The Kinder Poison

by Natalie Mae

  “Fine,” Sakira says. “Then tell her we have food, and we need to go now.”

  “We have food for you,” I tell the mare. “But we have to get away from the stable. Otherwise they won’t let you go with us.”

  No, the mare thinks. Grain.

  “Do you have grain?” I ask Sakira.

  “All right, this is ridiculous,” Sakira says, pulling out her brush. “New plan. I’m going to jump in there and paint her with Mirage. You’re going to open the gate, and I’m going to ride her out.”

  “That’s a terrible plan!” I whisper as loudly as I dare. “One, she’ll probably roast you like that fly, and two, how am I going to get out of here?”

  “Do you want to ride, too?”

  I gape at her. “No! If you’d give me just two minutes—”

  “Then I guess you’ll need to compromise.”

  She swings a pale leg over the wall before I can protest, and the mare tosses her head and backs away, startled. The Whisperer turns around. I hear Alette ask loudly about a nearby horse to regain his attention, but he puts a hand up and starts toward us. Ashra is clearly too important to put aside even for Alette.

  In a few more steps, he’ll be able to see us.

  “Sakira!” I snap.

  I feel the change in the mare the second Sakira pulls onto her back. One moment it’s annoyance at having a stranger in her stall, the next it’s full irritation this person would be bold enough to sit on her. The Whisperer stumbles when Sakira draws the spell on Ashra’s shoulder, the mare vanishing before his eyes, and the grain jar shatters to the ground four steps later, when he’s close enough that all three of us flash into his view.

  If he recognizes Sakira, it doesn’t register on his face.

  “Thieves!” he bellows, lunging for me. “Thieves in the stable!”

  Off! screams the mare, rearing.

  I try not to think about how many Earthmovers and Waterweavers are throwing down their cards right now to come after us. I do the only thing I can, and rip the metal gate open.

  “Run!” I yell.

  The mare plunges forward. The man curses and lurches back, falling over his feet to the ground.

  “Ashra!” he calls. “Ashra, stop!”

  But with nothing between her and the open door, Ashra doesn’t even notice the grain she tramples on the way out. Run, she thinks. Open. Out! I dart after them, hoping the man isn’t as fast as he looks. But though he’s back on his feet, he doesn’t pursue me. He turns to the trio of armored soldiers who’ve entered on the far side.

  “One of them is trielle,” he says. “They’re using Mirage!”

  Metal footsteps clack behind me. Sakira is already out of sight, the sand flying eerily where Ashra’s hooves hit it. I reach the edge of the barn and shriek when someone comes at me, but it’s only Alette, her long hair flying wildly from her headband.

  “This way!” she says, grabbing my hand.

  We bolt into the desert. One soldier follows us on foot, his gaze low where our steps kick up sand, and I hear others drawing horses from their stalls. The Whisperer stops at the edge of the barn, shouting Ashra’s name. Behind the stable, a low horn bellows the alarm.

  I would like to revisit the moment I said this little adventure couldn’t be worse than my last one.

  “We’re not going to make it!” I yell as the soldier gains on us.

  “Yes we are!” Alette says, singsong. I have a feeling she does this way too often, and much too successfully. “There!”

  She points to a large area of moving, churning sand, and Kita bursts into view on one of the geldings, the buckskin and the other bay in tow. The horses slide to a stop, and Alette is on the bay in an instant. I clamber up on the buckskin. The foot soldier is reaching for me when a shot of my fear must go right into the mare, because she whirls and strikes him, sending him flying to his back. We bolt after the others. I cling to the saddle, cursing Sakira’s rashness. The mounted soldiers are approaching fast, their horses fresh and trained for speed.

  “Where’s Sakira?” I yell.

  A blast of sand next to us is the reply. One of the pursuing soldiers is an Airweaver, and I imagine if he could see us better, that shot wouldn’t have missed.

  There, says the buckskin.

  “What?” She was the last person—er, creature I was expecting a reply from.

  Fire smell, says the buckskin. Follow?

