Through watery eyes she saw Caillin MacRennie and her uncle exchange glances. Jilly, lounging in a chair nearby, perked up, clearly sensing a secret. Even Perkins stopped drawing maps to look at her uncle, expectant.
“Everyone deserves to know the truth,” Caillin MacRennie said. “The lasses should know what’s becoming of our work.”
“What is becoming of our work?” Jilly was on her feet now. She prowled over to the table to stand at Anthea’s shoulder.
“We reckon that over half of the medicine and supplies we drop off goes unused,” Uncle Andrew said bluntly. “Some places don’t even let us drop it. They chase our men away, threatening them if they leave so much as an eyelash on the road, let alone a package.” He sighed.
“I’m sure Dr. Rosemary can wave her samples goodbye. I wondered if we should wait for the king to make an official announcement … but Queen Josephine’s letter arrived first, and she gave us the go-ahead …” He smiled faintly. “She wants to believe people will get used to horses as badly as we all do, but I just don’t think it’s going to happen.”
“But they’re wearing uniforms,” Anthea said.
“It doesn’t matter, Thea,” Uncle Andrew said. “Think of how you felt when you first came here. The Coronami fear horses far too much.”
“The king has done his work well,” Perkins said bitterly.
“What do you mean?” Anthea said. “He’s made announcements, he’s trusted us to deliver coded messages! He is just too sick to make an official statement about the medicine …”
She trailed off, seeing Perkins shake his head, and Uncle Andrew and Caillin MacRennie exchange looks.
“Sandwich teapot bunny slippers?” Perkins said with a sneer. “Biscuit dragon turnip stew? Those weren’t real messages. They were just a big test. Which we failed.”
“What?” Jilly screamed it in Anthea’s ear.
Anthea was too shocked to do more than slide sideways in her chair, however. Jilly used this as an invitation to cram herself into the seat next to Anthea, one arm squeezing her cousin’s neck.
“What are you talking about?” Jilly demanded.
“You think I hate everyone,” Perkins said. “And you might be right. But it’s with good reason.” He picked up some papers on the table and rolled them into a tube, smacking it into his palm over and over again.
“The king wanted to make sure that we were reliable, and to test our speed and accuracy and all those things,” Uncle Andrew said before Perkins could open his mouth to release what was sure to be a violent rant.
“Which we knew,” Andrew said pointedly. “What we didn’t learn until very recently was that it was all a test. We never were given any real messages. And the king decided after only a week that the cost of feeding riders and horses was greater than our usefulness.”
“A week?” Anthea was aghast. “We were living rough for months!”
“I bet the queen made him keep us working,” Jilly said dully.
“Yes,” Uncle Andrew said shortly. “Josephine hoped that he would come around eventually. But I don’t think he has. I think he’s pretending to be sick, or too busy, to answer my letters now, which is why I didn’t wait to begin distributing medicine.”
“Now I hate everyone, too,” Jilly said to Perkins.
“Except the queen,” Anthea said, loosening her cousin’s grip on her neck.
“Except her.”
“I had no idea they would hate us so much they would refuse medicine,” Anthea went on. “That’s … insane.”
“It’s not so much the medicine as the way of it,” Caillin MacRennie said. “The vaccines are so new … people are wary of it. Don’t like needles.” He shrugged. “Then somebody on a horse rolls up, with a bag of needles, says they want your blood in exchange for medicine that takes more pokes and prods to give out … well!”
“I still hate everyone but the queen,” Jilly said.
“And me,” Anthea said.
“And you. And everyone in this room.”
“Do you think Major Gregory will be all right?” Anthea had to change the subject. It was just too depressing to think of all the time and medicine and work wasted. “I think that was worse than the time I got shot.”
“If he doesn’t get an infection, he’ll be fine,” her uncle said.
“A collapsed lung,” Perkins broke in. “A smashed rib—”
“He’ll be fine,” Andrew repeated.
