Bounty Hunter (The Black Tulip Chronicles #1)

24. Ikar

Chapter 24

Ikar

W hen I wake, I find my cloak folded beneath my face. The rest of me lays atop sparse grass and dirt. I feel as if I’m recovering from an illness that includes a heavy dose of brain fog. I groan and push myself up, wincing at the tug in my leg.

Painfully, slowly, I stand, gritting my teeth. Vera’s taking a clean, dry shirt off a line, which has me wondering how long we’ve been here.

“What happened?” I ask, my voice rough and my throat dry as the dirt I was lying on.

Her brow pulls together with concern, and I don’t like it. I feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, and I have no idea what happened after I killed the bantha. A cool breeze makes its way between the slashes of my ruined armor, but I’m relieved when I reach back and find my shirt still mostly intact. Mark entirely hidden. But my trousers are another story. Torn irreparably and baring my bandaged thigh. I touch the bandages, confused. I immediately head to my pack, but my body feels stiff and off, and my leg aches, causing a hitch in my stride that further irritates me. I resist the wince that tugs with every step.

“I had the great privilege of yanking a bantha claw from your leg yesterday,” she says tartly from behind me.

I whip my head around too fast, and everything blurs together. Between the disbelief, dizziness, and the headache at the base of my skull, I find myself scowling at her. I remember the fight, but I know no possible way I’m still alive without a Healer nearby. My mood darkens further. If anyone has a reason not to trust, it’s me. What did she do?

She picks an off-white, dirty, blood-covered object off the ground and holds it out to me between two pinched fingers, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “I thought you might want it as a trophy… of sorts. Seems like something a mercenary criminal would do.” She shrugs.

This situation is so strange and unbelievable that I simply stare at it.

“I’m not a mercenary or a criminal,” I growl. Though at this point, I probably look like both, and it’s not helping.

“That’s yet to be proven.” She quirks a brow. A muscle ticks in my jaw as I return to the difficult job of reaching my pack. I rifle through it, further irritated at how messy it is, until I find what I’m looking for, then turn with clean trousers in hand toward the forest. From behind me, I hear the claw drop into my pack with a soft thud as she follows me.

“Do you need help?”

“No,” I say curtly. “Unless I’m dead, I won’t need help dressing.”

“You make a very ornery patient,” she mumbles under her breath, so low I know it wasn’t intended for my ears. She doesn’t realize how good my hearing is, even if she has blocked my magic .

I find a small creek nearby where she washed the clothes I saw drying. Questions tumble through my mind as I quickly wash the accumulation of dirt and sand from my body before donning the clean trousers, which takes a ridiculous amount of time in my injured state. While changing, I take a moment to inspect my leg, unwrapping the bandages that show no blood. Apparently, I was only asleep for a day. My logic tells me there’s no way, but my eyes say opposite. I never saw the initial wound, but it’s partially healed. Enough that I can walk without assistance, even though my muscles and skin feel tight and resistant to moving, and it aches and pulses uncomfortably. With movement, I hope it will loosen up. I take a moment to inspect my torn leather armor. It’s definitely beyond repair, but some armor is better than none, so I put it back on.

When I get back to camp Vera is snacking on fresh berries, and Rupi has returned. She throws out some birdseed, and the puff ball bounces around, pecking happily. I sit a few feet away and consider her carefully.

“How’d you do it?” I ask, suspicion strong in my voice. This slip of a woman is more than she seems. I feel it like a pebble in my boot.

She chews for a moment. “I used that fae potion in your pack.” She pops another berry into her mouth.

“It wasn’t potent, and even if it was, one potion couldn’t have done all of this,” I say firmly.

She looks down at her hand and lets a few of the berries roll around her palm. “You must have acquired it more recently than you remembered, or maybe it came from a particularly potent batch.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. I just remembered you had it and used it, and you’re part healed now.”

I glance at the spot where I woke, uncomfortable with the fact that no one is here that I trust to support her account. I spot the empty bottle near the tree, make my way over, and gingerly bend to pick it up. I slip it in my pocket, then turn to find Vera watching me with a guarded look in her eyes.

“Can’t leave glass in the forest. It could injure an animal,” I say, matter of fact. I don’t know why I feel the need to explain my actions to her, but I do.

She accepts that answer with a suspicious glint in her eye. Really, since she needs to visit the fae anyway, I plan to talk to one of them about this apparently potent batch of fae potion, but she doesn’t need to know that.

My limp isn’t so bad we lose too much time, more of an issue when we have to climb than anything. But the slower pace is irritating when I’m already in a rush, and the suns seem to make their way across the sky faster than ever. On top of that, the heat of the day has been brutal, mixing with the moist shadows of the forest and creating an insufferable humidity to trudge through. Then a heavy wind came out of nowhere midday, and even though it’s gusty and hot, it cools the sweat, so I savor it while I can. Who knows what will come next, the weather patterns grow more unpredictable every year, and this year has been no exception.

We make camp just before the third sun sets, and even though my leg is still stiff, I follow through with Vera’s weapon training. I don’t know why I care so much if this bounty hunter assistant knows how to use a weapon, but I do. I pull my sword and begin some warm up movements, watching as she pulls her short sword and a knife from their sheaths at her hip. I notice the way her trousers crinkle at the waist, and her belt seems much too large. It’s limp and worn with rough holes cut ever further from its end to better fit. I wonder at her choice of men’s clothing and why she appears to be starving if she takes regular contracts as she implied. Where does all the money go if not clothes and food?

