Valiant Read Free

Saville!”
    “No.” I shook my head, glad for the strength my anger gave me. “Not until I pick up Mama’s music box.”
    I held his gaze for one more heartbeat. Then, before he could decide whether to slap me in front of the crowd, I knelt and gathered the pieces of Mama’s last song. When I was finished, I stood a moment longer between Father and his fabric.
    He hated even that delay.
    Then I walked away from the wreck, the fragments of the music box cradled in my skirts. Father shouted orders about his fabric and the men around him sprang into action to salvage what they could.
    I moved through them like a ghost, unnoticed by all but one.
    Luca limped up, favoring his bad hip, and handed me a small burlap bag. He tended the caravan’s fires and drove the wagon that carried the food. He’d tended to me, in his own way, the entire journey.
    I transferred the pieces to the bag and tied it shut, trying not to think that I’d lost the music box and Mama’s song. And I was going to lose Luca, too.
    “I’m going to miss your stories,” I said, rubbing my thumb over the burlap’s roughness. It was the closest I could come to saying I’d miss him.
    “It looked like that young merchant was telling you a fine story,” said Luca.
    I followed his gaze. The other caravan was already traveling on toward Reggen, taking with it Lynden and Fine Coat and the poor young man who’d whispered of monsters.
    I sighed. It had been fun to laugh with Lynden.
    “Don’t make me tell you about the time the caravan was caught in an early snow and I spent two weeks peeling boards off the sides of wagons to cook and feed the men,” warned Luca.
    I turned to him, knowing he was gathering one last story for me.
    He grinned. “They never knew the difference. Thought it was nothing more than tough travel bread.”
    “I don’t believe it,” I said. I could feel the sadness build at the base of my throat, grief for the music box and myself,and for never hearing another of Luca’s stories. But I spoke as brightly as I could. “Even if your cooking
is
close to boards.”
    “The tale is true!” Luca whipped his woolen hat over his heart. “I swear it.”
    He told me the story as men collected the scattered cargo and loaded it onto other wagons. He was telling it still when the caravan moved forward once more. He even bribed a young merchant to drive the food wagon so he could walk with me.
    “I’m tired of the wagon rattling my bones,” he said with a wink.
    Luca walked on with me, even when he’d finished the story. He didn’t say anything else, and I couldn’t. But I was glad to have him beside me, a Guardian of my own.
    After a while, he prodded me. “Look, child.”
    We had crested the last low bluff before the Kriva River. A bridge as long as two fields arched across it to Reggen, which was tucked between the river and the cliffs that rose behind it. I understood why tales claimed giants had cut and laid the city’s foundation stones. They were each broader than a man could reach with his arms spread wide, and they felt old, older than bones. Reggen’s brick walls looked young by comparison, great-great-grandchildren of the foundation they were built upon.
    And then there were the Guardians: two men, their bodies blurred by time, carved into the cliffs on either side of the walls, their feet near the Kriva, their shoulders rising above Reggen’s walls.
    “It’s a sight, to be sure,” said Luca. “Those two standing in the cliff.”
    “I like them,” I said. “They remind me of kings.”
    “Or giants?” he teased.
    I rolled my eyes. “Yes, giants. I’ve seen so many, you know.”
    “I think I saw one when I was younger,” said Luca.
    “You can’t mean that!” I turned to him, as surprised as if he’d claimed to ride dragons.
    He shrugged his crooked shoulders. “He was a great big man, that’s all I know—half again as tall as most—with a forehead like a cliff and a nose like a bag of rocks. That’s