Page 241 of The Crown's Awakening
"You have been like this since we left," I said. "Tell me what is on your mind."
He did not answer immediately. The Avanki ahead shifted formation as the path narrowed, their movement clean and practiced, snow breaking beneath their boots and the hooves of the horses among them.
"When you were delivering them," Colsar said at last.
"I could hear you," he continued. "Every part of it. I did not understand what I was hearing. I did not know if you were surviving it or if I was listening to you die."
“I have been in situations where I understood the outcome,” he said. “Even when it was not in my favor. This was different.”
I looked at him. "You weren’t there,” I said quietly.
"No." His jaw shifted. "And I could not fix it."
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of snow and something faint beneath it. One of the firebirds dipped lower, then climbed again and disappeared into the gray.
"You did fix it," I said. "We survived. That is what matters."
"It is not all that matters," he said.
I watched him for a time, then glanced back. Kentan rode at the rear of the column, unhurried, his attention moving across the tree line the way it always did.
“Do you trust him?" I said.
Colsar followed my line of sight. "I do."
"With me? With the children?"
“Yes.”
A brief pause.
"He knows what is mine," Colsar said.
I turned back to the road.
That was enough.
We rode in silence for a time. It was near dusk when Trophi rode alongside and Colsar called to him. "How much farther to the outer Gyarin?"
"Another day," Trophi said. "Less if the pass holds."
Colsar said nothing.
"There are so few undead here," I said eventually.
Ahead, movement broke through the snow along the edge of the path. Something dragged itself upward, limbs uneven, head tilted at an angle that no longer belonged to the living. It did not reach us. An Avanki soldier stepped forward, light gathering along his arm before he cut through it. Another rose behind it and met the same end, then another, each falling before it could close the distance.
The line did not slow.
Trophi rode closer. "They keep their distance. They feel our lightcraft." He inclined his head. "They are drawn to power. But not all power. This they avoid."
I watched another cluster break through the snow further out and fall just as quickly. "This is why they want the wards dropped," I said. "If Alarnans moved like this, the undead would not stand long."
Trophi’s expression shifted slightly. "They would solve the dead," he said. "Not the problems of the living." He held my eyes for a moment. Then inclined his head once, because there was nothing useful to add to that.
The transport moved on. The mountains held their cold around us, and somewhere above in the grey sky the firebirds continued their slow patient circles, watching for what neither of us wanted to find.
CHAPTER 71
