Walk Between Worlds

by Samara Breger

  “I don’t believe her.” James carefully wiped his weeping lip against his shoulder. “You’re too special to not become a knight. I just thought . . .”

  “You thought that if you believed I could do it, everyone would. You wanted me to have a command, and you always get your way.” She attempted to pat his head with her cheek. “My poor little nobleman. But that’s not the point I was making.”

  “I’ve been beaten nearly to a pulp, darling. Forgive me for missing a point or two.”

  “I think she might have left, Jamie.” Frances had spoken like a woman who knew more than she let on, who understood that there was no hope for a future where she was. Like someone who had made alternate plans. “Two horses were gone, hers included. She could have ransacked her room as a decoy.”

  “Why would she have done that?”

  “Well, I don’t know.” She had roughly a dozen theories. “But think about it: Levon barely asked us where Frances had gone. He and the King weren’t demanding answers, they were looking for someone to blame.” The ideas were sparking, making her nose itch. “It’s far easier for them to pin it on us than to admit that Frances ran off. And if they really thought we had spirited her away, we would be in a torture chamber right now getting our eyelashes plucked out.”

  “Well, thank the gods for small mercies.” He spread out on the floor and sighed. “Scratch, I understand that you’re looking for answers. I wouldn’t mind a few myself. But if the king has decided we’re guilty, we’re guilty.”

  “You aren’t allowed to be right.” She felt heavy, the thick dungeon atmosphere pinning her to the ground. “Gods, Jamie. Nothing’s been going my way today.”

  “Poor babe.” He chuckled, wet and throaty. “You know, I have a book in my pocket.”

  She couldn’t help the smile that dragged her cracked, painful lips across filmy teeth. “You what?”

  “I fell asleep reading. I just put it in my pocket. They didn’t seem to care.” His voice broke. “Nobody cares. They didn’t care. They didn’t—”

  “Shh, Jamie.” She shifted closer, stemming his tears with her hair. She wished she could open her mouth and swallow the tears and, with them, the pain. He was a soldier, but he was soft. Not like Scratch. She had built her armor early, stealing through the slums with an empty belly, reaching her grubby hand into strangers’ pockets for a few coppers. James had the privilege of softness, and it suited him beautifully. Gods, if she could only take this from him. “I care. We have each other, all right? We’re okay. If we’re together, we’re okay.”

  She whispered nonsense until his sobs faded to the deep breathing of sleep. Then, she was alone.

  She tried to close her eyes, but her mother was waiting behind her eyelids. If Scratch was to be publicly executed, would Purpose Keyes be brought out to watch her daughter drop? To see her only child’s blond head take leave of her body? Would she weep, or would she stare in that blank way of hers, a closed door shaped like watery blue eyes in a face too miserable for sadness?

  The Academy had been Scratch’s freedom, her escape and her promise. God of Days Ahead, she was an idiot. She had thought that if she just kept being exceptional—fighting harder, running faster, strategizing beyond what those useless commanders could dream—the rest wouldn’t matter. Her family, her gender, her size: Scratch could build herself greater than the bricks of her birth.

  It was all for nothing in the end.

  And this particular end was the real elderflower drizzle on the shit cake: no one could craft a crueler death for Scratch than one she didn’t understand. Were she and James truly the only ones who hadn’t been accounted for last night? Were other members of the Guard out looking for the princess, or would her disappearance be swept away, left to ossify into the brittleness of national tragedy? And if that were the case, who benefitted? At the center of every tangle was the person who had something to gain. If only she could map her way toward who, pull the thread from the snarl until someone with a story popped out.

  What she wouldn’t give for a piece of parchment.

  James stirred. “There’s someone here.”

  “It’s too early, darling. Go back to sleep.”

  “No. Scratch.” She could see the deep green of his wide eyes in the scant light. “Listen.”

  She listened. Sure enough, the sound of footsteps interrupted the drips of the mysterious dungeon moisture. Not a guard to bring her to the block—a quick, confirming glance at the tiny window exposed a sky not yet touched by the cool light of dawn. There was a jangling—keys, maybe? And then—

  “Get up,” the intruder hissed. “Which key, which key. . . aha!” Metal scraped against metal, the gate screaming as it swung open. “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”

  Scratch and James scrambled up, using each other’s bodies as leverage. Hells, she was exhausted. Her ribs ached.

