“I am worry he will not tell me if he is feeling bad,” I say. “You will help me see if he needs help?”
She quirks an accusing eyebrow and looks pointedly at my shoulder again.
“I am okay,” I say again. “We just get to Pasul, and then I am okay. Not far.”
She shakes her head, but her next letters on the ground are familiar by now.
THANK YOU.
“You’re del . . . welcome?”
She grins through cracked lips.
“Lark,” Veran calls.
I hand Tamsin my canteen and get up, brushing the mud off my knees. I sidle through the pines until I get to his side.
He’s peering hard at the drainage. His hood is up, and a few runaway curls are dripping water onto his cheeks. “I keep thinking I see movement down there, but nobody’s come up—shouldn’t Dob have cleared that bank by now?”
“He’ll have to rest his horse as much as us,” I say, settling down beside him. Rat doesn’t even twitch—if his sides weren’t barely lifting with breath, I’d be worried he’d died. “The movement you’re seeing could be water—there’s the chance that drainage will flood. All the better for us.”
“Hm.” He doesn’t look convinced. “I wish he hadn’t shown up. I don’t like being chased like this.”
“He’s not after you,” I say. “He’s after me. Once you get into Pasul, you’ll be fine.”
He turns his searching gaze from the landscape to me. “What do you mean, you?”
“What do you mean, what do you mean?”
“You’re coming into Pasul with us, right? I mean, you have to, if you want me to pay you.”
I shift. “I’ll come in a little ways. I’m not coming into the upper city.”
“That’s where Rou and Eloise will be.”
“Well, good. You get Tamsin somewhere she’s safe and comfortable. I’ll probably stay at the posthouse.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re the least likely to kick me out or turn me over to the authorities,” I say more sharply than I mean to. “Fire and sun, you really do make a terrible outlaw.”
“I’m not sure I’m technically outside the law yet,” he says. “But at any rate, we’re going to have to sit down and make arrangements for relocating your campmates.”
“Yeah, and we can do it at the posthouse. I’m not coming into the upper quarter, Veran.”
He’s still looking at me. I use his negligence as an excuse to stare hard at the rainy landscape. He’s right—there is movement in the drainage. It doesn’t look like water, but it doesn’t seem to be getting any closer, either.
“And after you get the money?” he asks.
“I told you back in Three Lines,” I say. “I’m done. You go your way, I go mine.”
“Back into the Ferinno?”
“Probably.”
“You could leave.”
“I’m aware.”
He pauses, and I feel this tangible buildup, a tightening of emotion, like some thread between us is suddenly pulled taut.
“You could come with me,” he says.
I lift an eyebrow, not looking away from the flats. “To find your lost princess?”
“No,” he says. “I . . . I know that’s what I made it seem like before, but . . . Lark, I don’t want you to disappear back into the desert again.”
“I’m dust in a hat and vest,” I say. “If I step out of the desert, I collapse, and then you’ll just have a pile of secondhand clothes to pick through. If you want my hat that badly, I can try to find you one.”
He doesn’t laugh. The eyeblack I applied to his cheeks this morning has rain tracks through it, slowly sloughing off.
“I just . . . what happens to you out there, without your camp? Will you just live up in that canyon by yourself?”
“No, I have to find a different one now, thanks to you.”
He still doesn’t smile. His sage-green eyes are crinkled with worry. “I could help you. I know you don’t want my charity, but I could help you get set up somewhere. I could help you get a job in Callais, or Teso’s Ford. Or you could leave Alcoro, Lark—you could go to Cyprien, or Paroa. You could train to be a ferry boat hand in Bellemere, or a shepherd in Wyddroan. You could run for mayor of Poak. Earth and sky, Lark, come be a scout in the Silverwood. My ma would kill for a recruit like you.”
“You forget I have a bounty,” I say, something weird and snaky slipping around in my chest at his high expectations. “Something tells me folk won’t be too keen to hire a wanted outlaw.”
