“I have several conditions.”
Well, I have a condition, too—what exactly are we talking about? I tilt my head upward and immediately regret it—she’s in front of the damned sun again, leaving her little more than a sliver of shadow.
I rub my eyes. “Is standing with your back to the sun just a coincidence, or do you make a conscious decision every time you move around?”
“Sit up and take things seriously. I’d rather not have to stuff you again in front of the little ones.”
I open my eyes again, shading them against the glare. She’s not alone—there’s a small figure practically glued to her side. I scoot until I’m no longer blinded and blink the tears out of my eyes.
Oh, Light, oh earth and sky. She’s holding the hand of a tiny woodgirl, who’s clutching my other boot like a blanket.
“I rescued this one a week ago,” Lark says. “She hasn’t said a single word to me until last night, when she recognized your boots. Is she—one of yours?”
The girl peeps at me with one bright green eye—she has the look of the south woods, but she could just as easily be a child of merchants around Lampyrinae. I turn my hands over to her.
“Hello, little sally. Have you got some boots of your own?”
“Pa dances the boot . . . dances the daisy chain with Ma . . . with the boots.”
“Your pa wears his fringe boots to dance the daisy chain with your ma?”
She nods.
“What did you call her?” Lark asks. “Is her name Sally?”
“It’s a baby name—little salamander.” We still call Susimae sally to annoy her. “What’s your name?”
“Hettie,” she says.
“Can you dance the daisy chain, Hettie?”
She circles her finger. “No, I go round and round.”
“I bet you do.” Little kids often run circles around the older folk dancing before they learn the steps themselves. “What’s your parents’ epithet?”
“Goldfinch.”
“Flash of yellow in the tree, little finch—”
“—per-chick-o-ree,” she finishes.
“I’m a greenbrier,” I offer.
“Tangle in the laurel slicks,” she recites.
I want to hug her, little lost sally. I open my arms, and she slips her hand out of Lark’s and wraps one grimy arm around my shoulder, still clutching my boot with the other.
“She says she’s from a mining town,” Lark says, her voice oddly strained. “She says her pa’s a miner. Do you know her family?”
“They shouldn’t be hard to find,” I murmur. I tap the little girl’s shoulder. “Hettie, is there a bear or a fox in your dancing square?”
“Fox,” she says.
“South Mine, then.” I tilt my head up to Lark—she’s moved out of the sun and is watching us. She’s got all her armor on again—thick eyeblack smeared over her cheeks, faded bandanna draped around her chin, black hat pulled low over her forehead.
“How’d she get out here?” she asks, hushed.
I lean back to look the little girl in the face. “Hettie, does your pa travel with the silver shipments down to the coast?”
She plays with the buttons on my tunic. “Yeah, I goed with him last time.”
Oh, little sally. I wrap my arms back around her and draw her close, squeezing her tight.
“I’ll get you back home, okay? We’re going to go back home.” My gaze falls on my second boot, flopped over in the dirt. I’m going to need to pry the other one away from her.
I look up at Lark again and extend my hand.
“Give me my firefly,” I say.
Without comment—oh, the shock—she reaches under her collar and fumbles with the clasp. She slides the pin out and places it in my outstretched hand.
“Look, Hettie. I need my boot back, but I have something else for you. Recognize this?”
She takes it into her pudgy hand. “Blue ghost.”
“That’s right. They’re flying now, aren’t they? I’m going to put it right here on your shirt. I bet the silver came from your Pa’s mine.”
She strokes it. “And the lantern from the lake.”
Oh, sunlight, I love her. “That’s right, the pearl in its lantern came from the lake.” I give her one more hug and let her go—she’s absorbed with the pin.
I beat the dust off my boots and pull them on, savoring the familiar press of the soft soles as I get to my feet. There’s a rustle in the bushes, and into the clearing comes Saiph, ruffle haired and probably sore from sitting up on the boulder standing guard on me last night. I heard him spitting sunflower seeds into the brush until I finally dropped off to sleep. He’s traded his crossbow for a flat corn biscuit and a dinged cup.
