I took my stolen horse, my stolen clothes, my stolen food, and my stolen knives and rode as fast as I could out of Almwyk.
* * *
For the first two hours on the road I see nothing, and no one. Pheasants call from deep in the grass and there’s the occasional rustling of something bigger, but the horse doesn’t seem to worry, so I don’t, either. Instead I keep my head down and my hood up, watching the road ahead of and behind us.
I stay to the sides of the road, riding in the grass where I can, anxious not to leave a trail to follow. As the sun moves across the sky and the shadows lengthen, I start to see signs of the refugees gone before us. We pass a lost wooden doll, its scarred face turned skyward, the painted eyes following us eerily. I see a shoe, a little larger than mine, abandoned, and wonder how it wasn’t missed and what happened to its owner. Who could afford to lose a shoe? Other things litter the roadside—paper, broken glass, bits of cloth—leaving a trail for me to follow and I do, using the remnants to guide me deeper into Tregellan and toward Scarron.
Because unless he, too, managed to steal a horse, Silas Kolby is heading north on foot, through a country he doesn’t know, and with the added need to remain completely concealed. So I’m going to ride like the wind to Scarron and find this girl first.
I have to. Before Silas does and they disappear into the Conclave for good. The only thing that makes sense is that she’s a philtersmith; I’m convinced of it. That’s why the alchemists want to find her so badly. Silas said they have limited supplies of the Elixir and my guess is it’s because she’s cut them off. Because of this bad blood between her and them. And now that the Sleeping Prince is here, they want to find her and reconcile.
Family first.
So I’ll beat him to Scarron; I’ll be the one to tell her that she’s in danger and that she should hide in the Conclave. I’ll escort her there. I’ll beat him, I’ll do his job, and when the Conclave are falling over themselves to thank me, I’ll tell them they can repay me by getting my mother out of the asylum, giving us sanctuary and a few drops of Elixir each moon. A small price to pay for restoring their philtersmith to them.
And then, when Mama is settled, I’ll make Silas Kolby regret betraying me.
* * *
In the week that I first met Silas, I also turned seventeen, and learned that the Sleeping Prince was impossibly still alive, and had woken, invaded Lortune, taken Lormere castle, and killed the king, all in one night.
It was also the week that we both realized Lief was trapped there.
I told my mother what I’d heard at the well, trying to stay calm, all the while my rib cage constricting until there was no space inside me for air, no room to breathe. She looked at me, then turned her face to the wall. And I left her, walking out of the house, walking into the woods, walking halfway to Lormere before I realized where I was. The whole time, the pressure in my chest didn’t let up, becoming a solid weight between my lungs, until I grew used to it. I told myself that he might be all right, that he was probably on his way home even now. That was the thought that made me turn around. On the long walk back I convinced myself he’d be there when I got home, that we’d passed each other in the woods. That we’d laugh about it. That lightning hadn’t struck twice. But when I got to the hut he wasn’t there. And neither was my mother.
I’d found her, half a mile away, buried in a pile of leaves, her arms shredded and bleeding from deep and jagged cuts. When I asked her what happened, she stayed silent, her eyes both wild and dead.
The following day I ventured back into those selfsame woods to find herbs, plants, anything that might stop the scratches from becoming infected. With the dark forest all around me, shadowed and secretive, I worried about everything, knowing something inside me, and in her, was broken, terrified it couldn’t be fixed. There was suddenly so much to be afraid of: poverty, illness, death. More death. Every rustle, every grunt, every birdcall caused my heart to try to leap out of my chest, uncaring about the bone and flesh in its way.
My hands had trembled as I tried to peel willow bark away from the trunk, the blade on my beautiful apothecary’s knife—the last gift my father ever gave me—now dulled, my nerves ringing with fear. Then I heard the telltale crunch of leaves behind me, the snap of a twig that meant something big was there, and I turned to find a hooded man approaching me, his body lowered in a predatory crouch. As I staggered back, pushing the knife out before me, he’d come to a stop, gloved hands held out.
