“If you just use the sofa,” Margaut said, passing them to Adem. “It’s not the most comfortable place to sleep in the world, but for a night …”
“It’s perfect,” said Adem. “Thank you for your charity.”
“Jasen, are you all right in here?” Margaut looked even more apologetic than she had a moment ago. “There’s a blanket in there for you too. It’s the red and orange one … it’s a little smaller.” She patted it, at the bottom of the pile in Adem’s hands. “And there’s one extra, so if you bundle that up … it’s not a pillow as such, but …”
“It’s just one night,” Adem assured her in the kindliest voice he had.
Possibly not just one night, though, was it? Finding a new home might take some time. Then there was the matter of furnishing it, of rebuilding a wardrobe, assembling a new collection of possessions. Jasen didn’t have much, but he wouldn’t want to get by with nothing forever. A few books would be nice. Keepsakes, if he could find it in himself to want to keep anything ever again.
Nothing would replace his mother’s things, of course. Those were gone, turned to ash, carried away on the breeze.
It might not be more than one night for Adem … but for Jasen, it would.
“Come, Alixa,” said Margaut, guiding her up with a hand on the shoulder. “Say goodnight to your cousin and uncle.”
“Goodnight,” Alixa bade. Her eyes caught with Jasen’s—and then she was departing. She did not look back. She seemed settled in silence; Jasen could not recall her speaking at all this night.
Adem went around the room, blowing out most of the last candles. Only one was left, an inch or so remaining of it. It didn’t have the pungent smell that the assembly hall candles did. In fact, as far as Jasen could tell, it carried no scent whatsoever. If it did waft the subtlest fragrance, it would not for long; the flame was small, barely above the pool of wax beneath it. Before long it would snuff itself out.
Adem handed a blanket to Jasen—not the red and orange one, but patchwork, every color under the sun.
“It’s bigger,” he said. “You take it.”
“Father—” Jasen started.
Adem waved him off. “This one is plenty big enough.” He unfurled it, throwing it across his legs and chest. It was big enough, but only just; there was not much loose wool to tuck in around himself. Fortunate that it was summer, and he did not need much to stave off the chill.
He produced a pillow with one blanket and handed it across the space to Jasen, who took it and placed it down where his head would lay. Lowering himself onto it, he adjusted to get it as comfortable as possible. Which was not very, as it turned out—the fibers rubbed at his face.
Perhaps if he were to go completely prone …
Adem sunk down on the opposite chair.
For a time, they were quiet.
“It’ll be all right, son,” Adem finally said.
That was all. No more, no less. Much the same as their short talk a few days after Baraghosa had gone: he was broken, weight crushing him, and his reassurance was scant.
The words rattled in Jasen’s mind for a long time.
It’ll be all right.
It would.
Jasen would make sure of it.
17
The candle failed to snuff itself out. Perhaps Jasen had not given it long enough; it was hard to tell how long it had been. What felt like hours might have been minutes. He was sure of only two things: the candle’s flickering flame was smaller than ever, the light it cast so dim he could pick out the landscape of this room only by grey edges; and that his father had fallen asleep some time ago, filling the air with soft snores.
How deeply would his father sleep? Jasen was not entirely sure. He’d not been an especially unruly child. He had had unruly ideas, certainly, of the world beyond Terreas. But he had kept quiet enough, not challenged his parents the way some wayward souls did about the village. So he had never tested the limits of his father’s slumber.
Well, he had to move sometime.
And if Adem woke? Jasen could just say that he was going to the privy.
Nonetheless, he was slow at rising from the seat. Every tiny sound he made seemed far too loud in his ears. And though they were easily muted by his father’s gently rumbling breaths, he was convinced that one wrong move, one creak as his bare foot touched the wood floor and it gently shifted to take his weight, and his father would wake up.
And that would be the end of all his planning.
Adem did not wake up, though Jasen did hold his breath.
