‘Bet you haven’t seen one of these before, have you, gutter rat?’ he said, tugging on himself, moving towards her. His wet, mud-brown hair clung to his face, and drops of water glistened in the fuzz that carpeted the rest of his body. ‘Bet I could teach you a thing or two.’
‘Lennox,’ a sharp voice called, ‘that’s enough.’
‘Was only playing,’ he growled.
‘None of us want to see your arse gleaming in the moonlight, get some clothes on,’ said Fiore, stepping in front of Bleak.
Lennox muttered to himself. However, Bleak could hear his thoughts clear enough, and they made her grateful that Fiore had been there.
The night grew late and Bleak was exhausted. Her body was stiff and aching, and she was wary that tomorrow would be a longer, harder day. With the embers of the fire glowing, and the men’s speech becoming slurred and sleepy, she curled up in the sand with her blanket. She’d slept in worse places. And despite the thoughts around her becoming clearer as the night itself became quieter, Bleak slept.
She dreamed of Bren. Of having the conversation she’s always feared having, where she told him she was an Ashai, a mind whisperer. In the dream, she sat with him on the damp sand in Angove and told him everything, how she could hear his thoughts about her, everyone’s thoughts about her. He sighed, ran his fingers through his fair hair and then reached out to her. There was a sound, like a hissing breath, rolling towards them. She turned to see a towering wave rising above them, casting a dark shadow across the whole beach.
‘Bren!’ she cried out, but the wave crashed down upon them both.
Dawn announced itself all too soon. Muted shades of lilac and blush pink rippled around the hint of sun on the horizon, and a flock of gulls dipped and rose in formation, their reflections dancing on the surface of the sea. Bleak rolled out of her blanket with a moan.
‘Get up,’ the commander snapped.
She felt pain all over. Her feet were raw and blistered from being bare in the stirrups; her wrists stung where the manacles had rubbed her skin; her tailbone and backside were tender from the saddle. And the rest of her? Her body was just in general agony. She also needed to relieve herself. Around her, the men were packing up their bedrolls and saddling their horses. After a quick glance around, Bleak dropped her blanket and edged towards the woods.
‘Going somewhere?’
She whirled around. Fiore was there, picking his teeth.
‘I … Uh … I need to …’ She was squeezing her knees together.
Fiore sighed. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. Just before they entered the woods he stopped and eyed her bare feet. ‘Wait a moment.’
He left her there and she didn’t run. She wasn’t an idiot. How far could she possibly get without shoes, water and a cloak in mountains she knew nothing about?
He came back and threw her a pair of tattered boots. ‘The men have been pissing and shitting in there all night.’
Wonderful, she thought, tugging on the boots. They were enormous, and she must have looked ridiculous clomping towards the trees in them, but they were better than nothing. And had the commander been with her, she knew she’d have been trudging through all manner of filth, barefoot.
‘Can you undo these?’ Bleak asked, holding out her bound hands.
He looked at her wrists for a moment before shaking his head. ‘The irons stay on.’
Fiore followed her in, but was gentleman enough to turn his back as she squatted among the shrubs. Her face burned with humiliation as she struggled to pull down her pants with her bound hands. And despite feeling as though she was going to burst, it took her several minutes before she could go.
As they made their way back to camp, Bleak swiped a dagger from Fiore’s belt in a quick, practised motion. They didn’t call her the Angove Fingersmith for nothing. Fiore didn’t notice the missing weight, and as he bent down to untangle some vines from his boots, Bleak hid the weapon down the side of her trousers.
When they reached the horses, Lennox shot them a filthy look.
Fucking hypocrite, he glared at Fiore, not letting the rest of us have any fun, keeping the gutter rat for himself.
Fiore seemed to know what Lennox was thinking without telepathy. ‘Don’t you have work to do?’ he said.
‘I don’t answer to you, no matter how damn friendly you are with the commander. Wouldn’t surprise me if he came outta there with you. Sharing the gutter rat with him, are ya?’
