I thought of Archmagus Rolan, still fighting even after he’d been blown up. “How long, Miles?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. A day, maybe? If that?”
“Untreated,” Zell said, and we all turned to look at him. He was standing against the base of the tree, his eyes closed. It was the first thing he’d said since we’d gotten here. “You said ‘an untreated sting.’ Does that mean there’s a way to treat it? A cure?”
“Well, no, not a cure, but there are some medicines that can help the body slow down or even fight it off, if you can get them in time,” Miles said. “I believe the best-known antidote is a tonic of crushed embrium root, Orlesian ash, and a dilution of—”
“We don’t need the details, Miles,” Jax interrupted. “Where do we get these things? Can we find them here?”
Miles looked at him like this was the single most ridiculous idea he’d ever heard. “No, of course not. These ingredients are rare, valuable, hard to get. Orlesian ash is imported from Orles, all the way on the Eastern Shore. To get the kind of medicine Lyriana needs, we’d have to buy it from an apothecary.”
“Like in Bridgetown,” I said. I almost didn’t want to, because having even a glimmer of hope felt like a setup for disappointment, but I couldn’t not. “They’d have it there, right?”
The others turned to look at me. I could tell we were all thinking the same thing. “Well, yes,” Miles said. “Given how close Bridgetown is to so many mining communities, they’d likely have some skarrling antidote.”
“Bridgetown is just a few hours away,” Jax said. “We could be there and back before morning.”
“Miles said Lyriana could last a whole day.” I started walking toward the horses. “If we can get her that antidote in time, she might have a shot.”
“What are you all talking about?” Miles cut in, obviously not on the same page at all. “Sure, Bridgetown has the antidote, and it might help Lyriana…but so what? We have no way of getting it. We’re the most wanted fugitives in the whole Province, remember? We can’t just stroll in there, find the nearest apothecary, and buy some medicine. There’ll be City Watchmen on the lookout for us, WANTED posters with our faces, maybe even soldiers from Castle Waverly. Riding in there would be suicide!”
“So what?” Jax spun on him. “We just let her die? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, of course not. But we can’t throw our own lives away to save hers!”
“If she dies, we die,” I said. “The only shot we have at getting out of this is to reunite Lyriana with the mages, remember? What do you think will happen if she dies? They’ll just take us at our word?” I shook my head. “We have to try to save her. It’s our only chance.”
“I understand that, but what do you want to actually do?” Miles demanded. “We’ll be arrested the moment we cross the city gates!”
“Will we?” Jax asked. “Because I’m not so sure.”
“What are you talking about? That WANTED poster with our descriptions is probably hanging on every corner in the town!”
“I know, but…” Jax hesitated, suddenly insecure, the way he only got when he was afraid he was about to say something stupid. “Look. This has been bugging me the whole time. It might be dumb, but it’s not like we have another option, right?” Jax knelt down and dug in his pack until he found the WANTED poster and unfurled it on the ground.
“What about it?” Miles asked skeptically.
“Well, it tells people what we look like, right?” He read it aloud, slowly and choppily—Jax had never been much of a reader. “‘A Zitochi male, age sixteen, with black hair down to his shoulders…a pale-skinned male, age sixteen, with blond curls framing a smooth, round face…’”
“What’s your point?”
“Well,” Jax said, “what if we just didn’t look like that? You know, we cut our hair, put on an eye patch, that kind of thing. Hell, you’ve got a beard already, Boy Genius. That’s half a disguise right there.”
“You’re right,” I said, and Zell nodded. Jax was onto something, and even in this tense moment, I felt a small surge of pride for him. “That could work.”
“Maybe,” Miles said at last. “You might be right. But what are you proposing? We put on disguises, ride straight into Bridgetown, and try to buy the antidote before anyone recognizes us? That’s our plan?”
“You have a better one?” Jax replied. “Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re kind of running out of time.”