“There’s no sense coddling them, Commander,” Perkins continued, with a look on his face like a man prodding a bear with a stick.
“I’m not coddling them,” Uncle Andrew said in icy tones. “I’m coddling myself. Trying to convince myself that my life’s work hasn’t been completely in vain. That the people of Coronam aren’t going to try and kill us when we’re attempting to save their lives.”
“It’ll take the southerners a while to get used to us,” Caillin MacRennie said in an attempt to soothe Uncle Andrew.
“Speaking of southerners,” Perkins said, even gloomier.
“Shut yer flap,” Caillin MacRennie barked at the man.
“Kronenhof? Are we at war?” Jilly’s face was puckered with worry.
“Is it happening?” Anthea’s voice squeaked.
“Possibly,” Uncle Andrew said.
“The horses, on a battlefield?” Anthea felt her stomach drop.
“You know that they’ve been trained,” her uncle reminded her.
“If Florian … any of them … were killed.” Anthea could barely say it.
“Don’t worry,” Perkins said. “People won’t take medicine from us, they’re not going to let us fight.”
“It does seem unlikely that Gareth would send us to war,” Uncle Andrew said
“We’re finally at war?” Finn came into the room, holding a letter in his hand.
“No,” Andrew said.
“We should be so lucky,” Jilly chimed in. Anthea jabbed her with an elbow.
“Ow!”
“That’s not lucky,” Anthea whispered.
“Um, all right,” Finn said, confused. “I just … I have something I need to do first.”
“What is it?” Andrew said.
“It’s from the queen,” Finn explained. “She wants me to carry medicine personally to her home village.
“Her real home village.”
14
THE SHEPHERD’S HUT
Anthea wrapped her long coat around her tightly. Snow was falling, and the treeless stretches of the West Country had allowed the wind to whip the earlier snows into a sculpted landscape like a rumpled linen sheet. It had been icy cold, but the snow was somehow warmer, which made Anthea deeply suspicious. She had heard that before you froze to death, you felt warm again. She didn’t think it had reached that point yet, but it was surely just a matter of time.
They were in the middle of nowhere, in the winter, and Anthea had volunteered to stay there alone. Jilly was just a little farther up the road, well within distance for Florian to call out to Caesar without straining. And Finn was there, with Constantine, and would be within distance of the Way as well. Or so they hoped.
“Are you going to be all right?” Finn asked, his face anxious and rosy with the cold.
Anthea looked around. They were standing in front of a three-sided shelter that shepherds used in the warmer months. Anthea had a folding cot and blankets, food for herself and the horses, and Finn had started a fire for her in the smoke-blackened corner of the shelter with the peats they had found stacked nearby.
“It’s horrifying,” she said honestly. “If Miss Miniver, my old schoolmistress, saw me, she would faint.”
She started to smile, and then it faded.
Anthea was trying very hard not to be jealous of Finn. She waited every day for a letter from the queen, for news, for words of encouragement, for a special mission just for her. She got letters, sporadically, but none containing deep secrets, or orders for her to ride south and rescue anyone. She had argued wit
h Uncle Andrew about taking medicine to Bell Hyde, even though the queen had told her that she and the princesses were well enough and not to come.
So it had been shocking, and more than a little hurtful, that the queen had chosen to tell Finn her secret. The fact that she had authorized Finn to tell Anthea and Jilly, Andrew and Caillin MacRennie only softened it a little. Why did Finn get to be the first one?
According to the queen’s official biography, she was from a village called Brambleton, in the northwest, just a few miles south of Camryn and its fabled castle. She had spent the modest inheritance from her parents’ tragic death to go to a Rose Academy in Blackham, and come to the newly crowned king Gareth’s attention when she had become the youngest Rose Maiden to his mother, Dowager Queen Louisa.
According to Queen Josephine’s letter, she was really from an obscure village, Upper Stonesraugh, a hidden community of Leanans south of the Wall. The whole village had taken up a collection to send her to Blackham, hoping that as a Rose Maiden she could plead their cause to the outside world.