‘Mind your tongue, Lennox, wouldn’t want to lose it.’
‘Go to hell, Fiore, and take the rat with you. She stinks.’
Bleak felt Fiore give her a push, and she clomped past Lennox, not daring to look him in the eyes. Fiore took her back to Stefan, the young guard from the day before. He helped her up onto the horse and bound her hands to the saddle horn again.
‘Is this really necessary?’ she asked.
‘Orders.’
The guard assembled and waited for the commander’s instructions, while Bleak looked ahead. The Hawthorne Ranges loomed before them, dark, dense and whispering centuries-old secrets. Bleak was used to the open seas and clear skies, not the suffocating vines and tangled thicket that awaited her now. The horses lurched forward, and one by one began disappearing into the trees. Bleak gulped down the lump in her throat as she followed Fiore in, the pale tree trunks and heavy air seeming to swallow them all whole. Inside, everything was tinged with blue – a navy hue pulsed around the foliage. Emerald-green vines strangled branches and linked them together, creating a blanket of darkness across the canopy, leaving only a few narrow beams of light to filter down, producing dappled patterns of gold atop the leaf litter.
‘What are you waiting for?’ the commander’s voice barked. ‘Let’s move.’
Bleak squeezed her horse’s sides with her heels, and the mount trudged further into the forest, giving her a better view of the famous ‘King’s Trail’. It was a rocky dirt path, only wide enough for them to proceed in single file on horseback. Beneath the horses’ hooves, the earth was worn down from centuries’ worth of travellers. Bleak’s steed stumbled and she winced, gripping the saddle with her sore thighs. This was not going to be easy.
So this was the legendary King’s Trail. It was the only known passage through to Heathton. The only other access was by the East Sea, and Bleak still wasn’t sure why they hadn’t come by ship … The only one who knew the reason was the commander. She still couldn’t get inside his head.
As they moved deeper into the forest, the air became thick, and once again, the hum of voices in Bleak’s mind became loud. Gods, she needed a drink. She needed a drink so bad.
‘Psst, Stefan …’ she whispered.
The youngest guard looked back at her and hissed, ‘Don’t talk to me.’
She could see enough anxiety in his face that she needn’t read his thoughts. He feared falling out of favour with the commander.
‘I’ll do you a deal,’ she said a little louder, feeding his panic. ‘Give me some of that wine in your saddlebag there, and I won’t say a peep.’
‘What? No!’
‘Oh, come on!’ she said, and the guard in front of Stefan turned as well.
‘What’s a little wine compared to the wrath of charming old Swinton?’
‘Shut it,’ he said.
‘Where’s your team spirit? Just a few sips …’
‘I said, shut it, or I’ll hand you over to Lennox.’
That silenced her.
The forest swallowed them, and the incline of the trail increased steeply. Every now and then, Bleak’s horse slipped on a loose vine or a patch of leaf litter and she’d hold on for dear life. The manacles around her wrists, which were bound to the saddle horn, were becoming unbearable. Not only did it mean she was constantly hunched over, unable to sit up and stretch her back, but she’d lost layers of skin. Beneath the iron and rope, her flesh was open, pale and sticky, with bits of rope and dirt stuck to it.
‘We’ll take them off when we stop,’ Fiore
said from behind her.
She nodded without turning back to him. How long will that be?
Bleak had never been in a forest before. She marvelled at the dizzying height of the trees, their sheer density and volume, and the earthen scent of the trail, so unlike the fresh coastal breezes she was so accustomed to. However, despite her lack of experience with forests, she got the distinct feeling that this one was different. The further up the mountain they trekked, the more uneasy the horses became. Bleak noted the way her own mount’s ears flicked, aware of sounds her human ears couldn’t detect.
‘Are we in Valia?’ she asked, just loud enough for Fiore to hear her.
He didn’t say anything for a time, but Bleak could hear him debating with himself.