“Here.” He holds out his wares to me. “Lila said to ask for more if you want it. Oh—I mean . . .”
Lark is glaring at him, probably for letting slip the name of another campmate, though I don’t know what she expects me to do with this information. I take the biscuit and the cup from him.
“Tell Lila I said thank you.”
Lark clears her throat and pats Hettie’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go with Saiph back to the fire, okay?”
“Mmkay.” She slips her hand into the older boy’s and follows him back into the brush.
I sip from the cup—watery coffee bitter enough to strip paint, but it’s nice to have something hot after a night on the rocks. I mull over the cup, eyeing Lark. She’s looking none too rested, either.
“Nice night?” I ask innocently.
She frowns at me—she took watch after Saiph. I saw her outlined against the moon the few times I shifted around. Maybe I’m being mean, but my rear still hurts from where she dumped me in the dirt last night—and I’m still pissed about my boots and firefly.
“I’ve had worse,” she says. She seems to be warring over something internally, her lips twisting over her bandanna.
“I believe you were saying something about having a condition,” I prompt over the coffee.
“I have several,” she says. “But first, let me see the letter again.”
Adding the biscuit to my coffee hand, I dig in my cloak pocket and hand it to her. She takes it and studies it again, peering once more at the end of the text.
“They’re all like this?” she asks. “The other letters?”
“Yes. We’ve plotted a handful of abandoned mining towns that it could have come from, but we hadn’t narrowed it much past—”
“She’s not in one of the mining towns.”
I pause over my cup. “How do you know?”
“In Snaketown, I saw a woman buying some odds and ends in the general store. She was getting more ink and parchment—this is the type they make down there, from sawgrass.”
“Yes, we’d gotten that far, but—”
“And she was handing over another letter, like this one.”
“All right, but that doesn’t—”
“And her cloak stank of guano.”
Okay, she’s really throwing me off now. “Guano?”
“Bat droppings.”
“I know what they are. Why is that important?”
“Because your lost princess has been telling you where she is all along.” She taps the parchment, down at Tamsin’s name. Specifically, the scribbled M at the beginning of her surname, with the little spiky flourishes on either side of the letter.
“I’m not much at writing,” she says. “But that doesn’t look like any letter I know.”
“It’s a flourish, a lot of folk use them—”
“It’s a bat,” she says. “She’s been drawing you a bat. The two points on the M are its ears, and the flourishes are its wings.”
I take the letter from her and stare at the mark. It seems wildly far-fetched.
I look up at Lark again. “Are you saying this could tell us where she is?”
“No,” she says. “I’m saying I know exactly where she is.”
My heartbeat quickens. “What? How?
Where is she?”
She regards me, her sharp bronze eyes flicking over my face.
“You have conditions,” I say. “Right. Lay them on me. Condition one.”
“Condition one is you cut the sass,” she says curtly.
I match her sharp tone. “Sorry, it’s a defense mechanism. Condition two.”
Her lips twist in a frown, but to my surprise the expression doesn’t reach her eyes. She doesn’t look angry, she looks concerned. Serious.
I try to backtrack. “I’ll cut some of the sass. Promise.”
Another long pause slides by. She draws in a breath.
“You get them all out of here,” she says quickly, as if forcing the words out.
“Get what out of where?”
“All . . . all the others, here in camp,” she says. “You get them to safety. The ones who have homes get back home. The ones who don’t get set up somewhere they’re not going to get dumped in a ditch or back in a wagon. The ones who need medicine get medicine. No prison, no slavery, no tricks. You get them all out.”
The silence between us is profound, a tangible thing. And suddenly I realize I’ve only been seeing part of the issue, like seeing a few branches without seeing the rest of the tree. All the viciousness and thievery and no holds barred—here it is. She’s got a camp full of lost kids and no way to take care of them.
“How many are we talking about?” I ask.
“Is that a yes or no?”
