The soldier doesn’t move. He stays facedown in the rocks, one of which bears a wet, straggled line of red.
Iano drops his bow and stumbles backward.
“Oh, Light,” he gasps.
Slowly, I rise from my half-crouch by the boulder. I wish I felt ashamed for running, but I don’t—staying put would have only earned me a quarrel. I wobble back toward Iano, who’s staring at Olito still slouched half out of his saddle. As we watch, the horse takes a few nervous steps down the path, and the soldier’s head bumps the boulder. With a slow, terrible slide, he falls to the ground.
Iano’s palms fly to his head, his lips white. “Oh, Light . . .”
I grip his shoulder to steady both of us. His frantic gaze jumps to me.
“He was . . . he would have shot you! But I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . . oh, Light . . .”
I squeeze him, fighting down my own panic. His gaze moves down the slope, where the second soldier is still unmoving on the rocks. There’s no sound from beyond the lip of the cliff.
Iano suddenly bends at the waist, his hands on his knees, gasping as if he’s going to be sick. I sink with him—my legs are reedy and trembling from my burst of movement. I peer up into Iano’s stricken face.
“I killed him,” he whispers to the ground. “I killed them both. Our own soldiers . . .”
Perhaps it’s because I know I can’t offer any condolences, but suddenly there’s something else I want him to focus on. I swipe at the ground below his face and drag my fingernail through the dirt.
ACCOMPLICE? I write.
“Who’s an accomplice?” he asks.
“Me,” I say. I point to the soldiers. “Called me . . .” I point to the word in the dirt again.
“They called you an accomplice,” he says, and then his brow furrows. “They must have had you confused with someone else.”
They’d seemed pretty certain, though, and there was no hesitation in how they should act upon it. They were ready to shoot on sight.
I rise and slowly approach the riderless horse, stepping carefully around Olito’s body. The horse tosses its head, still uneasy, but I grasp its dangling reins and reach for the saddlebag.
“What are you doing?” Iano asks.
I gesture to the bag, unhooking it from the saddle. Bringing it back to Iano, I open it and rifle through the contents. The topmost items are camping goods—packets of food, a tinderbox, a canteen. But below these things is an oilskin pouch, crinkling with parchment inside. I pull it out and open it.
It’s a stack of documents, all marked for the captain of the garrison in Pasul. I unroll the first and come face-to-face with Lark, the woodblock-printed image staring out in crisp black ink from under her broad-brimmed hat and raised bandanna.
Wanted: Dead or Alive
The Sunshield Bandit
for the Murder of Ashoki Tamsin Moropai, Abduction of Prince Iano Okinot in-Azure, and Attacks on Moquoian Industry.
Subject Should Be Considered Armed and Dangerous.
Reward: Two Hundred Crescents
Fifty Crescents for Accomplices, Dead or Alive
“Oh no . . . ,” Iano breathes, reading over my shoulder.
My own chest is locked tight with dread. Lark is being blamed not just for my faked murder, but for Iano’s disappearance, too? My gaze travels down the page, where there’s a splash of red wax at the bottom. Iano’s fingers jump to grasp the parchment, lifting it closer to be sure. He draws in a sharp breath.
It’s his mother’s seal—the stamp of Queen Isme Okinot in-Scarlet.
We lock gazes—his eyes are creased with shock.
“Not . . . ,” he begins. “I mean . . . just because . . . she authorized the bounty, it doesn’t mean that she . . .” His anguished gaze drops to my lips. “Does it?”
I shake my head, but it’s a worrying thought, that Queen Isme might have been the one behind my attack.
“She’s not a Hire,” he says firmly, almost angrily.
I don’t say anything. I can’t. Instead, I tap the phrase at the bottom, with the reward for accomplices.
“Vee,” I say.
“V?” he repeats, and a full five agonizing seconds pass before his expression clears. “Oh—Veran?”
I nod.
“I suppose this puts him at risk too—assuming he finds her.”
