by Jo Spurrier
‘I wonder if perhaps we should head east,’ Mira said. ‘To the Owl lands and Isidro’s kin. They may shelter us this winter for the sake of our connection with him.’
Ardamon rubbed his chin. ‘Well, we’ll need to be settled when the babe’s due in midwinter.’
‘But what about Cam and Delphine?’ Anoa said. ‘We can’t just leave them.’
‘Anoa, we’ve spent the whole summer searching, and haven’t found so much as a footprint,’ Mira said, fighting to keep her voice steady. ‘Something’s gone wrong, and we can’t keep chasing ghosts through these hills.’
‘They haven’t been captured,’ Ardamon said. ‘Everyone else is looking for them too. If they’d been found we would’ve heard.’
Mira nodded, blinking back tears. ‘You must be right.’ She sighed. ‘Anoa, please fetch the captain. We’ve been camped here for days now, waiting for the wretched priest, and it’s time we moved on.’
She settled back into the padded chair and passed a hand over her eyes as Anoa left. By all the Gods, Cam, I hope you’re safe. What will I tell this child if he has to grow up without you?
Anoa huddled into her salmon-skin raincoat as she made her way through the camp. The rain had grown heavier and the hills around them were only a dull grey blur. Somewhere, servants would be preparing Valeria’s body for the pyre, but Anoa suspected the old queen would have to wait for her send-off.
She found Captain Omaldan at the edge of the camp, berating a messenger Mira had sent out a few days ago. Flanked by soldiers was another slight figure, small and childlike in an oversized salmon-skin coat. The figure’s shoulders were slumped and head bowed.
‘You brought her here?’ Omaldan demanded as the messenger squirmed under his gaze. ‘Have you lost the wits you were born with, man? What if she’s a spy? Do you have no care for Lady Mira’s safety? Do you think the cursed Slavers will suddenly learn to treat a woman decently just because she’s with child?’
‘Sir, forgive me, but we didn’t know what else to do with her,’ the messenger protested. ‘I was only going to bring word of her, but then we learnt some of Hespero’s men were coming our way and we couldn’t let them find her. If they took her to Ruhavera they’d only hand her back to the Slavers: if she is a spy, she’d get off scot-free, and if her tale’s true, we’d be sending her back to the folk she escaped from. Sir, I thought it best to let Lady Mira deal with her — if the lass is truthful, she’ll be safe, and if not she’ll get what she deserves.’
‘Truly, sir,’ one of the guards said, ‘if Hespero learnt of her, it could give him a lead to track the lady down. Besides, she’s a city-born southern girl. In this weather, in these mountains, she could be on the moon for all she knows where she is. Give her a cursed signal fire and she still couldn’t lead the Slavers to us.’
Anoa cleared her throat and Omaldan glanced her way. ‘Captain, Lady Mira wishes to see you —’ Anoa broke off as she took a step closer and caught a flash of honey-coloured skin and fair hair peeking from the hood of the small figure’s coat. Frowning, she stooped to get a better look. Anoa had only seen her a handful of times, but she knew this girl from her months as a slave — it was Alameda, Delphine’s younger student.
At the sight of her, Alameda threw back her hood and dropped to her knees. ‘Madame, I beg you, take me to Lady Mira,’ she said in a rattle of Akharian. ‘I swear by the Good Goddess herself, I’m not a spy! Please don’t send me back.’
A half hour passed before the matter was heard in Mira’s tent. Rhia had been summoned to make sense of the girl’s tale, for Alameda was too overwhelmed to explain it with her limited grasp of Ricalani.
‘My lady, she fled the Akharian camp to escape an unwanted marriage,’ Rhia said.
‘Marriage? She’s barely fifteen,’ Mira demanded. ‘I know how the Slavers make use of young slave-girls, but are their free women really treated the same way?’
‘She’s young, even by Akharian standards. My lady, Alameda was slave-born before joining the Collegium. Delphine was her guardian, but with her defection the role fell to General Boreas. One of the ranking Battle-Mages took a fancy to her and approached the general, seeking marriage.’
