She scooped up a bit of stew into her mouth with her spoon, unable to resist its enticing aroma, as Rose continued. “I was a bit surprised when he showed up at my doorstep without you or Shira and with a coupla little girls that resembled him quite a bit more than you do.”
Mariah smiled sheepishly through her mouth full of stew. She chewed slowly, remembering that wolfing it down would just cause it all to come back up. She had been living on mice and voles for the past few days and on barely anything for a week before that. To distract herself, she focused her attention back on Rose.
“They wouldn’t tell me what was going on. Xae was polite and thanked me for everything I offered, but he wouldn’t tell me why he was back, why he had come ahead of you, or where you were. He only told me to tell you that they had been here and when and that they had to go home and couldn’t wait. Those girls, they looked haunted. They were silent as mice and didn’t smile a bit.
“They all left at dawn the next morning, walking the beach toward Quell. They told me that you and Shira were behind them by a bit and that you’d have company.” She laughed. “I thought he was mad, thinking the beach would get them to Quell faster than the road, but he’s old enough to see to the girls, and they were not mine to mind, so I let them go.
“I fretted all week, mind you, until my daughter finally showed herself two days ago and told me everything. Everything, Mariah.”
“Shira’s here? What about Simone?”
Rose nodded, her face pinched up a bit. “They’re both here, both sleeping. They’ve been through a lot.” She reached across the table and grabbed Mariah’s hand. “You saved my girl’s life and those children’s mother’s life, too. Shira said you were captured helping them and some others escape, but my girl, she had an arrow in her leg, and she ran like mad for days with that woman on her back, all the while grieving for you, thinking you enslaved and maybe dead.
“When she made it back here, she barely let me tend to her, although Simone had done a fair job of it already. Shira barely stepped foot in the inn before she was raving about going back and finding you. I doubt I would have been able to keep her here much longer, even though she didn’t know where you’d been taken and she herself’s been limping about like a crab missing three legs.”
At that news, Mariah found herself smiling like an idiot.
* * *
Mariah’s reunion with Shira the next morning was fierce and ebullient, just as Shira herself tended to be. Her limp was much slighter than Mariah expected, her having taken the arrow only a week ago, but Shira confessed that although it still hurt some when she walked, it hurt much more when she sat down. They talked about the time they had spent apart while Shira’s parents took care of the business of arranging a boat to take Mariah and Simone across the sea to Eiocliff.
A hollowness filled Mariah when Shira told her that they had not seen Ruby or her uncle since they fled the drudge camp. She wasn’t even sure that they had made it out. “Mind you, I wasn’t lookin’ back for a long time after I ran from that place.” She touched Mariah’s arm. “There’s hope, though. The bindin’s gone.” She pulled up her sleeve to show Mariah that the skin on her arm where Loleon had bitten her was smooth and unmarked, as was her own. “Maybe that’s good news.”
Mariah tried to smile, but Loleon had asked them to kill Faylan if he couldn’t be returned, so if Shira was right, if the binding had been satisfied, then Faylan was either home or dead. And probably Ruby along with him. She wanted to know, but her first priority was to finish her own mission and return Xae’s mother to him.
Simone was much quieter and more reserved than Shira, but Mariah wondered how much of that was her worry over her children rather than her personality. They hadn’t yet had time to get to know each other, but she had been told that the trip over the sea to Eiocliff would take them at least a week, depending on the weather. There would be time.
Although it was only the Caden family and not the whole village that was privy to her secret, Mariah felt strangely comfortable in Grof, as if it was a second—or third—home to her now. Near the end of the second afternoon, she and Shira had wandered down to the beach near the docks where they had met for the first time.
“I’d a funny feeling about you the first time I saw you,” Shira said.
“You say that now,” Mariah said, “only because of what has happened.”
“No, I knew.”
Mariah stopped and turned to her friend, clasping her hands. “Shira, I’m worried.”
“What? About what the man in your dream told you?”
Her face screwed up at the mention of him. “No. Well, not exactly. When you figured out what I was, you knew me, had heard the story of my escape from Eaglespire. What if someone puts it all together? You said that the Trappers were deliberately using the children’s families against them. What if that’s the same for all of the Ceo San? Tibbot seemed alone, maybe that’s why Rothgar couldn’t control him, even with the cuffs. He had no family to be held against him.”
“What are you getting at, lady?” Shira asked.
“I’m sorry, it’s just my mind keeps racing with all these possibilities. What if Rothgar or the Trappers know who my parents are?”
Shira’s lips turned down in an uncharacteristic frown, and she nodded.
Mariah continued. “If I leave Varidian again, will they be left alone?” A possibility occurred to her that had pain lancing through her heart. “Were they taken when I left the first time?”
Shira squeezed her hand and patted her on the back before she resumed walking up the beach toward the town, leaving the sea at her back. “It will do you no good to let your mind go running down those trails, lady. I’ll see to your parents. I’ll find a way to get news of them and a warning if they are still there, even if I have to do it myself.”
“You’d do that? But they might be looking for you.”
Shira turned to her, pausing midstride. “Why? When Cam went missin’, most people prob’ly suspected he got drunk, did somethin’ stupid, and got himself killed.” She paused. “I suppose that’s exactly what he did.” Mariah hoped she was right. Shira took a deep breath and ruffled Mariah’s hair. “We’re sisters now, featherhead. I’ve always wanted a sister. Yes, I’ll do this thing for you. After I’ve been to Eaglespire, I’ll have a letter sent to your people in Wellspring.”
In a rare bout of her own enthusiasm, Mariah threw her arms around Shira and squeezed her tightly, ignoring the soreness of her injured wrists. “Thank you.” The words hardly seemed enough, but they would have to do.
“I do hope you’ll come back anyway, visit us sometime.”
Mariah leaned back and looked at Shira, the words of the cat-eyed man rolling through her head. The Ceo San need a leader, a leader to break them free of the slavery that Rothgar has imposed so that they may fulfill their purpose.
“I … I …” She wanted to equivocate, but that was the woman she had been back in Firebend, when she’d fled from Gwyneth’s request to help Xae.
Despite the truth of the cat-eyed man’s words about her escape, she couldn’t quite believe that she was capable of breaking a whole nation free of slavery, but she did know one thing. With the help of a few friends, she had been capable of freeing four people. Maybe with a little more preparation and some more help, she could help a few more.
“I need to help Simone and make sure the children got home safely. I need to see to my loved ones in Wellspring and check on my own home, make sure bears haven’t moved in.” She laughed and put an arm around her friend as they turned and continued into the main part of the village. “But I’ll come back, Shira. I promise I’ll come back.”
The End
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Mariah’s story will continue in Book 2, Revelation of the Dragon
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