The Lost Daughters

by Leigh Grossman

  We trudged onward in a steady drizzle, not stopping till many hours later. Finally we reached the sheltered canopy of a dense thornwood grove. There we burrowed into the dry, pungent needles; I don’t know how long we slept, but I awoke refreshed and warm from a dreamless rest, and saw hints of sunlight though the overhead canopy.

  Chapter 14

  Sperrin

  The Mountain Road: Eleven days after the Loss

  Ketya filled me in on what she’d heard from the giants, first in whispers while we still walked underneath the rocks, and the rest in bits and pieces while we practiced knifework and her father was out of earshot.

  The giants had left her with more questions than answers, and some of those questions she addressed to me during our early-morning practice in the thornwood grove.

  “Were any of the royal family doing something odd?” she asked me while I stood beside her, adjusting her knife-throwing stance. Apparently, growing up as the chancellor’s daughter had left her more innocent than most of her Empress’s Academy classmates.

  “Probably half of them or so. But not with gods. With cooks, a surprising number of them. The Empress’s sisters and a couple of her ladies in waiting seemed to have a thing for cooks. And the usual royal spouse-swapping that you see in any palace. You’d be astonished at what people expect guards not to notice.”

  Ketya reddened, and her next throw missed the target entirely, but she pressed on. “Nothing at all with gods?”

  “I really don’t think so,” I said while Ketya walked to the edge of the clearing and recovered the errant knife. “The royal family were all potential kidnap targets, so we guarded them pretty closely. Talking to a god would need more privacy, I think. And how many of the Empress’s relatives would even have known how to contact a god, or which one might be sympathetic? And none of the royal family lived—you’d think a traitor would have made escape plans.”

  “And you would have known if another guard had seen something?”

  “I would have known. That’s not the sort of thing a guard hides from his or her superiors.”

  “It just doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Maybe the giants were confused?”

  “Fey are what they are, but they’re not stupid. Why lie when they planned to eat you anyway? I think the part about the messengers being sent out by the god must have been true. And the rest seems likely.”

  “I wish I’d thought to ask which god had sent it.”

  I put a supporting hand on her shoulder. “You did well. You’d never been in that situation before.”

  “Does it get easier?”

  “It never gets easy. You think more clearly when you’re not surprised. But you did well. We know more now than we did.”

  “I guess. I feel like my father would have found a way to find out more.”

  “He wasn’t there. You do the best you can.”

  “I can do better,” she said, shaking my hand off so she could throw. This time she hit the target dead center with both knives.

  Ketya recovered the blades in silence, and didn’t speak again until she had returned to my side. “My father would know what to make of this,” she said. “I just wish he was well enough to tell us.”

  I looked to the other side of the clearing, where the chancellor slept curled in his bedroll, next to the pile of stones where we had eaten our dinner cold last night.

  “Actually, that’s what concerns me,” I answered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re asking me about what the palace guards might have known. But how did this happen without your father knowing? He was the one in charge of protecting the Talisman of Truce and the one with years of expertise on the gods. Wouldn’t he have known about anything going on?”

  She reddened again. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “He’s my father so I know better, but I can see how it might look to someone who didn’t know him.”

  “Do you think there’s any chance he could have known something was happening?

  “No!” she said, loud enough that her father stirred by the rockpile.

  She froze until he settled back to sleep, though he would be awakening soon. Then something seemed to occur to her. “I wonder...maybe he realized that, when the god attacked. He should have known and didn’t, I mean. Maybe realizing that something was happening in the palace and he didn’t know about it is what caused his...breakdown. He knew he should have seen it and stopped it. Does that make sense?”

  “Maybe. Something still seems off about it. He didn’t miss much that happened in the palace. It’s hard to see how someone could have done this without his knowing. And the contact had to have come from the Drowned City. We saw the barrow. Whoever did it broke the seal to let them out.”

  “Are you saying you think it was my father’s fault?”

  “I’m not blaming anyone. Your question just made me wonder.”

  Ketya bristled at my reassurance.

  “You just don’t like him. You see him as some kind of monster, but he’s my father. I know him. The Empress trusted him completely. He would never let anything happen in the palace to hurt the empire.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t like him, but you’re right: No one ever questioned your father’s devotion to the empire. I think he was the only one in the palace who was completely above suspicion, besides the Empress of course. Everyone else was watched and reported on. That’s probably why I’m suspicious: I know how much was going on in the palace, even if it was mostly dalliances with cooks and not with gods. Maybe I’m suspicious of something that isn’t there.”

  “You are. My father lost more than either of us. And he devoted his life to serving the empire. It was...it was all he had left after my mother died.” Ketya brushed hair out of her eyes. Her long hair tended to stray when she spoke animatedly. “I just wish we could ask him about this. I don’t know what to ask giants, and I don’t really know what to look for in the treaty. We really need his help. He’s the only one alive who knows some of these things.”

  I nodded, because really I didn’t have an answer. Ketya seemed so convinced that I wanted to agree with her, but her words didn’t entirely allay my suspicions. The only one who could do that was her father who, whether from madness or evasiveness, wanted nothing to do with our questions.