We all stared at Miles. He thought wordlessly for a while, then let out a long, deep sigh. “All right. Let’s do this.”
This time around, we didn’t have to debate who was going. Miles was obviously in, since he was the only one who had any idea what medicine we were supposed to be getting. Zell was going, too; if the disguises didn’t work, he was the only shot we’d have at fighting our way out. Jax, on the other hand, would have to stay back. If our little camp here got found, Lyriana would have to be with someone who could pick her up and move her in a hurry.
That just left me. And without hesitating, I volunteered to go into town. I said it was because it was better to send more people, to increase the chances one of us got back with the medicine. But that was just an excuse. The truth was, I would’ve done absolutely anything rather than sit around and watch Lyriana die.
We didn’t have much in the way of disguises, but we did what we could. Zell and Miles headed into the river, where Zell shaved Miles’s head with one of his daggers. With his distinctive curls gone and that stubbly beard lining his chin, Miles looked nothing like the boy we’d set out with. He looked like a man now, and a weirdly tough man, like a guy who’d spent the last decade hungover in a gutter.
Zell was next. I cut his hair, slicing off all those long black locks with his dagger. We decided to cut it short on the sides and back, a little longer on the top but parted to the side, a look common among Western soldiers and mercenaries. As we sat together in the shallow waters at the river’s edge, avoiding each other’s eyes as his hair floated in the water around us, I remembered when I first saw him across the Hall at the feast. How could I have possibly imagined where we’d end up? I’d thought he was beautiful, dangerous. But I hadn’t known a thing about him, really. Did I know him now?
A few wisps of hair clung to the side of his head, just above his ear, so I reached over and brushed them off, and as my fingertips grazed the soft skin, I realized my hand was trembling. What was this? Why did I feel so nervous, my breath sucked tight in my chest? It’s not like we were strangers to contact. Hell, we spent two hours a day grappling in the dirt. But there was something different to this touch, something that made my heart race. There was a tension in the air, a hunger, so thick you could taste it.
Zell must have noticed, because he glanced back over his shoulder. With his hair cut so short, his eyes were even more striking, but there was something new in them, a vulnerability, a hint at a tenderness inside him that I was just beginning to see.
It scared me.
“Here,” I said, handing him back the dagger. “It’s a little better than the last time I cut someone’s hair, but that was when I was seven and ended up nearly shaving Jax bald.” It was a joke, a dumb one, to try to break that tension. It failed. Something had changed, something I didn’t have the time or emotional energy to fully consider right now.
Then it was my turn to get disguised. I couldn’t just cut off my hair without drawing more attention, but Zell had an idea. He got a small leather kit out of one of the mercenaries’ packs and opened it, revealing a half-dozen vials full of multicolored powders. He mixed them together in the water, the reds and blues and yellow swirling like magic around his fingertips, and then, very gently, rubbed it on my face, squinting the whole time, like a painter working on a masterpiece. I had no idea what he was doing, and I was kind of afraid I’d come out looking like a clown from a vagabond troupe. But his touch was soft and delicate, and that made me trust him. In the waning pink light, he ran
his fingertips along my face, and the nightglass shards on his knuckles sparkled like stars. It was hard to believe these were the same hands that killed so readily.
Then he finished, slapping his palms together with satisfaction, and I took a look at my reflection. I didn’t know how he’d done it, but Zell had worked a miracle. He’d added thin black lines, like wrinkles, that aged me a good decade, and made my normally thin eyebrows dark and full. He’d reddened my lips, filled out the bags under my eyes, and given me a distinctive mole on my right cheek.
“Wow,” I said. “Good work. I look totally gross.”
“You’re welcome,” Zell replied sincerely. “I think this might be some of my finest work.”
“Do I even want to know where you learned to do this?”
