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Quinn had slept against Bryar’s back, her arm thrown over him, but woke to find the bedroll beside her empty. Through the overnight mists engulfing their campsite, she could make out Dal crouched by the fire, poking it to life. Kiril appeared to be asleep. She struggled out of her bedroll.
“Where is he?” she whispered.
“Gone toward the river.”
“Thanks.”
Moisture from the heavy mist glazed the path; her feet slipped occasionally as she crept along the trail. She almost missed seeing Bryar. He stood off the trail on a small bluff looking out over the waterfall, which cascaded into a pool upstream of the ford. He’d drawn his right arm back as if to throw a stick.
Not a stick.
Quinn flung herself at him, grabbing his arm before he could launch the little wooden flute into the water. As he stumbled back, his hand went slack. The flute tumbled onto the moss at their feet.
He shook himself free. “By all that’s sane, Quinn. You nearly pushed me over.”
At least that hadn’t been his intention.
“Sorry.” She nudged the flute with her foot. “You’ve carried this for twenty years. Everywhere.”
“Yeah. Easy to pack.”
Bryar had other flutes, but something about this little guy had always appealed to him. Quinn didn’t know if it held a story, but she couldn’t let him hurl it into the waterfall.
Making a bid for normalcy, she changed the subject. “How’s Ezra’s weave holding up?”
His gaze locked on the pool below them, he said, “It doesn’t make any difference now. We’re out of Borgonne.”
“It matters to me. I’m a Scribe, remember. How it works and how long-”
Bryar wheeled on her, his face set in rigid lines of hostility. “I’m well aware of what you are. For how many years? Twenty-five? And in all that time, you haven’t learned a damn thing about leaving people alone. Always digging, poking-”
Her temper surged to meet his. “Just stop right there. You know me better than that.”
“Do I? Then how is it you don’t know me at all?”
Quinn growled low in her throat, too frustrated to speak. She watched Bryar walk away from her, but he didn’t leave. After a moment he turned back, rigid with his struggle for control. “In the hills, it’s hard to tell. It was breaking up before we left Borgonne.”
He’d answered her question. She forced the temper from her voice and replied in kind. “That explains why you kept fading in and out. Arwen and I weren’t sure if the weave was disintegrating or if you’d been wounded.”
“Looks like both, doesn’t it?” He turned away.
Quinn closed the gap between them and touched his arm. “But which came first? And were the two related? Did the injury affect the weave? Talk to me, Bryar.”
The instant the words were out she knew she should have kept quiet. His expression, when he faced her, chilled her to the bone. He was... empty. Even the restoration of the Aura wasn’t sufficient to counter his losses, starting with Tai, and now his music.
Frustrated, she dug her fingers into her tight curls, gripping hard. “I love you.”
“I love you.” But you’d never prove it by the flatness of his voice.
“None of us can predict the future. Are you so sure you won’t play again?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“I don’t agree. Maybe... well, could they build artificial fingers to fit over the...?” She gestured at his hand.
She got the full force of his bitterness. “Stumps, Quinn? Is that the word you can’t say? Did you see them last night? Stumps.” He waved the bandaged fingers in her face. “This hand won’t make music again. The flute’s useless.”
In an effort to provide a more hopeful picture, she changed tack. “How about giving it away, like the Bard who came to your village when you were a kid? Pass the music on to-”
“Stop! Just stop.”
Bryar grasped her arm with his wounded hand. For an instant, she actually thought he might strike her. Instead he pulled her down on the moss and curled up against her, the two of them nested together as they’d been so many times before in happier circumstances. His powerful body shook under the weight of his broken heart.
Quinn shut up, held him, and let him work things out his own way. But later, when they returned to the camp, she surreptitiously slipped the flute into a pocket, thinking that another might convince him where she had failed to.
When they came around the bend in the trail, Dal and Kiril were chatting comfortably and munching on waybread over the cold remains of the fire, evincing no urgency to travel. That surprised her; she had assumed Kiril’s modus operandi involved getting a kick out of being a constant irritant.
“Ready? Let’s go,” Dal said. He stood and slung his pack onto his shoulders. Kiril followed suit, rather more leisurely, as if this were just a pleasant walk in the forest.
Quinn tore off a chunk of the waybread and handed it to Bryar before shoving the rest into Dal’s pack.
Bread in hand, Bryar turned and left the campsite. “Get a move on,” he shouted from farther down the trail.
Quinn fell into line, aware of Kiril following, his eyes on her. Of the many disconcerting things about him, his unabashed study of her unnerved her the most.