by Amber Argyle
Throat thick with tears she refused to shed, Larkin stripped out of her soiled dress and dunked it in a barrel they used for wash water. She scrubbed the night’s evidence from the fabric, wringing her screams from the folds, and set it before the kitchen fire to eliminate the last traces of her horror. She borrowed another of Caelia’s dresses and came downstairs to see her mother scrubbing the floor. Larkin dropped down to work beside her. Outside, the crowd grew louder—grumbles and angry mutterings intermixed with shouts.
“What do they want?” her mother whispered.
Me. They’ve come for me. She couldn’t retell it, not again.
Upstairs, the baby began to cry.
“The little ones—” Larkin began.
“Nesha will protect them.”
Larkin had always been the strong one, the one who made things better. But now, everything she touched seemed cursed. She scrubbed harder. When the mob came, they couldn’t find mud. The baby screamed louder, wails counterbalanced by the mob outside.
Someone pounded hard on the door, making Larkin jump. She froze, one foot on the bottom stair. She wanted to dash upstairs and hide, but where could she go? She tiptoed to the curtains and peered out, careful not to disturb the fabric. Garrot, Hunter, and Rimoth stood in front of what appeared to be the entire town, armed with pitchforks, scythes, and axes. They wore anger and fear like a second skin, and all the anger was directed at her.
“Larkin,” Garrot called. “Open the door.”
She hadn’t been seen yet. She swallowed hard. Where was Bane?
Mama frantically wiped up the last of the water and took both buckets, heading into the kitchen. “Don’t answer it.” Through the open door, Larkin watched as Mama pulled up the trapdoor and poured the muddy water onto the dirt floor of the cellar. “Go upstairs and hide. I’ll deal with them.”
“You can let us in or we can break down the door,” Garrot said calmly.
Larkin would not put her family at risk, especially when it would do no good. “There’s nowhere to run, Mama,” she said softly.
“Larkin, no.” Dropping the cellar door, Mama rushed to stop her.
Larkin hesitated a moment, her hand closed over the cool metal. She felt fragile, like the smallest breeze might send her caterwauling up the chimney and into the gray sky. Bane, where are you? Gathering up the shattered bits of her courage, Larkin cracked open the door to reveal a sliver of Garrot’s dark eyes and unkempt hair.
“Larkin,” Garrot said gently. “Let me in.”
Larkin shook her head.
Garrot’s hand shot through the crack. He forced the door open. Larkin didn’t resist as he, Hunter, and Rimoth came inside. Mama planted herself before Larkin. Baby in her arms, Nesha appeared at the top of the stairs. Rimoth took up position before the kitchen. Limping, Hunter blocked the bedroom. Both had their hands on the knives at their belts, while Garrot paced before the front door like a wolf who smelled blood.
“Why couldn’t you go into the forest like all the other girls?” Garrot muttered. “Why do you have to cause so much trouble?”
Larkin didn’t think he was asking—more like he was chiding her. What she didn’t understand was why. “I didn’t cause any trouble.”
He finally looked at her. “They’re calling for your life, Larkin, demanding you burn at the stake. I must give them an answer. Two girls were taken last night. Do you know anything about it?”
“No!” Larkin burst out.
“I don’t believe you,” he said softly.
“She doesn’t know,” Mama said. “Now get out.”
Garrot’s gaze flicked to Nesha, and then he slipped inside the kitchen. When he came back, he held Larkin’s mud-stained boots. “Why are your boots muddy, Larkin? Where have you been this morning? And why is there a dripping wet dress before the fire?”
Larkin wiped her sweating hands on the front of her dress. “Just out to the privy. I washed my dress, and it’s drying.”
He looked through the kitchen to the back window. “The way to the privy is paved with stones. Still lying?”
“I don’t know anything,” she whispered.
He stalked toward her. She backpedaled around the table. Rimoth took hold of Mama’s arm and pushed her into the corner. “Stay out of this, Pennice.”
Mama scowled. “Get out of my way, you filthy, conniving—”
“You’ve got three other girls,” Hunter said over her as he came at Larkin from the other side of the table. “I suggest you think of them and not just Larkin.”
