Flecks of Gold

by Buck, Alicia

  The exchange was quick. When the hall settled back to silence, I drifted slowly into slumber, wondering absently who Rafan had been talking to.

  A knock at my door woke me. I performed a cleaning lacing to de-rumple, then unlocked the door and admitted Rafan.

  “Ah, Mary, you are looking lovely this morning, as usual,” Rafan said, bowing.

  “Rafan,” I warned.

  “Not to worry, my lady. I will not speak of the subject you found so distasteful before,” he replied, flatly. His face was a study of pleasantly raised eyebrows warring with the steely aqua glitter of his eyes.

  I was torn between feeling guilty and nervous. “Where’s Breeohan?” At the moment Breeohan’s presence to diffuse the awkwardness between Rafan and me was very high on my wish list.

  Rafan glanced to the partially open door as if hoping for the same thing. “He should be here soon. He went to buy the horses.”

  “Oh.” The silence stretched unbearably.

  “Who were you talking to last night?” I was relieved to find some way to push back the disconcerting quiet.

  Rafan stiffened before relaxing into nonchalance. “The innkeeper came to ask if I needed anything.”

  “That was nice of him.” I was out of conversation ideas.

  There was a light tap on the partially open door before Breeohan slipped into the room. “We’re ready to go. I suggest we don’t use the chameleon lacing until we’ve left the inn and started traveling on a decoy route,” he said.

  “That’s fine with me.” I smiled at him gratefully.

  We ate a quick breakfast in the inn’s low-tabled dining area before leaving. At the door, I remembered the key.

  “You guys go ahead. I forgot to return the key.” I rushed to find the innkeeper.

  I had to ask one of the serving maids to point him out, because I hadn’t been paying attention to who Breeohan talked to when we’d arrived. When I reached him, I handed the beautifully twisted key back to him with a twinge of regret.

  “Thank you for your business. I hope you have a good journey,” he said in a melodious bass. I froze. Rafan had said that he’d talked to the innkeeper last night, but there was no way that whiny voice could have come from the man standing in front of me. He’d lied. But why? The innkeeper shifted uncomfortably, so I thanked him and walked back outside to Breeohan and Rafan.

  They were waiting in the street with three earthy colored horses who all had white around their hooves, like socks. One of the horses had a lead rope tied to the saddle of another. I was happy to see that all three horses had saddles this time, though I felt nervous flutters at the thought of riding alone. Breeohan helped me awkwardly mount the third beast, then efficiently mounted his own as Rafan waited astride his mount.

  We rode directly out of the city and headed down a road that curved loosely away from the mountains. I held the saddlehorn tightly, wishing it wasn’t necessary to ride away from the direction that we would really travel. I wanted my pony ride over with as fast as possible. After about twenty minutes, Rafan doubled back to make sure we weren’t being followed. When he returned and informed us that no one was on our tail, we turned the horses around. Breeohan threw another rope for Rafan to tie to his horse, and then we performed the chameleon lacing on ourselves and the horses.

  The animals whickered fretfully, and for a dizzying moment I had to cling to my saddle as my mount jerked on his lead and side-stepped almost out from under me. But the horses soon adjusted to the fact that they couldn’t see themselves, and then nothing but the soft clop of hooves indicated our passing.

  Whenever someone neared on the wide dirt road, Breeohan veered his horse off the side of the path and halted. Rafan would reign in his horse as well, but all I could do was wait for my horse to bump into the lead mare. It was jolting, but my stallion didn’t seem to get too upset, and he soon learned that a detour off the path meant he should stop. We would then stay quiet until whoever was coming had passed by.

  We approached the town of Kerln by early evening. Its thick sandstone wall crouched darkly at the foot of the first towering monolith of the Ziat mountain range. Set against so grand a background, the city seemed small. Its wall was no protection from anything more menacing than paper. As we neared the ten-foot construction, the illusion of frailty shattered, and instead my heart quivered at the thought of being trapped inside such a solid barricade. Two guards stood at the wide gates regarding the people passing through with sharp attention. Rafan, Breeohan, and I rode through on the heels of a cart carrying hay, our horses’ hooves completely camouflaged by the wagon’s creaking.