  “Our hands are still bound.” Scratch turned, exposing the rope at her back that rubbed her wrists raw. “Could you . . .”

  “Oh, yes.” The stranger—a woman, from the sound of her voice—pulled a knife from the folds of her skirts and quickly slashed through the ropes. “Not much time. Follow me.”

  Scratch met James’s eyes for a brief, silent conversation. A raised eyebrow. Who do you think . . .? A shrug. Does it matter?

  One last risk wouldn’t kill them. And if it did, what difference did it make?

  It hurts to hope, she reminded herself. Don’t let yourself hope.

  Still, they followed. The woman didn’t lead them down the hall to freedom. Instead, she brought them to a neighboring cell. There was a quick dance with the keys. “Which one, come on?” And they were in. The woman closed the gate behind her.

  And now they were trapped in a new, smaller cell. This one, if possible, was even damper.

  Scratch tugged on her waistband. “Um . . .”

  “Quiet.” The woman hunched down in a corner, frantically pawing at the wall. “Ah!” A little exhale of triumph as her fingers found a loose rock. She pushed it to the side, opening a slender hole in the wall, just big enough for a moderately sized human to crawl through.

  “Ursus first, please. If you get stuck, I want Keyes behind you to push.” It was dark in the dungeon, but Scratch was still able to detect a smirk on the woman’s face. “If you please.”

  James hesitated. “Could you tell us who—”

  “No time.” The woman pushed him towards the hole. “Stay here and be executed, if you please. No skin off my feet.” The way she manhandled James cut a few holes in her nonchalant veneer, but he was swayed. With a shrug and a wince, he crouched into the darkness.

  “Now you, Keyes. I’ll be right behind you. Just have to close it up after us.”

  Scratch swallowed thickly, obediently making her way into the tunnel. She had known the advantages of her size—counted them, wrote them out, internalized them so that no one could tell her being small wasn’t worth something—but she had never considered within those advantages the ease of escaping the castle dungeon on the eve of her own execution. The passage was downright roomy. For her at least.

  “Ugh,” James groaned. “How much longer?”

  “Not much.” Their savior (or captor—there was really no way of knowing) was also having a bit of trouble getting through. Scratch bit back a surge of wild laughter. This was ridiculous. She had been preparing to die only a moment ago, and now, upon the instruction of a nameless stranger, she was wiggling through a secret passage to nowhere. The only thing that would make this more absurd was if the whole tunnel collapsed and the last thing she ever saw was James’s ass as he shuffled a foot ahead.

  A short, percussive noise rent the close, warm air.

  James stopped short. “Scratch, was that your pants?”

  “No,” she hissed, though she couldn’t deny her sudden ability to take full breaths, nor the tiny breeze at her backside. Of course her pants would rip. Whatever god had it in for her must be having quite the giggle. Her face b
urned.

  “No time for ripped pants,” the woman whispered, a barely concealed hitch of laughter in her voice. “We’re nearly there. Ursus, push up when you see the iron bar.”

  He did, leading them out into what was most certainly an alehouse basement. Barrels lined the walls, and the sharp smell of fermentation prickled in Scratch’s nostrils.

  The woman emerged from the tunnel, closing the trapdoor behind her.

  “Through the window now.”

  They slipped through a high-set window (Scratch insisted on going last) and rolled out into a dingy alley. The stranger pressed a finger to her lips, gesturing them to follow. She led them through small streets, quickly darting behind buildings and carts when anyone came near. They didn’t need to worry. It must have been close to four in the morning and the streets were nearly deserted. Scratch didn’t recognize the area, but the sickly, heady smell and general filth had the feel of the slums where she was raised. It gave her the sensation of jolting through time, running from the neighborhood children whose greatest joy was to corner and pummel her. Her lungs felt tight, and she could taste her own breathing, rough iron on her tongue.

