“My name’s Opal.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “Sure.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you.” I snatched up a piece of ham and tore into it. “You were saying ‘us,’ Emerald?”
“We are similar in a way. Erlend loathes both of us, but the part of me they would disagree with is to do with attraction.” She sighed, long and loud and annoyed. “I experience no romantic attraction. The same is not true of sexual. There are others who experience the opposite or the same or both. Some people who grew up with primarily Erlend ideas have a hard enough time separating sex, romance, and love for me to even finish talking about it.”
“And you do hate being interrupted.” Roland raised his glass.
Emerald tapped her knuckles against the rim and smiled.
People did get all up in knots over sex and love and romance all the time. Alonians less so, but the farther north you went, the worse it got. Same went for gender.
It wasn’t about the clothes or their silly notions about how men and women acted. My life was about me and no one else, but they’d hurt me time and time again—asking me what was under my clothes, assuming I was a girl or boy as if those were the only possibilities and always separate, saying it was hard for them to remember how to refer to me but never asking. It was always about them. Their comfort was more important than my existence.
I was fluid. They were selfish.
That’s what it was—they didn’t see me as important enough to bother.
“You’re not alone here.” Emerald blew the steam from her new cup of tea. “Most of us supported Our Queen because we were the ones Erlend wanted dead the most.” She nodded to Amethyst. “Or the ones willing to fight even though Erlend wasn’t going after them.”
Amethyst tapped her soft-boiled egg against Emerald’s empty cup. “I won’t stop fighting till my corpse is on a pyre.”
Least that part of my admiration was warranted.
“About that.” Roland gestured to me. “I grew up on the border, before the war, you know, and my parents assumed I was a girl. I assumed, after a while, they were all fools. Not that it’s the same, but talking’s nicer when it’s with someone who understands. Lark and I get together with some other folks occasionally. You should come.”
I held out my hand in agreement and tapped the table near his, wanting sealed and sure. Wanting to make sure he was real.
It was different seeing older folks. The ones who’d thrived despite Erlend trying to drag them down.
“I’d like that,” I said, fingers closing around his hand when he found mine. “I won’t even try to kill you this time.”
Lady, let him come back alive. I wanted that talk. And he was older than me. He’d years of living. I wanted that knowledge.
“You could try. I like a fun sparring partner.” Roland laughed. “But who knows how alive we’ll all be next meeting time?”
Emerald shrugged. “I’m fine with dying so long as the world I leave’s safer for it. We have to protect each other, the future included.”
“I understand,” I said. “No one else innocent dies. No more pyres built for friends. I’m ready to end this.”
“Good,” Emerald said. “Roland, tell them about Caden de Bain and his rangers.”
And much later, once I was fed and watered and packed, Emerald took my face in her hands and kissed my temple. “Step lightly.”
“Hit hard.” Amethyst took her place and kissed me too. “And come back alive.”
Their lips to the Lady’s ears.
Chapter Seven
I rented a carriage for the first leg of the trip. I was terrible at riding horses, always going sideways or getting thrown or both. People and livestock crowded the roads, trying to carry on with their normal lives or fleeing farther south, and I’d no desire to stampede through them just to get there a bit faster. The border was already chaotic enough, and not everyone could just up and leave. I had to take care of Caden de Bain and his rangers quick.
These kids could be their next corpses.
The carriage I was in was boring enough to be any moneyed traveler with a taste for solitude. It was the sort Rath and I used to target most often, the outside gilded but not too fancy and the inside built for four people to share. The cost was more than normal folks could afford unless you were sharing with a wealthier friend, and people out to save a pearl or two from going toward the price never paid for extra guards. I hadn’t either, but I was me.
Good evening for it though. The clear sky was only just starting to bruise, and the curtained window let in the dying scent of the last summer blooms. I tilted my head back till the memories of Rath’s voice in the dark, the tang of his breath, and the rustle of his hand against his hair overpowered the crickets and clomping hooves. A long, low whistle like a loon’s echoed outside.
