Poison. Part 6

Kyra wiped the blood from her eyes and glared at the three goblins that were back on their feet. "Come on," she said, waving the club.

Shrieking, one leaped at her and she batted it aside. It tumbled to the ground and lay unmoving.

The remaining two looked at each other and then sprinted away, leaving their companions. For one second, the club raised over her head, Kyra almost chased after them.

She stopped herself.

There was no real danger that they would spread tales about the human girl who beat them-no one listened to goblins.

Except Arlo.

There had been goblins at Arlo's. Had he sent these to ambush her? But why would he do that? For once, Kyra's goal and Arlo's were the same.

As long as she'd known of him, Arlo had been plotting to destroy the kingdom. When Kyra was little, he'd even managed to get bear trolls into the palace. They'd killed three people before the guards managed to contain them. And he was rumored to be behind even worse attempts on the royals.

But Arlo never got punished for his crimes against the kingdom because no one could ever prove he was responsible. He always got someone else to do his dirty deeds. Someone else to take the blame while he walked free.

Someone like Kyra.

Kyra tore a strip of cloth from the hem of her shirt. She wiped the blood off her face and tentatively touched the holes the greck's claws had made. They stung, but she could tell the wounds weren't deep. She couldn't quite shake the sensation of it up there, feeling like it was about to suck her life away.

Kyra tied the cloth around her forehead to stanch the blood.

She had to get Fred out of there before the goblins regained consciousness.

Lowering herself to her knees, Kyra pulled Fred and his pack across her shoulders. Carefully, she stood up.

"Oof," she said. Fred was not a small person. He was at least a head taller than she was, and a good half a person wider.

She caught Rosie watching her from the top of the hill. At least she'd stayed put. "Come on, Rosie. Langley."

The animals fell in line behind her as she staggered out of the clearing and into the forest, putting as much distance between themselves and the goblins as possible.

A half hour later, when she could carry him no farther and hoped they were a safe distance, Kyra collapsed and dropped Fred to the ground. She shrugged off his pack and her own, and propped him up against a tree. For a pretty young man, he sure weighed a lot.

"Fred," she wheezed. "Wake up."

He had to regain consciousness soon. She couldn't carry him any farther, and she didn't have any healing potions.

She sat back on her heels, considering. There was water in her canteen. She could at least try to clean his wound.

Before she could do that, Langley began licking Fred's face.

His striking green-gold eyes fluttered open. "Kitty?"

"h.e.l.lo, Fred." Kyra set down her canteen.

"What happened? The last thing I remember was a pack of goblins coming at me." He reached up to touch his head, winced, and came away with blood on his fingertips. "Ouch."

"I think the goblins. .h.i.t you on the head." She sat back on her heels and thought quickly. "By the time I got there, they'd been chased away."

"By what?" He blinked beautifully. "Do you know you have blood all down your face? You look awful."

"Gee, thanks." She wet a corner of her shirt and scrubbed at her face. One of the tricks to lying was to keep the story close to the truth. "A pack of grecks went after the goblins, but one got me before he took off after the rest."

That sounded more believable than that she'd single-handedly taken on a pack of goblins and a greck.

"So you tried to save me." Fred's smile lit up his face.

"I thought they were all gone when I found you. Don't get any ideas."

"But you must have moved me."

"Just in case they came back."

"So you tried to save me." He just kept smiling at her.

"You're insufferable. How can you keep smiling with that giant gash on your head?"

He reached for his pack and pulled out a small jar. "Very special super healing balm," he said as he unscrewed the lid. "It takes the sting out of any sc.r.a.pe or cut without so much as a whisper of a scar left behind."

Fred dabbed some onto his head wound, wincing with every tap.

He handed the jar to Kyra.

It smelled like sunshine. Kyra unwound the strip of cloth around her head and patted the mixture lightly on her own injuries. She tried to conjure up pages from her medical potions textbook to pinpoint what had gone into the mixture, but the only image that came to mind was her crabby medical potions instructor glaring at her as he pulled out a copy of Effective Coatings for Blade Metals and Alloys from where she'd been covertly reading it behind her textbook.

"Can you walk?" Kyra said, taking the bandage Fred handed her. "We should keep moving. We're not that far away from where they attacked you."

He smoothed a bandage on his own head and stood up slowly. "Yeah, I think so." He wobbled a little bit. "Whoa."

Kyra stepped beside him and let him put his arm around her shoulder. They started walking, Fred leaning on her. "You'd better not be faking."

Fred chuckled. "So, how did you happen to be so close by?"

"I was going to ask you the same question."

"Langley. He was following a trail, pulling me along all day. I a.s.sumed he was hunting a rabbit or something." Fred looked down and started shaking with laughter. "I'm so stupid."

She followed his gaze and saw Rosie and Langley avidly sniffing each other. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Love," Fred said. "It does the strangest things to you, doesn't it?" He reached down and vigorously rubbed the dog's head. "I had no idea you were such a romantic, Langley."

When he stood again, he seemed steadier on his feet. "Good thing we caught some fish before we set out, as that elusive rabbit seems to have turned into a figment of my imagination."

Fresh fish. Kyra's stomach growled. It was like the clouds had parted and delivered her greatest wish. She was probably drooling. There was his fishing rod poking straight up out of the top of his pack. "I didn't think to bring my reel on this trip," she said.

