Call the Rain by Kristi Lea Read Free Book Online

to her manner, a skittishness, like a dog that had been kicked too many times and only wished to disappear into the corner and be forgotten.
    The thought of someone terrorizing the small servant girl made his fists and his teeth and his gut clench.
    “Don't just stand there gaping.” Zuke tossed the words over his shoulder without so much as a glance at Joral's face.
    In two quick strides, Joral was kneeling beside the bundle at Zuke's feet. It was the other Waki girl from his mother's tent, but pale and motionless. “What happened?”
    Illista stared at him wide-eyed and shook her head.
    Zuke picked up one of the girl's wrists and held it for a long moment, then tucked it back underneath a blanket and shook his head. “Have Zabewa's hunters left camp?”
    Joral's blood ran cold and he stared from Illista's dazed expression to Zuke's closed one. “Did one of them harm the girl? Is it poison again?”
    Zuke opened his mouth and then closed it again.
    “Tell me.”
    “We were leaving the Chieftess's tent after serving. Quarie..” Illista's voice trailed off and ended in a hiccup that sounded perilously close to a sob.
    “She collapsed.” Zuke finished for her. “When I left the tent, I brought her back here. She has not improved, and nothing we can do will wake her from this state.”
    Joral took Illista by the shoulders and was surprised at the solidity of the muscle he felt there. For all their softness and vulnerability, these Waki were solid as mahogany underneath. “Did someone hurt her? You can tell me the truth.”
    She stared at him, her eyes boring peepholes into his honor. He stiffened his shoulders under her scrutiny. Finally she shook her head. “No one touched her, my lord.”
    Joral held her by the arms for another moment and searched her face for any hint of shame or untruth. Or a hint of his silver spirit. He saw nothing but determination and fear.
    Zuke used his staff to push himself to standing and motioned for Joral to do the same. “Sleep now, Illista. We will tell Nunzi that the prince requested a second assistant and have your things brought over. Stay here tonight and watch over her.”
    Illista nodded and lay down next to the other girl. She looped an arm over the other girl's lifeless waist and buried her face into the still arm.
    Zuke led Joral a few steps back and spoke in a whisper meant for Joral's ears alone. “The girl is Illista's sister. Her collapse coincided with Mulavi's incantation. I had to leave her in the dirt outside the tent while I confronted him. But even breaking the enchantment has not helped the girl.”
    “What kind of magic did he use? And why was no one else affected?”
    Juke shook his head. “The relic he wears around his neck summons the power of the oceans. I saw something similar to it, years ago on one of my first travels. The master I studied with said it came from one of the southernmost shores. What Mulavi is doing wearing it here, I don’t know.”
    “What do we do?”
    Zuke smiled a weary smile that was nonetheless infused with mischief. “You, my friend, shall pack my tent since my new assistants are incapacitated. I shall meditate on how a creature born in the far northern mountains could be vulnerable to the power of an ocean she has never seen.”
    ***
    Illista bumped along in the back of the medicine man's tall wagon, clutching her travel pack in her lap, supremely aware of the curiosity of the other score of Waki travelling on foot or pulled in the Segra's grass sleds. She never made eye contact with the other workers, but she knew they watched.
    She did feel the occasional glance from the Segra. Many of them pretended to study the design of the wooden wagon and its great wheels, marvels of woodwork and metal. But she knew that the sight of her squat form clinging to the ledge at the back was raising eyebrows.
    Let them wonder. Zuke's foreign eccentricities were known throughout the camp. He made a very loud scene of insisting to Nunzi that