Sunshield

by Emily B. Martin

  I’m distracted, and in pain, and off my guard—serves me right—so I react too slowly. The old Cypri literally throws a chair out of his way—it crashes against a wall—and barrels straight for me. I put my fists up, but not quickly enough. His hands fasten around my throat.

  No, not my throat.

  My face. He plants both palms on either side of my face.

  “Moira!”

  I jerk backward, out of his reach, leaving his hands clawed on the air. His face is split with a bizarre emotion—he looks downright deranged.

  “Light,” he croaks. “Oh, Light.” He presses forward again, reaching.

  I knock one of his arms out of the air. “Don’t touch me.”

  I’m expecting somebody to move, to gently guide this addled stage passenger away so we can carry on our business, but the rest of the room is utterly still. Tamsin is still staring shrewdly, her quill limp in her fingers. The Moquoian man isn’t looking at me—he’s fixed on the back of the room, at the quilted traveler.

  But Veran—he’s staring, too. Those two sagebrush eyes are practically popping, the eyebrows and that little scar thrown high, rumpling his bruise. His lips form an almost perfect o.

  The Cypri man clamps a hand on my wrist, and I twist it away. “I said, don’t touch me, old man. Veran—what’s going on? Where’s Saiph? Are we in trouble?”

  But this man is all hands—he lifts them toward my face again, stopping just short of my chin when I jerk away.

  “I mean it,” I warn. “I’m going to start throwing punches.”

  “Moira,” he says again. And then, blazing, burning Light, he starts to cry. This old man, in this room full of people. He goes for one of my hands—I snatch it out of his reach and finally step around him. He turns with me like a pull-along toy.

  “Moira,” he says for a third time.

  “Sun be damned, stop saying that,” I snap. “Go sit down. Somebody make him sit down—he’s addled.”

  Still, nobody moves. The man beckons for the back of the room. “Eloise, please, lolly, come here.”

  The quilted figure rises, dreamlike, from the chair, letting the blanket slip down her shoulders. She has a sickly look to her, her cheeks hollowed and her eyes shadowed, like little Whit back in camp. Still, I can’t help but notice the fine cut of her traveling dress, and the pearl droplets in her ears, and the gold thread embroidering the band holding back her tumbling curls. She can probably get all the hair care products she can dream of.

  I edge away, hoping she’s not going to try to touch me, too, but now the corner of the table is blocking my path. I’m boxed in, and I don’t like it—I feel like a rabbit in a snare. The girl stands looking me hard in the face. A handful of freckles spatter her nose and the corners of her eyes.

  The old man is still crying, fingers flexing toward me. “Great blessed Light.”

  “Stop it,” I say. “Go sit down. Leave me alone.”

  I look again at Veran, but in one swift motion, he covers his face with both palms, flattening them over his mouth, nose, and eyes. The Moquoian man is staring, his gaze jumping between me and this soft, pretty girl standing half a pace away. Tamsin is the first one to move—she drops her quill on the table and rises from her chair. She picks up the map, a print of the Ferinno, and holds it firmly outward. In the dead, empty space not far from Three Lines, she’s written three words in large, hasty letters.

  LARK IS MOIRA

  “Moira, darling,” the Cypri man says, voice thick. “You’re my daughter. You’re Eloise’s sister. You were stolen from us in Matariki fifteen years ago. Do you remember it at all? We searched for you, your mother and I—we searched for years.”

  I cut my gaze toward Veran, wondering what’s witched everybody to toddle along with this nonsense. Veran, at least, should know the truth. Tamsin’s barely known me a day, and she’s been half starved and swooning. The rest of these folk have never clapped eyes on me before. But Veran and I traveled together for nearly six days, and he never said a thing to this effect.

  Though . . . now I wonder why he was so keen on me coming into Pasul.

  And where the balls is Saiph?

  The hair on the back of my neck rises.

  “This is stupid,” I say. “Veran, come on, tell them to knock it off. I thought we had things to do.”

  He finally moves, but not much—only sliding his hands down his face to his mouth, staring at me over the tops of his fingers.