‘Why would a ranking mage want to marry a girl of fifteen? If all he wanted was a bedmate, I’m sure he could have his pick from the slaves they’ve taken from the south.’
‘It’s because of her talent, my lady,’ Rhia said. ‘At the battle in the Spire one of Delphine’s students helped the survivors escape, and Isidro said it must have been Alameda. Battle-Mages like to take talented women for wives. I suspect this Presarius was trying to snap her up.
‘Alameda refused, but the general said she was too young to know what was best and granted his permission. Alameda says she got together what gear and supplies she could and ran away. Delphine had told her that the Ricalani people treat their women rather differently than the Akharians do.’
‘Indeed she did, madame,’ Alameda piped up in her heavily accented Ricalani. The physician had given her a bowl of tea brewed with soothing herbs and she had calmed enough to use her limited knowledge of the language Isidro had started to teach her. ‘She said northern people don’t make their women marry if they don’t wish. Please, madame, please let me stay, and I’ll serve you in any way I can. I know I’m only a student, but I can make many enchantments, and I can craft sturdy bridges and walls and the like.’
Ardamon was pacing behind Mira’s padded chair. ‘Does she really expect us to believe that she fled the Akharian army and made it all the way to the ranges on her own?’
‘Well, child?’ Mira asked her in Akharian. ‘Just how did you slip away?’
‘It wasn’t hard,’ Alameda said. ‘Fontaine was jealous, but she went away to the cache in the north, so she couldn’t interfere. Professor Harwin helped … he gave me a bit of coin in front of the servant who was supposed to guard me. I let the man steal it and when he got drunk, Harwin and I got our things and slipped away … he was supposed to come with me, except one of the guards spotted him and took him back to camp. I waited and waited, but he never came back and it was too dangerous to stay any longer. So I went on my own.’
‘Alone,’ Mira said. ‘What did you do for food, for shelter? How did you stay warm?’
‘I had a little bit of food,’ Alameda said. ‘You don’t need much, really. I never had much to eat when I was a slave. Your belly hurts, but if you drink enough water it stops. When I was little, I slept near the fireplace, so I know the stone holds the heat long after the fire dies. Each night I found rocks and made them hot. I met a bear once and it wanted to eat me, but I chased it away. After a while I met some herders, and they took me to some soldiers who brought me here.’
Mira twisted around in her seat to catch Ardamon’s eye. He grimaced and shrugged.
It was too convenient. She wanted to believe the girl, but if the Akharians had sent her to spy upon them, what better story to concoct than one that went to the heart of the divisions between their cultures? The herders hadn’t known what to do with her, and the soldiers had brought her to the ranges for the same reason. If the Akharians had planted her, they couldn’t invent a better story.
But if she was telling the truth, sending her away would be a travesty and a waste. Mira had grown used to having a mage on hand, and since Isidro and Delphine had been lost, she was keenly aware of her disadvantage.
‘Very well,’ Mira said. ‘You may stay. Rhia, can you fit another fledgling in your nest?’
‘I believe we can squeeze her in, my lady,’ Rhia said, and turned to Alameda. ‘You must understand that Amaya is not a slave now. You are to help her with her work, and when I am not there you must do as she says.’
Alameda nodded. ‘I promise, madame.’
‘Amaya,’ Mira said, nodding to the girl standing by the tent door. ‘Show Alameda to your tent. And Alameda, perhaps when we find Delphine again, you can continue your studies.’
At that, Alameda turned to Mira
with wide eyes. ‘Do you mean to go west, madame? I’ll go with you if you command, but please don’t make me stay there or they’ll find me.’
‘West?’ Mira said. ‘Why would we go to the empire?’
‘Because you said … madame, that’s where Madame Delphine is. I heard the general talking about it while I was waiting to see him. Madame and the barbarian prince went into the empire after the Blood-Mages.’
Mira studied the girl’s face, searching for any guile in those wide blue eyes. She seemed to be telling the truth, but Mira knew many to whom lying came as easily as breathing — she was one of them, trained from her earliest years for the games of politics. ‘Did they?’ she said. ‘How interesting. Rhia, please stay a moment. Amaya, you may go.’
