by Imogen Elvis
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Lara said. “It could be anyone, singing around a campfire, like we could be doing.”
“Then we should check it out,” Kade said.
“You should lead the way, Briar,” Lara said. “We’ll follow you.”
Briar stepped towards the distant voices, half eager now that they’d finally found something, half afraid of what they might see. She eased her way around the bushes in a vain attempt to stay silent. The whisper of leaves rubbing together as she brushed past and the soft huff of her own breathing were too loud in the silence. Every fibre of Briar’s body was tense with the knowledge that magicians were in these woods tonight. Maybe even the Nameless Ones.
Step by careful step, they made their way through the darkened woods. The closer they got to the voices, the most distinct they became. And with these voices came the first prickle of magic. These weren’t the powerful voices of the Nameless Ones, nor was it their overwhelming magic. These singers sounded… young. Briar’s heart clenched.
“Look,” Kade whispered. “Firelight.”
A faint orange glow shone between the trees, growing stronger as they approached. Surely there was too much light for this to be just one campfire? It covered too wide an area and burned too brightly to be from a single source. Briar pressed her lips together. How many people were camped in these woods tonight?
This was the source of the magic though. It wasn’t strong. Whoever was singing, they weren’t trying to burn down the forest at least. Briar dropped into a crouch, trying to silence her steps as she came closer to the campfires. A glance behind confirmed that Kade and Lara still followed in her shadow. She could see their faces now, illuminated in the slightly orange glow from the campfires, and mottled with strange patterns of shadows.
Briar crept over to a large tree at the edge of the circle of light, crouching as low to the ground as possible as she covered the last few feet into the shelter of the trunk. Her heart hammered in her chest. Reaching the tree, she pressed her back against its comforting bulk, closing her eyes and drawing a couple of deep breaths. So far, so good. Whoever was in that camp didn’t seem to have noticed them approaching.
When Briar opened her eyes again, it took her a few moments to spot her friends. Lara was crouched half inside a bush, apparently having crawled in without making a single sound. The delicate branches closed around her, turning her into just another part of the woods. Kade was just as difficult to see, lying on the ground nearby in a deep patch of shadow, blending in so perfectly he could have been just another part of the forest floor.
There was no use in putting the moment off any longer. She needed to know who was in the camp Briar peered cautiously around the side of the trunk, her hand moving to cover her mouth, stifling her gasp as she gazed on the scene laid out before her. Children filled the campsite, at least forty of them, maybe more, clustered around five or six campfires. The oldest child couldn’t have been much more than twelve, or thirteen at the most, and the majority of them were far younger than that.
The children sprawled around the fires, seeming calm and relaxed. Some of them were sleeping, their heads pillowed on their arms. Their faces were so peaceful that it was hard to imagine that they could be the ones creating such chaos and destruction. A boy, who couldn’t have been more than eight, sang in a high, breathy voice, weaving the flames of one of the fires together so that they rose like a fountain of water. Sparks fell around him in a shower of gold. A girl sitting across from him sent a strand of wind swirling through the sparks, which spun across the camp like a multitude of fireflies. They weren’t that strong, or even that well trained, but they did have great potential. Enough, perhaps, that together, they could destroy whole towns.
The children caught Briar’s eye first but, as she looked around the camp, she also picked out other shapes lurking around the edges. Nameless Ones. They sat cross-legged on the ground, dressed head to toe in their customary black. Even their faces were covered by black masks, which hid their features. From a distance, it was hard to tell whether they were male or female. They didn’t move a muscle, though they sat perfectly upright. Were they alert, listening to the whispering of earth and the wind? Or were they satisfied that no one would be foolish enough to come looking for this camp?
Briar’s first thought was that the Nameless Ones must have been there to guard the children and make sure that they didn’t try to escape. But none of these children looked unhappy. They slept peacefully or talked and laughed together, more as if they were on a picnic with their friends rather than camping in a dark forest surrounded by some of the most powerful and ruthless magicians in all of Kerr.
No, much as Briar didn’t want to believe it, these children weren’t being kept here against their wills. They weren’t cowering in fear. They weren’t bound to keep them from running away. And there were far too many of them to be under the sway of the Nameless Ones’ magic, even if every single one of these Nameless Ones had been a soul singer. No, these children wanted to be here. It was the only explanation. And that meant that, if what the farmer had said was true, and they had been the ones to destroy the farmland, they were doing it by their own choice.
The worst part was that she recognised some of the children. That boy sleeping at the nearest fire, his dirty blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, had been a novice in Osman. He’d only been with them a couple of months at most before the attack. Briar had to think hard to dredge up his name. Luka? That girl in the middle of the camp, rolling backwards with laughter, she’d been an earth singer in that Order house too. Briar couldn’t remember her name.
A little boy at one of the campfires towards the middle of the camp curled into a ball, settling down to sleep. As he moved, Briar caught sight of another familiar face, one that sucked all the air from her lungs. Those long, straggly brown braids and the set of her thin shoulders, her face glowing in the golden light of the fire…
Ava.