  We slipped through the gates just in time. The two guards braced their bodies between the door and the thick wall before tugging the heavy, thick, black oak doors shut.

  Breeohan, Rafan, and I kept the chameleon lacing on until we entered the stables at an inn called “Good Rest.” I looked around to make sure there wasn’t a stable kid around before I undid the lacing. Then I unlaced my horse’s invisibility as well before sliding carefully to the ground. Rafan and Breeohan did the same to themselves and their horses. They were already unsaddling their mounts while I was still wincing at the pins-and-needles feeling in my feet. I waited for the jabbing to stop, and then healed my sore legs. I glanced uncertainly at my own horse’s tack.

  “I’ll get that for you, Mary,” Rafan said kindly. I nodded my thanks and let him do the horse stuff while I watched, propped against the stable door.

  When we came out of the stable, we surprised a girl coming back from the inn.

  “I was having my supper, but I was watching the whole time. I don’t know how I could’ve missed you,” she cried in distress.

  “We prefer handling our horses ourselves,” Breeohan assured her. I was disturbed by her genuine fear of being beaten by her master. Even after we’d promised we wouldn’t report her, she looked nervous. I slunk inside hesitantly, feeling suddenly depressed, but then decided to shake off my gloomy thoughts with a distraction.

  “Are you going to insist on guarding my door again?” I murmured to Breeohan.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s dumb. We’d all have a better chance against any attacks if we were in the same room, and it would save money,” I added practically.

  “I’m not going to argue this with you, Mary.”

  I was stopped from further discussion when a sharp-eyed woman came toward us. The woman proved to be the innkeeper, and she and Breeohan bartered for two rooms right next to each other on the upstairs floor as well as breakfasts and dinners for the next two days. As they talked, the woman regarded us with a harsh stare, and I noticed uneasily that she had arms like a blacksmith. Breeohan, noting her glare and crossed arms, paid in advance. We sat cross-legged on pillows at the low table where I stared into a meatloaf soup that looked about as appetizing as dung. I wanted to reopen my discussion with Rafan and Breeohan, but as soon as I opened my mouth, Breeohan cut me off. “I don’t think we should talk here. There are too many people.”

  I looked around. A man and woman sat across the room, arguing in a harsh whisper. Both looked lean and hard, as if they’d seen little luxury in their lives. At another table three rugged men cradled their cups silently, as if in deep thought. The table closest to us held a raggedly dressed, but muscular man, intent on shoveling soup into his mouth.

  Nobody seemed to pay the slightest attention to us, but I felt intimidated by the atmosphere and so kept quiet anyway. If Breeohan wanted to keep acting pointlessly stubborn, that was fine with me. I wasn’t going to feel guilty about it.

  Upstairs I said good night to Rafan as he entered his room. He grinned back before he closed his door. I said the same to Breeohan as he settled outside my room, and he whispered a quiet return as I shut the door and slid the flimsy wooden latch into place.

  The bed crackled as I lay on it, as if it was filled with hay, but even with a few uncomfortable pricks, it still felt better than the ground. I was tired, so sleep came quickly. I drift
ed in dreams until the sound of a soft scrape woke me. I twitched, and the mattress crackled loudly. The room was black as pitch but for a crack of faint light. I turned my head, still half asleep, to see that the light streamed through the partially-opened door where the ragged man from dinner stood staring at me.

  I was tangled for a fateful second in my sheet. Then he launched forward and, as I wrenched my feet from the covers, he caught my arms with one of his and struck my head with the knob of his dagger handle. I knew no more.

  Chapter 19

  I awoke to searing pain in my head. Only gradually did I realize that I was blindfolded and that my arms and legs were tied behind me. It forced my back to arch achingly. I concentrated on forming the lacing that would heal my head. The release of pain was startling, but before I could think of some way to get free of my bonds, I heard a man’s voice, muffled as if through a cloth, say, “She’s healed herself. Quick!”

