Still, they were comfortable. And, crucially, in one piece.
“Thank you,” Scratch choked out, “for the pants.”
Brella hummed acknowledgment. “Not for rescuing you?”
“That too.”
“I was sorry to see you demolish that other pair.”
Scratch raised a shoulder with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “They were tight.”
“They looked expensive.”
Another weak shrug. “They had already been ruined.” Even before they ripped. Her knees had spat blood onto the fabric when she was shoved to the hard stone of the dungeon, and who knows what filth had ground its way into the weave. She hadn’t seen much in the dim light of the Shaes’ living room, but she had caught the dark, wet stains that bloomed like bruises in the red fabric.
“So . . .” She tapped a nervous rhythm on the borrowed pants. “Do you come here often?”
“To the forest?” Brella raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”
“And who guards you against bandits then?”
She shrugged. “I have more brothers. They’re a little more, uh, weapon-proficient than Vel is. And I have . . .” She mulled over the word. “Friends.”
Scratch chose the least thorny path. “How many more brothers?”
“Not including Vel? Six.”
Scratch stumbled. “So, with Iris, there are . . . eight of you?”
Brella shook her head. “Seven boys, seven girls. Fourteen.”
“That’s a lot,” Scratch commented, realizing only after the words spilled out how unnecessarily obvious they were.
Brella snorted. “I hadn’t realized.”
“Sorry,” Scratch mumbled. “I was surprised.” She leapt over a branch that Brella, with her long legs, had calmly stepped over. “It was only me and my mother growing up.”
Where was Purpose now? Probably tucked away in her nice little house with thick walls and windows that kept the draft out. It had been a gift of sorts, from daughter to mother, bought with saved-up soldier’s wages. It hadn’t been a peace offering as much as a cashing out of obligation. Here, Purpose, take this house and leave me alone. Now, Scratch didn’t have to feel guilty when she thought of her mother servicing men well into her middle age. Scratch had, at least, spared her mother that effort. Normally, she didn’t think about Purpose Keyes at all.
How long until Purpose heard that Scratch was a fugitive of the crown? Surely guards would show up at her door, demanding answers. Would they believe Purpose when she said she hadn’t spoken to her daughter in two years? It was implausible, sure; they both lived in the Royal City and Scratch had plenty of time off to go visit. But it was the truth.
Scratch imagined her mother answering the door in her house dress, her uncut blond hair hanging limp and stringy around her small face. Were her cheeks still hollow, bugging out those blue eyes like twin siren’s pools? Would she cry when the guards told her what her daughter had done? Would she smile?
“It’s a big family,” Brella conceded with a heavy sigh. “It’s strange to be in the forest without them, though.”
Scratch wanted to ask where all those siblings thought Brella and Vel were now, but, savoring this tenuous peace, she decided to save the harder questions for later.
“How often do you go to the Between?” she asked instead.
“A few times a season.”
“Where does it take you?”
“Oh gods, where doesn’t it?” A sunbeam shot across Brella’s face, and she raised a hand to shield her eyes. Then, in an instant, she caught herself. “Lots of places.”
“Like . . .” Scratch prompted.
Brella eyed her warily, her face carefully blank. Assessing. It was a look Scratch recognized from her own face: a cautious, deliberate shell that hid the skilled work of deciding whether to share something truly worth sharing. It was apparent that Brella, like Scratch herself, rarely doled out precious things, meaningful things, and only then to the people who deserved to hear them.
It hit her with the blinding brightness of a sun suddenly unimpeded by cloud cover: she wanted Brella to tell her about the Between. She wanted it desperately. Because Brella, for some reason, didn’t like soldiers. Because Brella, for some reason, didn’t like her.
Everyone thought they had the measure of Scratch, that they could see the parts of which she was composed and decide what sort of person those combined bits made up. Everyone had been wrong. And so the need built (and built and built) to show Brella that Scratch was worth the telling. That it would be a pleasure—no, an honor for Brella to lay her stories at Scratch’s feet.
Brella, for whatever reason, thought she knew exactly who Scratch was. Scratch didn’t know much about the other woman, but she knew at least that Brella was wrong.
