Hunter quickly put these thoughts out of his head as the horseman rounded the corner in front of him. He was carrying a bow in his hands, but no arrow had been loaded into it.
“Who sent you?” the man called out, keeping a few lengths between their horses.
“Chief Auberon of Breccan,” Hunter replied.
The man nodded and looked to the tail of his horse. “You’re a fast rider. We weren’t expecting you for at least another day.”
“You won’t find another rider in Breccan faster than me,” he said, choosing not to tell him about the rebel camp that had captured him on his way over. Somehow he felt like he would be betraying his fantasy if he told the Pax of their existence.
“Wait there,” the man ordered, turning his horse around and trotting back the way he had come.
Only a few minutes had passed before another man on horseback arrived. This man dismounted from his horse when he saw Hunter, and then went to his pack and pulled out a white cloth bag. He began to walk towards him, and Hunter stepped forward as well, meeting him halfway.
“This is your cargo,” the man told him. He dug his hand inside and pulled out three silver boxes. He put two of them back in the bag and carefully lifted the lid of the third. Hunter peered inside and saw that it was filled with a black powder. An involuntary shiver of fear ran through his spine. He knew how dangerous Black Powder was, but was careful not to make any comment on it.
“This one,” the man said, extending the box to him, “you are to take back to the stronghold and give to Auberon.”
Hunter took the box, and the man went back to the bag for the other two. Opening them one at a time, they each revealed a white powder.
“These,” he explained, “you are to drop off first to a man named Brin. You will find him in the woods just outside of Breccan.” The man dug his hand into the bag and pulled out a folded piece of parchment. “You can find him with this map.”
Hunter took it and nodded.
“And there’s something else,” the man added. “When you see his cabin, make sure you only knock if you see a white shirt hanging on the front door. If it’s not there, you leave and come back when it is. It’s very important that you do this.”
“Yes sir.”
“If there’s no shirt on the front door, leave that second and don’t look back. And when you do speak to Brin, don’t ask any questions. Just give him the two boxes, and then go.”
“I understand,” Hunter assured him.
“You had better,” the man said, eyeing him. “Or else it’s your head.”
The man held the white bag out for him to take, and once Hunter had it in his hands, the officer headed back to his horse.
“I expect you’re tired,” the man called out, angling his horse to turn around. “You probably want food and rest.”
Hunter did not answer him, but instead waited for him to continue.
“Well, you’ll find none here,” he said. “Continue down this road, and you will be shot.” He glanced back at him over his shoulder, adding, “No offense.”
With that, the man galloped away, leaving Hunter with nothing else to do but to turn around and start the long and dangerous journey back home.
*
For the week that passed after the stable job, the Harbinger team did not let up in their persistency. Though the Pax could no longer send carts of goods to Cashel because they were missing their horses, the officials still took what they could from the villagers and carried the baskets through town in groups of four men. The Harbingers managed to commandeer one of these baskets one night, re-taking everything inside and leaving the basket flaming right on the steps of the stronghold.
The next day, Ashlin appeared in the north end of the city, stopping a few officials from beating up a group of villagers that refused to hand over the money in their pockets. She stopped the fight in all of one minute, humiliating the officials in the process and dealing them some pretty large bruises.
Luckily they hadn’t needed Norabel for jobs like this, and she was able to spend some of her free time tending to Wren’s mother with the Timber Ivy she collected. Though she never seemed to get any better, Norabel was at least able to report back to Wren every day and give her word of her mother.
However, the Harbinger’s latest stunt took away all of Norabel’s free time. It was of such a great magnitude that it had to be carefully coordinated with the Whispers of Breccan. Ashlin wanted to put a piece of parchment into each person’s Amias Gift one morning, bearing the Harbinger motto and listing off several names of known leachers. In order to write them all out, Ashlin had Norabel, along with Malachy and his kids, working practically non-stop to get them all done. Ashlin called it her “Declaration of War on the Leachers,” saying it would leave more of an impact if she called them out individually. Since Norabel wrote over a thousand of her declarations, she knew very well that Fletcher’s name was on that list, and it made her uneasy every time she wrote it out.
Fletcher had been coming to her house nearly every night that week, taking food and money and demanding her to do little things for him. He hadn’t hit her again, not until he woke up one morning and found his name on a hit list. That night, when he showed up at her house, all he took was her blood. He punched her right in the face, splitting her lip open, and left the second after he did it, saying, “I just felt like doing that.”
Though he had no idea that she was behind that list, she still felt as if she had secretly defied him. In at least a small way, she had made him accountable for what he was doing to her. But this knowledge didn’t make her feel any better. Seeing his name on the list only made Fletcher more violent. She shuddered to think if the other leachers on the list were taking it out on their victims the same way he was.