I’m pulled from my thoughts when she holds two weapons before her and asks, “Which one?”

“Sword.”

She replaces the intricately carved dagger and holds the short sword out uncertainly. “Now what?”

I stalk toward her like a predator, and I see a flash of fear in her eyes as she begins to step back.

“Aren’t you supposed to teach me before we fight?” She practically squeaks as she steps back faster at my approach.

“No time for that. I’ll teach you while we fight. Sword up.”

I know she doesn’t trust me, has been around more than enough criminals to know that there are some crazy enough to kill her for their freedom, even though it would cost their magic. I’ve seen the way she watches me, trying to figure me out, unwilling to believe anything I say. So, I take advantage of it. Nothing quite like fear as a motivator.

Two hours later, Vera drops to her bedroll in exhaustion, taking a longer than normal drink of water before falling to her back somewhat dramatically. I hide a grin, remembering my own training when I was a young boy. Rhosse was never easy on me, and I often woke so sore the next morning I could hardly dress myself. A stab of worry shoots through me at the thought of my missing friends. Watching Darvy being dragged beneath the surface of the river, struggling with some unknown monster, then both of them gone in the blink of an eye, I painfully admit that it’s not likely they survived. I take time to clean a few of my blades, the motions and sounds therapeutic to the sorrow and worry. I know it’s unwise, but though I saw them disappear with my own eyes, I argue with myself that they are two of the most capable and expert warriors I know. I hold on to a bit of hope.

My thoughts gradually turn to Vera. She’s surprisingly strong for being so small, and her blocks improved quickly today. I withheld my praise so she doesn’t get lax. I have only days to teach her the fundamentals, and she has much to learn.

“You’re scary with a sword, you know that? Kinda scary always, actually,” she mumbles from several feet away, her voice tired and sleepy.

I grin in the shadows, knowing she can’t see. “Go to sleep.”

I hear her mumble something about me and my orders before she turns over, and her breaths fall into the even patterns of deep sleep.

The next morning, we start early again, hoping to reach the city before the Shift Forest by this evening. Even with our grueling pace, the suns seem to race us in their descent. It’s another sweltering day, so hot that in the patches of bare field we see waves of heat drift off the ground, and it seems the vegetation wilts before our eyes as morning moves to afternoon. Today, there is no gusty wind to cool the sweat that slicks my clothes to my body. As closely as I’m tracking the suns to set our pace, I’m also tracking the sporadic weather patterns, even if it’s useless. One moment, it’s hot and sunny. The next, we could be blown into hiding by gale force winds and hail. These past two days, it’s been hot, but generally calm. And while I enjoy the reprieve that comes with times like these, that usually means something violent will come next, and something inside me says it’s soon. I find my eyes drifting to the sky often, every breeze that moves across my skin has my eyes scanning for a tree that might work as an anchor for us.

I’ve noticed that Rupi appears to sense it, too. She’s stayed close to Vera these past few hours, as she usually does before the weather changes from what I’ve observed. Maybe the bird is more useful than it first appeared. I don’t know how she knows, but she does.

We continue forward as I feel the breeze pick up, the air cooling considerably, but still, the few clouds in the sky are as white as Rupi and just as fluffy. Good, I don’t want to stop earlier than we have to. We’ve had enough delays already.

“We need a place to wait out the coming storm,” Vera calls.

“Soon,” I reply, unwilling to stop before it’s absolutely necessary. Besides that, I’m still scoping out a decent place. I’d spotted a mountain wall a few miles to the east and redirected our path there, hoping there would be somewhere for us to sleep out of the elements soon to come.

The weather cools drastically as the clouds gradually turn from fluffy white to dark gray. We stop for only a moment to put on our cloaks when chill rain begins to fall, slipping beneath the collar of my shirt and rinsing the sweat from my body and clothing in an uncomfortable way. Along with the clouds and rain, a heavy fog has rolled in, weaving eerily through the trees and covering the forest floor. Vera begins to walk more closely beside me.

“You got a plan?” she asks me, her teeth chattering a bit.

“We’re almost to the mountainside. It’ll be safer to be beside it than in the forest if high winds kick up.”

She nods and pulls her cloak tighter. The chill makes my injury ache, and I find the hitch in my stride worsening as the evening grows later.

Finally, with relief, I spot a place that might work—if we can get there. With Vera shivering hard beside me and even my own bones feeling chilled to the core, I point to a small, dark hole above us in the cliff wall. “There.”

Vera eyes the rock face we’ll have to climb uncertainly. “I don’t know.” She looks back at the fog infested forest almost longingly.

“We can’t wait much longer. The wind is picking up, and the temperature is dropping.” I have to raise my voice now to be heard, even though we stand close, as the winds howl and whip around us. I don’t wait for her to over think it. Instead, I say, “You first,” fairly pulling her to the wall and pointing out where to begin. “I’ll be right behind you.” That is, if my leg doesn’t give out. I keep the concern to myself.

She begins climbing. And soon after, I follow, guiding her to next handholds with shouted instructions as well as I can, but I begin to question my decision when we are halfway up and her foot slips. I see her waver as she looks over her shoulder at the distance we’ve climbed. My leg aches furiously now, pulsing uncomfortably with overuse and fatigue.

“Keep going!” I shout.

My fingers feel as slick as the rock looks, but that hole in the cliff wall isn’t so far now. I search for the next handhold, determined to reach safety.