Chapter Twelve
Overall, Vil found that he liked Nerda’s caravanners. Although, if he was being fair, he was pretty sure that none of them knew that.
Still, they were a decent, forthright bunch. They worked hard to care for their animals and equipment in order to keep up the demanding pace Nerda set. Time was money, after all, especially in the business of moving trade goods.
But the caravanners also had a kind of camaraderie that pervaded the company. They genuinely cared about one another. So, when Mell got hurt defending the camp from the bearcat attack, the rest of the wagon train’s drovers and staff rallied around him in support.
Support which extended to Aelys as his healer.
“Yer demoiselle all right there, Vil?” one of the drovers called out as Vil hopped down from the back of the wagon where Aelys rode with the recuperating Mell. He pulled his hood up, stepped to the side of the road and waited for the man and his animals to catch up to him before answering.
“She is,” Vil said. “But she asked me to fetch Nerda. Mell is stirring, and she thinks he may wake. She wanted him to see a familiar face.” In the five days and nights since the attack, Mell had been in and out of fever as he and Aelys battled the infection she’d been hoping to avoid. Vil couldn’t prove it, of course, but he strongly suspected that Aelys was using magic wherever she could. He knew for a fact she fed her magically augmented tea to the man at every opportunity.
“Nerda’s in the lead wagon,” the drover said. “He’ll be glad to come back. Divines grant Mell does wake. He’s a good man, that one.”
“Mmmhmm,” Vil said, nodding briefly at the drover and then turning to walk down the dusty line of carts to the lead wagon, where Nerda walked beside his caravan lead, Orsanc.
“…so Cievers tonight, and then— Help ye, Vil?” Nerda broke off his conversation as Vil approached. “Everything all right with yer wisewoman? Mell?”
“Aelys is fine. Mell is stirring and she thinks he may wake. She’s asked for you, so he sees a familiar face.”
“Aye, I’ll come. Yer good here, Orsanc?”
Orsanc, whom Vil had never heard speak a word, uttered an affirmative-sounding grunt, and flicked his switch at the hindquarters of the nearest ox. Nerda fell into step beside Vil, and together, they made their way back to the wagon where Aelys nursed Mell.
Vil let the wagonmaster go first before he climbed up on the wagon’s rattling steps and ducked his head inside the cloth cover that shaded Mell and Aelys from the sun, rain, and wind they’d encountered over the past few days.
Inside, the air was close and warm, redolent with the scent of herbs and the lingering sickly sweetness of infection. Aelys and Nerda crouched on either side of Mell’s head toward the front of the wagon. There wasn’t enough room for Vil to join them, so he stayed where he was. He judged the odds that either Nerda or Mell would attack Aelys to be infinitesimally small.
And if they did, he had plenty of room to drop them both with his throwing knives.
Between the rattle and creak of the wagon’s progress over the rutted road, and the fact that they spoke in low tones, Vil couldn’t hear the conversation that passed between Nerda, Aelys, and Mell. He did note with gladness that Nerda helped the injured man to sit up while Aelys held a water bottle for him to drink, and he happily handed Aelys the sling that hung on a nail on the wagon’s frame just inside the door. Some of Mell’s fellow drovers had fashioned it for him while they waited to see if he would recover from his injuries.
Yet more evidence that they’re a good group, Vil thought. If I was looking for such a thing.
Aelys shifted her body, which snapped his attention back to her. She kept to her low crouch because the wagon didn’t permit anything else, but she moved toward him. Without a thought, Vil reached out, catching her slender fingers in his black-gloved ones, and helped her step carefully over Mell’s feet to join him on the tiny, swaying wagon step.
“Are you all right?” Vil murmured, swallowing hard against the sensation of her body pressed close to his.
“I am,” she said, her voice carrying a little bit of a tremor. “I just…needed some air.”
Vil nodded and then let go of her hand, ignoring the wrenching feeling it caused inside him. He hopped down as he’d done before and then turned to walk alongside the back step.
“Step down backwards,” he directed as he reached up for her. “I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”
“I know,” she murmured so softly he wasn’t sure she intended him to hear. “You never do.”
Vil didn’t respond, other than to put his hands on her waist and hold on. When she stepped backward off the short step, he pulled her to him, relishing the heat and the weight of her in his arms for a moment before letting her slide down to the ground.
“Good?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He swallowed again and forced his hands to open, willed his arms down to his sides. Behind them, the drover cursed, and Vil heard the slap of the man’s switch as he urged the oxen onward through the dust of their fellows’ passing.
Somehow, he started walking again, keeping pace with Aelys as she stretched and breathed, shaking out her hair and lifting her face to the sunlight.