“Easy,” he’d said, and his voice had sent shivers down my spine. It was thorny, if a voice can be such a thing, and curiously empty of any accent. “I mean you no harm.”
“Stay back,” I’d ordered, jabbing the knife forward to make my point. “Or I’ll gut you.”
His lips had pulled upward, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. There are people who have smiles that force you to smile back at them; Lief was like that. Then there are others whose smiles make you forget your name. There are smiles of comfort, and solidarity, and sympathy. There are people like Prince Merek, whose smile was a captive at the corner of his lips the whole time he rode through Tremayne, but which was never allowed to be free; his was a smile you’d have to work hard for.
Silas’s smile that first time was pure challenge; the curve of his lips was a dare.
“No need for that,” he said. “I thought you were someone else. I can see that I was mistaken. I’ll be on my way now.” He backed away, and I watched him go, my heart hammering in my chest, the tip of the knife shaking visibly.
As soon as he was out of sight, I picked up my basket and followed. I knew it was stupid, I knew I should have turned around and gone home, but I couldn’t stop myself. I needed to know where he’d come from, where he was going. During the moon we’d been living in Almwyk I’d grown familiar with the faces and habits of my neighbors, and it was too much of a coincidence, a stranger lurking in the woods, the day after I’d found my mother, scratched and in shock, that made me need to follow him. I wanted to know where the stranger with the wicked smile slept.
And I wanted a fight. I wanted someone to hurt because I was hurt, because Mama was hurt. Because Lief might have been hurt and it wasn’t fair.
So with my knife still clutched in my hand I followed him silently all the way back to the village, skirting down to the tree line to track his progress. At one of the recently abandoned cottages near the forest’s edge, I watched him pull the flimsy window made of the cow-horn strips that all the cottages had clean out of its frame and then climb inside the building, his long arms reaching back out to replace it. Straightaway I realized he was in hiding, a refugee of some sort, but certainly no one Unwin or anyone else knew about, and my suspicions grew. I approached the window cautiously, pressing my ear against it.
Then he was behind me, a hand over my mouth, and I dropped my basket, feeling the contents scattering over my feet, onto the ground. He’d known I was following him all along, had snuck out of the front door as soon as he was inside to wait for me.
“Nosy, aren’t you?” he said, pushing my face against the rough wood of the cottage, though with surprising gentleness, allowing his own, gloved hand to bear the brunt of it. His gloves smelled of mint and nettles. “What’s to be done about that, then?”
I tried to free myself but his grip was too secure.
“I’m going to take my hand from your mouth. If you scream, I’ll silence you permanently,” he said. “Do you understand?”
I nodded slowly, and he pulled his hand away, whirling me around to face him and pushing my chin up. As he did I raised my knife, pointing it at his throat. Beneath the lip of his hood he smiled again.
“You’re good,” he said and I had felt perversely proud of his approval. Then I felt it, something sharp pressing into a space between my ribs. His own knife, aimed at my heart. “But this time I’m better. So lower your weapon. Let’s be civilized.”
I did as he asked, and to my relief he did the same, pulling his blade away as I move
d mine.
We stayed still. I could feel him peering at my face from inside his hood, studying me, but I could see nothing of his, save his mouth, which was drawn into a thin, determined line.
“Who are you?” he asked finally, taking a step back and sheathing his knife, as I did the same. “Why were you following me?”
“My name is Errin. Errin Vastel. I thought … I wanted to know who you are.”
“I’m no one, Errin Vastel,” he said, his lower lip twisting as he pulled it between his teeth.
There had been something in the way he said both of my names that made me shudder, as though there was a curse in them, or a spell. There was an edge there, something to be wary of.
“You don’t live here,” I said. “That’s not your hut.”
“It’s mine for now,” he replied. “Why does it matter to you who I am?”
“I just wanted to know. This is the kind of place where strangers are a cause for concern.”
“From what I’ve heard, everyone in Almwyk is a cause for concern.”
“If Chanse Unwin found out …” I meant it mostly as a warning, not a threat, but his response came as a hiss.
