by E. C. Blake
And so, when she had finished eating, she told them everything: about Grute, about the mine, about Katia. They listened in silence, Prella and Simona with wide eyes, Alita impassively, Kirika without looking at her at all. Hyram and Keltan had heard some of it by then, but not all. Mara talked until her throat was sore. At first the words would hardly come; but the longer she talked, the easier it became, until the words rushed out like the waterfall that had thrown her and Grute into the sea. She felt as if a boil had been lanced, or a scab peeled away. More blood and pain might follow, but in that moment all she felt was relief.
When at last she ran out of words, the seven of them were alone, the other tables empty, the food cleared away. “And tomorrow you’re going back?” Alita said.
Mara nodded.
“Of course my father agreed to rescue Katia,” Hyram said. “Once he knew about—”
“He and Catilla still think the risk is too great,” Mara said harshly. “I’m blackmailing them. They need me. If they didn’t . . .”
“My father would have come around eventually anyway. He would have done what’s right. He always does.”
Mara opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again.
She’d felt the same way about her father, once. It seemed a long time ago.
Kirika snorted and spoke—and looked up—for the first time. “My father,” she said, voice venomous, “would have dragged you back to the camp himself, and sold you to the highest bidder. He would have done the same to me. How he was successfully Masked when I . . .” She broke off and looked down at the floor again, jaw clenched. Simona reached out tentatively to put her arm around Kirika’s shoulder, but Kirika leaped to her feet, fast as a cat, slapping Simona’s hand away with a violent swing of her arm. “Don’t touch me,” she snarled. “Don’t ever touch me.” And then she turned and stalked away.
“I’m sorry,” Simona called after her in a stricken voice, but Kirika strode out of the Great Chamber without looking back. “I’m sorry,” Simona said again, but this time to the rest of them.
Alita shook her head. “Not your fault,” she said. “Blame her father.”
“He must have been even worse than mine,” Keltan said sourly. “And here I didn’t think that was possible.”
Prella said nothing, but her lower lip trembled and her eyes glistened. She was obviously thinking about her own father, who just as obviously had been nothing like theirs. Mara reached across the table and put her hand on top of the smaller girl’s, who gave her a small, watery smile of gratitude.
Mara glanced at Keltan and Hyram. “Oh, and I’ve been meaning to thank you two,” she said. A half-smile twitched up one corner of her mouth. “Your father tells me you both volunteered to personally give me a bath after the Watcher was burned to ash. That was so kind and selfless.”
Her smile flashed to a full grin as they both turned roughly the same color as the mashed redroots and started sputtering out incoherent sounds of apology. Mara laughed, and Alita laughed with her. Prella looked a little scandalized, but then she started grinning, too, as did Simona, and soon all of them were laughing together.
The laughter felt good. Mara still felt good as she, Alita, Prella, and Simona made their way to their room, where Kirika already lay in bed, back to them all.
But she didn’t feel good in the middle of the night when her decapitation of Grute and disintegration of the Watcher replayed themselves over and over and. . . .
She woke screaming, bringing the other girls gasping awake in their beds. After apologizing, she took a long time to fall back asleep, and slept poorly once she did; and when Keltan called to her from the corridor, with the sky not even graying yet outside the window slits, she didn’t feel good at all. She heaved her aching body out of the bed, wincing at a throb from the raw, red scar on her forehead and a jab of pain from the wound in her calf. Though healing well, both still hurt. Alita raised her head, looked at her blearily, said, “Luck,” and rolled over and went back to sleep. Prella and the others didn’t even stir.
Mara wanted nothing more than to go down to the baths and soak in the warm water, but there was no time: the rescue party was to set out at first light, and first light was just around the corner. She dressed in the warm, newly repaired clothes the Warden had provided her, visited the latrine, picked up the pack she had prepared the day before, and left as quietly as she could, with a whispered “good-bye” she doubted anyone was awake to hear.