Do I tell her? I shouldn’t even be talking to her. But she’ll just keep asking questions, drawing attention to us. What harm could she —
‘Technically, no,’ he said, ‘the forest and mountains this side of the King’s River belong to the king. But the Valia kindred know these parts better than anyone. And whatever the official story, it’s likely they still consider this part of their territory.’
The Valia kindred. She’d only ever heard stories about the warrior society that lived among the trees and mountains, whose people bent and broke the rules as they saw fit.
‘Did you see any on the way here?’ she asked.
‘No. Not one, thankfully.’
Bleak looked around. It was rumoured that the leader of the Valia, Henri, had magic, and despite the laws that only royalty could wield it, was some kind of unspoken exception. From the tales Bleak had heard, the leader was a powerful Ashai, an energy shifter, whatever that entailed. Like many others, Bleak had never had access to Ashai histories. Magic had been abolished before she was born, and along with it, any books that divulged the sort of powers the Ashai folk had once wielded. She’d never met another like her. Henri’s powers might explain the strange sensation she was experiencing being in the forest. At first, she’d chalked it up to claustrophobia and being in such close quarters with so many of the King’s Guard. But as she thought of the stories she’d heard about the kindred and their leader, she realised it might be something else. Her skin was crawling, as though the magic thrumming beneath her flesh was answering something out there …
They rode for six hours straight, and just as Bleak was about to pass out from exhaustion, the commander led them off the trail and into a little clearing. With surprising gentleness, Fiore untied her from the saddle horn, and she slumped down the side of the horse into his arms, her hand skimming over the tattoo on his forearm.
He tugged his sleeve down.
‘You gotta stand,’ he hissed, but her knees buckled and she fell into the support of his body several times before she could hold herself steady. He was a wall of solid muscle, big hands and a towering frame. He waited for her to gather herself, and then got to work undoing her manacles and binds. Each movement stung and she inhaled sharply as he peeled away the final piece of rope.
‘The second you fall out of line, these are back on. You understand?’
She nodded, testing her wrist joints.
‘Good. Come on, then.’
She limped after him, her inner thighs feeling as raw as her wrists. The stolen dagger jabbed at her side beneath her clothes, but she didn’t care and she was too wrecked to think of ways to use it to her advantage.
The commander noted her free hands from where he was cooling down his horse, a chain with a bronze medallion on the end peeking out from beneath his shirt.
‘She does something stupid,’ he said to Fiore, ‘that’s on you.’
‘Understood.’
The rest of the guard eyed her as she shuffled along to the tiny stream that ran past the clearing. Her knees cracked loudly as she knelt down beside it. As she went to cup the water, she realised her hands were shaking. Although her situation was hardly ideal, she wasn’t at that moment afraid. She held out her hands, palms down before her and watched them tremble in wonder. Hearing Fiore clear his throat behind her, she plunged them into the water. She stifled a cry of pain as the icy water stung her open wounds, but she held them in there.
Once her wrists were numb, she splashed her face and tried to rub at least some of the dirt away. She could hear Lennox’s thoughts nearby; she didn’t so much as roll her sleeves up to wash elsewhere. She stank, but perhaps in this case, that wasn’t a bad thing.
She sat, legs outstretched on the outskirts of the company, next to Fiore, who handed her a waterskin and a piece of stale bread. Bleak wolfed it down, the hard dough drying out her mouth. She received no more. Gods, she was starving. She sipped the water slowly, letting it soothe her fat, swollen tongue. She had to avoid relieving herself again until nightfall.
She wanted to ask Fiore more about the Valia kindred, but didn’t want to get him into any trouble. He’d been kind to her, and if there was indeed over a week left of this journey, she may need to lean on that kindness again. Instead, she thought about what she knew. She knew that the Valia kindred were the oldest society in Ellest, and had perhaps been here even longer than the royal family. They were a warrior clan, who trained their young in combat and survival from the age of five. She had heard that the weak, unconventional and disobedient were exiled to the outskirts of their territory, to work the essential but lesser jobs. That was just gossip, though. People feared the Valians, and fear created all kinds of stories.