“I’ll listen,” she tried. “I’m not just trying to make conversation. I’m curious.”
Brella’s eyes narrowed further, little lines appearing beside them. At last she sighed. “All right. Koravia, sure, but once my sister Maisie and I went to the Bargard Cliffs. We were so high up, I thought I could reach out with my tongue and taste a cloud.” She paused. A dark flush spread across her cheeks and nose. “I couldn’t.”
Scratch’s mouth went dry. “Where else?”
As she talked—and as Scratch listened—Brella’s tension eased. She had seen the deep eastern caverns, glistening striations of ore spinning down into the darkness. She had seen the sulfurous pools of Kerir, steaming swaths of impossible green reflecting sunlight like stained glass. She had even smelled the flowers of Gundoor; those had made her pass out for a few hours.
“Worth it though,” she said. “I still remember the smell. Nothing smells like that.”
Scratch had never smelled exotic flowers or sat atop the edge of the world. She had spent her life in the Royal City. There had been a few expeditions—accompanying the King to the Hillen Lands or guarding a noble on a political expedition to Crather’s Keep—but those had hardly been remarkable. She had taken the King’s Road there and the King’s Road back. Most of her experience had been stomping, her only view the inside of her helm.
She didn’t even remember the Tangled Lakes. Her mother had taken her to the Royal City when Scratch was only a baby. She often thought about going back, dipping her toes in the lakes she knew only from her mother’s stories. But within that twined a thorny vine of apprehension. She had been called a Lakes girl her whole life. What if she went there and found out she . . . wasn’t? That being raised elsewhere made her something different, something even more singular?
And then there were the Western Wilds. Her mouth ran dry, remembering. “They live in trees,” she had told the commanders. Homes up high with bridges between them, wooden grins with slats like teeth. Clotheslines and pulleys strung between branches. Children nestled in hammocks like pupating caterpillars. A whole world above the ground.
Octagon had been an oversimplification. The real term was octagonal prism. Soldiers pointed out, then up, then further up still to catch fighters as they fell. Lines that weren’t lines, but angles, shapes. Soldiers in graduated groups, their bodies forming honeycombs, leaving room for the Westerners’ spears to catch only air. Climbers with daggers in their teeth and boots, clad in leather armor for close treetop combat that the Western spear fighters would never expect.
“Scratch?” Brella was peering at her. The sunlight filtered through the trees and onto her freckles, two overlaid patterns of dappling. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere,” she answered, and they walked on in silence.
Chapter Six
When evening fell, they stopped in a clearing conveniently located by a small trickling stream. Wildflowers burst in bunches all around, tiny clumps of pinks and yellows and purples smiling up from the roots of trees and the edge of the water. Scratch watched as a small brown rabbit hopped through the glen, briefly stopping its course to munch on a flower before darting away.
She scowled. “It’s like a children’s story,
James.”
“Be nice.” He gifted her a light slap on the arm before joining Vel on his quest to find fallen twigs to serve as firewood.
Brella had gone off to forage for edible berries and roots, leaving Scratch alone at the campsite. For want of something better to do, she laid out everyone’s bedroll. It took roughly thirty seconds. She then searched the stream’s bank for the heaviest stones she could find and arranged them in a circle so that the fire might burn a bit longer. She knew it to be a wholly unnecessary move. The night was warm, and between the food the Shaes had packed and the foraged roots, it was unlikely that they’d be eating anything that required more cooking than a cursory grill. But her hands were restless, as was her mind. If she were to sit, she was sure she’d be set upon by visions of disaster and ruin, too-clear memories of her worst failures. Her brain was used to working at speed, and now, sidelined like a racehorse with no rider, her mind was frothing and stamping, a confined, muscled machine making itself sick with unspent energy.
“Nice stones.”
Brella stood at the edge of the forest holding the hem of her apron. Roots and berries weighed down the cloth that now served as a makeshift basket, the red juices from burst fruit dappling the fabric.
“You’re going to stain your apron.”
Brella shrugged. “That’s what aprons are for.”
“But the embroidery!” It was fine work, the stitches tiny and immaculately placed, depicting strange plants Scratch didn’t recognize.