Splitting her gaze between Hunter and Garrot, Larkin ended up with her back against the cold bricks of the mantle. Garrot spread his legs, his hands on either side of her head. Though no part of him touched her, she was boxed in all the same. “I’m not even sure the truth matters at this point,” he said softly. “There are too many people who would see you dead.”
Her mouth went dry, and her throat closed. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. “You mean to kill me?”
“If I must,” Garrot answered.
“You leave my daughter alone.” Mama tried to shove past Rimoth, but he pinned her against the wall.
Where were Bane and Daydon? Neither would allow this. . . . Of course. They weren’t here because they couldn’t be. Larkin’s jaw hardened. “Where are Bane and Daydon?”
“Somewhere they can’t interfere,” Garrot said.
The color bled out of Mama’s face. “Please. Just leave us be.”
“Garrot,” Nesha called from above, pleading in her voice.
Larkin shot her sister a confused look.
“Go upstairs with Nesha and your baby, Mother Pennice,” Garrot ordered.
Larkin jerked her chin toward the stairs. “You can still help them, Mama.” But not me, not anymore.
Tears slipped down Mama’s cheeks. Like Larkin, Mama was no stranger to force. She knew when she was beaten. She slowly climbed the stairs and took the baby from Nesha. Baring her breast defiantly, she suckled Brenna, who got her first mouthful of milk and her screams settled to baby grumblings and swallows.
“What have you done with Bane and Daydon?” Larkin tried to make her voice hard as flint, though a tremor betrayed her.
Garrot leaned toward her. “Why were you at the forest last night?”
Taking a shuddering breath, Larkin forced herself to meet his gaze. “The forest take you.”
“Wrong answer.” Garrot grabbed her by the back of the neck and hauled her toward the door.
“Larkin,” Mama cried.
The townspeople cheered when she appeared in the doorway, lifting pitchforks, scythes, axes, and even roughly hewn clubs into the air in triumph.
“Burn her!” Horace shouted.
“Drown the ashes,” Horgen said.
“She’s caused the floods and famine!” a voice cried. More joined in, the individual words lost to the onslaught of hatred flung at her.
Those closest spat at her feet. Garrot forced her to turn left, toward the weather-beaten wood of the four-man stockade. She reached out to the manor house wall to steady herself, searching for sympathy in the faces she’d known since childhood—friends of her parents and parents of her friends. Their crazed, hateful eyes were full of accusation, as if she’d been the cause of their lost daughters and friends, and she suddenly understood. They couldn’t make the pipers pay, but they could make her pay—she who had the audacity to escape when none of their daughters had. Fear expanded within her until her chest threatened to burst. A rock slammed into her shoulder, driving the breath from her as the pain radiated.
Rimoth and Hunter became her protectors, as they shoved the crowd back. Larkin stumbled. Garrot’s fingers dug into her neck, forcing her up. She squirmed and winced, knowing she would have bruises.
On the top step of the platform, he gave her a shove. She flew forward and landed hard on her hip. She gasped at the pain shooting down her leg. She braced herself but didn’t rise. Rimoth and Hunter took positions on either end of the
platform—to keep her from escaping or the crowd from thronging her, she wasn’t sure. Maybe both.
Mama shoved wildly through the crowd, her breast bare, milk leaking as she struggled to reach the platform. Copper flashed beside her, and Harben grabbed her by the arms, restraining her. “Pennice, there’s nothing you can do.”
So, Harben had been released from the stocks, only to have Larkin take his place. The man had betrayed them, abandoned them. Why did he care what happened to them now?
Her mother threw an elbow into his middle. “Liar! Coward!”
Rimoth pointed to Horace and Horgen. “Lock Mother Pennice up in the cellar until this is over.”
The men took hold of Mama, dragging her away as she screamed. Larkin didn’t protest. It would be better if her mother didn’t witness whatever happened next.
“Hang her,” Kenjin shouted.
“You can’t kill her,” Vyder, Venna’s grandfather, cried. “She’s expecting.”
Garrot held up his hand. To Larkin’s surprise, the crowd stilled—all except Crazy Maisy. “Flood, blood, diberdud. Toad, foad, diberdoad. Ditch, stitch, diberditch.”
