by JA Andrews
“He had black hair,” the Torch pointed out.
“That does seem like a clue right now,” Will admitted. “Although until I came to the Sweep, I didn’t know every Roven had red hair. I just thought a lot of you did. I’ve never heard from anyone that Mallon wasn’t Roven.”
An idea snagged in Will’s mind. “How long ago did Mallon come to the Sweep?”
“Fifty years ago.”
Will’s grip tightened on the reins. The fact that there were no Keepers younger than Will wasn’t the only gap. Historically Keepers were born every five to ten years. Between Will and Alaric was a twelve year gap, but that length wasn’t unheard of. The bigger question had always been that Between Alaric and Mikal, who was seventy-one, the gap was over twenty-five years. The space between them was generally thought to have belonged to at least two Keepers who, it was assumed, had died during childhood, before their abilities were awakened. But if Mallon was born fifty-some years ago, and came from Queensland, with powers like he had—he would fit in that gap.
Mallon should have been a Keeper.
The thought lodged something in Will’s heart. Keeper Mallon, puttering around the Stronghold with the other old men, browsing the library, wearing a black robe.
It was too far-fetched. What were the chances that the one child of his time who should’ve ended up a Keeper had been enslaved to the Roven?
Still, the Keepers hadn’t known of any children born during that time with abilities.
Until now.
“Someone in Queensland knows,” Killien scoffed. “The people in power know. The Queen. The Keepers.”
Will clenched his teeth down on the answer that he was positive they didn’t.
“They’re just keeping it quiet,” the Torch continued. “They wouldn’t want their people to know it was one of their own trying to kill them. Better to blame the nomads, right?”
“He came with an army of Roven.”
“We didn’t have a choice,” Killien objected. “Mallon gathered the clan Torches together and told them he was going to conquer Queensland and required our warriors. He said if we helped, he’d give us some of the land.”
“Did anyone refuse?”
Killien looked at him incredulously. “You understand what he was capable of. No one would who valued their lives or the lives of their clans refused. We were commanded to gain the support of our people and send all our troops.”
“All of them?”
Killien nodded, his face dark. “Every man between fifteen and sixty. And to send weekly shipments of food and supplies.”
Will looked away from Killien, letting his eyes run over the Scales. An uncomfortable level of sympathy for Killien vied with an illogical guilt that Mallon was from Queensland. Will shifted his cloak, pulling more of it around himself to block out the little fingers of cool morning air wriggling in through the gaps.
A half-dozen rangers appeared over a rise to the east and Killien studied them for a moment. “I’ll send Lukas with the runes I’d like you to translate,” he said. “When we reach the rifts, we’ll discuss the little slave girl again.”
Will took it as a dismissal and left, conflicting thoughts about the Roven and Killien and Mallon butting against each other in his mind. And the idea of buying Rass’s freedom was bittersweet. Certainly he’d love to take her away from the Roven, but she was small enough he could have snuck her out. It was Ilsa he needed to get to.
When he reached the book wagon, he found Rett driving it. Will gave the slave a friendly nod and the man nodded back. There was a general sadness about him this morning.
“Looks like a big storm is coming.” Will nodded toward the clouds piling up on the horizon.
“I don’t like thunder.” Rett kept his attention forward. Ahead of them was another wagon, loaded with baskets and sacks. And ahead of that one, another. The clan moved forward doggedly, each person and animal and wagon following the one ahead of it with no real need for thought. But Rett concentrated anyway, his hands gentle on the reins, his eyes determined and sad. Next to him sat his lumpy bag of heatstones.
Will couldn’t quite figure out the man. He was older than Will by a few years, and his mind didn’t seem slow as much as…distracted. As though there was too much going on and the simplest tasks required enormous concentration.
“I’m Will.”
Rett glanced toward him. “I know.”
“You drive the wagon well, Rett. Some of the others aren’t careful about what they’re doing.”
Rett shook his head disapprovingly. “The Torch’s books are very important.”
Will agreed, and when Rett kept his focus forward, he rode around to the back of the wagon, and dismounted. Walking behind it, he moved the oilcloth out of the way and opened the red bag of his books. He pulled several out, laying them across the back of the wagon. He’d already read most of them. The only two left were genealogies, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to commit the rest of the day to reading something that boring. Stuffing them all back in the bag, Will tugged at the leather straps cinching the bag shut.
The wagon creaked over the uneven ground and the bag and the boxes shifted haphazardly, making him feel slightly off balance. Will glanced up at Rett, but the man was facing forward, his shoulders slumped. He pushed the oilcloth farther to the side and opened the bag with Lukas's books, slipping out Methods of Transference again, even if there was nothing left to learn from it.
A rumble of thunder came from the storm clouds and Will flipped the book closed. He shoved it back into Lukas's bag and put it back where it belonged.
He was setting his own bag back in its place when the wagon wheel nearest him slammed into a hole and the entire wagon jarred to the side. Rett’s bag of heatstones tumbled to the side. The wagon jolted forward again and the box in front of Will slid, its edge tipping off the back of the wagon.
