by Kaleb Schad
“Our kids—”
“Will be fine. Nobody will know. You get them across the pass and you get back before sunrise. Nobody will know.”
Alysha stared at him as she spoke, refusing to wipe away the tear that broke loose, slipping along her cheek. The way she stared at him, Daveon knew something had shifted inside of her. There was a fire in her—a certainty and courage—he’d never seen before. It reminded him of Rayen. Of who he wished he could be.
She wasn’t wrong. They were the only ones in Fisher Pass who could do this. Nobody else had enough horses. Nobody else knew the paths like he did. The trails were hard enough on horseback, there was no way Zenterra and her children could cross them on foot without being caught by the guards at daybreak when they realized they were gone.
Alysha leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Daveon’s. “No more William Fentin’s,” she whispered. “Don’t let there ever be another William Fentin.”
Daveon nodded. “No more William Fentins.”
His wife smiled and kissed him. It wasn’t long, an awkward hesitation inside of it, but it filled Daveon with a warmth he didn’t know he’d been missing.
“Where’d this Alysha come from?” he said.
She grinned at him. “Maybe I’ve been living with the Hero of Lindisfarne a little too long. Some of it finally rubbed off.”
His heart sank. Always it came back to that...
Alysha looked up at something behind Daveon. He turned and saw Nikolai standing in the doorway to the bedrooms. He was dressed.
“I’m coming,” he said.
“Not on your—” Alysha started, but Daveon held his hand up.
“Look at him,” he whispered. Alysha looked from Daveon to Nikolai, then back to Daveon and he could tell she didn’t see it. She didn’t see the weight of hope this boy bore. She didn’t see the weight of dread and so little power and here something he could do, was good at, if Daveon was being honest.
“Help me get ‘em saddled,” Daveon said and smiled at his boy. “It’s going to be a long night.”
46
Daveon led them, Syla almost eager for the midnight trek. Red behind, loaded with all the belongings and hopes of two fleeing families. At the back, Nikolai on Willow, riding next to the girl of an age with him, Elsa. She wasn’t a strong rider, but Nikolai was doing well at keeping the horses moving, leaning out and pulling the reins up when the horses tried to stop and nibble at the brush.
They dropped into the burn of ten summers past, the blackened lodgepole pines standing like devils’ lances, pointing accusatory towards the moon. Death above, but everywhere under them, green life, brush and berries and thousands of summer blossoms. Pale whispers in the moonlight.
They crossed a nameless river, slow and cold with fresh melt and their feet came away wet and the horses breathed a little quicker. A mule deer, a buck with antlers wide enough for a man to curl up inside of, leapt across the trail ahead of them, crashing into the thick brush and then disappearing as fast as it appeared. Lulea Rhinestand yelped and covered her mouth and Zenterra, with the four summer old Roan in front of her, snapped her head at the crashing noise. Syla snorted and swished her tail.
Elsa whispered to Nikolai, “I’m really scared.”
“Aww, ain’t nothing worth it,” Nikolai whispered back. “My Pa killed two of them Fletchers. Not even a scratch on him. He’ll get you over these hills.”
Daveon wasn’t sure if he should smile or weep.
She sat there, Alysha, with her hands wrapped around a warm mug of pine tea and her head hanging over it and she watched the steam unfurl towards her face. What had she done? How could she have said yes and now she was here, still here when they should have been gone days ago, and Elnis and Miria slept in the room and out there, out there, they were crossing Marcen’s Hill and Tear Gully Pass. Out there with the Wretched and wiblins and whatnot. Her son. Her husband. She wouldn’t sleep, she knew. She wouldn’t have it said that she was wrapped in a blanket when her husband and son were killed trying to do something worth dying for.
She stared at the window and hoped that it would reveal her family coming back, but it only showed her reflection, sitting at her table.
Alone.
Anaz sat on a rock and waited for his head to stop spinning and his throat to unclench, so raw it felt as if it had swallowed itself. The guards would be passing soon. He’d need to draw on the hsing-li to create another distraction, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to. Just rest for a moment, that’s what he needed. He thought briefly about Daveon, about where they might be by now. He felt guilty he hadn’t ridden with, but there wouldn’t have been time for him to cross the pass and get back to Fisher Pass before sunrise. Getting inside the village unseen would have been infinitely harder. That and he didn’t know if he could have stayed upright in a saddle more than six minutes, much less six hours.
Voices cut into his thoughts. The guards. He could hear Reyn telling him that a thing is better done than talked about. He stood and drew the hsing-li into himself.
It was no use looking out her window, she couldn’t see anything except the vague outline of a pine tree at the edge of the bridge where she knew he’d led them out and where he would come back through, but Isabell held watch anyway. It was part of a her duty when others put their lives on the line for her. She should have been out there with him. With Anaz.
Anaz. How, in so short a time, had that man wormed his way into her heart like this? An infuriating, wonderful burrowing. Even sick as he was, when he hobbled down Henley’s stairs, surrounded by dead animals and fears, he looked like something out of a story. There’s a face easy on the eyes, Lelana had said as they walked back to the keep.
