She shook her head at the pass that Yohanna had directed them to on her map, and pointed to a pass to the west.
“I’ve heard it’s easier here.”
Nolan judged the distance between the passes on the map carefully. “That’s another two days…maybe three, longer than Yohanna’s way.”
“But if we can’t cross at all through Yohanna’s pass, we’re just wasting more time,” Kris pointed out.
Nolan nodded and started to fold up the map again. “Right. We’ll need to take the next main road left, if you think that’s the safest pass, Rhea.”
Rhea smiled slightly. “It’s the best I know of, anyway.”
Nolan practiced shooting whenever the path was level enough for him to track where his arrows ended up, which was, unfortunately, often five feet or more from where he’d meant them to land. He practiced more when they stopped for the night, stoically ignoring the commentary from both of the girls. Tired as Kris was by the end of the day, watching him swear as his arrow bounced off a tree rather than lodge inside it was entertaining enough to keep her sitting up and awake.
“You could brush Star, or find more firewood, if you have enough energy to sit up and laugh at me,” he pointed out on their second night. He plucked his fifth stray arrow out of the dirt and rubbed the arrowhead off on his coat sleeve.
Kris smiled. “I’d go to sleep if I didn’t think I’d get myself skewered by mistake. I’d rather see where these things are falling, thanks.”
Nolan rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to miss by that much.”
“Tell that to the tree over there,” Rhea said.
Kris crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes sparking with more humor than he’d seen on her face in weeks. “Try again.”
Nolan’s aim improved—slowly. By the time they were a day’s ride from the border, his arrows were staying in the trees about half the time. But he wasn’t going to be a match for any soldier.
“If we’re lucky, this path of Rhea’s will avoid the checkpoints,” he pointed out, squinting down at the map for the fifth time that day. “We might not have to fight again at all.”
“And if we’re even luckier, we can ask the nice magic-hating men for directions,” Kris retorted. From the other side of Star’s head, she held up the hand without the mare’s reins in front of her in a fist. It flickered briefly out of sight, wavered, and reappeared. Kris grimaced.
“You shouldn’t waste your magic,” Rhea said. She ran a hand over the Nila’s ear, smiling wryly.
“If I don’t practice it, I won’t learn it.”
“Be patient,” Rhea said calmly.
“There’s no point in burning yourself out,” Nolan agreed. He glanced back over his shoulder to Rhea. “How long do you think you can hold that illusion spell?”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t know. I’ve never tested it. And I don’t want to waste power now.”
A day later they had their first sight of Ustengard. On the Ostmontian side of the border the path led down a heavily wooded, gentle slope with only an empty wooden shelter to show that some kind of border guard knew the path was there. Nolan could see a frozen stream at the base of the hillside, but what struck him much more was the nakedness of the Ustengardian mountain. Only a handful of trees, spaced evenly over the southern slope, added any color to the snowy terrain. Even stranger, the mountain was tiered, with steep rocks leveling off twice for a sloping roadway. Nolan wondered which army, over the centuries, had carved out the mountainside to be its own fortress. The path Nolan and the others were standing on merged with a road that followed one tier. From this side of the brook, it didn’t look like there was any way to scale the mountain and avoid the stone guardhouse sitting in the middle of that road.
“Do you think they see us yet?” Kris asked.
“Probably. Or they will soon,” Nolan answered. He didn’t like the look of those guardhouses.
“We’re not doing anything wrong as long as we’re on this side of the border,” Rhea said.
“But we’re not staying on this side of the border.”
“And by the time we cross it, they won’t be able to see us.”
The wide, stone-paved road that the wind had swept clean of snow would have made the climb up the Ustengardian mountain feel easy if it hadn’t made them feel so completely exposed. Rhea’s spell hid them, but it did nothing to mask the noise they made. Every clip of Star’s hooves, every birdcall, and every squeak of the saddle leather made Nolan flinch. They walked on the grass beside the road whenever they could, and finally took out rags that Nolan had saved to wrap around each animal’s hooves, as he had when he’d first stolen Star.