Will grabbed for the box, staggering forward with the wagon hearing the thunks of dozens of heatstones falling next to Rett. Will shoved at the box, trying to push it back into place, but his own bag of books toppled down into the space where the box belonged.
Shoving his shoulder against the box, Will stretched around it with his other hand, grabbing a handful of the red bag and yanking it out of the way. He’d almost cleared it when the bag jerked to a stop, the leather strap snagged on something he couldn’t see. With a curse, Will wrenched the bag toward him. The wood cracked and the bag slid clear. With a shove, he pushed the box into its place.
A rumble of thunder rolled from the dark clouds piling up to the north and Will climbed up on to the wagon to see what he’d broken. In the front of the wagon, Rett was focused on picking heatstones up and tucking them back into his bag.
A jagged piece of wood was caught in the straps of the red bag, and behind the box, one of the boards of the wagon bed had split, leaving a gap two fingers wide in the bottom of the wagon. He grabbed the broken sliver of wood and stretched around the box to put it back in place. It wouldn’t be fixed, exactly, but he couldn’t just leave a hole in the bottom of Killien’s wagon. Just before he placed the wood in, a flash of blue shimmered from the hole.
Will glanced up at Rett, but he was looking forward. Will leaned farther over the box. There, just visible through the crack was a piece of grey oil cloth.
Why put oilcloth under the books? A bit of it stuck up through the hole and Will tried to stuff it back in. The cloth shifted and he caught a glimpse of blue leather, glimmering with silver letters.
Will’s hand clutched the sliver of wood.
It was the book—the one Lukas had bought from Borto behind the wayfarers’ wagons.
He pushed the cloth out of the way, the jagged edge of the wood cutting into his finger until he could read the title. The Gleaning of Souls.
He pulled the board farther, feeling the wood groan, and leaned over. Just at the edge of the shadow he saw the author.
Kachig the Bloodless.
In the center of the cover, wh
ere the silver medallion had been, there was only a darker blue circle of leather, rough and scarred. Will stared at the disfigured cover, confused for a moment before realizing Killien had pulled the metal off the book to keep it safe from frost goblins. Will tested the boards next to the broken one, but nothing moved. The book was well sealed in the base of the wagon.
Thunder rumbled overhead again. The round pile of clouds were surging closer, like some kind of flower that kept blooming swell after swell of whiteness piling on top of each other. And underneath the whiteness, the Sweep was cast into dark shadows slanted with distant rain.
“The books should be covered,” Rett called back to him, worried.
Will let the board fall back into place, then shoved the box of books back on top of it before covering everything with the oilcloth. His fingers itched to pull it all back apart and grab the book. Instead, he climbed down off the wagon and mounted Shadow again.
The reins stung against his hand and he looked down to see a gash in his finger from the wood. Will cast out to the Sweep. The vitalle of the grass was no longer little pinpoints of energy, it now covered the ground with thin strands, like humming, shimmering fur.
He found the rough edges of his cut by the tangle of his own vitalle crowding around the wound, beginning the long, slow process of healing, which it would work at for days. The sheer amount of energy expended in healing made anything more than small cuts nearly impossible to heal quickly. Funneling the energy from the grass into his finger, he pressed it toward the cut, bolstering the healing, drawing the deepest part of the gash back together, working his way toward the surface until new skin spread across his finger in a slash of paleness.
He rode behind the book wagon for the next several hours, reading and pondering ways to get Kachig’s book out of Killien’s wagon.
It wasn’t Lukas who brought the runes for him to translate around midday, it was Sini.
When she appeared, Rett stood up in the still moving wagon and started to climb down. “Where are you going? I’ll go with you.”
“No, Rett.” She pulled up alongside him, speaking gently. “We’ll sit together at dinner. You need to drive the wagon and keep the books safe.”
“Oh.” He stopped and sat down slowly. “I forgot. Thank you.”
She gave him an encouraging nod and once he was seated, rode back toward Will, carrying a roll of paper. Her face lost the serious expression it often carried around Rett and settled into something curious, but cautious as she got closer.
“Is Rett…?” Will began quietly, looking for the right words.
Sini glanced back at the big slave, her face turning pensive. “There was an accident a long time ago. They say he almost died. I don’t think he remembers it, but he has trouble remembering a lot of things. He’s always distracted by things inside his head.”
“Do you take care of him?”
She shrugged. “He doesn’t need much care, just reminders sometimes. And he’s funny and kind.” She brushed a bit of blond hair back behind her ear, nervously. “We like the stories you’ve been telling at night. Both of us knew the one you told in Porreen, about Tomkin and the dragon.”
“Where did you hear it?”
“We’re both from Queensland,” she answered.
Will tried to ignore the complicated surge of pity and anger that thought evoked, and tried to find something to say.
But she didn’t seem to need a response. “How many stories do you know?”
“I could tell you a different one every day until you turned a hundred.”
She gave him a dubious look. “There aren’t that many stories in the world.”
“There are enough stories in the world that each of us could hear a different one every day until we turned a hundred, and we still wouldn’t run out.”
She considered this, biting her lip. With an almost absent expression she held the rolled papers out towards Will. He took them with thanks.
