I was twisting the water out of my skirt. It was long, so as I twisted from the top, the hem, which I’d already wrung out, hung in the water.
“Um,” I said, frozen hands still trying to get as much water out as I could. “Washing?”
Aleksa shook her head and grumbled under her breath, then left her basin to come help me. “Like this,” she said. She dunked my skirt again, shaking it under the water until all the soap was gone, then twisted it as she pulled it out of the basin, pressing the fabric against the wood to get even more water out and hanging the drier part outside the basin as she moved up the skirt.
“Oh,” I said sheepishly. “That does make more sense, doesn’t it?”
She shook her head and went back to the bedclothes.
“How long have you been in Turia?” I asked quietly. I really wanted to ask why she was in Turia, but I didn’t think she’d answer that question.
Aleksa chewed on her bottom lip and kept her eyes down, focused on scrubbing. I thought maybe she’d decided not to answer, when she said quietly, “Two months.”
Two months. So she wouldn’t have any information about my father. If Aleksa didn’t want to talk, I wouldn’t force her to. I needed to focus all my energy on figuring out washing.
When I went back inside with my dripping, slightly sudsy bundle, Lessia took one look at me and started laughing. “You look like a drowned cat!” She handed me wooden clothespins to hang the laundry, then took a basket of folded blankets through the doorway leading to the dining room. Someone was sitting at a table just outside the door, a man who struck me as familiar, though I couldn’t pinpoint why before the door swung shut. I moved my soggy pile of clothes to my hip and went to the door, nudging it open, but whoever it was had gone.
“What is it?” Aleksa asked, pinning up the blankets in front of the fire on rope strung along the rafters.
I shook my head and clumsily followed her lead. “I thought I saw someone I know.”
Aleksa went back to her work. Perhaps I needed a good night’s sleep. Because I’d thought I’d seen someone with white-blond hair in the dining room. Enzo wouldn’t have sent Ren after us—he had his own kingdom full of trouble.
Aleksa glared at my crooked clothing, then came over and straightened it. “If you hang it crooked, it’ll dry crooked.”
“Oh,” I whispered, trying to mimic her movements, but she worked so fast it was hard to imitate. I scooted a little closer to the fire. We’d come so far. I couldn’t let anyone take us back to the palace.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked hesitantly.
She didn’t answer, just continued hanging the blankets.
I cleared my throat. “Do you think my grandmother could make the journey to Rialzo and down the cliffs?”
Aleksa dropped a pin and stared at me. “Do not tell me you’re going to Riiga.”
I pursed my lips. If she didn’t want me to tell her that, I wouldn’t.
Aleksa let out a deep sigh and glanced at the room where Yesilia tended to Ilma. “No,” she said quietly. “I don’t think so. I got out of Rialzo as fast as I could. You’ve the same chance of being swindled there as getting wet standing in a field during a rainstorm.”
I shivered and crossed my arms.
Her lips twisted as she studied me. “The passage down the cliff is a steep path built into the rock face. A full day of switching back and forth. It’s incredibly difficult to do on foot, and incredibly expensive to hire a cart.”
“Are there guards? Or can anyone descend?” My father had said they opened the border for the wedding, but…wait. The border had been closed two months ago.
Aleksa furrowed her brows and looked at me like I should know all this already. “Aye, there are guards. Last I heard, the bribe to cross was six golds—three at the bottom, three at the top.”
“Six golds!” I said, then lowered my voice. “How did you find such a sum?”
“Do not go there. Especially not now,” she muttered. She headed toward her sister’s room without answering my question. How had she gotten here, and why had she been so desperate to leave her homeland?
I followed her into the room. Already Ilma rested easier. Her cheeks weren’t so flushed, and she didn’t cough so deep or so often. But Yesilia…She sat low in her chair, skin pale, breath labored.
“Grandmother.” I knelt by her side. “You need to rest.”
She nodded feebly. “Aye, child. I do. I’m not sure I can continue traveling.”
