by Hanna Howard
“We need to leave with the laborers,” he said in a croaky voice. “Even Polter has some of those, and they’ll all leave town before dawn to get a full day’s work in.”
So before even the landlord was awake, we slipped out of the inn and into the streets to join the small, shambling parade of sleepy-looking men and women filing out of town toward their various labors. No one so much as glanced at us.
“Linden, we need a plan,” I murmured as the ever-thinning crowd of workers dispersed into the fields and farms surrounding the village. “You said it’d be more dangerous today.”
He nodded. “Yarrow and I agreed to meet at an inn just below the northern pass, but it’s two days from here. I think we’ll be stopped before then.”
“How far if we cut through farms or the forest?”
“At least an additional two days. But I’d be surprised if they didn’t have patrols out there too.” He looked furtively around. “If we managed to commandeer a supply cart, we might go unquestioned . . .”
I glanced around as well and saw something large and trundling take shape on the road ahead, its hideous purple paint visible even through the gloom of early morning.
“Linden!”
He jumped and looked both relieved and irritated to find me smiling. “What?”
“I have an idea.”
The players’ carthorse was walking so slowly that Linden and I caught up to the domed wagon within a few minutes. We slowed to a jog behind it, and I grimaced at Linden before rapping sharply on the back door. After a moment, the upper half of the door swung open, and the same black-haired boy I had spoken to before looked out, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
His mouth fell open at the sight of us, and even though I had intentionally pulled my hood and scarf down, remembering what he’d said about sunchildren, my stomach plunged as he gaped at me.
“We met before!” I said quickly, lengthening my stride to keep up. “On the road! I was dressed as a boy, and you told me not to go into Polter, but I had to find my friend”—I gestured at Linden—“and now we need help. Can you help us?”
The boy seemed torn between terror and awe. “You—you’re that sunchild, ain’t you?”
“Yes. Please, can you help me?”
“Gareth, what is it?” called a woman’s voice from within the wagon.
“Some . . . people . . .”
“You don’t have to harbor us or anything,” I said, looking back over my shoulder so often I was getting dizzy. “It’ll be quick. Just—please let us in, and I’ll explain.”
He opened the lower door and stepped back, looking like he didn’t know what else to do. Three other actors were crammed inside the wagon—stuffed floor to ceiling with fold-down beds and tables, miscellaneous set pieces, and drawers bursting with bright fabrics—and they all stood in alarm at the sight of us.
“What’s going on, Gareth?” demanded an old man with fluffy white hair. He was staring at me with eyes as round as wagon wheels.
“They need our help,” said Gareth, sounding slightly more confident. He turned back to me, the eagerness I had counted on bright in his eyes. “What can we do?”
I forced myself not to look at Linden as I gave Gareth a warm, lingering smile. “We need to be disguised,” I said, feeling both relieved and guilty to see Gareth’s answering interest as he stared at me. “Completely, and very quickly. Can you do that? We can pay you.”
Gareth smirked at his companions. “Can we do that?” he repeated with a cocky wink. “Oh, I think we’re probably up to the job. Just you sit down, beautiful, and we’ll fix you right up.”
A quarter of an hour later Linden and I jumped out of the wagon as entirely different people, waving our thanks to the actors, and the rest of our money, as they trundled away—Linden tight-lipped and irritated after the kiss I had given Gareth in thanks, which had prompted the actor to vow undying silence and secrecy on our behalf. Neither Linden nor I recognized each other when the players had finished with us, so I felt optimistic that Iyzabel’s soldiers wouldn’t either.
Linden was sporting a false beard and black, bushy eyebrows, as well as a stringy wig, a straw hat, and a reeking pair of overalls the actors claimed they had found in an abandoned farmhouse. He had swapped his rucksack for an old grain bag, and his handmade shirt for a nastier one with some questionable stains. With his usual swagger replaced by the shuffling slouch that betrayed his bad mood, he looked every inch the downtrodden Volatian farmer.
