Thief's Cunning

by Sarah Ahiers

  “No choice, yes, I remember what you said. It doesn’t make a difference, Nev. All my life people have stolen me. I was a stolen child and now you’ve stolen me again. I’m never where I’m supposed to be.”

  Nev shook his head. “You are where you are supposed to be. You are supposed to be where you are.”

  I shook my head but he continued. “Your god is not a god of fate. Neither are the Three. Your life is your life. If you keep searching for where you are supposed to be, it will pass you by.”

  I scowled. He sounded like Lea. “Can you not see it from my point of view?”

  “I see it,” he said. “But I think you should let it go.”

  “You don’t see it, then,” I said. “Not truly. What if I had come here, to Mornia, and I had tried to kill Metta. And then I took you away from your home, your family who desperately needed you. And from a new life with people you were supposed to be with all along. Would you just let it go? Start over?”

  He looked at me then, really looked at me, until he dropped his gaze to his boots, which had sunk into the sand. “No,” he said. “I would not.”

  “That is why this”—I gestured between us—“can’t happen.”

  “But you do not see it from my side, either.” He locked gazes with me again. “If your aunt, or your god, asked you to hurt my family, to take me from my home, and you did not want to, but you knew it was the only way to save my life, would you have not done it?”

  I blinked. He was right. I would have done what Lea told me to do, even if I disagreed. She was the head of my Family. I would have done what she commanded. “You took me,” I said again. “You took me after you sent me away. After you rejected me.”

  My voice broke. I looked away from him, trying to control my emotions.

  “I am sorry,” he said, his voice quiet, earnest. “I sent you away, yes. But I did not reject you. I did not want to send you away. I did not want you to leave at all.”

  He could be lying, of course. But he had never lied to me in the past.

  “I wanted to stay with you, Allegra,” he continued. “I wanted you to stay with me. But mostly I did not want you to be hurt.”

  “That’s what everyone always says to me,” I said. “They all say it after they’ve already hurt me.”

  He closed his eyes and took a few breaths. “I have . . .” He paused, searching for a word. “I have regrets, Allegra. I wish for things to be different. But they are not. I cannot undo the things I have done. You are here. I am here. That is how things are. Wishing for the past will not change that.”

  Marcello had once told me that the past was a fixed point, that nothing could change it. And maybe that was true, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t strive for a different future. I was tired of everyone controlling me. Of keeping me caged. I wanted to make my own choices.

  I rubbed the tears from my eyes. “How did you find me, anyway?”

  “The stones.” He gestured to the standing stones where I’d spent the night. “It is the closest landmark. I knew you would go there.”

  “And so you set off to bring me back, a prisoner.”

  He shook his head. “No. I went to find the mule.” He pointed over at Flee, who was drowsing in the late morning sun. “No one knows you are missing.”

  “You kept it secret.” He was protecting me from the others, from his people. He was choosing me over them.

  “Nothing good would come from the others knowing you escaped,” he said. “I will tell them you went with me to find the mule.”

  “I can’t return with you.”

  Nev’s shoulders slumped and he suddenly looked exhausted. If he’d truly been so worried about me, he’d probably gotten little sleep last night. “You must.”

  “I’m tired of people telling me what to do.”

  “Where will you go?” He gestured at the sparse dead plains surrounding us. “You have little food. Little water. The ghosts will find you. You will not find more stones like this, to hide you from them.”

  “I won’t need stones,” I said. “The singura will protect me.”

  He scoffed, but then looked at me closer when he realized I wasn’t joking. “You sang the ghosts away? The singura protected you?”

  “Yes.”

  His face blanched. He blinked rapidly, trying to come to terms with something. He shook his head. “It does not matter,” he said. “There is no protection with only one person. You need others to make a circle.”

  I remembered back to my first night with Nev and the travelers who had taken me from my home. They had stood in a circle, and when they sang the song, the barrier connected between them. I had been alone last night. The barrier had no one else to connect to, which was why it had just traveled straight into the night.

  “I could dig a hole each night,” I said. “Hide myself inside, let the barrier cover me.

  “Dig with what tools? There is clay and stone beneath the dirt and sand. And you will be starving and dying of thirst. No. You cannot reach your home this way, Allegra.”

  “I don’t have to reach my home. I just have to reach the sea.”

  Nev looked over his shoulder, facing south. “The sea? The sea is farther away than Rennes or Lovero from here. You would surely die.”

  Something inside me crumpled. If the sea truly was so far away, then I really had lost my way home. I couldn’t blindly head east and hope I’d stumble across Lovero or Rennes. I had been unconscious during the first days of my kidnapping. I had no idea how far north or south we could have traveled on our way to Mornia.

  I pinched my eyes shut, trying to fight against the tears that threatened to overwhelm me.

  “Allegra,” Nev said quietly.

  “You have caged me,” I said to him. “You have trapped me like you have trapped your snakes. Like your tiger. Everywhere I turn I am caged by those who profess to love me.”

  “Love is a cage,” Nev said. “And you are not the only one who feels this way. Why do you think I travel so much? Why do you think I leave my home every chance I can?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “It is the same!” His voice echoed over the dead plains. “Love and family and duty trap us all. We are all caged. You would have to give it all up to be truly free. You say freedom is what you want but I know it is not true. If it was, you would not be trying to return home, return to your family and the cage waiting for you there.”

