by Jim Galford
As they approached, Oria made a conscious effort to walk more steadily, though she worried that the scuff on her side would be easily noticeable. She could only hope that her mother ignored it as yet another minor scratch from exploring areas of the tunnels that were less safe.
Once they were close, Feanne’s ears twitched, but she kept her eyes on the kits.
“This afternoon,” Feanne announced, batting away one of the males’ attempts to claw at her, “we’re going to finally get out of this prison of a village. The gypsies are in the area again. I would like to visit them today and possibly travel with them someday soon if they will let us accompany them. I believe I am quite done with Corraith.”
Both Oria and Atall froze and Oria knew she must have looked guilty. She knew Atall did.
“But…what about…?” she fumbled, looking around the room for some excuse to stay. “Aren’t we going to help them retake Corraith or…?”
“No,” replied her mother, finally turning to face them. “We have been here long enough and these people are making no progress, as though Desphon has no appreciable interest in succeeding. The raids are too small and ineffective against even the few undead that hold Corraith by night. Even Norum has agreed with me that if the leadership does not change its policies, this is a lost battle.
“I would rather we continue looking for a place to live where there are no Turessians.”
“How much time before we have to say goodbye?” asked Atall, a twinge of panic in his voice. There was no doubt what he was really worried about.
“Give me another day or two to make sure they do not need anything more from us before we leave.”
Feanne looked to Oria, then frowned as her eyes fell on the bloody hole in her shirt.
“If your friend wishes to accompany us, I have no objections,” she noted, pointedly not looking at Oria’s wounds again. “He may represent the worst of the traits of our people here, but he is not a bad male overall. Perhaps he can be retrained. At least he is respectful of our gender, which is more than I can say for others here.”
“Who? Phaesys?”
Feanne’s wry smirk was accompanied by a shrug.
Oria’s face heated as her temper flared, but she could not find anything useful to say in argument. She had, after all, spent nearly every day with the male, usually exploring or sneaking into Corraith. Sometimes they just sat around and talked. She could see why her mother would think she would want to keep him around.
“That’s up to him,” Oria finally said. “I’ll ask him when I see him next. I really don’t care either way.”
Feanne gave a little bow of her head in acknowledgement.
“You two go along and have fun before we must leave,” Feanne told them, scooping one of the male kits in her arms. The other two kits sat on the edge of the altar, watching the conversation with their short legs kicking off the edge. “In a few hours, be ready to go shopping at the gypsy camp. I will come find you when I am ready to travel…assuming I can get these three monsters worn out by then.”
The male kit in Feanne’s arms gave a cute little growl and tried to squirm free.
Oria punched Atall’s arm and began walking away.
“What?” he asked her, once they had gotten a short distance from their mother.
“Are you okay with letting her stay here as a slave?”
Atall’s face hardened and he had no trouble figuring out who she meant. “Not at all. What choice do I have though?”
“Gypsies are here,” she reminded him, leading them back toward the back tunnels they had arrived through. “You remember Yoska. He would accept anyone traveling with him. We just make sure Arlin gets to the camp before we leave here for the last time. We pay the gypsies to hide her for a few days, then she’s as free as we are.”
“The hard part is getting her there,” Atall reminded her. “Desphon watches her and Cora like a hawk. When he’s not around, his wife or his guards often are. Any of them will turn the girls in if they try to run.”
“Would Arlin have been out wandering if either was around?”
“No…”
“Then there’s no time,” Oria insisted, grabbing Atall’s hand and pulling him to walk faster. Her side ached horribly, but having a goal helped her ignore it. “We’ll get them out today and hide them in the desert until we’re ready to leave. Mom will be mad, but you can blame me for this one. I won’t even argue.”
They hurried down the halls, avoiding several small groups of elven nobles with their guards. It took much longer to get to Desphon’s room when trying to be sneaky. When they did arrive, there was no sign of anyone outside.
“I’ll scout it and you get them out of here,” Oria told her brother as she slid along the wall, trying to peek into the room.
“Why am I getting them out? Maybe I should be the lookout.”
Oria reached back and slugged Atall in the shoulder.
“You always say I’m rotten to you,” she reminded him. “This time, I’m putting my tail on the line to get a female you like free of slavery. Of course I want you to be the one to swoop in and free them. Don’t ever act like I don’t care about you again, okay?”
If wildlings could blush, Atall would have been, judging by his posture. “Thank you, Oria. It means a lot…”
“Damned well better,” she answered and went back to peeking at the doorframe.
Inside, Oria could make out movement, but without letting her muzzle or ears be visible, it was tricky to see much. Even sniffing, she could not identify much, as the Corraithian women put on liberal amounts of scented oils that covered even wildling aromas. There were at least two different scents, but beyond that Oria could not be sure. What she did know was that the particular scents that Desphon doused himself in were absent.
“He’s not there,” she whispered back to Atall. “I can’t be sure about his wife.”
Nodding, Atall braced himself and stood up straight. Acting as though he belonged there, he stepped up to the hanging cloth that covered the doorway.