I had undergone a more difficult transformation. Since being hooded and veiled would likely raise suspicion, I had allowed the players to dye my hair jet black with an indigo paste that had left it greasy and gritty, as well as cover my skin in a face cream they sometimes used for their productions. It would eventually wash off, but for now I was as sallow as Linden again, every last one of my freckles hidden beneath a layer of makeup that itched as it dried. I wore a pair of thick, foggy spectacles to obscure my vivid eyes, and a rather stained farm dress that had been stuffed with my own clothes in the hips and bosom to disguise my telltale boyish figure. It was a little awkward to walk in, but I decided an ungraceful gait would add authenticity to my new persona.
Linden was sour for the first part of the morning, but for me the effect was somewhat lessened by the absurdity of his false beard and scraggly wig. After a while his scowls started to make me giggle, and Linden’s frown gave way to a smirk.
“You look ridiculous,” I informed him.
“Well,” he said, rolling his eyes, “it’s too bad they only made one of us look silly. What were they thinking, making you so stunning after they’d turned me into this travesty of facial hair and grease?” His eyes fell on my hair, and he grimaced. “I still can’t believe they did that to you.”
“It’ll grow back the usual color,” I said, mostly to keep myself from regretting what I had done. Survival was far more important.
Now that we were alone again, I was increasingly distracted by thoughts of last night in the inn. I was almost as self-conscious as I had been at Gildenbrook, and Linden kept taking his hands out of his pockets and putting them back in again, as if he didn’t know what to do with them. I wondered with a rush of paranoia if he was having second thoughts about me. Our conversation had opened a door onto a new landscape of warmth and intimacy, but the night’s sleep seemed to have shut it, and I wasn’t sure how to nudge it open again.
We kept to the road, and our fears were confirmed as the day passed: dozens of horsemen thundered past us in one direction or the other throughout the day, sometimes in small groups, other times alone. They all wore some variety of Umbraz attire, though only a few bore the polished silver-and-black armor of the city. Several times, these soldiers stopped at the sight of us and jumped down to look for signs we were the people they sought. But our disguises worked like a miracle—especially after we found a pile of horse manure to rub on our clothes.
About midday, the sky lightened to a pearly, dark silver color that illuminated something I had been longing to see since we left Umbraz: the mountains. They were all the more overwhelming for the way they seemed to suddenly appear, massive and hulking on the horizon, the light having been too weak to bring them into view slowly over time. I stared at them over the rims of my thick spectacles almost constantly for the rest of the day, straining to pick out the peaks through the clouds. I couldn’t believe they would get even larger as we drew nearer, as they were so impossibly big already. My fascination seemed to amuse Linden; he kept chuckling to himself as I gaped.
“Why does no one know how beautiful the north is?” I said at some point, marveling at the combined effect the view, the fresh scents, and the bright air were having on my mood. “All I ever heard was that it was a dangerous wasteland beyond the Battlements, full of sickly, weak folk. If they’re sickly and weak, it’s only because Iyzabel’s starving them, not because of the weather.”
Linden grunted. “She keeps a tight lid on it. Has to, doesn’t she? The only people wh
o travel so far out are her guards, and they’re paid well to keep their mouths shut. Otherwise she’d have all her most loyal subjects running off to build country estates in areas where her Darkness has less control, and before long she’d lose her grip on them. They’d see that her nonsense about light and dark was just that: nonsense.”
When the sun began to set behind the Darkness and the mountains were lost again in shadow, Linden pointed out a cluster of buildings rising dimly ahead of us on the road. Outside the wall surrounding the town, a crowd swarmed before the gates.
“They’ve set up a checkpoint,” Linden said, squinting.
I groaned. “Should we take the long way around?”
“If they’re checking everyone entering the village, I’m sure they have soldiers surrounding it as well. Getting caught trying not to get caught would go much worse for us.”
He was right, but I still felt cold at the thought of submitting to an inspection that had been set up for the express purpose of finding me. “All right, then. Slouch,” I told Linden, doing the same myself. “Try to look more defeated. You’re far too confident for a poor farmer.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because I have this irresistible beard. All the lady farmers love a putrid, lice-infested beard.”
“And your bow, Linden . . . what if they find your bow?”
