Azure bonds - Kate Novak [143]
Olive declared the honor of the first bath and began setting up the screen to block the tub from view. "I'm sure I won't be able to reach into that well," she said to Alias. "Would you mind?"
"As soon as you get me out of this chain," the swordswoman insisted.
"Oh, bother," the halfling grumbled. She banged the manacle once with the end of the chain, and it sprang open.
"You have a really light touch," Alias teased. She grabbed the two pails and set out for the water. Akabar followed.
"You won't be much good for hauling with a bad arm," the swordswoman said as she poured water from the well bucket into one of the pails she had brought.
"I am good for other things," said Akabar, unsmiling. "I am a spell-caster as well as a merchant."
"We'll have to get a healer for that shoulder," she continued, not understanding that she'd offended him.
"We've developed our own methods in your absence," Akabar added, leaving Alias completely confused. His coolness hurt her. She realized that even though she'd come to terms with not being human, accepted it, and was now prepared to go on living, Akabar might not feel the same way about her. And if her friends didn't accept her, who would?
An awkward silence fell between them.
Finally, Akabar overcame his pride-his usefulness was no longer at issue, and they had more important things to discuss. "Alias, what Moander said, what it made me tell you, what it made me do, the way it used me-I think I understand how you must feel."
Alias finished filling the second pail and set it down beside the first. She shook her auburn hair and stared at the ground. "It told me you were all dead," she said, swallowing back the memory of the grief and horror that had accompanied that moment. "It was lying then. It could have been lying before."
Akabar was silent.
"What is it?" Alias asked. "Tell me," she demanded.
"I was in its mind, as well," the mage explained. "As far as it knew, it was telling the truth."
"I see." She looked down into the well. Her reflection in the water mocked her. Golem, homonculus, made-thing, that's how the mage saw her now.
"It changes nothing, though," the Turmishman said. "You are my friend, and I mean to help you, no matter how many gates we must pass through."
Alias stretched out a hand and laid it on his good right shoulder, prepared to tell him he must leave, that she would not have him facing any more danger on her behalf, for the very same reason: he was her friend.
Before she could open her mouth, though, Olive, wrapped in a towel, called out from the doorway, "Are you getting water or what out there? I'm getting chilled, and the kettle's already boiling."
Alias grabbed both bucket straps and duck-walked the full buckets back to their apartment. Akabar followed, cradling his bad arm and quietly cursing the small, dirty halfling. She had been a nuisance since the day they'd met.
Once the bard was settled in her bath, soaking, and half-humming, half-singing some obscene ditty to herself in the tub, Alias turned her attention to Dragonbait's wounds.
The sigil of Moander had faded from the lizard's tattoo just as it had from hers. Her glee at discovering this was soon squelched by the sight of his wounds. There was a bloody half-healed gash on his hip, and he flinched when she touched an ugly greenish bruise on his side, indicating a possible broken rib. She offered him some warm compresses for the pain.
"We're going to have to get a cleric," she said again. "I wonder if one will be available after the dragon's crash. Every time I turn around, Mist's victims seem to be sucking up all the available healers. This'll be the last time, though. How did you ever come to team up with her?"
Akabar sat down beside Dragonbait and gave him a gentle nudge with his good arm. "Do