Edrik had assembled a force of eight, counting himself, Mara, Keltan, and Hyram. The other four consisted of two women and two men: Tishka, who gave Mara a warm smile; Illina, a young woman—no more than twenty, Mara judged—and twin brothers, only a little older, introduced as Skrit and Skrat. She’d seen all three around the Secret City but had never before spoken to any of them.
They led their horses out of the stables and saddled and mounted them in silence, except for the groan wrung out of Mara as she swung her wounded leg over her mount’s broad back. Edrik gave her a hard look, just visible in the gray light that had seeped into the sky while they readied to ride. “All right?”
“I’m fine.” She gave him what she hoped was a bright smile but suspected was more of a grimace.
He looked skeptical, but clucked to his horse, wheeled it around, and trotted off toward the ravine they had followed into the Secret City when she had first been brought there. With varying degrees of skill, the rest of them rode after him. Mara, after a brief argument with her horse, which clearly would have preferred to rejoin its stablemates rather than trot off into the chilly twilight, fell in behind Keltan. Hyram waited for her, then brought up the rear.
They rode silently up the ravine while the world brightened. After twenty minutes, the sky flushed pink. After an hour, sunlight found them, its touch bringing a little more life into Mara’s chilled, stiff limbs, though the air remained cold enough to make her grateful for her gloves, vest, coat, and cloak.
Mara thought they must be heading for the cave they had passed through on their way to the Secret City, but instead, at midmorning, Edrik turned left and led the party out of the ravine, up a long defile. They rode the rest of the day through sun-dappled forest, the cold wind swirling golden leaves around the trees’ black trunks.
They camped that night by a small lake. Keltan and Hyram took turns hammering in the pegs for the tent Mara would share with Illina and Tishka, competing to see who could do it faster, then sat on either side of her at the campfire as they all ate venison stew and crusty bread, washed down with a pale beer that, though weak, made Mara’s head swim. She was glad to crawl into her bedroll . . .
. . . only to wake, gasping, from yet another dream of Grute.
A dark shape loomed over her and she cried out and tried to push it away, but, “Shhh, shhh,” said a soothing voice, and she lay there, panting. “It’s Illina. It’s all right. You’re safe.”
On her left, Tishka muttered under her breath and rolled over, but then resumed the heavy breathing of sleep. Illina lay down close to Mara. “Bad dream?” the older girl whispered.
Mara nodded. “Every night,” she whispered back. “I see Grute. He . . .” Her throat closed.
“The boy you killed? With magic?”
Mara turned her head. She couldn’t see the other girl, but knew she was looking at her. “Yes,” she whispered.
“He tried to rape you,” Illina said. “Didn’t he?”
Mara nodded. Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes.” Grute, naked, leering, coming toward her; the magic on her hands, her hands on his head; the horrible burst of red and white and gray, the sickening sound, the hot slick of blood all over her—
She jerked her eyes open, gasping. She’d almost slipped back into the nightmare.
Illina moved closer in the dark, found her, wrapped her arms around her. Her body against Mara’s felt warm and comforting. It brought back memories of cud
dling with her mother on nights she was ill or had a bad dream, nights her mother had soothed her just as Illina soothed her now, and suddenly she found herself sobbing, trying to be silent so as not to wake Tishka, her body shaking in Illina’s arms.
“Shh. Shh. It’s all right,” Illina whispered. “You’re safe. He’s gone. He can never hurt you again. Never.” Her arms tightened. “You’re safe. Go to sleep.”
Mara took a long, shuddering breath. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“I have a little sister,” Illina said softly. “You remind me of her. I would do what you did—and worse—to protect her. You did the right thing. Now shh . . . and sleep. We all need rest.”
Mara fell silent, then; and, wrapped in the warmth of Illina’s comforting embrace, soon followed that silence into deep, dreamless sleep.
She woke to find Illina already awake and rolling up her bedroll. Tishka was nowhere to be seen. Gray light seeped through the tent flap. “Rise and shine,” Illina said. “Did you sleep well the rest of the night?”
“Ye-e-ess,” Mara said, stifling a yawn. “Thanks to you.”
