Azure bonds - Kate Novak [58]
"Oh? And what job is that?" Alias asked with a smile.
"Teaching your lizard to vote," the halfling announced grabbing Dragonbait firmly by the arm and hustling him to a far corner of the ruins.
"You keep an eye on Olive, Dragonbait," Alias called. "Don't let her wander into the woods."
Akabar started the fire, using pieces of charred wood from the inn. The mage struck a spark off his flint onto some wool and soon had a small blaze going. Alias squatted on her haunches and blew into the flames, spreading them among the drier tinder until the heavier kindling caught.
Akabar pulled out a pan, some cooking utensils, and a package of meat from a saddle bag. "Lamb, I think." Carving the meat into strips, he added, "We're going to have to start hunting soon."
"I know," Alias sighed, staring into the flames. "If I hadn't been such a frightened ninny and had hit that bird square on, I'd still have my dagger and we'd be eating fresh meat tonight."
"Your aim can't always be perfect," he said.
"Why not?"
The mage laughed. He poured a splash of oil into the cooking pan and balanced it on two large logs which straddled the fire. "You're only human."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Why is perfection so important?" he asked her.
"Why is being alive important?" she returned. "One miss too many and I could end up someone else's supper."
"You lead a hard life."
"It's worth it," the swordswoman insisted.
"Why?"
Alias shrugged. "The feeling of being free, I guess."
"Free of needing others?"
Alias did not reply. She fished a brush from her saddle bag and walked over to where Lady Killer stood munching the stiff mountain grass.
The mage smiled as he watched her grooming the purebred stallion. If she took that brush to her own hair, he thought, she would look as well bred. Akabar believed he understood why she spent her affection on the horse. The creature would never betray her, it didn't really need her, and it didn't ask questions. Rather like her other companion, the lizard.
He shook off the pity he felt for her, knowing that if she saw it, she would go for his throat. The oil in the pan spat, and the mage added the strips of lamb.
The mountain air was chill. Before long. Alias returned to the fire to warm her hands.
"Do you think a dragon may have caused this damage?" Akabar asked. The thought had been preying on his mind, but he had not wanted to appear nervous.
"No," Alias replied. "A dragon wouldn't leave things so neat. It'd burrow through the stones on the floor, looking for treasure. The damage was probably caused by an ordinary fire. Unless two mages decided to fight it out here with heavy magic."
"I was just wondering," the mage explained as he covered a pan of boiling broth and millet, "because you said Mist had ravens as familiars. This is the height of the trading season. It is unusual, is it not, for this route to be so deserted?"
"Yes," Alias admitted. "But it might have nothing to do with the inn's destruction. Trade routes go out of fashion for other reasons than monsters. Sometimes it's just the rumor of monsters, put out by secret societies to discourage competition. Wars. Too little grain to trade. Import taxes and tolls. You know more about trading. What do you think?"
"I think something is wrong, but it may or may not concern… us."
"You mean me, of course. And my affliction."
"Have there been any problems?" the mage asked.
"Not since the wedding."
Alias watched as Akabar lifted the lid from the pan and crushed a fistful of dried peppers over the steaming grain, letting most of it settle in a quarter of the pan.
"I take it that's Olive's portion," Alias noted, smiling.
The mage grinned fiendishly. "The vengeance of wizards and cooks can be subtle but terrible. Each day I add another quarter fistful. Eventually Mistress Ruskettle will help prepare a meal, or her tongue will fall out of her head."
"More likely, you'll run out of spices."
Akabar chuckled.
Alias looked over to the far corner of the ruined inn,