by Page Morgan
I walked to the canvas-covered mirror in the loft and drew back the drape, the howling hounds in the distance. There was no escaping it—the question of who killed Princess Mara plagued me. I thought of the wish she’d made to the moon: Please, let him be telling the truth. Who, Prince Orin? Had she suspected the Klaven prince was lying to her about something? Her desperation for the truth had been fierce.
“Mirror,” I said, “show me who Princess Mara spoke of. Show me who she wanted to be telling her the truth.”
I released a breath as the mirror’s surface shivered and my pulse throbbed. The glass thickened and swam with feathered colors, spiraling into a pinwheel of blue and purple and red. Each ring thinned and pushed to the edges, bringing forward a forest scene. A young man crouched by a river, the water running high and fast as he dunked the mouth of a water skin. A mop of black hair obscured most of his face.
This was not Prince Orin. I’d never seen the Prince of Klaven before, but it was clear this man was not royalty. He wore common buckskin trousers with leather ties on each thigh, meant for holding weapons or tools, and a torn and filthy shirt, rolled to the elbows. He combed his fingers through his hair and tucked it behind his ears, exposing more of his face—square jaw, straight nose bent slightly to the left, and dark, somber eyes fringed by long, thick lashes. He stared into the river, even after he’d filled his water skin and capped it. Whoever he was, he looked lost. Devastated.
Who had this man been to the princess? And why would he have lied to her? My breathing echoed in my ears as I concentrated on his face, on the fresh scrapes and scratches on his cheeks and chin. He looked like he’d been in a fight. He was rugged and fierce, and as I continued to stare at him, I understood why the princess might have been thinking of him that night on the balcony. Handsome and brooding, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
A hound yowled in the forest, and in the mirror, the man stood quickly. He looked around as more yelps and barks entered my open loft door—and drifted from the direction of the mirror.
I sat straight, breath caught in my throat. The man stepped backward, his eyes locked on something beyond the mirror’s surface. But then, a pointed snout edged into view. Front paws followed, and then the whole shaggy-haired body of a hound came forward, sniffing and growling.
I shot to my feet. He was in the Rooks Hollow forest!
The man dropped his water skin and made a jerking motion with his arm; a blade appeared in his hand. My eyes narrowed on the weapon. Frothy drool streamed from the hound’s mouth as its massive gray form stalked forward. From the mirror, I heard shouting, most likely calls from the hound’s master.
The tension shattered as the hound sprang forward. The man shielded his face and neck with a raised arm, and the beast’s jaws clamped around it, bringing him to the forest floor. The dog twisted violently from side to side in an attempt to shred flesh from bone. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move…and then, with a sharp, heart-stopping squeal, the hound went limp.
The man pushed the dog off and extracted a long blade from the animal’s chest. He stumbled to his feet while holding his bleeding arm close to his stomach.
A distant whistle snapped the man’s head up. “Where are you, boy?” The hound’s master was near.
The injured man took off fast along the riverbank. The mirror’s eye followed. When the other man discovered his hound dead, small game would no longer be the object of the day’s hunt. The men in Rooks Hollow were competitive, yes, but the death of a hound would draw them together. If he were caught, the stranger would be beaten to within an inch of his life. Maybe even killed. And with his arm bleeding that heavily, he might very well be leaving a trail.
The river. It was the Melinka. And hearing the dog’s howling both in the barn and in the mirror meant the man had to be near. He stumbled, looking over his shoulder as the distant voice of the hound’s master rose to frantic shouting. He’d found the dog.
This man couldn’t keep running, not with an injury like that. The dog had attacked him, unprovoked. The stranger wasn’t at any fault. I knew it, of course, but no one else would stop to listen to him. I paced before the mirror, glancing out the barn loft door to the tree line just beyond the meadow. Stranger or not, he needed help, and I was the only one who could give it to him.
10
Tobin
Behind me, the woods spiraled with the shouts of men and the whine of more hounds. I ran, breath shaky and hollow, clutching my arm to my chest. The sting of the dog’s teeth and the damage they’d done hadn’t hit me yet, but I knew when it finally did, it would be next to impossible to concentrate on anything but the pain.