“What if they find your dagger?”
Another spasm of panic. Bows and arrows were common enough for travelers, but the citrine dagger would never pass an inspection. Linden’s agate-hilted knife was concealed in the bottom of his boot, making him limp, and I suddenly wished I’d opted for the same discomfort.
“Put it in your ample bosom,” he suggested. “If they do too much exploring, the game’s up anyway, Madame Falsehood.”
In the end I decided my padded hips were more suited to the task of hiding the dagger, and I secured it to my real hip as well as I could while Linden rubbed dirt into his bow to disguise its intricate carvings. When we joined the clump of people waiting to enter the village, Linden was slumping with convincing hopelessness, and I was chewing a fingernail with as bored and vacant an expression as I could muster behind my foggy spectacles.
The guards seemed to become more alert when it was our turn, presumably because I was a young woman, and they grabbed hold of me at once, looking me over like a horse at auction. I didn’t have to feign terror.
“Hey,” said Linden with an impressive blend of timidity and indignation, “that’s my wife you’re handling, sir.”
The soldier who had me by the arms gagged at the reek of horse manure and released me, but then seized a handful of my hair and peered down at it. Beneath another guard’s raised lantern, he rubbed the strands between his thumbs, and I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood, praying the dye had worked. Finally, with a repulsed look at the grease coming off on his fingers, the guard shooed Linden and me away. Linden immediately pulled me under his arm and led me through the gate, shooting looks over his shoulder that seemed to shame the guards for intimidating his poor, young wife. But I could feel his arm shaking.
“You could join the acting troupe,” I muttered, my legs like pudding.
“Nah,” he said, his voice a little weak. “They didn’t take a shine to me like they did to you. Of course, I didn’t kiss any of them . . .”
I wanted to laugh, but couldn’t quite manage it.
Our disguises were efficient, but it was the horse manure that saved us in the end. We passed three more checkpoints before we reached the road that split off up the mountain, walking through the night and the whole of the next day, and not one of the checkpoints detained us for longer than it took to rub a lock of my hair or swish it around in a bucket of water. Each time they seemed impatient to get rid of us, faces contorted in disgust, and I began to feel a perverse kind of fondness for the pungent odor.
By the time we had climbed the main road of a remote hilltop village and stopped in front of the pub Linden said was our destination, I was so tired my eyes would barely focus, even without my false glasses. But he squeezed my arm and gestured at the sign creaking on rusty hinges above the door, and my head seemed to clear a bit.
Chipped and weathered, it bore a sphere of yellow on a red field, with a number of thin yellow brush strokes stretching out from the sphere to the edges of the sign.
The same design Yarrow had taught me to draw when I was eight.
A sun.
“Welcome to the Rising Sun Tavern,” said Linden.
37
CHAPTER
When we walked into the common room, painted boldly in the banned colors of red, yellow, and gold and well-lit by many lamps, I saw that only a few of the circular tables were occupied. A toothless, wispy woman holding a cat sat at one, a pair of cloaked, whispering men at another . . . And three people I had feared I might never see again were hunched over tankards on the other side of the room.
I practically ran toward them, my throat tight. But they looked up at me with alarm—not the relief and joy I had expected—bristling and reaching for weapons, and I wanted to smack myself for forgetting my disguise. But Yarrow had frozen, eyes focusing on my face instead of the hair, the glasses, and the filthy clothes. I whipped the glasses off. Tears were already spilling down my cheeks.
Elegy was quickest out of her chair, and she hurtled into me so hard it punched the air from my lungs. I hugged her gray head to my chest, but my eyes were on Yarrow. His mouth worked furiously, and his eyebrows drew so tightly together that his whole forehead seemed to be wrinkling over them, like an old tortoise. His eyes had turned to liquid silver behind their round spectacles.
Finally, he pushed himself out of his chair and stumped toward me. Elegy stepped back and I felt like a fragile stem swaying alone in a strong wind. But then Yarrow pulled me against his chest, and I couldn’t tell whether it was him or me shaking with sobs, because we were both crying even though Yarrow never ever cried. And I realized that Phipps Nightingale’s indifference was no longer an open wound in my heart, because he was not my father.