  Agony exploded through my brain. The world turned black again.

  When next I woke, I held absolutely still despite the furious throbbing in my skull. I heard the swish of fabric behind me as someone shifted, probably the person who would conk me again if I roused. I thought past the pain to avoid giving myself away.

  It would have helped to see where I was, but the blindfold was tied tight, making my headache beat more painfully. Finding a way to convert the tight coarse rope around my wrists and ankles to stretchy bungee cord was relatively easy. I guessed the string that would change the give of the fibers without altering their appearance and tweaked it. A slight lessening of the pressure around my arms and legs told me my idea had worked. After my arms were free it would be an easy matter to pull the blindfold off.

  A flash of golden lines, and I’d donned the chameleon lacing. I heard a gasp of surprise as I quickly rolled away. The now elastic rope slipped off easily. I concentrated past a burst of renewed cranial agony, tore off my blindfold, and healed the lump on my skull. The misery ceased immediately, but I had no time to enjoy it. There was a door to my left. My captor was groping around the room, his arms sweeping in wide gestures as if he were blind. His eyes belied the illusion, however, as they swiftly searched the room for movement. I bolted through the door as he was looking the other way. He cried out as I burst into the next room. Twenty heads turned in my direction. Some looked confused, seeing nothing but the man behind me.

  “She’s escaping. Look for movement,” the man behind me cried. I cursed myself for not knocking him senseless when I had the chance. Twenty men and women started sweeping the room with flailing arms and keen gazes. I’d startled to the side of the door when coming through and stood flat against the wall. There was no chance at making it untouched across the floor, so I did the only thing I could think of. I activated my gecko lacing and climbed the wall to the ceiling.

  Luckily, my searchers missed the ascent, and no one thought to check the ceiling. I carefully stuck and unstuck my hands and feet above them. As I reached the opposite side, I stopped, unsure what to do next. The door had been slammed closed. I secured myself to the edge of the wall, my weight resting painfully on the balls of my Superglue feet. I found, however, that sideways pressure was better than pulling my shoulder sockets out by hanging upside down.

  “She couldn’t have gotten out,” someone growled in frustration.

  “Everyone line up against this wall. We can do a sweep across the whole room side to side so that there will be no way of her getting past,” another man said.

  All twenty-one men and women lined up on the wall beneath me with their backs against the yellow brick. I held my breath, afraid that even the sound of breathing would give me away with so many searchers right under me. A muscle on my left arm twitched with fatigue, and I concentrated on holding absolutely still until my captors swept the first third of the room, then I painfully detached my feet and arms one at a time until I reached the ground.

  My captors searched intently in front of them. I undid the gecko lacing and then slowly lifted the latch of the door so that the wood wouldn’t scrape. I then curled my fingers around the handle and inched the door open. They were more than halfway across the room. My heart thudded like thunder in my chest. I was sure that at any moment someone would look back.

  The door was almost open enough to let me through when the hinges squeaked. The sound, though slight, might as well have been a gunshot.

  “The door!” someone shouted, and the temporary paralysis that had gripped the room lifted as my captors charged.

  I flung the door wide and flew into a narrow outdoor alleyway filled with garbage. The smell was like a physical blow, but the motivation to move was stronger than my nausea. I turned right and twisted through a maze of refuse-strewn paths, my bare feet squelching through decomposing offal, despite my best efforts to place them carefully. I ran until my chest burned and my breathing heaved in and out in ragged mucus-filled gasps, but still my pursuers followed close behind.

  Someone yelled as they spotted me, and I tried to increase my speed. My foot bore down on a piece of broken glass which embedded itself deeply. An involuntary scream escaped before I ground my teeth together to stop the sound. I leaned against the wall, breathing fire through my chest, feeling fire lance through my foot and up my leg. Twisting my leg up, I carefully pulled the large dagger of glass out of my flesh. I calmed my breathing enough to concentrate and then healed my foot. I started to run again, ignoring the pain in my side.