He hesitated at the threshold from the room and turned back.
His father was an indistinct shape on the couch. Only his left leg was decipherable in the darkness, where the too-small cover had slipped away from him.
“I’ll be back soon,” Jasen whispered.
He would. He had to keep that in the forefront of his mind, or he wouldn’t leave. This trip was not like Baraghosa’s; he would return, he and Alixa and Shilara. He was not leaving tonight to walk to his death, as he’d expected, but to come back a savior and put Terreas right at least.
He sneaked through the house till he found Alixa’s bedroom. The door was ajar, and he gently tapped it with his knuckle. Then, pushing it gently open, he stuck his head through the gap.
“Are you awake?” he whispered.
“Yes,” came the response.
Alixa was up in a moment. More catlike that him, she seemed not to make a sound as she padded about the room.
She’d slept in her clothes too. Mostly ready, she scurried about grabbing some last things while Jasen lingered—
“Come in here,” Alixa whispered, “before someone sees you.”
“What if someone comes in to check on you?”
“Well, then you hide, don’t you?” Alixa slid open the drawer of her bedside table, retrieving the small knives she practiced self-defense with. They were sheathed in leather pouches, and she clipped them to a belt she had slung on around trousers; the world outside was no place for a dress, after all.
“It doesn’t matter anyway; I’m done,” she said, pausing before crossing to him to squat at the side of her bed, reach under, and retrieve a knapsack. “Come on.” She handed it to Jasen, let him slip it over his shoulder; then she slipped past and out of the door, down the corridor much more quickly than seemed possible for her quietness.
Outside, the night air was cool.
Alixa gently eased the door closed behind Jasen. It had a latch. If he touched it, no doubt it would whine, waking up the whole Weltan household. Alixa slipped it silently home though, and stepped away.
“Come on,” she said, taking the lead.
Jasen followed.
Soft lights lit small slivers of the village here and there. But mostly Terreas was quiet. The moon was nearing full, and it illuminated the village with a frail white glow.
A passerby would pick out Jasen and Alixa with ease, if there were any at this hour …
Good thing they were heading toward the outskirts.
Shilara’s house loomed. The curtains were pulled as they were when Jasen and Alixa had last visited: not perfectly. Amber light leaked through the partition. The dust on the panes turned it cloudy.
They quickstepped down the garden. Jasen felt particularly naked and glanced over his shoulder to sweep a look across this little slice of Terreas. There was no one watching that he could see—and why would there be? Still, it didn’t stop the crawling at the back of his neck.
Alixa tapped on the front door.
Shilara’s movements inside were noisy in the night’s quiet.
She opened the door a few inches, leaning around to peer out.
“You’re here,” she said.
“I said we would be,” Alixa retorted, a touch defensive.
“Mm,” was all Shilara replied. She held up a finger—One moment—and disappeared, closing the door behind her. Some rustling … and then it was opened, and in one swift motion Shilara was out in the m
oonlight with them, the door shut with a dull clunk.
She had about her a satchel, slung low around her waist—and on the other side, sheathed at her hip—
“Is that a sword?” Jasen whispered.
“Of a sort,” she said with disinterest. “I’d call it more of a dagger, personally.”
Alixa cast it a look Jasen could not miss even in the dull light of the moon. Her lips were tight, and her eyes slitted. She averted her eyes without saying anything.
“Where are we going?” Jasen asked.
“Stables,” said Shilara, already setting off.
“What about your fireplace?” Alixa asked, throwing a pointed finger up at the misted window. Orange light still crept through the gap between curtains.
“It’ll burn itself out.”
“Or burn another house down!”
“I leave it going all the time. It won’t. Now would you bloody hurry up? We’ve not got all night. I’d like to set off before dawn.”
Alixa breathed a humph. She argued no more—though she did take a few glances back at Shilara’s home as she and Jasen rejoined the path and followed along behind her. When Alixa looked over her shoulder the last time, to see that the building was out of sight, she stifled a soft groan.
