Healer's Touch (Deadly Touch #1) [Complete]

Chapter 8: Polite Company

"Now, I need bait." Hook in hand, Llew flicked the grass with her fingers to see if she could stir anything to life. Tasked with catching a fresh dinner, she was determined to impress.

"Like what?" Jonas asked, crouching beside her. Alvaro followed him down on her other side.

"Like..." Llew said, looking about. "That." She pointed at finely flickering grass blades where she had just caught a glimpse of a cricket going into hiding.

Jonas squinted to see what she was pointing at. The cricket leaped from its cover, disappearing into another clump of the yellow native grass. The grass shuddered and Jonas flung out his hand.

"Like..." He opened his fist, clutching the creature's powerful hind legs between the knuckles of two fingers. "This?"

Llew grinned at him.

"That's spittin' distance to cheatin', that is," said Alvaro.

Jonas raised an eyebrow dismissively at him.

Llew carefully took the cricket and grimaced while slicing the insect's head off with the hook. It wasn't her favourite part of fishing, but it was necessary – she'd rather they died from a quick decapitation than writhed around with a hook through them, no matter how much more appealing that might be to the fish.

"Usually, catching the bait is as much a challenge as catching dinner," she said, threading the hook through the fleshy abdomen. "There were a few hungry nights I could have done with you around."

The water downstream from the swimming hole filled the air with a babble loud enough to drown out the loose stones shifting under their feet and to cover their approach from over-sensitive fish Llew hoped had returned since their earlier swim. She stepped up to the water's edge, let out her horsehair line, and set about her usual performance of teasing the fish with light flicks of her bait on the surface. She sensed Jonas step up close behind her left shoulder. He blocked what breeze there was, and the warmth emanating from him gave her a heady feeling not unlike that provided by his small bottle of liquor.

Alvaro placed himself by Llew's right shoulder. He started to say something but, with a raised hand, Llew demanded silence of them both as they waited for the fish to grow brave enough to investigate the insect touching down on the water's surface.

Little more than an hour later, Llew had caught four sizable fish, which the three of them had scaled and gutted, releasing the entrails into the water to be washed away to feed more fish downstream.

"So, why were you leaving Cheer?" Aris asked, tucking into the now boiled fish. Llew wished they had a skillet and a little oil, but, even boiled, the fish was a welcome change.

"My... friend accused me of murdering his boss. I figured it'd only be a matter of time before the law tracked me down and hung me for it." Less than an hour, but they didn't need to know that. "I didn't do it." She eye-balled each of them.

Anya nodded. She might not have lived on the streets, but she would have known something about the ways of the law in Cheer. If someone of her standing had been accused, there would have been a trial. Lucky for Llew, it seemed that in her excitement about her impending trip, the news of the hanging of the two young thieves had skipped Anya's notice. She watched the other girl carefully for signs of ringing bells, but it seemed Anya had remained sheltered from such events.

"So, you cut your hair and left your hometown, that it?" Aris was savvy. He knew Llew's one-of-the-boys act wasn't new.

"My pa didn't like me as a girl. Said I reminded him too much of my ma." She sensed everyone's mood change. She supposed it was sad for her pa to feel that way, but she had little time for his feelings anymore. "And by the time he went missing, I already knew what happened to girls on the street. I didn't want that, so I stayed as a boy. I hardly knew different by then, anyway."