Cursed: Traitor's Trail

Chapter 12 part 2

The next morning found Jaob at the healing tent, helping to bind the poles for the new lattice. Sleep grit at his eyes as he wound the leather strapping in the familiar pattern, resisting the urge to rub at them. Again. He hadn't managed any sleep the night before. Even after Bane found him on patrol and insisted Jaob rest while he stood guard.

He was glad, if a little surprised, to awaken at all. The message of the night before still rang clear in his mind, the promise of death. He had shared his concerns with Bane, as much as he dared, but the man seemed more worried about the timing, that the Magi were awake and alert when someone infiltrated his tent, than the fact that a blade had been placed at all. The result being that Jaob's mind refused to slow and let him rest and he spent the night tossing and imagining traitors in every corner.

Dawn brought a tad more sense, and the comfort of being still alive calmed him enough that he insisted on taking Bane's place in the healing tent repair. As capable as the man seemed, he still needed his rest.

Jaob was happy to be alive, but the tension between the two women was going to give him a serious headache. The first thing Kierra said when Aya arrived at the site was “why did you come back?”

He wondered the same thing, after her anger the night before.

“I said I would help,” had been the reply.

Since then, only silence and brief nods and tension existed between the two women.

Jaob didn't know what to do. Should he mediate? Try to make conversation? He couldn't help the feeling that they tread on a narrow path, and one wrong word would set them tumbling away from their tentative peace.

How did he end up the only man working with them? Where was Lon? He had volunteered also, hadn't he? Jaob wished he would return. He began to feel outnumbered.

Kierra hunched over, doing the first round of binding on the lattice, and Aya moved back and forth from the pile of twig poles, laying them along the ground in the pattern necessary for binding. She grunted as she dragged a heavy pole past him and arranged it at the end of the row.

“You know you can't ignore me forever,” she said, at last, laying the pole in place. She wasn't talking to Jaob, but he nearly jumped in anyway, they edged so close to being finished, he hoped to avoid an argument. At least until he escaped the area.

“I can try.” Kierra whipped the leather she bound around her pole with a little extra force.

“I didn't destroy your tent, Kierra, how could I have?”

“Well it wasn't the termites.”

Aya sighed, bringing slender fingers up to the bridge of her nose and rubbing delicately. Then she blinked, realizing she stood still, and began to walk back to the pile of poles, picking out a smaller, slender twig this time. Laying it crosswise at an angle so it joined the top of the pole she just laid with the bottom of the pole next to it. “Fine,” she said as she worked. “Maybe it wasn't termites, but it wasn't me, either.”