  A hysterical laugh bubbles up my throat. She can smell the other horse! “Yes! Geldings, follow the fire!”

  All the horses shift direction, and if we weren’t at a full gallop, I would hug the mare for this revelation. Of course, that means the other horses can smell us, too, but their riders aren’t Whisperers. If we can lose the soldiers, they’ll have no way to find us.

  “Ah, she’s brilliant,” Alette exclaims, pointing ahead of us. Meaning Sakira and the route she chose, I assume. After what just happened, I’m not sure I agree, but this latest move does look hopeful. Ahead lies a hill spread with tall desert bushes and nettled grass, footing the horses will have to slow for; footing that will hide the shift of sand beneath invisible feet. The horses slide on their hooves and jog when we reach the first bushes, and we urge them quickly around. The soldiers are close behind. But as unnerving as it is to look over our shoulders and see them reaching the bushes we just passed, they’re forced to slow as well. The three of them look wildly up the hill, their eyes sliding past us. In moments they spread out, trying to find hoofprints in the grass.

  We press our horses on, until Sakira and the blood-red mare flash into view.

  Nice work, Sakira mouths, her eyes locking approvingly first on Kita, then Alette—then me. She nods and moves Ashra on, a fresh spell I don’t recognize sinking into the mare’s haunches.

  “They’re here somewhere,” grumbles a soldier.

  “Hold,” says another soldier.

  Sakira raises her hand, and we stop, too.

  The soldiers listen for our footsteps, but all that passes between us is the occasional rustle of wind through dead brush.

  “We can’t have lost them,” says the third soldier, his black mare dancing sideways.

  Up, she’s thinking. Fire.

  But of course he can’t hear her, and since they left the Whisperer behind, they won’t.

  Move, Ashra thinks. No stand. Move.

  “Easy,” Sakira mutters as the mare shifts and tosses her head. If she makes much more noise, the soldiers will hear her.

  “Quiet,” I whisper, laying a hand carefully on Ashra’s neck. A blast of impatience and nerves surges through my fingers, so strong I gasp and jerk back.

  “Get off,” I snap, turning to Sakira.

  “What? No!”

  “She’s going to bolt. She’s been locked up way too long in there, and—”

  BOOM. The entire hill erupts into geysers of sand, the Earthmover below us lifting his arms in effort. The buckskin lurches beneath me, and I barely hold on as she slams into Kita’s horse to avoid the surging earth. Sand showers around us, revealing our position—

  Ashra’s scream cuts through the chaos. Anger flows off her in waves, and fire billows on her hocks and in her hair, streaming down her back where Sakira clings. She’s turned to face the soldiers, and for once Sakira doesn’t look amused or confident. She looks young and afraid, and when Ashra rears, she finally loses her grip and falls.

  Burn, Ashra thinks.

  Sakira rolls out of the way as the mare crashes back down. Every plant in the area flares up in scalding shades of yellow and red, and Alette shrieks as the bush next to her engulfs the side of her jole. It must scald the gelding, too, because he screams and charges up the hill.

  “Alette!” Sakira cries. She lurches for her friend—at the same time that Ashra, once easily in her reach, bolts into the heat.

 
“No!” Sakira yells, whirling.

  “Let her go!” I shout, reaching for Sakira. I won’t go into the thoughts I have about leaving her, because she really could be our future Mestrah and the gods would frown on that, but I will admit the Follow spell on my wrist is a big inspiration in wanting to get her out. Sakira grabs my arm and swings behind me just as fear and pain overtake the buckskin’s thoughts. The entire world is aflame. The soldiers shout in alarm and retreat, and the buckskin’s thoughts surge with getting free, getting out, but I catch sight of a moving slip of flame and push the mare after it. Alette flashes into view, small flames crawling up her side from foot to shoulder. We charge after, heat searing our arms, our faces; blistering against our legs, until finally the foliage yields to open sand. Alette dives into it to extinguish her side. The gelding, his left flank still smoking, charges on with a pained whinny. Sakira reaches around me and yanks our mare to a stop.

