Prince of Time

Chapter Nineteen - Midnight Conversations

“We’ll stop here,” Tobiah halted them in a wooden copse on the top of a small hill, a good few minutes from the road.

Exhausted, barely upright, they tethered the horses to a tree and dropped their packs down beside them.

“Poor beasts are getting worn out,” Nicanor patted one on the neck. “Sooner or later, we’ll have to find new ones.”

Ane gave a muffled cry of outrage but didn’t pursue the subject.

“I’ll take watch,” Tobiah announced. “I don’t want to sleep.”

“I’ll watch with you,” Maple said, immediately, just as Nicanor opened his mouth to say the same thing.

Though she couldn’t say she liked Nicanor especially, she knew there were many ways in which they were similar. She wasn’t going to let him take charge this time. She was having the watch. She was getting the chance to watch Tobiah.

“Very well,” Tobiah recognised a lost cause. “If you insist.”

The others lay down in a rough circle, curling around themselves against the chill night air. The darkness made them mounds, sleeping molehills against the grey wash of the hillside and the stark-white tree trunks reflecting the half-moon.

Maple lay her sword across her lap, quietly cleaning the blade. It was a methodical task, one that allowed her thoughts to line up correctly and one that she had always enjoyed. Whilst the others fell swiftly asleep, she worked.

“Ok,” she said quietly, once all breathing was heavy and deep. “We need to talk.”

“I did suspect that was the reason for this,” Tobiah glanced her way. “And you don’t trust me.”

Maple’s cheeks turned pink. “I never said I didn’t trust you.”

“You didn’t need to. It’s alright. I don’t trust you either.”

Maple was stung. “Why not? What have I done?”

“How can I trust someone who doesn’t trust me? Trust has to be mutual. There’s no other way.”

Maple sighed. “Forget about trust for now. Why did you stand up for Ane this evening?”

She couldn’t see his face, only the subtle gleam of his hair.

“I owe her,” he answered.

“Or you care about her?” Maple suggested.

Tobiah laughed shortly. “Trying to see the good in me, deep down?”

“The alternative is frightening.”

His laughter stopped abruptly. “I don’t deny good in me. I am not the worst.”

“You’re bad,” Maple snapped, suddenly enraged. “You’re evil. Why did you do that to the girl, Tobiah? The girl on the road? Why?”

“Her name was Fleur.”

Suddenly Maple felt disorientated again, as if the world was spinning in the wrong direction and nobody had warned her.

“What?”

Tobiah didn’t repeat what he had said. He didn’t need to. Maple felt as if she was grasping at straws, trying to understand a game nobody would explain even whilst she was losing.

“There are people worse than me,” Tobiah said, softly. “People who laugh whilst they kill. People who find it funny. People who take pleasure from it. People for whom pain is a joy.”

“Those people are twisted,” Maple sulked.

“Yes,” Tobiah agreed. “They are. It’s not like that for me, you know. There’s no joy in hurting people. I just don’t take any joy in not, either. I don’t think and I don’t plan. I only react.”