“Welcome to the mob,” said their captor, gesturing for them to come with her up a long, sprawling flight of stairs running through the centre of the stepped incline of the land. Vanita wondered at the sudden attitude change – it was not as though they could run in their chains. But her curiosity soon overwhelmed her reservations, and she began looking around in earnest.
She had wondered how a ragtag single marauder could afford real iron chains, and now she knew – whatever this place was, it had been a great manse once at least on par with Rhodopalais. These steps were murky gradations of grey and brown, but she suspected they might once have been white marble, like the palace steps she and Ash had climbed so very long ago when everything wasn’t yet ruined. As they climbed higher on the stairs, lopsided bits of threadbare cloth and blackened wood started cropping up on the former lawns beside the stairs, which seemed to be tents. Grubby people the same colour as the tents scowled at them from both sides, and there were even one or two dirty children running around in amongst the mess.
“We have some few children left,” said the tanned woman with an air of pride as she caught Vanita looking at them. “Because we’re bigger and maraud outside our own, we’re one of the few mobs that haven’t eaten our young.”
Vanita didn’t know quite what to say to this, but luckily, they seemed to be nearing the top of the stairs. The tents were coming thicker and faster now, with no spaces in between each ramshackle dwelling, and slightly thicker cloth propped up on slightly less spindly and charred-looking beams of wood. Up ahead, was the pale grey stone of a pillared entrance arch, just visible between the scraps of brown and black cloth that were fastened to it on all sides to make still more tents.
“I know this place,” said Mother suddenly. “This is the Powiser manse. That’s their coat of arms up ahead.”
“You’re right,” said Vanita, looking around. It had been unrecognisable to her before, but now she could see it – the gleaming grey marble steps to match the house’s grey heraldry, the pots of white scented roses on either side of this staircase, and down just below them used to be the maze where she’d played hide and seek with the other children in garden parties long ago. Seeing it like this now shook her more than she could say. Not that she needed say anything – the tanned mercenary woman was already speaking again:
“Well, whoever the Powisers are, they’re long gone. We found this place like this, set up here temporarily because of the stairs, easily defensible, see? But the place itself was already carved out like a pumpkin. We think maybe there’d been carriors nesting on the roof and just got too clumsy with the place. Anyway, enough talk now, we’re here.”
As they reached the former entrance arch, two men stepped out from the shadows, holding aristocratic-looking swords that looked ridiculous in their scrawny, dirty hands.
“What you got for us here then, Safi? Dinner or entertainment or both?”
“They’re going straight to Rayce for questioning, strict orders.”
“Again? Hmm, well, before you get all stabby-stabby with this one, pass her here? I’ve got some questions and stabbing of my own to do.”
The man had almost no teeth left. He opened his black hole of a mouth into a grin and winked at Vanita. Mother strode forward and stood in front of her, glaring, but the “Safi” woman already had her twin blades drawn, casually pointing them at either man.
“What’s the one rule of the mob?” she asked lazily.
“The strong survive and have respect and safety.” They answered together, stupidly, like boys before a governess.
“And have either of you ever beaten me in blades?”
“No.”
“Either of you ever been sent out on a mission alone, so great were your abilities?”
“No.”
“Then let me pass, with my bounty, and keep your necks attached to the rest of you.”
In the dim gloom of the inner courtyard, what was left of it, there seemed to be a poor man’s war council happening. Stone garden furniture covered with hay, to make it more comfortable supposedly, was dotted around in a loose circle with men sitting around, talking heatedly, being fed by skeletal, sad-looking women. Their higher rank was clear – each was wearing isolated scraps of armour or strips of leather tied over their smocks in places, a far cry from the thin cheesecloth beggars” clothes everyone outside wore. Vanita and her mother, in their worst rags, were by far the best-dressed in the room.
“What have we here?” said the one in the most leather and armour whom Vanita assumed was the leader. “These your souvenirs?”
“Yes, Rayce.”
‘Rayce” turned to face them both, drawing a dagger from who knows where and pointing it, gesturing for them to stand near a steep small ravine in the courtyard where a carrior must have fallen. Vanita’s heart lurched at the sight of it – it was the same pit, where she would be stabbed in the lung. Now, though, she saw her wispy outline bound and gagged in Rayce’s straw bed for a week first. She also saw Mother, spun around a circle of men, each with their fleshy dirty hands outstretched to have their turn with her. Without shame, she leaned over and retched bile onto the floor.
Rayce was already leering at her, she saw as she straightened, but his voice was bored as he spoke, as if he had said the same words half a hundred times.
“Are you from the palace?”
“The palace? No. We’re from Rhodopalais.”
“Ooh, fancy… So you’ve had no contact with anyone from inside the palace?”
Vanita’s heart beat even faster. Did he know something about Ash? “No.”
“And no one has passed you a message for this mob?”
“No.”
He sighed. “It’s definitely not her, I would’ve remembered the eye all messed up like that, even though she’s a hoity toity. What a waste. I’m getting tired of this. Oh well.”