I opened my eyes and peeked out of the carriage. No one else on the road. I pulled out my knife.
My driver shrieked and yanked the carriage to a stop.
A thief, thin and young as I’d been my first run, flew through my window feet first. They stumbled and spun as the carriage lurched. I didn’t know them. Rath must’ve gotten some new kids.
Six out of ten. Their feet were too close and their balance off.
“You’re—”
I kicked the thief in the chest. They gasped, stumbling into the seat opposite me. I lurched forward, slammed my hand over their mouth, and pressed a knife into their cheek. They stilled, eyes wide. Too slow.
I patted their cheek. “This is fixing to be a real bad night for you.”
Their bushy brows slammed together. A muffled curse.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’ll live through it, but I’m not too thrilled about you all taking advantage of the panic.”
I’d have done, but I wasn’t the decent sort of thief.
Outside, the hushed voice of my driver and a handful of other folks quieted down. They’d be expecting their friend soon.
“Now.” I laid my knife against their cheek and smiled. “I’m going to move my hand. You’re going to tell me who’s outside running this mess, and I’ll be out of your life faster than you can blink. Nod if you got it.”
They nodded.
I took my hand from their mouth.
“Rath!” They said it so quickly they choked, and I froze. “Rath da Oretta. It’s Rath. We’re not robbing, you. I swear. He figured you’d not want people seeing’s all.”
I sheathed my knife and took a deep breath.
Rath, too-kind-to-kill-wasps Rath, who shuddered when thinking about Opal, had come all the way up here, dragging the kids he loved more than life itself this close to the border, to find me. I was traveling without a mask to keep people from thinking Opal was on the move.
How many damned kids had Rath told? He collected them as quick as he collected coins, giving away food and clothes and love till they kept coming back. He was too softhearted, too easy to be taken advantage of. I’d been watching the warrants coming out of Kursk. None of our old gang had any, but Nicolas said the guards down there were living well off of bribes. Had to be him.
He’d pay his way into debt to keep everyone safe. Least until they’d enough money to do something legal.
“Get up.” I tapped their knees and nodded to the door. “And next time keep your balance lower.”
They tripped out of the carriage and sprinted away. The noise outside died.
“You get lost?” I shouted.
Rath, ever the charmer, shouted back, “Not as much as you.”
“Get in here.” I kicked the door open and waited, not wanting to see who else he’d brought up here. A series of whispers. “You could’ve gotten them all killed, you know?”
“They’re already getting killed, and I’m more scared of the shadows than I am of you.” Rath, familiar face framed by short, black hair twisted out and a new pair of earrings, stepped into the carriage, and the lamplight caught his eyes—brighter and wearier than I remembe
red. The salted flecks were as ghost pale as the chalky sheen across his dark skin. He’d not been sleeping. “I told your driver to keep going. My lot are running back. We need to talk.”
Lady save me. This couldn’t be good.
I sat down. “Talk.”
“Good.” He shut the door and stumbled as the carriage picked up speed, and I waited for him to start.
He didn’t.
“You’re not one to mull,” I finally said. I figured he’d at least hug me, but he was only fiddling with his rings. Stung a bit. “What’s going on?”
He ran a hand over his face and shuddered. “Sorry. Lords, Sal, it’s all rubbish.”
I moved to sit next to him, and he threw himself on me, arms hooking under mine and nose bumping my cheek. I hugged him back tight around his shoulders and got a nose-full of sweat and ink, rotten leaves and old, dry wine. Rath, pure and filthy, eternally too busy with new ideas to bathe till he looked in a mirror. He crumpled in my arms, too heavy for me to hold up. I leaned back.
“I was furious.” He pulled back, face slack. Tiredness stuck to his skin like dust. Half circles of puffy skin hung beneath each eye. “You running off to die and leaving me to deal with everything. You were so content to never see me again.”