“But he doesn’t. And he won’t. No one will. My being here will be our secret, unless you’d like me to tell everyone how we met. In the woods, you with a basket full of hemlock, and nightshade, and oleander.” He nodded to the mess at my feet. “It’s a hanging offense to gather them without an apothecary license, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you have a license, do you, Errin Vastel? Or am I mistaken and you’re the apothecary of Almwyk?”
I reddened, anger and fear vying inside me. Fear won. “No.”
“Well then, you keep my secret, I’ll keep yours. What do you say?”
What else could I say? I agreed, and I did my best to avoid the cottage he was living in.
But three days later I saw him again, back in the woods. It was after Unwin’s first town meeting, the day he told us that the Tregellian council would be dispatching soldiers to our village to guard the border, the day half the village packed up and left before they were arrested. While they’d made a long, noisy caravan out of the village, I snuck into the woods for what I thought would be the last time before the soldiers came. He’d been waiting for me.
“I need a potion from you, if you can make it,” he said without preamble, hopping off the rotting oak stump he’d been perched on. He brushed dead leaves and moss from where they clung to his cloak, casual, as though we met in the woods often, as though we were friends, his head tilted like a bird’s as he did. “A tincture of henbane. Strong as possible. I’ll give you three florins for it, and I’ll tell no one where it came from.”
“Why should I?” As soon as the sullen words left my mouth I wanted to bite them back. Three florins was a moon’s rent, and then some. Enough to buy food to supplement my foraging. Three florins was another moon alive. I’d expected him to walk away after my rudeness.
I was wrong.
“Because you clearly need the money. And I really need the potion. We need each other. It makes sense.”
I stared at him, in his hateful cloak, his stupid gloved hands, and I could feel him staring right back at me.
“What’s your name?” I said finally.
As he walked over to me I realized fully how tall he was, how lean he was. Last time we’d met, I’d been focusing on staying alive, but now … He reminded me of a silver birch, or a willow, a casual, insouciant grace to him, at home in the forest. He fit here.
“Silas Kolby,” he said, stopping a foot away from me. I’d held my hand out, and he’d looked at it, puzzled, as though the gesture was alien to him. My cheeks had flamed and I’d pulled my hand back, only for him to suddenly grasp it, his larger palm enfolding mine in a way that felt more like the sealing of a pact than an introduction.
It had taken a few weeks for me to shake my fears that he’d been the one to hurt my mother, but the nights of the first full moon after the attack proved it wasn’t him; he’d stayed infuriatingly himself, while she … It was pure dumb luck I’d taken to locking her in when I went out, to keep her from wandering and getting hurt again. It was pure dumb luck that I’d turned the key in the door after I’d given her supper, already half asleep and acting out of habit. It was luck that meant all she scratched that night was a door, and not me, while I sat behind it weeping as she called me names. During that first moon, when I slowly realized inch by inch that Lief was in real trouble, and that it was just me and my beast mother now, Silas was the one thing that kept me sane. He had an uncanny knack of appearing when I was teetering on the edge of something dark that I couldn’t come back from.
And I’d trusted him. I really had. I had no idea how much until he betrayed me.
Far to the west the sun sits low in the sky and I realize that night is coming, quickly and quietly. I slow the horse to a walk, pulling my satchel around and fetching out the map. Five miles riding toward the sinking sun to Tyrwhitt, but even if I could afford to pay for an inn with my stolen coin, it would be the first place soldiers would look for me, so that’s out. Tremayne is fifty or so miles northwest after Tyrwhitt, and we have to make it there by lunchtime tomorrow if I want to get to Scarron before dark.
I decide to press on, get as far past Tyrwhitt as I can before the sun disappears completely. Then we’ll have to stop for the night, whether I find shelter or not. It’ll be fine, I tell myself. It’s one night, and I have a thick cloak. It can’t be much worse than the pathetic cottage in Almwyk.
“Come on, girl.” I press my heels into the horse’s flank and urge her onward. As the sky turns from gray to violet, we pass the outskirts of Tyrwhitt and I get my first glimpse of the refugee camp in the distant fields. Kirin wasn’t exaggerating when he’d said you could smell it on the wind. It reeks of rot, and rubbish, and human waste.
