“Okay. We’re safe.” Brella dropped her pack and sat herself on a mossy, flattish rock. Here in the woods, she looked marginally less stern. “We should rest a bit.”
“We’ve just arrived,” James objected, though he sat anyway. He had stopped drooling, but rusty gunk caked his split lip and his black eye had gone purple. “Surely we ought to get some distance between us and the city.”
“We have time.” Vel picked a few leaves off of a nearby bush, crushed them in his palm, spat in them, and offered them to James. “Press this against your lip.”
James blinked. “If that’s what you enjoy, we can discuss it.”
“It’ll help.” Vel seemed to try for firm, but a smile crept through. “Trust me.”
“Only because you asked so nicely,” James replied, unsuccessfully batting his fluid-caked eyelashes. He pressed the mess to his mouth. “Oh, that’s lovely. You’re a witch then? Convenient.”
“Not a witch. Just a woodsman.”
“A bit of both,” James insisted.
“Not a witch.” Vel grinned—a real one this time—and flopped down beside his sister.
Brella eyed him warily. “Enough of whatever this is. We have matters to discuss.”
Scratch joined them on the forest floor, taking pains to be careful of the weapon hanging from her new trousers: a kitchen knife, sharp and sturdy, with a wooden handle. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. She had fashioned a hasty sheath for it from the formerly useless pocket of her too-tight pants. If she had been one for poetry, there might have been something there, but she wasn’t, so: ooh, shiny sheath.
Brella smoothed her unnecessary apron over her thighs. “Where should we begin?”
“What’s the plan?” Scratch asked. “Are you fighters?”
“We aren’t fighters. I’m a brewer and Vel is a seamstress.”
“Seamster,” James interjected. “Surely.”
Vel shrugged with one oversized shoulder. “I actually don’t mind seamstress. Brella’s a brewer, not a breweress, you know?”
“That’s why we brought you,” Brella continued with the air of one who had been through this breweress business before. “You’re the muscle. As for why we’re out here, Iris is—”
“The princess’s lover,” Scratch supplied.
Brella tensed. “How did you know that?”
“Intuition.” Not entirely true, but it wasn’t worth explaining that it was the only scenario that fit. How else would the palace maid have known about a secret passage out of the dungeons? Why else would she have had Frances’s ear? “Why didn’t she come with us?”
“She’s in the palace. She can keep an eye on what’s going on for us. Besides, if she left, it would send suspicion her way.”
“Logical.” Scratch shifted in her seat. “How do you know that Frances is in Koravia?”
“Frances has been catching whispers for months. She said to Iris that if she were taken, that’s where she’d go.” Brella reached down to retie a boot that looked awfully tight already. “But in the end, it doesn’t really matter where she is. We’ll get to her regardless.”
“How—”
“Listen.” She winced, her mouth twisting. It was, Scratch thought unhelpfully, a rather lovely mouth, with thick, dark lips that turned down at the edges. “What we’re about to explain, it’s . . . a little unbelievable. So just, please try not to judge anything out of hand.”
“Me?” James raised his eyebrows. “Judge?”
Vel snorted into his fist.
“There’s a place in these woods,” Brella began, her voice taking on the timbre of a storyteller. She had a musical, deep sort of voice, more bassoon than flute, resonant through her broad shoulders. “A nexus kind of place called ‘the Between.’ It’s fair folk territory. We cross a blood gate to enter, and once we’re there the fae take us where we need to go. They’re no threat to us while we’re in the forest.”
“Wait.” James raised a finger. “Blood gate?”
“It’s not as unpleasant as it sounds,” Vel assured him. “It’s a gift. Our family’s blood allows us to pass through this forest unharmed and then enter the Between. We’ve been able to do it for generations.”
“That’s all well and good for you,” Scratch objected. “But what about us? We’re not related to you.”
Brella paused before answering, and when she finally spoke, she didn’t meet Scratch’s eye.
