by Jenna Rhodes
She pulled her feet from the water and pulled her boots back on. The river lapped playfully after her, teasing that it might wet her from boots to chin, if it wished, as if trying to lighten the burden it had given her. She leaned down and ran her hand through the crest. It had accepted her and charged her with a duty yet to perform, but it was one that she already knew she would have to carry out. She had a judgment to make and carry out, not for her own sake, but for the lives of many, most of whom would never know what had been done. “For Kerith,” she promised the Andredia, her voice barely above a whisper.
Lara stomped both feet firmly into her boots and began walking westward through the evergreens. Halfway through the grove, close enough to the squatters’ camp that she could smell the charcoal fires, she heard a splashing and a muttered curse, too light in tenor to be a grown man’s voice. She smiled a little, having surprised a young fisherman at his duties.
• • •
She found him westward on the river’s edge, squatting by a handful of large river stones that looked as if they’d been tossed up to beach themselves, wetted enough to keep the sheen of river mosses about them. He had no pole but dangled his line by hand and from his frustrated mutters, the mop-headed boy had had no luck. He inched over and, forehead knotted up with intensity, began to lower his line again, which she could now see sported a tiny noose at the end of it. She stood and waited until he inevitably began to curse and throw his hands up in the air.
“No luck?”
His mouth twisted in surprise as he shot her a look before shaking his head vigorously. He put a hand up to stay further words from her, and crept about the end of a pair of rocks where the water came up and pooled, dropping his line again. They both held their silence until whatever prey he hunted escaped him once again. The boy sat back on the rocks with a heavy sigh.
“Not a bit. Mam sent me out to catch frogs for soup, but I swear they have eyes in the back of their warty heads. Wurse ’n fish.”
Lara hid a shudder, having a dislike for frog soup that went almost as far back as her memory. “So you give up on fish?”
He shrugged and turned his surly expression to the river. “Cain’t. Have t’ bring home some dinner, or elst Dad will make me sleep out here till I git some. And it’s gittin’ cold, you know.” He hugged himself at the thought. “Ruther be here than home cause they’re fightin’ agin.”
“Your mom and dad?”
“Who elst? They fight all th’ time. She wants t’go home. He says nawt, th’ queen owes him a farm from the times when she chased his father off th’ land hereabouts.” The boy cocked his head suddenly and gave her a shrewd look. “You must be ona th’ new ones.”
“New ones?”
“Yup. Only sum of us stay all th’ time, the rest come and go. The mayor sends ’em back and asks for new blood, to keep th’ Lady Tressandre happy. So you’re new.”
“Yup.” She took a step nearer. “The trick with frogs is, they do have eyes on the back of their head. Or rather, the side, sort of, and that gives them a wider scope of sight. Plus, you’re between the sun and the rocks, so your shadow falls over them. They react to that shadow and go hide.”
He pursed his lips, thinking. “Sounds ’bout right,” he agreed.
“So it’s best to hunt frogs or fish early, and keep the sun in your face if you can.”
He sighed. “No dinner t’night and a cold sleep.”
She looked at him closely, wondering who his grandfather had been, and not recognizing the features, Kernan with maybe a touch of Vaelinar a mating or two back. She’d purged the valley years ago when the Andredia showed signs of pollution and corruption, and she’d attributed it mistakenly to the sharecroppers she let work the fertile lands. She and Jeredon had placed them fairly, she thought, if outside the valley, with good lands to start over. Here was one family who’d come back, bitter and angry. Lara took a deep breath. “How about I catch a few fish for you?”
An eyebrow shot up. “You kin do that?”
“Ought to be able to.”
He shoved his string at her. Lara waved it off. “I used to be able to tickle them from the water.” She pulled her boots off again and waded quietly into the river where nearby trees dappled the water with shadow so that hers would not be apparent. As she bent over, she sent her thoughts out, fishlike, upstream, catching the sense of other forms, darting and swimming about lazily. Small fish, true, but enough for this family’s pot, to flavor a stew or chowder. She called them downriver to her and as they swam through her hands, she pitched two of them onto the bank where the farm boy crouched, amazing him. He pounced on them, stuffing them into his burlap bag. “You did it!”
“That I did.” Lara waded ashore, picking up her footgear.
He stuffed his bag into his pants, heedless of the wetness sopping through and the wriggling fish against his stomach. “I won’t be tellin’ m’dad or he won’t et this. I won’t tell him th’ queen catched them.”
“Ah.” Lara looked down at the boy. “You know who I am.”
“I’m poor, not stupid.” He took a long stride away before touching his burlap sack. “I thank you for this. But you’re not runnin’ us off agin, unless it’s over my dad’s body. And mine. Got that? The true queen ’as got our backs. She’s coming to take you apart.” And he took to his heels as if afraid what his defiance might call down on him.
Lara watched him run, zigzagging through the thinning grove and disappearing into the tall brush and reed that fringed it. She didn’t know if he would call attention to her presence or not, but she wasn’t ready to meet any of the Returnists alone. She backtracked her trail to her horse, who had decided to fall asleep under the shade of a tree, and flicked his ears lazily at her appearance. Tressandre was on her way with clear intent.