Jasen patted her wrist and lifted a low smile. He doubted it was reassuring.
Shilara stood not much taller than Jasen. He had never seen her determined before, at least not until today, hurtling toward the blaze that swallowed his home. Now, he saw how quickly she moved when she was. Marching far faster than she ought to be able to, she easily outpaced Jasen, and even more so Alixa, without seeming to expend any effort whatsoever.
“What are your supplies?” Shilara asked over her shoulder.
“Waterskins,” said Alixa, “some changes of clothes. Hard cheese, salt pork.” Sniffily, she added, “Cutlery.”
“You bring any plates along too?”
Whatever Alixa’s response must have been too impolite to say, even in current company in the dead of night, when they were leaving the village, perhaps to face death head on; she worked hard on clamping her jaw tight. A muscle in it twitched from the effort.
“Have we missed anything?” Jasen asked.
“Plenty,” said Shilara. “Some of it obvious, much of it not. Don’t you worry, though. I’ll have us covered. Not like you’ve done this before.”
“No,” he agreed.
That didn’t seem to placate Alixa. Her expression was still tight.
The stables were toward the north side of Terreas. Adjoining a field presently knee-high with leafy plants, it housed a grand total of six horses: four stallions, plus two mares kept in reserve.
Jasen had rarely come this way before Pityr left, and his visits were still infrequent. Alixa liked to look at the beasts though, and he’d followed her now and again. A cursory fence was built around the halved field the horses shared, and Alixa wondered if the horses could communicate; the mares were separate from the rest, to avoid unwanted foals, but they and the stallions tended to cluster when they weren’t grazing or being ridden, all in a group by the fence between their paddocks.
The fields were empty, and the stables quiet.
Shilara let Jasen and Alixa in by the door, holding it with an arm.
“Hurry it up,” she said. “And quiet; if they’re startled, this becomes tenfold more difficult.”
“I know,” said Alixa shortly.
The stables stunk of straw and manure and the faint ammonia of urine. The horses must be about due a mucking out; probably tomorrow, by the looks of the straw that had spilled from the horses’ enclosed sections into the corridor forming the building’s spine. It was wadded in clumps.
Shilara led the way down the aisle.
“Which are we taking?” Jasen asked.
Beside him, Alixa craned her head to peer. The horse on the left was asleep lying down.
“Milo,” said Shilara. “The village won’t miss him.”
“Do the stablemasters know we’re borrowing one?” said Alixa.
“Oh, aye,” said Shilara. “I came up here earlier today and told them so myself. ‘I’ll be needing to borrow a horse to take a pair of youngsters out of Terreas,’ I said.” She shook her head. “‘Do they know we’re borrowing a horse?’ What a ridiculous question to ask.”
Alixa’s tight expression grew tighter, but she did not reply.
Milo was stabled in the farthest pen on the left. Black and white, he’d parked himself against the back wall, lying down but awake. He turned his head as Shilara, Jasen, and Alixa came into view, and regarded them with round brown eyes.
Shilara clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth twice in quick succession. Jasen had heard the stablemasters doing the same as they corralled the horses in the adjoining fields. A command, or perhaps just a noise that the beasts found particularly interesting; whichever the case, it did the job. Milo clambered to his feet and clopped to the gate.
“Evening, lad,” said Shilara. She ran a hand from his nose, up his head and down one cheek. “You’re coming for a ride.”
“Are we getting on him?” Alixa asked. There was a note of excitement in her voice, displacing the irritation a moment before.
“Course not.” Shilara opened the gate outward and gestured for Milo to come—another little command the stablemasters had taught him to follow. He obliged, hooves clicking against the stone as he passed the uneven threshold where the straw underfoot suddenly thinned to a thin dusting, most wadded in urine-soaked clumps. “Three of us on the back of one horse? Milo might not mind, but we’d not have the most comfortable time, crammed in together.” A shake of the head. “Engage your brain before you ask questions, girl.”