  “I’ll get him,” Kita calls, pushing her horse on.

  Sakira is already on the ground, painting symbols on Alette’s arms. Alette’s once beautiful jole is charred along the side, but the fire is out, and her tawny skin looks red and tender but not scalded. She turns on her back, and for a moment the friends look at each other, Sakira with something next to panic, Alette with the stunned look of someone who doesn’t entirely believe what’s happened. Her pink irises glance past Sakira to the wall of black smoke.

  And then, impossibly, she laughs.

  “That,” she says, giggling and holding her side, “was the most epic thing we’ve ever done.”

  Sakira sits back on her heels, her shoulders relaxing as a smile cuts her face. Soon she’s giggling, too, and like that they’re back to themselves, as untouchable by danger as they’ve ever been. Or so it would seem.

  But I remember the panic in Sakira’s face when she saw Alette catch fire. She could have reached for Ashra and gained an unprecedented advantage in the race. Between her skillset and a horse trained to use magic, she’d be nearly untouchable.

  She reached for Alette.

  XII

  “OH, I had that boy going,” Alette says, tossing her half-burnt locks. “I was a soldier’s daughter, visiting for the week, bored and looking for something to do. He asked if I’d like to go riding later, under the stars . . . you should have seen him blush when I said yes, then asked if he meant on horses.”

  We’ve only just met up with Kita, who luckily had Alette’s healed gelding in tow, and already Sakira and Alette are laughing over the details of their story, molding it into the tale the servants will whisper about in the palace.

  “You really do have a talent for innuendo,” Sakira says, shifting in the saddle behind me. “You should give classes.”

  “I wish I could give classes. Do you think you could make that a position when you’re Mestrah? ‘Alette: High Priest and Mistress of Seduction.’”

  “I think I’d be robbing the world of a treasure if I didn’t.”

  “And you on that wild horse! What was it like to ride her?”

  I would remind them Ashra isn’t actually a wild horse, and that Sakira’s recklessness made her that way, but I hold my tongue.

  “Like a dream,” Sakira says, stretching behind me. “She’s much smoother in stride than these street rats. And so much faster. If I hadn’t stopped her to wait for you, we’d be at the caves by now.”

  I roll my eyes. Ashra’s stride looked pretty much like that of every other horse I’ve seen.

  “Too bad the guards spooked her,” Alette says, frowning. “It would have been much more impressive to finish the race with her.”

  “Well, we didn’t know we’d be locked in an epic battle.” I hear the smirk in Sakira’s voice. “There we were, the four of us against a whole barracks of soldiers. They had Airweavers and Earthmovers. Stormshrikes and Dominators. But they were no match for Ashra and a queen.”

  “There were three of them,” I remind her.

  “You mean thirty-three,” Sakira says, winking when I look back.

  “And you lost the mare.”

  “Don’t be a killjoy,” Alette says, fussing with a burnt hole in her cooling cloak. “Obviously Sakira felt such a beautiful, powerful creature belonged to no one, and after subduing the soldiers, set her free.”

  “Yes,” Sakira agrees. “We’ll say it was a rescue mission.”

  Is this how all travelers spin their stories? Has nothing I’ve ever known been true?

  “But you did very well, too, my dear,” Sakira says, nudging my shoulder. “Especially for your maiden mission. The others will be much easier.”

  I turn to look at her. “You have more of these planned?”

  Sakira laughs. “I had everything under control. Give it time. Tonight, you’ll remember you successfully stole a legendary animal from a fully stocked barracks, and soon you’ll be saying you convinced all the horses to run free.”

  I wish I could show her the face she made when Ashra turned to the soldiers. She certainly didn’t look like someone who was in control. And how would she feel if any of those soldiers were hurt because of it? Or if Alette’s burns had been worse? Maybe having limitless access to Healers means she doesn’t think about those kinds of details. But I have a feeling her father—and her potential future soldiers—wouldn’t be so amused by her disregard for their safety.