I had to run. Get away. Keep myself alive for what I needed to do, which was to somehow wreak vengeance upon Frederic. The details of the plan were non-existent, even after two days of foot travel through the forest. I didn’t know how I would find the emperor, or what I would do to him beyond killing him. Death was not enough.
But first, I had to escape the master of that crazed hound.
The river gushed beside me, smashing into rocks and half-drowning a felled tree up ahead. The trunk lay lengthwise over the water, a natural bridge to the opposite banking.
The soles of my boots squeaked as I started across the wet log. Still clutching my arm close, I balanced myself. Frigid water lapped over my boots. It was only a log. I should have been able to cross it without trouble. But now it stretched far longer than it appeared a few moments ago. My heart beat a rapid rhythm. Cold sweat erupted on my back and neck.
Looking down, blood stained the front of my shirt and seeped past the waist of my trousers. My sleeve was not crimson, but black, the torn fabric stuck to the ripped flesh underneath. Pain finally reared its head and attacked. My foot slipped on the wet bark, and I sucked in a flimsy breath before crashing into the water.
The current dragged me, shoving and bending me. I chopped at the surface with my good arm, the furious current giving me an ironic escape from the hunters and hounds—the water could kill me just as easily. I gasped for air and gurgled on a wave, suddenly incensed. I would rather die from a blade than drown. This end, it was unacceptable. Yet I had no say at all as the river curved and dropped, sloshing me along.
Numbed by the wood-shaded water, I barely felt my ankles slam against the banking. I dipped up and then down, above water then below again. On one upward rise, a grassy banking looked to be within reach.
And standing on it, a pair of legs.
My knees struck a river boulder, and it felt as though the lower half of my body had been ripped off. I choked on air and water, my eyes open just enough to see the pair of legs running along the river, keeping up with the slowing current. My shoulder slammed into the gravelly banking and something—fingers—snatched at my drenched coat. They hauled me up, digging into my shoulders and arms and fighting the water attempting to steal me back.
At last, I was on solid ground. Warmed river water sludged from my nostrils and from my mouth, onto the bed of moss. Each breath tore at my chest, and my stomach heaved. Two hands grasped my shoulders and flipped my body, limp as an expired silver fish, onto its side.
“Cough it up.”
“I’m...fine.” My throat burned as the words passed.
“Your arm,” the person said as wracking shivers vibrated through me. My hair, matted to my face, parted to the side, pushed along by a light finger. A pair of bright green eyes hovered over me.
“Can you walk?” she asked. She. My rescuer was a girl. I pushed myself onto my uninjured elbow. She lent me her arm to help me stand.
“I…” The way this girl was dressed clammed my lips. No, I’d been mistaken. It was a boy, not a girl. “I’m being chased. You should leave me here.”
Nausea attacked, and I stumbled to the side. The young boy, about a head shorter than me, intercepted my fall. He propped me up against his side and threw my uninjured arm around his shoulders.
“Those hounds will rip you to shreds, and their masters wil
l cheer them on,” he said. “No, you’ve got to come with me. Walk.”
And with that, the boy started away from the wild river, into the forest. I limped along, sorry to be leaning so heavily on him—his shoulders were bony, and he huffed and grunted with the strain of my weight. My arm blazed as I held it to my chest.
“Nearly there,” the boy whispered. He guided me through the trees, the late morning light falling in splotches of gold through the overgrowth. Hounds barked in the far distance; the dogs had lost my scent.
We broke the tree line and emerged into a flat meadow. The grasses were waist high in spots, and paddocks gridded the land. A village, buildings, and a church steeple all registered in my mind, but the ache of my arm and my legs, close to buckling, edged it all into the peripheries.
Inside a barn, a horse whinnied and shook its black, velvety snout at me. A flock of chickens got underfoot. The boy shooed them away.
“Up here,” he said, and the scuffed wooden rungs of a ladder appeared in front of my face. Climbing took minutes upon minutes, or so it seemed, and felt mostly like the boy shoving me up ahead of him.
