“Is that the only one?” he prompts. “Or am I still just supposed to cut the sass?”
Condition one is you cut the sass, I’d told him one week ago, when I stood over him in Three Lines, hesitantly agreeing to accompany him to Utzibor. Back when my life was mine, and he was simply a means to an end.
“I guess . . . for now.”
“Got it.”
He stays on his back, eyes closed and fingers laced over his chest.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
His fingers flicker skyward before settling down again. “Oh, sure. It was only the most terrifying moment of my life, that’s all.”
“The most terrifying?” I repeat. “Veran, you’ve been shot at by multiple crossbows. You rode out into the desert alone to be robbed. You smashed a bandit with a pickle jar and ran into a burning building. And that’s just in the last few days. What about the time you fell off the walkwire at home?”
His eyes fly open, his gaze still up at the sky. “Yeah, but all those times, I was only responsible for my stupid self! I got myself into those messes, and the only life they impacted was mine! But it wasn’t my life on the line this time.” He rubs his arm over his face. “I just . . . earth and sky, Lark, you have to understand, I’ve spent my life wishing I could do the things I read about, and then when I’m finally faced with the opportunity—”
“You did just fine,” I finish, bewildered. “You succeeded. You dug a seep in one of the meanest places on earth and dragged me back from the edge of dehydration.”
“While panicking out of my mind.”
“Who says everybody else doesn’t panic in the same kind of situation?” I ask. “When you collapsed up on the ridge the other day, I was shouting a blue streak—at you, at Rat, at the sky, at myself. Taking charge of someone else is scary. Maybe the stuff you read leaves those parts out.”
He heaves a shaky sigh and flops his arm over his eyes. “Well, at any rate, don’t do it again. I don’t think I can take it.”
“I won’t. I said we’re getting across the water scrape, and we’re getting across. How much time did we lose, do you think?”
“Two hours, maybe. The sun’s getting low.”
“We’ll rest until it goes down, keep drinking what’s in the seep. Then we’ll keep going. That is, if you think you can.”
“Yeah, give me a little while.”
“All right. Hey.” I shift my leg until I can nudge him with my foot. He picks up his arm to look at me. “Thanks. I mean it. You saved my life.”
His green eyes flicker. “Well, you saved mine. A couple times, now.”
“Let’s not keep score, okay?” I reply. “I’m trying to say thank you.”
He turns his head to face the sky again and closes his eyes. “You’re welcome, then. Please don’t make me do it again.”
“Don’t worry,” I say firmly. “I won’t.”
Veran
It’s the cold that wakes me. In the Silverwood, the humid air holds on to all the day’s heat, leaving an August dawn just barely cooler than noontime. But out here in the dry water scrape, the morning cold is as persistent as the midday heat. I shiver. Without a cloak or bedroll, the only warmth comes from Lark’s back pressed against mine, and Rat burrowed between our legs.
I ache all over, but it’s the muscly, twinging ache from hard walking, not the deep-set, weary ache that sometimes signals a seizure. My forearms burn and my hands sting from digging an arm’s length into the dirt the previous afternoon.
Walking last night was barely easier than it was during the day. The cool darkness was a blessing, but the land that seemed so flat and featureless in daylight became a maze of surprise holes, rocks, brush, and hummocks. The moon was nearly full, but it rose late, and while the stars washed the sky into pockets of purple and indigo, there was barely enough light to avoid obstacles. We moved slowly, dazedly, each of us falling more than once.
Carefully, I shift, leaving the warmth of Lark’s back. I sit up and peer down at her. Yesterday, while she was slumped unconscious next to the seep, I’d been startled by the paleness in her cheeks and lips. And while I’d dripped sweat, digging at the earth first with our scavenged crossbow quarrel and then with a rock and then with my bare hands, her skin remained dry and cool. It had come on so suddenly. And while I was hacking the laurel medallion off my boot, something else struck me—there’s nothing in the scout manuals to prepare someone for the utter uncertainty of an emergency. There are step-by-step breakdowns, tips, tricks, testimonials—all designed to lead, ultimately, to success. None of it prepared me for the sheer terror of not knowing if Lark was going to wake up or die.