  “It won’t be a cage,” I said. “It will be different, with the Da Vias. It will be different.”

  “How?”

  “Because . . . because I belong with them!”

  “You could belong with me!”

  He stared at me, breathing heavily. “You . . .” He paused, then rubbed his eyes. “Everything is better with you. This—” He gestured between us, and the fight we were having. “Even this—” He pointed at the bruises on his face. “When I made you leave in Lovero, it was wrong. I wanted to take it back. But I could not. Because it was not safe, but also because I knew you would not let me. But you are here, with me once more. I will not watch you walk away from me again.”

  He crumpled his hat in his hands. “Allegra, come back with me.”

  “If I return with you, your people will want to kill me.”

  “I will not let them.”

  I sighed. It wasn’t as easy as he made it seem. “I’m sorry,” I said. And I found it to be true. I was sorry. Nev made me feel . . . Nev made me feel things I hadn’t before. I didn’t know how to categorize these feelings, how to categorize him. He had taken me from my Family, just as Lea had done. But he had done it to save me.

  But that was what Lea had said, too. That she had taken me to save me.

  It was different, though, maybe. Nev had never lied to me about it.

  I shook my head. “I have to keep going.”

  Nev sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Fine,” he said. “Then I will come with you.”

  He pointed over his shoulder and there, hidden behi
nd the standing stone was a horse and a tiny, covered wagon.

  I blinked. If he had really come to look for me only to bring me back, he wouldn’t have needed the wagon. The only reason to bring the wagon was for a lengthy trip, like across the dead plains and back to Lovero.

  I looked at him and my face must have shown the confusion I felt because he chuckled and shook his head. “I see you, Allegra. I see you.”

  My body thrummed. I changed the subject. “Where did you get that wagon?”

  “It is mine. It used to belong to my father. Sometimes I travel with it. I will travel with you, now,” he said. “We will leave together. You and me. We will travel safely and make Culda happy.”

  Nev smiled then, but unlike his wide, bright smile, this one was small, and sad. And I couldn’t help but love him there, in that moment. Love his sadness.

  Perhaps we were caged, but maybe if we were caged together, we wouldn’t be so alone.

  twenty-seven

  THE LAND PASSED BEHIND US AS WE TRAVELED IN silence.

  “I don’t think you should travel with me,” I’d said to Nev, even as I climbed up beside him on the wagon seat. We had tied Flee to the back of the wagon, then Nev had snapped the reins and we had set off to the west, toward Lovero.

  “I know,” he said. “But I am.”

  “What about Metta?” I asked. “And Isha? They’re your family. Don’t they need the money you earn from traveling? What about your snakes? And your tiger.”

  “Metta and Isha can take care of the snakes and the tiger. They have each other. And soon a child. They do not need me.”

  He said this with a touch of bitterness.

  “But she’s your sister,” I said.

  “What about your family?” He looked sideways at me. “You are leaving your family, too, yes?”

  “That’s different.” I shook my head. “They lied to me, stole me—”

  “They did those things to protect you. Even you said so.”

  I shook my head again, but didn’t respond. He didn’t understand.

  We continued on in silence, watching the empty dead plains and the tall golden grass as it swayed in the wind.

  The morning air was warm and the sun hot. I fanned myself with my hands, but I continued to sweat.

  I leaned my head against the back of the wagon and tried to let its rocking motion soothe me but instead it just seemed to agitate things. I felt too hot, tight.

  Birds appeared around us, flitting from blade to blade, chirping to each other.

  I watched them, their little motions, their tiny squabbles.

  Two of them flew around us on the wagon seat and I swatted them away.

  Nev glanced over at me.

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead and closed my eyes. The birds continued to chirp and flit around us.

  “You could lie down in the back of the wagon,” Nev said to me.

  I nodded and stumbled inside. The wagon was tiny. There was room for a single person to sleep, two if they really crammed together, and space for storage. I barely noticed any of that as I collapsed onto the bed made up of blankets on the floor.

  My thoughts twisted and spun around me.

  The birds flitted in and out of the wagon and I tried to wave them away from my face, but instead they sat around me, on little wooden perches like they belonged in the wagon with me.

  Because they did. Because the wagon was a trap, just another cage.

  Their chirps changed into a melody. A slow, soft song, like a viola. I’d heard the song before, but I couldn’t remember where.

  “Nev,” I said, trying to call out for help, but my voice emerged as a croak and he didn’t come, didn’t free me from my cage. “Nev.”

  I slipped into darkness.

  My head pounded.

  I awoke hours later. The wagon creaked and rocked below me, but it was quiet otherwise. I lifted my arms to rub at my eyes, but they were too weak. I was too weak.

  “Nev,” I said. My voice emerged as an unintelligible croak. Still, the wagon stopped and then Nev appeared above me. His eyes were wide and frightened.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, my words still slurring. Nev shook his head, like he was having trouble understanding me.

