This Poisoned Tide: The Last Water Witch Book One

CHAPTER 36

"Fair morntide to you, my old friend."

Roth's gut twisted with repulsion. It had barely stopped writhing since all he had witnessed at the Trial and Lord Dageor's presence only served to add to the nausea that seemed to constantly flood his throat like the oncoming tide.

You look the type who doesn't have many friends. If any at all.

Roth would never have admitted it to Bazel or anyone for that matter, but the rat's words had nagged at him. His mother had once told him that to travel through life without a friend was not much of a life at all. And here Roth was without even a wife to call his friend. At least his own father had had that.

Dageor was a man who neither possessed nor even needed friends and to think that Roth held any similarities to the priest was somewhat unsettling.

He had known friendship, of course, something he doubted Dageor could ever claim. Aleina had been Roth's friend before she had become his lover. And while he wouldn't have referred to Eva Victori as his friend, he'd felt closer to her in those few tides before her death than he had with anyone since joining The Order. The idea that a Naiad would consider him a friend was preposterous, but she had trusted him and that had been enough for Roth.

And then there was Juda. Not a friend, but something else. Something more.

He could deny fatherhood of Juda until it choked him—and well it might, for the boy was a nuisance and a concern always—but Roth knew his heart had claimed him as his own many moons ago. He'd always tried to fool himself that any affection was influenced only by the fact he could see Aleina in the landscape of the boy's face, but the truth was while Juda had oft been like a poison-tipped thorn in his side, he'd also rid Roth of the loneliness that had cleaved at his very bones for so very long.

The possibility that the boy could be lost to him and the thought of his world descending into that same loneliness once again had kept him awake past moontide, until the first glimpse of dawn.

He had not seen Juda since the King's Trial, but he'd seen what had been left of him after and it had not been Juda he'd seen in his eyes, but an empty, cold thing—far colder than the difficult, angry child he'd once been, and the oft detached, aloof man he had become. There had been no way to see him, no possibility of getting word to him or from him. Indeed, Roth had no idea whatsoever if Juda had even passed the trial. Any tentative enquiries had been rebuffed by The Grim, and Roth was not going to approach Dageor for answers. He'd let the old vulture come to him instead. Yet when the priest had, by way of the King's mail runner, Roth had studied the message with the weight of the sea stacks in his stomach and a nausea that had instantly exploded from his mouth as soon as he'd dismissed the messenger from his door.

Instead of confirmation either way, Roth had been summoned to the barracks, and led to the balconies lining the bloody square. He knew all too well that to be invited to the spectacle of the training yard meant only two possibilities—either he was to witness a battle here this tide, or an execution.

Had the Trial uncovered secrets that had condemned Juda? Was their plan known? If it was, then Roth could see no reason why he would be here in the watching towers and not treading the dust below, but he wouldn't have put it past Dageor to ensure he witness Juda's demise first before Roth endure his own. He had no doubt the priest would relish the opportunity to drink in Roth's agony in every possible way, such was the darkness of his soul.

"And a fair morntide to you also, Lord Dageor, by Ban-Keren." Roth barely even afforded Dageor a glance and kept his gaze fixed on the yard below. The dust had long-since darkened. An ever-present reminder of the blood that had seeped into the ground and remained there, an eternal shrine to the dead. "You seem keen for my company of late, my Lord."