The Bonemender's Oath by Holly Bennett

Author:Holly Bennett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE chunk of dark hard bread Derkh was given for breakfast brought back a world of memories. “Soldier’s bane,” they called it, and Derkh had eaten it on journeys and in training camps for as long as he could remember. The taste was bitter to him now, the taste of a life lost. He ate it anyway, tasting blood with the bread as his split lip reopened.

And though he kept his eyes down, he listened while he ate. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he had not yet lost interest in his own fate.

“So what’s next, Cap’n?” asked one of the men. “Do we take this’n”—thrusting his chin toward Derkh—”and head back?”

“You wish,” grunted the captain—Tarkhet, Derkh had overheard the men call him. “Our job’s to bring back one o’ their soldiers, not our own! This lad’s just gravy.”

So that’s what they’re doing here, thought Derkh. But why? He tried to think like his father. To what end would an enemy soldier be useful? Information, obviously. That suggested a second invasion was in the wind. But something didn’t add up. The information an invading force would need—numbers, deployment, defense plans—you couldn’t just snatch some outpost soldier on lookout duty and expect him to know these things. And no one from Greffier, where only the highest rungs of the military were privy to big-picture plans, would assume otherwise. So then what...

His speculation was cut off by the next remark. “He’ll be a right burr in the butt, that one, though, won’t he? I mean, how quiet’s he gonna keep while we go sneakin’ up on his new friends?”

“The thought had occurred to me.” Tarkhet’s voice, dry, speculative. Derkh glanced through the dark tangle of his hair, to find Tarkhet’s cold gaze leveled at him. He means to kill me, Derkh realized. He dropped his head, as though he could escape Tarkhet’s notice by ducking under his sightline. The blood boomed in his ears and behind his eyes; he fought to keep his breathing normal and listen.

“Interrogation’s not really my line,” Tarkhet continued in the same flat tone. “But on a special mission you sometimes have to go a little beyond yer usual line.” Tarkhet hauled himself to his feet and walked heavily over to where Derkh sat, his legs and hands still bound. The heavy boots came to a halt before him; Derkh looked up the broad trunk to meet pale eyes that betrayed no flicker of emotion.

“We’ll question him here. If he convinces me he’s loyal to the Empire, and is still fit to travel, we’ll gag him and bring him along. If not,” he shrugged, “you know what they say about dead men.”

In the silence that followed, one of the men scratched his head and ventured a question. “Uh, what do they say about dead men, Cap’n?”

Tarkhet’s humorless smile was a brief baring of teeth, nothing more. “They don’t itch yer butt.”

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