WITH A DEEP breath to armor herself against sniping comments and sullen glares, Falla lifted the flap on the shelter that Derinow shared with his mother and two other Atal women.
“If I may,” she said mildly.
In response, Derinow’s mother let out a noise halfway between a growl and a snort. But since it wasn’t an outright refusal, Falla crouched down and shuffled sideways through the door.
The tent smelled of unwashed bodies and musty wool. Unlike the Provs, the Atal families still hadn’t adapted to the conditions. Rather than air their bedding on the weathered boulders surrounding the camp, they shoved blankets against the frost-dampened walls of the tent during the day. They considered the little rills of meltwater that meandered through the valley to be far too cold for bathing. Especially after the Atal had spent the first days of the march complaining about the immodesty of the Provs who washed in plain sight.
Falla swallowed back her disgust at the stench and turned her attention to Derinow. She focused her spiritism on his inner thoughts, hoping for an improvement from the past few days of renewed anguish. Unfortunately, now that the march wasn’t consuming his energy, he couldn’t seem to break the cycle of memory. Over and over again, he relived the moments when the landslide had swallowed the garrison. In his mind, the screams had grown louder. Soldiers fell, pummeled beneath the rain of stone, shrieking as they tried to defend themselves from the barrage. Falla had watched the slide. She’d seen a few of the protectors’ last moments, and while they’d been tragic, the end had been quick and mostly obscured by dust. Poor Derinow’s imagination was concocting horrors that hadn’t happened.
“Derinow,” she said quietly. “Would you walk with me? I found a weasel’s den. If we sit still enough, she’ll come out to investigate.”
His mother sneered. “Shouldn’t you be figuring out ways to defend us?” She looked to her companions for support, but the women were too meek to offer an opinion. One crawled for the door and escaped into the fresh afternoon air. The mother snorted in disgust.
“Your son’s happiness is more important to me than any small help I might offer those working on our walls and weapons,” Falla said. “Are you saying you don’t wish him to enjoy the afternoon?”
The woman flinched as if Falla had flicked water on her face. Though Falla wasn’t one to pry, she’d grown so weary of the attitude that she finally decided to peer inside the woman’s head to see what motivated her. But just as Falla caught the first hint of the woman’s angry thoughts, the contact vanished. Sliced off as if by an axe.
How? Was the woman a secret metalogist? Falla’s eyebrows rose as she immediately scanned the mother’s fingers for rings. Nothing.
Again she tried to press her Mind sensing ability into the woman’s head, but nothing happened. She swallowed, groping for her magic. But she couldn’t form an awareness of anyone in the shelter. No one in the vicinity either. What was going on?
“How did you do that?” she asked, eyes narrowed.
“Do what?” the woman asked with an annoyed roll of her eyes.
“I…” Falla hesitated, realizing she shouldn’t admit her intrusion outright. “We’ve spoken much about your son’s geognosty, but never its origins. You wouldn’t happen to have any abilities of your own, would you?”
“How dare you?” The woman curled her lip in disgust, realizing too late the effect her reaction had on her son. Against the wall of the tent, Derinow pulled his knees to his chest.
Shaking her head, Falla extended a hand to the child. Right now, the child was far more important than her ability to peer into people’s minds.
“Make sure he doesn’t catch a cold,” the mother said as Falla helped her son out the door. “Last thing I need is him hacking and sneezing.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Savra
A one-room cottage
I WOKE WITH a sore neck and sand-filled eyes when sunlight poured through cracks in the cottage’s siding and landed on my face. Groaning, I sat up. Beashi had put on a good act for her fellow townspeople, giving us this cottage and claiming she wanted to expunge Azar’s influence from our minds. But when it came to true hospitality, she hadn’t bothered. The promised dinner had never arrived, and our only bedding had been the thin blankets the home’s former inhabitant had left behind.