“Hello?” he called out, clearly trying hard to steady the nervousness in his voice. “I need to speak to Master Desphon.”
Girlish giggles from the other side of the cloth preceded Arlin’s head peeking out into the hallway. Without her veil on, Oria could see that she was a lovely female, smiling happily at Atall. She very nearly missed Oria standing there, she was so focused on Atall.
“The masters are out,” Arlin told him, giving a polite smile at Oria. “Master Desphon would wish that I send you both away until he returns.”
“What do you wish? I’m more interested in that,” asked Atall with a forwardness that Oria would have never guessed of him. Suddenly, she was quite proud of her brother. Maybe he did have potential after all.
Arlin smiled impishly, with Cora giggling somewhere behind her.
“You know I cannot answer questions like that,” Arlin warned, again eyeing Oria suspiciously, as though she would tell on them. “Go and play games with your sister. I must return to cleaning the master’s dwelling.”
Atall grabbed Arlin’s wrist as she attempted to pull the door-cloth closed. “If you did not have to answer to him, what would you do?”
All of the humor fell from Arlin’s face and the giggling behind her stopped instantly.
After a second’s thought, Arlin replied, “I would leave before the hour was done and never return. If we are truly imagining the impossible, I would bring at least one friend with me…lest I be left alone. Luckily, he is the one asking.”
Oria thought she was going to be sick at the emotional thickness of the moment, but she kept her eyes on the hallway, sniffing occasionally for any approaching guards.
“Come with us,” Atall insisted, still not releasing Arlin’s wrist. “I don’t want Cora punished for it, so I want you both to come. We’re going to the gypsies this afternoon. They can hide you until we leave here for good.”
Yanking her hand free, Arlin opened the clot
h the rest of the way, allowing Oria to see Cora sitting on the floor nearby. The two desert fox females shared a brief stare, as though communicating silently. Oria recognized it as the same way she sometimes told Atall what she was thinking.
“Desphon has every right to kill all four of us if he finds out,” Arlin warned, looking both ways down the hall. “The law is clear.”
“I don’t care,” admitted Atall. “It’s hard enough to see anyone trapped like you two, but when it’s you…”
Oria very nearly gagged, covering it up by clearing her throat.
Touching Atall’s nose to stop him from talking, Arlin nodded. “You must be going, Atall. Cora and I must prepare to go collect market goods in about an hour. Given that we are just foolish young slave girls, we get lost often. I’m afraid the market is awfully close to the surface entrance. We could easily be lost for hours before Desphon would think to look for us.”
Atall grinned broadly and backed slowly away, as if unable to look away from Arlin. When he did finally turn, he hooked Oria’s arm and dragged her along as he walked swiftly down the hall.
“How could it have been so easy?” he asked Oria, practically skipping as he walked. “I expected guards and a fight.”
“We’re not out yet,” Oria warned him, though she wanted to be happy for her brother. “All it takes is a mistake or a wrong turn and we’ll get to see those guards.”
In that moment, it hit Oria hard that her brother was just a few hours away from freeing his first love from enslavement. Very likely, they would be together a while. Maybe they would even become mates once he was a little older. Trying to picture Atall as an adult was hard enough, but as a mated one was even harder.
They rushed headlong through the tunnels, but then came to a sharp halt, with Atall very nearly running into Phaesys, who was coming the other way. The slightly larger wildling’s wide shoulders made slipping past him unlikely in the narrow hall.
“I was just looking for you,” Phaesys said to Oria, giving Atall an odd look. “Someone said they saw you go this direction.”
“Just leaving,” Atall said a little too quickly, trying to step around Phaesys. The older male blocked his path.
“Your sister and I were to go into Corraith today,” he noted, speaking now to Atall. “I realize I hardly know you, as you’re almost always with the wizards. Would you like to come? I would welcome the chance to know you better.”
Oria felt like groaning, but bit back the urge. She did some fast math, trying to figure out the timeline they were dealing with. Three or four hours before Feanne wanted to leave. One hour until the slaves were to escape. Two hours to and from Corraith, plus any time in the city. The different things became a jumble in her head, as she tried to find a way to make them all work without letting anyone know.
“Oria, I’ll go talk to mother and let her know we’ll be with Phaesys this afternoon,” Atall offered, nervously twisting his ring. “It’ll probably take me about an hour to get there, plead to not have to shop with her, then get back. Would you like me to meet you a little south of the tunnel entrances? I might be a little late, so head to Corraith without me and I’ll catch up if mother lets me.”
Amazed at how easily her brother had sorted it all out, she nodded and smiled after him as he ran off. Maybe he was more grown up than she had thought, if he was that clever. She certainly did not want to tell him that, though, or it might go to his head.
Phaesys watched until Atall was gone and turned back to Oria, giving a bow of greeting.
“I am sorry for asking without talking to you first,” he admitted. “It was something I had meant to do for a while. The opportunity presented itself and I felt I should act before the moment escaped.”
“Why have you wanted to know Atall better? He’s…well…he’s Atall.”
