Shadows Return - Lynn Flewelling [133]
Alec nodded slowly. “He needed my kind of blood to make the rhekaro. He even tried to treat me well, sometimes, because of it.”
“Only sometimes?”
“I didn’t like him or the things he did to me.”
“Like what?”
“No, nothing like that. It was just—Can we talk about this later? I’m so tired.”
“Of course!” Seregil embraced him as best he could and felt Alec go limp against him for a moment, resting his head on Seregil’s shoulder. It was the first proper embrace they’d been able to share, and he didn’t want to let him go. “After the ambush, for the longest time, I was so afraid you might be dead.”
Alec’s arms tightened around him. “I thought the same, until I saw you on the deck of that ship at Riga. I knew then that I had to stay alive and find you again.”
“I’m not sure who found who, in the end, but here we are.” He kissed Alec and reluctantly released him.
Turning his attention to the landscape outside, he saw no sign of pursuit but doubted that would last. Who knew what sort of powers an alchemist had for finding lost slaves? Or the slave takers, for that matter.
Ilar was waiting sullenly for them, curled up in a ruined stall now and shivering in his stolen cloak.
Alec sat down some distance from him and fed the rhekaro again. Seregil made himself watch, figuring he might as well get used to it, though it still struck him as obscene.
Doing his best to hide his revulsion, he sat down beside Alec and opened the bundle. “Let’s see what you stole for food. My belly thinks my throat’s been cut.”
The three of them ate sparingly, sharing a bit of bread around and paring hard cheese thin on slices of apples taken from the orchard the night before. As always, the rhekaro ate nothing and didn’t seem interested in the water, either. According to Alec, the rhekaro had been given only a few drops of Alec’s blood each morning to live on, and nothing more.
Seregil took the first watch, sitting in shadows of the barn door with his back to a beam and a good view of the western barrens. Alec stretched out beside him with his head on Seregil’s thigh. Ilar remained in his corner, snoring softly.
The rhekaro seemed to have no more need of sleep than it did of food, but it curled up beside Alec, as if seeking the warmth of another body like a cat would. Or a serpent, Seregil thought, eyeing it warily as he stroked Alec’s hair.
The rhekaro stared back at him. Those unnerving silver eyes weren’t blank, but the kind of intelligence they might hold eluded him.
After a moment it turned away and looked down at Alec’s sleeping form. Then it lay down beside him in a similar position, and closed its eyes.
It’s trying to act like a real being, thought Seregil, surprised. He waited a few minutes, then shuffled his feet a little to make a noise. Those silvery eyes snapped open and it looked around, identifying the source. Seregil moved his feet again to show it. It stared at him for a moment, and Seregil felt the hair on the back of his neck prickling, strong as if there was lightning in the air. Apparently deciding that he was either no threat or very uninteresting, it returned to its semblance of sleep.
The light was stronger now, showing Seregil something he’d missed before; there was no mistaking the resemblance. Pale and unnatural as it was, the creature truly had Alec’s face, or at least the face as it might have looked when Alec was a child. As he compared the two, he noticed something else. Alec looked different somehow, and it wasn’t just from dust and exhaustion.
He looked more ’faie.
He shook his head. “What did they do to you, talí?”
Alec slept on, and Seregil returned his attention to the horizon as the day grew warmer, watching for dust rising against the sky. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation they were going to have when Alec woke up.
A few hours later Alec yawned and sat up. The rhekaro rose, too, and huddled close to Alec, as if it sensed what was coming. Behind them, Ilar was still sound asleep.
“Alec, you know we can’t keep this