---------------PLAGUE---------------
EIGHT: Glass

Kel had never figured Lerant to be a compulsive worrier, but judging by his pale face and fidgeting hands the next morning, she had just discovered a new facet of his personality. The glaze painting his eyes suggested he had been standing blankly outside his door for some time. At first, Kel thought he hadn't noticed her emerge from her room, but apparently he was not glued in his pale-faced reverie as deeply as she had thought, as he turned to her after a few moments and blinked at her surprised face.

"I am never going to lie again," he said, his face haunted. "Ever. I would swear by the gods, but they're probably too busy laughing at my misfortune to hear."

Kel kept her mouth firmly shut and offered him a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Not to worry, Lerant," she consoled him, "I asked Tanaia to keep quiet, after all. I don't doubt her word."

He didn't appear convinced, much less as his voice began low and became increasingly feverish and stormy by the word. "I have no trust in any woman's word," he hissed. "By now everyone from here to the Roof of the World will have heard of our so-called 'tryst', and I have not slept a wink for knowing it!"

Kel narrowed her eyes. "I don't know what foul thing you have drunk to drive you to this paranoia, Lerant, but I can at least hold hope in that soon you'll have enough of a headache to shut you up completely." She looked him up and down, and then an edge of sympathy crept into her voice. "Look, let's imagine none of this has happened, and go down to the mess just like we always do. I guarantee you, the only person under the illusion we are lovers will be Tanaia. And we can work on that."

Indeed, Kel's prediction rang true; not a single head turned or whisper followed them as she and Lerant strolled into the mess together. Even Tanaia was too enthralled by her conversation with Dom to notice their arrival.

"I told you so," Kel said briskly, sweeping up a breakfast tray. "I'm going to sit by Neal. If you could sit near Dom and see if anything of interest is said, I'd be very grateful." Lerant obliged, albeit with a less-than-enthusiastic expression.

Kel sought her old friend out. Neal, it seemed, had recovered from the many prior lapses of his innocent façade, and greeted her with the cheery grin Kel had grown so fond of before this entire thing began. Kel decided to hail him with another of their traditions, which in this case was a raised eyebrow, a long pause, and one word: "Vegetables?"

"Nobody eats vegetables for breakfast, Kel," Neal scoffed, perhaps feeling he had found the perfect excuse to spurn greens at least until lunch. Kel, however, believed otherwise, as she promptly revealed an apple from behind her back.

"You'll thank me when you grow up big and strong," she beamed.

It was not until she had personally overseen Neal's consumption of the entire fruit that Dom approached, his sheepish expression almost convincing. Kel wasn't sure how they'd gotten their act together so suddenly, but she did know that it probably did not bode well for her.

Dom leaned over her right side, the apologetic crease in his brow reminding Kel why she used to like him. "I hate to bail on our scout duty shift later, Kel, but I've been assigned other duties. I asked someone else to step in."

"Oh." Kel set down her spoon. "Who?"

Dom's gaze intensified, as did Neal's, whose eyes she could feel boring into the back of her head. "Wolset," Dom said.

Kel blinked innocently.

"I hope that's okay," Dom continued, his eyes scouring her expression. "You know. You get on well enough with Wolset, don't you?"

Kel looked at her bowl of porridge. "I suppose he's not bad company," she said, and then rose her face back up at Dom's. "When's the shift?"

"Noon," came the reply.

"And, Wolset's recovered from being worked like a slave, I assume?"

Dom grinned nervously, withdrawing a little further from the range of her interrogation. "'Slave' is perhaps a small exaggeration, Kel... besides, I assure you he's perfectly well now, and I'll let him know you were concerned about his health. Now, though, I've got, um, breakfast to be eating. I'll see you later!" He raised a hand in farewell and scampered away. Kel let him go, slightly reassured that his earlier composure had crumbled so quickly. If they fell apart that fast, perhaps Neal and Dom's suddenly prodigious acting skills would not cause her as much worry as she had thought.