“We’ll form a blood bond. We’ll slice our hands and hold them together. That should be enough to get you in and out.”
Scratch nodded, choosing not to press. There certainly was more to this. Brella’s determined foot-focused gaze gave that much away.
“And how long until we get to this ‘Between?’”
“Ten days.” Vel held up the appropriate amount of fingers. “Once we’re in the Between, it’s only a day. Then, we’ll be in Koravia. Hopefully, we’ll be wherever Frances is. And then,” he gestured to the two bedraggled King’s Guards, one of whom was equipped only with cutlery. “You do your thing.”
Scratch narrowed her eyes. “Our thing?”
James cleared his throat. “Before we get ahead of ourselves, does this mean the fair folk will leave us alone?”
“Until we need them, yes,” Vel confirmed. “We’re safe.”
“Jolly good. Hoorah. But what of the bandits?”
The seamstress, thankfully, had enough awareness to look a bit chagrinned. “That, uh, we figured would also fall under the heading of ‘your thing.’”
Scratch sighed. “Of course.” Gods, she was wrecked. She was running on two hours of sleep, and the adrenaline of her daring escape was beginning to seep away. Now that she no longer had to be actively afraid, her mind had room for other things: anger, mostly. Yesterday, she was ready to claim her deserved knighthood. Now, she was rescuing the lost princess of a country that had used her for her skill and rejected her for everything else. A country that—oh yes—planned to execute her for a crime she didn’t commit without even the dignity of a trial.
It was a good thing she had a knife. She was ready to stab something.
“Scratch?”
“Hmm?” She blinked out of her red haze. James was staring.
“You all right?”
“Sure, Jamie. Peachy.”
He crossed his arms, muttering something that sounded like “Well I haven’t done anything.”
Brella had her defensive face on, the one she had worn back in the city. The smooth planes were jagged, her freckles like chips of ice on a mountain face.
“If you’re not happy out here,” she drawled coolly, “feel free to go back to the dungeons.”
Scratch could have fought. It was tempting, but she knew better. It wasn’t her place to be angry here. Not her place to complain. If she were in charge, she could breathe; but Brella commanded here, so Scratch pressed her anger down—kindling to light a fire when she was safe.
“I’m fine.” She squeezed her grimace back into her gums. “Really. Just adjusting.”
“Please do. You need to be at your best out here.”
“For the bandits?”
“Yes, and . . .” Brella’s shoulders lifted, just a touch. “You might be tested.”
Scratch’s mind flashed to the day a war medic had smeared her blood across a piece of fabric to determine whether she had Campfire Flu.
“Tested?”
“The Between is a really, really special place. The fae are protective. Hopefully, if you stay near us, you won’t have anything to worry about. But if you get too far . . .” Brella spread her hands. “They might give you a test.”
“Ah.” Scratch had a pretty good idea of what sort of test this might be. “And passing looks like surviving, right?”
“You got it.” Brella wiped a hand across her forehead, depositing a little trail of dirt. Now that the sun had risen, Scratch could see the circles under Brella’s golden eyes, little pouches of darkness dampening her dappled face. “Anything
else we should cover before we keep moving?”
Of course there was.
There were still holes. How did these two merchants expect James and Scratch to rescue Frances on their own, with no backup? This was a lark at most, a hopeful little gambit that would, best case scenario, get them all killed quickly. Besides, if the king was plotting against his own daughter, where would Frances be returned to? Would Scratch save her princess’s life, only to have Frances spend the rest of her years as a fugitive? And what of the rest of them? Would she, James, the princess, and the Shaes make a bandit camp in these woods, smoking pink flowers until the king keeled over?
When Scratch added the confusion over Frances’s potential escape to this hellish tangle, she found herself clutching a string connected to the biggest snarl of her life.