Approaching the first guardhouse, Nolan felt his heart sound in his ears again, and held his breath. His nose started to itch when they were a hundred yards away, and he fought hard to hold in the sneeze he felt building. Kris, eying his nose rubbing, eye-watering progress, glared daggers at him, though neither of them dared to say a word.
The guards at the guardhouse must have had a soft spot for greenery, because there were a few dead wildflowers around the wall, poking an inch or two over the snow. Another hundred yards past the guardhouse, a few quiet footsteps on snow warned them of a guard coming. Nolan jerked on Star’s reins and jammed his shoulder into hers to stop her, a second before a young man with sandy hair and a broken nose walked out of the woods with a pair of pheasants hanging from his hand and a bow and arrow over one shoulder. Nolan jammed his itching nose into his fist. The man walked so near that Nolan could see the thin knife scar on the man’s cheekbone. He choked on the sneeze, and the guard paused, frowning. He looked back and forth over the path, staring right past them, then shook his head and walked on. As soon as he shut the guardhouse door behind him, Nolan’s sneeze burst free.
Kris hissed in her breath between clenched teeth, but the guard’s door stayed shut. Nolan waited two more breaths, nodded, and led Star forward again. The hoof beats still sounded too loud. Nila grumbled to herself.
Ostmonton passed out of sight around the next bend in the road. The second guardhouse was at the top of a tiny valley filled with rows of housing. A pair of bearded men were outside the house playing a game throwing knives at a painted target. The sound of the knives hitting the wood covered their footfalls, though Nolan had a hard time dragging his eyes away from the sight of the guards burying their knives inches into the tree with every throw.
The housing in the valley looked more like an army base than a village, with long wooden buildings instead of regular houses and barns. Nolan supposed it must hold one of the mines that Ustengard had fought so hard to claim. A few men were walking between the buildings, but he didn’t see any women. Not that he cared how Ustengardian miners lived.
A mile past the village, Rhea stopped walking. “Okay. This is it.”
Kris blew into her gloved hands. “This is what?”
“As far as we go.”
Nolan felt a small thrill of dread. “You lost the spell?”
Rhea shook her head. “No. No one can see me. And as long as you stay with me they won’t see you. But I’m turning around.” She stroked Nila’s ear casually, but her face was set.
“Rhea…” Kris hugged her arms over her chest, a disbelieving smile on her face. “You can’t leave us out here. We’re only halfway across.”
“I know. Guard posts in front of us and behind us. But I want to get back to Ostmontian territory tonight.” She held out her free hand towards Nolan. “Now give me the star-jar.”
He blinked at her. “What? Why?”
“Because just in case you don’t freeze to death, I’m not taking a chance on going back to Rusam. Give it to me.”
Nolan backed away, a step, nudging Star gently along with him. “Rhea, everyone in that jar will die if we don’t make it to the caves. Everybody left in Rusam, and the other worlds. Even your family.”
Rhea’s eyes flashed. “My family might already be here. And if they’re not—it’s not lik
e they’d mourn for me, if I started fighting the Academy.”
“Rhea…”
“No, you were, right, Kris,” she snapped. “You’ve been right for the last two years. What do we really owe all of them? Mundane nobles who want youth spells and spying spells, with magni in their pockets—that’s who they had us working for. Playing everybody else’s power games. But I didn’t listen to you. I never knew how strong I could be without them draining me.”
A small fire appeared in Rhea’s hand, and she laughed. “Look at this! All of these years and I’d never dared light a fire by myself. But now I could burn down half of this forest if I had to.”
“We don’t need to burn down half the forest!” Kris snapped. “And you can’t mean that you’d just let everybody die.”
Nolan backed away another step, thinking fast. They couldn’t get past the rest of the guards without the hiding spell, but he didn’t like the look in Rhea’s eyes at all. His thoughts flicked between the bow and his knife, and he decided the bow would be too obvious. Very slowly, he reached across for the knife—just in case.