“Shut her up, Rimoth,” Garrot said.
Rimoth dropped from the platform and headed toward his daughter. Before he reached her, Maisy finished her song with a whimper and a rough series of twitches.
“The truth now, Larkin,” Garrot said with seemingly infinite patience. “This is your final chance.”
Larkin set her jaw. “The truth is a great evil has come upon Hamel, and it doesn’t originate from me.” Her gaze settled accusingly on Garrot.
Garrot backhanded her. She staggered, barely managing to keep her feet. She tasted iron and salt, the inside of her cheek bleeding where her teeth had cut it. She laughed. Garrot thought to intimidate her with violence, but she’d grown up with pain inflicted by the one man who should have protected her. At the bottom step, her father glared at her.
She faced Garrot, her chin high. “You don’t frighten me.”
“What is the meaning of this?” a voice cried. Larkin nearly staggered with relief as Bane shoved his way through the crowd toward them. His left eye was blackened and nearly swollen shut, but other than that, he seemed intact.
“You were supposed to see he was detained,” Garrot growled under his breath to Rimoth.
The other man shrugged as he climbed back up the platform. “I thought I had.”
Bane climbed the first two steps before Hunter blocked him. Bane’s gaze raked over Larkin, before settling back on Garrot. Larkin knew Bane well enough to see the calculation in his eyes as he weighed the crowd’s mood and the strength of the three men before him. She saw when the realization came over him as it had for her: this was not a fight he could win by force.
“Garrot, I don’t care who you are. You will not incite violence in my town, and you will not harm my pregnant fiancée. Now, take your friends, get out, and never come back.”
It would be ironic if this fake baby saved my life, Larkin thought.
“Are you sure it’s us you want out?” Garrot said.
“I’m sure,” Bane said through clenched teeth.
Garrot turned to Larkin. “Larkin was telling us she has no idea what happened to the girls last night, isn’t that right, Larkin?”
Larkin glanced at Bane, who gave a minute nod. “That’s right.”
“So, you didn’t go to the forest last night or the night before that . . . or the night before that.” Garrot sounded almost bored.
“Of course she hasn’t,” Bane spat. “Now let her go.”
Garrot made a gesture of agreement. “If I find no proof of guilt and you promise to keep silent through my questioning, she shall go free.”
Bane searched the crowd, weighing his options. He had none. Larkin knew it as well. “Fine.”
Garrot circled Larkin, leaning into her from behind, his breath against the soft skin of her throat making her shudder. “I have a witness.”
“Fly. Lie. Die,” Crazy Maisy shouted as she twirled, head thrown back.
“Maisy?” she said incredulously. “She’s your witness?”
Bane huffed, shoulders relaxing in relief. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that.”
“You agreed to remain silent.” Garrot paced from one end of the stockade to the other. “How many times have you been to the forest?”
With Maisy as their witness, Larkin might survive this, if she stuck to her story. “I only went once! Sela wandered into the woods. I went after her.”
“Have you been communicating with a man who lives in the Forbidden Forest?” Garrot went on. “A servant of the forest, same as the beast.”
She had, but admitting to it would have her burning to death faster. “Absolutely not.”
“This is ridiculous,” Bane said.
Garrot huffed. “And did you dance naked before the river, calling up the flood that has ravaged the town?”
“What?” She had lifted her shift to put on the amulet. She’d thought herself hidden, but perhaps Maisy had seen?
Garrot spat in front of her. “Answer the question.”
“I nearly died in that flood,” Larkin said. “Why would I call it down on my own land?”
Garrot eyed her. “A clever ploy to win back the town’s favor.”
“That’s not what Maisy says,” Rimoth hissed. “Maisy says you were communing with the river.”
“Insane, main, diberdain!” Crazy Maisy chanted.
“You aren’t even carrying a baby, are you?” Garrot said, a gleam of triumph in his eyes.
Bane started toward Larkin. “I will not stand by and watch this farce continue!”
Hunter and Rimoth closed ranks and shoved him back. The baker showed up with his cart and called out his wares to the crowd.
