She shoved open the door to the men’s washroom and saw that the man had pushed the girl up against the sinks and was loosening his belt.
“Get the hell out of here!” he ordered.
Kala stood her ground and peeked under the doors of the stalls to see if they had company. She turned and locked the door.
The man reddened with anger, pulled his belt free and advanced toward Kala, swinging the buckled end at her. She casually ducked under it, followed through with a walkover up the wall, caught the end of the swinging belt, and guided it around the man’s neck in one smooth motion. Grabbing both ends of the belt, she tightened it around his neck. He tried and failed to dislodge it, then struck at her futilely.
“I like your dress,” Kala told the frightened girl while choking her thrashing date.
She nodded, terrified.
“How about I take this lout off your hands, and you give me your dress?”
The girl glanced down, and her eyes widened with fear.
“No. I don’t expect you to walk out of here naked. We’ll trade clothes. You look about my size.”
The girl looked relieved and nodded. The man’s flailing gradually stopped, and Kala lowered him to the ground. The girls exchanged clothes, and both dressed quickly to avoid feeling vulnerable in their undressed state any longer than necessary.
Kala turned to the nervous girl who looked unconvincing in her server’s outfit. “Head straight for the kitchens and get the hell out of here through the back door. If anyone asks, tell them you’re done for the night. Understood?”
The girl nodded uncertainly.
“And get better taste in men.”
Kala unlocked the door and pushed the girl through it and past the line of impatient men that had formed.
“A guy got sick in there,” she explained to the man in front, pointing to the unconscious man on the bathroom floor. She turned the girl toward the kitchens and pushed her in their direction. Kala turned toward the women’s washroom and smiled to see that the man on the floor of the men’s washroom was being kicked out of the way by another patron.
Kala went straight to the mirror and pulled out the comb and makeup that Marija had given her. Her new dress was deep emerald and high-necked. She applied some mascara, stood back to take in her image, and reckoned she looked pretty good, all things considered. She left the washroom and made a beeline for the table of high-brow girls out on the town.
They were being propositioned by a drunk who was supporting himself on the back of an empty chair.
“That’s mine,” Kala informed him as she circled around and sat in the chair. “Be a dear and fetch me a drink.”
The man looked her over and wandered toward the bar.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked the girls.
“Be our guest,” the leader of the troupe replied. “You don’t look familiar.”
“Silly me. I’m Raven… with a ‘y,’” she announced, and introductions went around the table.
Kala drank and laughed with the girls, all the while scanning the room. Finally, the guards executed a shift change. A slightly better dressed, but entirely menacing-looking guard ended his shift and sat down at the bar.
“Watch this,” Kala told the girls. She pushed her chair back and walked up to the man.
She placed her hand on his arm and whispered his ear, “Want to go somewhere?”
He pulled his arm away and grumbled, “I work here, you idiot. Try that on someone else.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Wait a moment. You don’t work here.”
“Yup,” she said. “You’re drunk, and I’m attractive. Or is it the other way around?” she giggled.
He looked her over. “Have it your way,” he said, took hold of her arm, and downed his drink.
“Later,” he said to the bartender, who just nodded, and the man guided Kala toward the stairs.
Kala glanced over her shoulder at the girls, who looked shocked but raised their glasses in a salute. She allowed herself to be led up the stairs. At the second-floor landing, he looked left and right down the hall at the open and closed doors but decided instead to bring her to the third floor.
“Pretty,” Kala said, touching the breastplate of a guard they passed on the stairs. They passed several more before arriving at the third-floor landing. The guards at the door just sneered and let the man pull Kala through it and close it behind them.
In the antechamber, he looked about for an open room, and spotting one, pulled Kala toward it. Pushing her inside, he closed and locked the door behind him.
“Get undressed,” he ordered and began unbuttoning his tunic.
Kala didn’t react fast enough for his liking, and he backhanded her onto the bed.
“The dress opens in the back,” she said, not faking her fear.
“Gods-damn. Turn around,” he ordered.
She complied, and he reached for the zipper. Pulling it down, he noticed her black leathers tight against her body underneath. “What the hell?” he exclaimed.
Kala stomped her heel down hard on his foot, and as he bent forward, she smashed the back of her head under his chin.
“You bitch,” he declared, spitting blood. He swung and knocked her tumbling over the bed.
Kala wiped the blood from her mouth and pulled the dress off to free herself. The man advanced swinging. She ducked and punched him in the stomach. She swung around behind him and struck him in the kidneys, and as he stiffened, she hit him in the back of the neck. Her hand felt broken, but as he slumped forward, she climbed his back, wrapped her legs around his neck, and spun sideways. They ended up on the ground in a heap with her choking the air from his lungs. He struck at her legs repeatedly, and she winced at the pain each time. Gradually, his blows contained less and less force until they stopped altogether.
She extricated herself and kicked him repeatedly while trembling. She gradually got ahold of herself and searched his body for weapons. She found a dagger and added it to her belt to complement the two that she had strapped to her thighs.