When she came back, she’d have reinforcements . . . and the Andredia . . . at her side.
Chapter
Fifty
“THIS PLACE GETS INTO YOUR BONES. Makes ’em ache like broken teeth in a freeze.” The frowning man glared at the far pastures and the fringe of forest holding their borders. He set his jaw, clenching his teeth as if they pained him before shaking off his thoughts. “Git along with the two of you. I’ll be rid of you tomorrow.”
“Rid of us?”
The frowning man would not meet Evar’s stare. “They’re taking you off my hands. About time, if you ask me. Don’t want to be spending a winter out here when snow and ice closes th’ pass. I’ll die for my lady, but I’m a fighting man, not some auntie to a couple of half-breed mongrels, and I want to go with my boots on. I didn’t sign on to be wiping mongrel chins and butts and coddling little snots who shouldn’t ever have been born.”
Evar could feel a heat growing inside of him, not a warm and cuddly heat, but one of anger. “Don’t talk about my sister like that.”
“She’s a mewling pup, and it’s glad I am to be rid of the two of you. You brawl like teething puppies and scamper about without a wit in your head—and what if you’d been hurt? Your lives are on me, hear that? Me! I was to keep you safe, all the while the two of you squabbled and rolled about on the floor, kicking and scratching each t’other. Running through th’ pasture like you haven’t a sense in your heads. Bolgers are more civilized than th’ two of you. You’ll be gone in the morning, and I will dance when the deed is done.”
“Who is coming for us?”
“The Lady herself, for all I know and care. I’m well done of you. Did what was asked of me and then some. Nobody told me you’d be growing like weeds. You make sure she knows I kept you in shoes and long pants. You make sure she knows I listened to th’ whining and complaints and didn’t lay a finger to you, hear me?” And the frowning man shook his crooked fingers at Evarton.
Evar quailed inside a moment, wondering if he meant the old lady who’d stabbed them both so ruthlessly. The thought of Tressandre was bad enough. He
fought the instinct to rub the old wound on his leg. “What happens then?”
“I don’t know what she wanted from the two of you.”
He knew. If not at that moment, on the street while they played, perhaps now. If not now, soon. She wanted them dead.
Evar turned his head, very slowly. The valley had stretched him. Not just his body, lengthening and strengthening him, but his mind, his thoughts. His knowledge and his reactions. And although he had not let himself think it before, he knew who’d taken them and why and what ultimately would face them. The ild Fallyn wanted them dead. That realization clawed at the back of his throat, dark and terrifying. He could feel his eyes grow hot and sting as if he might cry but did not. He forced it back. She might want him and his sister dead, but they were still alive. They still held some purpose in Tressandre ild Fallyn’s plan for things, and they would be kept alive until they fulfilled it, whatever it was.
That thought steadied him. He knew already that his bloodlines, of Lariel and Jeredon, of Nutmeg, had already defeated the ild Fallyn time after time. He would do whatever he could to see they won again.
His hand curled into a fist. He turned his back on the frowning man and went to the bunkhouse, the tilting shanty which gave them shelter and saw, as he passed over the threshold what had worried his captor. The house would not make it through a harsh winter. Might not even stay standing through a heavy autumn rain. The old weathered roof and wood might just give out a groan and collapse upon itself, useless, a pile of firewood. The frowning man was a coward. Evar thumped the doorjamb as he passed through it, and the graying, aging wood gave a solid thump back at him, betraying itself as much stronger than it looked.
Just as he was.
He joined Merri at the hearth where she stirred soup that she and the frowning man had set to simmering over coals early in the day, adding herbs and root vegetables now and then, the tough old coney started from the very first and, hopefully, getting more tender with each cooking moment. It smelled good, if nothing else.
She met his shoulder nudge with one of her own. The aroma of the soup coated her like a perfume, but underneath she smelled like meadow flowers and sun. He tucked a wing of her hair behind her ear, her ear that was like his, delicately pointed and less Dweller-like than anything else about her.
“Will you be eating?”
She wrinkled her nose. “That old one was my friend.” She nodded at the pot.
“I know. I would have freed him from the snare, but frowning man got up early this morning.”
Merri heaved a sigh. “He was getting old. The winter worried him. Now he doesn’t have to worry.”
True and truer. She swung on him. “You have to eat. Too thin. Mama and Auntie would say you’re too thin.”
He grinned a little at her. “If they were cooking, I would eat.”
She pushed her lips into a pout and turned her back on him, still stirring. Her shoes pushed out in front of her toes by a ridiculous length. His shoes almost fit, so he’d given his extra socks to her so that she could pad her shoes even more. She wore boy’s overalls, rolled up and cuffed at the bottom so they wouldn’t drag, but had on a girl’s puffy shirt underneath, something someone had embroidered with needle and thread carefully once, but now the sun and many washings had bleached the colors out of the handcrafted thread so it was difficult to see. He thought they were tiny flowers and fruits but couldn’t be sure. He realized as he looked at her that she’d lost the chubbiness she’d carried even after she’d begun to toddle and walk after him. Looking at her now, he realized why she had the nightmares she did—that they’d somehow gotten home, but even their mother had not known them. She looked the same yet terribly different, as he must look different to her, standing nearly head and shoulders taller than she did. He’d be tall, Dayne had told him. Taller someday than Tolby or Dayne himself. Evar remembered that, even as he couldn’t remember the sound of Dayne’s voice anymore.