"I wouldn't leave home without it. Towns are few and far between in this part of the world. Makes it difficult to stock up on supplies without grubbing for some of it yourself. And there's nothing like fresh fish."

"I wasn't really thinking about that when I left home."

"Your trip probably isn't quite as extended as mine."

"Why would you say that?" Kyra realized she was revealing too much. d.a.m.n her hungry belly.

But Fred just shrugged. "You don't exactly look equipped for a long journey."

Little did he know it had already lasted three months. "Yeah, um, that's true. It's just a short trip to my sis-I mean, cousin's house. Delivering the pig, you know, as a gift. To her. Well, really, his kid. I mean, her kid. Right. So anyway, it's only a few days' journey and I didn't plan that well."

She had spoken to so few people in the past three months that she didn't really have much practice lying.

"You're giving Rosie away?" Fred's green-gold eyes watched the small pig in front of him. "To be a kid's pet?"

"Yup."

"I never would have guessed it. She seems so attached to you. Sort of sophisticated for a kid's pet, too."

"Sophisticated?"

"Yes, sophisticated. Don't give me that look. She has a very distinct personality, and it's most certainly not the rough-and-tumble-with-kids kind."

"We'll see."

"Yes, you will." Fred squeezed her arm gently.

The long shadows of sunset had disappeared and dusk was settling when Kyra heard water tumbling over rocks up ahead. As they broke through the trees, the shush-shushing of the water grew louder. There was a stream, no more than a sword's length across, falling over a small rocky ledge to a clear pool below.

"Perfect," Kyra said, thinking immediately of her laundry.

"For?"

"We should make camp soon, don't you think?" Kyra asked.

"So I'm going to have the pleasure of your company this evening? I had the idea that you were against socializing with strange men."

"It's going to be full-on night soon. It just makes sense to share camp tonight." Then she realized that a young man like Fred, especially a young man who looked the way Fred did, could take that invitation entirely wrong. "I mean-you know-in a friendly sort of way."

His eyes crinkled at the corners in amus.e.m.e.nt. "As opposed to an unfriendly sort of way."

"Er, yes."

"Sure." Fred ran his hands through his perpetually rumpled brown hair, seeming to forget his wound, and flinching. "I suppose we could do that."

"Well, you don't have to sound so excited about it."

"I would be honored to share a fire with you, Kitty. In a friendly sort of way."

FRED STARTED BUILDING a fire from bits of leaves and twigs in a small clearing. "We're going to need more wood."

"I'll get it!" Kyra said. "I have some, uh, other things to attend to anyway." No way was she wearing these undergarments one more day when there was a perfectly good stream to do laundry in just down the hill. "I'll get the wood on my way back."

"Things to attend to?" Fred looked up, small puffs of smoke rising in front of his face.

"I have some items of clothing I need to clean. Which I'm going to go do. Down at the stream. By myself."

"Didn't everything you own get soaked when you took a dive into the river earlier?"

"Getting something wet doesn't make it clean. You don't do laundry by dipping it in water and hoping for the best."

"You don't?"

Kyra grabbed her pack and set off down the hill.

"You need some help?" He called after her. "I'm really good at dipping things in water and hoping for the best."

"I'll be just fine, thank you."

Fred shrugged and put another twig on the fire.

At the stream, Kyra squirted her Rapid Cleaning potion onto her dirty clothes-and her more practical underthings, simply cut shifts and bottoms made with plain soft cloth. No bows, see-through sections, or embroidered cats. A fine layer of silt from the Iota River had made its way into everything. Gently, Kyra swished the clothes in the water, watching the sediment float off into the clear current.

Swish, swish, swish.

What was she doing camping with a handsome stranger when she should be out hunting down the princess?

Well, she had to eat and sleep, didn't she? She'd fought goblins, after all. And a greck! And it really would be irresponsible to leave Fred alone so soon after his head injury. Just one night of good food and a warm fire. That wouldn't be so bad, would it?

Kyra wrung out her clothes and went back up the hill. She stopped just short of their campsite and delicately hung each item out to dry on the branches of a couple of tiny pines.

"Kyra?" Fred's voice came through the trees. "Is that you?"

"Just getting firewood, be right there."

Several armfuls of wood and degrees of darkness later, Kyra sat across the fire from Fred, slicing potatoes with a camp knife.

Fred, the sleeves of his jacket rolled up, drizzled oil on the trout fillets and sprinkled them with seasoning he'd pulled from his pack. Rosie and Langley were sleeping together under a tree-the big dog curled around the tiny pig, the pig's muzzle tucked into the dog's belly.

The sun was completely gone, leaving only bare pink streaks in the sky. Dark outlines of trees surrounded their camp, and at the center was the crackling fire. Kyra never dared to have a fire-it would attract too much attention-but she felt safe having one with Fred. No one was on the lookout for two travelers-just for one decidedly unfriendly woman.

The potatoes were sprinkled with fresh herbs and placed into Fred's small round cooking pot, which Kyra covered and placed carefully in the center of the coals.

While Fred wrapped the fish in a cooking packet, Kyra picked up his seasoning jar and tried to read the words written on the label by the light of her necklace.

"You won't be able to read it," Fred said, without glancing at her. "It's written in Cryptic Lorienne."

"And you can read Cryptic Lorienne?"

Fred laid the fish packet beside the pot. "I've picked up a thing or two in my travels, though I've never seen anything quite like that necklace. Where did you get it?"