Does It Matter?

Chapter 38

Dara kept insisting he was fine and could keep riding, but for the last few hours he'd been saying it through increasingly gritted teeth. By the time they finally found an inn, he was so exhausted that Maric insisted on helping him down from Farah's back.

Bug immediately gravitated to Dara's side and they leant against one another. Maric wanted nothing more than to take Dara upstairs and have a nap with him, but he had promised Brayan they'd sit down and talk over their plans. Maric gave Dara a kiss on the forehead and then sent him and Bug off with Hudson, who had been tasked with arranging rooms for everyone.

While the rest of the men crowded into long tables in the centre of the tavern, Maric and Brayan found a small one alone in a corner. Food and drinks were delivered to them immediately.

"So, what do you think of Bug?" Brayan asked.

"What do you think of him?" Maric countered.

"I think..." Brayan hesitated. "I'm still not sure. There's something going on. Some force that wants to keep him with us, for whatever reason."

Maric had intended the question more personally than that, but if that was the angle Brayan wanted to take that was fine too. "Hudson seems to think we should trust it."

"Trust it to what, though?"

"I don't know. Bug staying with us instead of leaving with Hudson seemed like a terrible idea, but it worked out."

"Thanks to Dara."

"Thanks to Dara," Maric agreed. "But I can't help but think it knew that would happen."

"I'm sure it did. Just as it knew he would be enslaved, and then raped and tortured."

Maric pressed his lips together and nodded slowly. Brayan had hardly lived a life where he was sheltered from such things, and though none of it had ever been to his tastes he seemed to be taking what had been done to Bug particularly personally. "What does Bug think of all this? Have you spoken to him about it?"

"It's been showing him something he wants for a very long time. A relationship with a man. Despite everything that's happened, he still wants that to come true."

"Does he know who?"

Brayan shook his head. "The vision conveniently shows him very little. I assume he was also shown something that made him decide to stay with us, but he won't speak a word about that."

"Do you trust him?"

"Whatever controls his visions, I don't know. But him, personally? Yes. I have no reason not to."

"Hmm." Maric said back in his seat and took a slow swig of his wine. "Do we know what his visions want of us next?"

"He hasn't said anything."

"Then I suppose, for now, we continue on as we were. We have cities to visit and a schedule to keep. I don't like having no long term plans, but I feel like making them would be a waste of time."

"I don't like waiting for someone else to make decisions for me."

"I don't see how it can do that. It can trick us, certainly. It can persuade us. But it occupies the mind of a young man with no power of his own. It can do nothing at all without our cooperation."

Brayan rested his elbows on the table and leant forward. "Does it occupy his mind? It has access to it, but do we know that it's constrained to it?"

"We still know very little, if I'm truly honest. I thought Hudson might know something more than I do, but if he does he's keeping it to himself."

"You think he might have some involvement in all of this?"