by JA Andrews
He raised an eyebrow. “You put a lot of thought into rescuing me.”
“Remembering food and medicine isn’t exactly high level planning.”
Will looked up at the wide blue sky. It was unaccountably comfortable here. The floor was hard, there wasn’t much to eat, and if he stayed too long, Killien would find him and kill him. But somehow in the midst of all that, it felt homey.
The sky was a rich blue like home, and Queensland felt almost within reach. The Keepers’ Stronghold, book after book after book, stories that made sense and had all the right feelings. A place where being comfortable wasn’t restricted to one small cave, a ranger, and a grass elf.
Sora unwound a dirty bandage slowly, revealing the ugly burn on his palm.
“Do you think Killien will hurt Ilsa?” Will pushed the question out quickly before the fear behind overpowered him.
It took her a moment to answer. “I don’t.”
“Are you just saying that to make me feel better? Or do you really think Killien is that decent of a man?”
“No and no. I used to think Killien was a decent man. And maybe he is, but lately he’s so angry. He’s done savage things when he thinks the clan is in danger. But Ilsa is the only leverage he has against you. I don’t think he’d give that up. He was certain we’d find you and he needs something to control you with.” She let out a long, slow breath. “It’s my guess he’ll do what he can to ingratiate himself to her. Because the more loyal she is to him, the more it will hurt you.” Sora finished unwinding the bandage and he stretched his hand a little. She bent over his hand, inspecting the burn.
Will looked up again at the patch of right-color-blue sky outside the cave and let it call to the deepest parts of himself. The parts he’d been trying not to think about for a year. He wanted to go back home so much he almost couldn’t breathe.
“I can’t leave her there. You need to take me back to Killien.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sora’s head snapped up.
“If you take me back,” Will said before she could argue, “Killien will still trust you. He probably expects you to be the one to find me anyway. Maybe you’d get a chance to help Ilsa escape.”
“I’m not taking you back.” She dribbled some water on his palm and rubbed at the dirty ridge of crustiness along the edge of his burn.
“There’s no other way that Ilsa’s ever going to get out of there.”
Sora dropped his hand and looked up at him in exasperation. “If you go back, he’ll kill you. Then he’ll have no reason to keep her alive.” She picked up the jar of salve and spread some across his palm and wrapped a new bandage around it before starting on his other hand.
She was right. He stared across the forest. There had to be a way.
Sora worked quietly, and he was struck again with how comfortable she was. He tried to pinpoint what was different. She wore the same leathers she’d been wearing every since he met her. Her arms were bare of anything but the wide cloth band around her upper arm. The long white claw was still there, tied on by strips of thin leather, and the long puckered scar beneath it ran from her shoulder to her elbow. Her boots were worn leather, her hair hung over her shoulder in its thick braid. And every bit of it looked…at home.
“You love the mountains, don’t you?”
She looked up at him sharply, as though expecting some sort of teasing. “I do.”
“Why did you leave?”
Her face hardened and she picked up the salve to put on his palm. “I’m not interested in talking about my life with someone I know almost nothing about.”
Will felt a flash of irritation at the return of her coldness, but his retort died on his lips. He deserved that. “You’re right, you don’t know much about me. What do you want to know?”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“Alright, I’ll start at the beginning. I was born outside a small town a half day’s ride south of Queenstown. You already know I have a younger sister Ilsa, although I haven’t seen her since she was a baby. My mother’s name is Marlin. My father’s name was Tell.”
“Was?”
He nodded. “We lived on a small farm. I wasn’t much help, I’m sure. Neither the chicken nor the cow was much trouble, but we had this goat, Tussy, who was the bane of my existence.”
Will flexed his fingers slightly and saw the puckered red and white outline of his old scar, almost covered up by the new burn. “The first time I ever did magic it was because of that stupid goat.”
Sora sat perfectly still, her eyes wide, searching his face. He dropped his gaze back to his hand. It had been twenty years since he’d told this story to the Keepers when he’d first joined them. But now that he started, the words pressed up inside him, and after only a short struggle, he let them out, telling her everything about Vahe and Ilsa.
“How old was she?”
Will pressed his eyes shut against the image of Ilsa’s terrified face. “Two.”
He felt a touch on the edge of his palm. Sora’s finger brushed over it, feather light on the edge of his healthy skin, blanking out to nothing over the scar.
“All I wanted was to stop him, but after everything, he still killed my father and took my sister. And I almost killed my mother.”
Sora set her hand across his palm, blocking the scar with her own long fingers.
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
Sora said nothing, but picked up the jar of salve and began to spread it across Will’s palm.
“When I was born,” she said quietly, “stars flew across the sky.”
The memory of his parents dissolved at her words. She focused on his hand, spreading the cool cream over the blisters, filling the air with the scent of mint and sulphur.
“A star shower?”
She nodded. “Not unusual, except this one came from the mouth of the Serpent Queen.”
“Do the mountain clans think of her the same way the Roven do?”
