The Book Gatherer

Chapter Seventeen

Firek eyed the lackey girl, trying to figure her out. Not because he liked her, or wanted to get to know her—well he did need to know her—but only so he could use her weaknesses to snatch the Holy Book and escape. He was a warrior, a flier training in Yutinah's flock, and he would use the girl only to his advantage. There was no other reason he watched her or obeyed her petty commands, like stay here while I climb this tree for a book I don't need. He waited only for the opportune moment to strike.

The tree she climbed was diseased, with only a few healthy branches left. Firek had to bite his tongue to keep from calling out when a branch wobbled dangerously beneath the girl—she was always gone a moment later before it could snap anyway. She moved so fast, so light and precise. Firek would never have thought a plump girl like her could climb a tree so well, but the way she ducked and weaved through the web of branches proved him otherwise. Even when a strand of hair or piece of fabric got snagged on a twig, she barely even slowed, simply tugged it free and moved on. She didn't even seem wary of the river flowing almost directly underneath the tree branches, swollen from the recent heavy rain and moving fast.

Do not engage the enemy in trees, he noted to himself. Nor on giraffe. Attack on ground, preferably in a place her giraffe cannot interfere.

He'd already known that. Firek had figured that out the day he'd woken up a prisoner, when he'd watched her climb a tree to view their position from a height. What was he actually doing, watching her like this?

Firek shoved that thought away. He shifted his weight, his weak leg failing even leaning against a tree as he was. The giraffe turned her head to stare at him with a huge black eye, though she already had an ear on him. Firek glared back, unabashed. Once he'd found her eyes to be deep, malevolent, but now he found it difficult to find her thick eyelashes anything but silly and lazy.

"Almost there!" the lackey called cheerfully, too cheerfully. Even after their wrestle a few days back, she tried to remain bright and smiley. Fake. So, so fake. It nauseated him.

The girl was only a few branches away from her oh-so-special blue book. It hung from a half-dead branch, all other branches surrounding it either fully dead or diseased and dying. Firek watched, still holding his tongue, as she leaped from one branch to another. She dangled from it for a second, then pulled herself up and balanced expertly on the rope-thin branch. Firek had pulled death-defying stunts himself, up in the air with Krunin, but this . . . this was madness. He knew he would never—could never—do such a thing as trust a tree, healthy or otherwise. And that river. It was well past its normal banks, splashing against the trunk of the tree. Water was just as untrustworthy as earth.

She stretched towards the book, inching down the length of the dead branch despite it drooping from her weight. "Just a little closer . . ." Her fingers brushed the book's spine, then wrapped around the twig and snapped it off. "Got it!"

Right then, her branch snapped.

"Honi!" Firek lurched toward her.

She jumped just in time to snatch the branch above her, and miraculously it held her weight. The blue book fell into the river and was washed away in an instant.

He breathed out in relief.

Jeje lurched forward to save her rider. Her head stretched out for the girl to grab onto, but just before she could, the giraffe's shoulder slammed into the trunk. The old diseased tree groaned from the force of the blow, a large crack appearing in the wood. Branches broke and fell, taking Honi with them.

Firek's heart skipped a beat. "No!"

She disappeared beneath the black water.

Jeje bellowed. A sound Firek had heard only once before, and made him flinch. The giraffe launched herself into the river, but was forced to back out when the currents threatened to topple her. She made that awful bray again, thrashing her legs in the water in frustration, rage—and fear, Firek realized. The giraffe was terrified. Just as he had been on the day Meyi died. Died beneath hooves just like those, while he did nothing, his fear paralyzing him like a coward.