by Barb Hendee
Over that year, I watched the life drain from the eyes of our men, and I saw a determination growing in my father that I’d never seen before. I knew he hated it here. He hated those mines. But what was going to happen when the men earned out their contracts and received the wages owed them? We certainly wouldn’t have enough to buy horses.
At the end of summer, I asked him, “What are we going to do?”
He studied me for a long moment. “I have a plan, but no one knows except Marcus, and you cannot speak of it yet. Do you swear?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve noticed the soldiers don’t guard their horses well, with perhaps one man on the perimeter at night. Once we are paid, after dark, we’ll overcome that one guard. We’ll take six horses and slip away the same night. We’ll leave Uncle Marten’s wagon behind. He can ride in Landrien’s. Micah and Katlyn and their children can ride with us.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Captain Garrett will come after us. You’ll be hanged for stealing their horses.”
“He won’t find us.” His voice lowered further. “I’ve let it be known that we all long to return to Belfleur Keep in the east. He will believe that we have run, and he’ll organize men to chase us east. But Marcus has found us a place to hide only three leagues away. There is freshwater, fish, and good hunting for him. We’ll hide out until the soldiers stop seeking us, and only then will we begin to move.”
This sounded risky, but if Marcus believed the hiding place to be sound, I trusted his judgment.
“Where will we go after that?” I asked.
“Back to Kéonsk. I’m going to speak to Master Deandre about finding us work in the city, even if we end up mucking out stalls for the Väränji soldiers.” His voice broke. “But we have to get away from here, my girl. This is no place for us. Those mines are no place for us.”
“I know, Father.”
I reached out and stroked his arm, truly proud of him for the first time since Mother died.
Autumn came, and I prepared for our dangerous departure. I said nothing to Mariah. I knew she would fight me. She was going on fourteen, and for her, this place meant food and stability.
Finally, the day arrived when our men were paid, and I knew Father and Marcus were going to unveil their plan to the other men. I wasn’t entirely certain why Father had waited so long, but I think he feared that the younger men—Mikolai, Payton, and Orlando—would feel the same as Mariah and would not want to go back on the road. Perhaps he felt that if he sprang it on them when they all had money, they would be more likely to take a chance.
After the hour when their work had ended that day, I waited for them all to come home . . . and I waited. No one came.
Katlyn, Mariah, Marcus, and I grew worried.
Then one of the miners’ wives came to tell us that on payday, once a year, the men were excused at noon, so they could make the walk—several hours—to a large village somewhere between Ryazan and Enêmûsk, where they would use their money to have a mug of ale and buy supplies they could not get here. They would stay the night and come back in the morning, and then they would see Captain Garrett and sign new contracts.
I didn’t believe my father would do this, and that if he had gone with our men, it was only to explain his plan.
But the next day, just past noon, he walked slowly up to our wagon, and I could see the defeat in his face. Marcus ran up to him, and I had never seen Marcus desperate before. He hated this place, and he’d believed we were leaving.
“What’s happened?” he asked.
“They wouldn’t agree,” my father answered hoarsely, “not even your father. They said stealing horses from the soldiers was madness, and we would be caught and hanged. They spent their money, and they all signed a new contract.”
Marcus stumbled backward. “And you?”
“I . . . signed as well. I cannot leave the family.”
Marcus’s features twisted in bitter disappointment. Turning, he ran into the forest. But by now, I knew he’d be back. He wouldn’t leave the family either.
And so we began our second year in Ryazan.
Somewhere along the way, I began to stop caring about many things. Like a number of the older miners, Uncle Landrien began having problems with his joints, until he could barely close his hands without pain. I knew I should have pitied him, but I was beginning to have trouble just making it through the days with my washing and mending and cooking, each day blending into the next.
I never thought I would miss traveling, miss the road, but I did. In my entire life, I had never been in one place for so long. Our men stopped laughing. They stopped singing and playing their violins.
Captain Garrett was replaced by another man named Captain Asher, along with a new crop of soldiers who served under him. Asher didn’t have much to do with us so long as the silver in the mines kept flowing—and it did.
In that second year, a small part of me began to worry more about Mariah. She rarely spoke, and she seemed to spend much of her time off by herself. She resented helping me with the washing or the cooking, and it was easier for me to do it myself than to try to force her. She was growing up wild, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to care.
I watched my father fading before my eyes.
The following autumn, most of our men signed their third contract, but Uncle Landrien could not. His joints had grown so painful from the cold and the damp and the relentless work in the mines that he could barely walk.
Orlando and Payton both married girls from the miners’ camp, thus grounding themselves forever.
Marcus continued to hunt for us, but he seemed to speak less and less.
The following winter, Mariah turned sixteen. She was hauntingly beautiful.
Not long after, my father caught a fever, and he died.
