Ani snorts. “Any other girl in this town would be jumping at such an opportunity.”
Any other girl in this town would have less chance of being ridiculed by a court obsessed with beauty and fine manners. “Not enough horses there,” I grouse. “And not enough work to do.”
“You are such a stick in the mud,” Ani says, smiling faintly.
I’m so glad to see that smile, I shrug and say, “Mud is very comfortable.”
“There’s more to life than horses, you know.”
“True. There are smithies too.”
Ani shakes her head, the smile dropping away. “When would you go?”
I sigh. “Soon. And I’d rather not go just yet.”
We keep walking, following the path around past the road I came in on.
“I dreamed about her last night,” Ani says abruptly. “About Seri. I dreamed I was walking with her, and we were laughing about something, and then I turned around and she was gone. I couldn’t—I could barely breathe when I woke up. I couldn’t sleep again. I can’t not think about her, Rae.”
I nod, because I don’t know what to say.
“Mama says it isn’t my fault. That, if they were watching her, it would have happened anyhow. That I did well realizing she was missing so quickly, and getting help, but she was my responsibility. I let her go off instead of walking her there . . .”
I stop and wrap my arms around Ani and let her cry again, wishing I had a way to stop her pain, to undo what has been done.
Eventually, Ani steps away and wipes her nose on her sleeve, her eyes red and puffy. “Sorry,” she says.
I shake my head. There’s nothing to apologize for.
She threads her arm through mine and we turn back to town. “So,” she says roughly, and for a moment I think she will start crying again. But then she clears her throat and asks, “Why don’t you want to go to Tarinon?”
I shrug, my uneven gait all the more obvious beside her steady step.
“I think you should go,” Ani says.
“Why? There’s no real need for it.” I eye her askance. “I didn’t think you would want me to leave.”
“I don’t,” she admits. “But can you tell me, truly, why you don’t want to go?”
What is it that’s holding me back? I hesitate, thinking of all I’ve heard of the court, and admit, “I don’t want anyone’s pity.”
A silence.
Ani’s arm tightens around mine. “People are stupid wherever you go. That doesn’t mean you should never leave home.”
“I know,” I concede. Yet I don’t see any reason to expose myself to more than I must.
“Good,” Ani says as we near her home. “So when do you leave?”
I let out my breath in a helpless laugh. “Are you all trying to get rid of me? And here I thought we were friends and my family loved me.”
“All true,” Ani says. “Which is why you had better tell me when you expect to leave next time we meet.”
As if it were as easy as that. I shake my head, look up at Ani’s house, the darkened window of the room she used to share with her sister. The room that is hers alone now.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say, and Ani hears the change in my tone. She pauses beside me. “I don’t want to leave you alone with your grief and go off to the palace, even if Melly would like my company.”
For a long moment, Ani stands with her head bent, her eyes on the hard-packed earth underfoot. “Perhaps you could ask someone there,” she says, the words so soft and unexpected I don’t know what to make of them. She turns her head, and her eyes are as deep and dark with grief as they were yesterday, as if there were no light left in her at all. “Tarinon is a big city. Someone there might know more about the snatchers—have an idea where the children are taken. They must know more.”
“It’s possible,” I allow. For the chance to learn what’s happened to Seri, I could easily put up with being snubbed. Melly might be able to help me find out what the guards have learned about the snatchers, what the king thinks. Though I don’t think she could influence anyone—she and Filadon are not especially high in rank.
Still, it might be worth it to simply ask the questions. To do something.
“I’ll still be here when you get back,” Ani says. “And it will be easier knowing you’re doing what I can’t.”
I nod. But will it make a difference? Couldn’t I learn the same just by writing to Melly? It’s not like I’m going to take on the snatchers myself.
“Think about it,” Ani says, and squeezes my hand.
“I will,” I say, and walk with her back into a house that will always feel a little emptier than it was.
Sometime in the middle of the night I jerk awake from a deep, heavy sleep. I sit up, muzzy headed and afraid, and realize with a sickening lurch that Niya isn’t sleeping beside me anymore. She’s gone.