Around dark, she’d presided over another attempt to cast out our evil, and she hadn’t skimped on the guards she’d placed on the cottage. I slipped to the window, cracked the shutter, and peered out. Two men stood uneasily before the door. One was balding, and he kept smoothing the thin tufts of hair that lay across his scalp. The other fiddled with his weapon, a notched short sword with ratty leather wrappings on the hilt. Neither looked pleased to be standing outside our door.
As I pulled the shutter closed, the hinge let out a squeak. The closer guard, the slight man with thinning hair, snapped his head to look. Sighing, I tugged on the shutter until the edges were flush with the wall.
Avill yawned and sat up. “Anything changed?”
I shook my head.
She curled her lip and swung her feet off the bed. “Then I guess we should get on with the plan.”
“Are you strong enough?” I tapped my foot nervously. We’d discussed an idea for passing Beashi’s guards before we’d fallen asleep, but I wasn’t entirely keen on it.
“I wouldn’t suggest it if I wasn’t.”
I sighed. “Fair enough.”
Before stepping to the door, I grabbed the rucksack Avill had snatched from the garrison bedchamber during our flight. She’d filled it with a blanket and spare jacket before stumbling out the door. I plucked the items off the bed and restuffed them. The rucksack and its contents were our only possessions. A pathetic tally. But if this didn’t go as we hoped, we’d be glad for them.
The door opened inward. When I jerked it open, the taller of the guards stumbled into the room, eyes wide over having his backrest suddenly removed.
“Hey!” he shouted as he caught his balance and whirled.
“We have no chamber pot,” I said. “The situation has become urgent.”
The men stood blinking. Beashi had probably warned them that we might ask to leave, but I doubted she’d have anticipated this ploy. Especially since there was, in fact, a pot with a snug-fitting lid stored beneath the bed.
“I—uh…” the balding guard said.
“Go fetch one,” his partner said, stepping back onto the stoop and nudging him.
“Hurry!” Avill squeaked, crossing her legs.
The man’s eyes went wide, and he sprinted away.
Anxiety furrowed the remaining man’s brow. He gnawed at the inside of his lower lip. Avill let out a high squeal and grabbed my hand.
“If you’d let us go around the back of the building, my little sister would be rather grateful,” I said.
He shuffled. “I’m supposed to keep you under guard. You’re not in control of your minds.”
“Well, in a moment, I’ll no longer be in control of my bladder,” Avill said loudly.
I had to slap a hand over my mouth, pretending shock, to keep from laughing.
The man’s eyes were white around the edges. “Fine. Go.”
Walking with her knees pasted together, Avill waddled for the corner of the cottage. I stuck close to her heels. Once out of the man’s sight, she sprinted for the back wall. We skidded to a halt, clasped hands, and within two heartbeats, the breeze swept us away.
***
I staggered when Avill dumped us rather ungracefully from the air on the far side of town.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “Guess I’m still a bit tired.”
A small child was playing in a square of dirt before his house. I winced, realizing we’d dropped onto the ground right in front of him. Wide eyes gleamed at us.
“Fly!” he said with a grin.
Avill nodded. “Yes, fly. But shhh. It’s a big secret.”
T
he child’s eyes were solemn as he nodded.
“Come on,” I said, tugging her forward.
Avill shuffled behind me, eyes darting, as I marched for the center of town. The morning sun drew long shadows from the buildings and reddened the bodies strung up on the edge of town. I glanced north, toward the distant rise of the Icethorns where scraps of clouds hung over the peaks. Longing tightened my chest. More than anything, I wanted to be by Kostan’s side.
But Avill was right. The best help I could offer Kostan was to bolster whatever faint loyalty these people felt for the throne. Afterward, even if the journey was futile, I needed to try to enter the Maelstrom. Perhaps we still had a chance to beat the Hunger. If we survived the coming months, someday I’d find my way back to him.
The street we followed passed the side of the town hall before emptying into the central square. The hall’s wooden siding was gray and warped. Mud had been plastered into the gaps where the boards no longer fit. The windows were shuttered. A shiver crawled along my skin when I thought about our plan. These townspeople had murdered the lord and his sons. They’d strung the bodies up. As far as I could tell, they felt no remorse for their acts.
