by Sarah Ahiers
“No,” Nev repeated.
Perrin’s jaw tightened. Another traveler shouted. Perrin’s eyes flicked to the dead plains and then she slowly smirked.
“How long do you think you can last?” she asked him, speaking so I could understand her.
Nev responded in Mornian, and though I couldn’t work through what he said with the pounding in my head, I could hear the resolve in his words.
Perrin snorted and retreated, dropping the curtain.
Someone shouted, and the crack of reins snapped through the air. The wagon lurched forward, causing me to tumble backward until I grabbed the bench.
We were on the move again. I pulled myself onto the bench, sitting up, trying to calm and ease the illness raging though my body.
Nev hopped into the back of the wagon and sat across from me, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes.
“She was angry at you,” I said.
“She is always angry.” He sounded tired. I was sure I did, too. “She thought you were trying to escape.”
“I was,” I said.
“I know.”
Silence between us then, filled only by the creak of the wagon.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Mornia.” He sighed and looked at me then.
Mornia. It wasn’t unexpected, really. But then they were travelers and could go wherever they wanted. And I didn’t know what was going on, which made it hard to plan.
I needed to get out of this wagon. I needed to get back to Lovero.
“Why am I even here?” I pulled my knees to my chest. My trembling had stopped, but I still felt weak. I wasn’t going anywhere until my strength returned.
“We are not like you,” he said.
“No one’s like us,” I hissed. “We’re disciples of Safraella. We are Her hands in the world and perform Her dark work.”
“That is not what I mean. Travelers are not like Loverans, or people from Rennes. We have more gods than you.”
“Meska, Culda, and Boamos,” I said. “Yes, I know. People can worship whomever they want.”
“Yes, but they worship a single god. We worship three. They are equals among us. It can complicate things. I told you to hide the necklace,” he mumbled, glancing at the entrance to the wagon.
“What does my necklace have to do with anything?” I snapped.
“You were seen with it, when you left the menagerie. They think you are a thief of our ways.”
“What ways? And how I am the thief? It’s your god who asks for thievery. It’s you who have stolen me from my home.”
“This is not only a matter of Boamos,” he said. “You do not know what you do by wearing the singura. The necklace.”
“And you do not know what you do by taking me from my Family,” I snarled. “Do you think they will let you keep me? Do you think they will not come for me? The Saldanas are favored of Safraella. My aunt is chosen by Her. She will come for me and you will rue the day you ever took me in the night.”
Lea had told me what it was like, standing before Safraella in the land of the dead. Safraella had greeted her amid of forest made of bones.
The bones of gods, Lea had told me. The bones of Safraella’s enemies.
“I have no choice in the matter.” He pulled his hat off and rubbed the top of his head. “I have little status and everything I do have I used to save you.”
“To save me,” I stated. I didn’t feel very saved.
“Perrin wanted to kill you.”
“I’m harder to kill than I look.”
“I know.”
I scowled. He knew I was trying to escape. He knew I was hard to kill. He knew all these things about me, and yet here we were, together because he had taken me.
“You can make this right, Nev,” I said. “There’s still time. You can let me go. You can tell the other travelers you lost me. No one would need to know the truth.”
He shook his head. “No. We are in the dead plains. There are ghosts. And even if there were not ghosts, it would not work. We would just look for you again.”
Of course, it wouldn’t just be a single ghost in the dead plains, and I’d only escaped with Emile’s help.
“I need to go home, Nev. I need to be with my Family. It’s only been a day. If I return now they won’t even be angry . . .”
“Allegra—”
“We can forget everything. Forget all of this and just go back to our lives.”
“Allegra, no,” he said. “It has been more than a day.”
I blinked. More than just a day. “How can that be possible?”
“We kept you drugged. We only woke you for short times, for water. Some small foods.”
“How long?” I whispered.
“You probably cannot remember,” Nev said. “The drug causes that. Same with your weakness. You will recover.”
“How long?” I said louder.
Nev sighed. “Over fifteen days.”
Fifteen days. Fifteen.
I closed my eyes. I tried not to think about Les, or my family and what they thought about my disappearance. But I couldn’t help it. My chest squeezed me once more and I gripped my necklace, trying to calm down. But there was no respite from this. I’d been gone so long, they had to think me dead.
“Allegra . . .” Nev started.
I shook my head. “Don’t. Don’t talk to me.”
They couldn’t save me. My family. Either of them, the Saldanas or the Da Vias. They probably had no idea what had happened to me. I had left the house looking for a doctor and never returned.
I couldn’t count on them. I could only count on me now. I had to escape, to return to Lovero. To be free of the travelers.
To find where I fit.
twenty-one
THE WAGON STOPPED ONCE THE SUN TOUCHED THE horizon.
Nev hopped out, and as soon as I was alone I tried standing again, but my wobbly legs shook until I was forced to sit.
Not yet, but soon.
Of course, even if I was in top form, I wasn’t sure how I would cross the dead plains. I wasn’t Lea, who was the chosen of Safraella and could command the ghosts away. But that was a problem for later. Right now I just needed my body to recover.