No. She can’t be. She’s slipped downstairs for something. Anything. I wait, but there’s no sound of movement in the house. After a few increasingly shaky breaths, I rise and let myself out of the room. By the time I reach the stairs, I’m hobbling as fast as I can. Only about halfway down do I catch a hint of lamplight coming from the kitchen.
I make myself take a slow, deep breath. It was foolish of me, I know, that irrational, unspeakable fear. There was no reason whatsoever for Niya to leave our room and then somehow get snatched. I’ve just let myself get carried away by my own fears. I give myself a slight shake and pad down the stairs slowly and steadily, as I would normally.
In the kitchen, Niya sits on a stained old blanket, kept for dirty work, one hand resting on the stray dog’s back. If it weren’t for the utter focus of her gaze, and that a ruby pendant glitters faintly in her other hand, there’d be no indication whatsoever that she is working.
But she is. I’ve seen her work this sort of magic on our sick animals before. If her compass used the concept of flow, healing magic is primarily about patterns. Such magic is never easy, and only the best of our mages become healers, if they so wish. Niya might never have attempted it had a faerie visitor not mentioned pattern magic as his parting word of advice to her.
A healer-mage might remind a body of the pattern of unruptured flesh, using their magic to return wounded flesh as close to that pattern as possible. Or, as Niya found while accompanying my mother to our community’s local births, the body knows the pattern for a healthy birth, even if it cannot achieve it. Magic gently introduced and carefully woven can turn a child from breech to anterior facing, can remind vessels to close, muscles to squeeze tight a rupture before a woman might bleed out. I remember the brightness in Niya’s eyes the first time she came home, knowing that the secret application of her magic saved the life of the woman she and Mama had gone to help, that one more family would remain together, one more child would keep her mother.
I settle across from her on the blanket, and watch as the dog’s skin slowly—so slowly—eases toward a healthier color beneath a dried, scaly layer of old skin. Niya is reminding the skin how to fight infection, how to push out what is unwanted, and while it will take days and possibly weeks for the dog to fully heal, eventually she will.
“There,” Niya says finally, setting aside the pendant. “That should help her. And Mama can have her pendant back, now that I’ve drained it.”
I smile. “She’ll be happy to hear it.”
A gemstone can be used to hold a reserve of magic, but the act of draining the magic alters its structure somehow, so it can only be used as an amulet once. Niya has slowly worked her way through our jewelry, storing what magic she doesn’t manage to use in her daily little spells around the house—kneading birdsong and a warm spring breeze into her bread, or spilling a bit of sunshine into the laundry. Every now and then she’s able to perform a big enough working that she uses the magic at her disposal and drains an amulet as well, and then we get our jewelry back. True mages, of course, have much larger gems than we do, and their amulets can become a source of great powe
r. I don’t think Niya particularly cares about that, though. A small gem holds more than enough for her needs.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I ask her.
“I can’t stop thinking about Seri. I can help this dog—and I’m glad of it!—but I wish I could do something for her too.” She turns to me, gray eyes intent. “There has to be something we’re missing. Children can’t just disappear. Even dead bodies can be traced.”
“I know.”
“So what do we do?”
Nothing. If Niya does something to uncover the snatchers, not only does she risk being abducted herself, but her talent could be discovered and that would destroy her in a different way. She’d be made an amulet bearer, her magic constantly drained to an amulet to be used by the mage who becomes her master. I won’t let that happen.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I might just go to the palace to see what I can learn. The king must be doing something; perhaps there’s someone among his staff who knows more.”
Niya stares at me. The dog wiggles her shoulders beneath Niya’s hand, asking for a petting, and she automatically starts scratching. “You’d do that?” Niya asks.
“Yes. And if no one’s doing anything, as you say, I’ll call you in and you can knock over some snatchers for me. Put your pattern and flow to good use.”
Niya laughs. “You’d never send for me. Just . . . if you really plan to learn about the snatchers, be careful, all right?”