Easy on the eyes, but hard on the heart.
She had to stop this. She’d made her choice. Accepted her betrothal. The only thing she’d gain by sitting here swooning like a girl with her first crush was heart break. Marrying Olisal was going to be hard enough—impossible enough—without adding the heart ache of lost love into the mix.
Plus, the real heart ache would be when her father killed Anaz for loving her back. No, he didn’t even need to love her back. All her father needed was to see her and Anaz together once and he’d be executed on the spot, she was certain. No begging. No pleading. Dead. Even imagining the horror put a pit into her stomach.
Airim’s breath of all that is holy. When did the word “love” come into this?
Isabell turned as someone tapped lightly on her door. Lelana entered and she was crying and Isabell could feel her breath seize in her. Something was wrong.
“What happened?” Isabell demanded, sharper than she meant.
Lelana shook her head. “Anaz has returned. They got out safe. The brave Therentells are leading them across Marcen’s Hill now.” She wept openly, then, and fell into Isabell.
Isabell could feel her smile as she hugged Lelana. Those brave Therentells. Her brave Anaz.
47
It didn’t take long for the word to spread already that next morning. The Rhinestands are gone. The Lady Isabell’s own handmaiden’s folks? The very ones. If they could do it, if they could betray their daughter and their lord’s will, why shouldn’t anyone? And Zenterra Finn. She saved her children. She, with no husband and no fear, did for her children what none of the others had.
Anaz would see groups, two, three, four people, whispering, hands on elbows, eyes sketching across anyone within listening distance. And then Sunell would be there or she’d be whistling and skipping down past Henley’s and into the Sunflower Stop and back out and to the seamstress’s, Evie Summers, place and up to Old Man Barrow’s steel works.
That second night they had another eight people huddling under Henley’s butcher shop. The third night it was twelve. Daveon warned many more and the caravan would be too long in the narrow passes for him and his son to keep everyone together. Isabell warned that the numbers were climbing faster than they could help—needed to do bigger groups.
He knew the guards would put things together soon. There’s no way to create that many sudden mud pits, falling rocks, and tangle vines around the village edges that were never there before and not raise questions. Yet, he also knew they had never seen his hsing-li before. They wouldn’t know the kinds of questions to ask and without the right questions, you can’t find the right answers. Besides, the ones most inclined to the baron’s new militia seemed the least inclined to thinking.
By the third night, Anaz reckoned they had saved nearly two dozen families. It had been seven years since the Pit. Four of them the brutal struggle out of Anathest. Three alone in the woods with nothing but critters and rain and snow. Now, three nights and he’d lived more life than the last seven years. Three nights of saving dozens of lives.
And maybe one Ascenic.
That is, until the baron caught them. Caught a mistake. And, Anaz knew, no matter how well you planned, how well your magic worked, there was always a mistake waiting to happen.
Isabell had to jog to keep up with her father. He charged down the stairs two at a time, his age and massive size in no way limiting him, fueled entirely by rage. His sword, Seven Claws, thwapped against his thigh.
Sir Nattic huffed behind her as he tried to keep up with the both of them.
“The fucking Cartwells?” Her father’s voice boomed off the stone walls of the spiral staircase. She would have been able to hear him from the other side of Fisher Pass.
When they reached the bottom, they crossed a short hallway, then down another couple of steps and into the kitchens. Isabell was overwhelmed with the savory smells of baking bread, boiling soups and chicken frying. The kitchens were in full bloom with every servant scrambling to prepare the evening’s meal. With the militia tripled in size, one form of payment was that they got to eat in the great hall every night. Isabell knew that for many, this was the best eating they’d ever had in their life.
“My lord,” Sir Nattic said, “my squire says Larens never opened his tannery this morning and when he went to the Cartwells’s house, it was abandoned.” He squeezed his girth around Isabell to get shoulder to shoulder with her father.
“Are the bodies still there?”
“Yes, my lord. Since they were hung.”
“And still they revolt. Revolt, I say. Faithless bastards.”
“It might be time to take them down,” Isabell said. “The message has been sent. Now they’re just sending stink and flies.”
He spun on her. “The message very clearly hasn’t been sent.” He stabbed a finger into her sternum. “I thought you were fucking helping with this! That was our agreement.”
“I am.” She tried not to sound like a whiny daughter, to hold her courage, but there were things ingrained in a person when they were raised by a man like her father. Fear, not the least of them. “Every day I’m talking to people. I have my page talking to people. Ask anyone. We’re out there every day trying to find out the mood of the village.” At least parts of that were true. They were talking to people every day.
“The mood of the village?” He was roaring now.
The head chef watched them, making small gestures to her sous chefs to stay away.
“I can tell you the fucking mood of the village,” her father screamed. “I don’t care what the mood of the village is. I need you to tell me who is leaving and how they’re doing it.”