Briar’s heart soared for one glorious moment as she gazed at her sister for the first time in weeks. There she sat, basking in the glow of a campfire, alive and unharmed. She was not being carried away by the Nameless Ones. Not bound hand and foot. Not locked in a cell. Not crying out in terror. Happy and close and free. Briar could call her name, and Ava would hear.
But she sat surrounded by the very people who had kidnapped her from Osman, and no longer seemed afraid of them. What had happened to Ava that she felt so comfortable here? Surely, she couldn’t believe that they were doing the right thing? But here she sat with the other children, part of their band, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially as if sharing secrets. Occasionally one of them would glance at the Nameless Ones, but other than that, they seemed at ease. Ava talked earnestly, her eyes bright, gesturing with her hands as she spoke to her friends. When Briar thought back to the ashen fields and the crumbling buildings these children left behind, she couldn’t reconcile that destruction with the sister she knew. This couldn’t be who Ava was now.
“Briar. Are you alright?” Kade crawled in close, pressing his back against the same tree Briar hid behind. “What’s wrong?”
For a moment, Briar struggled to find the words to explain. “My sister is here.”
Kade’s face softened. He peered out past Briar. “Which one is she?”
“In the middle. With the braids.” Briar closed her eyes. “She shouldn’t be here, Kade.” Her voice shook. This was her fault.
“I know.” Kade closed his fingers gently around her hand. “I’m sorry.”
So was Briar. Sorry that she hadn’t managed to save Ava before. Sorry that all she could do was crouch here, greedily drinking in the sight of her sister, without being able to do a thing to help her. Sorry that she would creep away again without being able to lift a finger to rescue Ava.
“There has to be something we can do.” Briar swallowed hard, trying to hold back the tears that prickled at the backs of her eyes. “I can’t just leave her here. Not again.”
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br /> “The Nameless Ones would kill us the moment we tried. If there were any way to rescue her, I would do it, I promise.”
The worst part was, Kade was right. Briar couldn’t even pretend there was a way for her to reach Ava. Not sitting right in the middle of the camp. And not with all the Nameless Ones sitting so close by. It was tempting fate just being here. She didn’t even know if Ava would want to come with them now. Briar held onto Kade’s hand like a safety rope. How could she leave Ava again? It broke her to do it before. Now she would have to do it again, and Briar wasn’t sure she was strong enough. Every fibre of her being cried out for her to go to Ava, to wrap her arms around her sister and take her away from this awful place. But she couldn’t. So instead, she laid her head on Kade’s shoulder and stared at Ava until her eyes blurred with tears.
“We need to go,” Kade said after a long moment.
Briar nodded. But she held still, memorising the sight of Ava and the way the firelight played off her face, the swing of her long braids, the earnest look in her eyes as she spoke to her friends. Something twisted inside Briar’s chest until she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t leave her sister. Not again. But she must.
Briar stumbled away from the camp as quickly as she dared. She didn’t look back. Not because she didn’t want to, because the Tree knew she did. But she couldn’t, because if she did, her heart might just shatter into a thousand broken notes. No one said anything until they’d moved so far away from the camp that the children, the Nameless Ones, and the orange glow of the firelight had faded to nothing behind them. Briar couldn’t even hear the faint sounds of singing anymore. Even then, they didn’t stop, pressing on through the forest, putting as much space between themselves and the Nameless Ones as possible.
It was Kade who finally broke the silence. “So, the farmer was telling the truth.”
“It seems so impossible that it could be children,” Lara said quietly. “They shouldn’t be that powerful, should they?”
“They wouldn’t have to be,” Briar said quietly. “There are so many of them. And they have the Nameless Ones to help them. Between them, they would have more than enough power to do anything we’ve seen so far.”
“They’re so close to Mizra,” Lara said. “The soldiers must know they’re here, especially if a report has been sent about the attack on the farms. The royal guard isn’t just going to let them walk right up to the walls of the city without challenging them.”
“Not to mention the warning the wind singers would have sent from upriver,” Briar added. “Why haven’t the soldiers tried to stop them yet?”
“Maybe they did,” Kade said soberly. “Maybe they killed the soldiers.”
There was silence for a long time as everyone took in that thought. Finally, Lara said, “Well, this is just more reason to reach Mizra as quickly as we possibly can. If the Nameless Ones brought the children here, then Sachio has to be planning something big. We need to reach Mizra before he can carry out whatever plan he’s now working on.”
Briar couldn’t argue with that. But, as they set off through the darkened woods again, a myriad of questions still circled through Briar’s mind, without any trace of an answer. Why were the children destroying everything in their path? Why did Ava march with them, seemingly without protest? And what did Master Sachio stand to gain from it?
CHAPTER TEN
Though there was no sign of the Nameless Ones or the children they led, in the distance behind them, Briar and her friends still pushed themselves to the limit the following day. They travelled from the first grey light at dawn, all day, and well into the evening, until it was too dark to see, before finally making camp. Even then, they slept only briefly, rising before the sun to get back on the road.