Yarrow Ash was my father. He had been since I was six years old, when he appeared at Nightingale Manor and took it upon himself to love me as no one else ever had.
After a long moment, Yarrow released me with one arm and pulled Linden in as well. “That’s a fine beard you’ve grown, my boy.”
Linden laughed, and I heard Elegy say to Merrall, “They smell terrible.”
When we broke apart, I found Merrall standing beside the banshee. “It is good to see you,” she said, smiling. “But you will surely clear the whole tavern if you do not change out of those clothes soon.”
“She’s right,” said Yarrow. “Elegy, why don’t you take them upstairs and show them where to wash? I’ll bring some food up.”
Sitting in a blissfully hot bath fifteen minutes later, I scrubbed hard at the paint still coating my arms and face. Close as we were to the Northern Wilds, my thoughts now settled on my brother with the same looping repetition as a child learning to play a few chords on an instrument. Soon I would meet him; soon I would know what he looked like, how his voice sounded, whether he was funny or serious or brave or dull.
I fidgeted with nervous energy. Soon I would know whether he approved of me as his sister. Yarrow and Linden had become my family, but Eamon, I couldn’t help thinking, truly was. We had been born in the same palace, kissed by the same lips, sung to sleep by the same voices.
Once upon a time, we had both belonged to a family. And now we might belong to each other.
Between the heat of the bath and my restless thoughts, I was a little dizzy when I stepped out of the tub, rubbing a towel over skin that had returned to its normal, freckly state. My hair was still resolutely black, but the dye had been worth its weight in gold for the protection it gave us at the checkpoints. I stepped in front of the mirror as I toweled the wet curls—and went very still at what I saw.
There had been no mirror inside the Polter inn. I had not seen my reflection sin
ce the carriage ride out of Umbraz, and that had been a short glance in a dim coach. And though I expected the unfamiliarity of black hair, I could not stop staring at the total stranger now looking back at me out of the cracked, wood-framed mirror.
My face was thinner, and the cheekbones starker than before. My collarbones and the tendons in my neck were more pronounced, the soft, pampered contours replaced by sharp angles and lean muscles. I was fitter than I had ever been, but I couldn’t help noticing I also looked a bit too thin. Away from Gildenbrook, I was growing malnourished, just like the rest of the kingdom.
And though I was now used to the freckles on my arms and hands, seeing them on my face, neck, and shoulders—covering every inch of my skin—made me reel. My eyes, too, had dimmed to normalcy in my memory, but I saw afresh that they were like lit gemstones, twin whirlpools of glowing peridot and sapphire, struck through with veins of amber. And black though my hair was, the damp waves and spirals falling over my shoulders were distinctly firelike, flames made still.
I was beautiful, I thought in surprise. There was no vanity in the notion, because I felt no sense of ownership over the person in the mirror; I had almost never seen her before. But my reflection was so striking, so peculiar—even without the gold-and-copper hair—that it was stunning to behold. Not like the perfect specimens in Iyzabel’s court, or the girls I had envied at Gildenbrook. I was still as far from them as it was possible to be, and a long way indeed from perfection.
But—I felt a rush of exhilaration as I realized it—something had changed in me, and I no longer wanted to be perfect. I was glad to be what I was. Because I liked me.
A small victory, perhaps, but I was in a mood to take any victories I could get.
I gave the sunchild in the mirror a small, bracing smile and left to get some sleep.
38
CHAPTER
When we filed out the inn’s front door the next morning, a bright silver sky was already shedding misty light over the path up the mountain. I stopped at the sight. It was the lightest morning I had ever seen, and the range of color on the mountain—the hues of deep purple, rich charcoal and slate grays, shadowy greens and dark blues that comprised such towering heights—was a visual symphony. And the temperature . . . I was sure that this, at last, was what Linden had meant when he described true warmth: free and open, soft against the skin, and tantalizing as ribbons of gold borne on a lazy breeze. I wished I could stand in this spot all day.