Weeks of fear and isolation had changed these people. I hoped I wasn’t making a big mistake.
As we stepped into the central square, the front door of the town hall opened. Beashi stepped out, carrying a tunic she was mending. Her eyes went wide with shock as her lips pulled back from her teeth.
“We wish to speak with your fellow townsfolk,” I said, stepping in front of Avill.
Her eyes narrowed. “How did you… Never mind. Seems I must have a conversation with the guards I’d assigned to keep you safe.”
“Oh, clamp your lips,” Avill spat. “It wasn’t our safety you were worried about.”
The woman raised her eyebrows in offense. Behind her, the door to the town hall started to open, but she quickly stepped back and yanked it shut. “The others in town agree with me. Your minds have been corrupted by the mage. We’ve been discussing alternative methods for cleansing her influence. At first, I thought we should keep her alive until you were free, but now I feel her death may be the only way.”
The temptation to control her was so strong I could taste it. I pressed fingernails into my palms to keep my aura-sight subdued.
“Let me speak to the others,” I said.
I glanced toward Azar’s prison. The cellar door opened beneath a single-story building that fronted an edge of the square. A simple bolt slid into a housing to secure the doors. In addition, a chain had been looped through the handles on the hatch and a… I rolled my eyes. Someone had wrapped a wire around the black-iron fish statuette and had nailed it to the door. Did no one here realize that Azar was a ferro mage?
“Return to the room we so generously provided,” Beashi said, gesturing toward the cottage, “and I’ll send the others to speak to you if they’re willing.”
Given her evasiveness, it was clear to me that not everyone in the town agreed with the woman. She was working hard to control the situation—and nearly succeeding. By my guess, she’d been inside the town hall arguing for a swifter punishment for Azar when we’d stomped into the central square. But unless she wanted to physically restrain us, she wasn’t going to stuff us back in that cottage. The best way to shake loose her grip on the situation was to do something unexpected.
“I have a better idea,” I said. “If they wish to express their opinions on my friend’s fate and our treatment, I suggest they come outside now.” I crossed the square in a couple dozen long strides. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I felt more eyes peer from the town hall’s windows. The hinges squeaked as the door opened, and this time, Beashi didn’t manage to pull it shut.
I picked up the end of the chain and examined the tangle. It wasn’t locked, just looped. I started pulling links through the doorway’s handles.
“Wait. She’s dangerous!” Running footsteps beat the earthen square. A man stepped up beside me, and dry washed his hands before snatching my arm.
Beashi grabbed me from the other side with far less hesitation. Nodding at the man, she yanked me upright. The sun-warmed chain links slipped from my grip and fell back onto the cellar hatch with a hollow thunk.
“Listen, girl,” Beashi snarled. “We’ve learned that Stormshard toppled Steelhold and removed the new monster from the throne. The Empire is no threat to us now. It’s time for Provs to take what we deserve—and eliminate the filthy Atal. I don’t know if you’re stupid or a victim of her magic, but you will not stop us from getting vengeance.”
I stood straight. “So that’s what it’s really about. Azar isn’t a threat to you, not with your little fish statue. She didn’t do anything to harm you. But you’d still kill her to get the revenge you want.”
“Lies. I seek to protect my town.”
I glared at the woman. Outside the town hall, a small huddle of villagers watched the exchange, but no one stepped to interfere.
“I know more about Steelhold’s fall than you think,” I said, raising my voice so all could hear. “You’re dead wrong about the circumstances. But you’re right to say the Empire is no threat. Neither is Azar. She is not your enemy.”
Beashi’s face hardened. “She is Atal and a mage. If you choose to remain a slave to your fear, I cannot change that. But you will not spread weakness in our town. We have thrown off our Atal oppressors.”
“You have murdered them, you mean,” I said softly.
She narrowed her eyes and gave my arm a shake. “We defended ourselves. And I don’t regret it.”