I nod again, release the bounty sheet, and rifle through the other documents in the pouch. They’re all copies, meant to be posted throughout Pasul. They’re hastily made—the woodblock was clearly carved in a hurry, with uneven spaces between the letters and smeared ink where they hadn’t been left to dry long enough. I close the oilskin pouch and lift out the one beneath it, also full of parchment. I have a sinking feeling in my stomach, a growing dread at why, exactly, the two soldiers recognized me as an accomplice.
I open the pouch and pull out the first sheet.
“Great Colors of the Light,” Iano blurts out in shock.
Sure enough, there’s my face, or as near enough as the woodcarver could come. It’s rounder than it appears now, more like it used to be when I was a healthy weight, but the most damning thing is my hair. It’s gone, just as mine is now, suggested only by a few sparse black lines on my head. At the bottom, just like Lark’s, is the queen’s seal.
Wanted: Dead
Accomplice of the Sunshield Bandit
Name Unknown
Moquoian National. Amber Si-Oque, Possibly Forged. Shorn Head. Mute.
Subject Should Be Considered Armed and Dangerous.
Reward: Two Hundred Crescents
We stare in silence. I fix on that one word at the top, the finality of it lending some sense to our soldiers’ panicked reactions. Dead. I’m not supposed to be brought in alive.
“What . . . how?” Iano finally asks, his voice weak. “How could someone know what you look like? How could they know that I gave you back your si-oque? How could they know that you’re . . . about your tongue?”
I turn the heavy parchment over and sweep the ground for a pebble. I roll it in the dirt and use it to form an inelegant scrawl.
OUR BLACKMAILER DID THIS.
It’s the only answer I can think of. The court had already been twitchy about the Sunshield Bandit, but the only person I can think of who would know these details about me, besides my now-dead captors, is the person who orchestrated the attack itself.
Which means they must know that I’ve escaped. And this is their way of getting rid of me before anyone finds out that I’m the ashoki who didn’t die.
Iano’s right—just because his mother’s seal is on the bounties doesn’t mean she’s the mastermind. But it does mean she’s been drawn into the lies.
It means we’re even less safe than we thought.
Iano scrubs his face. “We need to get to Giantess Township. We have to get to Soe’s, find somewhere we’ll be safe. This is getting out of control—someone in Tolukum is somehow one step ahead of us. I just hope they haven’t figured out where we’re going.”
I don’t know how they could, but we can’t afford to linger anyway. Together we pile the bounty sheets back in the saddlebag. For one terrible moment, we both pause, and then simultaneously look to the riderless horse.
Iano inhales.
“You get on,” he says, his voice tight. “I’ll get the rapier.”
Lark
The South Burr is running high.
I stand on the far bank, my boots inch-deep in muck, staring at the rushing, rust-colored water between me and the trace leading up to Three Lines. Last night’s thunderstorm was no typical desert shower—the grass along the banks is slicked flat and strewn with debris, and the water is still well above its usual course. As I watch, a cottonwood tree bobs hurriedly downstream, shedding green leaves along the way.
We never needed to worry much about flash flooding in Three Lines. The worst that ever happened was that the freshwater seep would overflow and send a creek down the side of camp, but since all our gear and stor
es were on the higher slopes, we were never in any danger. I see that telltale creek now, trickling down the grassy trace, but now I’m on the wrong side of the Burr, and what was usually a line of defense is a barrier.
It doesn’t matter, though. Flooding or not, I have to ford it. I have to get my campmates out of the canyon, out of the Ferinno. I have the barest head start. If we leave everything, we can get away before anyone comes looking.
And Sedge’s crossbow is in camp. So I can deter anyone trying to follow.
I shouldn’t have thought of the crossbow. Thinking of the crossbow makes me think of Saiph, and then of Rose, and then of the disaster all our lives have become. Saiph is missing, either lost along the road or injured, or killed, or captured by slavers, or in prison in Pasul—and I don’t know how I’m going to find out which. Short of following the track he was supposed to take south of the water scrape and then knocking on the sheriff’s door, I can’t figure out how I’m going to find him.