  “I wish I knew how we could help him heal,” said Ketya. “No matter what happened, we need his help to figure it out.”

  That I could agree with at least. Her father stirred again, opening his eyes this time.

  “Come on,” I said. “Enough knifework for the morning. It’s time for breakfast. By tomorrow we’ll be halfway to Whitmount.”

  Ketya

  The Mountain Road: Thirteen days after the Loss

  The lake stretched clear and silver below us. Mist hid the woods at the far end. We had been following a ridge trail west for the last two days, skirting the broad lake as it opened up in the flooded valley beneath us. From where we stood it would be a half day hike down forested slopes before we could touch water. But with fallen rocks blocking the ridge trail ahead we would need to take at least part of that hike. Detours onto the slopes had become almost routine; while Sperrin told us that channelers usually walked the trail when the snows cleared in late spring or early summer, in order to clear away seasonal rockfalls, that apparently hadn’t happened yet this year, and wouldn’t for the foreseeable future.

  Here and there I could see buildings dotting the lakeside, and docks jutting out onto the water. A string of cable-carriage pylons crested the mountain in front of us and ran downslope, ending at the water’s edge with the cable trailing off and submerged in the lake. The pylon across the lake must have fallen from its platform: I could see the flattened hill where the platform had been, but none of the metal supports remained. Scarred and broken trees marked where the pylon had crashed to earth. The dangling cable in the lake reminded me of the cut ferry cable as we left the Drowned City. I wondered if there had been a
carriage on those cables when they collapsed.

  The water jogged oddly at my memory, reminding me of that glorious family visit to the lake with my mother and father all those years ago. It didn’t seem likely that it was the same lake I’d visited, but I really didn’t know.

  “Was there...was there a resort down there?” I asked Sperrin.

  “Just houses, I think. Mostly summer houses, for well-connected people. It’s too cold here in the winter to run a year-round resort unless you’ve got channelers to keep you warm and lit. Once in a while people would come out here in the winter to skate on the lake, but mostly the people who come here in the summer spend the rest of the year elsewhere.” He scanned the lake as we talked. I wondered if he was looking for something specific.

  “Did you know anyone here?” he asked the chancellor. My father stood aloof on the trail nearby, but as usual he listened to every word.

  The chancellor considered. “No one likely to be there now. This time of year it is just servants and attendants and guards, and a channeler to maintain the station and light the houses. It is still too early for the residents to be there.”

  If he saw Sperrin’s sour look, my father ignored it. “Pity. If they had been here, some of them might have lived.”

  “Some of them might have lived,” Sperrin answered. “We’ll see when we get closer.”

  He began to pick his way downslope. My father and I followed gingerly after. With no trail to speak of, Sperrin cut over rocks and around trees, moving more quickly than his usual pace. Usually he made sure we kept close, but now Sperrin just seemed to focus on getting toward the lake. Despite the brisk pace, I knew that Sperrin wasn’t moving as fast as he could. I still saw him pausing to check for dangers and recent passages. But he moved a lot faster than I could. It was all I could do to stay close to my father and within sight of Sperrin’s receding back.

  We came to a rock face slick with dew. Sperrin scuttled down it like a crab, barely pausing. Stopping, I measured the stone face in my head. Can I do this with a pack on? I wondered. Sperrin could, but he’s a lot stronger and more sure-footed than I am.

  “Well? What are you waiting for?” my father said from beside me. I almost stumbled in surprise.

  “Go on then,” he said. “The overcaptain is in a hurry to see if any servants or soldiers survived in the summer houses below. It will not do to keep a soldier like him waiting.”

  Scorn dripped from my father’s voice. I couldn’t tell if he aimed his barb at Sperrin’s hastiness or my own indecision.

  “I will,” I said hesitantly. “I just want to look it over first.”

  “Move aside then,” he said. “You can follow after, when you find your courage. Or if you never find it, I can send the soldier up to rescue you. He likes doing that sort of thing. Whether people want to be rescued or not.”

  He stepped past me, rolling his shoulders to loosen them before reaching for the first rockhold. His left boot tested a narrow foothold, and he edged outward, reaching for the next rock.

  He looked back at me to say something, and his foot shot out from under him, losing the tiny ridge in the stone. His right hand never caught the slick rock he reached for.

  My father’s eyes widened as he scrabbled for purchase. His left hand and foot barely held, without enough purchase to hold his weight for more than a moment.

  I shed my pack and dropped to the ground. Locking my legs around a rough-barked gallowwood tree, I stretched out over the slick rockface until my hand reached my father’s. My chest and arms scraped the rock as I added my other hand, holding my father’s weight and steadying him until he regained his grip.

  “You can let go now,” he said. “I have a secure hold on the rock.”

  As soon as I released my grip, my father began to move steadily across the rockface, more slowly this time.

  You could have said thank you, I thought. But I knew that wasn’t my father’s way. I brushed myself off and checked to make sure the scrapes wouldn’t hinder me. Shouldering my pack, I studied the rockface closely, picking out each step. Finally I began to make my way across, slowly and carefully.

