death's door long before it swung shut. Some half-wit druid, with a grove where everyone knew he kept kivits and collected their musk, couldn't have been so foolish. So, some half-wit druid must have known what he was doing, must have been sending me a warning. That's what I think. That's what I'd swear-"
"Mind your words," Yohan interjected, deep-throated and meaningful.
"That's what I'd swear before a Urik court. My word against his. My warning against his murder. And my word would prevail, because there's been warning, but no murder. In Urik, by King Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy, what a man
does is all that matters. What he thinks is spit in the wind-or every man, woman, and child would die each sundown for what he'd intended to do each sunrise. It's a sorry state, I think, when the Beast of Urik has more mercy than a Quraite druid."
Akashia laced her fingers together. She could see now, for the first time, what Ruari saw when he looked at that scarred face, and she couldn't imagine why Grandmother had shared her suspicions with him, as she must have done.
Pavek was shaking. Vomit stained his tunic; the stench reached her nostrils five paces away. He was crude and disgusting, and he wore both traits like armor. Pavek was broken, all right. He was a templar to the very bone.
And, once again, this templar was giving Ruari's life back to him.
"Ru-?"
The coppery face swiveled up toward Pavek, not her. "I intended murder. My only mistake was that I failed."
"Your word against mine, scum," Pavek replied, as cold as a human voice could be. "I heard a warning. You won't get a second chance."
Chapter Eleven
The ground between the guarded Quraite groves was as hard as any of Urik's cobblestone streets. Pavek's sandals made a reassuringly familiar sound as he walked) quick-pace, toward the distant stand of tall trees that was Telhami's grove. He was grateful for the cool wind that continued to blow from that grove-or Akashia's grove when he was determined to go there, the two druids having decided that they would conduct his lessons on alternating days- but he no longer relied upon the wind to guide him.
Hard as the ground was, generations of druid feet marching from village to grove and back again had left their mark on it. With nothing better to do as he walked, he'd learned to see the difference in color and texture that defined a path through the wilderness. He could even distinguish the more subtle distinctions that marked the lesser paths between the groves themselves. His lessons hadn't progressed beyond tiny, fast-evaporating spheres of conjured water or fire spells that were more smoke than flame, but he'd begun to build himself a map of Quraite in his mind: the village at the absolute center, surrounded by its cultivated fields and the wilderness between the village and the Sun's Fist, which was studded with groves-at least twenty of them, if he'd correctly identified the high-rank, grove-tending druids at supper.
And he'd done it all without asking questions. Some habits were harder to break than others. Pavek was getting used to the looser routines of Quraite life. He no longer flinched when someone greeted him with a smile. But he was still a templar in his heart, and templars didn't ask unnecessary questions because answers, especially honest answers, created debts.
Which was why, though he progressed toward his goal of druid mastery in a day with Akashia-there had been another pair of them since that first day when she'd challenged him to a race through her blind-grass meadow-he preferred a day in Telhami's grove. The old woman seldom asked questions, never personal ones, but Akashia, try as she might, couldn't contain her curiosity about the city, about templar life, about his own life, and-worst of all-about the differences between the lessons she gave him and those he received from Telhami.