Sora shook her head. “Among the Roven the Serpent Queen is a shadow that is devouring the heavens. But to my people she is Tanith, a serpent moving thorough the stars, giving meaning to the blackness between them. She searches out paths in the darkness and leads those lost in the night.”
“I like your version better.”
Sora didn’t look up at him. Her face was distant as she picked up a new strip of bandage and wrapped it around his hand. “But she is not all good. She is still full of darkness, and when dark things must be done, she is the one to do it.
“The night I was born they say a hundred stars flew out from her mouth, scattering across the sky.” Her hands paused for a moment. “And one gave life to a child.”
“They think you came from the Serpent Queen?” Will let the idea take root and grow, seeing the effects of such a belief rippling outward, shaping all of Sora’s life.
Her expression, when she looked up, had a tinge of desperation. “Everything I did,” she continued in a whisper, “they said was a sign from the Serpent Queen. If I was near a sick man and he recovered, Tanith had deemed him worthy to live. If I passed a man who died soon after, I had brought the queen’s judgement on him.
“For as long as I can remember, they brought people to me. Wanted me to touch the sick, bless pregnant women and hunters. And whatever happened, they claimed it was because I had doled out the will of the Serpent Queen.”
“Did they blame you?” Will asked. “When things went wrong?”
“Never to my face. To speak out against me was the same as speaking out against Tanith. But they kept their distance, unless they were desperate. The other children stayed away, afraid they might anger me.” She twisted the last bit of bandage in her fingers.
“It wasn’t you,” he said, reaching forward to set his hand on hers, stilling them. “None of it was you.”
Her eyes flicked up toward him, a hollow bright green. “It didn’t matter. Everyone believed it. The story shaped everything.”
His hand tightened on hers. “And that’s why you hate stories.”
She dropped her eyes again, brushed his hand away and finished tying his bandage. Her next words were so quiet Will had to lean forward to hear her. “My mother tried to protect me from it, but the clan was relentless. I witnessed births. I sat by sick beds. The dying, in an effort to seek Tanith’s mercy, confessed to me.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Terrible things. Things a child shouldn’t hear.”
Sora sat silent, and Will felt a deep anger growing at the thought of the small girl alone, wading through the darkest parts of people’s hearts.
“The cave system we lived in was enormous. I had free range of it all. No one dared upset me, never mind hurt me. But wherever I went, I was watched. So I learned to sneak out.
“I learned to stay quiet in the woods for hours at a time so that none of the rangers or hunters would find me. I learned what sorts of things the animals did. Where they lived, what they ate.
“That’s when I realized I could sense them before I saw them.” She glanced up at Will. “I didn’t know other people couldn’t until I watched hunters walk right by some brush with a hidden deer.
“So I started to hunt.”
“And they all thought you hunted so well because you were blessed.”
Sora nodded. “It was nice to be outside, though. When I hunted with others, I brought them to larger herds in the mountains. There was no point in telling them the way I found things. It would have just convinced them more strongly that I was different.”
“I finally understand why Killien asked you to come to Lilit.”
She nodded. “He knew why I’d left the mountains. I stayed with him because he didn’t believe it.”
“Desperate people believe a lot of things.” Will paused. “I also understand why you were so upset that he thought you healed her. I’m sorry.”
She waved off the apology. “I’m a little sensitive to people thinking I did something miraculous.”
“Are other people born with talents like yours in the mountain clans?”
Sora’s brow knit. “The holy men and women claim to have powers. I don’t know if they’re real, though.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t try to make you a holy woman.”
“They did.” She ran her finger down the long claw that was tied around her arm. “Did you know the snow lynx is the enemy of the Serpent Queen? It’s a creature that only hunts at night, but it is all white. It camouflages itself in white places, whereas the queen hides in the darkness. And it hunts the mountain snakes. It’s supposed to be a great snow lynx that keeps Tanith up in the sky.
“I was with a hunting party. I’d chased a small hare away from the others.” Sora wound up the rest of the bandage and tucked it into her pack. “I don’t know why I didn’t notice the lynx. But it was on me before I could do anything.
“It sliced down my arm”—she nodded to the scar that ran under her armband—“but I had just enough time to stab up into it with my hunting knife. The other rangers found the lynx lying on top of me, blood soaking the snow around us.
“For a moment I couldn’t get my breath enough to call out to them.”
Will let out a laugh and she looked up sharply. “I can only imagine what they thought.”
A smile spread across her lips. “One of them cried out ‘We are ruined! The lynx has killed the queen!’”
“Who says things like that?”
Sora’s smile widened and a short laugh escaped her lips. “I was covered in the cat’s blood. It was so disgusting, and so heavy, I shoved it off with all my might.”
“What did they do?”
“About fell down and worshipped me. I tried to tell them the stupid cat had leapt directly onto my knife, but no one listened. In the official story, I rose ‘like a shadow of death, black against the winter snow, flinging the corpse of the lynx aside like a rag.’”
Will grinned with approval. “Dramatic.”
She looked down at her hands, the smile fading off her face. “After that, things changed. They gave me the pelt as a cape. They replaced the eyes with black river stones. It sat on my shoulder and stared at anyone I talked to.”