I hadn’t been joking when I told her that shook me up, bad.
My stomach squeezes again with the same panic that flared then, and I attempt to push it away. It’s too dim to see the color of her skin now, but she seems to be breathing easily enough. Her hair is filmed with tiny beads of water—dew. I look across the water scrape, lavender-gray in the dawn, where the bobbing grasses are heavy with moisture. I pull my handkerchief out of my pocket and carefully, quietly, reach for Lark’s under her belt. I lift it out. Rat rolls his head to look at me, but Lark doesn’t stir.
I consider taking off my tunic to gather up the moisture on the grass, but it’s filthy and would probably only produce mud and diluted sweat. Armed with the two handkerchiefs, I get stiffly to my feet and wade out into the wet grass.
I slowly sop up the water like Lark showed me yesterday morning, wringing it into my mouth. After I cool the scratchy burn in my throat, I start to collect some for her. Several stalks of grass hang particularly low, burdened with some kind of seed head. I bend closer, wondering if it’s something we can eat, when I realize they’re not seeds at all—they’re grasshoppers. Dozens and dozens of grasshoppers cling to the tops of the grasses, frozen into a nighttime torpor. They must latch themselves up on top when night falls to make most use of the early sunlight. I prod one; it doesn’t move at all. I pluck it straight off the stem like a fruit and hold it in my palm.
My folk eat a fair amount of grasshoppers, cicadas, and crickets. On market days, it only costs a few coppers for a bag of hickory-roasted grasshoppers, and my sister Ida’s favorite meal is the juniper-cricket stew we eat on the autumn equinox. But I’ve never had one raw. I turn it in my hand—its big thorny leg twitches with the warmth from my skin.
I look across the landscape, picking out the stalks of grass drooping with insects, easier to see as the light grows. I could fill the skirt of my tunic as easily as picking berries, and I might even be able to get a fire going with the handful of yucca scattered around, but I can’t think how I’d cook them without something to put them in. I squint at the distant horizon as if it might help me think, honing in on a bright smudge that I first take for mist. Then my brain catches up with my eyes, and my breath hitches in my throat.
Not mist.
The river.
I stare harder, trying to make absolutely sure I’m not hallucinating, that it’s not a mirage or rocks or nothing. But no—I can see the glint of moving water, and the line of dark foliage along it.
We’ve neared the River Tell.
We must have strayed too far north during our march last night. We tried to be careful in keeping the polar star on our right shoulders, but there were certainly times I spaced out, too focused on my feet to pay attention to the sky, and I expect Lark, still weary from dehydration, was little better. At any rate, we’ve closed the distance to just a handful of miles.
It will be easy enough to simply aim a little farther south once we get going today. But I can’t help but scan the horizon again, wondering, calculating. I turn back to Lark. The grasshopper, warmed from its torpor by my palm, springs into the air and disappears into the grass.
I crouch down. “Lark,” I whisper. “Wake up.”
I touch her shoulder. She picks her head off her arm, bleary-eyed. A rasp comes from her throat. She swallows and tries again. “Veran?�
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“Here. I gathered some water. I can get more once you’ve squeezed it out. But listen, I think we turned too far north last night. We’re in sight of the Tell.”
She blinks several times and pushes herself into a sitting position, letting her head hang for a moment. Her dreadlocks curtain her face, loose. She rubs the back of her neck and then straightens.
“How close?” she asks, accepting the soaking handkerchiefs.
“It’s hard to say with the slope—maybe five or six miles.”
She wrings the bandannas into her mouth and swallows.
“We’ll have to turn south,” she says. “Head for the North Burr where it comes out of the highlands, and then turn upstream . . .”
“But, Lark,” I say. “That’s going to add miles we don’t need, swinging south and then doubling back. Can’t we keep heading straight across?”
“I’ve told you before, we don’t want to be spotted anywhere near Tellman’s Ditch and mistaken for escaped slaves.”
