01 - The Compass Rose Read Free Page B

older, like most guards assigned to new naitani, and sensible, but—well, time enough to worry about it after the battle. If they all survived, she could talk to Hamonn then about reassignment or retirement.
    “Bread is for eating.” Torchay slid one of his blades into a wrist sheath and drew another to test its edge. “Not staring at. It’s not a work of art. You’ll need the fuel tonight for your magic.”
    “You’re my bodyguard. Not my keeper.” Kallista wanted to set the bun aside, but Torchay was right. She needed to eat. The bread tasted better than she expected for having been baked without magic and set out on display all day.
    The silence caught her attention. No sound of steel on stone as Torchay sharpened one of his numberless blades. She’d tried to count them once, the dirks and daggers and short swords secreted in every place conceivable around Torchay’s body. But just when she thought she had them all, he would produce another from some invisible spot. And whenever he had a spare moment, he would sharpen them. The rasping sound had played accompaniment to every quiet moment of the last nine years. Until now.
    He sat in his usual place beside the street door, a wicked little blade—needle thin and razor sharp—in one hand, his whetstone forgotten in the other as he watched her.
    The skin between her shoulder blades prickled. She did not have time for this now, whatever it was. They had a battle to fight, probably before dawn. She refused to encourage him. But she could not refuse to listen if he chose to speak.
    “Yes, I’m your bodyguard,” he said finally. “I’ve served you for nine years. I’d like to think I’ve done a good job of it.”
    “You have. Exemplary.” Was that what had his hair on too tight? His qualifications record?
    “For nine years, I’ve been no farther from you than a spoken word. I know you better than anyone. Better than your family. Better than your naitani.” He paused and looked at his blade as if wondering why he held it. “The battle tomorrow—it’s not like the bandits we’ve fought before. It doesn’t look good, does it.” He didn’t ask a question.
    “No. It doesn’t.” Kallista still didn’t know where Torchay was going with this, but she had never given him anything less than the truth.
    “This time tomorrow, we’ll most likely be dead.”
    “Very probably.”
    He looked at her then, his clear blue eyes holding her gaze. “If I’m going to die, Kallista, I want to die with friends. The army isn’t a good place for making them. You’re the only person I can think of who I’d consider a friend. You’re my captain, my naitan, and I’m your bodyguard. But—is it possible—could we not also be friends?”
    Friendship . Was that all he wanted? Such a simple, utterly difficult thing. Someone who cared about him not because they had to, not for ties of blood or marriage, but simply because they liked him.
    Did Kallista have friends? Naitani in the army were too valuable, too rare to concentrate them in large numbers, and the regular officers were often what the average citizen thought them: dim and sometimes cruel. She’d met a few fellow naitani she liked, but postings in the far corners of the Adaran continent kept her from furthering the acquaintance.
    The person Kallista knew best, the one whose moods she could interpret just from the sound of steel on stone or the huff of breath through his beaked nose, the one who kept her secrets and guarded her privacy, was Torchay. Was that friendship?
    She rather thought it was. “We are friends, Torchay,” she said. “You’ve perhaps been a better friend to me than I have to you, but we have been friends for a long time. Why else would we have lasted nine years?”
    Torchay slicked his knife along the stone, a satisfied sound. “I thought so.”
    “You know, you’ll sharpen that knife away to nothing if you keep that up.”
    He grinned at the familiar comment. “Perhaps,” he said in