by Deborah Hale
“The lad had better mind his tongue and his thieving fingers, though.” Blen insisted in a gruff tone. “Or I will bounce his backside out in the dirt and let the Han have him.”
“I will vouch for the boy,” Maura promised. “And keep a sharp eye on him. I know the two of you think I must be daft to give him a chance, but I am not blind to what he is.
She fixed her gaze on Rath. “Perhaps he is not to be trusted, but how will anyone know unless someone dares to try?”
How reluctant she had been to give Rath Talward a chance. But circumstances had forced her to rely on him, and he had never let her down.
If only she could convince him to give others the same chance Langbard had given him.
Give to others as you have been given. Maura could not count how often Langbard repeated the Third Precept to her over the years. At the time, she had thought he meant the giving of material things.
Now, when she had almost nothing but the clothes on her body and the herbs in her sash, she glimpsed the need in her poor, broken land. She had plenty to give... from her heart, if she could find the courage to do it.
Did she think him too dense to understand what she meant? Rath wondered as he helped Blen unharness old Patchel for the night.
Langbard had trusted him at a time when even he had doubted his trustworthiness. Maura had overcome her well-warranted suspicion to have faith in him. Perhaps he owed it to them both to place a little of that trust in others. One day, he might overcome his natural wariness enough to do it.
But not if it threatened to put Maura in more danger than she was already. Each night he lay down to sleep caring more for her than he had just that morning. Looking back, he saw it had been going on almost from the first.
Every day he glimpsed some new petal of her beauty opening for him. The way she looked when she glanced up to find him watching her. The practical grace of her hands as she performed some task for his comfort. The stubborn set of her lips that made him long to kiss them into cooperation.
Though he had to admit such a kiss might win her his surrender, instead.
Most of his life he had thought of nothing beyond his next meal, his next theft, his next fight. Until he’d met Maura, survival and freedom had been enough for him. He had never allowed himself to slow down long enough for the emptiness of such a life to catch up with him.
Now that he had let someone else matter to him, he could see what a hollow shell his old life had been. Would it become that way again if some harm befell Maura? Rath feared so with a jagged-bottomed depth of dread he had never felt before.
For a man with certain skills, it was a good deal easier to keep himself from harm than to protect someone else. Especially someone who did not look out for her own safety as much as she ought to.
An expectant silence wrenched him out of his brooding. “Your pardon, Blen. Did you say something?”
“Just that I would fetch you and Maura back some supper from the inn once I have eaten.”
“I hope for all our sakes the food is better here than the place we stayed last night.” Rath fished a silver from his money pouch and tossed it to the farmer.
Blen tried to give it back. “Put that away. You will need it soon enough. Besides, who ever heard of a man’s hireling paying him?”
“Keep it,” Rath insisted. “We would have spent more to come this far on our own. And drawn all kinds of unwanted notice from the Han, I daresay.”
It gave him a sense of sly satisfaction every time they rode under the noses of a Hanish patrol or got waved through a toll gate. Neither surprised him, though. A number of well-laden wagons like Blen’s were making their way to Venard on this road. Most had a hired guard along to help the farmer protect his harvest.
Blen and Rath fit in well, and the Hanish garrisons along their route had enough to keep them busy without delaying the routine spring shipment of hay to Venard. Rath could not have ordered a swifter, more secret means of smuggling Maura north.
“Since you put it that way...” Blen gave him a parting salute that looked almost jaunty. “I will not be long, I promise.”
Rath led Patchel to the troth in the inn’s courtyard for a good long drink, then brought him back to hitch beside the hay wagon. While Blen spent the night in the inn, his “hired guard” would keep watch over the horse and hay. Maura would probably insist on taking a turn during the darkest hours so he could catch some sleep.
Glancing around the courtyard to make sure there was no one within earshot, Rath whispered, “It looks safe for you to come out, now.”
When he got no reply he tried again. “Maura? Are you awake?”
He thought he heard a faint rustle in the hay.
“Maura?” He jammed his arm into the pile all the way up to his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
His hammering heart slowed a little when his hand closed over her arm. “Your pardon! I did not mean to wake you. I only worried that...”
Wait! That sleeve did not feel like Maura’s wool tunic, nor her linen undergown.
Rath hauled on the limb he was holding, dragging out a squirming boy by what turned out to be the left leg.
He was a rangy, underfed youth, like too many Rath had seen during their long ride through the heart of Westborne. The lad was missing the little finger off his left hand and under a coating of chaff, his face was streaked with black.
That puzzled Rath for a moment until he realized the lad had tried to darken his hair with something, soot perhaps, which had run when he sweat.
“Oh, it’s only you,” muttered Rath in Comtung. He had all but forgotten about the boy.
“Let me go!” Snake writhed like his namesake. “I wasn’t doing nothing! Just staying out of sight like the lady bid me.”
Rath let go of the boy’s leg, then before he could run off, grabbed him again by the breast of his coat, a bulky man’s garment with the sleeves crudely hacked to half their original length.
“Where is the lady?” Rath gave the boy a shake for good measure. He knew from his own youth that Snake had been up to no good. “If you have harmed her...”