It was midday by the time Briar caught sight of Mizra for the very first time, and the sight took Briar’s breath away. The road followed the gentle roll of the hill down into the level grasslands that housed the city, which spread out before Briar like a strange forest of buildings. It spread from east to west, even crossing the river and reaching into the distance on the far back. You could easily fit twenty towns the size of Osman into this city. A high stone wall wrapped around the whole city in one long, unbroken line, except for where the river, glimmering in silver as it caught the sun, snaked inside, disappearing among the buildings. But what drew Briar’s eye, far more than the walls or the river, was the castle, which stood in the very centre of the city.
The castle rose above the other buildings, the towers at each of its four corners reaching up to the sky. From this distance, the castle was small, like a carved children’s toy, but it was enormous when compared to any of the other buildings. Green gardens spread around it, large enough to be seen even from this distance, and a second, slightly smaller wall separated the castle and its grounds from the rest of the city. Though Briar was too far away to make out any details, she could imagine large, colourful banners hanging from the walls, swaying gaily in the breeze, and a multitude of fine ladies and gentlemen strolling across those green lawns. It seemed like something out of a story her papa might have told around the fire on a cold winter’s night, not a place where people actually lived. It was hard to think that this castle had once been Kade’s home. But, besides the wonder and the spectacle, there was one thing that this sight meant more than anything else. They made it. Mizra was within reach at last. Briar could almost have cried with relief.
“How are we going to get inside?” Lara asked. “The sentries at the gates are sure to be on alert after the attacks. Someone will recognise Kade.”
“What about side gates?” Briar asked. “They wouldn’t be quite so heavily guarded, surely? Maybe we could slip in through one of those?”
Kade shook his head. “If the sailors have informed the royal guard that we are coming to Mizra, then you can be sure Sachio will have posted extra guards on every gate, no matter how insignificant.”
“Do we have any options?” Briar asked. How cruel it would be to come all this way, only to find at the last moment that they couldn’t enter because of a chance encounter with a greedy captain.
“We could still go in by river,” Lara suggested. “There’s no gate to block our entry by water.”
“If we had a boat,” Kade said. “Which we don’t.”
“We don’t need one,” Lara said. “We could swim.”
“You want us to swim into the docks?” Kade raised his eyebrows. “I suspect that the guards will find that more than a little suspicious.”
Lara folded her arms. “Maybe you’d like to let me finish explaining my idea before you dismiss it completely.”
“I’d like to hear your plan.” Briar shot Kade a look that said ‘hear her out’. At least Lara had a plan. It wasn’t like she or Kade had even the glimmerings of an idea yet.
“I say we head for the river, and wait there for night to fall. Once it’s dark, we can reach the wall in relative safety. Guards patrol the wall top, but we should be able to slip past. Then, we simply step into the water and let the current right into Mizra.”
“And then?” Kade asked.
“There are sure to be guards, but the docks are large, and the patrols won’t be able to watch every part of it at once. We can bide our time and wait for the right moment. Then we use the cover of the cargo to make our way to the nearest street entrance. Once we’re beyond the docks, we should be safe from most of the soldiers. If we’re already inside the city, we’ll be much less suspicious to patrols, unless they look too closely.”
“That doesn’t sound impossible,” Briar said slowly.
“I told you I had a plan. And once we’re in Mizra, we can go to my home to rest and regroup.” Lara gave Kade a sidelong look. “So, is it a terrible idea?”
“No,” Kade had to admit. “Though I’m not so sure about going to your house.”
Lara put a hand on her hip and thrust out her chin. “We need money, Kade. And we’ll need dry clothes too. I’m not suggesting that we stay th
ere for long. But we’re going to need money, dry clothes, and as much information as we can gather. And those we can get at my house. It’s a risk, but it’s a calculated one.”
“We’ll see.” Kade kept his eyes on the city as they made their way down the gentle slope toward it.
“What is there to discuss? If you’re so worried, I’ll go alone, and you can both wait somewhere until I come back.”
Kade shook his head. “If we go, we go together. It’s safer not to split up.”
“What about your servants?” Briar asked. “Would they report us to the soldiers if they knew who we are?” People in Mizra must know by now that Lara too, was a fugitive. Captain Finbar had. What if her servants gave them up?
“My servants are loyal to my family.” The outrage on Lara’s face at the very suggestion that her servants might betray them was almost comical. “Most of them worked for my parents, before serving Rowen just as faithfully, and-and now me, I suppose. They are as loyal as anyone could be.”
The force of her words cleared a silence. On the one hand, Briar respected Lara’s faith. On the other, the servants were loyal before Lara was denounced as a traitor. They couldn’t take anything for granted now. Briar’s eyes wandered over the city, growing ever larger as they approached it. How could one place, so filled with hope, also pose such danger?
“I’m not suggesting that your servants are likely to betray us-” Kade began.
“Well, that’s what it sounds like.” Lara glared at him.
“I wasn’t-” Kade ran his fingers through his hair, then let out a heavy sigh. “Alright. We’ll go to your house. But we let as few people as possible know that we are there, and we leave as soon as we can. If not for our safety, then at least for theirs.”
“Agreed.” Lara tossed her braid, and a slight smile played around her lips, as if she was taking great pleasure in the fact that she had won this particular argument.