They’d made a hell of a racket during the melee, so she opened the door a crack to peer out. No one had come to investigate the violence that was likely common on this floor. She breathed a sigh of relief and looked around. The antechamber led out to a great room that flickered with fire and candlelight. She glanced up at the ceiling and saw a familiar lattice of rafters.
She slipped out of the room and climbed up the doorframe as quietly as she could. Standing precariously atop the door, she leaped for the rafters and barely succeeded in grabbing one. She hauled herself up and made her way along the beams to the great room, wrapped in shadow.
Looking down, she spied a giant of a man sitting at a desk reviewing papers in front of a roaring fire. He seemed to fit the description that Rat had given her of Tito. He got up, scribbled a note, and placed it in a tiny opening in the wall. He pulled a cord, and Kala heard the faint chime of a distant bell over the crackling of the fire. He paced impatiently, and a couple of moments later, he pulled a cold drink from the opening and sat back down to his paperwork.
Kala continued along the rafters until she was directly over him. The heat from the fireplace was overpowering near the ceiling. She mopped the sweat from her brow and slowly pulled her daggers from their sheaths. She dropped from the rafters, landing on the man’s back, and brought her blades down on the sides of his neck. He writhed as blood spurted everywhere. Gradually, he stilled and slumped forward across his desk.
That was the easy part, Kala laughed to herself, thinking of the gauntlet of guards outside the door. Remembering the dumbwaiter, she circled round to it. It was tiny, but it looked like it could work. She returned to the fireplace and used tongs to pull out a burning log. She quickly circled the room, lighting several tapestries with it. She raced to the dumbwaiter, pulled the cord to signal the kitchens, and squeezed into it. She had to take shallow breaths so that the air in her lungs wouldn’t make her too big to fit.
The dumbwaiter began
to descend as smoke filled her lungs and wreaked havoc on her measured breathing. Passing an opening on the second floor, she burst out of her confinement into the hallway. She kicked open the closest door and told the girl inside about the fire upstairs. In the second room, a man and woman lay on the bed.
“Fire!” she told them, then scooped the girl’s clothes off the floor and raced out of the room. Kala reckoned she had little time before the fire spread, so she simply pounded on the closed doors as she ran past them. She halted outside the door that she remembered was Amber’s. She burst in and startled Amber in the embrace of an older man. Kala punched the man square in the face and told Amber to get the hell out of the building. She took a moment to pull on the clothes that she’d carried in with her from the second room, then bolted out, continuing to yell, “Fire!”
She ran for the stairs to the main floor. Smoke had begun billowing down from the third floor, and she joined the crush of people fleeing the second floor. The smoke was so thick that she could barely see. Choking, she tumbled out onto the tavern floor. People were fighting to escape the fire through the main doors, so she wheeled for the kitchens. She tore through the hallways at the back of the building, spilling out the rear exit into the alley.
She picked herself up, pushed through several disoriented staff, and ran down the alley. A block away, she slowed and hacked the last of the smoke out of her lungs. She leaned against a wall and vomited. She recovered and stumbled through the alley toward Baron’s.
Turning into the next alley, she heard a noise behind her. She grabbed the remaining dagger from her belt and hauled the young boy who had made it from the pile of garbage he was hiding in. She drew back her dagger hand.
“Raven!” a voice rang out.
She halted her downward strike and glanced about for the source of the voice.
Rat emerged from the shadows. “He’s just a boy,” he said, holding out his hands pacifyingly.
Fire danced in her eyes, but she shook her head and released her grip on the boy. He scurried away, and she broke down sobbing.
Rat approached slowly and helped her to her feet. She put her head on his shoulder and continued crying.
He smoothed her hair. “It comes back, you know,” he said.
She looked up at him, confused.
“Your soul. It comes back,” he said and guided her away into the night.
21
Forest
Nearly two years had passed since Kala left in the airship. Life at her grandfather’s cottage had fallen into a comfortable rhythm. Cera and Lily had both entered their seventeenth year and were now too old for the Offering. Forest was still too young, so none of them lived under the shadow of that threat.
Cera took an official position at the school alongside Kala’s grandfather. She looked after the younger children, while he taught the older ones. She was greatly loved by the children, especially when she’d gather them in a circle and tell them stories about Kala. Even though the Council had declared her a murderer, her status as an outlaw only added to her legend. Several parents reprimanded Cera for giving their children nightmares, and others for giving their children the idea that they wouldn’t be instantly devoured if they ventured into the woods.
Lily continued to work in the gardens. She was happiest when she returned home covered in dirt and aching all over. Cera would prepare her bath and Lily would soak in it for ages. For the first time in a long while, she was truly happy.
Forest slid into Kala’s mold as if time had simply been rewound. She was only twelve, but she defied authority of any kind and ventured into the woods alone as Kala had done before her. She hadn’t yet grown into Kala’s left-behind bow, but Kala had taught her how to recognize the best wood and her skills had advanced to a level at which she’d made a bow for herself that was almost on par with the quality of Kala’s work.
Forest was fearless, just like Kala, but unlike her, she was more interested in exploring than hunting when she was out of the village. While Kala had ranged only as far as needed to find game, Forest ventured much farther. She was tiny and moved easily in the shadows of the forest. Calix joked that she was alive only because she wasn’t even a mouthful for most predators. Forest smacked him but grinned.