  “You are ill,” he said. He grabbed a water skin and pressed it to my lips so I could drink. The water tasted cold, even though it had been sitting in the skin.

  I drank my fill, then put my head back down, exhausted.

  “Sleep some more,” he said.

  So I did.

  When I woke again, it didn’t feel much later. I sat up, prepared for more fatigue, more hallucinations, but there was nothing. The sickness had passed as quickly as it had come. I had recovered.

  I pushed my way past the curtain and climbed back onto the seat beside Nev.

  He looked at me, concerned.

  Ahead of us, Mornia spread on the horizon, the afternoon bright overhead.

  My stomach sank. I glared at Nev. “You brought me back. You lied to me.”

  He shook his head. “You fell ill.”

  “You should have just kept going! I would have been fine.”

  “Allegra, no. You were ill. I could not wake you. There was a fever. You got worse and worse. I had to return. I thought you might die.”

  I scoffed. I hadn’t been that ill. It had just been a passing sickness, from too much sun, maybe. Or the strange Mornian air.

  “You lied to me,” I said. “You said you would come with me, to go to Lovero, and as soon as I fell asleep you turned this wagon around.” Betrayal. Everywhere I went people lied to me, betrayed me. Said they loved me and then did what they wanted anyway.

  My breaths sped, until my chest heaved, until I had to clench my necklace and close my eyes, trying to get everything under control again.

  “Allegra,” Nev said. He pulled on the reins and the wagon came to a stop. Behind us, Flee brayed loudly. “Breathe,” he said, watching me.

  “I am breathing,” I gasped.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “You grew worse and worse.” He faced me. “It was bad.”

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly. Take my time.

  “You got worse the farther we went. I did not lie to you. If you want to go to Lovero, I will go with you. But I had to turn back, for help. You . . .” He paused, then swore. “I do not know the word. Your body shook, yes? With the fever.”

  “I seized?” I asked. I’d been so ill that I’d had a seizure?

  The tightness in my chest eased. I took a deep breath, and then released the necklace.

  Nev rubbed the top of his head, sliding his hat around. “I turned around and you got better. The closer we came to Mornia, the better you grew.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I whispered.

  “I have never lied to you,” he said.

  I thought over everything, every moment of our time together, every word he had spoken to me, in the darkness, yes, but also in the light, and he had always been truthful.

  “So you’re saying leaving Mornia made me ill.”

  “I do not know what it means.”

  I bit my lip, thinking. Then I hopped off the wagon and marched west, away from Mornia.

  “Allegra!” Nev shouted after me. “Where are you going? You cannot walk to Lovero!”

  I knew that, of course. I certainly couldn’t walk there without supplies, anyway, and those were all in the wagon. But Lovero wasn’t my goal.

  I walked west, leaving Nev behind as he watched me. Leaving Mornia behind once more.

  The afternoon sun beat down on me. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I brushed it away. My hand shook.

  I paused. Maybe it was just the sun. I had to keep going.

  “Allegra!” Nev finally yelled at me, his voice carrying over the flat dead plains. “Come back!”

  The farther I walked, the weaker I seemed to get. As if my strength just poured out of me. My limbs shook, my feet practically dragged in the dirt with each step, my skin burned and
flushed. Lights sparkled in the air, like little ghosts, maybe, dancing in front of me.

  I tripped.

  The dirt felt surprisingly soft beneath my body. Maybe the best thing to do was to take a nap right there.

  Footsteps pounded behind me. Nev slid to a stop at my side.

  “Are you hurt?” He placed his hands under my arms and pulled me to my feet. “Come,” he said, and tugged me back toward the wagon.

  It only took a few steps before my mind began to clear, my limbs to stop shaking.

  I rubbed my face, trying to brush away the last of the cobwebs in my head.

  I didn’t have the strength to keep going toward Lovero. It was as if my body couldn’t physically do it. And when Nev had tried to bring me there on his wagon, I’d passed out, then had a seizure. If he’d kept going, kept heading away from Mornia, would I have continued to get worse until I died?

  “All right,” I said. “I believe you.”

  Nev exhaled slowly. “I am sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “I know you want to go to your home. Your new home. I am sorry you must go back to Mornia now.”

  I pulled free of his support. My strength was returning, I could walk on my own.

  “What does it mean?” I looked over my shoulder to the west, to the freedom that seemed even farther away now. “Why is it that your people can wear the singura and travel around the world, but something keeps me from leaving Mornia?”

  “I do not know,” he answered. “It is not good.”

  “No, it’s not. Not if I ever want to leave Mornia.” Leaving Mornia was the crux of everything.

  “I have to get rid of it,” I said to Nev. “We have to find a way for me to get rid of the singura without my death.”

  Nev nodded but remained silent.

  It didn’t take us long to return to Mornia. It stretched out on the horizon, the buildings of New Mornia growing closer and closer as we headed east, the afternoon sun hot overhead.

  Things seemed easier between Nev and me now. Much of my anger and blame for him had drifted away when I’d truly put myself in his place. I still wanted to be free of Mornia, of the travelers, but my previous plan of just running home was no longer feasible.

  I was aware of every move he made, each twitch of his wrists, directing the wagon, every breath, when he stretched his legs before him.