He spun to continue his charge through the kitchens. Just as he did so, Merry, a young elven woman carrying a kettle of boiling soup with two rags tried scuttling in front of him. Her father slammed into the woman. The kettle crashed, a metal clank and splash of soup. The baron seized Merry by the shoulders and hurled her to the floor, into the still boiling soup. She slid along the slick stones, palms first, soup splashing up over her hands and arms, onto her neck. She screeched, then clamped a hand over her mouth to stop.
Her father charged past. “You’ve reviewed the walls?” he demanded of Nattic.
He hustled to follow, shooting a glance at Merry on the floor.
Isabell rushed to her. Her arms were already red from the burns, but Isabell thought they didn’t look as bad as they could have been. She snatched the two towels from the floor and drenched them in cold water, then wrapped them around her burns. “Keep putting cold water on them,” she hissed. She ran to catch up with her father.
“…square foot of them,” Nattic was saying. “I have guards walking every linear mile of the thing, day and night.”
They dropped another three steps into the great hall. Four servants were in here, rolling up the soiled rush mat from under the table, a fresh one sitting next to it ready to be rolled out.
“Then tell me how the fuck they’re still getting out.”
“Somebody has to be helping them,” Nattic said.
“No shit, you twit! I know Larens Cartwell. That spineless fuck didn’t run on his own.”
“We just have to find out who is helping—”
Nattic gasped as the baron spun and clamped a hand around his thick neck, the massive fingers nearly disappearing into the man’s fat.
“I swear to Airim,” her father whispered.
Isabell’s heart thundered.
“Say another stupid thing and I’ll cut out your fucking tongue and make you eat it for supper tonight. Yes. Yes, we have to find out who is helping them. That’s why I have a constable in Fisher Pass. That’s why I’ve hired the militia that I have.” He shook Nattic once, then shoved him backwards.
The servants at the table stopped what they were doing. Set down the mat and stepped away.
Sunell. Lelana. Daveon Therentell. Anaz. She wasn’t just risking her own life. They couldn’t keep doing this. Eventually someone was going to slip and say something. Or maybe not slip. Maybe say something on purpose. What if someone who came to them for help ever changed their mind? Got cold feet?
What choice did she have? She’d given too much up for this. She’d rather die saving her people than live in fear and shame. She thought the others would probably agree…
Probably.
They climbed three stairs on the other side of the great hall and moved into the long hallway leading down to the library. Massive stained glass windows lined the right side of the hallway, overlooking a garden, while on the left stood a series of seven statues, each of the main gods of the pantheon. Their boots clicked against the red marble floor.
“My lord?” Isabell wanted to laugh at how much like a child Nattic sounded. “Can I ask a question?”
“Is it stupid?”
“I don’t…” Nattic looked at Isabell for help. She only smirked. “I don’t think so. What’s the plan, my lord? It’s been nearly a week. Lady Isabell, you said the wall was only a week out or so as did that horse rancher, Therentell. If they’re right—”
“My daughter couldn’t read troop movements if they were written in a letter and hand delivered, much less the Wretched’s.” He didn’t bother looking at her as he walked down the hall, saying, “No offense, Isabell.”
“None taken, Father.” She gave a “fuck you” gesture to his back.
“We stay until the Airim’s Lances arrive,” he said. “That’ll be our final hurdle. After that, the king won’t be able to stop us.”
“The Airim’s Lances are coming here?” Nattic looked back at Isabell, then back to the baron.
She’d known they were said to be coming, but somehow Isabell had been so focused on getting people out of the village, she’d not taken the time to think about what that meant. The Airim’s Lances. Here. What if
she begged to join their order then? Could she escape her betrothal? The odds were slim. Humay law was strict about this sort of thing, about the control a father, any father, much less a noble father, had over their daughters. But maybe…
“One of their squadrons, at least, is what the king’s missive said.”
“But the Lances…”
“Don’t piss your britches, Nattic. They’re people just like you. Well…better than you, but still just people.”
“They’ll want to know why so many of your citizens are still here,” Isabell said. “What will you tell them?” If she knew her father’s plan, she’d be able to work up counter moves.
Her father stopped and turned to look at her and Nattic. The jester god, Misfalnis, stood next to them, his laughing face looking down at them, that floppy hat with bells perched as if it were about to fall any second. Isabell couldn’t help but think the god was laughing at them.
“If Nattic here doesn’t find the traitorous fuckers helping people escape, there won’t be anyone left in town to answer for to the Lances.” She could see his blood rising in his face again, heard the anger swelling in his voice. “Keep your fucking eyes on the target, Nattic. Find these people. Bring them to me. Alive, if possible. Dead if needs be, but either way, I want their fucking heads hanging from those gallows by sunrise tomorrow or dying by the Wretched’s hands won’t be a concern for you any more.” He shifted his gaze from Nattic to Isabell. “That goes for both of you. It’s time to fucking deliver.”
She needed to find Anaz. She needed to warn him. Her father was coming for them.