I Am Who? - Book 2

Chapter 29 - Decisions

"Wait. You're telling me they agreed to help only if we can convince the other tribes?" Ayan scoffed.

Bohai growled something in his native tongue. "I wish they hadn't agreed at all. I wanted the excuse to destroy them."

"So what are we going to do now?" Martimus rolled his eyes at the two younger men's behavior.

At the question, every eye turned to Kotaro, and I was able to comfortably study him without being too obvious. He was perched on a boulder a few feet away from me sharpening a dagger, and the knuckles of a few of his fingers were slightly discolored which hadn't been the case the night before. He had deftly avoided any questions on the matter, but that didn't change my burning curiosity.

Sitting in the mid-afternoon sun in his regular, black attire, no one would have guessed what image he'd made the night before. As I thought about last night's events, my heartbeat picked up, pounding heavily in my chest, and I averted my eyes for a moment. Shooting a glance around our circle to make sure no one had noticed my strange behavior, I pretended to be occupied with the pebbles in the dust by my feet.

"We're going to stay here for a couple of days as long as you deem it safe?" Kotaro shot a questioning glance up at Bohai.

"We already erased any trace of our passage on the trail down here, so we should be fine for a couple of days." Bohai shrugged. "But if the Second is actively looking for us, we can't risk being here longer than that."

We had ridden most of the night and camped in a wide ravine that allowed plenty of sunlight to reach us, but the cliffsides surrounding us were tall and steep enough that any smoke created by our fires would dissipate before it could be visible. There was also a rounded out space at the back of the ravine surprisingly was grassy and warm, a reminder that summer was well on the way in the lowlands.

"We won't need to. We'll head to the Seventh on the morning of the second day." Kotaro said.

"Are we delaying in order to give us some time to make plans? You did say Citro said the Seventh would be worse than his people." Ayan said.

"No, I don't think we can really plan. We only know they'll be worse, but we don't know in what way." Kotaro shook his head slowly, and I could tell he'd already thought about this a great deal.

"We need to think of something." Martimus spoke up. "If they're worse, they won't have any qualms about slaughtering you and locking Bohai up under suspicion that he's a spy, and all those things they said about Bree? No, we need to give this some thought before we just go charging in there like chickens with our heads cut off." He shook his head firmly.

"I don't think there's any way to avoid that." Kotaro's eyes found mine, and he tilted his head slightly as if to say: 'He's right. Are you sure you still want to go through with this?'

"Look, I know a way to kill two birds with one stone." Martimus cleared his throat.

"Murder?" Ayan piped up, a note of excitement in his voice, and Bohai raised his head quickly.

"No," Martimus glared. "Kotaro needs to be significantly important, and she needs to be unavailable." He pointed at us each in turn.

"What are you trying to say? How can we convince them I'm important enough that they won't want to kill me?" Kotaro frowned, his gaze shifting to Martimus.

"If they thought you were her husband, they wouldn't be able to kill you." The words sent waves of shock through me, and I stared at Martimus, trying to discern of I'd heard the seriousness in his tone correctly or if he was just spouting jokes.

"No." Kotaro said immediately and with heavy force.

"Why? Do you have a better idea?" Martimus asked.