Batuk stood at attention, his sword hand gripping his pommel as though at any moment he expected an attack. But to Adelaida’s eyes, the only creature he’d have to fight was one of the hundreds of buzzards that had already begun their feasting.
“She . . . ?” he asked Adelaida with the quiet intimacy of friends who don’t need complete sentences to understand each other. Adelaida felt that freedom like a drink of water in the desert.
“Asleep,” she answered, and breathed deeply. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t. There were foul, squirming stenches on the wind that she had never before smelled. She had no desire to know what they were.
Something shuffled in the tent behind them.
“Poor thing,” Batuk said. “Never a chance to rest.”
“She is damaged in more than body,” said Adelaida, and fel
