Tethered Spirits Page 9

  Her eyes opened and darted across their surroundings. “What’s going on? Where’s Lucian?”

  Amar looked around. Where was the fiery Spirit Tarja? He’d spent much of the previous day in Kesari’s lantern, but that was empty now.

  “He doubled back to make sure we’re not being followed too closely,” Saya answered. “He should be back soon. We may have to leave without him, but I’m sure he’ll catch up.”

  Kesari sat up with a frown and adjusted the lapels of her coat. “You shouldn’t have sent him off alone.”

  Saya shrugged. “It was his idea. And it was a good one. I would have told you, but he didn’t want to wake you.”

  Mitul dug around in his satchel and began to pass out dried mango slices and hunks of bread for their breakfast. Amar took the food and nodded his thanks without meeting the other man’s eyes.

  “We can eat as we walk,” Saya said, hoisting her satchel over one shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “You’re in a hurry this morning,” Amar said, his tone intentionally prickly. He was famished, and now that he’d had some time to recover from his nightmare, he was starting to feel drowsy again. They’d walked late into the night, and he couldn’t have had more than a few hours of decent sleep. Was the danger really so great that they couldn’t rest a while longer?

  Beside him, Kesari yawned and gave a slight nod of agreement. “It’s barely morning.”

  Saya jabbed a finger down the path in the direction from which they’d come. “There’s a dangerous, violent Tarja after us. We may have thrown her off for now, but I’d prefer she didn’t catch up with us again. Or have you all forgotten what happened the last time our paths crossed?”

  Amar looked up at her, fighting to keep his expression neutral. “Actually, I did forget.”

  Saya’s eyes widened like she’d been slapped across the face. “Amar, I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I don’t know anything,” he shot back. “I don’t remember. I don’t know who you people are, or who I am, and I don’t know who this Visan woman is, either. I don’t see why we have to go rushing off so soon. Who put you in charge, anyway? Isn’t the whole point of this journey to find out what’s happening to me? Shouldn’t I have some say in where we go and when?”

  His petty arguments made him sound like a child, but he couldn’t stop himself. There was a caged wolf inside him, and now that its door was open, it burst out, ready to tear apart everyone in its path.

  Mitul’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Amar, please. We’re only trying to help.”

  “I don’t need your help,” he snarled, pulling away.

  The man held up his hands in resignation. “Look, none of this is fair, and I’m sure it’s all very confusing and overwhelming. But I’m asking you to trust us. Saya’s right. We should go.”

  A simmering heat continued to roil inside Amar, but he held it back. This wasn’t worth fighting over. He even agreed with Saya and Mitul. He didn’t remember the enemy they spoke of, but he’d seen the blood on his clothes in the aftermath of their last fight. She wasn’t someone he wanted to run into again.

  But that didn’t mean he was willing to admit he was wrong. And he didn’t appreciate Saya’s comment about his forgetfulness, intentional or not. It wasn’t his fault he couldn’t remember anything.

  “Fine. Let’s go.” He stuffed his food in the pocket of his tunic and went to get his pack. His sword and pistol sat atop it, and he belted both around his waist. The weapons felt familiar there, comfortable in a way that helped to quiet the growls of that wolf inside him.

  For now.

  They walked in silence, lingering tensions stifling all conversation. Saya and Mitul took the lead with Kesari right behind them. Amar brought up the rear, hanging back to avoid interaction with the others.

  Kesari kept glancing back over her shoulder, her brows knit together with worry. He was about to ask if she had a problem with him and why she couldn’t just mind her own business, but then she put a hand to the lantern hanging from her coat. Of course it wasn’t him she was worried about. She was waiting for Lucian.

  The Spirit Tarja finally made an appearance around mid-morning. He floated past Amar without a word, coasting to a slower pace when he reached Kesari’s side. Her entire face brightened when she saw him. “You’re back!”

  “Did you see anything?” Saya asked.