And Rose . . .
It’s been two weeks since the catastrophe with the slave wagon, the one that killed Pickle and wrenched the last good bit of Rose’s amputated leg below her knee apart. And it’s been five days since I left her with the others, feverish and unconscious.
I’ve grown sicker and sicker with dread this whole ride, afraid of what’s waiting for me in camp.
And I loathe the self-absorbed, manipulative prince Veran Greenbrier.
Jema stands with her head drooping over the rushing river, nose almost to the water. Poor Jema. I finally stopped to let her rest once we reached the shiprock, but it wasn’t enough, and I need her to keep going.
We have to get across the Burr.
“Rat,” I call. “Here!”
Rat lopes up the bank, leaving paw prints in the deep mud. I grab hold of his ruff and wrap my arm under his chest.
“You’re not going to like this,” I warn him. “Bear with me, okay?”
I hoist him off the ground, and immediately he whines and wriggles, smearing my trousers with mud. But they’re about to get soaked anyway, so I move forward and take up Jema’s reins. I maneuver upstream of her—if she slips, I don’t want to be in her path. With a cluck, I slosh forward into the thick, muddy rapids.
We’re okay, at first. The slope is gentle and the ground is pebbly. Rat gives a stringy coyote whine at my hip, and I clutch him tighter. Jema snorts, tossing her head.
“It’s okay,” I soothe them both, leading us farther out into the river. On a typical day, a ford here would barely get my knees wet, but just a few feet in, the surface is already over the tops of my boots. They flood, dragging my steps.
By the time we’re ten feet in, the water is sloshing against my thighs. Something—a branch or root washed free by the current—slaps my knee, and I lean into Jema’s shoulder. She tosses her mane, her nose high.
“It’s okay,” I say again. “It’s okay, Jema. Jema, come on . . .”
The water’s at her chest, and she doesn’t like it—she keeps trying to turn away from me, to move downstream.
“Jema,” I say breathlessly. “Jema . . .”
And Colm.
The name slams into me and I slip on the rocky bottom, clutching the reins to keep from falling. Rat’s claws catch my trousers.
A familiar voice enters my head.
You named your horse after Gemma Maczatl? The Last Queen of Alcoro?
I’d scoffed at Veran a few days ago, glad to use his affront against him, but I hadn’t given his comment much thought. The night I stole Jema was two years ago, in Teso’s Ford. There was a group of university officials in town for a lecture, and as I lurked around the back of the amphitheater, pinching coins from pockets, I heard that name dropped more than once. When I stole one of their horses, a big, burly black mare, I gave her that name.
I liked it. It felt fancy, felt right.
Felt familiar.
“No, no, no,” I murmur, gritting my teeth. I wrap Jema’s reins around my fist, trying to pull her along, but now I can’t get that other name out of my head—the one that often accompanied the first.
Gemma and Colm. Colm and Gemma.
Your uncle’s coming to visit . . .
Look, we got a letter from . . .
“NO.”
I drag Jema forward, trying to outrun these ghosting half-memories, trying to drown them in the raging water. The ground dips under my boots, and suddenly I’m up to my stomach. I hoist Rat up under my arm, his paddling legs clawing my shirt.
Those memories aren’t mine. They don’t belong to me. I’ve got no past in that lofty, untouchable world, a world of queens and kings and castles all built on the backs of innocent people. A world that trades in flesh and blood.
This was a bad decision, choosing to ford here. I should have continued downstream to the place where the current eases, but that would have taken me two miles out of the way. Two miles from Three Lines, two miles from my campmates. Two miles safer. I shake away that thought and take another step.
The water’s at my chest; I lift my chin above the dirty droplets leaping from the surface. Rat clambers over my shoulder, his wet fur sticking to my face. I can feel him shaking.