Or even Mama. But he couldn’t tell Merri that because it would make her cry. That would make the frowning man fiercely angry, and their caretaker already stood on the edge of harming them. He patted his sister on the shoulder and walked away to check the firewood in storage. When Mama found them again, would she spread their hands open and look at the little scars and calluses they had from working in the pasture, gathering wood and mending the fences and making snares, and would it make her cry? He didn’t want that. He could barely deal with Merri and her short bursts of tears now and then.
He finished his chores and went to the window, looking out as the lowered sun disappeared and that half-light between day and night colored the meadows and forest. Though he searched for the ribbony silver lady, it was too early to see her. She appeared only when the sky was darkest overhead and the dew heaviest on the grasses. If she did appear, would she say to him what she always said: Not yet? Or would she finally tell him that his time had come?
And if it had, what would he do then? He still had no answer when he rose a long time after dinner, when even the coals on the hearth had burned away to cold, black flakes and the window called him again. Merri stirred as he slipped past her bed and he put a hand on her ankle to keep her quiet although the frowning man had begun to snore heavily.
The sight that met his eyes was not what Evar expected. Sharp shadows ringed the old bunkhouse, black and prickly, ranging here and there and yet when he moved to watch them, they disappeared, fading into the night. Yet something had fallen across the night itself, something deeper and moving quickly, almost seen, crossing from here to there and then gone. His throat ached as he tried to catch its vision and could not. Finally, because he knew Merri could hear the frustrated grunt he gave out now and then, he tossed a few words back to her.
“There’s something out there.”
Merri yawned widely before getting to her feet. Blankets shuffled against one another as she pushed them aside and came to join him at the window. He could still feel the warmth of the bed and its blankets on her. “Is it the silver lady?”
“No. It’s nothing I can see, like a shadow almost. But bushes and trees are shaking when there is no wind. Something is getting closer and closer.”
She closed her hand about his elbow. “Wake the frowning man?”
“No.”
“It’s hunting.”
“I know.” He paused with one hand on the window frame. “I just don’t know what it’s hunting yet.” And he wondered if the silver lady would show as well, and if she did, what she might make of those sharp, quick shadows.
She made a sssing noise through her lips; for her, a sound of worry. He patted the hand which held him. “We’re safe.”
But they weren’t, not really. The frowning man was giving them over in the morning, away from this valley, away from the magic that welled up from the earth and spilled over into them, away from what little safety they had. He should be used to change, but it seemed he had had too much lately. He looked down at them because the window showed him little that he really wished to see. Because the nights had been growing steadily colder, his sister was still dressed, as he was, save for shoes, such as they were. They stood barefooted on the wooden and grimy floor, and he pointed out to her where he’d almost seen something. She leaned close to the pane, watching with her bright eyes, not at all sleepy.
“What is it, then?”
“Don’t know. Big as a Kernan, though.” A sharp angle caught his eye. “There!”
“Ooohhh.” She saw it then, too, close by, an edge of night too sharp for the shadows, closing in on them. She pressed her cheek to the window, trying to follow its movement. “I can’t see it now.”
“But it was there.”
“Yes.” She took a shaky inhalation of breath and when she let it out, it fogged the window and, for a moment, neither of them could see anything.
Something brushed the far wall of the bunkhouse. They both w
hirled from the window at the noise. Merri reached for her brother’s hand again and grasped it tightly. Stuck in place, he did not dare move or nudge Merri to a safer corner, for he had no idea where safety lay. Silence spun down from the wood post ceiling and hung about them like spider thread, coiling closer and closer until catching them in its web, drawing tighter and tighter until Merri made a little noise at the back of her throat and the webs gusted away in shreds. Evar put his hand out, catching the edge of one, realizing that he had made the webs, spinning them off some small creature’s net high in the rafters. Spinning an armor about them wasn’t a bad idea, but the silk hadn’t been near strong enough to protect them. He pondered on that a moment while Merri pointed a shaking finger.
The roof creaked. Dirt sifted down, a fine rain of grit and sawdust. “It’s up there.”
He grabbed his shoes and hissed at her to get hers on. She plopped on her rear and tugged them into place, her mouth skewed in determination. The whole building groaned faintly as if leaning in answer to the weight and movement above.
He feared going out. But he feared staying in and being trapped more. He tiptoed into the corner of the kitchen and grabbed the dull paring knife from the counter. It wouldn’t be much use, unless he had to poke an eye out, but it was better than nothing. He crossed back to Merri, put his arm about her waist, and propelled her out the back door. It exploded against the frame of the building as he flung it open behind him, shattering the silence of both the hunter and the hunted. Something cursed in a low growl as it did.
Chapter