The boy abruptly stopped squirming.
“Do I look daft?” He fixed Rath with an indignant glare that appeared ridiculous coming from such a tattered scarecrow. “Why would I harm the only one who’s done me a good turn in as long as I can reckon?”
Those words struck Rath a stinging blow such as the boy could never have landed with his hands. That still did not mean he trusted young Snake. Rath had known too many like him—been too much like him, once.
“Where is she, then?” he growled.
The boy shrugged his bony shoulders and almost got a cuff on the head for it. “Right after we stopped, she heard somebody crying. She went off to look. Told me to stay here. That’s all I know.”
Rath cursed. Then he took a risk he might not have taken if he’d had longer to think about it.
“I am going to find her,” he told the boy. “Stay here and keep watch on the horse and wagon. Yell at the top of your lungs if there is any trouble and I will come in a hurry.”
The boy nodded.
At least Rath thought so. He was too busy worrying about Maura and wondering where she had gone. Someone crying usually meant trouble. The kind a body should stay away from—not go in search of.
Slag! If he had to surrender his heart to a woman, why could he not have picked one with a healthy sense of self-preservation?
Because, he decided as he made a circuit of the courtyard, checking for hidden nooks, listening for the sound of Maura’s voice. That was one of the things he... loved about her. Might as well use the word, at least in the privacy of his thoughts. Calling it something else did not lessen its hold on him.
That was one of the things he loved about Maura. Her vast desire to help people, especially people no one else would see any benefit in helping. Because there was no benefit to helping outcasts... like him.
Or maybe there was, to her. A benefit as intangible
as her Giver. And perhaps as powerful, if it existed and had done everything she claimed.
Where was she?
He wanted to bellow her name as loud as his voice could ring. But he dared not draw that kind of attention to himself, or to her.
When he finally caught the soft murmur of her voice, the intensity of his relief made him light-headed. He followed that sound toward a narrow opening between the main part of the inn and a side wing. Suddenly a door opened in front of him and a pair of Hanish soldiers strode out.
By good fortune, they were headed in the other direction.
Rath scrambled for cover behind a two-wheeled dairy cart abandoned in a corner of the courtyard. When his foot landed on something yielding and a bit slippery, he glanced down to find several nuggets of horse dung around his right foot, and one under it. He swallowed a curse.
The soldiers walked past the narrow alcove from whence Rath had heard Maura’s voice. Then, a few steps beyond it, one stopped and doubled back.
After a quick glance, he called to the other fellow and the two of them slipped into the alley. The swagger of their steps and the rough heartiness of their voices alarmed Rath.
Do not move! he ordered himself. Keep your wits, for you will need them and so will she.
Perhaps he had misheard and Maura was not there at all. If she was there, she might be able to get herself out without any interference from him. She had done it before, after all. No sense doing something rash that might draw too much unwelcome attention to their presence unless he had to.
The next few moments stretched on and on with every part of Rath clenched so tight he feared something would snap.
Then he heard sounds of a struggle and a cry he knew was Maura’s. Before he could stir, she appeared, her arms pinned behind her by one of the Han. A slender trickle of blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.
Her gaze searched desperately around the courtyard. For him, no doubt. But whether to beg his help or warn him away, Rath could not tell.
Not that it mattered. For there was only one thing he could do now.
Chapter Seven
MAURA CURSED HER own foolishness and lack of caution. She had not even noticed the Han until they were upon her.
The sound of brokenhearted weeping had lured her from Blen’s hay wagon into a tight little alley beside the inn’s kitchen. There she had found a girl a year or two younger than herself, eating scraps begged from the innkeeper’s wife.
With her improved command of Comtung, Maura soon learned that Angareth had run away from a pleasure house in Venard that served Hanish soldiers and government officials.
“They’re only supposed to mate with their own kind, so they do not foul their superior race with half-castes.” The girl passed a hand over her slightly swollen middle in a protective caress. “If one of the bed girls has a baby, the bawdwife does away with it soon as it is born. Sometimes sooner.”
The thought made Maura’s gorge rise and her heart clench. “I do not care so much what happens to me, now.” Angareth scrubbed at her eyes with the wide sleeve of her tunic. “If only my baby can have a chance.”
She glanced up at Maura. “Do you think I am foolish to care for it when it is not even born yet?”
When Maura began to shake her head, the girl added with anguished defiance, “Or wicked to love it even if it has Hanish blood?”
“No!” Maura reached out to stroke the girl’s cheek, but Angareth flinched back. “Loving is never wicked.”
Something about the girl stirred a memory within her, but Maura had no time just then to dwell on it. “Where are you bound, Angareth? How can I help you?”
The girl named a place that meant nothing to Maura. “It is a town west of here. I have family there. I only hope they will not turn me out for shame when they find out about the baby.”
“Surely they will not.” Maura wished she could sprout wings and fly to the Secret Glade. For the sake of girls like Angareth and boys like Snake. For Blen and Tesha and their children. And thousands more in need of deliverance. “I would let you come with me and my friends, but we are bound by a different road. Would a coin or two help speed your journey?”