That next morning, Norabel looked at her reflection, saw the split lip and the fading bruise by her eye, and decided that she had stayed silent long enough. She needed to feel safe again. She needed to know that she wasn’t alone in this. She wanted her friends to help her through this. And, if nothing else, she wanted them to feel angry over what was happening. Then maybe waking up to a bruised and bloodied face wouldn’t feel so bad.
The Harbinger team had arranged to meet at Logan and Mason’s house that morning since it was a Toil-Free day, and Norabel decided that it was probably the best time to tell them. When she got to their home on the north sector, she could hear Logan around the side of the house, talking with Aleta. By the way they were speaking, they seemed to be discussing something earnestly, and she didn’t want to interrupt them. Walking inside the house, she looked for Mason, but did not find him in the front room or kitchen like she thought she would.
“Mason?” she called out timidly.
He did not reply, but she heard a noise coming from a back room. It was the sound of metal on metal, and it seemed to be coming from one of the bedrooms. At first Norabel paused, not wanting to have to speak with him back there. But she reminded herself that this was important; she was being beaten, and it needed to stop.
Taking in a deep breath, she walked down the small hallway to the open door at the end. Inside, she found Mason kneeling on the ground. There was a floorboard missing in front of him, and he was reaching down and pulling several objects out. There was already a small pile of metal tools, slips of parchment, and various other mementoes beside him. Norabel couldn’t say exactly what it all was, but by the way Mason was looking at them, they seemed to belong to a part of his past—to a time when his parents were still alive.
She hated to have to walk in on him like this. She made sure to stay in the doorway so he wouldn’t feel like his privacy was being invaded as she called out to him. “Uh, Mason?” she said quietly, a hint of remorse painting her voice. “I need to talk to you.”
Mason didn’t look up at her as he announced gruffly, “This isn’t a good time.”
He dug his hand inside the hole in the floorboards and took out what looked like a metal chisel.
�
��It’s just,” she stuttered, twisting her hands in front of her. “I think…” She took a deep breath, wondering why it was so hard to admit what she had to say. “I think I’m in trouble. There’s this guy…”
She stopped herself as Mason tossed a stack of parchment onto the floor and muttered something to himself as he searched through them.
“Mason?” she asked, a stab of pain reaching her heart as she realized he hadn’t even been listening to her.
“You say something?” he asked, staring from the parchment in his hands to the chisel that was resting at his knees.
He hadn’t taken the time to look up at her once this whole time; he was so preoccupied with the stash before him. But Norabel figured that the moment he saw her face, he would realize that something was wrong, that what she was trying to tell him was important enough to listen to.
“Will you just look at me for one second?” she exclaimed, her tiny voice sounding flustered and cracked with exhaustion.
Finally his head shot up at her, and she thought for sure he would notice the blood on her lip, but he was too angry to see it.
“You know, I could do with a bit of space right now, Norabel,” he said, half yelling the words in annoyance. “Do you think you could do that? Just a little space!” He raised his hand, still clinging onto a piece of parchment, and motioned to the window. “Just go outside and talk to my brother until its time. You’re good at that, remember?”
He went back to the parchment in his hands, but Norabel was so stunned she couldn’t move. Maybe her mother had been right. Maybe she could never make him happy again. Or maybe she was looking at it the wrong way. Maybe what was making him so unhappy…was her.
She bit down on her tongue to keep her emotions from spilling out, and turned away from his room. With shaky legs she walked down the hallway, feeling the blood in her lip throb and the room before her turn fuzzy with tears. She took a deep breath and forced the tears back inside. She was here as a Harbinger, and Harbingers didn’t cry.
Doing what Mason said, she went outside in search of Logan. Aleta passed her on the way, but she was so deep in thought that she didn’t notice her. When Norabel turned the corner, she found Logan with his back leaning against the wall and his palms pressed into his forehead. Something must have happened between him and Aleta, she realized, and it didn’t seem to have ended well. There was no way she could tell him about her leacher problems now when he seemed to be dealing with heavy issues of his own.
She took a few shy steps towards him and stopped several feet away. “Are you okay, Logan?” she asked.
He took his palms from his forehead, but seeing who it was, he placed them back down, saying in a half moan, “Oh, I’ll be alright…I think.” He let his hands fall, and he stared down at his boots. “Aleta and I are just…we just have to work through some things is all.”
“But you’ll be okay though, right?”
He closed his tired eyes and nodded. “She’s just concerned about everything we’re doing. I’ve told her that,” he paused, his face showing a hint of embarrassment. “I’ve told her that I want to start a family with her. I’ll marry her the second she’ll have me. But she said that you can’t start a family and a war at the same time.”
Logan looked out at her and saw that she was staring down at the dirt in worry and discontent. “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving you,” he reassured her with a smile.
She nodded to the ground, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of pain from her features.
“Norabel,” he said, taking a step closer to her. “Is something wrong?”
She shook her head, keeping her eyes pointed to her feet.
He took another step closer. “I heard Mason a minute ago,” he told her apologetically.