I made a point of running my eyes over the onlookers. Like the man who held my other arm, they wore uncertainty plain on their faces. Beashi and her allies had convinced the town to punish the Atal family, but I didn’t think the decision had come easily.
“And you plan to murder Azar for the crime of her birth.”
Across the square, the townspeople began to speak in low voices. Beashi’s lower eyelid twitched as she realized I was getting through to the others. Her gaze darted to the street leading to our cottage. Our guards were trotting toward the square, bearing bewildered looks and a chamber pot.
“She brought you here by unnatural and unsafe means,” she said with a raw edge to her voice. “Your sister was nearly lifeless when you arrived. That’s more than enough evidence to prove her guilt.”
Avill drew breath to speak, but I tossed her a silencing glance. They feared magic as much as Azar’s heritage. I didn’t want them to decide to execute Avill for her use of the pendant. Besides, we might need her secret.
“Let me be clear,” I said. “We came here by choice. Azar is a trusted friend. You won’t take my word as a fellow Prov?”
A flicker of doubt crossed Beashi’s face, but she squeezed my arm harder, fingers digging painfully into my flesh. “I don’t wish to harm innocent girls, but either you give up on this, or I’ll see you cast out from our village by midday. We have our own children to care for.”
“Then lock me up with my friend,” I said, chin raised. “I won’t let her bear this alone.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Avill’s reaction. She hadn’t agreed with this part of the plan, but she hadn’t offered any better ideas. And I had tried to convince the townspeople to reconsider. If my sister still disagreed with the idea, she didn’t show it.
“I—” Beashi pressed her lips together over her words. I could almost see her thoughts working. She could still cast us out with nothing but a rucksack and a broken dagger. Given what I’d seen of the woman, I doubted she’d feel much guilt. But she had to know she’d lose sway in the village by condemning us to fight the wilderness—and the Riftspawn—alone. She could refuse to lock me up, but then I’d be free to speak to others in the town, undermining the woman’s vendetta against Azar.
As I slid away from the man who’d grabbed one of my arms, his hands dropped to his side, limp. Beashi’s de
sperate eyes traveled the square. I allowed my aura-sight forward, inspecting her. Her spirit was tinged with frustration and fear—she knew I was swaying her fellow townsfolk. Ever so gently, I wrapped a tendril of aura around her and fed her uncertainty. The frustration roared forward, eclipsing her attempts to think rationally.
“Fine. Cling to your enslavement,” she growled. “That fish contains her evil, but once you’re inside her domain, I won’t protect you. She can turn your mind inside out, for all I care.”
She stared at the gathered onlookers and nodded at a young woman whose aura went white with shock over being singled out. No doubt Beashi chose her for that reason. She didn’t want to risk being disobeyed.
“Open the hatch,” Beashi commanded. “Everyone, be ready to force the mage back if she’s stupid enough to try to escape.”
The girl swallowed. After a moment, she shuffled across the square, fists balled. Others followed in a loose huddle. The girl grunted as she tugged on the chain to free it from the handles. The free end swung down and smacked her shins. She winced before dropping it into the dirt. With shaking hands, she slid the bolt free and tugged the door open. A square of light fell on the stairs. In the far corner of the small earthen room, Azar shifted.
“Savra,” she whispered, “don’t do this. I can handle myself.”
“I refuse to leave you down here alone.”
“What about the sister?” a man asked. I turned to see Avill chewing her thumbnail, brow creased with worry.
“Lock me up too,” Avill said, dropping her hand to her side and marching forward. She shoved a grown man aside in her quest to reach the stairs. As my sister descended into the cellar, Beashi huffed and shoved me forward.
The stairs had been cut from the raw earth. Warped planks had been laid over the top of each step to protect the edge of dirt from disintegrating. The boards wobbled under my feet as I descended. Once I joined my sister and laced my fingers with hers, the door dropped over the entrance, sealing us in darkness.
“Well,” Azar said, “I hope you have a plan.”
Fate of the Drowned (The Broken Lands Book 3) Page 22