Illina smiled. “It’s amazing how powerful a hug can be. You’re welcome. Now get up, sleepyhead. We have many more miles to ride.”
Mounting the horse again wrung a groan of pain from her. She didn’t think she would have managed it at all without Hyram’s help (he got to her before Keltan could), and both he and Keltan rode close throughout the day, watching her as though afraid she might drop from the animal’s back at any moment. She laughed at them for it, but until a couple of hours had passed and the sun had once more loosened her joints she was secretly glad of their attention.
They went up, over, and down a series of ridges that day, and Mara realized that they were following more or less the same path she and Grute had taken on foot. On horseback, the journey didn’t last as long, even though the woods were thick enough the horses could only move at a slow walk (for which she was grateful). Early in the afternoon she looked up at the next ridge—and saw the square box of the hut where she had slain Grute.
She kicked her horse in the sides and trotted ahead of Keltan and Hyram to catch up to Edrik. “We’re not going up there, are we?” she demanded, thrusting her finger at the hut.
“Yes, we are,” Edrik said, his eyes on the hut and not her. “There might be something we can use in it. You said there was food—”
“We have food,” Mara snapped. “You’re going there to check up on my story, aren’t you?”
Edrik’s gaze swung to her. “Yes,” he said quietly.
“You won’t find anything of Grute. The magic saw to that.”
“But at least we will find the hut as you described it.” Edrik’s eyes locked with hers. “Won’t we?”
Mara’s jaw clenched. “Yes,” she grated. “You will.” She let her horse fall back until she rode between Keltan and Hyram again, but kept staring at Edrik, hoping he could feel her angry glare burning into his back.
Peripherally, she saw the boys exchange glances. “Um, what’s wrong?” Hyram ventured at last.
“Your father and your great-grandmother don’t trust me,” Mara said. “They think I’m lying about Grute. About the magic.”
“Oh.” Hyram cleared his throat. “I don’t think that’s quite—”
“Fair?” Mara swung her angry gaze toward him, and he quailed in his saddle. “I wake up every night screaming because of what I did in that hut!” She pointed at the square stone structure, growing closer by the moment. “I never wanted to see it again. And now I’m being forced to go there, because my word isn’t good enough! Is that fair? Would you like to be dragged to the site of your worst nightmare against your will? Is that fair?”
“He . . .” Hyram cleared his throat and straightened. “Father has responsibilities. So does Great-Grandmother. To the unMasked Army. I’m sure they believe you. But others may not. Everyone has to understand why—”
“Oh, shut up!”
He did.
She turned her glare back on Edrik, caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of Keltan’s face, and snapped her gaze in his direction. “And wipe that stupid smug grin off your face, Keltan—or whatever your real name is.” He flinched. “Did anyone question your story? Did anyone wonder why you have the same name as the Autarch’s horse? Or did they just accept what you had to say? Why am I the only one nobody trusts?” But she didn’t wait to hear whatever feeble answers either boy might have offered. Instead, she dug her heels into her horse’s flanks and trotted ahead of them until she was out of earshot.
She rode the rest of the way to the hut in black, fuming, solitary silence. Edrik held up a hand to stop them well short of the little square building, then slid from his horse and drew his sword. “We’ll approach on foot,” he said. “It may not be—”
Mara brushed past him. “Mara!” Edrik shouted after her, but she ignored him; limping to the hut, she threw the door open, then spun to face the rest. “Empty. As I knew it would be.” And then, without waiting for Edrik’s response, she went inside.
It was just as she remembered it. Of course it would be, she thought. She went into the room with the stone basin. At least that had changed: the basin was almost full of magic once more, swirling and shifting color as she watched it.
She coughed. Entering the room had stirred up the fine white dust on the floor. Acrid on her tongue, it tickled the back of her throat.
Dust.
On the floor.
Grute . . .
She ran outside, shoving Edrik out of the doorway so hard he stumbled and almost fell, then turned sharply left, dropped to her hands and knees on the cold wet stone, and heaved up the contents of her stomach. It took a long time for the spasms to pass, long after her belly was empty and all she brought up was bitter liquid. Even then she could still taste the acrid dust . . .
