Changed By Fire (Book 3) Read Free Page B

say?”
    “You don’t want to know where she is or why she didn’t come to you?”
    Tan swallowed back the lump rising in his throat. He had thought of little else at first, but what would Lacertin say if he even answered? Would he explain where Tan’s mother had gone? Would he know why she didn’t come searching for him? Or would he not care, so focused as he was on what he needed to do?
    Perhaps Ephra truly had died in Nor. Only Zephra remained.
    “Had she found me in Ethea, what would have happened?” Tan asked. Would he have gone to help Elle? Would he have sought the draasin, or spoken to udilm, or even found Amia, had his mother found him in Ethea? Or would he have stayed, letting her continue to protect him?
    “You wonder whether you would still have learned what you did.”
    Tan nodded.
    “When I think of losing my family, I have the same questions. Then I hate myself for the thoughts. Had our caravan not been attacked, had we never gone through Incendin? What would have become of me?” She squeezed his hand. “In time, I would have become Mother. Being blessed by the Great Mother would have given me much standing among the People. Possibly enough to direct another caravan. Maybe I would have been one of the few who settles.” A faraway look crossed her face.
    Through their connection, Tan felt none of the contentment he would have expected from the look on her face. Instead, there was anxiety. “The Aeta settle?”
    She blinked, the lost expression clearing, and turned to him. “Some. There is a place where those who cannot travel will go. It was…” She swallowed. “It was where I thought I would find healing.”
    “I thought the Aeta were wanderers?”
    She nodded. “Most are. Even in this place, the wagons can be moved… only they never are. We would visit once a year in a gathering of Mothers. It is where I saw the only other of my people blessed by the Great Mother.”
    “Did you ever find out why they betrayed you?”
    One hand slipped up to the band of silver around her neck and fidgeted with it, running her fingers around it. “The archivist,” she began. “He was Aeta. What he chose did not serve the Great Mother. He traveled with them, using the caravan as a way for him to chase his studies. With it, he could pass through any border. But he was no longer Aeta.”
    “Why would the Mother allow it?”
    Amia swallowed. “When I learned, that was when they… restrained me,” she began. “They are blood. More than simply of the same caravan. He was her brother, I think.”
    Tan let out a slow breath. It would explain why the Aeta would allow the archivist to travel with them, though not why the Mother would allow him to capture Amia. As one of the Aeta—and one blessed by the Great Mother—she should be revered among her people. Instead, she was treated with violence.
    “Will you go there now?” he asked.
    She pulled him toward her, standing on her toes and kissing him on the mouth.
    The suddenness surprised him and it took a moment for him to kiss her back. When he did, his mouth covered hers with hunger.
    “There was only one reason I would have gone,” she said. “And I no longer have that need.”
    He smiled and kissed her again, gently this time. “But the others need to know of the archivists. There were others. How many of the archivists were born of the Aeta? How many would use the caravans in such a way?”
    A troubled look crossed Amia’s face. “I…I don’t know. I hadn’t thought it possible.” She forced a smile at him. “You could come with me. Learn what it means to travel like the People.”
    Once, Tan would have welcomed an invitation like that. So much had changed for him. “I’m not certain what I should do.”
    He could search for his mother—as much as he tried to deny it, he wanted to see her, to know she was well, and for her to know Amia—but there were other things he should do.
    They made their way down a narrow path leading toward the