Shifting a little uncomfortably, Phaesys froze as he stared at Oria’s side and then her hand. “What happened?” he asked, taking a step toward her.
“Nothing,” Oria insisted, stepping past him and walking quickly down the hall to keep him from examining her injuries. “Just a little scuffle.”
“How is it that I lived among these people for months and fought just once, but you manage to have a ‘scuffle’ nearly every other day?”
“I’m cuter than you are,” she tried joking, but Phaesys was having none of it.
Grabbing her wrist, Phaesys forced Oria to stop and turned her hand over to examine it. His frown deepened as he—and Oria—found that her knuckles had swollen badly, especially around her grandmother’s ring. Oria doubted she could remove the ring at all now.
“You hit someone or something,” he noted, lifting her arm slightly to gaze at her side. “And it hit you back.”
“So?”
“So I am tired of having to tend to your wounds and make sure that the younger members of the camp do not seek revenge on you.”
“So stop. Let them come after me. I’m strong enough…”
Phaesys pushed her up against the wall, leaning close enough that she felt his breath on her face. “I am begging you, Oria. Stop endangering yourself.”
Oria wanted to whimper, wondering what to do next as Phaesys held her there, closer than she really felt comfortable with. She felt both guilt and a desire to want to lick Phaesys’ nose out of spite. If Atall came back, she would never live the moment down.
“Aren’t we endangering ourselves by going into Corraith?” she asked meekly. “And Atall now, too.”
Snarling, Phaesys let her go, stepping away. He put a hand over his face, taking a deep breath as he did so.
“Let’s go to where we will meet your brother,” he told her, almost going out of his way not to look at her. “I do not wish to discuss things further.”
Oria felt somehow as though she had done something wrong, but could not put her finger on it as she followed Phaesys toward the exit of the tunnels. Somehow, she wanted to make it up to him.
*
Just over an hour later, and still not quite noon—mostly spent in silence between Oria and Phaesys—Atall came running to join them. Unlike Oria and Phaesys, who both had donned light armor and carried weapons, Atall had nothing, looking quite out of place among them.
“Where’s your dagger, Atall?” Oria demanded as her brother came over the rise.
“I don’t need it,” he answered defensively, eyeing her as though she had gone crazy. “And I got everything worked out, thanks for asking. Mother said she’s fine with us not coming.”
Oria realized that she had been brooding over the silence between her and Phaesys. Trying to soften her tone, she asked her brother, “You got everything handled?”
“Yes,” he insisted. “Everything. They’re all traveling to the gypsy camp now. Mom and the kits, that is.”
Phaesys snorted and began walking toward Corraith, saying over his shoulder, “Your mother and the children will be fine. We should get going, or it will be dark before we return.”
Letting Phaesys get a little ways ahead of them—but noting that he seemed all too willing to let them fall behind—Oria got close to her brother, asking softly, “Did they both go?”
“They did. Arlin convinced Cora that she would be punished for both if only one left, so they headed to the gypsies. I sent them with what money I had saved up, which should be enough to convince the bandoleer that they should be protected.”
“Good work,” Oria told him, giving Atall a hug. “Tomorrow, we’ll go see that they’re okay and you can introduce me to them. Today, I’ll need you to focus on what we’re doing. No worrying, okay?”
“I can do that, Oria.”
The three of them traveled for about an hour, until they were practically under the city walls. As they had the last few times Oria had gone there with Phaesys, she followed his lead, letting Phaesys be the one that faced the city guards. It had been something he had originally insisted on, and since it had worked well, she had accepted it for all further visits.
“Hoods do
wn and identify yourselves,” announced the guard, holding up a hand to keep the archers on the walls at bay. “Same rules for everyone.”
Phaesys lowered his hood, but Oria stopped her brother from lowering his, while she kept her own up.
“Oh,” remarked the guard, looking away as Phaesys raised his hood again. “Refugee elves. Move along.”
Moving into the city proper, they got nearly to the main streets beyond the gates before Atall leaned close to Oria, demanding, “What was that all about?”
“My family were nobles,” Phaesys answered for her, leading them toward the southern section of town. Each visit, they had explored a different part of the city. “Arturis has a bounty out for all members of my family. The guards were loyal to us and still appear to be. I can only hope it stays that way.”
He looked over at Oria and Atall. “You can both lower your hoods if you like. No one is looking for the two of you. Wildlings are only hunted here if they look like me. It’s the ears that get you in trouble.”
Oria and Atall did as they were told, but Oria continued to feel like she was being scolded by Phaesys. For some reason, she did not even want to call him out on it. Keeping her mouth shut was entirely maddening for her, but she was not ready to have a fight with him about what she did when he was not around.
A scent on the wind caught Oria’s attention. She forgot everything she had been thinking and looked over at Atall for confirmation.
“That smells like Estin,” Atall said, voicing her thoughts as he looked around frantically. “It’s faint, like he was here recently. Is it possible he’s still in the city?”
Phaesys continued walking and gave Atall a quizzical look as he said, “We can look for him after we finish what we came for. Maybe with both of you looking, we can find him on our way out.”