The boy smiled when he caught her looking at him. It was a smile that made Akashia's blood freeze in her heart.
"I do not want to be your enemy, dear lady. Pavek was born a thick-skulled idiot; he'll the a sorry hero. But not you. You understand. You've held power yourself. You have ambitions."
He came up the shadowed, twisted pathways she had blasted through her defenses, through her very self. All silk and seduction, he touched the tender, aching places of her mind, of her body, offering her things she had scarcely imagined before this horrifying moment.
She drew a shuddering breath, closed her eyes, and fought with all her might to throw him out.
Chapter Fourteen
Pavek's days had assumed a different routine while Akashia was gone. He still went to Telhami's grove every other day-they scrupulously avoided certain subjects of conversation: zarneeka, Urik, Laq, and Akashia, herself. But on the day between, he carried a hoe into the fields and worked with the farmers. The back-breaking work gave him time to think about the lessons Telhami gave him, and the subjects they did not discuss. Thinking was good for his incipient druidry: he could wring water out of the air now, on demand and without a headache, but as the empty days of Akashia's absence began outnumber his fingers, his mood darkened.
Aside from Telhami, only one person intruded on his enforced solitude: Ruari.
They had not become fast-friends after they returned from the youth's grove, although Pavek had stood firm, in his brawly templar way, for the half-elf s right to rejoin the community then and there. Remembering himself at Ruari's I age, Pavek reckoned that he'd saddled the boy with too great a debt and was content to let him keep his distance. Besides, the half-witted scum was a whiner, and a complainer; and Pavek, veteran of the orphanage and the civil bureau, had no patience for either trait.
He looked up from his hoeing and saw Ruari waiting for him at the end of the row-the row he'd intended as his last row of the day, unless he showed Ruari his back now and kept working until the scum gave up and left. But he'd let Ruari catch his eye, which was all the invitation Ruari required.
"Go away, scum," he said when a long, lean shadow touched his feet. It was a polite, even friendly, greeting among templars.
"You beat me up bad. I couldn't fight you off. I want to learn how."
"Keep your mouth shut." He offered the advice he'd heard and ignored many times before. "That way you won't start so many fights you can't finish."
"I don't start fights," Ruari snapped, giving the lie to his words with the tone of his voice. "They just happen. Maybe if I won once in a while, I wouldn't have so many."
A vagrant laugh slipped into Pavek's mouth. He clamped a hand over his chin to contain it.
"Wind and fire! Why're you laughing? What's so funny?"
Ruari took a swing at him, which Pavek blocked with his forearm. The hoe slid off his shoulder and landed in the dirt. The scum was quick; Pavek would grant him that Too quick. Once he was riled, Ruari whipped up the air with his fists, landing blows that were little more than love-taps, and leaving himself vulnerable to the powerful punch of an admittedly slower, far-more-massive opponent. But instead of a punch, Pavek reached through Ruari's guard, grabbed shirt and skin, and lifted him off the ground.
"You've got two arms, scum. Two fists. Keep one of 'em at home for yourself."
"That's what Yohan always says."
"Listen to him." Pavek let go, and Ruari landed lightly and easily on the balls of his feet. "He's a good teacher." "He's not here-" "Just go away, scum."
"I want to learn from you. Aren't you impressed? Flattered?" The whine was back in Ruari's voice; it grated in Pavek's ears, "/think you're better than the old dwarf. Me- the half-wit scum who hates all rotted, yellow-robe templars, and tried to poison you-I want you to teach me how to fight."
There was a fading bruise on Ruari's chin, another on his arm, and a third, larger, one across his chest, visible through the open neck of his shirt, all souvenirs of their last encounter. Pavek picked up the hoe with a display of hostility that made Ruari dance back a pace or two and hoist his fists again. But he was only teasing, not taking bait. He dug into the dirt where Ruari had been standing.
The boy reafeed he'd been gulled. "Pavek-?"
He broke up a clod of dirt with the blade of the hoe and threw a handful of weeds over his shoulder onto the barren ground beyond the irrigated fields. Ruari's shadow didn't move, and neither did his mouth, for a pleasant change. Another long, silent moment passed. Pavek kicked the blade into the ground, then he headed out of the field. With a wave of his fingers, he invited Ruari to join him.
"Show me what you've got," he said, and the half-elf bobbed on his toes, with his slender arms and fists in front of him.
Swearing under his breath, Pavek shook his head and turned away. "You'll never be a brawler, Ru." He retrieved his hoe. "Now try it," he said, tossing the bone-shafted tool at the youth, who caught it deftly.
Everyone in the Tablelands had to know enough about fighting to defend him- or herself. Gender didn't matter much, either in the cities or the wastelands: if you didn't look like you could fight back, the full run of predators and scavengers took note. Quraite was protected land, but common sense said the guardian would better protect those who showed the inclination to protect themselves. Pavek had watched the Quraiters, farmers and druids alike, training one day in ten with bows and ordinary tools like the hoe Ruari held in front of him, one hand circling the shaft in a sun-wise direction, the other going the counter-way.
Pavek assessed the youth quickly and coldly, the way he himself had been taught. Then, instead of exploiting the weaknesses he saw-of which there were remarkably few (Yohan was a good trainer, Ruari's failings were rooted in his personality, not his technique)-he tried to correct them.
They went at it through the dying light of another arid afternoon, swapping the hoe and the attack. One of two things usually happened when a man tried to teach another the finer aspects of fighting: one man got angry, the lesson ended, and a serious brawl erupted, or they found a common rhythm and the seeds of equal friendship were planted.
With the bloated sun in his eyes and the hoe in his hands, Pavek feinted to his right side, drawing Ruari's attack. Then he swung the hoe low above the ground, letting the sweat-polished shaft slide through his fingers until the angled blade was smack against his wrists. The tactic was designed to strike an enemy's shins and sweep him off his feet; the minimal countermeasure was a leap into the air to avoid the swinging shaft. Gladiators executed the technique with a variety of weapons. Pavek had learned it in the orphanage.
"You're supposed to jump, not trip over your own big, baazrag feet," he said, trying to make light of what he knew-from personal experience-was a very painful moment, and hoping, as the moments lengthened, that the silent, huddled-up youth wasn't nursing broken bones.
"Now you tell me," Ruari finally replied in a choked, quavery voice. His face was pale when he looked up, but he did a hero's work trying to laugh. "You're supposed to be my teacher."
Pavek lowered the hoe and extended a hand. "Sorry, scum-didn't think you were that stupid. Can you stand?"
Ruari nodded, but took the help that was offered. He held onto Pavek's wrist an extra moment while he took a few hobbling steps.
"Men," a woman grumbled from not too far away. "Never too old for child's play."