“We can continue when the rain stops,” I said, taking her hand in mine.
“No, child. I’d thought to finish this journey with you, but my time for climbing cliffs has passed. And Ilma needs to see more summers.”
I swallowed.
“Don’t go to Riiga,” Aleksa said, squeezing her sister’s hand. “It’s madness. A prison.”
Prison? It was her kingdom, her people. How could it be a prison? Though the palace had started feeling more like a prison than a home lately.
“We have to.” I rubbed Yesilia’s age-spotted hand. “I have to.”
“Surely you can find what you seek elsewhere?”
I shook my head.
“I am sorry,” Yesilia said, closing her eyes.
I held her hand tighter. “It’s okay, Grandmother. I’ll continue on my own.” I wasn’t sure how, but I’d find a way.
“Dora tells me there are more Riigans here who need help,” she said. “I will write to your brother, alert him to what is happening. He can send a carriage for my return.”
I swallowed hard. The easier path was staying with her and returning home. The fire in the grate popped and the words of the poem whispered to me from my pocket.
I wasn’t sure I could do any of it—navigate Rialzo, make it down the cliffs, follow the clue to the map. But for my father, I would never stop trying.
“Why are you going?” Aleksa asked, staring at her sister’s hand.
She wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t trust me. “Personal business.”
She shook her head. “Riiga is too dangerous to risk for business. You may not return.”
A shiver raised gooseflesh on my arms. “Why not?”
Aleksa didn’t respond, just held her sister’s hand tight.
Trusting a Riigan went against what I’d been told my entire life. But it wasn’t about trusting a Riigan. It was about trusting Aleksa. Who cared for her sister as fiercely as I cared for Mari.
“My father went to Riiga and never returned. I must find him.”
Aleksa closed her eyes and pressed her free hand against them. “It’s too dangerous.”
I shook my head. “I must. He’s my father. I’d do anything for my family.”
Aleksa was silent for some time, then heaved a sigh. “If your grandmother will help my sister, I will help you get into Riiga. No more.”
I pressed the toe of my boot into the floor. “How can I trust—”
“I don’t know what you know about Riigans,” she interrupted, standing so fast her chair scraped the rough wood floor. “But we pay our debts.”
I looked to Yesilia. Her eyes were still closed. She patted my hand. “It’s your choice.”
Aleksa was hostile and didn’t trust me, and I wasn’t fully certain I trusted her. But I needed her. “We can leave at first light.”
Aleksa touched her shoulder and shook my hand in agreement, then sat and murmured to her sister, brushing her hair from her face and ignoring the rest of us.
Yesilia would help Ilma and be safe here until Enzo sent a carriage. And I would find a way to save my father.
Ren
A young woman and her grandmother should not be this hard to track.
It was easy enough to find the orphanage in Turiana, but from there, it was as though they’d disappeared. The headmistres
s told me about their exchanging clothes, apologizing that she had already sold off the fine fabrics.
I didn’t care about their silks—I was tired of crisscrossing the kingdom looking for Chiara and Yesilia.
And now I was stuck under a grove of trees while more hail and rain than I’d ever seen thundered down around me and my horse. Nótt was well trained and warm, so we weren’t bad off, but Chiara and Yesilia were out there somewhere. Had they found shelter before the rains came?
I’d searched all of the cities closest to Turiana, but no one had seen a girl and her grandmother. Three routes led to Rialzo. Chiara would take the fastest way to Riiga; she’d follow her father’s route. So I’d continued along the main road, getting suspicious looks and eating mildly edible food from inns, taken the wrong fork, and ended up in a town farther east than I’d intended.
Every time I’d tried to access the Medallion’s magic, it remained distant and cool. I fleetingly considered banging it on a rock—maybe it needed to reconnect with the land to be helpful.
