Naked Empire (Sword of Truth 8)

Jennsen slipped the strap of her waterskin off her shoulder before hesitantly starting again. “I know it’s easy to misconstrue things. Look at how I was tricked into thinking you wanted to kill me just like Darken Rahl had. I really believed it, and there were so many things that seemed to me to prove it, but I had it all wrong. I guess I was just so afraid it was true, I believed it.”

Richard and Kahlan both knew it hadn’t been Jennsen’s doing—she had merely been a means for others to get at Richard—but it had squandered precious time.

Jennsen took a long drink. Still grimacing at the taste of the water, she lifted the waterskin toward the empty desert behind them. “I mean, there isn’t much alive out here—it might actually be that the races are hungry and are simply waiting to see if you die out here and, because they do keep watching and waiting, you’ve begun to think it’s more.” She gave Richard a demure glance, bolstered by a smile, as if hoping to cloak the admonishment as a suggestion. “Maybe that’s all it really is.”

“They aren’t waiting to see if we die out here,” Kahlan said, wanting to end the discussion so they could eat and Richard could get some sleep. “They were watching us before we had to come here. They’ve been watching us since we were back in the forests to the northeast. Now, let’s have some supper and—”

“But why? That’s not the way birds behave. Why would they do that?”

“I think they’re keeping track of us for someone,” Richard said. “More precisely, I think someone is using them to hunt us.”

Kahlan had known various people in the Midlands, from simple people living in the wilds to nobles living in great cities, who hunted with falcons. This, though, was different. Even if she didn’t fully understand Richard’s meaning, much less the reasons for his conviction, she knew he hadn’t meant it in the traditional sense.

With abrupt realization, Jennsen paused in the middle of another drink. “That’s why you’ve started scattering pebbles along the windblown places in the trail.”

Richard smiled in confirmation. He took his waterskin when Kahlan handed it back. Cara frowned up at him as he took a long drink.

“You’ve been throwing pebbles along the trail? Why?”

Jennsen eagerly answered in his place. “The open rock gets blown clean by the wind. He’s been making sure that if anyone tries to sneak up on us in the dark, the pebbles strewn across those open patches will crunch underfoot and alert us.”

Cara wrinkled a questioning brow at Richard. “Really?”

He shrugged as he passed her his waterskin so that she wouldn’t have to dig hers out from beneath her desert garb. “Just a little extra precaution in case anyone is close, and careless. Sometimes people don’t expect the simple things and that catches them up.”

“But not you,” Jennsen said, hooking the strap of her waterskin back over her shoulder. “You think of even the simple things.”

Richard chuckled softly. “If you think I don’t make mistakes, Jennsen, you’re wrong. While it’s dangerous to assume that those who wish you harm are stupid, it can’t hurt to spread out a little gravel just in case someone thinks they can sneak across windswept rock in the dark without being heard.”

Any trace of amusement faded as Richard stared off toward the western horizon where stars had yet to appear. “But I fear that pebbles strewn along the ground won’t do any good for eyes watching from a dark sky.” He turned back to Jennsen, brightening, as if remembering he had been speaking to her. “Still, everyone makes mistakes.”

Cara wiped droplets of water from her sly smile as she handed Richard back his waterskin. “Lord Rahl is always making mistakes, especially simple ones. That’s why he needs me around.”

“Is that right, little miss perfect?” Richard chided as he snatched the waterskin from her hand. “Maybe if you weren’t ‘helping’ keep me out of trouble, we wouldn’t have black-tipped races shadowing us.”

“What else could I do?” Cara blurted out. “I was trying to help—to protect you both.” Her smile had withered. “I’m sorry, Lord Rahl.”

Richard sighed. “I know,” he admitted as he reassuringly squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”

Richard turned back to Jennsen. “Everyone makes mistakes. How a person deals with their mistakes is a mark of their character.”

Jennsen nodded as she thought it over. “My mother was always afraid of making a mistake that would get us killed. She used to do things like you did, in case my father’s men were trying to sneak up on us. We always lived in forests, though, so it was dry twigs, rather than pebbles, that she often scattered around us.”

Jennsen pulled on a ringlet of her hair as she stared off into dark memories. “It was raining the night they came. If those men stepped on twigs, she wouldn’t have been able to hear it.” She ran trembling fingers over the silver hilt of the knife at her belt. “They were big, and they surprised her, but still, she got one of them before they…”

Darken Rahl had wanted Jennsen dead because she had been born ungifted. Any ruler of that bloodline killed offspring such as she. Richard and Kahlan believed that a person’s life was their own to live, and that birth did not qualify that right.

Jennsen’s haunted eyes turned up to Richard. “She got one of them before they killed her.”

With one arm, Richard pulled Jennsen into a tender embrace. They all understood such terrible loss. The man who had lovingly raised Richard had been killed by Darken Rahl himself. Darken Rahl had ordered the murders of all of Kahlan’s sister Confessors. The men who had killed Jennsen’s mother, though, were men from the Imperial Order sent to trick her, to murder in order to make her believe it was Richard who was after her.

Kahlan felt a forlorn wave of helplessness at all they faced. She knew what it was to be alone, afraid, and overwhelmed by powerful men filled with blind faith and the lust for blood, men devoutly believing that mankind’s salvation required slaughter.

“I’d give anything for her to know that it wasn’t you who sent those men.” Jennsen’s soft voice held the dejected sum of what it was to have suffered such a loss, to have no solution to the crushing solitude it left in its wake. “I wish my mother could have known the truth, known what you two are really like.”

“She’s with the good spirits and finally at peace,” Kahlan whispered in sympathy, even if she now had reason to question the enduring validity of such things.

Jennsen nodded as she swiped her fingers across her cheek. “What mistake did you make, Cara?” she finally asked.

Rather than be angered by the question, and perhaps because it had been asked in innocent empathy, Cara answered with quiet candor. “It has to do with that little problem we mentioned before.”

“You mean it’s about the thing you want me to touch?”

By the light of the moon’s narrow crescent, Kahlan could see Cara’s scowl return. “And the sooner the better.”

Richard rubbed his fingertips across his brow. “I’m not sure about that.”

Kahlan, too, thought that Cara’s notion was too simplistic.

Cara threw her arms up. “But Lord Rahl, we can’t just leave it—”

“Let’s get camp set up before it’s pitch dark,” Richard said in quiet command. “What we need right now is food and sleep.”

For once, Cara saw the sense in his orders and didn’t object. When he had earlier been out scouting alone, she had confided in Kahlan that she was worried at how weary Richard looked and had suggested that, since there were enough other people, they shouldn’t wake him for a turn at watch that night.

“I’ll check the area,” Cara said, “and make sure there aren’t any more of those birds sitting on a rock watching us with those black eyes of theirs.”

Jennsen peered around as if fearing that a black-tipped race might swoop in out of the darkness.

Richard countermanded Cara’s plans with a dismissive shake of his head. “They’re gone for now.”

“You said they were tr

acking you.” Jennsen stroked Betty’s neck when the goat nudged her, seeking comfort. The twins were still hiding under their mother’s round belly. “I never saw them before now. They weren’t around yesterday, or today. They didn’t show up until just this evening. If they really were tracking you, then they wouldn’t be gone for such a stretch. They’d have to stick close to you all the time.”