It didn’t take long for Seneira to finish packing. There’s only so much you can carry when you’re travelling the long roads. We could’ve left that very hour if it weren’t that Ferius was still in the throes of the obsidian worm fever.
‘Hey, Kellen,’ she said, eyes half-opening as I walked into her room. ‘Come to rescue me?’ She pulled at her bonds. ‘Mind taking these off so’s I can get a drink? I’m powerful thirsty.’
‘They were just to keep you from hurting yourself.’
‘Silly kid, why would I want to hurt myself when I’ve already got so many other folks tryin’ to do it for me? Now take these restraints off.’
‘You should sleep awhile first. Let yourself—’
‘Let myself what, kid? Get used to this crawler under the skin of my right eye?’ Again she pulled at her restraints. ‘Take them off, Kellen. I ain’t gonna scratch out my own eye. I need it for something first.’
Not feeling as if I could refuse her, I did as she asked. When I was done, she sat up groggily. ‘All right, now where are those boots of mine?’
‘Ferius, I need to talk to you. I need to tell you the plan.’
She smiled in a way I found kind of patronising. ‘The plan? Sure, kid, tell me all about your plan.’
I did, explaining what Beren was intending and what the rest of us would do that night.
‘Sounds sensible,’ she said. ‘Good thinking. Excellent plan. Now, how about those boots, kid?’
Something struck me about her tone. ‘Ferius, you’re coming with us. You, me, Seneira and Reichis are leaving tonight, before—’
‘No, Kellen, that’s your plan, not mine. You and the girl –’ she looked down at Reichis, still curled up asleep on the bed – ‘and the squirrel cat if he wants, you all get out of here fast as you can. Me? My dance card’s got a fella’s name on it that I mean to scratch off once and for all.’
‘Are you crazy? Dexan will kill you!’ I strode over to a chest of drawers and pulled a small mirror from its stand to hold it in front of her. ‘You see that thing around your eye? He can use it to hurt you. If those bracelets he uses have any kind of blood sympathy or iron attraction spells charmed into them, then he’ll know when you’re nearby. You won’t get within fifty feet of him before he ends you.’
She made a show of looking in the mirror and fixing her hair. ‘Reckon that might be so. Probably worth laying some money on it if you can find someone dumb enough to take the bet.’
She wasn’t listening. Ferius was falling back into that stupid habit of pretending everything was some big joke and that she’d just swagger on up to Dexan and trick him into giving up. ‘Come with us,’ I pleaded. ‘The four of us can survive if we just –’
She rose up from the bed, visibly unsteady but not letting me support her. ‘Kid, I’ve been trying to teach you for months what it means to be an Argosi. It ain’t some set of tricks or skills, it’s not even a philosophy. It’s a path, Kellen. That’s what makes a person an Argosi: finding your path and never straying from it.’ She slipped her black leather waistcoat back on and took out her metal flask. ‘And my path runs right through that son of a bitch.’
‘Don’t do this,’ I begged, practically starting to cry. Yeah, I guess I was laying it on a bit thick, but, well, I needed to put on a good show.
She tilted her head as she looked at me, then reached out a hand and ruffled my hair. ‘You’re a funny kid sometimes, you know that?’ She unscrewed the cap of her flask and took a long drink. ‘All right, best you and the girl set off now, Kellen. I’ve got some serious dancin’ to do.’
‘Will you two shut up?’ Reichis groaned. ‘I’m trying to die here.’
‘He okay?’ Ferius asked.
I nodded. ‘Seneira took care of his wounds. She said they were too shallow to do much damage.’
‘Good, that’s good.’ She took another swig from the flask before sealing it up and putting it back in her waistcoat.
‘Nothing will stop you from going after him, will it?’
She smiled. ‘Not a thing, kid. Not one, and if you respect me at all, you’ll understand that …’ She looked confused, then sat heavily back down on the bed. ‘Whoa … who set this room to spinning?’
‘Must be the fever,’ I said.
Ferius glanced over at the night table, and the small vial of sedative that was two teaspoons short of what it should have been. ‘Damn, Kellen … you drugged my hootch?’
I nodded.
‘That’s … That’s just …’ She fell back and I caught her in time to turn her around so her head was on the pillow. Her eyes were already fluttering closed as she muttered, ‘You’re the worst apprentice I ever had.’
Reichis got up and shook himself off, then started inspecting his wounds. ‘So what now? We toss the Argosi in the back of a wagon and run for it?’
I wanted to. More than anything in the world right now the thought of getting away from this place, of starting a life with Seneira, pulled at me like iron magic. But what kind of man would I be, what kind of life could I give Seneira, if I let my friends down? ‘No more running,’ I said. ‘Ferius is right: an Argosi never backs down.’
‘Neither do squirrel cats, but I thought –’
I pointed to the black marks around her eye. ‘It’s a safe bet that if Ferius goes anywhere near Dexan, he’ll know she’s coming, through his connection to the worm. He’ll kill her before she can so much as toss a card at him.’
Reichis stared up at me, then shook himself again and his fur went from grey with silver stripes to black with traces of red. ‘So you and me are gonna …?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah. You and me, partner.’
He looked as if he was trying to decide whether to come with me or just leave me there and go find a business partner who didn’t get himself into life-or-death situations every five minutes. I wouldn’t have blamed him; none of this was his fault. After a minute of watching him I couldn’t stand it any longer. The thought of doing this without him was threatening to make me lose my nerve. ‘Well?’ I finally asked. ‘What’s it going to be?’
He got up on his hind legs and stared down at the cuts on his side, then up at me. ‘I am seriously going to kill that damned crocodile this time.’