  “I saw many things,” he replied with a sly cheekiness that brought a smirk to Amar’s lips. Saya muttered something under her breath, and Lucian quickly added, “No sign of our friend, though. If she’s still following us, she’s farther behind.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’s following us,” Saya said. “But I’m glad she’s not close. Thank you for looking.”

  They walked on into the afternoon, stopping to rest only when the sun was high overhead and sweat began to bead on their skin. They gathered under the shade of a cluster of trees near the road’s edge, and Mitul once again passed out food to the others. Saya and Kesari thanked him graciously, but Amar said nothing and found a place away from the others to eat.

  After they were finished, they set off again. Amar tried to hang back alone like before, but Mitul lingered until he’d caught up. “How are you doing, my friend?”

  Amar’s teeth ground together at the man’s choice of words—my friend. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure? You seem a little on edge.”

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “All right,” Mitul said brightly, seemingly unfazed by the harshness in his tone. “I just wanted you to know that I’m happy to answer any questions you have or talk about whatever you’d like. Maybe share some memories, when you’re ready.”

  “And what’s that supposed to do? You’ll tell me a few stories about the man I supposedly used to be, and we’ll go back to being friends again?”

  Mitul shrugged. “I thought it might help you feel more like yourself.”

  “More like the person you think I am, you mean.” Amar cast him a sidelong glance. “You must not like this new version of me very much.”

  Mitul’s amiable smile fell, and he turned his eyes to the road ahead. “I’ll always like any version of you, Amar. Even the one that hates me.”

  Before he could respond, Mitul quickened his pace and fell into stride with Saya again. She cast a glance back at Amar, an angry frown pulling at her lips, but her eyes were sad. He looked away and pretended to be fascinated by the trees and the birds.

  It wasn’t that he hated Mitul—or Saya, for that matter. But the way they watched and hovered over him was enough to aggravate anyone. They spoke to him like they knew him, but that familiarity only went one way. He hated feeling so off-balance. He didn’t need any more reminders of how very incomplete he was without his memories.

  He wasn’t the old friend they wanted him to be. Not anymore. And what was the point of forging friendships if he could die at any point and forget them all over again? Or worse, if he didn’t die—if they grew old and he didn’t, until he outlived them and was left all alone with only bittersweet memories to cling to.

  Something inside him constricted in a way that brought on a wave of nausea. He couldn’t recall a specific time he’d lost someone close to him, but it must have happened at some point if he was as old as Tamaya thought he was. He wouldn’t set himself up for that kind of heartache again. Mitul would just have to get used to the distance between them.

  Voices drifted from the road ahead, and Lucian retreated into the lantern hanging from Kesari’s waist. He’d done that a few times already, always when they came upon someone else on the road. Like he was ashamed, their Bond a secret they both needed to hide. Odd behavior, but considering how young Kesari was, maybe there was some element of shame.

  The strangers they passed turned out to be a pair of merchants. They barely acknowledged Amar and the others from the seat of their wagon, and as soon as they’d disappeared from view, Lucian reemerged from his lantern to hover at Kesari’s
shoulder.

  What was their story, anyway? What strange circumstances had led to them forming a Bond, and why were they so secretive about it now? Tamaya had suggested that Jameson might be able to break Spirit Tarja Bonds, and that seemed to be what Kesari and Lucian were after. But why, when forming a Bond with a Spirit Tarja came at such a high cost to the living partner?

  Amar continued to mull over these questions as they continued on their journey. They didn’t stop again until well past sunset. Mitul and Saya split the night’s watches between them, declining Kesari’s offer to help with an exchanged glance of uncertainty. Amar had offered to take a turn the previous night, but Saya had made an excuse about his needing to rest, and Mitul had backed her up. The more likely reason was that they didn’t trust him not to run off and abandon them in their sleep.

  To be fair, he had considered doing exactly that, particularly as Mitul’s pitying looks became more frequent and insufferable.

