by Tom Hansen
She glanced behind her, taking in the two prison wagons. One was still empty, meaning the other mages hadn’t been caught yet.
Good.
The other was still full of orphans and Miss-Miss. None of them had protection from the cold. Out here on the plains, the wind gusted to dreadful levels, and without any protection from the biting frozen rain, the children would lose arms, feet, or die.
“Don’t worry, I won’t let them freeze to death tonight. They aren’t any use to us if we let them die.” Captain Nora had followed her gaze. “Your friends have managed to slip our grasp for now, but that is nothing to worry about. Out here in the frozen wilderness, there isn’t anywhere to hide. They will have to go to a town eventually, and as you know, both towns they could travel to are heavily guarded by my men.”
Ynya looked away. “If you put me in with the orphans, I promise to keep them warm and not run.”
The Captain huffed. “It is possible you might keep your word. But you have been a slippery one, Ynya Oblique, and keeping you with your sister seems like the more prudent thing to do now.”
“I’m not leaving without her.”
“I agree, but I still cannot take chances. You have to understand how things are from my perspective. Failure to bring you in reflects badly upon me and my skills. Ahh, here we are.”
The woman in white furs arrived at the caravan, and in a single leap, jumped to the top of the carriage, landing so lightly that the whole structure barely shook from her weight.
Ynya remembered the light footprints the woman left in the snow alongside the road. The memory caused a shiver to go down her spine.
“I believe you two have already met?”
Ynya grimaced, but the woman in white smiled a pleasant, sultry smile.
“We go way back.”
Nora pointed into the snow.
“As you girls certainly know, there are rabbits in these plains. Kalda here is going to show you just how deadly the Skarmyord can be.”
“You’re trying to scare us?”
“I’m trying to educate you. Your sister, bless her soul, is trying to help you, Ynya. She’s trying to help you understand how your actions affect others. I’m here to put an exclamation point on the end of her lesson. Kalda?”
Kalda produced a bow from beneath her fur, and three arrows followed.
Three shiny black arrows.
Ynya payed close attention.
Kalda crept forward to the corner of the carriage and scanned the horizon.
“I see seven groups of rabbits. How many should I take down?”
“One group will work for tonight. We don’t have many mouths to feed. The guards will appreciate a nice hot meal. Five should do.”
Kalda nodded and blinked a few times into the constantly howling wind from the north.
Underneath the blankets, Ynya superheated the shackle on her left ankle to the point where she was able to get two fingers in there and pull her ankle out at the next gust of wind. One down, four to go.
“There.” Kalda drew back her bow, nocked one arrow and held the other two in her hand. In a flurry of movement, she unleashed three arrows back to back so fast, it looked to Ynya to be just one blurry arrow shot.
Twang, twang, twang!
All three shots sounded so close together it would have been easy to mistake it for one single shot, but Ynya counted each one, distinct from the next.
She needed to know how good Kalda was with those arrows. She needed to pay back for Hvarf's grisly death.
“Got them?”
Kalda rolled her eyes. “Take a guess.” She leaped off the caravan, launching herself into the air a solid ten feet vertically and landing on the snow at least twenty feet out. Still, she barely made the carriage creak.
I better hurry, I won’t be out here much longer.
Ynya poured as much heat as she could muster into the next leg iron. She was just able to slip it off as Kalda showed back up from the darkness holding three arrows. Two of them had a single rabbit on them, while the third arrow had three smaller ones.
Nora pouted. “And here I thought you were going to impress us.”
“You told me five.”
“That I did. Guards! Get the cooking pot going, we have fresh meat for the crew!”
She turned to Ynya, who concentrated on her left wrist shackle right now. “You see, dear, we Skarmyord are quite well trained, each with our own unique skills. Kalda here managed to kill five rabbits with three arrows in unfamiliar terrain, looking into the setting sun with a massive crosswind. I hope you understand just how precarious your position is here.”
Ynya smiled and nodded as she slipped the third shackle from her wrist.
“I understand perfectly.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Synol headed down first, giving Ynya a precious few more seconds to loosen the final band on her hands, leaving just the one around her waist.
She was starting to work on the final one when Nora grabbed her by her hair.
“I see steam coming off your hair, young one. Is there something I need to know?”
Ynya rattled the chains underneath her blankets. They were all just barely loose enough that she could pull her limbs out of them, but other than a close inspection, it shouldn’t be obvious.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. I can’t help it, I’ve been on the verge of overheating in that stuffy cabin. You’re the one who brought me out here, so don’t blame me if I’m cooling off from the wind.”
Nora eyed her for a moment before glancing down at Ynya’s feet in the shackles.
“Am I going to get dinner like the rest? I did get injured by your guards today. You wouldn’t want me to fall ill and die, would you?”
Nora let go of Ynya’s hair, then pulled back and slapped her with the back of her hand.
Pain shot through Ynya’s jaw, and she flew backward off the carriage and landed on her head in the snow.