  The old man wipes his wet cheeks, and then he does touch me again—he takes my hand in both of his. “Oh, Moira . . . oh, love. You look so much like you did. You look so much like your sister, like your mother. Do you still have that silly circle of freckles on your tummy? We used to practice counting them together.”

  One, two, three, four, five, six.

  He leans closer, and I’m washed suddenly in a rush of coffee and cinnamon.

  I pivot on my heel, wrenching my hand from his, and take three long strides back to the door. Folk begin shouting behind me, but I kick it open and shut before anyone can touch me again. I storm across the porch and out into the rain. Rat lifts his head from under Jema’s hooves. Next to her, Veran’s horse stands idly by the hitching post. He hitched her in a hurry—her reins have slid off the post and lie trailing in a puddle.

  A rectangle of yellow light blooms across the mud, throwing my shadow long. A swirl of voices accompanies it, shouting that foreign name, shouting at me to stop. The old man’s voice is loudest, but it’s underscored by a softer one, a female one, young and sweet without the harsh edges of the desert in it.

  I don’t stop or turn around. I jerk Jema’s reins from the hitching post and swing onto her back.

  There’s splashing, and a hand grabs my knee.

  I’m sick of folk touching me when I don’t want to be touched. I kick out with the hard toe of my boot. Veran snatches his hand away, clutching his elbow.

  “Lark—Lark, wait. Please, wait.” His eyes are turned up to me, and I can see him still searching, still staring. My gut clenches—I don’t want him hunting for their lost princess in my face.

  He must understand the emotion on my face better than me, because his flittering gaze locks back on mine.

  “I didn’t know,” he says. “I swear it, Lark.”

  The old man is out the door, making for me with his hands out. In one quick move, I draw my sword from its sheath, holding it high. Veran flinches and jumps backward.

  I swing the sword downward and slap the flat across his horse’s rump.

  Kuree starts mightily and bolts, cantering up the road toward the upper city, reins flying. Veran turns a full circle, watching her run, before whirling back to me, mouth open.

  “Wait!” he blurts.

  “No!” I jerk my bandanna back over my nose and give Jema a mighty kick. She jumps forward, throwing up mud. Rat streaks along with me.

  “Stop!” Veran shouts behind me. “Lark, stop!”

  I don’t stop, and he can’t follow. Jema puts on a burst of frantic speed, and we race back under the Pasul signpost, out into the desert bowing under a lashing sky.

  Veran

  Oh Light.

  Oh Light.

  Oh blessed Light.

  I stop at the signpost, ankle deep in mud, as Lark is swallowed up by the rain. I clutch the wood, drawing great ragged gasps of air. Water sluices off me. Another round of thunder peals. Lightning splits the land beyond, but Lark is gone.

  There’s splashing behind me, and I turn as Rou comes even with me. I press my back against the signpost, but he doesn’t look angry anymore. He looks cut wide open. Mama always uses that phrase—cut wide open—and I never had a visual for it until now.

  He stares out into the rain. Then he swings to me.

  “I didn’t know,” I gasp. “I didn’t realize. I—I never saw her full face. She was always wearing eyeblack, and the bandanna.” Or else I was coming out of a seizure . . . or else she was wearing nothing at all. And always that sun, that damned su
n . . .

  Frantically, I set Eloise’s face next to Lark’s in my head. One smooth and unscarred, full-cheeked and sparkle-eyed, a gentle tawny brown. And the other . . . rough-edged and chapped, hollowed and sun-dark, with lightning in her eyes. Tumbles of soft curls, long locks streaked with gold. But now I see it—the sloping nose, the scattered freckles, the brown eyes . . . Rou’s eyes, damnation . . .

  I am the biggest fool who ever did breathe.

  “Where . . . where did she . . .” Rou’s voice sounds disjointed, like none of the words are actually hooked together.

  “She ran,” I say. “Into the desert.”

  He takes a few steps forward, as if setting out to follow her on foot. But he stops before I can find anything to say, and then a sound from behind us makes us both turn.

  The door to the posthouse is open, and three figures are shadowed against the light. The foremost is nearly at the edge of the porch, her traveling dress whipping in the wind.