The rain didn’t let up. The cap didn’t protect my hair, and most of the dye had washed clean. After shivering through the night and most of the next day, I was pretty sure there wasn’t any part of me left dry. Where were my high collars and fur-lined boots when I needed them?
I set out south again once the sun returned like it had never left, beating onto me, turning my neck red and soaking my back in sweat. If my body didn’t heal itself so quickly, I had no doubt I would have been laid up with fevers for at least a week. As it was, every movement took effort, and I fell asleep in the saddle twice.
Deep mud covered the ground. If Chiara and Yesilia had been stuck out in the storm, they’d be in dire need of help. My grip on the reins tightened and I pushed my horse a little faster.
There were streams aplenty here, with acres of rolling, empty fields edged with short hedges or tall, skinny trees I’d never seen before. Wooden houses sat tucked away from the road among patches of wide trees, their broad leaves more gold than green now.
Someone had to be helping Chiara and Yesilia. There was no way they could have made it this far south on their own, nor was it possible for their trail to disappear so completely.
Or—and this was a possibility I tried not to think about—something had happened to them.
The food from the palace had run out, and no one in the last village would sell to me—the price of being a roaming Hálendian. My stomach ached with hunger. I found a few berry bushes that hadn’t been picked clean, and I detoured into a nearby field for a brief lunch when I spotted some fallen fruit in the long grass under a wild apple tree.
By dinner, I regretted my food choice, as my stomach cramped in a different way. After I’d tossed my accounts by the wayside, my throat burned and my head pounded, draining my magic little by little, and I cursed every unhelpful Turian to an icy grave.
But I kept going. The way Mari had clung to me, the trust Enzo and Jenna had shown in letting me go after Chiara and Yesilia, weighed heavy.
The Medallion lay dormant against my skin—I wasn’t sure whether it was because I was on the right path or the wrong one—but doing something, as miserable as the trek was, was better than doing nothing.
I rested my horse for a spell, then continued on as the sun set behind the hills. I had fallen asleep in the saddle when I woke suddenly. Nótt stopped so fast I almost fell off him.
A gentle white fog had settled into the valleys of the fields, swirling over the furrows and ditches. A patch of trees that grew closer to the road shaded it from the dim light of the stars. The moon wasn’t out tonight. Everything was silent, except for my breathing.
But something had awoken me. With a jolt, I realized the Medallion was warm. Hot, even.
The scrape of a sword being drawn broke the silence. My senses snapped alert. I pulled my own sword and kicked Nótt into a gallop without waiting for the shadows from the trees to materialize into men. A breathy whistling was the only warning before something slammed into my arm, pushing me out of the saddle and into the grass at the side of the road.
My horse reared back from the man trying to mount it, the ground trembling with his hoofbeats as I bit back a curse and lay still. Fire throbbed near my shoulder where the shaft of an arrow protruded, its head buried deep in the fleshy part of my arm.
At least it wasn’t my sword arm. Well, my stronger sword arm.
A twig cracked to my right and I rolled, swinging hard at the man’s legs. My blade sliced into him and he fell with a cry. I lunged to my feet, stumbling once because of the shaft still in me. I swung at every blade I saw, frantically beating them away through a haze of anger and pain.
But the men kept coming. I had taken down three when I missed a block. The blade nicked my thigh. I grunted and spun, sinking my sword into the man’s gut. Another sword knocked into the arrow shaft in my arm. I stumbled as stars, far brighter than those in the sky, danced in my vision. Another man stepped in front of me. I barely had time to raise my sword before something hard slammed into my head from behind. I groaned and fell forward. Everything blurred and blackened, but I didn’t lose consciousness. The tingling of my magic fought the nick in my thigh, the fog in my mind, the fire in my arm.
My chest heaved as I tried to suck in air to keep me awake around the magic pulling me into unconsciousness.
A pair of muddy boots stopped by my face. Short boots, so not Turian. Not sturdy enough to be Hálendian. Riigan? I couldn’t tell in the dark.
