Angelfire | The Whispering Wall #3

Seventy Six: Surprise

Grace's brother looked very much like he wanted to kill someone, in a worryingly literal sense.

Grace hadn't noticed, but Nova had had trouble taking her eyes off his aura all day while trying to pinpoint what had changed, and now she finally had it. He looked like a man who was seriously considering doing something painful and permanent to someone else, and it was so unfamiliar in his aura that she'd noticed something was amiss the moment they set out that morning.

It wasn't like she didn't understand the sentiment, considering her own past. She could hardly talk. But while Thorne had been in turns surly, anxious and almost frighteningly angry at times of high stress, she'd not seen this in him before. There'd been a hint of it, once, at the Kiel temple dinner before the expedition had set out, but it had softened over the weeks away from the city. She hadn't seen anything change, and Grace hadn't said anything about their meeting with chieftain's wife that seemed to warrant this reaction.

At that thought, her own mood darkened. They'd been beset by Varthian midwives that morning, in the dim light that preceded dawn. It was with more patience than she'd had to muster for a long time that she had endured their chatter and questions and finally, when they had assured themselves that Grace knew who they all were and where to find them, got them to leave. Cheeks pink, Grace had admitted she'd told the chieftain's wife about her condition, and had looked so embarrassed at the fuss that Nova hadn't had the heart to press her about it.

But even that, she thought, shouldn't have worried Thorne this much. She wasn't the only one to notice that something was off; Yddris, who normally travelled at the front with Cara, had barely left his apprentice's side all day, and seemed uncharacteristically talkative, undeterred by the unenthusiastic responses he got. Astra, too, had declined to go out with the scouting group like she normally did, electing instead to alternate between Thorne and her own tutor.

"You look worried." Grace fidgeted on the bench beside her. "Why do you keep looking at him like that?"

Nova dragged her gaze to Grace's face. They were travelling in what was probably one of the last gasps of the light season, and soft sunlight brought out brilliant gold in Grace's hair and flecks of green in her eyes. Her cheeks flushed at Nova's scrutiny.

"Is he angry I told the Varthians?" she continued. "He didn't seem all that happy about it, but I didn't think he was angry."

"I don't know," Nova said, truthfully enough. And Grace looked too worried already for her speculate out loud or reveal the extent of her brother's feelings.

Grace settled back in the seat, frowning. Opposite them, Yddris's retired tutor Thirris snored gently. All around their wagons, the Varthians moved alongside, spread out across the plain and looking like a whole town had shaken loose of its foundations and got up to move on. Covered wagons rattled along, pulled by the tribe's enormous cattle, and the same wagons were never in view twice as the tribesmen allowed the animals to rest and graze as they pleased. Looking at the size of them, Nova had to wonder if it the people chose to allow it or whether they had to follow the giants' whims. She couldn't imagine whipping on a bull that size would end well for anyone.

There were no longer any mountains in view, and the landscape became alien without them. These were more productive lands than the Barrens, whose conditions were dictated entirely by the ever-present chains of mountains, the tallest of which could block out the rains or keep bitter, scouring winds concentrated on a few areas. Nova had grown up in the far north where the Annexe lay, surrounded by mountains and composed of towering marble, and then moved to the Reach, a city of hills surrounded by one of the longest peak chains in Nictaven, and she found the flatness of the land unsettling, though it was far from empty. In the last stages of the light season, the long grasses contained flowers of all different hues and clumps of rattling seedheads. They were bothered by all manner of flying creatures; tiny flies with no reservations about flying into eyes and up nostrils, biting midges, fat bees droning alarmingly close to their ears, and black birds that made daring swoops at their food wagons if no one was paying attention. She envied the Unspoken their cloaks as she slapped midge after midge, leaving tiny smears of blood all over her skin. They liked her far more than they liked Grace, who seemed to have some otherworld taste to her that they didn't favour. Earlier that morning they had startled a large herd of wild deer, which some of the tribe hunters had set out on foot to track. They'd returned hours later, grinning and dirt-smeared, with three huge carcasses carried between them.