“Rayce –”
“Thanks all the same Safi, you’re a good girl, nice and strong. If I hadn’t been in the army here in Germania myself, you’d have been stronger and leading this lot.” The two stared at each other, hard, but just before it became unbearable, the Rayce man smiled without mirth. “Yet here we are. Tanoak will give you your earnings.”
“Wait. There’s something you should know before I leave. Tanoak, bring in Lar.”
Five minutes later, Vanita fought down the urge to retch as she came face to face again with the man who would’ve raped her. He blanched at the sight of her too. “You see,” the Safi woman was saying, “this is the one that spooked Lar so – I should’ve recognised her the first instance but, well, it was dark, and this is not my country as you know. I didn’t realise it was the same manse. But we thought she was a witch. Today, she saved my life from a rival mob. And it wasn’t just that, she knew the things I was going to do before I did them. Then this old one here says it’s “Path powers’. So I thought you should know.”
And in that instant, Vanita knew how they would survive. She whispered just loud enough so only her mother could hear. “What are your Path powers again?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
These are the times
Conversation had erupted all around them – Lar pointing, looking green, Rayce yelling and Safi yelling back, while all the other men that had been sitting docile and quiet suddenly stood up and started gesticulating wildly too.
“What are your Path powers?” Vanita hissed again. “I know you can’t see the same… so what is it?”
“I’m a kinetic – well, I was. It means I can move things or give the illusion of moving them. But that was before, I haven’t used them in years. It’s like a muscle, if you let it stagnate –”
“I need you to use them now.”
“But -”
“Listen to me for once, Mother. Follow my lead, starting with the tent – that piece there, do you see it? This is the only way we survive.”
Rayce and Safi were almost at blows when Vanita started talking in her loudest, most proclamatory
voice. “Mob, you have been judged by the Path, but there is a way to avoid justice!”
The tent scraps directly above the men who had just stood up suddenly loosened themselves and fell on those below, muffled their yelling and bringing Rayce and Safi into sudden silence. Vanita put out her hand towards Rayce, and as she did, so did her mother. Within seconds he was on his knees, choking, as Vanita carried on talking to a wide-eyed Safe and a snivelling Lar.
“You cheat and steal – well, those are the times. But to take the lives of others is treason to the Path. You say you live by strength. I’ve heard your words – that only the strong survive and have respect and safety. Which of you is stronger than the Path? Well, now the Path has sent two to guide you.”
And, although they did not have any invisible kinetic hands about their throats, as one both Safi and Lar kneeled.
***
Sometime later in the day, a thick, meaty smoke assaulted Vanita’s nostrils.
She followed the smell back to the pit she had almost been thrown into, stabbed and murdered. The black stench was billowing up from there.
“What is it?” she asked Safi.
She blinked. “It’s Lar. I told them all how he tried to lay hands on the Pathfinder, rape her. This is the mob’s way of blotting out great sin.”
Vanita’s stomach twisted inside her, but strangely her mind was calm. This man had tried to take something valuable from her, instead something had been taken from him. She knew she had power now, and it cloaked her in a way she couldn’t have imagined ever feeling safe, not ever.
A month ago, a lifetime ago, Vanita would have cried for the man, tried to convince anyone in hearing that this was not her doing, she was a nice girl, she was no killer. But this was now. She walked over to the smoke, where ashes of Lar were beginning to fall from the sky.
The mob watched in awe as their new Pathfinder both exulted in and respected the dead man. She raised her eyes to heaven as ashes slowly fell onto her face.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Let them go
It was strange, the things that would bring you back from dying. For Ash, it wasn’t her dead sister’s face that woke her on the fourth day, nor the memory of her skin that still itched around the finger the prince had garlanded with a ring. It was a pumpkin tart that had wafted into her dreams and was so sweet, so perfect, that it had woken her up. She lay there in silence, mouth watering.
She was hungry, of course she was, but she was quite used to hunger by now. It wasn’t that. It was exactly the sort of thing the old Ash, Ashlynne, would have dreamt. Long ago, when she thought the future held a baker’s stall for her, she would awake in the middle of the night in her noble brat’s bedroom with full recipes that had just come to her in the night. They had filled her with excitement and hope and it seemed that that pattern were still there because, try as she might, she couldn’t help but feel the sunshine of that old remembered feeling creeping in.
She would make it, she decided. Go down to the kitchens while it’s still night and no one was around and just make it, quick. Not even eat it, just make one single, perfect pumpkin tart left for someone else. Maybe Tarah. Then she would come back here and starve, having left at least one thing of sweetness in the world that she hadn’t ruined.
She was halfway down the second corridor when a familiar laugh and a higher-pitched giggle echoed out of Naomi Verraine’s bedroom.
The duke had said Derrick would be all alone in the world without her, that he was all the family she had left. She had forgotten about that in the sheer agony of grief but now she remembered again, and without knocking threw open the door.