I gnaw my lip, thinking. “How is the compound set up?”
She eyes me warily. “There’s a tent city, where the workers live. It’s split up into quadrants, all surrounded by pike walls and guard towers. The quarry itself is downstream—there’s a fenced route between it and the tent city.”
“Where does everyone else stay?” I ask. “The overseers, the drivers, the off-duty guards?”
“The headquarters compound,” she says. “Upstream.”
“And I expect, if the focus is on guarding the slaves where they’re kept, there’s less security around the compound?”
“I wouldn’t know—I was only there a few times for health screenings.” She frowns at me. I fidget with the mangled fringe on my boot. “I don’t like that look,” she says.
“What if—” I say.
“No.”
“No, but listen—”
“How about some more water?” she says.
“If we could get into the compound—if we could get even around the compound, we could make off with something that could help. Even just a canteen . . .”
“We’ll be seen,” she says, staring at me like I’m suggesting we casually throw ourselves off a cliff. “And when they take a look at my arm—”
“Why would they assume we’re runaway slaves on sight? Why not folk traveling to Vittenta? If we’d broken out of the tent city, we’d be dressed differently, and not looking like we’ve been half-dragged across the water scrape. And neither of us look Alcoran or Moquoian—you look Cypri, and they’re not going to know what on earth I am. I almost think we could just walk in and say we’re lost . . .”
“No.” She shakes her head. “We’ve taken a lot of risks together in the past week, Veran, but this one’s too big. I’m not walking into Tellman’s Ditch.”
“Then we don’t walk in,” I say. “We’ll just poke around the edges. Grab a canteen—or even a mule.”
“A mule?”
“After nightfall,” I press. “It’ll be dark—we’ll sneak in and out.” She’s shaking her head again, and I rush to continue. “I know it sounds crazy, but, Lark—I’m starting to think walking across the water scrape is even crazier. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re not going to survive another day like yesterday, walking through the afternoon on only morning dew and wet rocks. And if we don’t travel in the afternoons, and only stick to morning and after the sun sets—well, you saw how well that went last night. We’re nowhere near where we wanted to be. At this rate, it will be days before we reach the Moquoian border, and longer still until we reach somewhere we can pass into the mountains, and by that time the soldiers will have fanned out through Pasul, Vittenta, Tolukum—you name it, they’ll be there. Word will be out that we’re being hunted. The only advantage we have is staying just ahead of the bad news, and connecting with Tamsin and Iano before they’re found, too. How else are you going to get to Callais?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Yeah?” I press. “Think you can do it before one of us dies out here?”
She glares at me but doesn’t reply. She looks out across the scrape, her brow furrowed and lips pursed—she looks startlingly like Eloise when she does that.
She lets out a breath. “It’s a really, really bad idea.”
I jump at the omitted concession. “Let’s just skim around the edges. Stay a few miles out, rest in the afternoon somewhere we can see down to the compound. Make some plans. Then when it gets dark we’ll slip down and cause a little mayhem.”
“We will not,” she says, turning back to me. “Listen, I’ll admit that we can’t go on like we did yesterday, but you have to promise me you’re not thinking of tiptoeing in and turning the place over. No fires, no riots, no prison breaks. Because after you run off all giddy with a couple of mules, you know who it’ll come down on? Who’ll take the blame and have to clean up the damage? Who’ll be whipped or hanged for causing an uprising?”
“Oh. The slaves.”
“Oh,” she says mockingly.
“Sorry,” I say, flushing. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
She shakes her head. “You and your hero complex, I swear. If I get any inkling you’re thinking of doing something that’s going to bring misery to the couple hundred workers down in the tent city, we’re forgetting the whole thing and striking off south, got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.” She plants her hands on the ground and stiffly rises to her feet. She hands me one of the bandannas. “Here. We’ll drink while we move. Come on, Rat.”
I follow her back out into the grass, her boots carving a dark line through the dew. She swipes her bandanna over a few stalks and then stops.
