The ground turned rocky — great boulders and sudden ravines that made Tamas wonder if the mountains had once come out this far, and if so, what god or force of nature had knocked them down.
The terrain had provided a good place to hide from Ipille’s Wardens, long ago.
They crossed a rocky bluff and then descended into a gully where two of Kresimir’s Fingers met. Tamas rubbed at his shoulders, suddenly cold despite the summer sun beating down upon them.
He saw it then. A cairn, not more than fifty paces from where the two rivers met. It was about four feet high and six feet across, sandstone rocks gathered from the area and stacked.
It had changed little in the last thirteen years. The bloody fingerprints both Tamas and Gavril had left, their hands raw from digging the stony earth, had been washed away. A necklace — a treasured possession of the dead that Tamas had left on the highest stone — was gone, but the rest of the cairn remained undisturbed.
Tamas climbed down from his horse and tied the reins to a stunted tree. He approached the cairn slowly. Thoughtfully. Now that he was here, the dread he’d felt in coming seemed silly.
He turned to Gavril.
The big man, with all his stubbornness in making Tamas accompany him on this pilgrimage, seemed reluctant to get any closer.
Tamas took a shaky breath. He reached out and touched the top stone of the cairn.
“Camenir,” he said, and found it felt good to say it aloud.
A crunch of footsteps sounded on the rocky soil as Gavril finally joined him.
“I doubt anyone but you or me remember the name.” In his head, it had been a musing thought. Aloud, it sounded callous, and Tamas instantly regretted saying it. Gavril was the last of Camenir’s kin. His relatives on the Kez side, dead by Ipille’s orders. The ones on the Adran side not numerous, and those alive having long disowned him.
Tamas tried to picture Camenir in his mind, and found he could not. He looked a lot like Gavril, he thought. Not as big. Quite a bit younger. A sloppy, casual manner and a genuine smile that most found endearing.
“How did you do it?” Gavril stood beside the cairn, head bowed.
“Do what?”
“How did you go on? After what happened?”
Tamas was surprised to hear accusation in Gavril’s voice.
“What choice did I have?”
What did Gavril want him to say? Did Gavril want him to admit he’d slept his way through half the eligible ladies in Adopest, and quite a few ineligible ones? Did Gavril want him to point out that he’d killed more men in duels in the short time following Erika’s death than he had in all his angry youth?
“I saw grief in you,” Gavril said. “I saw it eating through you after Erika’s murder. After Manhouch denied your demands that we go to war. When you came and said you wanted to kill Ipille, I knew it had to be done. But… but after we failed, after Camenir died, you changed. All those signs of grief I’d seen in you were gone. You went back to society. Smiled at all those fools who’d laughed behind their hands at the box containing Erika’s head. You entertained guests and walked the streets laughing.”
“What choice did I have?” Tamas repeated.
Gavril gripped his shoulder and turned him around to look him in the eye. “You never grieved for Camenir. You never cared that my little brother died.” Tears sprang up in Gavril’s eyes, his face red.
“What did you want?” Tamas was suddenly angry. Had Gavril held this against him all these years? Did Gavril think that Camenir meant nothing to him? “Did you want me to turn to the bottle, like you did?”
“I wanted you to show some decorum!” Gavril’s voice rose sharply. “Show some regret. Any sign of emotion for my brother! A man who died for you!”
This close, Gavril towered over him, but Tamas felt no fear. Only rage and regret. “That’s rich, coming from you,” Tamas spat. “Do you think climbing into an ale cask showed decorum?”
Tamas barely saw the fist coming. One moment it loomed, big as a ham, and the next his ears rang as he stared at the ground from his knees. He blinked away a sudden haze. Blood leaked from his mouth and nose, spattering on the dusty ground. Not the first blood he’d left on this spot.
He climbed to his feet, wobbling on his knees. Gavril glared at him, daring him to hit back.
So he did.
The look of surprise on Gavril’s face as Tamas’s fist connected with his stomach gave Tamas a jolt of satisfaction. He followed it up with another punch, doubling Gavril over.
“I lost my wife, you bastard,” he growled.
Gavril wrapped his arms around Tamas and lifted him with a bellow. Tamas felt a thrill of fear as his feet left the ground. To a man with Gavril’s strength, he might as well have been a child.
He brought his elbow down on Gavril’s back, eliciting a yell from the big man.
Gavril lifted him high, then pounded him into the ground. Tamas felt the air leave his lungs, the feeling leave his legs, and his vision blurred. He hacked out a cough and dug one hand into the fat of Gavril’s stomach.
