“You couldn’t wait?” Souda demanded.
He swallowed and said, “Briar, sit. Don’t hide, will you? I’m missing her, too. I know you knew her longer, but you know I wouldn’t be here without her.” His smile trembled. “She was too young to consider all the consequences, as you and I would have done.”
Briar nodded. He took a cushion next to the big man and picked up a plate. He spooned curry onto it, then looked at it blankly, having lost track of what he’d meant to do with it.
Souda took the plate and loaded meat, flatbread, and dumplings onto it beside the curry. “Eat!” she ordered. “We have work to do!” She sat cross-legged on a cushion of her own and served herself. “While the westerners were getting settled, another messenger from Sayrugo arrived,” she told Briar. “She wants us to meet her at Melonam. It’s northeast of here, on the road to Garmashing. Her soldiers moved as many people to the eastern temple fortresses as they could before they ran into more imperial troops than they could handle.”
“They tried to fall back to Fort Sambachu,” Parahan said abruptly. “Well, they did fall back. Except the fort isn’t there.”
Briar stared at him. “What do you mean, the fort isn’t there? It didn’t just get up and walk away.”
“The general’s letter says that maybe there was an earthquake,” Souda explained. “Only she doesn’t know how they didn’t feel a quake that was strong enough to make the entire fort collapse in on itself.”
“Could Evvy have done that? If she was dying?” Parahan whispered.
Briar shook his head. “That place was big! We pulled down parts of a house, her and me, but nothing that size.”
“I wish she had done it!” Parahan shouted. Two soldiers stuck their heads inside the tent flap. Souda waved them out again. “I wish she’d pulled it down on those murderers!” her twin snapped, his voice softer this time.
Briar hooked a hand around one of Parahan’s shoulders for comfort. “We’ll come up with some surprises for their friends, you’ll see,” he promised. When Parahan looked at him, Briar gave his friend a small, nasty smile. “We’ll make Weishu regret he ever heard of any of us.”
Parahan wrapped his hand around Briar’s. “Yes. Yes, I think that sounds like a most magnificent idea.”
“Briar, can you sense Rosethorn yet?” Souda asked.
He shook his head. “But if we take the road north from here, it’ll be easy enough to feel for her. I’ll let the plants know where I’m going. She can follow our trail.”
Evvy woke to find Luvo in the same place he had been when she had gone to sleep. The giant spider was gone. She was relieved, though Diban Kangmo had been nothing but kind to her. Still, being watched by all those eyes was nothing short of unnerving.
There was food remaining in the pots that Diban Kangmo had brought. Evvy ate a good amount of what was left. Would the spider steal more? Surely the temple inhabitants would start to wonder where their food was going. Also, the temples were supposed to be housing refugees. Was Diban Kangmo stealing food that should go to them?
She emptied the teapot and realized she had another issue that had to be addressed.
“I, um, need a privy,” she told Luvo. Then she had to explain what privies were for, and why she couldn’t just go where she stood, like the animals of his mountain. Once all of that was said, he showed her a cranny in the wall of the cave where the flooring was more sand than rock. Afterward she bathed again. Binding her hair in a scarf from his pile of offerings, she steeled herself and said, “Luvo, I can’t stay here. I have to find my friends. Sooner or later they’ll learn the enemy took the fort. They’ll think I’m dead, or that I got tortured and told where everyone is. I have to find them.”
Luvo rocked back and forth on the rounded pegs that served as feet when he wanted them. “Do you know where they are?”
“I know which way they went,” she said honestly. “The places they were going to stop at, the people there should be able to tell me where my friends went afterward.”
“How will you go?”
“I’ll walk, I suppose.” She tested the sole of one foot on the stone. They were still tender, but she had the boots, and the longer she waited, the farther away her friends would be. “I’ll steal a horse or mule if I get the chance.” It would have to be in an open field around the temples where they were grazing, and she would have to pray that the herders didn’t have any dogs.
Luvo hummed to himself. “I could find your friends.”
“How? They don’t have stone magic like me.”
“You said that the fire around your stone self is magic that lets you draw on it. I did not know of this reason for the fire in some meat creatures — humans — before. Now that I know it, I can tell which fires I see on the plain are simply magic and which are wrapped around part of the world. I can see the magic around your plant people if we are close to them. I think it is best that I go with you. Are you able to carry me?”
Evvy walked over to him. Excusing herself, she bent, wrapped her hands around him, and lifted. She heard her spine crackle, but Luvo did not move. “You’re so heavy!”
“Forgive me. I am a mountain outside this heart aspect.” He grew warm under her palms, though not hot. “Try again.”
Evvy tugged. She lifted him an inch, no more.