The Pillars of Creation (Sword of Truth 7)

“I never knew.”

“I should never have kissed you. I know it was wrong. I’m a soldier in the army against oppression. My life is devoted to the cause of helping my people—all people. I don’t have anything to offer a woman like you.”

She couldn’t imagine why he would think he had to offer her something. He had saved her life. “Then, why did you kiss me?”

He gazed into her eyes, looking as if he had to pull words up from some great painful depth. “I couldn’t help myself. I’m sorry. I tried not to. I knew it was wrong, but when we were that close, and I was looking into your beautiful eyes, and your arms were holding me, and I was holding you…I’d never wanted anything so much in my life…I just couldn’t help myself. I had to. I’m sorry.”

Jennsen’s gaze fell away. She stared down at the meat pie. Sebastian pulled the familiar mask of composure around himself and sat back down on his saddle.

“Don’t feel sorry,” she whispered without looking up. “I liked the kiss.”

He sat forward expectantly. “You did?”

Jennsen nodded. “I’m glad to hear that it wasn’t done out of duty.”

That made him smile and eased the tension.

“No duty ever felt that good,” he said.

Together, they laughed—something she couldn’t even remember doing. It felt good to laugh.

As Jennsen devoured one of the meat pies, relishing the flavorful spices and savory chunks of meat, she felt good again. She hoped she hadn’t been too hard on Tom for forgetting about Betty. She had let her frustrations, fear, and anger come out at him. He was a good man. He had helped her when she needed it most.

Her thoughts lingered on Tom, on how good she had felt when she was around him. He made her feel important, feel confident in herself, whereas Sebastian often made her feel humble. Tom had a handsome smile—a different kind of handsome than Sebastian’s smile. Tom had a hearty smile. Sebastian had an inscrutable smile. Tom’s smile made her feel secure and strong. Sebastian’s smile made her feel defenseless and weak.

After she had eaten every crumb of the meat pie, Jennsen wrapped herself in blankets over the top of her cloak. Still shivering, she remembered how Betty had kept them warm at night. In the silence, her sense of gloom returned to haunt her, refusing to allow her to fall asleep, despite her exhaustion from everything she had been through the last couple of days.

She didn’t look forward to the forlorn prospect of what the future might hold for her. She could foresee only an endless hunt until Lord Rahl’s men finally caught her. She felt empty without her mother, without Betty. She realized that she didn’t have any idea where she would go, now, other than to keep running. She had been intent on Althea’s help, but even that had proved to be an empty dream. In some distant corner of her mind, Jennsen had held out a spark of irrational hope that going to her childhood home of the People’s Palace might somehow hold a favorable resolution.

She shivered not only with the cold, but with the bleak prospect of what the future held.

Sebastian inched his back up close to her, protecting her from the wind. The idea of it being more than duty to him was a comfort. She thought about what it felt like to have his body pressed against the length of her. She thought about the intoxicating feel of his mouth against hers.

His words that had so surprised her, “I’ve never laid my eyes on a woman as beautiful as you,” still echoed around in her head. She wasn’t sure that she believed him. Maybe she was afraid to believe him.

The first day she had met him he made several complimentary remarks, the first about how people might say the dead soldier saw a beautiful young woman strutting along and thus tripped and fell to his death, and then “Sebastian’s rule,” as he called it, giving her the dead soldier’s ornate knife, saying beauty belonged with beauty. She had never trusted words offered so effortlessly.

She thought again about the sincerity in his eyes, this time, and how surprisingly tongue-tied and awkward he’d seemed. Insincerity was often smoothly delivered, but matters of the heart were more difficult to express because so much was at stake.

It surprised her to hear that her smile made him feel important. She hadn’t suspected that he might feel the same kinds of emotions she felt. She hadn’t suspected how good it would feel to have a man like Sebastian, a man of the world, an important man, think she was beautiful. Jennsen always felt graceless and plain compared with her mother. She liked knowing that someone thought she was beautiful.

She wondered what it would be like if he rolled over, right there, and embraced her again, kissed her again, this time with no one around. She could feel her heart pounding at the very prospect.