She lowered her voice and glanced around. “I’m glad you’re telling stories from Queensland.” With a quick smile, she turned her horse away.
Will watched her go, a convoluted tangle of emotions crowding into him. Killien might give him Rass if he could read these runes, and he’d find a way to free Ilsa, but how was he going to walk away and leave a girl like Sini here? She should be at home with her parents, growing closer to adulthood every day, complaining that they didn’t give her enough freedom. Not trapped here with no hope of it. It didn’t matter whether she seemed to be treated well or not, she was still a slave. The list of people he wanted to rescue from the Roven kept growing.
He unrolled the papers and his stomach sank for a completely different reason.
He’d been hoping that when Killien said “ancient runes,” what he’d really meant was “old fashioned runes.” A more decorated version of modern ones. But these runes were old. The deep, original-magic-workers-creating-a-language-to-hold-power old. The Keepers had plenty of books that used them. And all the Keepers could read them. To some extent.
For Will, that extent did not include being able to do more than narrow down their general meaning to a marginally more-narrow meaning.
Will’s eyes trailed over the page, sliding past the precisely written, highly complex shapes.
The topmost rune was something watery. Yes. Watery.
Will tilted the paper slightly to the side.
The next was definitely something about death. Except the corner of it was odd.
The third had entirely too many pieces. He pulled it closer, trying to make out the thin lines of extra strokes drawn into the bottom.
Chicken.
It said chicken.
Will let the paper fall back against the saddle.
The translation was “dead water chicken.”
That seemed unlikely.
He scrubbed his fingers through his hair, scanning the rest of the page. There were a dozen different runes. Each complex, each nonsensical.
Will closed his eyes.
If Rass’s freedom depended on this, she was never going to get away from the Morrow.
The day dragged inexorably on. Will returned, time and again to the runes, dissecting them, rearranging them, turning them on their heads. None of it was comprehensible.
The Morrow crept slowly north through the brownish green pelt of the grasslands, the sun moved slowly west through an empty, faded blue sky, and Will made no progress at all with his translations. Which began to tie his gut into a small knot of worry.
Rass appeared briefly, tugging on his foot to bring him down so she could show him the chain of flowers made from stalks and little blooms with greenish-yellow ray-like petals.
“I made it for you,” she said, seriously, holding it out toward his head.
Will leaned forward and let her set it on him. When he straightened, she nodded approvingly. Her face was so much less gaunt, her arms less skeletal. She’d lost the hollow sort of look in her eyes.
He reached into his bag and pulled out a wide salt flat and handing it to her. She must have been eating almost nothing before if the little food he was able to share with her was making such a difference. She grinned and took a big bite.
“Do I look kingly?” He lifted his chin and gazed over the grass ahead of them.
She giggled. “Like the King of the Grass.” And with that she ran off, stopping occasionally to yank something out of the ground.
Will watched her run, the knot of worry growing. There was no way he was leaving her here.
Ahead of him the peaks grew taller, connecting with each other until the entire northern horizon was blocked by the imposing wall of the Hoarfrost Range. He found himself staring at them more and more often, spinning his ring. His mind avoiding the impossible runes, avoiding thinking about Ilsa and Rass and Sini.
The sun wasn’t remotely close to the horizon when the caravan stopped. There didn’t seem to be a cistern, and Will was caught between wondering why they’d stopped and if he could c
ome up with a good enough reason to go near Ilsa when he heard the news that Lilit’s time had come. There was no reason in the world that would get him close to Ilsa tonight. Will settled down on the back of the book wagon, glad to be able to sit still during the daylight and write for Killien.
The sun had sunk low in the west when Sora rode up next to him. He hadn’t seen her since that morning, and her mood had not improved. She sat down beside him on the back of the book wagon with a curt nod. He waited for a minute or two before leaning over and whispering, “Are you mad at me? Or someone else?”
A small smile cracked through her scowl.
“Good.” He sat back. “It’s nice when you spread your anger out among other people.”
This earned him no response at all.
“Have you been doing something more riveting than walking north through grass?”
“Helping Killien.” She didn’t look toward him, and by the way she said the Torch’s name, Will didn’t have to wonder who she was angry with.
Will fiddled with the page of the book a moment, waiting for her to continue. She didn’t and he let the silence go as long as he could. “Did you finish whatever he needed?”
“Yes.” The word came out as almost a hiss, and Will leaned back slightly to be farther from her line of sight.
“Sometimes you’re terrifying,” he said.
She closed her eyes and let out a tired sort of laugh. When she opened them, her face was weary. The sun was low enough that the air had turned golden, and the copper of Sora’s braid caught at the light, reflecting strands of dark red.
“Why don’t you go home, Sora?” he asked. “Get out of these infernal grasses. Leave the Morrow to whatever Roven things they want to do, and go do something…anything else?”
She sank over against the wall of the wagon. “Because it’s never that simple.”
Will couldn’t argue with that. “Well then don’t go home. Go somewhere else.” He paused for a moment. “Come with me when I leave.”
She turned to him with an incredulous look. “And go where?”
Will shrugged. “Off the Sweep. There are a lot of interesting countries just over those mountains.”