“Mother of Magic, but it’s good to be out of the wagon,” she said, relief flooding her tone. “I hated to leave Mell while his fever raged, but now it’s broken, he should be out of danger. I felt like I’d throw up if I had to stay in that swaying, bumping box for one minute longer.” Her blue eyes danced with laughter as she looked over at Vil. “Not exactly the most confidence-inspiring thing a wisewoman could do.”
“They all have incredible confidence in you,” Vil said. “You’re like a miracle worker to them.”
“Me?” Aelys gave a startled laugh. “That’s ridiculous. I didn’t do much.”
“Didn’t you?” It came out harsher than he meant it to, which made her laughing ease fall away. She glanced up at him, and then down at her hands.
“I only meant that I did what any wisewoman would do. Setting bones and nursing fevers are hardly miraculous, Vil.”
“You’re wrong.”
Aelys puffed out an exasperated breath and glared up at him. “I’m not,” she insisted. “Any wisewoman—”
“Perhaps they could, but most wouldn’t.”
“What are you talking about? Of course they would have treated Mell.”
“Treated him, yes. But they wouldn’t have saved his arm. You said it yourself, the risk of infection with a break like that is extreme. Isn’t that why you just spent five days fighting back nausea in a swaying, bumping wagon? Because you had to treat his infection. Most wisewomen would have just amputated the arm and called it done.”
“No,” Aelys said. “Infection’s a risk even with amputation. Sometimes more so!”
“But it’s easier to treat with a clean cut, isn’t it?”
Aelys bit her bottom lip and looked back down at her feet. Then she laced her hands together across her waist and sighed. “Sometimes,” she responded. “Sometimes it is. It depends.”
“I imagine so. But that’s not the point. The point is that Nerda’s caravanners care about each other, and you’ve healed one of their own with your knowledge and skill.”
“But I just—”
“Don’t minimize it, Aelys. It meant a lot to them—means a lot to them. They honor you for it. Let them.”
“But it isn’t real healing,” she whispered.
“Tell that to Mell. Or better yet, to his wife and sons.”
Aelys fell silent, and Vil let her. For several moments, they walked side by side. Vil curled his hands into fists to keep from taking hold of her fingers again and let the sounds of the oxen and the wagons hang between them.
“Thank you,” she said after a long moment, her tone thoughtful. “I—you’re right. Just because it isn’t magic doesn’t change the fact that I helped an injured man—”
“Healed an injured man,” Vil insisted.
“Healed an injured man,” Aelys said with a nod. “And I didn’t mean any disrespect to the wisewoman’s arts. Herbalism and folk medicine are incredibly important, which is why they’re taught and studied at the Lyceum, despite being nonmagical.” She let out a sigh, and her shoulders slumped forward a tiny bit before she pulled them straight again. “It’s just that they are nonmagical, and therefore not held in quite the same esteem as some of the other things we were taught at the Lyceum, though Sanva Erisa would have me scrubbing the kitchen floors for a month if she heard me say so.”
“Held in esteem by whom? Because I’ll say it again, the men in this caravan could not hold you or your expertise in any higher esteem than they do right now.”
She flashed a smile up at him that nearly buckled his knees. Then she let out a laugh. “All right, I’m being a snob, I get it,” she said. “I suppose I’m just—”
“Nervous about returning to the Lyceum?” Vil let his voice go low and let a thread of darkness weave through his words. “Romik mentioned you had a difficult time of it there. Don’t worry, Aelys. Not a single one of us is going to let them make you scrub floors ever again.”
Aelys laughed again. “I didn’t mind the scrubbing, in truth,” she said. “It was the constant remarks and the surprise magical attacks that really bothered me. But I suppose I’m grateful, because that’s how I learned to shield. I couldn’t have held off Aerivinne if I hadn’t had those experiences.”
“We are who we are because of the experiences we survive,” Vil said.
“Yes, exactly,” Aelys said, and her smile lit up her face and made him clench his hands tighter. “That’s so wise of you, Vil.”
“Not me,” Vil said dryly. “I got that from someone else.”
“Who?”
“No one of consequence.”
“But you remember it?”
Vil smiled darkly and pulled his hood lower over his face. “I do.”
“Why, if whoever said it wasn’t important to you?”
“I didn’t say they weren’t important to me. Just that they’re not important to this conversation.” He used the shadow of his hood to cut his eyes at her, study the lines and curves of her face, imagine his fingertips brushing along her skin.
She frowned at him.
“Fine,” he said. “My old boss Bezier Tanithil told me that. After I’d survived being beaten near to death by a squad of his best thugs.”
“Divines, Vil!” Aelys gasped.
“No,” he smiled, though he doubted she saw it. “They were just ordinary thugs.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“Then what did you mean?”
“Just…I’m sorry you went through that. That sounds…”
“It wasn’t fun.” He shrugged. “But Tanithil wanted to teach me a lesson. I learned it.”
“What was the lesson?”
He turned his head enough that she could see his face and paused for a few steps before answering.
“Don’t get caught.”