Garrot pulled his knife and held it loosely in his right hand. “Back. Up.”
Perhaps seeing the murder in the other man’s eyes, Bane lifted both hands in surrender and stepped down.
“Maisy knows things,” Patrina cried. “She knew the flood would threaten the town. She knew our daughters would be taken!”
“Everyone knew the town would flood if the rains didn’t let up,” Bane shot back. “And girls go missing all the time!”
“Silence!” Garrot shouted. He turned to Larkin, his gaze narrowing. “Are you, in fact, pregnant, Larkin?”
Garrot knew something—he wouldn’t be asking all these questions if he didn’t—but Larkin was in too deep now. “Yes,” she whispered.
“I have given you so many chances to tell the truth.” Garrot almost sounded sad. “You have turned down every one.”
She wiped her sweating palms on the front of her dress. “It is the truth,” she said, her voice tremulous.
Triumph in his eyes, he looked toward the house where Nesha stood at the manor’s front door, her eyes glittering with fresh tears. Larkin went numb from the inside out. At a gesture from Garrot, Nesha limped through the crowd and up the stairs to stand before him. The whole crowd went utterly silent. All Larkin could hear was the blood pounding in her ears.
For the first time, Nesha met her gaze. “Larkin is lying,” she said, her eyes as cold and dark as the winter solstice. “I know of three times she sneaked off to the forest. I saw her stand naked before the river the night it flooded. And she isn’t pregnant with Bane’s child. They made up that lie to save her from the crucible. I know she hears the piper’s music day and night—she says it calls to her. She believes she is strong enough to withstand its call, but she’s wrong. It has twisted her soul, twisted her into one of them.”
Larkin looked at the girl who could not be her sister—not the sister who slept by her side every night, the sister she’d taken countless beatings for—because her sister would never offer her up like bait on a hook.
“Nesha . . .” As if from far away, Larkin heard the crowd roar, drowning out whatever words she might have said. Her sister simply turned away, as if Larkin no longer e
xisted.
Rimoth stared at Larkin with something beyond fear and hatred. In his eyes was righteous indignation. In his eyes was her death. “You will burn,” he whispered it like a prayer.
Instinctively, Larkin’s hand tightened around the amulet hanging from her waist and squeezed so hard the branches pierced cloth and then skin. Surrounded by hundreds of people calling for her death, a dark calm settled around her. Whatever was coming, there was nothing she could do to stop it, but she still had her pride—that they couldn’t take from her. She straightened her shoulders as the wind tugged at her unruly hair, shifting it across her back.
With a roar, Bane punched Hunter in the jaw and ducked around him. Garrot reached for her, and she thought, No. A sudden, achingly sweet burst of power throbbed through her. His hand stuttered to a stop, as if there were a perfectly clear barrier between them.
“It cannot be,” he gasped.
Larkin’s confidence wavered. What was happening? She staggered back from the hatred directed at her, tripped over her own feet, and fell onto her back. Garrot reached toward her, something like awe on his face.
Bane appeared behind Garrot, delivering a vicious kick to the man’s knee. Garrot went down. The crowd roared in fury. Bane hauled her up, wrapped his arms around her middle, and boosted her toward a second-floor manor window. She tipped forward, hands scrabbling to catch herself. Bane gripped her feet and shoved her inside before he was tackled by Rimoth.
She hit the floor hard, her lungs empty and unable to draw breath. Garrot pushed himself up behind her. She slammed her heel into his nose, feeling it crunch. His head whipped back, blood spurting, but he managed to hold on. She lunged to her feet and grabbed the swinging window, slamming it into his face. With a cry, he let go.
“Larkin, run!” Bane screamed from below.
Larkin heard the front door crack against the wall as someone threw it open. Footsteps pounded below. She shot into the room across the hall. She ran to the window. The mob hadn’t moved to the back of the house yet. She threw open the window and climbed out, letting herself dangle before dropping two stories to the tufts of grass below. She hit hard, feet stinging, legs buckling. The crowd’s outliers rounded the house. She scrambled to her feet and flew down the hill. Her hair swept across her face as she glanced back to see the crowd streaming after her.