“Hoppers,” she says, pinching a blade bent under a grasshopper.
“Yeah,” I say. “There are so many . . . I wish I could figure out how to eat them.”
“You have to pinch their heads off,” she says, plucking the one off the grass. With a flick, she twists off the head and then plucks off its wings. “And then squeeze the guts out, otherwise they’ll make you puke.” She gives it a little shake, and a blob of innards flies into the grass. With no other fanfare, she pops the rest into her mouth, legs and all.
I stare, openmouthed. She catches sight of the look on my face and pauses halfway through chewing. A moment of silence hangs around us as I grapple with the fact that I just watched the daughter of Queen Mona Alastaire, princess of Lumen Lake, whip the head off a grasshopper and eat it raw. Nearby, a cricket chirps.
“Oh . . . ,” she says through a mouthful of exoskeleton. She swallows, and her cheeks flush. “Blazes, I guess . . . most of your folk would consider that below them.”
“Maybe, but not me.” I reach for the nearest grasshopper. “Let me try.”
Her eyes go unfocused. “Veran . . . it’s times like these that I can’t bring myself to believe I am who you think I am.”
I don’t know why, given her parentage, but it’s times like these that I’m the most certain she’s exactly who we think she is. Something inexplicable swells in my chest.
“Well, the good news is we’ll have the luxury of confirming it now that we won’t starve to death,” I say. “Show me how you did the head.”
With less gusto than before, she points out where to pinch the insect and pull it apart. I squeeze the guts into the grass and put it in my mouth. It’s horrible, exactly the wrong kind of chewy, not crispy and smoky like the roasted ones on market day.
Still, I swallow and wipe my mouth. “We’d better gather more, before they warm up and start jumping, right?”
She nods and turns back for the flats. We progress a little way, pausing now and then to wring our bandannas into our mouths and pick grasshoppers.
“You know,” she says after a while. “My life was a lot simpler before you showed up.”
I spit out a thorny leg. “Yeah, Lady Princess, mine, too.”
Tamsin
I like Soe’s house because it’s quiet.
It’s a different kind of quiet from the insulated glass bubble of Tolukum Palace—it’s an open, breathing kind of quiet. The redwoods tower over the rough A-frame cabin and its little outbuildings, making me feel like a bug crawling around the feet of beings who have better things to do than notice me. The wind sighs through their lofty branches, easy to hear even from this distance because everything around Soe’s house is soft, muffled. Her flock of turkeys drift here and there, pecking the dry walnut meal left over from the oil presses. The yard is carpeted with copper-colored evergreen needles, and the pitched cabin roof is so thick with moss and ferns it melds with the forest floor where the eaves touch. A sapling grows out of the northwest corner of the roof, its spindly branches reaching toward the happenstance light let through by the redwoods.
I’ve made it a point to visit Soe as much as I can in the three years since we shared a room in the Blows, but normally those times were filled with chatter and music. The first time I visited I brought her a beautiful new dulcimer, with opal inlays, as a thank-you gift for the old boxy instrument she gave me when we parted ways—the one I played onstage for Iano’s parents to earn the title of ashoki. She still has that dulcimer, wrapped in flannel in the cedar chest. I let my fingers drift over it this morning, sliding them along the strings. But I don’t dare to pluck them, and that’s because I’m here alone.
It took several hours for Soe and Iano to agree to this, and that was only after Soe showed me how to get into her hidden root cellar where she stores her wines and oils. With a door covered in the same deep duff as the forest floor, it would be nearly indistinguishable to an outsider, but the hole itself is dark and too shallow to stand in—and I have a sudden urgent need to avoid going into places I’m not sure I can get out of. Still, I gave in to Soe insisting I check to see if the space she cleared for me is big enough, and I attempted to smile at Iano as he earnestly arranged a few items inside—a blanket, a canteen, a box of nut biscuits. But inwardly, I imagined sitting or lying under the skin of the earth, listening to people prowl around outside, looking for me, and I held back a shiver. I don’t plan on getting into that hole if I can help it.
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