“Vel can do more.”
“Vel did that?”
“Did he not say he was a seamstress?”
Brella upturned her skirt, unceremoniously dumping the spoils of her foraging by Scratch’s stones. She then took a small knife from her boot, plopped down awkwardly, and began peeling the vegetables.
Scratch scoffed. “You’re making a mess of that you know.”
Brella flicked a chunk of mangled root from her lap. “I expect that the maids at the castle have a somewhat lighter hand.”
“A bear would have a lighter hand.” She made a noise of impatience and held her palm out to Brella, who gamely plopped a fat root into her outstretched hand. She removed her kitchen knife from its fancy sheath and set to work, grinning to herself when she received Brella’s anticipated low whistle of appreciation.
“You’re good at that.”
She shrugged. “Knife work is knife work.”
“Ah. So you’d skin a man with the same sort of finesse.”
“What? I’d never skin a man! I only mean—”
“I know, I know. You prefer women.” Brella smirked, knowing eyes twinkling. “I know the type.”
Prickling heat crawled up Scratch’s face as she gaped, speechless. Luckily, James and Vel chose that moment to return, flushed and grinning, arms laden with twigs and branches. James looked a bit punch drunk, his eyes glazed and sparkling, his lips reddened.
“Shall we set this mess on fire then?” His eyes were on Vel as he cheerily tossed the twigs toward the circle of stones, managing to get only a few to their intended destination while the rest scattered like spillikins.
They dined on bread, cheese, and the roots, which turned out to be somewhat spongy and rather pleasant.
“I could set up some snares,” Vel offered as he tore into a root. “Maybe we could have meat tomorrow.”
James smirked. “Snares?”
“Uh, yes?”
James reached for his bow and nocked an arrow. Before anyone could ask what he was doing (or, in Scratch’s case, roll her eyes), he loosed the arrow into the brush. When he retrieved it, a hare was in his hands.
“If anyone could skin this, I would be much obliged.”
Brella, openmouthed, pointed at Scratch.
“Fine,” Scratch said. “Gimme.”
She skinned the poor beast in silence, the Shaes too stunned to speak.
“I’m an archer,” James supplied, after a moment or two.
Vel nodded slowly. “I gather.”
They didn’t follow, so James led harder. “Sometimes I go by another name.”
“Oh.”
Scratch snorted into her elbow. James glared at her.
“It’s a nickname. Have you heard of any . . . archery-related nicknames?”
The Shaes blinked blankly at him.
“Arrow?” Vel guessed.
Undeterred, James puffed out his chest. “Bowstring. Have you heard of a Bowstring in the King’s Guard?”
“Uh.” Vel spread his hands. “Now we have.”
“Does everyone have a nickname in the King’s Guard?” Brella asked quickly, James reddening beside her. “Bowstring, Scratch. Is it about the scar on your face?”
“Brella!” Vel whacked her. “You can’t just ask someone about the scar on their face.”
“No, no. I’m fine about the scar,” Scratch assured them. “That’s a boring story. I got it fighting a girl who hadn’t cut her nails in a while.” She slipped off the rabbit’s hide in one piece like a shirt and handed the meat to Vel to roast over the fire. “That’s not how I got my name, though.” She turned to James. He pouted down at his bloodied arrow. “You wanna tell it, Jam . . . uh, Bowstring?”
It had been their first day at the Academy, and Scratch had already become a target. Her sergeant, a stone-faced brick of a man, had called a group to the sparring ring and was setting up children to fight in pairs. “Separating the wheat from the chaff,” he had called it, and although the ritual was informal, it was important all the same. The winners and losers were split into groups after their spars, and Scratch knew that if she lost, she would be forever hampered by the weight of her first failure. There was no option but to win.
Perhaps for his own amusement, the sergeant paired Scratch, the smallest of the bunch, with a dense, brutish boy at least twice her size. The boy, a well-dressed, proud son of an earl, immediately complained of the indignity that was fighting a Lakes-milky slum rat in dirty clothes. He pleaded with the sergeant for a more suitable opponent, perhaps his cousin, a reedy, green-eyed youth with a perpetually bored expression and overgrown eyebrows. The sergeant didn’t budge, however; and after a few minutes of pointless wheedling, the son of an earl finally relented, stomping into the ring, grumbling all the while.