“Kill him,” a voice rasped in an accent I’d never heard before. Not Riigan or Turian. What in all the glaciers were mercenaries from the Continent doing this deep into Turia? Hadn’t Marko kicked them all out months ago?
Mercenaries or no, I was not about to die on some desolate road. I launched my blade up into the man in front of me, pushed myself off the ground, and lunged after him, pulling my sword free and spinning to meet the man behind me. But there were still six men. Six angry men, one holding my horse. Blood dripped onto my hand from the wound in my shoulder.
Maybe I should have let Jenna accompany me. She’d never forgive me if I died.
A man in the back cried out, then fell. The two next to him turned their swords into the night. Both fell with a thud before they finished the turn.
“Show yourself!” one of the men called. The man holding my horse leapt atop him and galloped into the night, unwilling to be the next target.
I cursed and inched backward, sword still raised.
The man who had yelled fell next. I saw the silhouette of an arrow protruding from his chest. I stepped back, into the line of trees. The bowman remained hidden. The shaft in my arm knocked against a branch. I bit my cheek to keep from crying out.
The remaining two men looked at each other, then turned to run, but fell before they’d taken two steps, arrows in their backs.
I swallowed as silence pressed in once again. Energy pulsed in my arm, but the wound couldn’t heal as long as the arrow was lodged in it.
A tall cloaked figure dropped from the branches of a tree on the opposite side of the road and stalked toward me, bow lax at his side.
“Come out.” His voice was solid and sure in the misty night.
I left the protection of the foliage, careful not to bump my arm, and tightened my grip on my hilt to keep it from slipping under the blood and sweat on my hand. “Who are you?” I asked, stopping at the edge of the road. The man paused and slung his bow over his shoulder.
“You looked like you needed help.”
My arm shook under the weight of my sword. “Your arrow in my arm didn’t help very much.”
He didn’t back down, didn’t approach. “It’s not my arrow.”
I studied what I could see of the shaft. It was short and thick, with rough feathers at the end. The arrow in the back of the man at my feet was long with sleek fletch
ing.
I grunted and lowered my sword, wincing as I sheathed it. “In that case, thank you.”
The man took a step forward. “I’ve a camp not far. Can you make it?”
My horse was long gone. We were alone. The Medallion warmed against me, a whisper of caution echoing in my mind, but nothing more. I grunted and followed the man into the trees. My steps dragged as we trudged into a clearing, every step causing a jolt in my arm.
The man crouched by the remains of a fire, and flames leapt into the air. The flickering light illuminated his youthful features. He might have been even younger than me, but his eyes were ancient, older than they had any right to be, and he had dark smudges beneath them and hollows at his cheeks.
I slumped onto the ground across from him. My hand wrapped around the arrow’s shaft and I sucked in a breath. I hoped I didn’t pass out.
“Wait,” the man said, and knelt in front of me. I exhaled. I wasn’t sure I could make myself pull it out anyway. “Here.” He leaned me back and braced his knee against my chest, then drew a long dagger from his belt.
Curses ran through my head as he lowered the dagger. Caution, the Medallion had warned. I hadn’t listened, and now this man would gut me.
It didn’t matter what choice I made, I was always wrong.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but his knife didn’t slice open my belly or my neck or any other important part. Instead, he widened the wound the arrow stuck out from.
“Breathe,” he commanded, and I breathed loudly in and out. Fire erupted in my arm, every nerve screaming as he pulled the arrowhead out, but I breathed with him. In, out. He pressed my hand against the wound as blood bubbled up. “Let me find something—”
“I’ll be fine.” I gritted my teeth and sat up, keeping my hand over the wound. I stretched my back and neck, pouring in extra magic to heal it faster. My skin stitched together, slowing the flow of blood; the muscle below took longer.
The man studied me. I pulled off my cap and ran my fingers through my sweaty hair, remembering too late the dye had mostly come out. I slammed the cap back on, but the man had to have noticed.
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