When at last I fell onto my stomach, a thick blanket of hay padded my head. The world ceased spinning. I was alive. Exhausted, but alive.
Then came the ripping of cloth, and when I opened my eyes, the young boy was tearing some canvas into rectangular lengths. Bandages.
“Can you…” the boy hesitated. “Can you take off your coat and shirt?”
He had to be joking. I could barely move my eyelids.
“You do it,” I said. He stared at me, but managed to pull off my coat easy enough. His pale green eyes examined the buttons of my shirt. He pressed his lips together in a way that reminded me of how Kinn looked while concentrating on addition and subtraction tables. The thought daggered me. I preferred the hound’s teeth to my memories.
The boy’s hands shook as they unlatched the metal clasps, starting at the neck and working down to my navel. Then again, I was trembling uncontrollably, too. He pulled the shirt open slowly, hitching his breath when his fingers brushed against my chest. What was wrong with this boy?
He tugged at my sleeves, but the cloth stuck to my wound.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” he cried, again trying to peel away the torn sleeve, this time with success. Hard gooseflesh riddled my skin as the boy circled the canvas bandages around my forearm. The gashes and puncture wounds reached past my elbow.
“I need w-warm clothes,” I whispered. “D-dry.”
“I can find some.” He scrambled off into the loft of the barn and returned with a quilt. He tucked it over me, and then got up and headed for the ladder. “I’ll be right back.”
“My b-boots.” My toes were numb. I hated this feeling of dependence, of need. Without this boy, I’d have drowned. Without him to help me now, I’d shiver to death.
He came back and helped unlace them, shimmying them off and dumping a puddle of water all over the hay-strewn floor. He held the boots up to his face, eyes wide at the dagger hilts strapped in place near the top ties. The boy set the boots aside, watching me from the corner of his vision.
“I w-won’t harm you,” I said, my throat aching from so many spasms. “My trousers. I n-need to get d-dry.”
The yelping of hounds split the silent meadow. The boy’s jaw went slack, and he stared at me, dumbfounded.
“Trousers?” he gasped. “No, no, I—I can’t, I’ll be right back, and you’ll be warmer and you can—”
Another howl, this time closer, interrupted him. I watched as the apples of his cheeks crimsoned. He stumbled over more words as he backed away on his knees, preparing to stand. I grabbed his wrist before he could flee.
“Why won’t you help m-me with…” My words died on my lips as he met my stare. He lightly bit his lower lip, which I noticed, for the first time, was full and pink. His skin was like fresh cream, flushed now but without a single hair. Beneath his cap, his cropped dark hair reached no longer than the lobes of his delicate ears. The shape of his face, his lips…definitely the lips…revealed the reason why he refused to remove my pants.
“You are a g-girl,” I whispered.
She wrenched her small wrist from my hand, and I crashed back against the floor. My stomach roiled and the urge to vomit returned. The loft dimmed, the sunlight fading as if a cloud passed overhead, and down I hurtled, into oblivion.
Something sharp pinched my finger, and I woke with a start. My cheek was pressed against the floor, and a few sheaves of hay clung to it as I lifted my head. A rooster jabbed his red-jowled neck toward my hand. I swept out my arm, and grimaced at the instant burning pain. Bringing my arm back close to my side, I sat up, and remembered everything.
I glanced around the barn loft, the quilt a nest of warmth against the cold air. My chest was still bare and by the feel of it—I lifted the quilt and peeked—yes, my legs were as well. The girl had ended up removing my trousers after all.
The girl disguised as a boy. A good disguise too, though granted, I had been a little disoriented. Why did she dress that way? The loft door was shut completely, though an opening at the roof peak, next to an owl’s roost, let in slate blue light. It was before dawn, I guessed, and the uncontrollable shivering had passed.
“I’ll live another day, at least,” I said to the rooster that still eyed me suspiciously.
I peeled back the bandage, and winced. The puckered wound was red and oozy, but it had been sewn neatly with black floss thread. I replaced the bandage.