“My mother was a zhantaren, a…How do I say this? Your closest word is ‘actress,’ but she was much more than that. At every feast, there would be plays telling of our Clan’s history, going back to the Era of Legends, when men and Gods lived as one. My mother led these plays and performed the most important parts. She had to know how to change her face, to look like Khellza, the Great Mother, or Rhikura, the crone queen of the Underworld.” He got that distant look on his face again, the one where he looked peaceful and lost.
“You and your mother are close?” Zell seemed like such an outsider that it hadn’t even occurred to me that he had loved ones left back among his Clan. It made me feel that much worse about him running off with us.
Zell nodded. “As the elder, Razz was always my father’s favorite. He was his spitting image…aggressive, loud, full of boasts. My father didn’t share his cruelty, but Razz could always hide it when he was around. I am much more like my mother. It is seen as unbecoming, weak, for Zitochi men to be quiet, to hide their passions, but I always preferred it. And so does she.” He sighed, a tiny little smile on his face, and looked down at his dye-stained hands. “When I was little, she taught me the art of face-painting. It was a game for us, seeing how different we could make ourselves look. I always wanted to be a zhantaren. But, of course, only women were allowed.”
I cocked my head to the side. “I’m starting to realize there’s a lot I don’t know about Zitochi.”
Zell nodded. “I’ve known that for some time.”
We made our way back to the willow tree. Jax was kneeling by Lyriana’s side, holding a damp cloth to her forehead, and he looked up as we approached. “Wow,” he said. “Miles looks like a deranged hermit. Tilla looks like a middle-aged spinster. And Zell looks like…well, like Zell with a haircut.”
Zell let out a tiny sigh. “I was worried about that.”
Lyriana arched up and let out a horrific gasping cough, one that sounded like it scraped all the way up from her diaphragm, taking most of her lungs on the way. Jax held her until her hacking died down. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Then he wiped his hand along her chin, and when he turned it over, the back of it was stained red. “Ah shit,” he muttered, and he looked like he’d never tell another joke in his life. “You guys gotta go. You gotta go now.”
Mile and Zell took off, leaving me alone with Jax. He sat there on the ground, Lyriana sprawled across his lap, and his hand shook just a tiny bit as he pressed the damp cloth to her head. I’d seen him sad and I’d seen him angry, but I’d never seen him like this before, so tender and nurturing.
“Jax…” I struggled to find the words. “This isn’t your fault. It really isn’t.”
He shook his head. “You can say that, Tilla. Doesn’t make it true.” He gently ran the cloth along Lyriana’s cheek. She shivered. “I gave her so much shit. So much shit. And for what? To get a laugh?” He let out a long exhale. “If she dies…”
“She won’t.” I knelt down, wrapped my arm around his big shoulders, and gave him a hug. For a moment, I saw the gravity of the situation, like glimpsing a huge shadow under you when you’re swimming. This might well be the last time I hugged my brother, the last time I talked to him, the last time we ever saw each other. This could be the end.
I blinked the thought away. I didn’t have time for it. “I love you, big brother,” I said, and pressed my forehead to his. He closed his eyes and hugged me back. “We’ll get through this. We’ll save her.”
“We’d better.”
“SO, I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT our cover story,” Miles said, maybe ten minutes after we rode out from the camp.
“Our what?” I asked. We were still in the woods, trotting our horses through increasingly thin undergrowth as we made our way toward a main road. Walking this slow felt wasteful; I wanted to gallop toward Bridgetown. But of course that would draw attention, especially this early in the day and this close to civilization. So instead we trotted along, edging forward while Lyriana lay dying back under that willow tree.
“Our cover story,” Miles repeated. “I mean, what are we going to say if anyone asks who we are or why we’re in town? We’ll need to be able to say something believable.”
I glanced at Zell, and he shrugged. “We don’t need to make up something fancy, Miles,” I said. “Why can’t we just be three friends traveling together?”
“Because we’re buying skarrling antidote?” Miles replied, as if this were incredibly obvious. Which, okay, maybe it was. “That’s not exactly a common purchase. It’s going to raise questions. Questions we need to be ready to answer.”