“I can get it lifted. Blazes, I know . . . I know that sounds so conceited, but I can talk to Colm and Gemma, and they can talk to the Senate. My ma can talk to the Senate, Rou or Eloise can talk to the Senate. We can get it lifted. Especially since you helped with this. I think they’d have done it anyway, but now you’ve helped us, and you’ve helped me.”
“Colm wanted me to find that princess.”
“Colm will understand. He was just looking for a chance, that’s all.”
“No, I don’t think he will, Veran, and I don’t think you do, either.” I shove away images of trees and water and soft boots like his—a difficult thing when surrounded by all three of those things. “Even if somebody did want to hire a beat-up mule like me, you forget that I’ve been at the mercy of your friends before. That same system that’s protected you kept me pinned down in the ditch. I’m not just going to follow you up into the upper crust and pretend it’s not all a song and dance on other folk’s backs. I’m not going to take a job handed to me because now I have a friend with a crown, and leave everybody else behind.”
I know I’m being mean, but I can’t help it—what he’s asking feels too much like betrayal, too much like cuddling up to the very thing me and Rose and the others have been fighting against for so long.
What makes it all the more agonizing is that it would be so easy just to do what he’s asking. To trust what he says.
He’s looking at me, his curls still dripping over his bruised forehead and eyelashes and making more tracks down his cheeks. I want him to knock it off, stop shedding the vestiges of life in the desert so easily and aesthetically.
“Why is it your job to save everybody else?” he asks.
I shake my head. “You don’t understand.”
“I know,” he says, his voice straight and steady. “I know I don’t, Lark. I thought I did before, but I don’t. And I’m sorry that I made it seem like I had all the answers, that I could assume exactly what you’ve gone through. I never considered what my own privilege was built on, and I shouldn’t have tried to project my assumptions on you.”
My eyebrows lift despite myself, my gaze fuzzy on the landscape.
Hot damn. He was listening.
I’m not sure what to say, and as my silence stretches, he streams out a breath and looks down at the muddy toes of his fringed boots. The silver medallions on them bead with water.
“If you don’t want my help, I’m not going to make you take it,” he says. “But at least let me put you up in Pasul for the night, somewhere quiet where folk won’t notice you. And then . . . before we go our separate ways, I’d appreciate you sitting down and helping me figure out what I can do with the means I have. It’s about all I’ve got, Lark. Connections. Folk aren’t ever going to let me do much else. And I want to do some good with it—not just throw it around at charity cases like a lot of folk do, but actually try to fix a few things.”
“You can start with my campmates,” I say, my neck hot under my bandanna despite the wet.
“Okay,” he says.
A quiet falls between us, whispery with rain. Both of us are looking out at the desert, but I’m not sure either of us are actually seeing anything. My stomach is a tumbleweed, all weightless and unsettled. Lightning flashes, and at the edge of my vision, I see him pass his palm over his eyes to shade them. It’s a tiny motion, so natural it would be easy to think nothing of it, but my stomach drops. How many unassuming th
ings must he have to navigate day after day? A flash of light, a flight of stairs, a hot drink in his hand. And suddenly, instead of a picture of me skulking back into the Ferinno alone, I get an image of him sucked back into that insulated world, watching the current of life carry on without him.
He’ll be safer there, I reason. Safer where folk can watch out for him, where they can keep him steady and stable when he collapses.
Never mind that’s the exact opposite of what he wants.
Suddenly I wonder if a life beyond the Ferinno is as much of a betrayal as I’m banking on.
“You’re . . .” I begin, and then stop.
He sets his chin in his hand. “An imbecile,” he finishes for me.
“Not an imbecile,” I clarify.
He sighs. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
I snort, and he smiles, his gaze distant. The air is cool and threaded with the scent of water and pine. Thunder rumbles, and he closes his eyes, lazily, as if enjoying the sound. Like with the bats, his easy pleasure in something I usually dodge is infectious. I take a deep breath of rain and lick the droplets off my lips.
Over the patter, there’s a familiar click of a crank, followed by a whiz and a thump. A chip of bark jumps from the tree just over Veran’s shoulder, where a quarrel lodges, quivering.