I scooted to the edge of the bench and pushed the curtain aside.
There were three other travelers besides Nev and Perrin, two men and a woman.
They untacked their horses and settled them down for the evening with bags of grain and mash. One of them lit a fire that roared to life when the sun disappeared below the horizon.
The ghosts rose.
There weren’t many, but the handful I spotted—their white, luminous forms drifting across the dead plains—were certainly enough to end every single one of us.
And they would. The angry dead always found the living.
The travelers separated, spreading out to four corners of the camp.
A ghost caught sight of us and screamed. The others followed suit, until the night was filled with the shrieks of the ghosts as they sped for us, eager to steal our bodies for themselves.
I clutched my necklace.
The travelers began to sing.
I didn’t understand the words. They were in Mornian, maybe, or perhaps another language. I was closest to Nev. He was a tenor, and his smooth voice made something twist in my stomach, until I had to look away from him.
I focused on the others, but they all sang the same song.
The ghosts continued to charge, their voices growing louder, until they covered the sound of the traveler song. But the travelers simply kept singing.
If I warned them, what could they do about it? There was no stopping ghosts. And if I kept quiet, maybe the ghosts would take them instead of me.
But Nev . . .
The travelers stopped their song. A light flashed between them. The ghosts halted, their screams dying away.
“What happened?” I asked one of the passing travelers. She ignored me and continued on her way. A necklace bounce
d on her chest, a twin to the one that hung around my neck.
I grasped the stone of my necklace in my palm, then slid it beneath my dress.
Nev returned. “They cannot see us. The singura and Culda’s song blind them to us, pushes them away in their travels.”
As he said that, the ghosts turned and headed back the way they’d come.
“This is how you travel?” I asked. “With a song? And a necklace?”
“Yes. Culda protects us as long as we stay in camp.” He paused, and studied me before adding, “If anyone leaves camp, the ghosts will take them.”
It was a pointed warning, so I wouldn’t try to run off in the middle of the night.
He headed to the fire, where one of the others appeared to be roasting two animals—rabbits, by the look of them.
A song and a necklace. While Culda sings us safely home. The travelers used magic to keep them safe from the ghosts at night. It was how they traveled so easily.
Nev spoke with one of the others and then Perrin stomped next to him. She spoke and the other traveler slipped away from the confrontation.
Their traveler magic could be my escape. I tapped my necklace on my chest. I already possessed one part of the equation—the necklace, the singura. All I needed was the second part, the song. If I learned the song, then as soon as my body recovered, I could flee back to Lovero and the people waiting for me.
I would save myself and return to the Da Vias, triumphant. They would welcome me with open arms.
My mind drifted to the image of Les’s arm on the table. I coughed and shook my head.
Perrin jabbed her finger toward the wagon and where I sat, watching. Nev replied, but she just pointed again until he headed my way.
I dropped the curtain and scooted back on my bench. Nev entered a moment later. In the evening shadows of the wagon, his bruises looked even darker.
“You can’t stay out there with the others?” I asked.
Nev grabbed one of the bags and began digging through it. “I must stay in here with you tonight, to watch you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Isn’t that dangerous?” I asked. “Couldn’t I kill you in your sleep? Or is that why you’re watching me?”
“Yes. Perrin would be happy. No more Nev, and a reason to kill you before we reach Mornia. With you dead, she takes your singura. She gets everything she wants.”
He pulled a blanket from the pack and spread it on the floor of the wagon, then grabbed two of the softer bags and put them at the top, to use as pillows. He was making a sleeping space for two people.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not sharing a bed with you.”
“There is nowhere else for you to sleep,” he said, his tone suggesting he wouldn’t argue with me.
“No,” I said.
“Fine.” He lay down on the blanket, back turned to me, shoving the makeshift pillow under his head until he was comfortable.
I sat on the bench instead, curling my legs beneath my dress. The bench was too short to use as a bed, but I was fine just like this.
Until I wasn’t.
Until my legs started to cramp and my back ache from my hunched-over position as I tried to get comfortable.
Finally, I had to admit defeat. I stepped onto the bed Nev had made and lay down beside him, back pressed against his. The muscles in my body relaxed, thanking me. I tucked my scarf under my head, adding more fluff to the pillow. Anyway, I would need to be well rested if I was going to flee.
Nev was still awake, by the sounds of his breath. We didn’t speak. But that didn’t mean the air between us was quiet. Instead, it was filled with a thick tension. I could practically taste it.
I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate on sleep. The warmth of his body sank into mine. I tried not to think about the toned leanness of him, pushed against me. Tried not to remember the feel of his skin beneath my fingers, the weight of him on top of me.
His fingers stroked my hair.
“Don’t,” I warned. “You don’t get to touch me like that anymore.”
“It was in my mouth. That is all.”
I couldn’t read him from my position. Couldn’t see his eyes. Couldn’t tell if he was lying.
But apparently I had read him wrong the entire time we’d been together. I’d thought he was someone different. I’d been wrong.