“I think I’d like to see you wear that.”
Sora rolled her eyes. “I wore it once, at the ceremony where they gave it to me, then told them something that sacred should be kept in the presence of the holy woman.”
“Did they give you the claw instead?”
Sora looked at her arm band. “I was terrified to step outside again. It felt too vulnerable.
“My mother went to the holy woman claimed the claw as a trophy.” Sora’s lips curled up in a slight smile. “She wrapped this band around the wound, and told me it was a reminder that it wasn’t Tanith who’d saved my life, it was me.”
She raised her eyes to Will’s face and in her eyes he could see a spark of defiance. “It was the first time I ever felt I’d done something myself. I wasn’t just a tool of some great power.”
Her face was set with something mutinous and despite himself, Will let out a short laugh.
“Sora, you are the most independent, competent person I’ve ever met. It is incomprehensible to me that anyone would think you were only a tool.”
She looked at him earnestly. “They believed because of the stories they were told.”
“Your people need to hear the real story of who you are. One that shows a woman who is just as human as the rest, who has been misused by the people who should have protected her, and has grown into a capable, perceptive, strong person despite it all.”
Sora snorted and turned away, but Will grabbed her hand. “This is why Keepers seek out stories. Because if the truth isn’t told, people are hurt.”
She looked at him for along moment, before pulling her hand away. “Then I wish there’d been a Keeper in my clan.”
They got a little more rest before the shadows of the mountains stretched far to the east and Sora announced it was time to leave. Will roused Rass and packed up his things while Sora cut thick pieces of rabbit for everyone to eat.
Will was packing his books when Sora came up next to him. She held a roll of leather in her hand, fiddling with the straps that tied it closed.
“Do you think Talen will find you again?”
“He’s found me everywhere else.”
“Then maybe you’ll have a use for this.” She pushed the leather towards him. “It adjusts small, so it might fit Talen…If you ever need something like this.”
Will unwrapped it to find a falconry glove and a small leather hood. He slid his hand into the glove. It was darkly stained, thick leather, the fingers blocky and an extra thick layer of leather blanketing the wrist. The hood was a tiny, bulbous piece of soft leather with straps in the back and a braided tassel perched on top.
“You bought these for me?” He held up the glove, fisting his hand.
“I bought them for Talen,” she corrected him. “If he stays with you long enough, I have no doubt you’ll bring him to inappropriate places, like the queen’s court, and the poor bird deserves to be protected from the chaos.”
“Ah.” He pulled the glove off and wrapped it back up with the hood. “Then Talen thanks you for such a thoughtful, and unexpected, gift.”
“I like that hawk,” Rass piped up.
Sora looked up at the darkening sky. “We can leave soon.”
Will’s body ached with exhaustion “I can’t leave Ilsa. But Killien’s book…” He scrubbed his hands across his face, rubbing at the weariness. “That book should definitely get off the Sweep.”
“There’s no way you can get to Ilsa, Will. And even if you could…”
He sank down next to his pack. “She might not want to come with me.”
Sora’s face was sober. “It would be strange if she did. She doesn’t know you.”
He shoved the rest of his things into his bag. “I know you think I should leave. But I can’t. And it’s not just Ilsa. Rass is free—”
>
Rass raised an eyebrow at this.
“I didn’t know you’ve always been free.”
She grinned at him and rolled her eyes. “I’m going to find some grubs. Do you want any?”
“I’ll be fine with the rabbit,” he assured her, and the little girl slipped out of the cave.
He cinched his bag shut with a yank. “What about Sini? How can I just walk away and leave—”
He stopped. That note Sini had left him…
“Is there something unusual about Sini and Lukas? Sini said they weren’t random slaves.”
“Of course they’re not. They’re Killien’s because they’re training to be stonesteeps.”
Will stared at her, his hand clenched on his bag.
“Maybe Lukas already is one, I don’t know. Killien spends a lot of time with the two of them, but keeps their training secret.”
“They can do magic?”
“Lukas does…”—Sora’s face turned distasteful—“things for Killien. And Sini can heal people. That’s why she was in Lilit’s tent. She’s getting better at it all the time, but Lilit was far too much for her.”
The cave around him spun slowly and he set his hand against the floor. Lukas and Sini were from Queensland. And they could do magic. “Sini’s fifteen…How old is Lukas?” The question came out in a whisper.
“Around twenty-five. Why?”
The truth sank into him.
They filled the gap almost perfectly. Keepers appeared every five to ten years.
Lukas was about six years younger than Will.
Sini ten years younger than that.
“Killien has the next two Keepers.”
Sora’s brow crinkled in doubt. “How could he?”
“Vahe found them. He must have a way…”
The fire. Vahe had thrown that fire over the crowd, and when it had reached Will, it had done…something. The air around him had sparkled, and right after that he’d shoved closed Tussy’s gate with magic. Vahe had somehow woken his powers.
“Vahe brings Keepers to Killien.”
“But Ilsa can’t do any magic,” Sora said. “At least I’ve never seen her do anything unusual.”
