Damn it! I can’t see anymore!
I wrestle with the big rock, curse at it, go back and try to lift it, and get nowhere.
Time seems to slow down, and the wait to know what’s happening becomes interminable. The sound of fighting gradually fades. Pacing in front of the wedged rock, I watch the entrance to the cave. Then, strangely hesitant, I tug on Beta Sinta’s knot again. When it doesn’t give, an odd feeling stirs inside of me. I’m not relieved. Definitely not relieved.
A few minutes later, all four men walk in, blocking the light from the cave’s narrow entrance. They look surprised to find me so close to the exit.
My chest deflates as I exhale the breath I was holding. “Really? None of you died?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Flynn chides, grinning like a fool. “And thanks for the advice.” He nods to me, but I don’t nod back.
“A blind Cyclops throws better than Flynn,” Kato teases. “He lost six daggers, including yours, going for the Giant’s eyes before he finally got one.”
One? Who got the other?
Who cares!
“Mine?” I turn to look outside. “I have to find them!”
“It’s a mess out there. We’ll buy more knives,” Beta Sinta says, pointedly adding, “for Flynn.”
“No. They’re mine, and I want them back!” Vasili gave them to me. I threw my Fisan knives down a sinkhole in Tarva four years ago. I was trying to “let go.” It didn’t work, of course.
I give him my death glare until Beta Sinta finally agrees to look for my knives before we leave.
“How do you know so much about Giants?” he asks. His gray eyes tell me he’s wondering what else I know, how much information he can get out of me. I should really stop giving it away for free.
I wave my arms around. “Soothsayer, remember? I know stuff.”
His grin surprises me. Straight, white teeth flash in the shadows, and a bolt of lightning thunders down my spine, splashing warmth along my nerves. I blink and turn away, off balance and alarmingly hot.
“Give me my knives back, and I’ll teach Flynn to throw something other than his ax,” I offer peevishly, my insides in a knot and my fingers itching for a blade.
Beta Sinta unties the rope from the rock and reties it around his waist. “We’ll see.”
At least it’s not a flat-out denial. Surprised, I glance up, my uncooperative eyes snagging on the shadowed planes, angular jaw, and aquiline nose of his arresting profile. He leaves the cave, and I follow, my stomach doing an annoying little flip when he catches my hand and helps me over the brambles at the entrance. I didn’t need help, and he knows it.
My hand still tingling from his warmth even after he lets go, I ask, “What did the Tarvans want?”
He shrugs. “They didn’t stop to talk, so neither did we.”
“Mercenaries are notoriously tight-lipped.”
He nods, and I can’t help thinking they’d only come after a small Hoi Polloi group with a hired Giant to assure the kill. I’m sure they weren’t here for me, so I have to wonder who’s after Beta Sinta’s blood—and who has the coin to buy it.
* * *
We ride north for the next several days, our pace sedate because of the pounding summer heat, our path dictated mainly by sources of water and shade. Beta Sinta gives me my knives back for target practice with Kato and Flynn. It’s a moderate show of trust, and I almost wish he hadn’t done it because I can’t seem to despise him as much since the day he handed over my blades.
I could have stabbed him right then. I thought about it. I really did, but some part of me just didn’t want to. I don’t know why, since Beta Sinta drives me insane. He’s always there, infuriating and practically on top of me, and I hate the fact that I’m getting so used to him.
Weighing the knife in my hand, I judge the distance to Beta Sinta and think hard about what I’m willing to do to escape. I never miss.
He’s alone right now, sitting with his elbow on one knee and his chin propped in his hand. A breeze lifts his hair, exposing the broad, masculine lines of his tanned and somewhat weathered face. There’s a crease between his eyebrows, and his preoccupied expression gives me the strangest urge to ditch throwing practice and ask him what’s wrong.
Ignoring that bit of lunacy, I turn back to the target, a silver birch with a knot in the trunk six feet up. I take aim and hit the knot. “Vasili has a knife-throwing act. There’s no one faster with a blade. He throws ten knives at his wife in ten seconds. He’s never hit her once.”
Flynn grunts, eyeing the birch. “Sounds like a lethal son of a Cyclops. He taught you?”
For the last three evenings, we’ve been attached at the hip—literally—and Flynn hasn’t gotten much better. It must have been sheer luck that he helped blind the Giant. Or an intervention from the Gods.
That thought raises too many questions, so I shut it down. “I was good with a knife before, but Vasili made me better. It’s about balance and anticipation. Feel where your target is. Figure out how it’s moving.”
“Trees don’t move,” Flynn grumbles.
“They do if there’s wind.”
He gives me a cross look, throws, and misses, cursing when his knife scrapes a chunk of bark off the side of the tree and then crashes to the ground.
“Only let go when the tip points directly at the target. And don’t rush,” I say for the fifteenth time.