I reach out to touch her arm. There is one truth, one future we have always promised each other: when Bean is married and leaves, and our parents are grown old, we will still always be there for each other. Niya because she can never dare to marry, given her secret, and me because I will never find anyone.
“Always,” I promise. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Chapter
6
I bring up my decision to my parents the following morning after breakfast. “I don’t know that Melly really needs my company,” I admit. Far more likely, she’s happy to have an excuse to finally make me visit her. “But it would be nice to see her. And . . . I intend to ask her what’s being done about the snatchers, if something more can’t be done.”
Mama considers my words. “There’s no harm in that. Just be careful about who you speak to. And Rae, bear in mind that if it were easy, it would already be done.”
“I know.” I don’t expect it to be easy. But Niya’s counting on me to do what she can’t, and, like Ani, I can’t give up. I know I won’t find Seri in Tarinon, but this is still part of fighting for her.
“Is there anything else?” Mama asks as I continue to sit there.
Of course there is. If I go, I’ll be leaving my whole life behind. And that means my sisters as well. “I’m worried about Bean and Niya,” I confess. “About not being here for them. If anything should happen.” Unspoken but not unheard are the last of my fears: that if the snatchers should return, I might lose a sister while away at court. Or that Niya might be found out and taken from us, my parents punished for hiding her.
“Suppose I promise to watch them?” Mama says lightly.
I laugh.
“I could bar Bean from accompanying me to Spring Fair in your place,” Baba says doubtfully. “But she may never forgive you.”
“She wouldn’t,” I agree. “And you’re both right: they don’t need me as long as they have you. But I still worry.”
“I’m glad you do,” Mama says. “That makes you a good sister. But they should be all right through the summer, and they will want to hear all your stories when you return.”
“Excellent,” Baba says, as if it were settled. “You’ll be ready to leave next week, then?”
“Next week?”
“Our own Veria Sanlyn is traveling to Tarinon for the wedding,” Baba says, naming a local noblewoman. “Her head hostler came by to see if he could cajole me into selling her a brace of horses for her carriage—as if we breed carriage horses! At any rate, I mentioned you might be traveling there. The hostler informed the housekeeper, who spoke with the lady herself, and she sent an invitation for you to ride along with her.” Baba smiles, well pleased with himself. And even I have to admit it is rather perfect.
I frown. “I suppose Sanlyn will be expecting to see those horses, then.”
“Oh, no,” Baba says. “I’ve been very clear that we have a lovely riding horse that might suit her perfectly instead. I was thinking of Lemon, really—their dispositions are of a kind.”
“Baba!” I say, amused despite myself. Mama just shakes her head.
I spend the day with the horses, glad to return to the steadying routine of cleaning, training, and—to be honest—visiting with the horses. As with the day before, I take some time in the afternoon to ride into town to check in on Ani, who is pleased to hear that I do in fact have a day of departure to report.
In the evening, as we settle on cushions in the sitting room, Niya brings out her work basket. Mama and Baba are lingering in the kitchen, voices lowered, though Mama’s muffled laugh tells me that, whatever their conversation, it isn’t a grim one. Bean sprawls on a cushion, utterly uninterested in the horse blanket she’s supposed to mend.
“I’ve been working on something for you,” Niya says. “For your birthday, but I think I can get it done for you before you leave. Shall I show you?”
“Oh yes,” I say.
She removes the topmost items in her mending basket and delves into the bottom to lift out a new sash. It is tradition to wear an embroidered sash about one’s waist, and Niya has embroidered more than a few designs for us over the years, but this is something different altogether.
“It’s a story sash,” Bean gasps, delighted. “What story did you do? Oh! Will you make me one too?”
Niya laughs. “Of course, but first I have to finish Rae’s.” She offers it to me, and I carefully unfold it. The fabric itself is a simple cream, but the sash almost shimmers with Niya’s multihued embroidery, so elaborate it takes my breath away. Story sashes contain the symbols and colors of a story so that it can be carried with you and passed down to those you love. They are rare nowadays, with paper being available and the embroidery itself so time-intensive. Which makes it all that much more special a gift.