  Just past the rockface, a rockfall had formed a sort of stairway that led to the remains of a rough track, what had been a wagonroad for the stonecutters who had worked on the lake houses. Sperrin waited for us under a copse of trees at the road’s edge, a small lunch for all of us laid out on a cloth in front of him. If he’d seen my father’s near fall and my own indecision, Sperrin said nothing about either. My father started to snap at the soldier, then seemed to rethink his words and settled for a growl as he took his portion. I accepted mine in silence, and tried to avoid my father’s reproachful look.

  Sperrin got up quickly when we had finished eating, wanting to be back on our way. I felt glad for the lack of respite. I needed to be moving, and not thinking about what any of us had done in the rocks above.

  Sperrin

  I couldn’t believe I had let him get me angry. All of those attempts to probe for weakness, and he finally managed to get to me now.

  It’s not like I hadn’t served the same empire he did. I was privileged, too.

  That made the second time he’d manipulated me that way. You’d think I would have learned, after the way he twisted all of us at the siege of Davynen.

  The only thing was, at Davynen, as much as I hated him, I knew we were on the same side.

  The thought bothered me. I didn’t want to think the chancellor might have ulterior motives. I preferred to think the chancellor was mad, and painfully self-absorbed. But the madness did seem to come and go conveniently.

  Ultimately, it wouldn’t be my problem to solve. I would deposit the chancellor and Ketya, alive, with whatever authority held Whitmount. Then I would find a way to return to the fight, in whatever capacity I could be useful. Whether they wanted me to be an overcaptain or a common trooper didn’t really matter. I would find a way to return to the thing I was really good at.

  Perhaps, sometime between the two, I would be able to find out what had become of my daughter.

  Working with Ketya always made me think of my daughter. I had no idea whether they looked at all alike, or had personalities anything like each other. It was just that in my head she represented what my daughter might have become.

  I kept getting ahead of the others. My temper made me want to kill, and when I felt that way, I didn’t want to be around them.

  I wanted to be hunting.

  My heart quickened when I saw the dead faerie. Not much more than a woodsprite, dead more than a day from a blow that had almost cut it in half, and left to bleed out on a low, flat rock.

  It meant that others had fought back. Someone else survived and fought.

  Someone else was still fighting, maybe nearby.

  Someone good at covering a trail: Besides the dead fey I found no signs of passage.

  I doubted I would find anyone in the lake houses. Nothing in them had been built for defense. No one would try to hold them against a determined attack. But I might find the trail of friends.

  The last few days had made me fear we might be alone in the mountains. But if soldiers held here, I could be confident they held at Whitmount.

  I let the others catch up as we drew closer to the lake, walking on paved roads instead of rough trails. The terrain grew less rocky, and straight-limbed gallowwood trees filled in thickly on either side of the road. High rock walls lined the horizon on all sides: We had climbed far down into the crater.

  I heard the first noises as we passed a shattered millhouse. A side wall had crumbled under some sort of assault. Grain carpeted the floor, mixed with pieces of shattered millstone. I didn’t see any bodies. Probably the building had been empty when the assault hit. They’re not just killing humans, I thought. They are assaulting human buildings, trying to eradicate us from these mountains.

  From somewhere, I heard a high bark, like a dog or wolf. It sounded again, not close. Maybe half a mile? A fight perhaps? This w
asn’t like the city, where one blade would make no difference on the killing grounds. Here, I might help to win a small fight—might be the difference between winning and losing.

  The desire to kill surged through me.

  I waved to Ketya and the chancellor. “Hide in there,” I said, pointing to the ruined millhouse. “I will return shortly.”

  Reflexively, I checked my blade. Shedding my pack, I placed it out of sight behind a piece of millhouse rubble. Smiling grimly, I began loping toward the side trail that led behind the millhouse and into the woods, toward the noise.

  I wanted a fight. For all those peaceful years in the palace I had buried the joy I took in fighting and killing. I had sought the palace position for that very reason, to get away from my love of killing.

  You can never really forget your first love, I thought. You can bury it for a while, but you can never really forget it.

  Ketya

  My father climbed into the millhouse while Sperrin disappeared down the trail. I hesitated for just a moment before shedding my own pack and jogging after Sperrin.

  Summer sunbeams lit the trail irregularly, shining through gaps in the thornwood and silver-barked ferrin trees that lined the dirt path. Sweat beaded on my neck and forehead and at the small of my back where I carried the Talisman. Sperrin moved at a steady, long-legged lope, his eyes scanning the sides of the trail as he moved. I didn’t want to get too close, but I had to jog faster to avoid falling farther behind.

  A low-pitched bark sounded from the woods ahead, followed by frustrated growls. Whatever Sperrin pursued seemed to have lost its quarry.

  Abruptly, Sperrin darted through a side-trail I hadn’t even seen.

  I stopped when I reached the place he had disappeared. I didn’t want to rush in too quickly. Kneeling, I removed the knives from my boots. I adjusted my boots, stood up, and started slowly down the side-trail.

  The trail opened out into a clearing in the forest. Fallen thornwood needles covered the ground. Half a dozen trails snaked from the clearing in different directions. The air smelled of blood and wet fur and pungent mountainthorn needles.