As they continued on their journey, he became one of the primary entertainers of the group, not far behind Tarol and Ki. Except he wasn’t simply goofy or witty the same way they were. He was more like a younger, pleasanter Resh. Charming.
By the time they set up camp at the end of the day, there was one more thing she concluded about Rikky: he had taken a special interest in her.
What she couldn’t conclude, was how she felt about that.
She knew she wasn’t the only one to notice. Larak seemed to be trying to keep the two of them apart. Terindi gave her a questioning glance when Rikky, wearing his handsome grin all the while, came to walk beside her when they were giving the celiths a break, asking her all sorts of questions about her childhood, family, interests. Wylan, she noticed, looked rather irritated by it.
The next morning, Yhkon asked her to go on a perimeter check with him. He let her ride front on Eclipse. She’d long since become a capable rider, even if she still felt a novice compared to the Wardens.
When they were approximately two miles from the campsite, she turned Eclipse to send him into a circuit around it. It was only then that Yhkon spoke up. “So…Rikky. If he ever causes too much trouble, let me know, alright?”
“Oh, well,” she gave a light laugh, “I will. But, I mean, he doesn’t seem that bad. Just a little…”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. He didn’t usually say yeah, he tended to use a more refined vocabulary, sticking to yes. “And I wouldn’t be so easy on him, I suppose, except…well, his father, and having lost his mother…”
Talea wished they weren’t on a celith, so she could see his face. Still, his tone told her plenty. “Yhkon…what happened to your parents? Did you lose both of them?”
His response wasn’t immediate, but when it came, it was curt. “Yes, in a way.”
As she wondered what to say next, he exhaled heavily and added, voice icy, “And I’d prefer that you didn’t ask me about those types of things. It’s not something I feel the need to discuss.”
The difficulty of swallowing past the tightness in her throat told her his words had cut deeper than she would like to admit. It probably would have been best to answer, with a simple apology or just an acknowledgement. But it wouldn’t come. She could think of more questions, she could think of a little speech about how it couldn’t be helpful for him to bottle it up, she could even think of some retorts. But the apology, the simple acceptance, wouldn’t leave her pursed lips.
So she said nothing. She realized she was leaning forward, as far away from his menacing presence as the saddle would allow.
Maybe, maybe she should make herself apologize, or just move past it. All he’d made was a request for privacy about what was apparently a delicate topic. So his tone had been a little cold. That was the case more often than not when he spoke to anyone, why should it bother her now? Why should she care if he wouldn’t tell her about his family, or the other unknowns of his life?
But she did care. Logical reasoning couldn’t change that.
She hadn’t minded so much, leaving her family behind, all those weeks ago on the shores of Jalkiva. With Wylan and the Wardens and the twins…she was comfortable with them. Even if they weren’t her family, weren’t the constant love of her mother, the calm reliability of her father, or the protective, fun, sibling bond of her brother; there was something to be said for people who didn’t just accept her unbelievable ability, they appreciated it, understood it, even shared it. There was something to be said for people who didn’t see her as just a laborer, who in fact saw her as an equal, even a leader.
It was the friendships that made the absence of family tolerable. When it came down to it, specifically, Yhkon’s friendship…and that was rapidly losing its benefit.
Homesickness had come and gone over the weeks away from her family, as could only be expected. Never staying too long, never too potent that it couldn’t be fixed by time or by one of the friends she traveled with. Now it came as a violent wave. The presence of her friend only made it worse.
There was no way she was going to break down to him. He would probably only scorn her for it, or think she was being manipulative, or he might gruffly try to cheer her, but the real problem wouldn’t be resolved. She knew if she tried to express her frustration instead, he would only become angrier, and her emotional defenses wouldn’t stand up to that for long. Silence was the only option. Cold and deafening.
“Talea!”
She stiffened at his urgent whisper, splitting the raging silence between them. His hand grabbed hers…no, he was taking the reins, tugging them back, nearly hitting her stomach in the process. Eclipse’s smooth gait stopped, the stallion’s ears strained forward. Her gaze followed the direction of his focus, traveling past the trees, pinpointing to the glint of iron in the sunlight that filtered through the leaves.
Yhkon already had Eclipse turned around and fleeing the scene at a canter. How many knights had there been? Dozens? With only the flash of recognition, it had seemed like a whole swarm of them, riding their coliyes across the path she and Yhkon were on. Had they seen them? There wasn’t a single noise, save Eclipse’s lone hoofbeats, the crackle of underbrush, and her heartbeat.
Yhkon, still holding the reins, halted the celith much sooner than she was expecting. “Climb down,” came his lowered voice in her ear. No longer icy. But closed off.
What, am I so vexing that you intend to leave me to be captured by the Kaydorians? “What? Shouldn’t we—”
“I said climb down,” he said it impatiently, though if anything, his mood seemed to have lifted. Once dismounted, he turned Eclipse so that he could face her. “Think you can get back to camp from here?”
“Um…” If he wasn’t one of the most blasted confusing people she’d ever met, then she was a barbsit’s tail. She wondered what his reaction would be if she were to verbalize the thought. If Seles were around, she knew she’d get a sharp look for using the word blasted. “Well, yeah. But—”
“Good. Then you need to run back there, as quickly as you can.”
Oh, sure. Remind me why we can’t just take Eclipse, the both of us? “Okay…what are you going to do?”
Yhkon looked back the way they had come from, an eager light flaring in his eyes. It told her what the answer would be even before he said it. It also told her that it was the prospect of a confrontation that had lifted his mood, and that worried her. “I’m going to go take care of that lance.”
So, in all, her supposed new best friend thought their relationship excluded anything deep or significant about one another’s lives, he found the opportunity to go kill a bunch of knights thrilling, and he didn’t see any problem in making her run two miles back to camp. A day of discovery. All she did was nod. Her personal struggles would have to wait for later. “Right. But weren’t there, you know, a lot of them?”
An unconcerned, even cocky shrug. Yhkon was not someone she would normally describe as being cocky. Apparently drastically uneven odds in combat brought it out in him. “Sure, most lances have at least a hundred men.” He ignored the look she gave him, and continued on just as casually. “I’ll draw them off. There’s not much choice, they’re headed straight for our camp. Eclipse can outrun their coliyes for quite a while. I’ll either just escape them, or take down some,” another shrug, “and then I’ll come back. Now go. Tell Grrake what’s going on, he’ll know what to do.”