Amaya bowed, and beckoned the Akharian girl to follow her.
As soon as they were gone, Mira buried her face in her hands. She straightened with tears in her eyes, but she was smiling despite them. ‘Twin Suns be thanked, they’re alive! Oh, by all the Gods …’ She slumped over again, while Anoa hunkered down to rub her back.
‘I knew they had to be safe,’ Anoa said. ‘They’re too bloody-minded to die after coming all this way …’
Mira gulped and swept her hair back from her face, blotting her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Well, this does change matters a little, but first things first. Rhia, what do you think? Can we trust the girl?’
‘I … think so, my lady,’ Rhia said. ‘Amaya says the girl never struck her as deceitful.’
‘They must be desperate if they’re sending a fifteen-year-old girl to spy for them,’ Ardamon muttered.
‘Does the fact that she was a slave argue for her telling the truth?’ Anoa said.
Rhia grimaced. ‘Not necessarily. There is a saying in Akhara: no one’s as prideful as a freed slave. Her talent concerns me. How are we to know if she makes contact with her commanders?’
‘Witch-stones,’ Mira said, turning to Ardamon. ‘We must have some, like the ones Mesentreians have on the pommels of their knives. Give some to Rhia and Amaya and they may spot her using power.’
Ardamon nodded. ‘I’ll see to it. And Rhia? Watch her closely. If you see any sign of duplicity, tell us at once.’
‘I will,’ Rhia said. ‘But, my lady, what if she speaks the truth and Cam and Delphine really went into the empire?’
Mira heaved herself up. ‘We can’t keep skulking around these hills forever. We need allies, perhaps Cam and Issey and Sierra do, too … ah, I don’t know. It would seem foolish to look for shelter in the bear’s den. But heading east to shelter with the Owl Clan is a temporary measure, and puts even more distance between us.’
‘We need to think,’ Ardamon said. ‘Let’s just focus on moving camp for now. Once you’re safe, we can come up with a plan.’
Cam lay on his belly, squinting into the yellow dust.
Delphine lay prone beside him, breathing in the baked scent of the soil. For now, she could still lie face down. How much longer would it be, she wondered, before the swelling of her belly began to show? She knew nothing of babies, or bearing them, and she hadn’t dared ask any of the women they’d passed for advice. She hadn’t mentioned her pregnancy to anyone but Cam.
She pushed that thought from her mind. ‘What do you see?’
‘I think it’s just another herd,’ Cam said. ‘There are horses, but no spears or pennants, and no armour or shields.’ Still, he didn’t move away, but lay with his chin on his hand to watch a little longer.
Delphine slowly shuffled backward down the slope, until she could stand without casting her outline against the horizon. She shook her head as she walked over to the tethered horses lipping the last of the grain from their nosebags. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have recognised herself: covered in dirt, wearing layer upon layer like a desert herder, hands calloused with the work of tending the camp and without so much as a spot of ink staining her skin.
Stowing the nosebags, Delphine tipped her head up to watch the last of the morning stars. One day she would look back on this and it wouldn’t be the dirt she remembered, or the smell of horse and old sweat, or the bone-deep weariness of a body that never seemed to get enough rest. In the years to come — if there were years to come — her memories would be coloured by what came next. Kell and Isidro, and Sierra and Rasten, lay ahead of them, and sometimes the anxiety of what she feared to find seemed to tear her apart. Who was dead and defeated, or victorious and alive, would shape the future along two vastly different paths. After so many months of waiting, hoping, wondering and dreading, Delphine just wanted it over with. She wasn’t sure how much more of this uncertainty she could take. As Cam began to descend at last, she tightened the horses’ girths, swatting at Cam’s gelding’s nose as the beast turned to nip at her.
The leather-faced herders watching over skinny goats, stunted cattle and stocky, stubby horses had been their only source of news for months. From them, they’d learnt that Kell had tortured and killed anyone who crossed his path. They’d learnt that soldiers were moving up from the south to surround this arid corner of the country, together with the troops that had followed them east from the border.