“Ash?” Derrick blinked at her in surprise, leaning over a piece of parchment. Fully clothed over a piece of parchment. A piece of parchment that was covered in large ungainly letters drawn in ink. With Naomi watching him, ink pot in hand, fully clothed too.
“Well met, Ashlynne, can I help you?”
Damn them, now she was blushing, she could feel it. “I – I’m sorry I… thought that…”
She didn’t get further because Derrick was upon her in two seconds, enfolding her in his familiar scent and one of his bearish, warm hugs. “Ash… I heard. I’m so, I mean… I can’t believe it.”
With Naomi watching on, they cried together for a while.
When they were done and pulled apart, the lady in the room coughed politely. “Derrick, why don’t you go back to your quarters and we’ll finish this exercise tomorrow?”
Derrick nodded like a dutiful schoolboy and left with practised quietness, sneaking out the door. As soon as he was gone, Ash irrationally felt angry, made a fool of, and she glared and Naomi’s placid face.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
The placid surface of the pretty blonde face broke into surprise, then rearranged itself into a grim smile. “Of course you did. The ladies assumed it, as did most people, and I let them. It’s an old parlour trick for getting a nobleman’s affections.”
“The duke’s?”
“Yes. Well, no, not him specifically. Just… someone. To be honest, it’s what is expected around here. And it’s also a signifier of status amongst ladies, always has been. Bella and Mary and who knows who else would most certainly have snared him if I hadn’t got to him first, and I guarantee they wouldn’t be teaching writing and reading.”
“No, I expect not. And it’s a wonderful thing that you did. I always meant to teach Derrick, just never got around to it… Which brings me back to my first question: why not tell me?”
Naomi sighed. “At first, I assumed he had, you two always seemed so close. Then when I saw him strutting around on my arm when you happened to walk by, I intuited the truth: rather than me using him to spark a duke’s jealously, he was using me for the same thing. I’m sorry. And I should have said something to you, in all those afternoons embroidering, it’s just that… It’s second nature to conceal rather than reveal at court. It just is. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to be open in the same way that I’m sure it wouldn’t have occurred to you to keep the truth hidden for strategic reasons. What a mess this all is. I am truly sorry.”
Ash nodded, her anger clearing, and smiled at the woman. Nothing bad was happening to her last remaining family here, and the heady idea of pumpkin tartlets was still fresh in her mind. “You take care of him,” she whispered, and snuck quietly out the door.
***
Ash expected the kitchens to be cool and dark and silent, but she thought she heard faint muffled whispering. Still, there was no flicker of candlelight, she must have imagined it. She carried on padding down the passageway on silent bare feet.
When the whispering came again, clearer this time, she drew her knife and crouched. Bandits. Who else would be roaming around talking without a light to identify them? Anger flared up in Ash when she imagined Tarah and Mater and the rest of them coming in to the kitchens for an honest day’s work to find their precious few tools gone or – worse – someone less honest lying in wait for them. A pretty girl like Tara… no, Ash couldn’t allow that to happen to her.
Keeping low, Ash crept through the doorway as fast as possible, sticking to the curve of the wall. A brief crouched dart on her haunches got her to the nearest marble slab-covered table, big enough to hide behind. She breathed out slowly, twice, and readied her knife.
Which was when she heard Tarah’s voice, clear in the darkness:
“I told you already, there’s not enough time. If we’re going to take it from the inside it has to be now. She said the next one was Motte Greens, well, the words she “used were “motte something’, and a bailey and motte castle means –”
“Means kitchens far removed from the hall and everything else, down a long wooden tunnel, closer the guards” house and the watchmen. And then we get hanged for treason if we so much as try a thing. Not ideal. We know.” This one was a man’s voice, Weasley and conniving. Not Walters. Someone else. “What do we do, boss?”
And then Mater’s.
“Sure.”
“Then we move tomorrow at the evening supper. We’ve no choice. Are the tarts readied?”
“All ready and laced. They’re well out of sight of the others, so Iphigeneia an” me serving them won’t look too odd once we’ve got the rest of the kitchen with their meal. Also prepared, before you ask.”
“Then all that’s left after is to deal with those few that won’t be in the hall like Lord Verraine and then we walk straight up unannounced for the overthrow.”
‘Ambush’, “treason’, “overthrow’… the words rang like a bell for Ash in the silent dark. In that brief moment, Ash was reminded suddenly of Tansy – sweet-faced Tansy, who had wanted a church wedding with whoever was willing and not much else in life. This would have been as foreign to Tansy as walking on the moon – was that why Ash was so surprised? Was this how servants who weren’t Tansy thought?
Briefly, under the cover of darkness, Ash allowed her cheek to rest against the cool marble and closed her eyes. Without realising, she had made judgments on her new world, this castle, and every judgment seemed to be wrong. The Pathfinders she’d thought were evil were good, the prince she’d thought she’d loved was… well who knew what he was. Perhaps she loved him still, perhaps she didn’t. Naomi Verraine was a saint, Tarah was a sinner. And people had died for it. What had become of her clearly ordered world of right and wrong? Where would she fall on that right and wrong scale now?
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