“I thought you loved her,” I whispered.
He stiffened behind me but didn’t respond immediately. Finally he asked, “Who?”
I closed my eyes.
“Kuch. I thought you cared for her. Was it all a lie? Just a show to trick me? To entice me to your bed?”
He shifted again but I refused to look at him. “There was no trick, Allegra. And if I remember, it was you who began everything.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re just an innocent who went along with it. You had no say at all.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean? What did you mean when you told me you liked her? Does that mean something else to travelers?”
“No.” I felt him shake his head. “It is the same.”
“But if you liked her so much,” I said, “how could you be rid of her so easily?”
I swallowed, waiting for his answer.
He cleared his throat and fell silent.
I’d started to drift off to sleep when he finally answered.
“It was not so easy,” he said softly. His breath brushed the back of my neck. I hadn’t realized he had rolled over. I fought against a shiver. “She was beautiful. And strong. And unique. And some people didn’t understand her. But I did.”
He exhaled slowly.
“Why did you try to kill me?” I asked again. He’d never answered me the first time.
“She was not for you.”
“Then who was she for? And what did my Family ever do to you to engender such hate?”
“It is not your family,” he said. “It is . . . complicated. But you are unhurt, so everything is fine.”
“Everything is not fine,” I hissed at him. I felt like Kuch, and wished I could have struck out at him. Could have sunk my fangs into him, let my venom kill him slowly from the inside.
“Did you kill her?” he asked.
“Of course we killed her!” I snapped. “What did you expect us to do?”
He rolled over again, away from me. “I expected nothing. I put her in the box for him like I was told to do.”
“For him? My uncle, you mean?” Les. Kuch was meant for Les. But that made little sense. He had nothing to do with Nev and me. He had nothing to do with any of it. “Why, because he’s a half traveler?”
“No.”
There were traveler mysteries here involving Les that I wasn’t privy to. Secrets. “What did he ever do to you?”
“Nothing,” he said quietly. “He did nothing to me. It is complicated, Allegra. I had no choice. I do not want to talk about it.”
I looked over my shoulder at him, twisting in the floor of the wagon. Even in the shadows of the wagon I could see how the olive skin of his neck blazed red from some hidden emotion he felt. “There’s always a choice, Nev.”
He didn’t respond, and I slipped into familiar nightmares and shadows that whispered my name from a gray fog.
twenty-two
IN THE MORNING WE PASSED A LAND WHERE NOTHING grew. Little golden foxes played together, but hid inside their burrows when they caught sight of us. Dust puffed into the air with every footstep, with every creak of the wheels. It coated everything and I was glad when we were free of it.
The strength of my body slowly returned. By afternoon I could stand without problem, and even walk well, but running was out of the question. Soon though, I knew. Soon.
“We will reach Mornia before night,” Nev said as I watched the passing landscape.
I was full of wrath and rage and despair and worry over everything that had happened to me, to my family, but a tiny part of me was still excited. I was seeing the world. Granted
, it was nothing but dead plains filled with golden grasses, but still. It was more than I’d seen before. More than I’d ever hoped to see.
Of course, thinking about that just made me even angrier at Nev. I couldn’t enjoy these new lands because I had been brought to them against my will. I had exchanged one cage for another. At least for now.
The sun was setting when we crossed over a hill and the home of the travelers spread before us.
Nev pushed the wagon curtain aside and pointed ahead. “Mornia.”
I tried not to look interested, but I was. Outsiders rarely visited the traveler home. Its location was not quite a mystery, but neither were the travelers eager to share it.
I didn’t know what I had expected, but it wasn’t what I found outside the window.
There were no walls. Mornia sat in the middle of nowhere, golden dead plains surrounding it, and yet it remained wide-open for any ghosts or even people to walk through it.
It was terribly small, too. Maybe around the same size as Yvain. There was a small grouping of buildings to the left, none more than two stories high, but that was all. No castles, no cobblestone or flagstone streets, few fountains or gardens or squares.
I didn’t know how many travelers there were, but surely there were not enough houses here for all of them.
“That is the New Mornia.” Nev pointed at the buildings. “Most of Mornia is behind it. Old Mornia.”
“There’s nothing behind those buildings.”
“Everything is behind the buildings,” he said.
The wagon continued to roll east. The first buildings passed us on the left. They weren’t made out of stones and bricks like Rennes or Lovero but instead smooth rock, with no joins or breaks anywhere. Mud or clay, maybe.
The streets seemed to be the same, pressed into shape by feet and hooves and wheels. Even as we passed New Mornia, it seemed ancient, as if centuries of animals and people had worn these roads to their present state.
We continued deeper into Mornia, travelers glancing at us curiously as we passed. Then we were through the buildings of New Mornia and a flat expanse stretched before us.
Unlike the dead plains I was used to, though, there was no long grasses here. Instead, colorful curtains dotted the landscape, thousands of them, two adjacent corners anchored to the ground, the other corners hoisted into the air on wooden poles, creating a sort of lean-to of fabric.