Ten-year-old Scratch sized up her opponent. In the midmorning sun, his skin was as pink as a plucked chicken, and when he pouted, his stuck-out bottom lip was a ripe cherry. He was coated in a layer of baby fat that hid a robust well of strength, as she discovered when he threw his first punch, knocking her onto her ass in the dusty earth. Even now, she could feel the spreading ache in her seat of a bruise to come, the sting of humiliation prickling behind her eyes, and the terror of being dubbed worthless before she even had a chance to prove her mettle.
Then, someone shouted, “Get up and fight!” And she did as she was told.
She fought as only a girl who had tasted the first bitter hints of failure could. She spat the poison from her body by sinking fists into flesh. The terror and anger of teetering on that precipice fueled her, and she fought with terrible, unsteady desperation. She would not go home, could not, and the unfortunate boy before her was taught the cruel lesson of her determination. She landed punch after punch in his soft belly, and when he went down she boxed his ears and head, then his hands when he brought them up to protect his skull. Only after the sergeant had called “Enough, girl,” did she finally relent, leaving her bested foe bloody-nosed and trembling in the dirt.
Pity for the boy rose like bile. He lay on his side, wiggling like a frantic maggot suddenly exposed to light. Her assault had left him leaking blood and mucus from his nose and mouth, bubbling frothy red with his ragged panting. Limpid threads hung at his shoulders and collar where his fine clothing had torn at the seams. He looked smaller somehow, deflated; and glassy-eyed like a gutted fish. He trembled.
Something inside of Scratch told her to turn from him, to avert her eyes from this boy at his weakest. She did him this
mercy, looking instead to her classmates, all wearing similar expressions of shock and horror, commingled with freshly earned respect. The combination left her with a feeling both terrible and intoxicating. Searching for a friendly face, her gaze landed on the boy who had yelled earlier, who had told her to “get up and fight” when she feared there was no fight left in her. It had been the cousin of her opponent, the green-eyed boy. He was smiling.
“My name’s James. Do you want to be my friend?”
And then there was madness, a cacophony of shouts and cheers, faces near her and hands slapping her back. The defeated boy was all but forgotten in the fray as low and highborn spectators alike introduced themselves. Some came to offer congratulations, but more hid thinly veiled threats beneath supposed praise. They had seen what this nobody girl could do to one of their own and wanted to tell her that they would not be next.
She had let these new faces melt into one exhilarated blur and, trembling, had fallen into the blissful relief of her survival.
“. . . and someone shouted ‘She doesn’t have a scratch on her!’” James told the rapt Shaes. “And it stuck.”
Scratch generally didn’t mind the story. Sure, there was a tint of guilt over the pride, but it didn’t bother her when she didn’t think too hard about the boy she had beaten. But today . . .
It had been her moment of renaming, when she went from Nobody to Soldier. She had planned to be a soldier forever.
Her hands were still red from rabbit’s blood. She wiped them on the grass.
“And Brella?” she asked, too quickly. “Where does that come from?”
“It’s actually short for Umbrella.”
James was in no mood. “Don’t tease us.”
“Not teasing. Vel can verify.”
“Not teasing,” Vel verified.
“Why Umbrella?” Scratch asked, receiving a roast quarter of rabbit from Vel.
Brella lifted a shoulder. “It’s a long story.”
“We have time.”
Brella paused for a moment, caught in knit-brow consideration over whether Scratch and James were worth her story. “I was born during a rainstorm,” she began, apparently finding her audience satisfactory. “My parents wanted to name me Rainbow. Vel was sick when my mother was pregnant, and my parents hoped that when I was born, Vel would get better. The rain would stop and everything would be okay.” She squinted up at the sky as a bat swooped above their heads, squeaking in the moonlight. “But it wasn’t. He stayed sick for months, and that rainy season was the heaviest in a generation. Still, I was a happy baby, and I was Vel’s favorite thing. My parents said that I wasn’t able to clear the rain, but I made it easier to bear. Like an umbrella.”
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