The first few bands of embroidery are purely decoration, but then the story begins—a twist of blue around a black center: There was and there was not.
“A princess!” Bean says, happily jumping ahead to the stylized image of a girl with long braids.
Niya laughs. “Not yet. You see how the leaves wrap around her? She’s a girl who lives in the forest.”
“Yes, but there”—Bean points to the other end of the sash—“she’s getting married and that yellow twist around them is a crown.”
“That’s how most stories end,” I agree, amused. “It’s Riha of the Woods, isn’t it?”
“Mama said that was your favorite tale growing up. You always used to tell it to us too,” Niya says.
“I still love it. Thank you, Niya.”
“You should stitch in something useful too,” Bean reproves her. “Stories are all very well and good, but suppose she needs something?”
One of Niya’s favorite magical skills involves hiding things in her stitches, things which can only be regained when the stitches are undone. She learned this, as she has learned much of her magic, the hard way: in this case, by accidentally stitching Baba’s prize nanny goat into a whorl of embroidery. At a harvest fair livestock competition. Right behind the judges’ backs.
Niya nods. “I was planning to hide some coins, in case you ever lose your purse.”
“Could you stitch up my bone knife too?” I ask. A gift from that same faerie visitor who suggested pattern magic to Niya a year ago, it looks like an old chipped kitchen knife to most. I am the only one who can see its shining ivory blade and onyx-and-mother-of-pearl handle. But more than that, it’s sharp and useful, and while I hope I won’t need it, it can’t hurt to have it handy.
“Of course,” Niya says. “I’ve put a backing on to protect the knots, see?” She turns the sash over, and sure enough the other side is plain cream, only the ends, where they would hang free, embroidered on both sides. “Anything I add for you, I’ll bring the knots through the backing so you can easily break them and release what I’ve hidden.”
“Sounds perfect.”
Niya hesitates. “I also—I’ve been experimenting with protections. See this border here? That’s where they’re sewn.”
“You can stitch wards?” Bean asks, properly impressed.
Niya shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know how a real mage would do it.”
“Who cares what a ‘real’ mage would do?” Bean demands. “That’s amazing!”
Niya smiles shyly. “I can add some to your sashes too, Bean, once I’m done with Rae’s.”
“Oh yes,” Bean says. “Will it stop horses from stepping on my boots?”
Niya frowns. “Right now they mostly work against other magics, but I can experiment with physical force.”
“Just don’t hurt yourself while you’re at it,” Bean says cheerfully.
Niya laughs. She will likely do a much better job of keeping herself and Bean safe than I ever could. But I’m still going to miss them and worry about them, anyhow. I claim big sister prerogative on that.
“You’ll watch their horses,” Bean says, now that my magical packing list is settled. “I want to know what kinds of horses the prince and all ride. I suppose they must be better than ours.”
“Maybe,” I concede. “But their hostlers have bought from us at Spring Fair before.”
“Which horses did they buy?” Bean asks, intrigued.
From there, we quickly descend into a discussion of which dam’s offspring was sold when to the royal hostlers, a topic our father takes up with great spirit when he and Mama finally join us. Niya and Mama exchange a commiserating glance and focus on their sewing.
Chapter
7
A week and a half later, I watch avidly from my carriage window as we trundle up a great, wide city avenue. This is West Road, the road off of which the true princess lived as a goose girl in the royal stables, and it passes through the poorest part of the city. The yellow-brick buildings rise up to two or three stories, not unlike the somewhat shorter buildings that make up our village. But there the similarity ends, for these adobe walls are stained, the plaster cracked and broken here and there, revealing the bricks underneath. The people are thin and poorly dressed, but it’s the children who shock me: squatting in the dirt to play, barefoot and dirty-faced, their figures painfully thin, and even a few, here and there, who wear nothing but a long tunic, as if the cost of pants were too much for their family.
The Theft of Sunlight Page 3