. . . the dust of Grute.
Edrik knelt beside her. “Here,” he said gently, and handed her his waterskin. She poured water into her mouth, swirled it around and spat it out, then did it again . . . and again. “Mara, I never would have made you go in. I just wanted to see—”
“It’s Grute,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “The dust. In the hut. That’s Grute. That’s all that’s left of him. Just like the Watcher.”
“Can you stand?”
Mara nodded. Edrik helped her to her feet, then led her around to the sunny side of the hut. “Wait here,” he said. Finding her legs shaky, she leaned her back against the wall, then sank down to a sitting position. The stones had soaked up enough sun to warm her aching body. She shut her eyes against the glare.
A shadow moved behind the dark red curtain of her eyelids. She opened them and blinked up at Keltan, who slid down the wall to sit at her right. He closed his own eyes. “My real name is Birik,” he said, his voice low and rough. “But I’ll never use it again. My father gave it to me, and I want nothing of his. He beat my mother to death when I was ten years old. The Autarch hung him for it. It’s the only good thing the Autarch ever did. I watched him die. I wasn’t supposed to be there, I was given to my mother’s brother after . . . after my mother died . . . but I sneaked out. I wanted to see. And I saw. And I saw the Autarch. He was there himself that day, not for my father, there was some high-ranking City Official being hung for some offense, I don’t know what. He was sitting on his beautiful white stallion. Keltan. And that’s when I chose that name for my own.” His eyes opened, but he didn’t look at her: he gazed up at the mountains’ gray-and-white peaks, wreathed in thin cloud. “I told Edrik all of this when I joined the unMasked Army. He knows my real name. He knows why I’ll never use it. And he swore he’d never tell anyone the truth.” Finally, he turned his eyes on Mara. “Except for him, you’re the only one who knows,” he finished, his voice barely above a whisper.
Mara felt sick in a whole new way, sick for h
aving tried to hurt Keltan with her revelation about his name, for having responded to her own hurt by trying to hurt a friend. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have—”
Keltan shrugged. “It’s all right.” He looked back up at the mountains again, but his left hand found hers, held it. “There’s an old saying: ‘Be gentle, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing of.’ I think that goes double for those who have found their way to the unMasked Army.”
Mara nodded, lips pressed together.
Keltan’s hand felt good in hers, so she kept it there. For about five minutes they simply sat in companionable silence; then Hyram came around the corner. “There you two are—” he began, then his face lost expression as his eyes darted to their linked hands. Suddenly embarrassed, Mara pulled free. Hyram’s eyes flicked up again. “Father wants to see you,” he said. His voice had gone wooden. “But he’d like to see you in the hut. If you think you can stand it.”
Mara nodded. “I can stand it.” I hope, she thought. She left Keltan and Hyram looking at each other like tomcats circling one another stiff-legged in the street, and went around the corner of the hut to the open door. The rest of the party sat on the rocks, eating their midday meals, while the horses tugged at the sparse grasses growing among the stones. Illina gave her a friendly wave; she managed a smile in return, then ducked into the hut’s dim interior.
At once she tasted the dust again. Trying not to think about what—who—it really was, she went through the front part of the hut into the back room, where magic seethed in the black stone basin.
Edrik had taken one of the empty urns from the shelves and was turning it over and over in his hands. He glanced up. “These pots,” he said, “look like ordinary—”
“They’re not.” Mara could hardly tear her eyes from the basin, aswirl with beautiful, tempting magic. She couldn’t believe Edrik couldn’t see the glistening pool, the rainbow spray of colors chasing themselves around the walls, crawling over his face. “They’re made of black lodestone,” she said distantly. “Like the basin.” Three steps took her to its side. “And this . . .” She dipped her finger into the pool, pulled it out sheathed in glimmering light. “. . . this basin is the magic-well. It’s black lodestone, too. It’s drawing the magic out of a mass of the stone inside this ridge.”