  If they didn’t want his help, so be it. Let them wear themselves out on half a night’s sleep if they were too worried to trust anyone else. When he’d finished his meal of salted pork and dried berries, Amar found a relatively comfortable spot in the grass to sleep and turned his back to them all without a word.

  The next day progressed much like the one before, and again, they walked late into the night. Mitul was stumbling over his own feet by the time they stopped. Kesari was yawning every few minutes, and even Saya’s squared shoulders had begun to droop with exhaustion.

  “Do you want to take the first watch again, or should I?” Saya asked Mitul as they laid out their blankets.

  “I will,” he replied, but he didn’t sound happy about it.

  Lucian hovered between them. “It’s foolish for you both to waste your energy walking this far on so little sleep,” he said in his low, crackling voice. “I don’t need sleep. I can keep watch all night.”

  “He’s right,” Kesari agreed. “You don’t need to tire yourselves out like this.”

  Saya frowned and said nothing. Mitul kept his eyes on his blanket, smoothing out the same wrinkles over and over again.

  “They don’t trust us,” Amar said. He stared directly at Mitul, waiting until the man’s gaze rose to meet his before continuing. “You claim we were friends and ask me to trust you, but you can’t do the same for me?”

  “It’s not like that,” Mitul replied.

  “Isn’t it? What are you so afraid of? That we’ll murder you in your sleep? Or that we’ll steal everything you own and disappear without a trace?”

  “Amar, please…” Mitul didn’t finish the sentence, just shook his head and let out a longsuffering sigh.

  “We don’t trust you because you’re not yourself,” Saya said. “And I don’t care if that upsets you—it’s true.” She turned to Kesari and Lucian. “I don’t mean any offense to either of you, but we barely know each other.”

  “What does it matter if I leave?” Amar spat back. “You and Mitul spend so much time whispering about me and trying to tiptoe around my feelings. I’m sure you’d both be happier on your own.”

  Saya leaned forward, her eyes cold and hard. “Oh, I’m sure we would be, if you’re going to keep acting like some ignorant, self-centered pashlik.”

  Amar didn’t know exactly what the word meant, but it was obviously an insult. Before he could respond in kind, Mitul stepped between them, his hands raised. “Stop this, both of you. We all want the same thing. There’s no reason to fight.” He turned to Saya. “Lucian’s right, and so is Amar. We’re going to have to start trusting each other a little more if we want this journey to go smoothly.”

  Saya hissed a rapid string of Sularan words under her breath, then looked at Lucian. “Fine, then. Take the watch. But you’d better wake us the moment something happens.”

  “Of course,” Lucian replied with a wicked grin. “There’s nothing like a few singed eyebrows to get people up and out of bed in a hurry.”

  “Oh, stop it,” Kesari said, but her mouth turned up at the corners. Saya glowered at them both, and she quickly added, “He’ll do no such thing, I swear.”

  Saya shook her head, lay down on top of her blanket, and closed her eyes. Mitul looked at Amar before resting his head on his pack. “Goodnight,” he said with a conciliatory smile.

  Amar merely grunted in response and lay back with his hands behind his head. Within minutes, his companions were fast asleep, their deep breaths breaking up the night’s silence. Amar, however, lay awake. After trying everything he could think of to quiet his mind and drift into sleep, he finally gave up and rose from the ground.

  Lucian hovered several paces away, and he turned to face Amar at the sound of his stirring. The Spirit Tarja’s fiery body stood out in stark, jagged orange against the night, but his eyes and mouth were as black as the sky. “All that fuss about making sure you don’t wear yourselves out, and now you’re not going to sleep?”

  “I can’t sleep,” Amar replied. He went to stand beside Lucian and followed his gaze out into the dark beyond the trees. “You do this every night? Just wait here alone for hours while she sleeps?” He nodded to Kesari, who dozed peacefully nearby.

  “Usually,” Lucian said. “It’s been more interesting these last few nights, having Saya or Mitul to keep me company. And tonight, I find myself with the most interesting company of all.” His dark eyes seemed to narrow. “A man out of time, cursed with immortality. I’ve never met someone quite so…unique.”