A pair of brown tweed pants and a white poplin shirt lay beside the quilt, along with dry stockings and my own, damp boots. I dressed quickly, annoyed by the care I needed to show my arm. What was a dog mauling anyhow? The pain of that was a pinprick compared to what my family had endured. And Mara…the memory of her choking on her own blood made me falter with the buttons on my shirt.
A snowy-faced owl fluttered in through the roof peak and settled into its roost. I pushed the loft door aside. Mist curled up off the meadow. A few lights brightened the village buildings within view, and a handful of chimney stacks smoked. The one directly behind the barn pumped out a steady stream of smoke, and firelight flickered in a lower story window. A figure was coming toward the barn. I was nearly positive it was the girl, but just in case, I rolled the loft door shut and pulled on my boots, the leather spongy.
No one had come for me all last evening and all night. The girl was hiding me. Or perhaps she was only protecting herself and her secret. With hair cropped that short she must have been playing the role of a boy seriously for some time. Below the loft, the horse whinnied and the chickens burst into a cacophony of hungry clucking.
“Shhh,” a muted voice said just before corn kernels scattered over the wooden planks.
The ladder creaked. A moment later the girl appeared, her hat still firmly in place and a kerchief wrapped around her neck. She saw me and froze. We watched each other, the cadence of her breathing fairly fast.
“You saved my life,” I said. “Thank you.”
She couldn’t hold my gaze as she clasped her hands behind her back.
“The hunters returned last evening.” Her voice was low and husky. “They said a hound had been killed. They followed a blood trail and boot prints to the river.” She met my eyes.
“I hope the hound wasn’t rabid,” I replied and saw the slightest lift of the corner of her lip. “What village is this?”
“Rooks Hollow,” the girl answered. The brigands’ had mentioned it a few days earlier.
“I’m in Klaven.” Again.
She nodded, and it was then I realized she already knew I was from Morvansk—and a member of the emperor’s court. She’d sewn the gash along my left shoulder, where the black inked M was. Common citizens didn’t require such a marking.
“There’s a noose strung up at the gallows for when they find the man who killed that hound.” The girl walked to the loft door and peered out in the same careful manner I had. Her profile revealed a well-scul
pted jawline, delicate in the heart-shaped point of it. The kerchief around her neck, I imagined, was to cover up how willowy and feminine it was. But none of it mattered. Whoever she was, this girl would have to remain a mystery now that I’d managed to make myself Rooks Hollow’s number one enemy.
“If you’ll give me my coat, I’ll rid you of the burden of hiding me.”
This seemed to surprise her. The pinch of her brows went soft.
“You can’t leave. Your arm has been seriously injured; it could fester. Besides, they’re in the forest searching for you.” The girl cleared her throat. “You can stay here, in the loft, for a few days until they give up. Hiding you won’t be difficult.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I’m telling you, no one comes into this loft but me. My father hasn’t stepped foot inside the barn for years.”
“Not that. I meant your voice. You don’t have to lower it.” She stared at me, but before she could argue, I continued, “Your disguise fooled me at first, but I know you’re a girl.”
Her heels scraped along the floor.
“I’m not going to say anything to anyone.” I gestured to the barn loft. “Obviously.”
The girl held still. She wiggled her fingers, rubbing the tips hard into her closed palms as she weighed whether or not to believe me.
“I don’t know why you’ve chosen to dress this way, but considering what you’ve done for me the last twenty-four hours, I owe you a good turn,” I said.
My mind whirred with questions about this girl. The timid way she held the ladder, indecisive and yet bold, intrigued me. It almost made me forget the incessant pain of my bandaged arm.
“What is your name?” she finally asked.
Frederic’s soldiers were no doubt scouring the countryside for me, and now he had an excuse to invade Klaven. Using my true name wouldn’t be wise.
“I’m known as Huntsman,” I said. It wasn’t so uncommon an occupation. I could recall a number of huntsmen who had appealed to the emperor for employment; he’d turned them all away, not trusting they wouldn’t steal from his protected forests to feed their own families.