“Fine. It sounds like you’ve already got something planned out.”
Miles nodded. “I’ve been thinking about it, yes. What do you think of this? Tilla, you and I are newlyweds from Malbrec, a small town just outside Port Hammil.”
“We’re what now?”
“Newlyweds,” Miles repeated, and could he actually be oblivious to why that was weird? “Our families are well-off, though not wealthy. Yours runs the local inn, while mine provides protection to merchants traveling around the North. As the second son, I find myself trapped in the shadow of my successful brother, desperate to prove myself, especially to my father before his ailing health fails him.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?” Zell asked. “And how does it actually help us get the antidote?”
“I’m getting there!” Miles grumbled. “As a wedding present, a distant uncle of mine gifted me several acres of land up in the Northwest, past the Morning Lakes, but just shy of the Borderlands. This is barren frostland, unfarmable, mostly worthless…except my uncle swears up and down that the hills there are rich with gold, just waiting to be mined. While most think it’s a fool’s errand, I’m convinced there’s truth in his words, so I’m setting out, along with my new wife, to inspect the territory for myself. And given that we’ll likely be venturing into caves and scouting for mines…”
“You’ll want the antidote on hand, just to be safe.” Zell nodded. “Clever. But how do I fit in?”
“You are the Zitochi bodyguard and guide we’ve hired to show us the way!” Miles exclaimed. “After all, who would know the land better?”
Zell nodded again and actually seemed a little impressed. I had to admit, it wasn’t a bad cover story, but part of it didn’t sit right with me. It’s not hard to guess which. “Uh, do we have to be newlyweds?” I asked. “I mean, can’t we be siblings?”
Zell shook his head. “That’s harder to believe. You look nothing alike.”
Thanks, Zell.
“Plus, we lose the whole element of the wedding gift, which the story hinges on,” Miles complained. “I’ve thought about this a lot. This is the story that makes the most sense.”
“Yeah, but it…it just seems weird….”
“What’s weird about it?” Zell asked.
I tried to think of a way to answer his question without just telling him the whole truth, and came up with nothing. Miles guided his horse toward mine ever so slightly, and my gaze met his. I could tell that we were both thinking the same thing, wanting to address the issue hanging in the air, the tension we’d been avoiding ever
since his ill-advised confession. I kind of hated him for bringing it up like this.
Then I glanced at Zell, at the grave look on his face, and I thought of Lyriana back there in the grove, shivering and trembling in Jax’s arms. I saw it again, the sheer gravity of the moment, the shadow lurking beneath the water. The entire Kingdom was at stake, but more than that, my friend’s life was at stake. Was I seriously going to make a big deal out of some stupid fake identity?
“No, it’s fine.” I sighed. “I’m just being prickly. I’ll go with it. I’ll be…pretend to be…Miles’s wife.”
Miles nodded, and at least he didn’t seem overly happy about it. “We’ll need fake names. Easy ones that we can remember. I’ll be Anders Tonnin.”
“Muriel,” I said. “Muriel Tonnin.”
“Zenn,” Zell said.
Miles and I both turned to him. “That’s a little obvious, isn’t it?”
“It’s a common Zitochi name.” He shrugged and didn’t seem interested in discussing it any further.
An hour of silent riding later, we emerged out onto the wide dirt road that led into Bridgetown, its bright lights visible through the night even this far away. At first, it felt deeply wrong to be here; we’d spent so much effort avoiding main roads that riding on one now seemed horribly exposed, like walking into a great feast naked. As we trotted side by side down the road, I held my breath, and when we came upon our first fellow travelers, an ox-drawn wagon laden down with golden Heartlander grain, I felt my heart start to race. But then the husky, bearded man driving the wagon didn’t even look up as we passed him, and neither did the young couple walking on the side of the road or the old man riding on the back of a fly-mottled donkey. No one noticed. No one cared.
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