All of these things began to feel as if they were happening in someone else’s life, that I was just an observer. One day blended into the next.
Then, in the spring of our third year in Ryazan, Captain Asher died, and his replacement was not long in arriving. His name was Captain Keegan, and I felt a wave of fear the first time he visited the miners’ encampment. He looked at my family and me as if we were filth. I could see the disgust in his eyes, but his eyes stopped for much too long on Mariah, moving up and down her slight body and exquisite face.
He didn’t say a word. He just turned and walked away.
He had a handsome lieutenant named Sullian serving with him, along with a corporal named Quinn, who both struck me as fair men, and I hoped perhaps we would end up dealing with them more than with their captain.
But a week later, Keegan came back . . . to see me.
“I’ve done some checking,” he said, “and you and your sister have no man working in the mines. The rules are clear, and they were written for good reason. Women who have no men working in the mines need to clear out and make space.”
“We’re not taking up any space,” I argued. “This wagon belongs to us. And we do have men working in the mines, my cousin Mikolai and my second cousin Micah.”
“Those men aren’t part of your household, and your father’s dead. You’ll need to clear out. Take your wagon if you can buy a horse somewhere.”
He walked away. I couldn’t believe it. He was ordering Mariah and me to leave.
When I told Mikolai and Marcus, of course they came to our defense, and Mikolai went to speak with the captain, to tell him that Mariah and I were part of his family. He came back grim faced and said that the captain had told him that since he was not a husband or father to us, he didn’t count, and we would have to leave.
We had no horses, and we could not take our wagon. With the possible exception of Marcus, I didn’t think any of our men would go with us—and even he might not leave his father. What would become of us?
I spent the next two days in fear, think
ing that soldiers might come at any moment to drive Mariah and me out of camp, but they didn’t.
Instead, Mariah came in late, opening the door to the wagon and slipping inside long after dark.
“We don’t have to leave,” she said.
“What?” I asked in confusion. “I don’t think that captain will change his mind.”
“I’m not going anywhere!” she spat at me, and then I could see that she was upset, her small hands trembling. “I’ve made a bargain with the captain. You and I can stay, and in exchange, Marcus will give him wild game for his table, and I will give him . . .” She trailed off.
I went cold. “You’ll give him what?”
She turned away, and reality hit me. This was what he’d been after all along. This was why he’d threatened to banish us: to place her under his power.
I should have been outraged. I should have taken a knife and gone after him. But I didn’t.
“We can stay?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I wasn’t even relieved. I didn’t feel anything.
That day blended into the next.
Chapter Ten
Somehow, Amelie drew her hand away. She couldn’t watch any more of the events that led up to the state of Mercedes and Mariah’s current life. While doing readings, her targets were not normally actively involved, but this one had been different. She’d felt Mercedes with her, almost speaking to her, all along.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I couldn’t watch anymore.”
Mercedes just sat there with bleak eyes, and Amelie realized what it must have cost her to relive all that.
“So . . . ,” Amelie said, “not long after that, the first attack happened? The soldiers started turning into wolves?”
Mercedes nodded slightly. “Mikolai was killed the first time it happened, and Captain Keegan threatened to make his father complete his contract . . . if we wanted the wages. Uncle Landrien’s joints are too painful to work in those mines, so Marcus signed on to take over for Mikolai, which is exactly what Keegan expected to happen.” She sighed. “But then the attacks continued . . . and this last one that occurred inside the mines proved too much. Even desperate men will refuse to work if they fear something more than starvation.”
“You left those mushrooms for Keegan, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did.”
“Why now? If Keegan has been at Mariah for months, what made you decide to try to kill him now?”
“Your sister,” Mercedes answered quietly. “She woke something inside of me. Right after she left me last night, I went out and picked the mushrooms and ran them to the cook. He was just finishing the stew, and he knows the captain likes mushrooms fried in butter. But I made sure that neither you nor Céline would be sitting at the captain’s table last night. I’d never do anything to hurt one of my own people.”
“What about Quinn? Or Jaromir? Did you ask about them?”
“I don’t care what happens to them. I just want Keegan dead.”
Though Amelie didn’t blame her for hating Keegan, she could not condone Mercedes’s callous disregard for Jaromir or Quinn.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I’ll do something about Keegan. I’ll make sure he leaves Mariah alone and that you’re both allowed to remain with your family. But you need to promise me you won’t try anything else. You have to trust me.”
“You won’t give me away? You won’t tell your lieutenant?”
“No. I won’t tell anyone but Céline. She and I don’t keep secrets. Do you swear to stop, to let me handle this?”
Mercedes nodded again.
Amelie stood up. “I need to get back.”
Though she had established who’d poisoned Keegan, she was no closer to resolving the true reason she and Céline had come here—to find out why these soldiers were turning into mad wolves one by one. But she didn’t believe Mercedes had anything to do with it or knew anything about how it was being done.