“It’s neither, yet,” I say. “I want to do what you’re asking, but I need to know the scope. How many do you have here? Five? Twenty? Fifty?”
She’s quiet—she still doesn’t trust me.
“There are seven of them,” she finally says. “One is . . . one is bad.” She swallows behind her bandanna. “She needs surgery, probably, or at least full-time care until she recovers. Another needs medicine for his eyes, and one needs to see a lady’s healer. The others may get better with good food and proper care.”
“And where do they need to go?”
“Alcoro will be all right for most of them, as long as they’re safe. One has family in Cyprien. You can get to Cyprien?”
“I can get to Cyprien,” I reply as seriously as I can—Cyprien must seem like the other side of the world from here. “I pass through it to get to and from home, and I’m good friends with the ambassador.” I keep quiet so as not to give her false hope, but Rou would turn a country over to reunite a child with their family.
“All right. And Moll—er, Hettie, she belongs in the Silverwood.”
“Yes. Is that all?”
“Yes. Well—one would like to go to Lumen Lake, but that could be a long shot.”
My blood runs cold, and I physically stop myself from grabbing her arms—I don’t want another clip from her buckler. “Lumen Lake—you have someone here from Lumen Lake? A girl? A woman?”
“She’s . . . I mean, she’s not full Lumeni . . .”
“Yes, yes, of course, good.” Lumeni and Cypri—Queen Mona and Ambassador Rou. In the excitement about Tamsin, I’ve completely forgotten the thought of searching for Moira Alastaire. Eloise’s fawn-freckled face and fine brown curls flash in my head. “How old? What’s her name?”
She leans back—I’ve made her wary again. “That’s not important. I don’t even know if she really has family there, or if she’d just as soon settle down here in Alcoro. The point is, there are seven of them, and I’ve laid out for you what they need. So? Is it a yes or no?”
Oh, dammit, Lark, this is important. I breathe heavily, almost desperately, needing answers about this Lumeni girl she has hidden away out here. But she’s frowning again, perhaps regretting sharing so much information with me, and I can’t lose this opportunity now that I’ve got it.
“I’ll get them all where you want them to go. I promise.” I’ll have to talk to the Lumeni girl, at any rate, to help her get home. Patience. Patience now. Tamsin has to come first, the alliance has to come first. I exhale, trying to appear less manic. “I have contacts in Alcoro who can help settle your friends in safety, and Cyprien and the Silverwood are no trouble, none at all. Neither is the lake. I’ll get them out.”
“Good,” she says, and then, as if to make herself believe it, she says it again. “Good.”
“Though,” I say, suddenly realizing, “you’ve left someone out.”
“Who?”
“You, of course. Surely you want something out of this?”
She goes quiet. A warm desert breeze slinks through the sage, bringing a wisp of smoke from her secret campfire with it.
“I’ll take the money,” she finally says. “Some of it, anyway—whatever’s not used to settle the others. And then you leave me alone—you and everyone else. I owe you nothing beyond what you’re asking me to do. I get you your lost lady, you get my campmates to safety, and that’s the end of it. There’s no partnership here, no contract. Our connection ends the moment the job ends. That’s what I want out of this.”
“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” I ask. “Don’t you have somewhere you’d rather be than here?”
I’ve probed too deep. Her face shutters again, and she hitches the bandanna up over her nose.
“I’ve got dust instead of blood,” she says frankly. “Cut me and I bleed desert. Is it a yes or a no?”
“It’s a yes. Get me to Tamsin, and I’ll do the things you’ve asked. You really know exactly where she is?”
“Utzibor caverns. There’s a massive bat colony that streams out every night from several of the openings. There are a few outbuildings, abandoned, used only by shady folk looking for a place to conduct business. I spent a few weeks there . . . a while back.”
I decide not to press her for personal details. “Where is it? How far?”
“About two days’ ride from here, southwest.”
“All right, then. If you’re sure. There’s a hitch, though—Prince Iano is in Pasul, and I need to get word to him that I’m going with you.”