  Rou does a hard pivot and starts jogging back to the porch. I follow numbly, the mud sucking at my boots. As we get nearer, Rou flaps his hands at Eloise, trying to send her inside, but she doesn’t budge. She’s hugging herself, shivering.

  “Papa . . .” she gasps once we’re in earshot.

  “Inside,” Rou croaks. “Inside, Eloise.”

  Together we all file back through the door, edging past Iano, who’s staring up the street.

  “The guards are coming,” he says as I draw even with him, nodding up the slope.

  I follow his gaze to where a knot of mounted riders are materializing in the rain. Lightning flashes off metal helms.

  Tamsin reaches out and grasps his sleeve, dragging him back inside. We cluster in the doorway. The post manager is righting the chairs that were flung aside just moments ago, but one look at the shock and dismay on our faces, and she seems to think better of making any reprimand.

  “I’m riding out after her,” Rou says, first to nobody in particular, and then homing in on Eloise. “I’m going after her. You stay here . . .”

  “Papa, the guards,” she whispers. She’s spattered with rain, and still shivering. I remember the threat of prison if we’re not out of Moquoia by the end of the hour, and suddenly I’m in agreement about one thing—she needs to get out of Pasul.

  “Then you take the coach,” Rou says. “You and Veran go as far as you can tonight, and keep going until you reach Callais. Have Colm send a letter to your mother . . .”

  “I’ll go after her,” I say.

  “No.”

  “Rou . . .”

  “No.” There’s pure agony in his voice. His hand jumps to the wall almost involuntarily, as if he suddenly needed to steady himself.

  “I know where she’s going.” I swallow. “I know exactly where she’s going. You won’t be able to find her camp, but I can. And . . . she knows me.”

  The unspoken meaning hangs in the air.

  She knows me.

  She doesn’t know you.

  Something close to horror mixes with the agony on Rou’s face. I bite my lip, but I don’t break his gaze. I take a shuddering breath. “I’ll go. You stay with Eloise and send word to Queen Mona.”

  “Your parents—”

  “Won’t know until I’m back,” I say. “We’ll say I ran away. And I will, if you put me on that coach.”

  Rou’s face spasms—I’m being absolutely wretched, I know it—but before he can reply, Eloise gives a thick burst of coughing that she’s clearly been fighting to hold back. She hunches over, her hands over her mouth, struggling to draw a breath. Both Rou and I take one of her shoulders.

  Iano’s leaning against the window, his anxious face reflected in the panes. “They’re at the intersection.”

  “No,” Rou says to nobody, to all of us, almost on principle.

  Tamsin leaves our huddle, but instead of going to the window, she heads for the post manager, picking up the quill and inkwell on the table along the way.

  Eloise gulps a few breaths and straightens, her hand on her chest. I thread my shoulder under hers and look to Rou entreatingly. “I can do it. I did it once—let me do it again.”

  This despite the fact that Lark probably hates me and will never trust me again.

  “No,” he says again. “It’s not safe.”

  Eloise steadies herself and takes her father’s hand.

  “It’s not safe for any of us, Papa,” she whispers, siding—to my shock—with me. “I need you for this trip.” She takes a difficult breath but presses on. “We should focus on getting to Callais and sending word to Mother. She has to know. Let Veran go.”

  He mouths the word no again, but no sound comes out. He stares at Eloise as if unable to see her.

  Choosing, I realize. Choosing a child. All because I was too stupid to understand what was right in front of me.

  Oh, Light.

  Tamsin gives a little whistle from her conference with the post manager, half of which is scribbled on a blank page of the ledger. She beckons to Iano, who leaves the window and joins her. She plunges a hand into his inner cloak pocket and withdraws a handful of coin. She dumps them on the post manager’s ledger. The manager scrutinizes them, tallying them up.

  “Very well,” she says. “A single horse.”

  Tamsin raps the ledger, her face cool and intimidating even without a single spoken word.

  “And you weren’t here,” the manager agrees with a bow. “None of you were, save the two Eastern travelers taking the mud-coach.”

  Tamsin nods with satisfaction. She scribbles another few lines on the ledger, rips off the bottom of the page, and brings it to me.

