“Well, then, you know. They got me away during the siege.” The corpulent youth sighed. “I wish they had left me alone. I wouldn’t be here, and Orla wouldn’t be dead.”
“Yeah, and Chytrine would have the piece of the DragonCrown you’re carrying.”
Kerrigan’s eyes grew wide and a hand shifted beneath the blanket. “How did you… Did Crow tell you?”
Will shook his head and picked with a thumbnail at a piece of bark trapped in the triangle of his legs. “I’m a thief, remember? You’re guarding that thing as well as a gem merchant with a hoard, or some swain mooncalfing over a locket with a curl of his lover’s hair. No one else would have noticed. Well, probably Resolute—he sees everything. But you’re big enough that most’ll just figure you have chiggers in your armpit.”
“I do not.”
Will shrugged. “Just scratch like you do and it’ll keep folks away.”
“So you knew I was hiding something, but how did you know it was a fragment?”
The thief pursed his lips. Instead of telling Kerrigan he’d not known for certain until he’d seen Kerrigan’s reaction to his bluff, he decided to lie. “You’ve been hiding it since we left Fortress Draconis. Now, aside from the people we got out, the only things of worth there were fragments. The Draconis Baron had to try to get at least one piece out and if there was anyone who could hide it with magick, it would be you. I just kind of figured it out from there.”
“He made me promise not to say anything, not to tell anyone but Crow and the princess. Will, you can’t say anything.”
Will shook his head. “I won’t say a word, but you have to let me help you hide it. Here, on the road, it’s not so important. Strikes me, though, that given what folks think about Crow, Meredo is pretty much going to be enemy territory. Chytrine had sullanciri in Yslin last autumn, so you know she could have them in Meredo.”
The magicker nodded slowly. “Yes, that makes sense. How will we hide it?”
“Easily. We’ll start on the road.” Will shivered. Kerrigan was leaning forward, hanging on his every word. Not having had friends growing up, and with Orla dead, Kerrigan was desperate for someone to talk to. Had Will been setting him up to be robbed, well, it would have been too simple.
The small part of Will that had absorbed all Marcus’ lessons wanted to laugh at Kerrigan. Here he was, a powerful mage, in possession of an item so priceless that the Aurolani Empress would destroy nations to possess it. Kerrigan had already seen the riches that she’d offered the Pirate Queen Vionna for the Lakaslin fragment, so he knew just how much it was to be treasured. Yet despite all that, here he was listening to Will’s advice as to how to safeguard it. In a heartbeat the fragment could be Will’s—the reward for it, too.
Will snorted. “Starting tomorrow, put all your stuff in one of your saddlebags, then fill the other up with junk.” He leaned over and picked up a pine cone. “Things like this, and little animal skulls, funny-shaped rocks. Have Qwc and Lombo find things for you, and spend time looking at them. Offer to show them to the Tolsin men. Let them think you’re a little crazy.”
Kerrigan nodded. “They think that already. And that I’m useless, even though I started their fire for them, wet wood and all.”
“I’d have left them cold. ‘Cept maybe Mably. I’d start a fire with him.”
“No, Will, don’t think that. It didn’t work with Wheele and Orla died because of it.”
“Hey, Ker, stop right there.”
“What?”
“Orla’s death isn’t your fault.” Will held up a hand to prevent a protest. “I know you said I wasn’t good at being a mind reader when I said that before, but you remember back in Yslin? Orla came with Crow and Resolute and the princess and we went after a sullanciri. And that Dark Lancer had made my friends into monsters, and we had to kill them. We didn’t have any choice ‘cuz they would have killed us. But when it was all over, they were dead and they were just kids again. And I couldn’t help thinking, somehow, that there was a way we could have not killed them.
“But, you know, I worked out that it wasn’t my fault. You trace it back, and it’s all Chytrine. She’s the one who made the sullanciri, and she’s the one who wants me dead, and she’s the one who had the pirates attack Vilwan, which meant you had to go away and Orla with you.” His head came up. “You and me, we’re not doing this. We might not do everything right, but we have to do something because if we don’t, then she wins and folks will be dead. Lots of them.”
Kerrigan sat there for a bit, his thick lips pursed. Will wasn’t sure how long the magicker thought, but it was long enough that the cold and the silence began to gnaw at Will. If not for the steam drifting from Kerrigan’s nostrils, he could have imagined the mage had turned to stone.
“That is it, though, Will,” he finally said. “You and I might not do everything right, but at least you’re doing some things right. I…” Kerrigan’s voice failed for a moment, then returned muted and cool. “All the training I had was meant to prepare me for something great. What, I don’t know, no one ever told me. They just made me do more and more and more. And then, when I was leaving Vilwan, the pirates tried to stop us. I destroyed their ship, but the people on the boat with me were hurt and then the ship capsized, and that was my fault, so that those who weren’t dead already drowned. And then I used the wrong spell on Wheele…”
“But, Kerrigan, your spell let Orla’s spell work. And you’re forgetting all the stuff you did during the Svoin siege, and figuring out those spells when we were in Loquellyn, and your lighting up the firedirt that killed Chytrine’s troops and saved the people we were getting out of Fortress Draconis. You’ve done good, lots of good.
“And I know I haven’t been fair to you.” Will sighed. “I let Scabby Jack and Garrow’s gang beat you up. I said you froze when that big frostclaw came after you. I never told you I was sorry Orla died. I guess, growing up, I had friends, but I never had people I could trust like you could her. I saw how she was, and I envy you knowing her. She was a good person.”
“I know, and I miss her.”
They both sat there quietly for a moment. Will thought about Orla for a bit, then about Resolute and Crow. They were the first real friends he’d ever had, and the first people he could trust, because they trusted him. Granted, they had drawn him into things without telling him who he was, but time had let him see that they were trying to protect him, preparing him to accept his responsibility as the person who was prophesied to bring an end to Chytrine’s invasion of the south.
Kerrigan’s voice came soft through the night. “Did you ever think you’d be here, Will?”
“Here, in some forest in Oriosa, wearing a mask, freezing, while the most evil man in the world is sleeping with a beautiful princess and the most evil woman in the world is sending vast armies south to kill me? Not specifically, no.”
“You know what I mean.” The magicker’s hands emerged from beneath the blanket and he stared down at his open palms. “When I was growing up, I used to imagine things. I thought maybe I would become Grand Magister of Vilwan and invent new and wonderful spells. And other times I’d dream about opposing Chytrine, but in those dreams it would be the two of us in some wizards’ duel and I’d batter her down and save the world.
“But here I am, in a cold wood, talking to someone who is younger than me and, no disrespect intended, about as ill prepared to save the world as I am.”
“And don’t forget that we’re being hunted.”
“I haven’t.” Kerrigan glanced over at the tent. “Orla told me to follow Crow and Resolute, and now Crow turns out to be Hawkins and King Scrainwood will probably kill him. And I have a fragment, and you are a pawn of destiny, and Fortress Draconis has fallen, and my mentor is dead. Have I forgotten anything?”