  Finally, the stranger opened a warped wooden door and shooed them inside. It was a living room. Dingy paint cracked from wainscoting to baseboards, and the floor beams listed like a ship carried by sea wind. A hearth crackled with the last gasps of tired-out logs, spitting ash and dust onto a balding rug.

  “We’re here,” the stranger announced.

  From the dimness, a man and a woman approached. They looked to be siblings, both thick and broad-shouldered, as if they had been well fed on milk and eggs since birth. They had nearly identical ropy arms, russet skin dappled with scattered-spice explosions of freckles. Their hair was the medium brown of burnished bronze, hints of gold peeking from the man’s cropped curls, the woman’s twin thick braids. Their lips were plump and rosy-brown and, like the rest of their bodies, so startlingly healthy. Scratch could see the definition of their muscles through the soft linen of their garments, the dips and divots of biceps hiding under the man’s open-necked tunic, the woman’s simple, pale-blue shirt. Oddly, even though she wore trousers, the woman had tied an embroidered apron around her waist.

  “You got them,” the man said by way of greeting. His voice was low and rich, a bass that rumbled through her toes. “Good.”

  The new woman said nothing, the lines of her mouth tense and downturned. Her eyes burned a dark topaz verging on amber, ancient sap grown hard, long dormant insects trapped between the threads of iris.

  James drummed his fingers on his thighs. “Hello.” He wiped the drool from his swollen lip. “I’m terribly sorry to report that I’m not at my prettiest.” He eyed the man. “You, on the other hand—ow, Scratch, o-kay. I’m James.”

  The man bowed his head in greeting. “Vel Shae. This is my sister Brella.”

  “Lovely to make your acquaintance,” James replied, with a bravado Scratch knew sheltered a trembling unease. “And—not that I’m complaining, of course—but may I ask: why have you sprung us from the dungeons?”

  Brella glared at their rescuer. “Iris. You didn’t tell them?”

  “We didn’t have time.” In the glowing light of the room, Scratch could see that their escort—Iris—was wearing the dress and apron of a palace maid. She ripped off her bonnet, exposing a head of bedraggled bronze hair.

  “They don’t know where we’re going,” Brella spat as Iris flopped onto a moldering sofa. “They haven’t agreed to anything. Damn it, Iris.”

  Iris closed her eyes and began to rub the bridge of her nose. “What do they need to agree to? They were going to die, and now they’re not. Now, please, go rescue Frances.”

  Scratch choked. “Rescue . . .”

  “Listen.” Vel’s voice was calm, but his eyes kept darting to the door and his hands were in fists. “Iris works in the castle. She and Frances are . . .” He bit his lip. “Close. She and the princess overheard some details about an abduction. Frances brought it to Gorn. He didn’t do anything. It seemed like . . .”

  “Like he was in on it.” Brella’s jaw was set, her rust-toned eyes fierce. “There was no one the princess could trust in the castle. No one but you two.”

  James raked a hand through his hair. “Us?”

  Vel nodded. “Unless we get Frances back, you’ll die for this. You didn’t do it.”

  “We could have,” James reasoned. “I mean, maybe we knew too much. Maybe they had to kill us to get us out of the—ow!”

  Scratch rolled her heel over James’s toes. “We’re not in on it,” she assured the Shaes, tethering herself to reality through the sensation of James foot underneath hers. Plots? Abductions? Conspiracies? When she finally got the chance to pick this all apart, she would need a very large piece of parchment.

  “Yeah,” Brella said. “We know.”

  Scratch took a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “So where is she?”

  The Shaes locked eyes for a moment.

  “Koravia,” Vel said, and it was all Scratch could do not to crumble to the floor.

  To fight for Ivinscont was to fight against Koravia. That had been the whole point of her recruitment—hells, it was the point of every recruitment. Even if Koravia was not the enemy of the moment, every fighter Scratch felled, every horse she hobbled, was in the name of destroying that nearby nation, those aggressors who had nearly brought Ivinscont to its knees only thirty years before.

  They had invaded on black horses, spears dipped in wizard-wrought potions to make each death quick, to turn each nonlethal stab into inevitable destruction. They had claimed nearly all of the Eastern Steppes before they had met Ivinscont’s army, stronger and cleverer than they had anticipated. There had been death on both sides, violent, ugly death, each soldier facing their end with cold certainty. It had been the sort of war that could have no victor.