I squint to see the makeshift shacks leaning against one another, fabric hanging between them to increase the shelter. There are mismatched tents made from various scraps, propped up with sticks. Small fires glow everywhere, but there’s little sign of movement and no smell of cooking on the rank air. It looks forlorn and forgotten. I can see no place to get fresh water, or anywhere for the refugees to clean and toilet themselves. It looks like a breeding ground for disease.
Worst of all is the wire fence around the encampment, flecked with rough-cut trios of wooden stars and wound with holly, the berries bright in the dying light. They look like drops of blood against the cruel coils of razor-sharp wire, and the sight of it is enough to make me urge the horse on. Is Old Samm in there? Pegwin? Gods help those poor souls.
We make it another four or five miles past Tyrwhitt before I finally call a halt to the day. I decide to camp away from the main road, and I dismount and lead the horse along a narrow dirt track. In the last of the light I see the horse’s ears turn back and it feels as though mine are trying to do the same, listening for danger. We’re surrounded on both sides by a small thicket, dense enough to conceal someone, and I decide that it’s likely as good as it’s going to get.
The track veers sharply to the left, and then a small, filthy-looking cottage, not dissimilar to the ones in Almwyk, looms out of the darkness ahead of us. I freeze, holding my breath and watching it, listening, scouring the ground for footprints.
I tie the horse to a tree and pull out my knife, creeping forward. There’s no candle or firelight visible through the glassless windows. The shutters stand open to the elements, despite the temperature, and I straighten as I approach.
I circle around, listening, looking in through the corners of the windows, my heart thumping, ready to run. When I reach the front door I see it’s ajar. Carefully, half expecting something to fly at me, I push it open, wincing at the creak. I wait for my eyes to adjust and then I step inside.
The small windows and twilight make it difficult to see anything at first. I move in farther and begin to explore. It’s somewhat like our cottage: tiny fireplace, dirt floor. But this p
lace has a single large, empty room and, unusually, a narrow wooden staircase leading up to a second floor. One hand still clutching my knife, the other wrapped around the bannister, I climb it slowly, expecting to hear the splitting of wood beneath my feet with every step.
At the top of the stairs is another open space, though this has a lumpy-looking bed near the window, a wooden crate upended to become a table beside it. The layer of dust on the mattress and the tabletop is thick, and the only footprints on the grimy floor are mine. It’s creepy, and isolated, but it’s indoors, and no one has been here for a very long time …
Making up my mind, I edge back down the stairs and start a small fire in the hearth, pulling the shutters over to hide the glow. I pray the chimney isn’t blocked. Then I head back outside, leading the horse behind the cottage, where I tie her up, murmuring an apology for leaving her outside. For her part she doesn’t seem to mind, nuzzling at me until I give her an apple and some of the water from my skin. I hate leaving the tack on her, but there’s nowhere to hang it, and I didn’t think to take a comb or brush to groom her, either. I loosen what I can and apologize again, and she watches me with liquid brown eyes, snorting warmly into my shoulder.
Then I return to my temporary home, bolting the door behind me.
I toast some of the bread and cheese, washing it down with the milk, enjoying it more because of where it came from, then I unpeel my towel bandage and examine my hand. I use a little of the water to clean it, then tie it back up. It still hurts, but I’ll bet it’s not half as painful as Unwin’s face. I play the moment again in my mind. I hope his nose heals crooked, and every time he looks in the mirror he remembers me.
When my eyelids start to droop I toy with the idea of sleeping upstairs, but decide I don’t want to cut off my exit. Instead I wrap myself in my cloak, leaving my boots and clothes on, using the satchel as a pillow. I watch the fire as it smolders, red and black, and I close my eyes. Please let my luck hold. I’ve had precious little of it lately. I don’t know who, or what, I’m praying to, but I hope they’re listening. Let me get to Scarron and find the girl. I’m not asking for a miracle. That’s all I need. Just, please, please let me find her before Silas does.
The Sleeping Prince Page 15
