Honor-Bound [ Lore of Penrua: Book III ]

25

Uarria was tired. She had never been more tired in her entire life. She and Ealin had been walking for days. Without Telai and Neshar, there was no conversation. Ealin spoke only to give her commands, and Uarria could not speak at all.

It was summer, and in Narr the days could grow hot. Uarria had never done much traveling, but she knew there was a problem: the grown-ups had been using a map to set their course, and the map was gone. Neshar had kept it in the pocket of his jacket, and Neshar had fallen into the water and been swept away. So they had no map, and they had no more of those hideous stones Ealin had used to make them travel in an instant, which had always made Uarria feel so sick.

And so they walked, endlessly, and the silence was endless, too, and Uarria had never been so exhausted, so hungry, or so unhappy. Even though they had been on the road for a long time, Uarria's feet had not yet grown calloused enough not to suffer, and her shoes were wearing out again.

"There," Ealin said. She pressed Uarria's feet in gentle hands. She had just wrapped them in narrow strips of cloth torn from her own shift, layering cool green leaves beneath the bandages. "Do you think you can put your shoes back on?"

Glancing toward the shoes, Uarria shook her head. Her eyes swam with tears. She simply wanted to sit down and never get up again. She wanted to lie down and sleep and never, ever wake up.

"I don't have any other shoes for you. You know that."

Uarria shook her head again, tears spilling down over her cheeks. She was hungry and she was cold and her feet hurt more than anything had ever hurt, and she was so very tired.

"Please. Please put them on." Ealin reached for Uarria's leather shoes. The soles of them had worn through at the balls of her feet after some time on the road. Talei had given them new soles, cutting pieces from the flap of one of their satchels, and Ealin had already patched those soles once again. The shoes were filthy and crusted with dirt.

Uarria missed her favorite shoes from the Holy City. These, taken out of the barrel in that dark cellar, were ugly and uncomfortable. The ones Ealin had taken from her had been a gift from Grandmother Rhea, made of beautiful blue cloth and stitched with lovely winding and whirling designs that recalled the markes of the Arcborn—people like Rhea, people like her father. They had been pretty, made for the halls of the palace and not for a long, dirty road and endless walking.

"You must—" began Ealin again, a note of impatience in her voice.

Suddenly furious, Uarria snatched up a handful of sticks and dirt and flung it at Ealin's face. She hated her. She hated her for taking her away from her parents, for bringing her so far from home, for making her walk all day, every day.

Ealin flinched back, closing her eyes and screwing up her pretty face as the rain of dirt and twigs fell over her. And then she smacked Uarria.

It was the second time. Still, the cracking pain and that dreadful sound, the burning that came in the wake of the blow—it was all too cruel. Uarria sat for a moment, her head turned, folding her awareness around that bitter pain. Absorbing it. Making sense of it.

It was something to hold onto.

After the burst of agony had faded into a dull throbbing, she opened her eyes again. She wiped her cheeks with a sleeve.

She reached for the shoes.

***

Uarria tried to remember her father and her mother, but as the days crept by with no one but blonde-haired Ealin for company, their faces in her mind wavered and changed, and she was beginning to worry that she had forgotten what they looked like.

One afternoon, as they sat down for their small lunch, Uarria took a stick from the ground and poked at the dry dust of the road. She began to draw shapes—round heads, round bodies, spindly fingers, loops for legs. She drew her mother and her father, and she drew herself, and next to herself she drew Farra, with large, pointed ears and a snaking tail.

Ealin had been focused on a review of their provisions. She approached Uarria, passing her a water skin and a hunk of hard bread. She looked down at the drawing Uarria had made in the road, and with a frown, she swept her foot over it, wiping out in an instant what it had taken Uarria such pains to create.

"Don't do that," she said.

Uarria stared at the smoothed-over dust. That was what it was like: she'd had a family, a home, and Ealin had swept it all away.

It felt like she had a stone where her heart should be.

She did not cry.

***

On another night, Ealin and Uarria made camp next to an outcropping of rock. They were not far from the road, and Ealin did not light a camp fire. Uarria wondered why; it was hot during the day, but it was cold during the night, and she missed the warmth. She had come to look forward to the smell of woodsmoke, which would linger on their clothes, reminding her during the day of the rest that would come at night.

Ealin sat alone a couple of armspans from Uarria, staring off into the distance with a blank expression on her face. At times like this, watching her, Uarria wondered if she was sad; she certainly looked sad. She looked as if she, too, felt very far from home.

It was difficult not to be scared of Ealin. Uarria had seen her do a number of scary things. Ealin had hurt Hastor and had made him fall asleep. She had done the same to the guard in the courtyard when she had taken Uarria out of the palace. And she'd struck Uarria, too; the memory of those unexpected blows, which contrasted so sharply with Uarria's charmed childhood that she would never forget them, was still cruel and sent a lance of something like panic through Uarria's stomach.

But in moments like this, when the two of them were alone and the night encroached and Ealin sat with her arms wrapped around herself, her hair teased by the breeze, as if she, too, were as cold as Uarria was, the little girl felt sad on her behalf.

Silently, Uarria rose to her feet and crept toward Ealin across the grass. Her footsteps rustled in the long blades of grass, but Ealin did not seem to notice her approach until she was at her shoulder. Then she started, looking up in surprise at Uarria.

"What is it? Do you need to make water?"

Uarria sat down next to Ealin and let her head come to rest against the woman's shoulder. After a moment, Ealin stretched out an arm and laid it over Uarria's shoulders, drawing her in close. "It's quiet out here, isn't it, sweet?" she whispered.

Of course, Uarria could say nothing in response.

"We are a very long way from home. And we're a very long way from where we're going. But the distance decreases day by day. Soon enough our journey will come to an end.

"Soon enough."