“I’m sorry about your goat,” he whispered in the silence, his back still to her.

“I know.”

“But with Wizard Rahl after us and still this close, the goat would only slow us down.”

As much as she loved Betty, Jennsen knew she had to put other things first. Still, she would give almost anything to hear that singular bleat of Betty’s voice, or see her little upright tail wagging in a blur as her whole body wiggled with the excitement of Jennsen’s greeting. Jennsen could feel the lumps of carrots under her head in the pack she was using as a pillow.

She knew they couldn’t stay and search for Betty, but that didn’t make it any easier to know they were leaving her for good. It broke her heart.

Jennsen looked back over her shoulder in the darkness. “Did they hurt you? I was so worried that they would hurt you.”

“That Mord-Sith would have. You came just in time.”

“What did it feel like when she touched you with the Agiel?”

Sebastian thought a moment. “Like being hit by lightning, I suppose.”

Jennsen laid her head back down on the pack. She wondered why she had felt nothing from the power of Mord-Sith’s weapon. He had to be wondering that same thing, but if he was, he didn’t ask. She would have had no answer for him, anyway. Nyda had been astonished, too, and said that her Agiel worked on everyone.

Nyda was wrong.

For some reason, Jennsen found that strangely worrisome.

Chapter 31

Stiff and sore from the cold night on the ground, Jennsen woke just as the sky was beginning to take on a faint pink glow. The western sky still displayed a sweep of stars. She hadn’t slept much, and wished she could sleep more, but they could not afford to linger. It could be fatal to be caught out in the open like they were, where they could be spotted from miles away.

Stretching her arms over her head, the first thing Jennsen laid her eyes upon was the black shape of the plateau against the faint blush of the eastern sky. As she watched, the People’s Palace atop it took on a glow around the edges as the first golden rays of the morning sun, still beyond the horizon, touched it from behind. Standing there, looking at the palace, Jennsen felt a peculiar longing. This was her homeland. She wanted so much to have some sense of her place in the world. But her homeland harbored only terror and death for her.

Fearing how near they yet were to the palace and Wizard Rahl, they quickly gathered their belongings an

d saddled the horses. Climbing up onto a frigid saddle was a miserable experience. Jennsen spread a blanket across her lap so that Rusty’s heat would help warm her. She patted and rubbed her horse’s neck, both out of affection and to warm her fingers. Rusty’s body heat would keep her second meat pie, wrapped in her bedroll tied to the back of the saddle, from freezing.

They rode hard, walking at times to give the horses a rest, but their effort rewarded them, when, later in the day, the country began to bear evidence that they were reaching the edges of the Azrith Plains. Their goal was to escape into the wall of mountains rimming the western horizon. Their clear view back across the plains revealed no pursuers, so far, anyway.

By late in the afternoon they rode into an area of low hills, ravines, scraggly vegetation, and stunted trees. It was as if the unbroken hardpan of the Azrith Plains could no longer keep itself flat and out of boredom had to finally roll and heave into a featured terrain.

The hungry horses tore at the shrubs and thick clumps of dry grasses on the way past. Even though the horses had bits in their mouth, Jennsen didn’t have the heart to deny them a bite to eat. She was hungry, too. The meat pies had provided them a good breakfast but were long ago finished off.

Before dark, they reached foothills leading up into more rugged country, where they made camp in the lee of a rock outcropping. At the base of a cut of rock Jennsen found a place that would provide them shelter from the wind and, for the horses, at last enough grasses to graze on. As soon as the horses were unsaddled, they eagerly began browsing on the clumps of tough stalks.

Jennsen pulled out some of their gear and supplies while Sebastian hunted around, coming up with remnants of some of the stunted little trees, long dead and dried to a silver gray. He used his battle-axe to cut down the dry wood and built a small fire up close to the cut of rock, where it wouldn’t easily be seen. While she waited for the fire to get hot, he gently laid a blanket around her shoulders. Sitting before the fire, with Sebastian close at her side, Jennsen worked salt pork onto sticks and rested them across rocks so the pork could cook over the fire.