But a few weeks ago Delphine noticed one herder peering closely at Cam’s face, asking too-casual questions as to where they were headed and where they intended to make camp. Perhaps she and Cam were worth less to the empire than those they were trailing, but even so the insult of Delphine’s defection would not be overlooked and Cam was too valuable a prize to be left unsecured.
When he joined her, Cam spread out the map against his saddlebags. Delphine looked it over as he measured the distance to the water-hole near the ruins. She had perused every inch of that map so often that she ought to have it committed to memory, but there was a certain comfort to be had in running one’s eyes along the roads and old riverbeds yet again.
‘Two or three days should get us there,’ Cam said, ‘if you think that’s where we should go.’
Delphine wasn’t certain, she just didn’t have any better ideas. ‘Whatever Kell has in mind, he needs Sierra to be isolated —’
‘Delphi,’ Cam broke in, letting the parchment roll shut, ‘I didn’t mean to sound as though I doubt you. It’s our best bet, I agree.’
But what if we’re wrong? Delphine bit her lip to keep from speaking that thought aloud.
‘Cam … it was my suggestion that brought us here …’ Back in the spring, on that rainy morning when she and Cam had found the horses Mira left for them, coming west had been her idea. Now they were trapped and the little lump of guilt that congealed in her chest reminded her constantly that it was her fault.
‘And I agreed to it,’ Cam said. ‘I knew you had no experience of living rough, running and hiding from soldiers. We took the chance, and there’s no use worrying over what might have been. Wherever they are and whatever’s happened, we will find them.’
Chapter 3
Rasten turned the leather sling over in his hands.
‘You must have used one before,’ Sierra said. ‘I had mine the moment I could throw a stone straight.’
It came to him in a flash — a man with warm, calloused hands showing him how to pinch the knotted end between thumb and fingers. For a moment, he saw his face, deep grooves around the man’s eyes crinkling as he smiled encouragement. Rasten tossed his head like a fly-stung horse, and when he turned to Sierra with her hand outstretched, a few rounded stones in her palm, it was all he could do not to slap it away.
Her face fell. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, reaching for him.
‘Don’t touch me!’ he snarled, recoiling. The sling tangled around his fingers and he flung it away, a pathetic length of brittle leather. That face filled his mind and he could almost recall the voice that went with it, the smell of his clothes.
Rasten’s chest clenched, a sudden, visceral pulse, as though he’d taken a punch to the gut. He raked his hands through his hair, and the sting as his fingers snarled on tangled curls was a welcome distractio
n. He turned away from Sierra while his power flexed, enraged at the sudden pain tearing into his head and his heart. For years, the only way he could deal with that pain was by turning it on another, and he refused to let it fix upon her as a target.
He didn’t want to remember. He’d buried those memories years ago. Why was she torturing him by dredging up the faces of those who had loved him, who had died to protect him? If they could see what he’d become they would spit on him, repudiate their sacrifice and curse him from the next world.
Rasten dropped to his knees. The face lingered in his mind’s eye, the voice just beyond the edge of his hearing, and Rasten knew that if he heard it his world would shatter and his sanity would melt away like snow. In front of him was a large rock, and the urge swept over him to smash his head against the stone until the face and voice was lost forever like blood spilled into the sand.
Then, he felt Sierra’s hand on his shoulder, warm against the chill evening air. ‘Rasten?’ Her voice was small, quiet. He tried to speak, but made only a choking sob, and she dropped down to wrap her arms around him. Focusing on her warmth and the scent of her skin, he crawled back from the crumbling edge of memory, breathing through the pain as he had so many times.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. ‘I had no idea it would take you that way.’
‘No more did I,’ he said, his voice thick and rasping. He still couldn’t let himself look at her. In the last few months he had grown too used to using her as a refuge, letting sex and sensation drown out fear and pain. The time for that had passed; with Kell’s death a new age had begun. He couldn’t go back, no matter how desperately he craved sanctuary and respite.
The circle of her arms loosened, but she remained at his back. ‘I … I should find us some food.’ It was dusk, prime time for hunting, but the light would fade fast. ‘Will you be alright alone?’
Rasten nodded, but he covered his eyes with his hand. ‘Go.’