  Seeing no end to the bloodshed, two kings signed a treaty for peace. They were the fathers of the men who now sat upon their thrones. The late kings had kept to the treaty. The new kings . . . well, there was really no way of knowing. So Ivinscont needed to be prepared, always prepared, in case those black horses rode from the east once more.

  “Koravia?” James tugged at his chestnut curls, now gone entirely to frizz. “What, are we supposed to just go east? We’re fugitives!”

  “We’re not going east.”

  “But—Vel, was it?—Vel. That’s where Koravia is.”

  Brella sucked her teeth. “We’ll explain on the way. We need to get into the forest before the sun rises and the King’s Guard figures out you’ve gone.”

  “The forest?” James turned desperately to Scratch for support. “We’ll die there. We have no weapons!”

  “We have weapons,” Vel volunteered.

  James looked unconvinced. “Such as?”

  “Bows.”

  “And Scratch? I can handle a bow—” a gross understatement “—but Scratch is for swords.”

  Vel tapped a thoughtful a finger against his jaw. “We have kitchen knives?”

  “There isn’t time for this,” Brella snarled, a braid flopping over her shoulder. “If we don’t get out of here soon, it’s your heads.”

  “Can I borrow some pants?”

  Everyone turned. Scratch stood, picking at her waistband, her skin aflame. She didn’t know whether to cry or fight or vomit or lie down and let the exhaustion carry her away. In her chest, ribs squeezed around a ragged heart, too drained for fear, or perhaps beyond it. She was spent, her final stores empty. Anything she did from here on out would be drawing strength from muscle and bone, depleting her.

  Everything had been taken from her. The least she could get in return were some comfortable pants.

  “These, uh, won’t suit,” she continued. Brella’s eyes were narrowed, her gaze a burning thing. “If we’ll be riding.”

  Brella shook her head. “We’re walking.”

  “Regardless. Do you . . .”
>
  Vel made towards a chest in the corner. “I’ve got something that might fit. They’re Leif’s.”

  “Our brother,” Iris called from the couch. “He’s eleven.”

  “Here.” Vel tossed her a wad of cotton. “You can change over there.”

  She shuffled toward the indicated partition, keeping her back to the wall, and struggled out of her pant-manacles. Sure enough, a neat rip gaped in the seat like a dark, mocking mouth.

  You’ve had nothing before, she reminded herself, though her own voice was weak in her heavy head. You can make it all up again.

  And there in her mind, as if summoned, was Frances. Her woods-wild eyes revealing truth after truth, melting off Scratch’s armor, revealing skin that stung with newness. The princess, at least, deserved the rest of her life.

  “I’m coming to get you,” she whispered into the dying fire. “Whether you like it or not.”

  Chapter Four

  From the second the small party slunk into the streets to the moment they crossed the forest’s tree line, Scratch barely took a breath. She allowed herself to fill her lungs when the forest rose up around her, the heady scent of damp earth and piney wilderness sluicing the filth of the dungeons from her insides. The dawn crept pale blue on the trees, chill and gentle, staining the brown bark gray. She breathed and breathed.

  She didn’t miss the irony that the forest, dangerous, mysterious, and largely avoided, would be her refuge. It was unforgiving, a home earned by those who could survive it. There were the animals, of course—bear, coyote, wild dog—as well as the packs of bandits who staked their claim to swaths of land, camps with unmarked barriers so subtle an intruder wouldn’t know they had trespassed until the blade of a bandit’s knife kissed their throat.

  But the threats of beasts and bandits were nothing compared to danger of the fair folk, the magical creatures who not only occupied these woods, but had, according to legend, drawn every tree from the earth. The clever Ivinscontian might call the fae a myth; the cleverest wouldn’t say such a thing out loud, for fear the fae could hear. People disappeared in these woods, lured by ghostly light or the crying of a baby who didn’t exist. Scratch’s mother, being from the Lakes, was more concerned about sirens and kelp spirits, but even she knew to warn her daughter: stay out of the forest.