“Aelys! Vil!” Aelys had opened her mouth as if she would say something else, but she closed it quickly as Romik jogged back to them from the front. “How’s Mell?”
“His fever’s broken, and he’s awake,” Aelys said. “Nerda is in the wagon talking with him.”
“Is he?” Romik asked. “Good. I’m looking for him, too. Orsanc’s spotted Cievers’s walls. We’ll be close by the Lyceum soon. We need to grab Daen and take our leave.”
Aelys stiffened, and she sucked in a breath that Vil doubted Romik heard. Despite his misgivings, he uncurled one of his black-gloved fists and reached out to take her hand, winding his fingers through hers.
“You’re not alone, Bella,” he murmured softly. “Remember that.” He looked up at Romik. “When?”
“Orsanc says we’ll arrive in an hour or two.”
“You’re right, then. Time to part ways. I can get us to the Lyceum from here. I’d rather not go into Cievers proper if we can help it. You go find Daen; we’ll let Nerda know.”
Romik frowned, but he didn’t ask any of the questions Vil could see brewing behind his eyes. Instead, Romik nodded and continued past them toward the rear of the caravan, where Daen had said he’d be.
Vil squeezed Aelys’s hand briefly and then let go. “Wait here,” he said, and then took a step forward and leapt for the stairs they’d descended earlier. They creaked as he landed, and the wagon rocked as it hit another one of the blasted ruts in the well-traveled road.
“Nerda,” Vil said, sticking his head through the doorway. “Orsanc’s spotted the walls ahead. We’ll be splitting off.”
Nerda straightened up, turning to look over his shoulder. “Heading to the Lyceum?” he asked, as if he hadn’t been fully briefed on their route and purpose. But Vil saw that Mell was sitting up. The drover cradled his sling-bound arm, but he looked worlds better than he had just days prior.
“Yes. Herbalist business,” Vil said with a shrug.
“Well, fare ye well. I’ll speak with Sabetha to settle up for yer wisewoman supplies and whatnot.” Vil nodded at this, knowing that Aelys wouldn’t care one way or the other. Despite the fact that she had turned her back on her family, Aelys still acted like a woman from a rich House—she didn’t spare a single thought for such things.
Sabetha will handle it, Vil thought as he started to back out of the wagon’s covering.
“Wait!”
Vil froze, his eyes snapping to Mell’s face as the man leaned forward. “Please, tell Lady Aelys—”
“Just Aelys,” Vil said softly, his voice hard.
“She’s a lady to me,” Mell said staunchly. “And none finer in the empire, Divines strike me if I lie. Will ye tell her…I owe her a debt.”
“She won’t see it that way.”
“Doesn’t matter. I do. If I can ever be of help to her, she need only get word to me, through Nerda or Gormren…I’ll come. No matter what it is. If she calls me, I’ll come.”
Aelys, why do I feel like this is going to be a recurring occurrence in our lives? Vil thought, remembering how the Brionne guards’ lieutenant had sworn a similar oath, not only on his own behalf, but on behalf of the entire House guard when they left.
“Tell her,” Mell insisted, and Vil blinked and refocused on the man’s face. He gave a single nod and then backed out of the wagon before anyone could say anything else. With a short movement, he hopped backward and landed beside Aelys.
As before, Vil grabbed her hand, but this time he pulled her off to the left, guiding her out of the caravan’s dust and up onto the raised berm that bordered the road. This time, she didn’t stumble, and while Vil missed the opportunity to hold her close as she regained her feet, he felt a surge of pride in her growth and adaptability.
“Was Mell all right?” she asked. “I hate to leave him—”
“Sitting up, drinking water, and talking to Nerda,” Vil said, jerking his chin at Romik and Daen as they approached from the rear of the caravan. “He said to tell you thanks, and he owes you a debt.”
“He doesn’t!”
“I told him you’d say that. He insisted.” Unable to resist any longer, Vil turned to face her and ran his gloved fingertips down the curve of her cheek. “You healed him, Bella. He said if you ever have need, get a message to him through Gormren and Nerda. You’ve made an ally of him, just as you made allies of the Brionne guard.”
“But I didn’t do anything special…”
Vil allowed himself a half smile as he ran his thumb over her lower lip.
“The evidence suggests otherwise, Bella.”
She gaped at him, her mouth slightly open. The desire to taste her lips hit him like one of the oxcarts that rumbled by as the drovers raised their switches in farewell. For just a second, he swayed toward her, drawn in by the need that hammered in his chest—
“Well then,” Romik said, breaking through the fog of desire that wreathed Vil’s mind. “I guess that’s that. I’m sorry to part company with Nerda and his men, truth be told.”
“Me too,” Daen said. “They’re a good crew.”
“So they are.” Vil raked his eyes down Aelys’s face once more before he spun away from her. “Follow me. The Lyceum is this way.”