She stops midturn. “You are not.”
“I am,” I say firmly. I made up my mind—well, just now, actually, but it’s been brewing since leaving Tolukum Palace. I’ve been waffling over whether I can make the trip. But after journeying over the mountains with Iano, my confidence is higher than it’s ever been. Two days to Tamsin, one day to Pasul.
I can make it three days.
I try to present my selfish excitement as resolution, nodding at Lark’s snarly look. “I can tell you don’t trust me. Well, I don’t trust you. This is important—too important for one person. At the very least, Tamsin’s prison is probably guarded. I can help you break her out.”
“I don’t need help.”
“I don’t care. I’m coming.” I square up, my weight forward in case she tries to shank me with her hilt again. “I’m coming, or there’s no deal—and now I know where your camp is.”
“I could still kill you,” she snaps behind her bandanna.
“Is that your fallback solution to everything?” I ask.
“Works so far,” she replies.
She’s lying, it’s all lies—she doesn’t kill if she can help it. She’ll rob and punch and spit and flash her buckler around, but she doesn’t kill if she doesn’t have to. She showed me that yesterday in the stage, she showed me that last night. I can see through you, Lark.
That fiery glare does make one think twice, though.
She fumes silently for a moment, while I try to channel Mama as hard as I ever have, spreading my feet a little wider and crossing my arms. Immovable. A mountain. A greenbrier, latched on tight without a crawdad’s chance of letting go.
“Fine,” she finally says. “But don’t—don’t, like, talk to me or anything.”
I permit myself a snort. “Deal. But I still need to get a message to Iano.”
“Saiph,” she says with reluctance. “Saiph can make the ride to Pasul.”
“He can be trusted? This is the prince of Moquoia we’re talking about.”
; Her gaze drifts up the path to her campfire, and I catch a glimpse of that same weighty anxiety as before. “Saiph,” she says, almost an exhale. “Yes, he can be trusted. He’ll be all right. He knows which tracks are safe.”
“All right, then. It seems we have a deal.” My university training kicks in, and I gesture to her. “Do you want it in writing? Or at least a handshake?”
She scoffs. “You go back on your word, and I’ll kill you. Will that do?”
“Again with murder. Most folk would find that unorthodox.”
“Get used to it.” She turns away. “I hope you’re ready to ride out—we can cover good ground before noon.”
“I’m ready.” I take a bite of the flat corn biscuit—and gag. The thing coats my tongue like sawdust. I choke around my too-big mouthful, pounding my chest.
“By the Light,” I gasp. I gulp a swig of coffee and spit it into the dust. “What d’you mix into your biscuits, chalk?”
“Cattail pollen,” she says as she heads for the brush. “Get used to that, too.”
Tamsin
I’ve made them nervous. Beskin and Poia.
After Poia hit me yesterday morning, my mouth swelled so much I couldn’t close it all the way. I was spitting blood all day and through the night. And there was no way on this sorry little earth I was going to put anything foreign between my teeth besides water. So I didn’t eat yesterday. Or this morning. They snarled at me, saying they weren’t going to hurry for my sake this afternoon when I was begging for something to eat.
But that swirling nausea is back again, probably from swallowing so much bloody spit, and now this afternoon they’ve found me in the same place—curled on my dirty mat, my head clamped between my arms. The pressure from my elbows really does seem to alleviate the worst of the pain.
I hear them conversing outside my door, though I can’t make out what they’re saying.
“Oi,” Poia calls through the bars. “Tamsin. On your corn, would you prefer honey to salt?”
I’m just fuzzy enough to be surprised at this new twist of apparent compassion—I’ve always had a sweet tooth, and I’ve always been snacky. It was hardly a secret in court—I was always nibbling on glazed walnuts or bits of toffee carried around in my pocket. That Beskin and Poia have only fed me two salty, unchanging meals for weeks on end seems like just another form of torture, but then my brain catches up with reality.
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