Despite the reaction, Ynya pushed more heat into the middle part around her torso, fingers from her hands pulling with all her might to overheat the metal as fast as she could and allow her enough room to slip out of the iron.
“You need to learn to be more respectful.”
Nora grabbed the chains between Ynya’s legs, which thankfully had fallen up to her knees, and tugged them, flipping Ynya back to a sitting position. “Throw her back in without any dinner.”
Captain Nora stormed away, not noticing the bare patch of melted earth where Ynya’s head and hair had been.
“You shouldn’t push her so much, Ynya.” Synol pulled grass and leaves from her hair as Ynya tried to get herself situated once again.
Now was the time. The guards were all busy getting dinner ready, the ever-present Torkelsen men were nowhere to be seen. Even the nurse was gone.
“Synol, I have one more thing to tell you before they get back.” Ynya whispered, hoping one of the abilities of the Skarmyord wasn’t amazing hearing.
“What?”
“You know how we always talked about what magic Mama had?”
Synol’s eyebrows knitted together and she looked at the door.
“It’s all right, they’re all gone, but do you remember?”
“Of course,” Synol hissed through clenched teeth. She stood partially up and glanced through one side of the carriage windows.
“She gave me her power, Synol.”
“What?” Synol pulled the drapes shut and whirled around. Her eyes were wild and crazed, like she had gone feral. “She what?”
“I told you she waited there for two days in the frozen ground, but she was alive, Synol. She waited for me to give me her power.”
“Well?” Synol went to the other side of the carriage to peer out those windows.
“Well what?”
“What was it? Healing? Weather prediction? Glamours?”
Ynya shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What! How can you not know?”
“I don
’t know, alright? She pushed this power into me. I can feel but I don’t know how to use it.”
Synol rolled her eyes.
“Look, you don’t have magic, and you don’t know how this all works. That’s fine, but I’m telling you, once you have bloomed, you just learn to live with it. You naturally figure out how to use it. Having magic is like having hands. You don’t ever think about how it might be strange or different that you have it, you just do.
“I don’t ever remember figuring out how light up my hair, I just always knew how. It’s the same as walking or breathing or pissing in the snow. You just always know. I don’t know what Mama’s power is because I have only had it a few days and I haven’t been able to test it yet.”
Synol gave Ynya a look of incredulity, but then her face softened.
“I suppose you haven’t had enough time to see if you can predict the weather, have you?”
Ynya shook her head. She wondered if she should tell Synol about her shackles but decided to keep that one to herself for now.
Synol continued. “I was always leaning toward weather myself. The way she knew when to tell father to head out on his fishing trips or when to come home was uncanny.”
“I thought it was gardening, personally.”
Synol glanced away, looking out the window again. “Why gardening?”
“You know how good our garden was in the greenhouse. She managed to keep things growing like it was summer all year long.”
“I think that was more to do with intellect than magic. Putting up the glass was just smart. It kept the heat in all winter long. She could have accomplished the same thing by just having you live in the room full-time, but you refused to stay inside for more than a few minutes.”
Ynya snorted as a memory bubbled up through her recollection.
“What’s so funny?” Synol looked out over the other window.
“Maybe it was magic over Papa. Remember how he would come home from fishing, grab us all in a big bear hug, then put us down and say ‘Girls, I haven’t seen your mother in a long time, we have much to discuss.’”
Synol smiled, a warm, genuine smile Ynya hadn’t seen in such a long time. “Mama would give us a dirty look if we didn’t clear out immediately.”
“I know!” Ynya yelled louder than she had meant to. Thoughts of her current situation fled her mind. She was in the moment, in the memories, of her family. “We couldn’t go back to that yurt for hours!”
“Or keeping Meki from interrupting them.”
Ynya’s eyes went wide as a realization came to her.
“What?” Synol asked, concern in her voice.
“I finally realized why they kicked us out.” Her face went bright red as heated blood flooded her skin. “Oh no!”
Synol sat back down, her face beet red too, as the two girls devolved into a restrained giggle.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
It was early in the morning when Ynya woke up to the caustic twinge of burnt timber.
Craning her neck, she tried to see outside in the morning light, but sitting on the floor of the carriage she was only able to see sky. Not wanting to risk being found with loose bonds, she had fallen asleep to the gentle rocking while waiting for the right time to escape.
Now, the sky was cloudy and blue in the early morning light.
Synol was awake, staring out the window.
“What do you see?” Ynya recognized the awful smell of burned wood, pitch, and bodies.
Synol looked over at her sister for a second, then back out the window. In that brief moment of time, Ynya verified all the information she needed.
They were definitely outside Marsfjord.
Ynya softened her voice, not wanting to preach, but simply to punctuate an existing thought.
“You know it wasn’t me that burned down the village. Other than when I was a young girl and was still learning to control my powers, I’ve never set fire to anything I didn’t want.”
Synol nodded, tears streaking down her face.