The water pushed once more at the back of her eyes. “It wasn’t just a few months he needed,” she said, referencing to a conversation they had had nearly seven years ago, after his parents had died and Mason refused to see her.
“I’m sorry Norabel,” he offered. “I thought he would have gotten over it by now.”
She clasped her hands tightly together and blinked her eyes shut. “Gotten over what?” she squeaked out. “It might not hurt so bad if I at least knew why…”
She took in a deep gulp of air and pressed her palm into her eye. She shook her head, as if to say to herself that she shouldn’t get into this now.
“I wish I could tell you,” he said, placing a hand on her arm. “But he’s shutting me out as well. If you want the truth, Mason’s shut everyone out. It’s only him inside, and he needs us both now more than ever. Because he’s getting lonelier and lonelier in the cave he’s trapped himself in, and it’s just a matter of time before everything explodes. And, I know it’s a hard thought, but I’m gonna make sure that I’m there for him when the walls finally fall.”
He lightly rubbed her arm and gently guided her head to rest on his shoulder, reminding her of how her father used to comfort her when she was little. She was about to thank him when a voice stopped her.
“Hey you two,” Archer called out from around the corner of the house. “Come on. The gang’s all here.”
“Yeah, just give us a minute, alright,” Logan snapped, blocking Norabel from his view.
Archer eyed them suspiciously, and then smirked. “Does Aleta know about this?” he joked.
“Shut up Archer,” he countered.
Archer held his hands up in defense and walked backwards until he was once more out of view.
“We should go in,” Norabel suggested.
He put both hands on her arms, asking, “Are you’re sure you’re alright?”
She nodded and finally looked up to him. The second she did, his eyes narrowed in on her lips, and a look of alarm passed over his features.
“Norabel, what happened to your face?”
She quickly turned her head away. “It’s nothing.” She didn’t know why, but she didn’t feel like she could tell anyone the truth now. A part of her was broken because Mason refused to see that she was in distress, and she was going to keep on breaking until he did see.
“No,” Logan said, gently tilting her chin up so he could examine her face once more. “That’s not nothing.” Shaking his head, he asked softly, “Who did this to you?”
She broke away from him. “Not now.” She shook her head. “I can’t. Not now.”
She started towards the front of the house and heard Logan silently follow behind. Inside, they found Archer sitting on a chair in the kitchen. He threw them a smirk as they took their places by him. Mason was just coming down the hallway, and Ashlin was walking over to greet him.
“Hey there,” she said, smiling. She reached her hand up and tussled his hair, commenting, “You’ve got dust in your hair.”
A smile broke out on his face as he tried to straighten his appearance. “Yeah, I was just going through some old things.”
“Well, come on,” she said, tapping a hand on his chest. “Back to the land of the present. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
As the two of them walked back to the kitchen, Norabel made sure to stare at the wood of the table. Seeing the two of them act so easily around each other filled her with a sinking feeling of jealousy. It hurt to know that Mason so obviously wanted to be around Ashlin while he made it clear that he wanted her to keep her distance.
When their Harbinger meeting started, Norabel found it hard to pay attention to what was being said, even when Ashlin boldly announced that their next target was no less than the stronghold itself. As she went on describing her plan to smoke the entire stronghold in a sleeping powder that would send every Pax official into a deep slumber for at least an entire day, the blood throbbed in Norabel’s lip, and she found her mind wandering to invasive thoughts of Fletcher and the biting smell of soap.
Only when Ashlin began discussing a way to sneak inside the stronghold did Norabel come out of the prison of thoughts in her mind. Mason informed the team that a river used to run
under the castle when it was first built, and even though the river had been dammed up now, the tunnel and water grate were still there. He said that he could take away one segment of the bars on the bottom, but that the hole it would create would still be rather small, too small even for Ashlin to slip through.
Norabel curled her hands in on her lap as he explained all this to them, knowing where this was going.
“So what do you say?” Ashlin asked.
Norabel looked up, and sure enough she was staring at her.
“What does she say?” Logan repeated, growing angry. “She says no! If they find her inside, she’ll be killed. Or worse; they’ll send her to Arkadiak! What would you say if someone asked you to take that risk all alone?!”
“I would say yes,” Mason spoke in a low voice. “And you know I would.”
“Why don’t you let her answer for herself?” Ashlin challenged. “After all, it’s not up to you.”
Logan’s head spun to find Norabel. “Don’t let them bully you into this,” he told her, shaking his head. “It isn’t worth it.”
Norabel looked from Logan to Mason, brother to brother, hardly knowing how to respond. She knew she was afraid. She knew that she didn’t want to do it, and that everything Logan had said was right. But somewhere in the pushing and pulling in her head, she could hear her grandfather’s voice. He was telling her a story, as he so often did. It was about the brave hero Jotham that once found himself in an enemy stronghold and needed to escape. And, since he was so small, he was able to slip underneath a water grate and run out into the forest, giving his company of men vital information that saved lives.
Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) Page 19