“I mean I’m looking out for myself for once,” Rhea said sharply. “Nobody—not one person in that jar—would ever think to look out for me.” She took a deep breath, and her voice steadied. “But Kris—we can do this. We can stay on the move, find other mages like us—we’ll be too strong for them to take on. You can even bring him with us if you really want to,” she added, jerking her head at Nolan. “We’ll be free.”
Free. The word hung in the air, and for a moment Nolan wondered if Kris might start to agree. But when he glanced at her, her face was twisted with revulsion.
“We’d have the blood of millions of people on our hands, Rhea. From a few nasty people, but from a lot of people we’ve never met, too, who’ve never done anything to us. There’s nothing worth that for me.”
“It’s not like we’re lining them up and stabbing them,” Rhea said impatiently. “We just have to not save them.”
“That’s the difference you’re drawing here?” Nolan asked. “That’s crazy.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she turned back to Nolan, almost baring her teeth with the trace of the smile that was still on her face. “It was your wish that did this, wasn’t it? I’m just taking the first bit of good luck I’ve ever had. But I’m done talking about this. Give me the jar.”
Nolan backed away another step. “No. You can turn back, but I’m going north.”
Rhea raised the hand that held the fire, holding it out to him. “I’m not asking. I don’t even have to hurt you—just put up a fire and let the guards find you.”
“Rhea, you can’t—” Kris said.
But Rhea tossed the fire, and it caught on a branch. “There’s no need for it to make this harder. You’re visible now, by the way.”
Nolan slid his knife out, but Kris widened her eyes and shook her head at him frantically. “Nolan, don’t.”
Rhea’s smile took on a mocking edge. “That’s right, Kris wouldn’t like you hurt, would she? I have to say I never thought—”
“She’d win either way, Nolan,” Kris snapped. “There’s no point now.” She jerked her head significantly towards the woods, where now Nolan could hear men shouting.
The flames licked higher up the tree. Kris put out a hand and frowned fiercely, making them dampen for a moment, but another gesture from Rhea made them bloom again, higher than ever. Kris swore.
“Give her the damn jar,” Kris snapped. “Trust me.”
Her eyes looked so wild, with some kind of hidden message Nolan couldn’t guess, that Nolan let himself listen to her. His fingers numbly found the jar in his pack, and the moment they did Rhea’s wrenched it away.
“Smart move,” she whispered, plucking his knife from his hand and shouldering his bow. “Now stay still a moment.”
The Ustengardian guards arrived a few minutes later, pointing excitedly at the burning tree and yelling. While they tried to put out the fire, Rhea led Nolan and Kris back down the path, passed the mining base, and down the road they’d already traveled. Kris’s face stayed white-lipped and remote. Now and then she looked at him sideways, but Nolan couldn’t be sure what it was she meant to say. He couldn’t imagine what there was to say at this point. Not to her, anyway. He had plenty to say to Rhea.
She was a traitor. A double-crossing, selfish harpy ready to let her own people die. She’d tricked them, and turned on her best friend. Rhea was worse than his uncle, worse than the power-drunk priests, and worse than the magni—Nolan hadn’t thought that was possible. Not in a teenage girl, anyway. But after so many scrapes, and over a thousand miles, he’d lost the star-jar because of her. Steady, churning rage chewed away at Nolan’s gut through the whole afternoon, so real and so physical he tasted bile. He didn’t know how she could walk so quietly down the mountain behind him, knowing what she’d just set into motion and how much hatred she’d just surrounded herself with.
When he wasn’t bitterly mulling over Rhea’s treachery and how he shouldn’t have put so much trust in this new mage, Nolan tried hard to think of a way to turn the tables on her again. He wasn’t about to give up, not when he’d come this close to reaching the Twilight Mountains, but getting away with the star-jar wouldn’t be easy. Rhea was drunk on her magic, and, as Kris had pointed out, the star-jar would be just as lost if she killed them both. They needed to surprise her if they were going to get it back. They needed a way to cut her power. Stop her magic.