Ynya opened her mouth to speak, but didn’t know what to say. Sometimes, silence was the only appropriate response. She had to remind herself she’d spent a couple days here tending to the dead, hoping they would find some semblance of peace in the afterlife.
For Synol, this was all new. She hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, and she needed to grieve in her own way.
Ynya watched as tears streamed down her sister’s cheek. Each one reached her chin and dripped off onto her blanket. Synol made a fist. Slowly, she released it, stretching out each individual finger, cracking a couple knuckles, then went back to a fist.
Ynya hadn’t remembered Synol doing something so unladylike as cracking her bones in years. It was refreshing to know the sister she had grown up with and looked up to all those years was still in there, buried beneath the quagmire of adult relationships and unwritten rules for the wealthy elite.
As Synol pumped her hand, Ynya felt her heartbeat slow to match her sister’s motion. It was a calm, steady beat. A comfortable groove.
“They could have just taken–” Synol stopped abruptly and looked at Ynya, a stricken look on her face.
“Just taken me?” Ynya nodded. “I know. I wish that’s what they did. I wish they had just taken me and let the rest go. I would give anything to have not gone on that fishing trip, given anything to be there so I could help defend their lives.”
Ynya thought back to the day she left. She remembered the clouds in the sky. She had been worried about the storm, but her mother promised her everything was going to be alright.
She’d even insisted that it was the correct time to leave. She had insisted that Ynya go right then in fact…
Ynya sat bolt upright.
“What is it?”
“I think Mama knew.”
“Knew? Knew what?”
“I think she knew the soldiers were coming.”
Synol’s eyes widened, and her mouth drew to a hard line. “What do you mean?”
“Storm clouds were coming in from the north, and even Papa worried about me going alone, but Mama insisted I leave, in fact, she help load the boat herself.”
“Mama never does that, that’s always Papa’s chore.”
Ynya nodded. “I know. She told me to hurry, even though I had the whole day to leave. Now I have to wonder if she knew something was coming and wanted me out of there before the soldiers came. Maybe she hoped that if I was gone, the soldiers would check the village and move on.”
“But how would she know?”
The two sisters stared blankly at each other for a moment. The normal tension between them had changed to a static charge, building as the two sorted out the puzzle that was their mother.
“That’s quite strange.” Synol said, looking out the window once again.
“What do you mean?” Ynya wished she could see out of the window, but then remembered she’d seen the image too many times. She knew exactly what the village graveyard, looked like. Perhaps it was best they spoke like this, it kept the emotions and anger at bay.
“Why would Mama load your boat? Do you think she put something in there?”
Realization hit Ynya and she opened her mouth to say, but at that moment the door opened up, and Synol’s nurse came back in.
Outside, Stefan coughed. “Good morning, my love. I hope you slept well?”
Synol pursed her lips and placed a protective hand over her belly. Her face changed in a heartbeat from curious to calm. “I’m quite well, Stefan. I shall come join you for breakfast.”
The two sisters eyed each other for a long moment, then took their respective seats while their minds whirled.
Ynya remembered the shoes her mother had packed for her. She noticed them deep in the hull when she was heading home. Mama knew Ynya’s magic better than anyone, and she would have never made the mistake. Papa might have accidentally packed shoes for his daughter, but not Mama. Mama wouldn’t have made such a minor mistake like that. She was too careful, too c
autious, and her mind never stopped working. She would have never sent Ynya with shoes, so why did she insist on packing them?
Ynya needed to get away from this caravan and into town so she could find out what was in that boat.
She had an urge to ask Synol to see if the boat was still tethered at the dock, but wasn’t willing to risk asking anything too specific with the nurse in the room.
So, Ynya closed her eyes and went over all her memories before she left, trying to recall every word her mother told her, every word between her parents, and every single thing loaded onto the boat.
Chapter Thirty
“Stefan, wait!” Synol called to her husband, who clomped outside on his horse.
“Yes, my love?”
“Come around here, please.”
“Of course.”
Synol wore a sour expression and shared a quick glance with Ynya as Stefan rode his horse from one side the carriage over to the other. After a few moments, Synol opened the carriage door, made sure he was there, and pointed to the ruined town.
“Did you have anything to do with this?” Synol’s tone dripped with vitriol and accusation.
She sounded like Mama when she was mad.
Stefan recoiled. “Of course not, my love. I wasn’t aware of anything happening with Marsfjord until the soldiers arrived with their accusations for your sister.”
“Are you aware my mother was raped after she was stabbed? If my sister was accused of burning down this town, how could that have possibly happened?”
“Mama wasn’t the only one,” Ynya piped in. She kept her gaze pointed at the rear of the cabin, not wanting to look out the open doorway at the destruction. Her mind was a jumble of emotions and looking outside was sure to set them off.
Synol sucked in the cold air sharply. “So, there were multiple women killed and raped in the village. Does that sound like the work of a sixteen-year-old maiden?”
Stefan gulped and looked away from the carriage, but not at the town. “No, my love.”
“Are you aware of any contract your father signed for me?”