  But I sigh and remind myself to go along with it, because even though “the mission” ended poorly, it could have been worse. And Sakira recognizing I did well is a good thing. It’s exactly what I was hoping for, even if I am still planning to leave as soon as viably possible, because if I’m not able to get away, I want it in the back of her mind.

  Because whether she meant to or not, she showed me a different part of her today. Someone human. Someone who feared she’d gone too far.

  Someone who might, if it came down to just us and the knife, choose a friend over the promise of power.

  * * *

  Twilight settles across the dunes like a silver sheet.

  My nerves amplify with the darkness. It’s been an hour since we crossed a road or skirted the distant shadow of huts, and here, where the meager spring rains have coaxed brush and patchy grass from their slumber, there are only animals. Overprotective rattlesnakes; herds of pale gazelles and sandy sheep. Soon, summer’s rainless heat will drive them back to the riverbanks. But seeing them brings me to an interesting thought. The animals aren’t foolish enough to wander far from a large source of water, and many of Orkena’s towns are built along our two rivers’ shores. If I can make it to a river, I’ll find people. And if I cover my scar, I may even find someone kind enough to help me get home.

  Which brings me to a realization I can actually thank Sakira for. Before, I wasn’t sure how I’d find the main river once I took a horse into the sand. But thanks to Sakira’s fire horse, I know I don’t have to know exactly where it is. I just have to be close enough for the buckskin to smell it, and she’ll guide us there herself.

  Now I just need the opportunity to leave.

  “All right, that’s as long as this gorgeous body can stand riding,” Sakira says, dismounting before the buckskin has stopped. “We’re still a day from the first checkpoint, and I want to arrive as fresh as rain. Which means tonight . . .” Jars clank, and I turn to see her lifting jeweled flasks from the saddlebag. “We relax.”

  “How are you even still standing?” I ask, stretching my aching back. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “Darling, this isn’t even half of what I can accomplish in a day.” She shoves a flask into my hand. “Alette dreamed this night would go smoothly. Do you want to lie awake fretting about your future, or enjoy my infamous hospitality?”

  She winks and twirls away, her red skirt flaring on her hips. I want to point out she could easily make my future not something to fret about, but I’m far too anxious about my pending escape to r
eason with her right now.

  “I’ll set up the tent, aera,” Kita says, though she, too, is given a flask.

  “To our new Mestrah,” Alette says, raising her flask to the sky. Sakira clanks hers against it.

  “To change,” she says.

  They drink. I slide off the buckskin and apologize again to her for the fire, but the wonderful thing about animals is they seldom stress about anything not immediately in front of them, and she only nibbles my shoulder and asks for food. I smile and rub her neck, feeling guilty that in another couple hours I’ll be asking her to leave again. I’ll have to take along an extra handful of grain, if I can find it. For now, I need to make sure there’s enough in her saddlebags to last us both a couple of days.

  I peer over the saddle, where the team is settling in. Sakira and Alette are definitely not paying attention to what I’m doing, but the Healer and her falcon eyes might be a problem. I wait until Kita wets a Build spell against the side of a large fabric square before shifting behind the bulky saddlebag and sliding my fingers beneath the latch. No sooner have I lifted the flap when Kita bursts into view and bustles me out of the way.

  “What can I get for you?” she says.

  “How did you even see me?” I ask.

  “My son is two. I see everything.” She beams. “Are you hungry? I’ll make supper as soon as the tent is up, but we have a few snacks if you need them.”

  “It’s the horses again,” I hedge, sighing. “They need to eat.”

  “Of course. I’ll grow them some grass.”

  She lifts a blue potion from the bag, but because I haven’t moved, she turns and smiles, like she knows exactly what I’m up to.

  “Anything else, adel?”

  I shrug. “No, thank you.”

  She doesn’t go. I shift in place and try a new tactic. “You have a son?”

  “Yes.” Her smile widens, her eyes growing fond and distant. “He’s brilliant. And a terror. But at least he sleeps better than his sister.”

  “You have two children?” I say this with a bit more surprise than I intend.