But things had turned out a bit differently, she had written. Because she had risen so far, so fast, she had never found any friends that could be trusted with her secret. In person the dowager queen, her mother-in-law, was far from the grandmotherly lady she had seemed to be at official functions. And the king? All Queen Josephine would say was that she had never summoned the courage to tell her husband where she was from.
But now the villagers of Upper Stonesraugh had written to her, begging for help, because the Dag had reached even their secluded cottages, and they didn’t know where else to turn. They had risked so much in sending her the letter, and she, in turn, hardly needed to say that she was risking a great deal in telling Finn her secret.
The most comforting part of the letter was at the end, where Queen Josephine assured them that she had already had ring pox after nursing her oldest daughters through it several years ago. It was agreed that Finn, Anthea, Jilly, and Caillin MacRennie would take medicine south, with only Finn going to the village itself so that they could conceal their real mission under the guise of making deliveries all along the road.
Finn looked around helplessly. They were knee deep in snow, and the shepherd’s hut looked like a strong wind might take the roof right off.
“No, you should come with me,” he said. “I can’t—this just feels like a bad idea.”
“We left Jilly by herself,” Anthea pointed out.
“Jilly’s … Jilly,” Finn said. “She can take care of herself. I’m mostly worried that she’ll shoot anything that moves, and accidentally kill some shepherd looking for a missing lamb or something.”
“You don’t think I can take care of myself?”
Anthea was offended. She could ride and shoot, had been caring for over a dozen horses on her own the last few weeks, knew how to light a fire and cook over it, and had learned how to administer a vaccine for both horses and humans. When Dr. Rosemary had taught her how to take samples and give inoculations, she had confessed that she hadn’t expected the daughter of Genevia Cross to be so …
“Intelligent,” Dr. Rosemary had finally said, after a long pause. “And yet compassionate.”
Anthea had just looked at her, wide-eyed.
“You knew my mother?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Dr. Rosemary had said. “And that is why I was so reluctant to work with you when I first came here. I was in fact shocked that the queen would allow you to be here, knowing who your mother is. But you have proven yourself time and again, and I’m sorry I wasn’t more trusting in the beginning.”
“Oh, thank you,” Anthea had said stiffly, and concentrated on pinching and poking with the needles.
Finn grabbed her gloved hands. “I meant … I wish you didn’t have to,” he said earnestly. “I wish … I worry … I just …”
Now both of their faces were red, but it was not from the cold. Snow was falling thick and fast, coating Finn’s blond hair and the shoulders of his gray coat. He needed to leave, or he would be finding his way through the snow to a strange village after the sun set.
Greatly daring, Anthea leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then pulled her hands away.
“Where is your hat?” she said. “And brush the snow off your head before you put it on!”
She fussed around, brushing the snow off Marius and checking the straps that held his supplies in place. Naturally she didn’t go near Constantine, who was standing to one side, watching her with suspicion.
“Make sure you stay warm, and keep to the road, and if you can’t see the road, promise me you’ll stop for the night,” she babbled.
“I will, I will,” he said, also babbling. “I’m just, oh, here’s my hat.”
He took a ribbed gray stocking cap out of his coat and pulled it on, after shaking the snow off his hair. Anthea realized that she had knitted that hat; it was the one thing she knew how to knit. She had put it in the warm clothes box in the main hall for anyone who needed it, atop a stack of Jilly’s lopsided mittens and Miss Ravel’s beautifully cabled scarves. She decided not to say anything about it, since it was already awkward between them, suddenly. But then she caught Finn’s eye as she looked away from his hat, and he gave her a slightly crooked smile.
He knew.
“Hurry,” she said to him. “And let me know as soon as you get there.”
“I will.”