“S’okay,” I spit around the hair and spray. “Come on, halfway there . . . no, Jema—”
Jema’s had enough. She turns downstream, her ears flat against her skull. I haul on her lead, but with both her and the current tugging me in the same direction, my feet slide, and I pitch forward. My head slips under the surface. Rat’s claws scrabble at my shoulder, tearing my skin . . .
And then he’s gone.
I suck in a dirty mouthful of water, my body free in the rapids. I bounce off a rock, jarring my injured shoulder. By chance my toes catch the riverbed, and I fight to dig my heels in. They pop free almost immediately, but it gives me the chance to thrust my head above the surface, spewing out water.
“Rat!” I fling my soaking dreadlocks out of my face—my hat is gone—and desperately scan the water downstream. It’s a raging mess, foaming and plunging, branches appearing and disappearing as they tumble. I’m rushing along with them—rushing past the trace to Three Lines. In a moment I’ll be swept past and have to double back, losing those precious minutes . . . I give a wordless shout and start to stroke—I’m no swimmer, never had to be a swimmer in the desert, not since the lake, stroke from your shoulder, not the elbow, fingers into spoons, not forks, sweetheart—
My next shout is more of a gasp, and then I see Rat—he’s twenty feet ahead, paddling for the shore we started on, where Jema is cantering out of the river, shedding streams of water. But the coyote is already being carried past the horse, floundering in the middle of the current.
“Rat!” I take one long shoulder stroke downstream before something slams into my stomach, knocking the breath from my lungs. Something wild and waving punches my ribs—a branch. I’ve hit a tree lodged in the bottom, stopping my progress. Rat shoots farther and farther away from me.
“Rat!” I scream. The current is so strong it’s moving me sideways, along the angle of the tree. It’s shifting me toward the far bank, toward Three Lines, but now Rat is out of sight. I fight to free one leg from the net of branches. I nearly have it thrown over the blockage when from the corner of my vision, a figure comes barreling down the riverbank, near where Rat just disappeared. It dives into the torrent.
The tree I’m flattened against judders, and I go under again. The current pushes me down its length, every twig and knob finding a way to pinch or scrape or slap. I emerge, choking, and realize that I’m nearly in the first reeds on the far bank. My boots grind on the bottom, and I lift my shoulders free. Gasping, I wind my fingers in the reeds—bless you, cattail—and haul myself into the pebbly muck. The water tugs at my boots, but now I can crawl, coughing, through the weeds and up onto the bank.
I’m a uniform dirty brown, from my hair to my once-white shirt to my boots. I slouch for a moment, drawing rattly gasps of air, my ears still full of the rush
ing water.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Stupid.
My dread now cresting like a swell, I lift my head and stagger to my feet. I barely get my boots under me before I hear the last voice I want—or expect—to hear.
“Lark! Lark, I got him!”
From the willows staggers an equally-brown Veran, his sopping clothes hanging off him, hair plastered to his forehead. He’s clutching a bedraggled Rat in his arms. An anxious coyote whine rises over the sound of the current, and my dread flushes into something like relief.
Something, but not quite.
I glance across the river—Jema is safe, nosing along with the pretty palomino Kuree, both their reins dangling. My buckler winks on her saddle, along with my sword hilt. I look back to Veran as he stumbles forward eagerly, eyes bright.
“I got him,” he gasps again. “I wasn’t sure I could, but I learned to swim with Eloise as kids—your ma made sure I could . . .”
A searing, irrational bolt of anger flares through me, and I slap my thigh. “Here, Rat.”
Rat struggles out of Veran’s grip and hops toward me, panting. Veran doesn’t stop, picking up his pace to close the distance between us.
“Lark,” he says. “You have to let me talk to you. Please—”
I don’t wait for him to slow down; I take one step toward him, the heel of my hand out for his sternum, aiming to tip him off-balance and maybe kick him once he’s down. But before I can make contact, his hand flies through the air to clamp over my wrist.
Floodpath Page 2