  There was a question there—one Amar didn’t want to answer or even contemplate. Time to change the subject. “You’re pretty unique yourself, aren’t you?”

  Lucian’s eyes seemed to widen, but it was hard to read his expressions in the flickering flames. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you speak Kavoran as well as any native. But Lucian is a Visan name, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “I didn’t think there were any natural born Visan Tarja.” There was the woman who was hunting them, but she seemed to have gained her abilities from a Bond. Only natural born Tarja could become Spirit Tarja, and only if they died prematurely.

  “How can you remember something like that and yet remember nothing about your own life?”

  Amar gave him a wry look. “That’s what I’ve been trying to understand myself.”

  Lucian’s chuckle was dry and brittle. “Well, you’re right. No Visan I’ve ever heard of was born a Tarja. But I’m not Visan—not really. I’m not sure where I came from. A Visan woman found me shipwrecked near her village when I was a boy, too young and scared to tell her my name. She and her wife raised me as their own.”

  “Generous of them,” Amar said.

  “Well, what else were they going to do? Throw me back to the sea?”

  “Some people would have.”

  Lucian grinned. “You’re very pessimistic, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “What happened when they found out about your magic?”

  “They did their best to understand, but I don’t think they ever really did. And of course, in Vis, magic made me more of an outcast than I already was. I tested for placement in a Kavoran Tarja academy as soon as I was old enough and never looked back.”

  “Not even to visit your parents?”

  “They weren’t exactly supportive of my decision. Can’t blame them, given how Kavorans see Visans as heathens just because they aren’t blessed with the ability to channel altma.” He said this with derision, like the idea was absolutely ludicrous. But there were plenty of people in Kavora who believed it.

  “People fear what they don’t understand,” Amar said.

  Lucian gave him another amused smile. “You sound very sure about that.”

  “It’s true enough, isn’t it? Why else would you hide in a lantern every time we see strangers on the road?” He glanced over his shoulder at Kesari. “If they saw you Bonded to someone so young, they wouldn’t understand, would they? They might be fearful, or even angry.”

  �
�They might.” Lucian’s smile disappeared, and his dark eyes simply stared out at the road.

  Amar waited a few seconds before prying further. “Why did you two decide to form a Bond? And why are you looking for a way to break that Bond now?”

  “Ah, you picked up on that, did you? It must seem a strange thing to seek after.”

  “Well?” he prodded when Lucian offered nothing further.

  The Spirit Tarja turned his gaze to Kesari, her limbs curled beneath her coat. “I was only thirty when I died,” he said. “It happened while I was in Atrea, where natural born Tarja are far less common than they are in Kavora. Most people there have little understanding of magic, and few would choose to give up half their life for that power. If a Spirit Tarja doesn’t form a Bond with a living person within a few days of their death, they fade away, and I didn’t have time to search for the perfect partner. I wanted to live, and Kesari wanted magic more than anything. We thought ourselves lucky to have found each other.”

  “But that changed,” Amar said. “You’re trying to break your Bond, and I haven’t seen her use her magic at all since I met you both.”

  “She never does,” Lucian said quietly. “She hasn’t for a long time now.”

  “So what happened?”

  “It’s not my place to say.”

  “I guess I’ll have to ask her then.”

  “I doubt she’d tell you, and I strongly suggest you don’t ask at all.” The implied threat in his voice was as sharp as a knife’s edge. “It’s none of your business, and I’d hate to make an enemy of you when I was just starting to like you.”

  Amar’s fingers curled into a fist. “She let me die,” he said, a new heat flaring up inside him. “She could have used her magic to save me, but she didn’t. And now, because of that, I can’t remember who I am.”

  Lucian stared at him with a frown that looked even more menacing than his usual demonic grin. “Because of your curse, you can’t remember who you are. Kesari had nothing to do with it. And just because she didn’t try to save you doesn’t mean she would have succeeded if she had.”

  “She still should have tried.”