I shifted. “I wasn’t thinking of it like that.”
“Course you were,” he said. “You never think through anything.”
That was always his job. He untangled his arms from mine, the relief at having him close dimming. He laced our fingers.
“I’m glad you’re Opal.” He sniffed. “Not just because I need help. I’m glad you’re alive. I’m glad you’re getting what you want. Odd to think of you as a court member though.”
“Don’t worry.” I slipped his purse from his pocket, waited to see if he’d notice—not a bit—and held it out to him. “Still some Sal in here.”
“Course there is.” He snatched the purse. Grinning. “I liked you better when I thought you were dead.”
“Usually how missing dead folks goes.”
Dealing with Rath was effortless—jokes, joy, and a bit of ribbing without the threat of murder. Court was well and good, better in a dozen ways, but it didn’t erase the near decade I’d spent running with Rath through the wilds of southern Igna. He was familiar in a way I couldn’t put into words, only memories of shaking hands stitching up my calf and late-night laughter strengthened by a stolen supper.
Comfortable if not quite content. The always-there feel of friendship.
“I can’t believe you…” He trailed off, gaze dropping to my hands and darting to the sheaths on my belt.
“Don’t think about me killing,” I said softly. “Not all necessary ends come from kind beginnings.”
“No, I need Opal’s help. I need you, necessary ends and all.” He spread his hands out between us, fingers open and palms faceup. Our signal that we weren’t being watched or forced to talk. “There are kids missing. First, it was just stories from the north. Figured they were tales to make kids obey, but then one of the new ones, Cam, he didn’t come back one night.”
I cracked my knuckles one by one. More missing kids. More nonsense I didn’t know what to do with. “Sure he didn’t run?”
“Wouldn’t.” Rath shook his head. “He’s not like the runners. He’s like us.”
Nowhere to go. No one to run to. We’d made a family down south after the war had taken our original ones. Rath was more insistent on it than me. He liked caring for people, for kids, making sure they didn’t turn out like us.
“What’s his full name?” I asked. “I can get guards to look for him but—”
“No.” Rolling his lips together, Rath leaned against the cushion behind him and slumped over. “It was guards took him.”
“You sure?” I knocked him with a shoulder. “If Igna guards are snatching kids, I need to know.”
Those guards and whoever was ordering them about need to die. Now.
Children had no place in this. They already had to inherit our mess of a world, and these kids had no one who would come looking for them or could afford to if they wanted. They’d slipped through the cracks and paid for our mistakes.
We’d take care of these kids. We’d fill in the cracks.
What was the point in stopping a war if the future was dead?
“You know all those people who buy up old soldier uniforms and then go begging for free drinks by talking about their past?” he asked. “Kids that saw him get snatched say they looked like that—old uniforms missing the new little hems guards got these days. And they were heading north. No town guards are heading north yet.”
Rangers. It had to be. “What do you want me to do?”
I was stalling. Opal couldn’t agree immediately, but Sal was doing whatever Rath asked. I had left him.
He deserved better.
“Find him. He’s my responsibility, and I know you’re doing something important, but these are our kids, Sal. This is us. How much better off would we have been if we’d someone come save us? Children have no place in our messes, and I’d rather build my own pyre than build one for Cam. I’m not letting him or any of them die.” He twisted so we were fully looking at each other, not just stealing glances, and grabbed my knees. The full weight of him bore down on my legs. “It’s was Erlends, right? Those rangers Weylin’s got?”
“Maybe.” Probably. There’d been no children found near the border, dead or alive, but if it was the rangers, what were they doing with them? The clammy memory of the severed, runed ear from Caldera’s desk tingled against my hand. Lady, don’t let them be related. “Why Cam?”
Rath shrugged. “There were four other kids there. They ran straight up to him, picked him up, and took off. No one got a word out of them, and by the time the remaining kids found me, Cam was gone.”
Be wary.