The only certainty so far was that these Shaes, whoever they were, couldn’t be trusted. At least, not entirely. Their explanations were too neat. Their plans were wildly inconsistent, too straightforward in some places, too loose in others—our thing? Really? Still, Scratch had seen enough liars to know that the business with the Between, implausible as it seemed, had the ring of truth. Liars? Certainly. Friends of the fair folk? That, too.
Which meant there was a real possibility that Scratch would end up with Frances, wherever she was. And maybe, by virtue of “her thing,” Scratch could retrieve the princess unharmed. If the Shaes were telling the truth about the King’s deception—if—then surely the public would be moved by the plight of their beloved princess. Could Frances take her father’s throne? And if she did, could Scratch be beside her?
Sure, Scratch could do something different with her life, just as Frances had advised her. But what if she could do the same thing—the only thing she knew how to do, really—as the hero who had saved Princess Frances? Not even the God of Kings could keep her from her rightful knighthood after that.
It wouldn’t be simple. The first few paces were clear enough, but anything after was clouded in the fog of confusion. She needed more information.
“I think Frances left,” she said, watching Brella’s face for a reaction. It was a risk showing her hand, but if Brella knew anything, she might be goaded into revealing it.
“What?” Brella had been halfway to standing. With a thump, she sat back down again. “What do you mean, left?”
“We had a conversation—”
“Wait. You know her?”
“Not really.” Scratch watched Brella’s nostrils flare, her mouth tighten into a puckered scowl. “We just talked last night.”
She slowly, haltingly, told the Shaes about the princess, the pipe, the brief moments of scale-scraping honesty. She skirted around her humiliation, letting only the necessary droplets run through, keeping the rest close. Still, her face burned.
“Something else.” Brella stared blankly. “She gave you advice. And you think, what—she left the palace?”
“I just think that—”
“Did you not hear the part,” Brella ground out, color high in her cheeks, “where my sister is her lover?”
“I don’t understand why you’re getting so heated,” Scratch retorted. She had been looking for a reaction, but she hadn’t expected rage. Brella’s eyes flashed with it, heated and overbright. “I just thought, you know, in case.”
“In case what?”
“In case you’re wrong.”
“I’m not wrong!”
They were both standing—when had that happened?—and panting—and that, too? Brella flushed dark, Scratch feeling the inevitable pinkness crawling from collar to forehead. Curse that Lakes complexion. It revealed everything.
“Scratch, don’t do this.” James hauled himself up and toward her, determinedly casual. “We don’t know the whole story. Besides, you obviously hit a nerve.”
Brella scoffed. “There’s no nerve.”
“Oh, really?” James cocked his head to the side. “Do you always get so flushed and pant-y over silly little theories, hmm?”
“Whether the sergeant major is right or not is no real matter,” Vel added. He, Scratch noticed, had barely reacted at all. “The Blood Gate will take us to wherever Frances is. Iris will either get her Frances back or she’ll get answers.”
“Or we’ll all get killed,” Scratch mumbled.
“And what a lovely bridge that will be to cross when we come to it, hmm, darling?” James’s green eyes darkened with unspoken warning. “Now, I don’t think we’ll reach the princess—or, y’know, whatever—just standing here, will we? I say we get our trot on. What say you, women?”
Brella rolled her eyes and stomped away.
James strolled after her. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he called back to Scratch and Vel, sauntering between the trees like a wisp, humming a wartime jig.
Chapter Five
They trudged on. Vel and James took the front, chattering like maids at a sewing circle, curse them. Brella, who had lost her lead almost as soon as she claimed it, lagged silently a few feet behind. Scratch, short-legged and overtired, hung back. Her hand hovered over her sheathed knife, eyes on the trees. She told herself she was covering their rear. Really, she was too spent to keep up.