I lunge sideways, slamming him to the soggy pine needles. He gasps in my ear, his breath washing my skin. It doesn’t quite cover the sound of a curse and the hurried rewind of a crossbow crank. Rat wriggles between us, trying to find his feet.
“Get Tamsin!” I scramble off both of them and haul Veran upright. I push him back through the pine trees, throwing a fast glance over my shoulder. I catch a flash of dirty leather through the trees and the glint of a mattock as Dirtwater Dob brings his crossbow up to sight.
“Fire and smoke.” I weave, and the quarrel skips wide. He had the same idea I had, only he actually has a crossbow. I keep my head low, recalling the movement down in the drainage—now that I think of it, it did have the look of a horse casually flicking its tail. Dob dismounted to creep up the side of the copse on foot.
Across the clearing, Tamsin’s sitting forward. Veran lets loose a string of frantic Moquoian, and her face blanches. She grabs his proffered arm and struggles to her feet.
“Who should take her?” Veran asks me, holding her upright. “You or me?”
“You,” I say grimly, snatching at Jema’s saddle. I draw my sword from its sheath in one long motion. “Get into Pasul, both of you.”
“What’re you . . . you’re coming too, right?”
“I dunno, we’ll see if I can avoid getting a quarrel through the eye.”
“You’re not staying here!”
“Go, Veran!” I sling my buckler over my fist. “If we break the trees now, Dob’s just going to pick us off.” I can hear him scraping through the pines, trying to find a place to shoot where I can’t fire back—he doesn’t know I don’t have my crossbow. I thrust my buckler into the small of Veran’s back and shove him toward his horse. “I can hold him off long enough for you both to get out of range. Here, Tamsin.” I crouch along Veran’s horse and pat my thigh. She steps up and struggles to slither over the saddle. I push her up the rest of the way.
“But you’ll come back!” He gasps it as a statement, almost a plea.
“Dammit, Veran, if I live, okay? Get on the horse so I can find a better position.”
He grabs my arm. “Tell me you’ll come into Pasul.” His sage-gray eyes flick back and forth between mine, creased and bright.
I grip his elbow around my hilt, in part to force him into the saddle. “I’ll come into Pasul. Wait for me at the posthouse.”
He nods and lets me shove him up.
“Get out of range.” I step back. “Don’t stop—don’t wait for me. Just go.”
He looks like he wants to argue more, so I lift my sword and bring the flat down with a slap on his horse’s wet rump. Kuree startles forward, and Veran swings to grab the saddle horn. And then they’re gone, tearing down the pebbly slope into the driving rain.
I don’t stay to watch them disappear. I break off to the right, away from Jema—I doubt Dob would shoot a good horse he has a high chance of stealing, but I’m not going to risk it. Rat, though, he would shoot—I’m sure of it.
“Rat, stay!” I hiss fiercely over my shoulder. He crouches by Jema, panting agitatedly.
The rain is falling harder, cascading through the waving branches. Timber bends and creaks. Thunder booms. Good. It smothers my footsteps as I run through the pine needles. My best hope is to draw Dob’s fire—force him to make a bad shot, and then rush him when he’s reloading. My shoulder burns with the weight of my buckler.
I see his dirty jacket through the trunks. He spots me half a breath later. With a yell, he swings his sights onto me. I dodge behind a trunk just as he fires.
“Sunshine!” he roars. “You’re mine!”
“Hack off, Dob!” I yell back. “Don’t make me cut you up like the other two back at Utzibor.”
Please.
But he’s crashing through the brush. I hear the rattle of quarrels.
“You took my whole crew away! Berta and Mosset and Goon—”
“You did that yourself, stupid!” I jump from my cover before he can reload and lunge for him—he hasn’t managed to wind his crank yet, and he brings the crossbow up to parry my swing. My sword catches the lathe of the bow and snaps the whole thing in two. He swears and throws the pieces to the ground. I follow through with my buckler—half grateful I don’t connect, my shoulder’s on fire—and then up comes his mattock.