  It was too late.

  My scream drew my pursuers like spiders to struggling prey on a web. I heard the sure crunch of running boots behind me just as I reached a dead end in the alley.

  Two men and a woman blocked my escape.

  “There,” the woman shouted and pointed me out. They rushed me. I barely had time to sidestep and kick the back of one man’s knees so that he would fall. He caught at his companion’s shirt to prevent the fall, which threw them both off-balance.

  At their moment of instability, I kicked again and both went toppling. I didn’t have the chance to run. The woman swung wildly and nicked my shoulder. I dodged her next punch with ease. There was a distinct fighting advantage in my chameleon state, but I was struggling for breath. As she stumbled, I roundhouse kicked her in the head. Her face snapped back, and she fell with a sickening little mew and lay still.

  Air surged in and out of my lungs in strained gulps. My arms and legs trembled with fatigue, but I activated the gecko lacing. The two men jumped up to grab me just as I was convincing my aching muscles to carry me upward. Their vengeful vigor gave me the jolt of fear-laced adrenaline that I needed to start climbing.

  “Where’d that cursed girl go?” snarled the man I’d tripped.

  “There, on the wall. I see something moving,” the other, shorter man said.

  I was pulling upward as fast as my shaky muscles would allow, but the taller man caught my left foot just as I detached it to move out of reach. He tugged with a ruthless yank that made my hip ache, but nothing short of a bombing could make my hands and foot release the rough yellow sandstone, so I stuck fast to the wall.

  I had no leverage to really hurt the man, since he was holding my foot above his head, but the position was an awkward one for him. Before the short guy could come to help, I kicked my foot back and forth in a vicious frenzy until he was forced to let go, then I quickly climbed out of reach. However, after only a few feet I had to stop to catch my breath before I could continue to the top.

  “Where’d she go?” the man who had not been fast enough to grab me asked.

  “She’s still on the wall. You just can’t see her cause she stopped moving,” the other replied. “Come on down, girl. You might as well just come with us now. We’ll find you one way or another.” I saw him make a small gesture to his comrade before the other disappeared back around the corner. He probably knew a way around the dead end. I made myself keep climbing.

  “Where’re you going to go? There’s nowhere you can hide. The whole city is on the a
lert to find you. We’ve got your boyfriends too.”

  I paused, almost to the roof. Was he telling the truth? Did he have Breeohan and Rafan, and was the whole city involved in this scheme? The city part seemed unlikely. But I’d been kidnapped, why not Breeohan and Rafan too? The man’s sharp eyes noticed me hesitate, so he continued. “Come down now, and your friends won’t get hurt.”

  I hadn’t ever been in this kind of dilemma before, but though my heart ached with guilt, I’d seen enough movies and read enough books to know that bad guys who say they’ll spare your friends never keep their word. I had no way of knowing if this guy was telling the truth. If I let him catch me, I would have no way of helping Breeohan or Rafan, assuming they really were captured. I climbed the rest of the way to the top of the wall and rolled over onto the building’s flat roof just as the man who’d disappeared at the signal of the other burst through a door leading to the roof of an adjoining building.

  He ran to the edge looking down at his partner. I started slowly crawling to a farther side. “Where is she?”

  “She just made it to the top. Hurry,” the man below yelled up as I rolled off the building’s roof and stuck fast to the opposite wall. The short guy’s steps pounded rapidly nearer. I slowed my gasping and stilled my muscles’ tired trembling with monumental effort. I wished ruefully that I’d been an avid climber back on Earth so that I wouldn’t be so near to collapsing now. But hindsight wasn’t very useful, so I concentrated on holding still as the man stopped near my edge, sweeping the roof with focused determination.

  As he moved further away to search a different part of the roof, I stealthily slipped down the wall to the ground. Once on the blessed horizontal dirt, I huddled in the corner of two buildings, shaking with tension and heat exhaustion. My strength reserves were starting to wane, and I wasn’t sure how many more lacings I could do before I would be completely out of energy.