When Bleak had still been spending a lot of time at the tavern in Angove, she’d heard drunken tales about how some believed the Valian leaders to be demigods, descendants of Rheyah the Huntress. Or at least they had been in the past. Their magic was passed down through generations, although still outside the laws of the four continents. Some people blamed them for the mist that encroached on the realm, inch by inch, year by year. If Bleak had learned anything through her condition it was that people loved to blame, and that like all negativity, blame festered and rotted the good away.
She turned to Fiore. ‘Whereabouts in Battalon are you from?’
Fiore raised his eyebrows. ‘I never said I was from Battalon.’
‘But you are.’
He considered her for a moment. ‘I am.’
‘And?’
‘And nothing.’
Bleak rolled her eyes. ‘Give a pauper a bone, would you.’
‘You’re a pauper by choice. That’s a different poverty.’
‘What would you know about poverty?’
‘Same as you – not much.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘I know self-pity when I see it.’
Bleak glared at him. ‘Got a lot of experience, then?’
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he shrugged. ‘Everyone’s allowed a free pass every now and then. Key is not to get stuck. Guests don’t stay long at a pity party.’
Bleak scoffed. ‘Thanks for the advice, soldier. I’ll try to remember that when I’m breaking bread and swapping life stories with the king.’
His thoughts hit her then – so loud that she couldn’t hear his actual retort. She saw herself through his eyes, a scrawny teenager, rags hanging from her jutting bones, angry odd eyes and a chip on her shoulder. And she heard his concern for her – none of them knew what the king wanted from her, or what he’d do with her. She plucked a leaf from the forest floor and began shredding it, attempting to force her thoughts back to the Valia kindred rather than the uncertain fate that awaited her in the capital.
‘Oi,’ Fiore’s voice hissed, ‘you got a death wish? I said move.’
Around them, the guards were mounting their horses and making their way back to the trail. She almost groaned aloud. Back on the horse already? Her body would be permanently damaged, she was sure.
She stood and the world slowed.
In the distance, she could hear the sad notes of a fiddle, pulling her along like a current. A metallic taste spread over her tongue, and then she was falli
ng …
‘There is no cure for what you have, girl,’ the Heathton healer had said, cupping Bleak’s hands in hers, studying the lines of her palms as though they held the answer.
‘And what is it that I have?’ Bleak asked, pulling back from the craggy-faced woman and glancing around the dim, pokey room.
‘You’re a mind whisperer, an Ashai. The magic in you is potent, passed down from your mother, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘You are mistaken. My mother wasn’t an Ashai.’
The dozens of candles around them flickered, and Bleak realised she was uncomfortably warm.
‘Oh? Is that so.’
‘Yes,’ Bleak ground out. ‘You going to tell me something worth that gold-coin payment?’
‘It wasn’t your gold.’
‘Not my fault when folks are careless. Besides, gold is gold, and it can be yours by the end of this conversation.’
‘It’s already mine.’
Bleak wiggled the coin at the woman. She’d stolen it back moments after she’d handed it over. ‘It’s yours when I say it’s yours.’
‘Be careful who you threaten, girl. Ashai aren’t as safe as they used to be, not now that the great Casimir is dead.’
Bleak snorted. ‘Casimir? He’s been dead over a decade, and even before that he was useless. The plague got him in the same way it got ordinary Ashai. Some saviour he turned out to be.’
‘Is that what you’re looking for, girl? A saviour?’
‘No such thing as saviours.’
‘No?’
‘No. Only time-wasters.’ She made to leave.
‘What of my gold?’
‘You had no answers for me.’
‘Just because it was an answer you didn’t like, doesn’t mean it wasn’t an answer.’ The healer glared at her. ‘What is it you need to know?’
‘How do I stop it?’
‘You can’t.’
‘Control it, then? How can I manage it? So that I don’t hear people’s thoughts as soon as they think them.’
The woman considered her, leaning back in her cane chair. ‘It truly plagues you?’
Heart of Mist Page 4