“Fine. I’ll help. You can come with me. We’ll find Cam or close as I can get to finding him without starting a war.” I couldn’t tell Rath I was out solely to kill rangers, but I could poke around. He was good at spying on people so long as no one asked him to pickpocket them. “But if I tell you to do something, you do it. This isn’t another normal night, the two of us together again. This is death we’re walking into—theirs or ours—and you can’t turn away from that.”
He nodded.
“Good,” I said. “I’ve not heard much about kids missing, but I know about some missing adults. We’ll start their first.”
And there was no part of me ever telling Rath I’d found a kid’s severed ear runed to shreds and tucked away like a trophy.
Chapter Eight
Rath and I left the carriage behind a day from the border. We traveled at night when the roads were near empty and most folks asleep. These lands had been Igna before, but the people were still Erlends. Borders didn’t change culture or traditions, and while Igna was trying to make the world a safer place for the people Erlend dismissed, I was thrilled about moving through recently reclaimed Erlend lands. Erlend culture was built on the idea that men and women were the only genders and that men were inherently better. People like Elise—a young woman, not solely attracted to men, and born to an Alonian mother—were doomed three times over. As for me…
“I don’t like it,” Rath said once we were firmly encased among the limbs of a leafy oak and settled in for a night of watching a small homestead. It felt like a good place to be—open fields but still plenty of cover, lots of woods near enough to drinking water, and places for camping where no one could see unless they were standing on you. I opened my mouth to agree, but Rath continued, “It’s cold, and Cam wasn’t wearing a sweater when they grabbed him.”
I glanced at Rath, grinning. The best parts of him kept getting better. “They took him for a reason. They’ll make sure he’s all right or else they’d grab any kid.”
“I hope so.”
“Cam got sweaters back home?” I asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it.
“Course.” Rath scof
fed. “I’m not hiring kids to work outside and not making sure they got sweaters.”
I laughed. “You sew them?”
He would if he could, but I’d never seen him darn more than socks.
“Tried.” He laughed too and knocked my shoulder with his. “It’s real calming though. I need to practice more. I got patches down. Day’s trying to teach me embroidery. You remember his coat?”
I nodded.
“It’s even more elaborate than the last time you saw it.” Rath’s smile slipped. He ducked. “I didn’t get it back then. How much that coat meant to him. Day always said he wasn’t allowed to sew when he lived up here.” He raised his head and met my eyes. “I didn’t connect it to you hating being close to Erlend. To all the ways they tried to make you feel lesser.” He paused, then added, “Makes sense now.”
I nodded. The homestead wasn’t fun to watch for me, seeing all the little ways adults crushed the spirits and selves of children like me and Elise and Day.
Maybe Rath and I would have time to help with that too.
An owl call, too high to be real, whistled through the night. Rath and I froze.
Rangers? But if they were as good as everyone said, they’d have better calls.
Rath touched my chin and turned my head east, toward a wall of trees thick as night. A small glint of metal flickered in the dark like a distant star, but the two of us knew—a signal. I pulled a black cloth mask, courtesy of Rath, from my pocket. Rath pulled his on too.
No one moved in the tree line. We crept around the edges of the homestead, bodies low and feet quiet. Rath’d gotten better at it, a feat he’d been quick to tell me about on our journey, but I kept him a good few steps behind me in case. A little thicket of broken branches and chewed mint leaves smelled of piss, and I followed a trail of footprints deeper into the woods. Erlend was all trees and fields, endless green. Made it easier to track folks.
A dim light filtered through the trees. I stopped. Rath crept up behind me, and we snuck as close as we could without getting into the light. Four Erlend men—proud of it and taking the piss out of each other for it—sat around a small fire and went over a dirt-scrawled map of the homestead. They all looked about the same, blond hair brown with dirt and white skin the streaked pinks and reds of uneven sunburns. One of them was older than the rest.
Ruin of Stars Page 5