Hearing the firm tread of a man, she knew Rath must have come looking for her. She wondered how she would persuade him to part with a silver or two to help this girl. He would put up an argument, no doubt, but she could not resent it. She recalled his words from the previous night when he had caught her making a poultice for a beggarman suffering a mild case of flesh rot.
“You can protect yourself from the Han if need be, lass. You are quick and clever and strong.” His praise had surprised and touched her all the more because she had expected a scolding.
“If I can protect myself from the Han so well,” she’d teased, “why did you come with me?”
He’d shaken his head and caressed her face with a gaze as fond as it was exasperated. “I came to protect you from yourself. I know you want to help folks and I admire you for it. But if you keep this up we will soon not have a coin between us and I will be on my way to the mines while they drag you off to a... some place just as bad. You do not have the power to help everyone who needs it, but this Waiting King of yours will. The best thing you can do for all these folks is to reach him as quick as you can. That means staying hidden and not giving away all your herbs and all our coins.”
“What if there is no king waiting for me in the Secret Glade, as you believe?” She had challenged him, hoping he might recant his doubts.
Her question had made him think, at least.
As he turned away, shaking his head, she’d heard him sigh. “If there is no Waiting King, then none of this matters.”
Now, she turned to cast him a pleading gaze. She would ask five silvers for the girl, then let him bargain her down to two. In exchange for which, she would agree not to go away from the wagon again without his leave.
Angareth drew back with a high, frightened whimper.
“Do not be afraid,” Maura reached for the girl’s hand. “This is a friend of mine, he means you no harm.”
Instead of Rath’s resonant, mellow voice that made even Comtung sound tolerable, another voice rang out, loud and harsh. “What friend, wench? No friend of mine.”
Before Maura could reach into her sash, the Han grabbed her and pinned her arms. Another one squeezed past them to seize Angareth.
“So which is the runaway the innkeeper reported?” the Han holding Angareth asked.
“I care not.” The Han against whom Maura was struggling fetched her a clout on the side of the face that made the outlaw Turgen’s blow seem like a love tap.
Maura cried out.
“They both look serviceable enough for a pleasure house.” The Han shoved Maura back out of the alley. “Let’s go.”
What now? Maura forced herself to breathe more slowly—to watch what was going on around her and to wait for an opportunity. True, she had fallen into the clutches of the Han. But she had fought them before and won. She knew they were not invincible.
As they emerged back into the courtyard, Maura’s gaze flew to Blen’s hay wagon. Though she saw no sign of Rath, she did catch a glimpse of two dirty bare feet disappearing into the hay pile. Hopefully Snake would have the sense to stay there until the danger had passed... if it passed.
What took place next happened so fast that it startled Maura quite as much as it did the Han.
Something hurtled through the air. Then the Han who held her cried out and pulled her arms so hard she feared he would wrench them from her shoulders. The other Han bellowed a curse, too, as the reek of horse dung assaulted Maura’s nose.
Rath. She knew it must be him even before she heard him shout some Hanish words. They must have been a taunt or a gross insult, judging from the reactions of the two soldiers.
The next thing she knew, she was flung to the hard-packed dirt of the courtyard. Angareth fell on top of her, for which Maura was glad... once she recaptured the breath Angareth knocked o
ut of her.
While she lay there gasping for air, she heard the rapid thunder of hard-shod boots against the ground and the furious cries of the Han moving away from her.
“Angareth,” she gasped when she had breath enough, “are you... all right? The baby?”
“You have come to worse hurt than me.” The girl rolled off Maura and tried to help her sit up. “What happened?”
Maura shook her head as she pulled herself up. It would take her too long to explain.
She needed to go to Rath’s aid—the fool. It had been one thing to create such a diversion out in open country, from a good safe distance, with a horse hidden nearby to make a quick escape. In the close confines of the inn courtyard, in the middle of Westborne, it was dangerous folly.
Something tugged at her elbow.
“Come lady.” The boy, Snake hovered over her. “You must get away... now. Follow me!”
“No!” Maura staggered to her feet. “We must help Rath.”
People were emerging from various doorways that opened onto the courtyard, where Rath was leading the two soldiers a chase.
Snake clamped his bony fingers around her wrist with surprising strength. “Come with me! I know this town. There is a place you can hide until night falls.”
“Take Angareth.” Maura tried to pull her arm away. “Rath needs me!”
The boy clung to her with stubborn insistence. “He does not need you caught by the Han, too. That is what will happen if you do not come with me now!”
A grudging part of her acknowledged the boy was probably right. His warning sounded like something Rath might tell her if he were able.
Perhaps Snake sensed he was winning her over. “Wait and see what happens. He may escape the Han on his own. Or if he is caught, you will have a better chance of rescuing him once all the fuss dies down.”
“Please,” begged Angareth, “let us get away from here before more soldiers come!”
The girl sounded ready to shatter from fright and the strain of her ordeal. Rath, on the other hand, had proven well capable of looking after himself. He had staged this diversion so she could get away. He would not be pleased if she refused to take it.