They needed the necklace Sabine had given him for Kris. Nolan’s mind sprang to the thought of the blue stone and its leather cord with a quick shock of relief. The necklace could stop her magic. He hadn’t given it a thought in over a month, but he thought it was still in his bag. He didn’t know how they could get it on Rhea’s neck, but if they could, that might help.
It was very strange, after such a long time traveling north, northeast, and northwest, to watch the sun set on Nolan’s right instead of his left.
They camped just over the Ostmontian border, in almost the exact spot that they’d camped the day before. Or rather, Rhea decided she was done walking for the day, and told Nolan and Kris to build the tent, picket and feed the Star and Nila, and find their store of vegetables, jerky, and barley. Rhea watched them sharply as they worked, then sighed theatrically once they settled to eat around the campfire.
“Ah, it feels good to sit after so long, doesn’t it?” She blew on her spoon, smiling slightly. “Nice and relaxing.”
“You know the magni will still be chasing us,” Kris said. “It’s not going to stay relaxing.”
“We can outrun them.”
Kris scraped her spoon against the bowl. “Why not just let us go? You have the star-jar. And the magni are only chasing Nolan and me.”
Rhea’s smile broadened. “To let you both sneak up on me in my sleep? Or sneak off to make the wish without the jar?” She shook her head. “And you’ll see I’m right eventually. You’re still my friend, Kris.”‘
Kris’s face curled into a snarl. “You might be killing half my family. You’re not—” She swallowed and dropped her eyes to her food. “You’re not who you were in Rusam.”
Nolan waited for the explosion, but after a short pause Rhea only nodded. “I’m not. And neither are you. We couldn’t be, Kris. But you’ll see I’m right.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. You need me.” She stretched. “And for now I guess I’ll have to be the one on watch tonight.”
“I’m going to kill her,” Kris whispered later, after she and Nolan had crawled into the tent.
“Talk like that and she’ll kill us,” Nolan breathed.
Kris sniffed. A tear slipped down her cheek, and then another. She tightened her jaw and sucked back her breath, covering her eyes with one hand. “We’re too close.”
Very slowly, Nolan reached up and curled his fingers around hers. “This isn’t the end.” He dropped his voice even softer. “But to her, it has to be. Or she’l
l just keep watching us.”
“I have to get my magic back,” Kris said, switching to Surian.
“She needs to know that it’s not,” Nolan said, wishing he could switch languages too. “We’ve lost. Given up.” He forced his mouth into a wide smile. Very slowly, he reached into his backpack’s small pocket and closed his fingers around the braided leather of Sabine’s necklace. He pulled it out far enough for Kris to see.
Kris pulled her hand away from her face and blinked at him. Her nose, eyes and cheeks had turned red, but it only took her three seconds to spot the necklace, and for the meaning to strike her. “So we can surprise her,” she said, still in Surian.
“Yes.”
“You think we have that much time?”
“I don’t think we have better options,” Nolan said carefully. He pushed the necklace into his trouser pocket.
Kris closed her eyes and tucked their linked hands under her chin. “Damn them.”
Nolan spent the next day making travel as slow as he possibly could. Nila was more than happy to be led at a reluctant, crawling walk. Girths slipped. He spent five minutes finding a glove that was wrapped up in his bedroll, and Kris spent another ten minutes finding her hat. Their breakfast was scorched, and had to be chiseled out of the bottom of the pot. Carefully.
And through it all, Nolan put on the most neutral expression he could muster. Rhea would be suspicious if they looked too cheerful too quickly, but he did his best to keep his newfound loathing for her out of his eyes, and faked a well-intentioned bewilderment on their slow process.
“She might have picked up a stone in her hoof,” he explained when she complained about Nila. “Bruised it a little or something.”
Rhea, haggard-looking now after a sleepless night, glowered. “I’m not an idiot.”
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