She then turned to Neal, who was angelically absorbed in ripping the stem from his apple core. Even if Dom had gone to pieces under the slightest suspicion from Kel, she had to commend Neal for managing to make it look like he had not been eavesdropping with more intent than was natural. "Neal, I'm going to give the kitchen a heads-up that I'll be needing to take some food on scout duty with me. I don't believe Wolset recovered as miraculously as Dom made out and having to wait a couple of hours for lunch could just be the death of him."

Her emerald-eyed friend pouted. "You never try to prevent my death."

"I force-feed you fruit and veg three times a day. What more do you want?" She paused. "It's not like I'm giving him special treatment or anything. I just don't want to have to carry him all the way back to the infirmary if he faints or something."

Kel left Neal to read into her answer as much as he cared to, signalling to Lerant discreetly as she left the mess that she wished to talk to him. He met her in the small alley between the mess and barracks, where the shadows would hide their presence.

"Dom's made the first move," she whispered to him. "Now I've got two hours with Wolset at noon, and no doubt a couple of Dom's minions spying on us the entire time."

Lerant was scowling, his arms folded tightly and gaze directed away from her. "What are you planning to do, then?" he asked, not looking at her.

"I guess I'll try and keep him talking. I'm not really sure how best to go about it, but if we learn more about each other, we can surely create the illusion of becoming closer. What do you think?"

Lerant grunted something indistinctly, which Kel assumed was an "I dunno". She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I wish Wolset were in on the plan, though. I don't know whether he's going to cooperate with me or not."

"What if," Lerant said, and paused, his eyes still stubbornly avoiding hers, "say, Wolset thought you really liked him. What then?"

Kel stared at him. "Oh. I hadn't thought of that." Alarm swamped her as she suddenly realised what Lerant was implying: that Dom and Neal were not the only ones she might be leading on. What if Wolset thought she had feelings for him? What if he sought to reject her apparent feelings for him by taking her somewhere private to announce he did not feel the same way, unaware that they would probably have an entourage of Dom's cronies watching with fists stuffed in their mouths in what would later become Third Company legend? Or even worse—

Kel's head jolted up to the alley's entrance as a passing shadow darkened it. Tanaia, who had now paused, looked calmly upon Lerant and Kel beside each other in the dark, blessed them with a suggestive wink and then flitted out of sight.

"First we need to do something about her," Lerant growled, hackles raised. "If a single lie gets out about us, Kel, I'll never, ever—"

"Okay, okay," Kel interrupted, somewhat exasperated. She realised then it had been a long time since he'd called her Kel, if he had ever; the thought wiped all else from her mind. "Okay, look. I'll just... we'll figure something out. If you're so opposed to the idea of us being lovers, well, we could feed her something about breaking up. She's not insensitive enough to spread it around after hearing that."

"Are you kidding?" For the first time, he looked straight at her. "She'd only get nosy, think to be a shoulder you can cry on and asking why and how and stupid details that never even happened! It's more trouble than it's worth."

Kel was taken aback by his attitude. Did he always have to be so resistant? "Just a suggestion," she said testily. "I thought you wanted to resolve it quickly. Besides, it's not like she won't be nosy anyway – we're the least likely couple in Tortall, and I'm surprised she even believed you in the first place. If I went to her tomorrow, she'd swallow a story about a stormy argument in a second. Mithros knows our reputation as enemies will always precede any reputation we could earn as lovers."

Lerant looked almost insulted, evident in both his expression and his silence. Trying to see his eyes in the shadows, Kel hoped fervently his recent surliness was not due to her. As much as his late attitude irritated her, the thought that she might be the cause was somewhat painful. Perhaps, she concluded, she had let loose a few hasty words, so she softened. "Let's leave it for now," she suggested gently. "I'll come to find you after my shift with Wolset." Another pause, this time thick and awkward. "Sorry," she said.

