“I think he should be honored that you are caring for him,” I whispered. “But I do not think that he will feel that way about me. I’m going to tend the fires.”
She looked worried, but I avoided her gaze as I toed in the nearest fire, pushing the fuel into the center as we let it burn down. No need for another forest fire. I tried to look casual as I made my way slowly toward where the Wings were whispering together. Whatever they were talking about involved me. I shouldn’t be kept out of their conversation.
“...want to leave now. While I still can,” Ivo was saying. “You know as well as I do that the Quills will be growing anxious. We need to get word to them.”
“You can do that when we reach the coast and find a healer,” Osprey said in response. “Until the prince is ...” His words were whipped away in the wind. I strained to hear more. “...so she must stay with him until then.”
“The moment those bees are out of his belly, you’ll be forced to fall upon her and destroy her, friend. I want to spare you both – and spare the Far Stones. We need her bees.”
“I’ll find some way,” Osprey said grimly. “Give me time to think of what that way might be.”
“You have until we reach the coast,” Wing Ivo agreed. “But after that, I must flee with her if you haven’t found a way – and risk the chance that you might follow.”
They made the sign of the bird grimly and I focused twice as hard on the fire I was toeing in, trying to look absorbed in the task.
Osprey met my eyes as they broke their huddle and he frowned, his toothpick moving from one side of his mouth to the other with almost frantic intensity as his gaze burned into me. He had his belt knife out and he was carefully cutting white toothpicks from a length of sapling. The way he went through those, he must have to do that a lot.
I tore my gaze away from him and back to my work. Ivo wanted to split off from him – a solid idea. And Osprey wanted to find a way not to kill me but still stay with us – a risky plan at best. But what did I want to do? I needed my own plan to get out of this tangled mess.
“Working on your meditation, Hatchling?” Ivo asked as he gathered up his few things. The sun was over the trees and it was time to get back on the boat.
“Yes,” I said, but the thing I was meditating on was how Osprey could feel like my ally and my enemy all at once and if there was any way to get away from the crown prince now that my bees were tangled up with his life.
“Good thinking. We need to be moving. No sense wasting any more daylight.”
We loaded the boat with the unconscious crown prince and what little we had. Between Osprey and Ivo’s packs, there had been two bedrolls. Both were being used now for the comfort of Juste Montpetit. There were also two waterskins, a few small items like woods knives, flint, rope, string, some bandage rolls, a little hardtack, some dried meats. In Osprey’s bag – to my surprise – there had been a tiny pot of honey and a lace-edged handkerchief. He’d blushed when Zayana found those, and I wondered if there was a lovely lady back on the continent worrying over her handkerchief and the person to whom she had given it.
The sun was bright as we launched the boat onto the deceptively calm water of the river.
I perched in the bow, keeping an eye out for rocks just under the surface or rapids ahead.
“We’ve been lucky so far,” Ivo said. “But rapids are bound to be somewhere on this river. Every river has them.”
He had the tiller, Zayana had the care of the crown prince and Osprey was talking to his bird.
“I’ll scout ahead when I can,” he said quietly before he put his forehead to the bird’s and began to whisper to it, his hand gently caressing the bird’s feathers. I couldn’t help the stab of jealousy that shot through me as he rested his cheek against the bird, running a hand gently over its feathers.
I should know better than to let myself watch that. Osprey was a threat to me not a ... what? A friend? That felt too weak to describe the tang of emotions I tasted when I watched him with his bird. It also didn’t explain why I kept glancing over my shoulder at him even while I returned to my job, trying to hide my furtive glances. I couldn’t deny my attraction to him – as much as it made my cheeks grow hot. I tried to tell myself that there was a good reason I was curious. After all, since I first met Osprey he had flown everywhere on the back of that bird – almost obnoxiously so. It was strange to me that he wasn’t flying ahead or getting help, just whispering to this bird. It was almost as if he was staying here on purpose to be near us. That was a good reason to be curious, right?
The boat jostled as the hull lurched across a rock.
“Are you blind, girl?” Ivo asked me from the back of the boat. “Or are you meditating so deeply that you can’t do your job?”
“Apologies!” I called back, focusing again on watching for rocks, but I couldn’t help obsessing over what had changed that bound Osprey to the boat. Was it the hurt crown prince? Or had he lost so much energy that now his bird could not bear him?
I focused on the water, my gaze drifting from time to time to the riverbanks. Many snake carvings decorated the edges of the river. At one point I thought I saw an old, crumbled footing of what had once been a bridge made of thick stone snakes. At another, someone had carefully etched them into an overhanging rock. I tried to ignore the creeping sensation that rolled over me. There was nothing I could do about ancient relics.
As we traveled downriver, the Forbidding grew thicker and more intense, twisting the trees and rocks along the edges of the river, sometimes right down to the water. Was I imagining things, or was it moving? Writhing and wriggling like snakes?
I shivered.
But the feeling did not leave, and after an hour I began to worry.
“Have you spent a lot of time in Far Stones, Wing Ivo?” I called back.
“I have a home in Astar Harbor,” he called back, but he sounded distracted, too.
“Have you ever seen the Forbidding look so ... alive?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
Ahead, the river narrowed, suddenly. Rock walls rose on either side of the river. There was no way to go but through the narrow channel between them where the water sped up, tumbling over itself as it rushed between the rocks. I looked around, desperate for somewhere to beach the boat, but everything was thick with the Forbidding, tiny strands of it waved out over the river as if searching for prey.
“Hold on to your heads!” Ivo cried from the back. “It’s going to be rough!”
We plunged into the rushing water at the same time that a bright purplish-white bird burst out over my head, rushing before our boat.
“Os will see if there’s a waterfall ahead,” Osprey called over the roar of the water reverberating off the stone walls.
A solid plan. He might be able to stop our boat with help from Ivo’s golden eagle. Or maybe they could help bear it down the falls gently so that no one was hurt or killed. I clenched my jaw and braced myself against the boat, wishing for the first time that my bees were fully under my control so I could send them to look for me.
The net dropped out of nowhere.
Chapter Five
IT FILLED THE GAP IN the rocks in front of us, unfurling so quickly that I only had time to give a wordless cry of warning.