He brushed off Con’s saddle and swung himself up. Taking the herd stallion, the king of the Leanan horses, out of Leana and into what was essentially enemy territory was a great risk. Finn had done it once before, in order to rescue Anthea, and the weeks that he and Con had spent in Bell Hyde had made everyone at the farm very nervous.
But now, because of the letter from Queen Josephine, he was doing it again. She and Finn were distant cousins, though they still weren’t sure how distant or where their families had gotten separated. Finn’s family, as far back as anyone knew, had lived north of the Wall since King Kalabar had built it. But although the queen had been born a magTaran, she was at least the seventh generation of her family raised in Upper Stonesraugh, where Finn was now headed.
Anthea stood in the snow and waved to him until he was out of sight. She knew she didn’t need to, she knew it was silly, but she did it anyway. Then she trudged around her small campsite and got ready for the night.
Florian and Leonidas would fit in the shelter, but just barely. She had their saddles off and shoved under the cot, and blankets draped over them. She and Finn had tied their reins inside the shelter, with their rumps sticking out the back, as a temporary solution, but now she did a better job of it. She took their bridles off so that they didn’t have to try and eat around the bits, and then, seeing how close they were to the fire, moved everything around again.
She ordered them out for a moment and then pushed the cot across the little room to the fire. Then she brushed the snow off their blankets and brought Florian and Leonidas back inside, so that they were on the opposite side and would have to leap over her and her bed to get to the fire. She took some rope and tied it across the open front of the shelter to make a rough fence, and made herself a pancake for dinner while the horses munched on their feed in the other corner.
Beloved? Florian twisted his neck in the small space and nibbled at the shoulder of her coat. She Who Is Called Jilly wishes to report for the night. She says that there is nothing left to do but sleep, and so she will sleep.
Excellent. Tell her I am at a shepherd’s hut and Finn has gone on to the village.
She says that she thinks the old tower she is in is haunted, but she is prepared to shoot any ghosts she sees.
Tell Caesar to tell her not to shoot anything unless she is sure it is a dangerous man or a wild animal!
Caesar says that she says that she knew you would say that.
Tell her I mean it.
Anthea settled down to try and sleep. Just as she thought she might actually be drifting off, ful
ly dressed with blankets piled atop her and her trusty coat wrapped tight around her, Florian nudged her with his nose and his mind.
Beloved? I have received word from Constantine.
Yes? Are they all right?
They have reached the village.
And? Did people welcome them? Are they all right?
Anthea sat up on her cot, pulling the blankets to her chin against the cold.
All he has said was that they reached the village.
Anthea was wide awake then. Florian could not get anything else out of Constantine or Marius. She asked Florian to pass the word along to Jilly’s horses, but he said that they were all asleep. Was Constantine asleep? Was that why he did not respond? Florian wasn’t sure. He reached out to Finn directly, at Anthea’s urging, even though it was considered poor manners.
“Manners be hanged,” Anthea declared. “You ask Finn if he’s all right, right now!”
Florian was quiet for a long time. Anthea stared into the embers of her peat fire and waited.
Beloved?
She put out a hand in the dark and felt Florian’s nose.
Yes?
The Now King says that you must wait here. Do not come after him. It will be fine.
Fine? What does that mean?
He is not answering now. That is all he said.
Anthea didn’t sleep the rest of the night. Florian and Leonidas, exhausted from their days of travel, let their heads hang and their hips go slack and went to sleep, while Anthea sat up in her blankets, her coat collar around her ears and her back uncomfortably pressed against the rough stone wall of the shelter.
Now that Finn was there, Anthea had time to think of all the things that might go wrong, if they hadn’t already. They had talked at length about what to do if someone shot at them, or tried to destroy the vaccines instead of accepting them. But they hadn’t talked about how long to wait for each other, or what to do if the messages passed through the Way seemed too abrupt or vague.
Anthea wished now that they had come up with code words. Certain phrases that meant all was well, or that it was slightly suspicious, or that she should ride back to a place where Florian could reach to the horses at the farm.
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