  SOE URKETT

  GIANTESS FOREST TOWNSHIP

  “This is where you’re going?” I ask.

  She nods. I glance at Rou. I haven’t made clear—to any of us—whether I’ll return to Moquoia or Alcoro. If, of course, I catch up to Lark, and if she doesn’t murder me on sight, and if I can think of a single thing that might convince her to come back with me.

  The likelihood of success is not high.

  “I have to find Lark first,” I say. “But then . . .”

  There’s a new sound with the rain outside—a muddling of horses’ hooves in the mud, dim voices. Tamsin nods and claps my elbow, then tugs Iano toward the side door to the corrals. The post manager turns mildly away, taking the pile of coin to her lockbox and ignoring the rest of us.

  Rou seems to have been holding a breath for at least three minutes. I look back to him, and he finally exhales.

  “She’s my little girl,” he says, his voice cracked in a way I’ve never heard.

  “I guarantee you,” I say. “She’s got more chance of surviving than any one of us. It’s not a matter of whether she’ll be all right. It’s a matter of whether someone can get to her before she goes somewhere we can’t find her again. Once she gets to her camp, she won’t stay long. Please, Rou. Take care of Eloise, like she said.”

  He flattens his palm over his chest, as if his heart is literally breaking to pieces.

  “I can’t say yes,” he says, and then his breath hitches. He doesn’t go on. And I realize that maybe I’m part of this equation, too—that as mad as he is at me, if something happens to me out there, he’ll pile it on his conscience.

  “Then don’t say yes,” I say quickly. “Just get in the coach. Go, before the bells.”

  He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink.

  There’s thumping on the porch, and Eloise suddenly turns for the side door, her arm looped through mine. I stumble alongside her, throwing a glance over my shoulder at Rou’s cut-open face, wondering if he’s going to stall the Moquoian guard or simply stand as he is now, frozen and wrecked.

  Eloise drags me out of the bright posthouse and into the shadowy maze of parked carriages. Her breath is ragged.

  “I have to go now, Eloise.” I squeeze her arm in mine. “Please take care of yourself.”

  She squeezes back but doesn’t let go—she turns to me
and takes a fistful of my sodden tunic. I place my hand over hers, unsure if her grip is aggression or not. Her eyes glint in the slivered lantern light—Lark’s eyes. Was I too busy wondering if she was made of sky to see the same set of eyes I’ve been friends with my whole life?

  “I’m still mad at you,” she whispers hoarsely. “But I will be much madder if you die.”

  “I won’t die.”

  “You can’t promise that,” she says. “So don’t. Veran. I’m going to be taking care of Papa now, as much as he’s going to be taking care of me. I was too little to understand what happened to him after Matariki, but I know enough now. This will kill him, if it goes wrong. If you can’t find her, or if one of us dies on the trip . . .”

  “Don’t, Eloise, please don’t say that.” Eloise can’t die, she can’t, she can’t.

  “It’s more than a possibility, Veran—don’t pretend like it’s not. I’ve gotten away from fever in the past, and you from the bows, but luck is against us all now.” She shakes her head, her fingers trembling on my tunic. “Just come back alive, both of you. Don’t—” Her other hand jumps to cover my mouth. “Don’t promise. You can’t promise. Just do it.”

  I nod behind her fingers just as a door creaks, spilling light among the shadowy carriages. From the posthouse comes a voice arguing in stilted Moquoian, made worse with emotion.

  “I go, I go, look—yes, yes. I with my daughter go.”

  Eloise pushes me down the row of dark stagecoaches, turning back for the little mud-coach waiting in the rain. I don’t wait to watch them board—I steal among the lines of coaches and into the street on the far side.

  There are more guards in town, knocking on the doors of inns and demanding to see their registers. But there’s no raised alarm or shouts of discovery, so I can only assume Iano and Tamsin have managed to slip away—for now. As for me, it takes six side streets and a tiptoe across the roof of the general store to locate Kuree, and a breathless run through the rain to get her away from the town center. Bless this storm—it will certainly muddle any rogue tracks and curious sound, if it doesn’t drown the lot of us first.