“You’re done, Sunshine—you and your sorry bunch of runaways.” He heaves his mattock, and I dodge backward to avoid having to block it. “You’ve been the ratty queen of nowhere for too long.”
I duck another swing and make a quick strike of my own, but he wheels his mattock handle down to block it. The impact sends a hornet’s nest of pain racing across my shoulders. I skitter back toward the edge of the copse, gritting my teeth.
“What’re you going to do with the road, Dob?” I call, hoping to slow him down. “Pick off an ox here or there on the wagon trains?”
“Do you know what I could do if I could move beef from the plains through the water scrape? The Burr is wasted on you.” He swings again, expecting me to duck—I bend almost double, and my hat tumbles from my head. I make a strike for his boots, but he hops to one side, skidding in the loose pebbles. We’re out of the trees now, the flats rolling away and running with water. Droplets sting my scalp.
“That’s the thing about the sun, Sunshine,” he snarls. “It sets, and gives everybody else a fighting chance.”
“It always seems to rise again, Dob!” I lunge. He blocks, and with every ounce of grit I can muster I sling my buckler from the other direction. I catch him across the nose, sending a shock through my left shoulder. I gasp; he hollers. Blood spurts over the metal. I pull back, letting my shield arm drop, deadened. I skid down the slope a few paces, gripping my throbbing shoulder.
“Leave me alone, Dob,” I croak. “You and I are nothing—neither of us is worth killing.”
He swears, spits blood, and charges again. The glint of lightning flashes off his raised mattock. The pickax head arcs down.
In any other scenario, the higher ground might have saved him.
I hate myself.
I sling my buckler up again, and just like outside Utzibor, the pointed end of his mattock punches straight into it. The pain that follows is as bright and blinding as the lightning, but unlike last time, I’m ready for the follow-through. With his mattock still buried in my buckler, I wrench my left arm down. He lurches forward, pulled by his grip on the handle. Letting raw pain take the place of regret, I swing my sword in a crisp arc to meet his bared neck.
It’s not a clean slice. My blade lodges where the workings of his throat must meet bone. Blood sprays. I turn my face away. My fingers loosen on my buckler at t
he same time his fists open on his mattock. There’s no sound—no moan or cry. My sword slides from my grip as he crumples forward, staining the ground red beneath him. Unable to come to a rest on his stomach, my hilt forces him over on his side, where he lies, motionless, save for a final death tremor in his hands and the still-flowing blood from his nose. It crawls upward along his cheeks, following the downward slope of his body on the hill.
This rotten, nameless hill in the middle of nothing, sucking up his blood and breath and juices. The storm will wash his life down the rills and slots like it never was, and a hundred circles of the sun will bleach him dry, and the horde of teeth and beaks will scatter the rest.
I bend double, my stomach roiling, intending to put my hands on my knees, but my left shoulder gives at the first touch of pressure, and I arc upright. I throw my head back to the sky. Rain thumps off my cheeks, my eyes, my tongue, because my mouth is open and before I realize it, I’m yelling upward. I don’t know what. I don’t know why. It’s just an ugly block inside me that comes billowing out at the raging storm.
The taste of soot washes my tongue—my eyeblack is sloughing off, probably along with the grit of twenty years, making muddy tracks down my skin. It feels like shedding armor. Water seeps under my locks and trickles along my scalp. I want to tear my clothes off, bare all my skin under the deluge, let it saturate the dirt in my veins until I run clear.
But I don’t. I have places to be.
Places that aren’t here—not anymore.
I look down—the rain has darkened the sand around Dirtwater Dob so his blood is barely distinguishable. My buckler, too, is free of streaks, now with two square holes punched into the curved metal. I almost leave it—drop it alongside my sword embedded in his neck, but that seems premature, and anyway, it’s as blatant as carving my name alongside the death wound. I step forward, light-headed, feeling a little drunk, and tug the blade from his neck. He follows the pull, like he’s getting ready to get back up again, but finally the sword comes clear, and he falls back to the ground. My stomach bubbles, sour. I wipe the blade on his sleeve.
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