When Lerant failed to say anything, Kel left him without saying goodbye. Later she realised her lack of a farewell was quite petty, as though she sought to punish him for his bad mood, and pondered whether to apologise once again. She spent so long deliberating this decision that her morning passed far more quickly than she realised, and, startled to discover the time, she rushed off to the kitchens to collect the food for her and Wolset's shift of scout duty.

He was grateful for the meal, which he had not thought to bring himself, and thanked her with an endearing smile. Kel could practically feel the glee radiating from the shrubbery behind them where two of Dom's spies lurked. It only intensified as she insisted Wolset sit in the shade of a tree to avoid overheating in the noon sun.

Once the conversation began, it ran long and comfortable. Wolset was more cooperative than she could have dreamed. Topics ranged from amusing anecdotes, recent immortal attacks, battle tactics and weaponry. Hearing his new-found love of the bow, she suggested they practise together, citing her dismay upon realising how much her own skills had deteriorated. He laughed and accepted, insisting his own modest skills could not possibly outstrip hers.

By now, she thought, their silent watch were probably silently exchanging high-fives and imagining Dom's joy when he learned of the apparent "developments" in Kel and Wolset's relationship. She was not one to deny them any pleasure, ensuring the conversation continued, laughing at Wolset's jokes and, similarly, smiling when he laughed at hers. Pretending she was enjoying herself was not hard, as Wolset continually proved himself an excellent partner in conversation. For now she pushed worried thoughts of leading him on to the back of her mind, intending to scare herself over the implications later.

Eventually their shift was nearly up, and she was almost sorry for it. Compared to the strenuous forces and subtleties of Lerant's company, and the stretch of no man's land between them, Wolset was like glass, that concealed nothing. She liked the clarity. She liked the ease of all words, that now fell from her lips with speed, where before, with Lerant, they had faltered. Yet somehow, as much as the clarity refreshed her, Kel recognised suddenly, and without illusion, a desire within herself to return to the one person whose presence she never thought she would yearn for. The complexities of him, the feeling that was at once both scalding and embracing, and the words that scrambled her, perhaps she liked them a little.

As for why she might like them, when the feeling of being around Lerant lately was so insufferably tense and frustrating, she didn't yet know. She thought she would need her whole life and another just to begin to comprehend him.

"Kel?"

She belatedly realised Wolset was asking her attention. "Sorry," she apologised, tuning back in to the clear sensation of his company. "What is it?"

"Can I borrow your spyglass? I think there's something in the sky, and I just want to check I'm not seeing things."

Kel fumbled to remove the spyglass from its pouch, and handed it to him. Now squinting at the sky where he aimed it, she saw what he meant. Though just a speck, something was definitely there. She felt her fingertips begin to tingle.

"It looks like wings!" Wolset said, his voice half-horror, half-enthralment. The sound of rustling as Dom's two minions fled back to camp went ignored. "Kel, we've got to raise the alarm." He stared at it for a little longer, then, without looking at her, thrust the spyglass into her open hands.

"What is it?" Kel asked hurriedly. "Did you see?"

He wet his lips. "Must be griffins," he said. "And lots of them." Even as Kel struggled to shove her spyglass back into its pouch, Wolset grabbed her arm and began to propel her back to camp. She did not know quite why he pushed her to run so fast, but as the breathless adrenalin of alarm hit, she revelled in it, and knew she preferred it to any comfortable feeling in the world.

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Ohisashiburi desu~! To old readers, hello again, sorry to keep you waiting and thank you for persevering, and to new faces, hi, nice to meet you and I hope you're enjoying the story! I had kind of subconsciously decided to leave the site... but I realise that writing means so much to me, and your reviews and feelings are so important, that I really want to finish up all my stories. I really hope that the things I am trying to convey will reach you and you will appreciate them, and I look forward to hearing what you think! (Maybe my writing has matured somewhat? Hahaha...) Got to get back into the swing of things...