Still, there was much to consider.
After heading out the door, Amelie walked through the miners’ camp back toward the path leading into the trees, and a single word from Mercedes’s story rose in her mind. Several times Mercedes had referred to Marcus as a “shifter.” He’d always before been mentioned as a hunter, but this designation as a shifter seemed to give him importance. The word was vaguely familiar, and Amelie thought she’d heard it somewhere before.
Could it be a Móndyalítko reference to one born with a special ability for hunting? Or did it mean something more?
Stopping, she turned and looked at Mercedes’s wagon, wondering if she should go back and ask. But . . . she’d already put Mercedes through too much today and thought it best to just find out on her own.
* * *
Jaromir remained sitting at Keegan’s bedside, by himself, well into midafternoon. He’d told Quinn to leave, instructing him to get some rest. The captain groaned and rolled a few times in his sleep, but Jaromir took that to be a good sign, suggesting that Keegan had not fallen into deep unconsciousness.
Footsteps sounded from the front section of the wagon, and he looked over in annoyance, prepared to order Quinn to bed if necessary, but the visitor was not Quinn. Instead, Céline came into view from around a hanging tapestry.
Her hair was damp and hanging loose down her back. She wore her red cloak, but he could see a shade of dark pink beneath the opening in the front.
Smiling tiredly, she lifted the hem of her cloak a few inches to let him see the skirt of her evening gown.
“I feel ridiculous walking around camp in pink silk, but my tan wool is spattered with everything the captain ate yesterday, and it smells terrible. I took it off and washed my hair, and I had nothing else to put on.”
He couldn’t help smiling back.
She looked around. “Is Amelie not with you? I thought to find her here.”
“She’s not in your tent?”
“No, I woke up alone . . . and I can’t believe I slept out so much of the day. But I’m sure she’s not far. Perhaps she’s gone to the provisions tent. I’ll take a look at the captain and then check there.”
However, she didn’t move. Instead her mouth opened once and closed again.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you, and we’ve had no time. It could be nothing.”
Growing annoyed again, he half turned in his chair. “Tell me.”
“Yesterday afternoon, when I was coming back from having tended to the miners, I ran into Corporal Quinn, and we had a rather . . . frank conversation about Captain Keegan.”
Jaromir sat straight, at full attention now.
“Apparently, Prince Lieven had trouble getting any of his officers to take up a position as commander here. The last captain died, and the prince could find no one willing to replace him. Quinn told me that Keegan ran into difficulties over a gambling debt and was coerced into volunteering as a result.” She walked closer, looking down at the sleeping captain. “Quinn’s exact words were, ‘He views this assignment as an insult and a punishment, and he feels he’s paid his dues.’”
“What are you suggesting?” Jaromir asked, but he already knew . . . He’d already had his own doubts about Keegan.
“Quinn says that he’s requested a replacement several times, but no action has been taken.”
Jaromir put his hand to his chin, thinking. Keegan had also staunchly refused to allow either Céline or Amelie to read any of his soldiers, and as he appeared to care little for his men, perhaps this reticence was due to the fact that he was hiding something.
“Do you want to read him?” Jaromir asked.
“I’d like Amelie to read him first. Whatever he’s protecting, I think we’ll think find it in his past.”
A groan sounded from the bed. Keegan rolled and
opened his eyes. He looked up at Jaromir blankly for a few seconds, and then moved his gaze up to Céline.
“Water,” he croaked through dried lips.
“Of course,” Céline said, hurrying toward a basin and filling a mug.
“Give that to me,” Jaromir said, standing up. “I’ll take care of him. You go and find Amelie.”
* * *
Céline checked the provisions tent first, and upon not finding her sister, she headed back to their own tent, thinking perhaps Amelie had already returned there. As Céline walked up, she saw her dark-haired sister coming toward her from the direction of the miners’ camp—wearing a pensive expression.
“Are you all right?” Céline asked.
“Let’s go inside.”
“Jaromir sent me to get you. He has a task for you.”
“Soon enough. I need to tell you something.”
Concerned and curious, Céline passed through the flap into their tent, and Amelie followed.
“Mercedes poisoned Keegan,” Amelie said as soon as they were inside and alone.
“What?” Céline gasped.
“It’s true. Listen. She let me read her.”
And with that, Amelie began to spill out a story of hardship that became increasingly difficult to hear, the story of what brought Mercedes and her family not only to live here, but to end up trapped here. Putting off Jaromir for now, Céline didn’t interrupt or rush her sister. She listened to everything Amelie had to say.
“And after Keegan threatened to banish Mercedes and Mariah,” Amelie finished, “Mariah sold herself to him. That’s why they’ve been allowed to stay.”
“He’s a monster.” Céline furrowed her brow. “And so Mercedes just tried to poison Keegan now?”