Alixa’s dark frown returned. She glanced away and folded her arms.
Saddles and bridles hung from the wall. Shilara took a set while Milo patiently waited. Then she geared him up—Alixa did her best not to look too interested, although Jasen caught her stealing glances, frowning all the while—and quietly led Milo, plus Jasen and Alixa, outside by the way they’d come.
“Where to now?” Jasen whispered as they passed the closed door. “The boundary?”
Shilara shook her head. “Back home,” she said. “The long way.”
“We aren’t setting off?”
“I still have things to get. I’ve a wagon.”
A wagon? Shilara would’ve had to have made off with that too. Not stolen it exactly; Terreas had a collection of wagons that could be borrowed as needed. They were few in number though, needed for little more than transporting harvest. Jasen hoped the village wouldn’t miss one, but suspected they might.
It’s not for long, he told himself. Only till we’re back. That won’t be an age.
The path Shilara took them on was even longer than Jasen expected. It wove around the edge of Terreas itself, right out onto the outermost pathway, cut alongside the fields and then open green. They passed the fields at the base of the nearest mountain, the one that breathed a plume of grey smoke skyward each day. Rock had flowed down its side from a cleft high up. Now and again it glowed orange, and everyone knew what it signaled: another spill of molten stone was coming to take away yet more of their land. It didn’t take much each time—but those small amounts of lost land added up. At the current pace, in twenty, perhaps thirty years, Jasen could see it beginning to devour the closest houses too.
Back at Shilara’s, she led Milo and Jasen and Alixa around to the back. The wagon was parked there, as close to the house as it would go. She’d managed to scavenge branches from a sapling somewhere and slung them over it. Fairly redundant; when Jasen asked, she said she’d taken the thing after dusk fell, wheeling it with her hands, which he found impressive, though she waved him off and said it was easy enough with your hands, rope, and time.
“Clear that off,” Shilara instructed Jasen and Alixa, pointing to the rudimentary camouflage. “Front end first, so I can hook Milo up.”
They stepped
forward to obey—
Alixa gagged.
Jasen stopped in his footsteps. He’d detected it after she had: the stink of meat and blood. And not good meat, either. This was just something dead, and though the night had cooled, the dead creature had not expired this night. It had been killed a day, two days prior—and the heat had started to dial up its scent. From a distance, it wasn’t obvious, cool night air breathed through the mountains wafting it away. But up close, it caught in the back of Jasen’s throat.
“What is that?” Alixa choked out. She retched.
“The discarded remains of two pigs and a cow,” said Shilara. “The wagon’s covered in it; horse will be too. There are buckets in the back for us.”
Alixa had gone entirely still.
“For us?” Jasen asked.
Shilara explained, “Scourge aren’t carrion-eaters. We’ll attract flies by the swarm, but scourge? If we catch their attention, it’ll be visually, or by happening across one. Smell won’t draw them in.” She fiddled with Milo’s bridle, realigning it to attach to the wagon. “Go on, help me out. We haven’t got all night.”
Jasen stepped toward the wagon.
He saw it now: under the thin, patchy layer of branches acting as camouflage, the wagon itself looked wet, and not very uniformly—a bloody coating, complete with, in places, thin strings of fat that had become glued to the wood.
He levered up a branch—
His knuckles grazed a damp plank. It was cold and tacky. A thread of liquid clung, thinning and drooping as he brought his hand away, until it snapped.
Ugh.
“Give him a hand, girl,” said Shilara. “Can’t have your cousin do everything.”
Alixa still hadn’t moved. She seemed not to dare to even look at the wagon—
“Go on,” Shilara prompted.
At that, Alixa looked around. She met Jasen’s eyes—and in them was fear—before finding the wagon at his side.
A pained sort of noise warbled in her throat.
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