Unlikely

by Frances Pauli

She dreamed of the fiend again. This time it faded too fast, wisped away before she could snatch at any meaning. Still, when she sat up, the winged woman’s screams echoed in her mind. The chill air suggested Hadja had let the fire die, which meant she’d fallen asleep before she’d had time to bank it. They were both running on their last threads. Too many late night conversations after Vane finally let Satina stagger home.

  Home. She shook that thought away and pulled on her clean shift, the tattered skirt and her cincher. Her boot soles were wearing thin as well. Despite her horror at Vane’s treatment of the ruins and surrounding forest, she almost hoped he’d hurry the road along. Her clothing wouldn’t endure many more treks through the brush.

  She tied her hair up with the blue kerchief and slid through the curtain without making a sound. Hadja snored like a bear. The old woman had buried herself so deeply under her stack of quilts that Satina would have feared for her breathing without the rattle of each snore to reassure her. She tiptoed through the main room and caught up her cloak, sliding it over her shoulders and the criss-crossed straps of her pouches.

  Vane insisted on an early start each morning, and she’d learned exactly how to slip out of the cottage without making a sound, without disturbing the rhythm of Hadja’s snoring. She fastened her cloak on the front step, shivering in the frigid morning air. Her steps padded against fresh dew as she trotted down between the herbs to the roadway.

  He wanted them at the inn by dawn, and the sky already streaked with blush and lavender. The wet weeds gave off a sharp scent, and Satina scurried out onto the road and turned left toward town. Maera leaned against the white fence halfway between the path and her father’s shed. Satina stifled a groan and trotted in the girl’s direction.

  “Goodmother!” Maera jumped away from the railings and met her in the middle of the road.

  “Good morning, Maera. How are you?” She squinted at the girl, examined her face, but the bruise had faded, and no new marks were visible.

  “What did he say?”

  “I’m sorry?” Something about the way Maera blinked at her seemed familiar. The girl’s hands twisted together. She shifted her weight back and forth between her feet and bit her lip.

  “You did talk to him? You promised you would.”

  Vane. She’d forgotten the girl’s request in her own struggle against the gang leader. Now she saw Maera’s obsession glimmering up at her, and she had no answer that the girl would accept. She’d failed her as a Granter, but what else could she have done? Vane was the answer to no one’s best wishes.

  “I have talked to him, Maera.” It was a partial truth, and only meant to stall the inevitable. She hadn’t had time with the girl to build enough of a bond, to convince her to trust Satina’s judgment where Vane was concerned. “But it’s complicated.”

  The girl’s face fell, scrunched up and gave away her youth for a moment. She struggled with it, got herself under control and then set her shoulders back and stuck out her chin defiantly. Before she could answer back, the sound of steps drew both their attention toward town where Vane himself marched directly for them.

  Maera’s face flushed pink. Her eyes fell to her shoes, and she fidgeted with the fabric of her chemise. Satina flicked her gaze between the girl and the gang leader, one so terribly uncomfortable and the other so completely at ease. Vane strode with his head high and his shoulders back. He had no entourage, and yet, he owned the roadway as surely as he did the town now. His gaze didn’t drift from his target for a second, not when he passed the blacksmith’s shop, and not when a flutter of quail erupted from Hadja’s weeds to flee across his path. His eyes fixed on Satina, and they never once left her.

  “Good morning.” His voice shattered what morning was left. It pushed the quail even further into the brush on the far side of the road. “How is my goodmother today?”

  Satina cringed. She saw Maera flinch, saw the girl’s expression change from shy to horrified. When Vane threw an arm around Satina’s shoulders, Meara’s blush flamed scarlet. Her eyes narrowed.

  “On my way to report in,” Satina answered as stiffly as possible. She shifted out from under Vane’s arm, but the damage had already been done. Maera backed a step away and then spun and bolted through the fence and into Hadja’s weedy shelter.

  “What was that about?”

  “She has a crush on you.” She wanted to add that she couldn’t guess why, but Vane still held his threat over her, and outright defiance placed Marten and the whole town at risk. “It would seem.”

  “Really?” He couldn’t have sounded less interested.

  “Did you need something?” They met at the inn every morning. Why he’d chosen today to wander down and fetch her, she couldn’t begin to guess. She didn’t bother trying. Nothing she might have imagined could have been worse than Vane’s reply.

  “Get your things,” he said. “All of them. We’re making camp in the ruins from here on out.”

  ☼

  He gave her her own tent. The tiny space offered her a small measure of privacy, shelter from the rest of the group, and she was grateful for it despite the nagging curiosity about who he’d stolen it from, which poor townsperson had had their tent requisitioned on her behalf. That he pitched it next to his own shelter worried her less. So far, he’d kept her at his side in all ways, and she expected no different here. At least beside Vane’s tent meant slightly apart from the others.

  His entire gang had moved to the ruins now, though he ordered a rotating guard shift to take turns in town. The remaining men, Vane divided between working on his new road and setting up camp. Today at least, the digs had halted.

  Most of the tents ringed a central area where a cooking pit had been dug, and a rough tri-pod erected over it. The Starlight women settled in, well accustomed to camp life and picking up their routines as if they’d never spent the week at Westwood’s inn.

  Satina avoided them. Their hostile glances told her she’d find no welcome among them. Instead she crept into her canvas shelter and rolled out the bundle that Vane had stuffed inside. The bedroll would serve better than her cloak, and she’d slept in that more nights than she could count. The blankets had three pins down one side to keep them in place and were rolled around a down pillow that someone had embroidered with a swirling P.

  She flipped it over to hide the initial, the evidence of someone else’s sacrifice. Her leather bags she set in a line along the wall, all but the one in which she carried her dust. That one never left her person. The only other item ever to have claimed that status was the warmer she’d left in Marten’s shop, and though she might have welcomed its heat tonight, part of her sighed in relief that her gadget was as far from Vane’s clutches as possible.

  Until they hit his shop again.

  She shook her head and pressed her lips tight. Marten would know enough to hide the warmer. If nothing else, his personal interest in the device would keep it safe. Still, she needed to get back to town. Hadja had barely opened her eyes when she’d come back in to gather her things. With Vane inside the cottage, tapping his boot and scowling at them both, there hadn’t been a chance to talk.

  They had a plan only half-formed. They had too much resting on the Skinner’s help, on the Gentry who may or may not even choose to be found. Vane had plucked her from the thick of their scheming, and now, she had no way to communicate without him watching. She had no way to get a message out, no way to see…but she did have a way to see.

  Satina had Vision waiting in the courtyard. She had her menhir and the pocket as well. She rested one hand on her dust pouch and listened to the footsteps right outside her wall. All she had to do was convince Vane to trust her, to win him over enough that he’d loosen his watch—and his grip—a little bit.

  If she could pull off that much, if she could find a way to keep in contact with Hadja, maybe they’d still be able to put their plan in motion. She heard Vane rustling in his own tent and tried not to think about the variables, abo
ut Marten and the Gentry and keeping Vane from getting suspicious.

  She could do it. She was a Granter, even if she had failed poor Maera. She fixed wishes. She helped people. But then, Marten had a different view on that score, and she’d never once tried to use her skills to help herself. If he was right, if they had any chance of getting the Starlights out of Westwood, maybe it was time she tried exactly that.

  Satina sat in her tent, wove her fingers through her dust, and for the first time in her life, she made a wish.

  Chapter Seventeen