Kala had shown Forest her treehouse, and it served her well as a staging area for her more distant excursions. She spent many nights in it and kept it in good repair.
The snow was beginning to melt, and the trees were starting to bud. Forest liked that the thinned-out foliage allowed her to see farther and more clearly than she could most of the year. She’d scale the highest trees and scout her next sortie.
She was up in such a tree one morning, farther than she’d ever been before, when she spotted a plume of thick black smoke rising in the distance. Many hills lay between her and it, so she wouldn’t have been able to see it from the ground. Something about it was terribly wrong. It wasn’t the season for fires: there was no lightning in the winter, snow covered anything that could burn, and it was too cold to sustain a fire. When the faint odor of the smoke finally reached her, something about it also smelled wrong.
Forest couldn’t let this strange occurrence go uninvestigated. She took bearings from various hilltops, laid out a course, and shimmied down the tree. It was a far hike, and she hadn’t much food left, but she’d endured hunger before. Water was more critical, but it was plentiful from the melting snow. She decided that she could make the trek and headed out along the path she held in her mind.
It was more than a day’s walk, given that she was wrapped thickly in furs, and the snowy ground made the going slow, so she had to shelter that night in a tree. Wisps of smoke continued to rise in the morning air, and this helped her reconfirm her bearings. She drank a little from a stream, rationed what little food she had left, and made for the source of the smoke.
Trudging through the woods, she crossed tracks made by enormous wolves. Given the size of the paw prints, they had to have been made by dire wolves, and Forest judged there to have been at least five or six. She froze initially, but on closer inspection noted that the tracks had hardened and were likely from much earlier in the day. Nevertheless, she changed course slightly to move more in the direction they’d come from, rather than the direction they’d been heading.
As she got closer to the source of the smoke, the air began to smell of death. She grew more cautious and began to feel exposed amidst the sparse foliage. She tried to move from evergreen to evergreen whenever possible for cover. The furs that covered her from head to toe were sewn from the white pelt of the dire wolf that Kala had slain, so she blended in well with her surroundings. The seamstresses were superstitious about the pelt, and it hadn’t been used when Forest had requested an outfit of white fur. They refused to touch it, so Lily had made it her personal project to sew it for her, and at the moment, Forest thanked the gods for her sister.
She edged closer to the hilltop that was the final barrier between her and the smoke. Nearing its top, she lay down and crawled forward slowly until she could just see beyond it. She beheld a scene of devastation such as she’d never witnessed. A village lay in ruin with bodies strewn about the streets. Hulking men wandered about, pulling clothing off the dead. Sometimes they weren’t entirely dead, and the men dispatched them as no more than an inconvenience.
Other men were looting the dwellings that still stood and loading goods onto wagons. Forest could see a wagon on which young children sat huddled together, crying.
A man at the center of the smoldering village caught her eye. He stood perfectly still, but still radiated menace. He surveyed the hills, and when his eyes moved past where Forest lay, she felt the chill of his gaze. She followed his eyes and spotted men moving through the trees searching for survivors. She crouched down farther, terrified that she’d be discovered.
She’d seen more than she wished to and stayed longer than she dared. She edged backward off the hilltop, realizing that even if she remained hidden, the impressions s
he had just made in the snow were plain to see. It was only a matter of time before one of the patrolling men came across them. Once out of sight, she bolted back along the path she’d come. She lost her footing and tumbled, but picked herself up and kept running. A shout rang out behind her.
Damn, damn, damn, she thought and ran as fast as she could through the drifts of snow. Other shouts joined in and erased all hope that it had nothing to do with her. She was a foolish girl who had just gotten herself killed or worse. She ran on but left so visible a trail that she had no doubt that she could be easily tracked and run down. Perhaps this would embolden her pursuers to follow more leisurely than she ran – she could only hope. Her legs burned, her pace slowed, and her hope fizzled.
She ran in spurts until she reached the wolf tracks and veered to follow them. If she were to die, it would be on her terms. Perhaps the men would fear the wolves and hesitate to follow. She followed the tracks for a long while but could still hear the sound of pursuit. The tracks hadn’t dissuaded them, or they’d also concluded that they weren’t fresh.
She plowed through brambles that scratched the parts of her face that were exposed. She almost got stuck in the dense branches and barely pried herself free. She spied a tiny stream, and this offered her some hope of splitting the men – she wasn’t so deluded as to think she could lose them entirely. She crashed through the brush and ran straight into the stream. Her boots had a measure of waterproofing, but they were designed for walking in snow, not water. It seeped in, and the brutal cold of it stung her feet. She hurriedly ran upstream, making no attempt to stay dry.
After a short distance, the stream cut through rock swept clear of snow by the wind. She thought she might leave less of a trail if she exited the creek there. She raced along the rock up a rise. She heard the sound of splashing in the distance and found herself imploring the aid of any god that would listen. The ridge didn’t stay free of snow long, and her tracks became visible once more, but hopefully out of sight of the stream. If there were multiple possibilities for the direction she may have taken, perhaps they would split up to investigate each of them or investigate all of them together.
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