The farther behind Brella she fell, the less friendly the forest seemed. It was as though proximity to the Shaes formed a protective bubble around her. Without Brella nearby, the sounds of the forest grew louder and more ominous—chittering where there had been chirping, scraping in the place of scurrying. Shadows danced in the corners of her vision, twining between the trees. Something that could just as easily have been a rabbit’s paw as the toe of a bandit’s boot flashed by a nearby tree root, subtle as a floater in her eye.
Ah, yes. Tests.
From the moment she had arrived at the Academy, everything had been a test, and not just for her. If she won a fight, she proved a woman from the Tangled Lakes could win a fight. If she survived in battle, it was a Lakes woman surviving. The only upside to a fae challenge was that her background wouldn’t factor into it. The thought of fighting without that weight was nearly appealing. Maybe she’d chase a shadow later on for a change of pace.
At least the weather was pleasant. The sun was fully risen now, its golden light giving a deceptive sense of warmth to the cool, hazy path. It was fresh summer, the early days of heat and sweat. Soon would be high summer, when the king’s council did little but drink and bathe, and guards cooked in their armor like crabs in a stewpot. The heat wouldn’t turn oppressive for a month yet, but hints of weather to come already showed in the heady perfume of summer flowers, the chirp of the bright birds who basked on upper branches, their iridescent feathers alight like gems.
Snippets of James and Vel’s chatter floated back on the breeze.
“Well, I met him in the pub.” James was laughing. “He told me he dealt in exotic snakes. How was I supposed to know what he meant?”
Loneliness cramped her stomach. Stupid, charming James. Stupid, dumb, rich, fancy, ridiculous—
“So . . .” Brella materialized beside her. “Nice sheath.”
It was an attempt, and not a great one. “Don’t strain yourself.”
Brella scoffed. “Make this harder why don’t you?”
Scratch studied the woman. Brella’s shoulders were set, her arms straight with locked elbows. She radiated effort.
“We don’t have to talk.”
“Might make for a more pleasant trip,” Brella said, unconvincingly.
You want to keep an eye on me, Scratch thought, her blood fizzing at the thought of working through this new puzzle. Why?
“Do you . . .” She searched for some tact. It was scant out here. “Do you generally not get along with people?”
Brella turned quickly, her braids whipping around after her. “I get along with people just fine.”
“Not me, though.”
“Forgive me,” she said stiffly. “I don’t know many people in the Kings Guard.”
That was odd. According to most people, being in the Ki
ng’s Guard was the least objectionable thing about Scratch.
“We’re regular people,” she explained. “Just, with helmets.”
“Sure.”
“And swords.” She fingered her knife. “Generally.”
“Yes. I gather.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Brella smoothed her hair. It held the pattern of tight waves, even tied in two braids. Scratch’s hair was thick and ropy, but when she brushed it back into its daily bun, it lay obediently flat. “There’s no problem.”
“Really? Because you look like you’re about to pop a vein.” She gave Brella a once-over. “Or crack a nut.”
“Soldiers,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“You certainly aren’t poets.”
She wasn’t sure if that was an insult. Regardless, she didn’t like it. “Would you have us be?”
“Poets have a great deal of empathy.” Brella shrugged. “Makes the poems better.”
Tension crept along her spine. “For?”
“Reading, I suppose.”
“No, I mean, who am I supposed to have empathy—”
“I know what you meant.” Brella shoved her hands into her pockets. “I heard about your octagon.”
Scratch didn’t know whether to be pleased or offended. Brella had said “octagon” like a curse.
“Yeah.” She cast around for words. “It . . . worked.”
“So it did.”
They walked in stiff silence. The chatter from the lads up front fluttered back like mockingbirds caw-cawing in Scratch’s temples. The borrowed pants were a touch snug around her thighs, but they fell at perfect length—a trifle humiliating, since their previous owner was an eleven-year-old boy. And, not that it should matter, of course, but they were, well, ugly. Stripy brown and white linen with too-large pockets and a tie at the waist that flopped like old carrots. It was a testament to the circumstances that James hadn’t mocked her for them yet.
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