Fleeing Peace

by Sherwood Smith

  She was sure that some of the ones Siamis had working for him now would figure out the kids’ plans as fast as the kids figured out theirs, and who had the weapons and the strength? Not kids.

  “I’m afraid Siamis might guess our plan,” Clair said.

  CJ grimaced ferociously. “But Boneribs sounds convincing. He certainly knows plenty more about war junk than we do.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard,” Diana put in, grinning.

  “I don’t want to know any,” Sherry said, her face earnest. “I just want to throw yukky pies at ‘em, or give them itchweed sandwiches, and annoy them so much they’ll go away and leave us alone.”

  “But they don’t go away,” Irene countered. “This whole year cooped up at Aunt Murial’s showed us that.”

  “We’ll never be good at sword-fighting a bunch of grown-ups—” Sherry said, then she looked puzzled. “Why are most of them men?”

  “Remember Dejain?” CJ countered.

  “She was one woman. And she didn’t like fighting.”

  “She liked power,” Clair said. “Fighting’s the easiest way to power, if you’re born big and strong. She’s smart, so she’s doing it through magic, and it doesn’t matter what size you are to be a magician.”

  “I think kids—girls—are too smart to become elevens,” Irene said loftily.

  Clair said, “Our ancestors’ wars were mostly men. They are better at it.” She mimed hacking and stomping. “But women got power other ways, and not all those were good. I’m sure there are plenty of female Norsundrians, but I hope I never meet them. What worries me right now is Siamis.”

  “But we’ve got Boneribs to spot the war-signs, and Sartora to do her mind junk,” CJ pointed out. “If we all do our jobs, we should be able to splorch one villain. When we got splorched, we’ve always been alone.”

  “That’s right,” Irene declared—as if anyone had been arguing.

  Clair looked from one to another. She didn’t see disagreement in any of the girls. “Well, how’s this. I wish you girls wouldn’t do anything—or go anywhere—alone. Okay?”

  Little gestures, words, and nods of agreement reassured Clair. They separated to grab up some camping things, and then ran out to find the others gathered at Arthur’s tent.

  “One more thing,” Arthur said as soon as the Mearsiean girls joined the group. “Sartora will teach everyone a mind-shield. Practice it as we travel.” He turned to Liere. “Go ahead.”

  CJ watched Sartora take a deep breath. She looked stiff and angular in her grubby boy’s clothes and worn out shoes, her fingers trembling. Poor thing, CJ thought with a pang of sympathy. She looks as worried as Clair was.

  “Here’s one way to do it . . .” Liere began.

  Faris and Winn stood in the opening of the empty command tent, watching.

  They’d each seen the kids slink off to their private conference. They’d said nothing to anyone else, just finished their separate tasks, and then found one another.

  Finally Faris said, “You know they’re going to make a run on their own. And Arthur’s probably going to go with them.”

  “Let him go,” Winn said.

  The wind drummed gently over the tent top, bringing the soft, high murmur of children’s voices. Winn resisted the impulse to go closer to listen. What would be the point?

  “How strange it is,” he said finally, smiling at Faris’s questioning expression. “We’re both under thirty—though I think I have half a year left, if I remember right. But that’s not old. Yet all of a sudden we are too old. As outmoded in all our training, our outlook, our abilities, as Evend and Oalthoreh.”

  Faris fingered the end of her braid. “I realized that the day I saw Arthur with those Mearsiean girls. It was like someone else had taken over his body. Someone happy.”

  Winn was seized by a fiercy impulse to press her close, and kiss her. How long had he been fighting that instinct? Wherever you are, my love, there is home.

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “We will do our best to lead against whatever forces Siamis is sending. He has to have been waiting for that girl to show up. Let’s rouse the camp and start causing some trouble for the elevens as backup—as soon as those kids leave on whatever mission they’ve set for themselves.”

  She turned to face him, and smiled.

  The trust in her eyes, the steady, warm hint of a smile on her lips, slipped past his guard at last, and his arm drifted round her sturdy shoulders. She did not bolt, or stiffen, or move away.

  One breath, two, and then she leaned close, and he breathed in the dusty scent of her hair. Bent and kissed the top of her head.

  She reached up and with one strong, capable hand pulled his face to hers.

  They kissed. And kissed again, more fiercely, until breathlessness forced them apart, and they remembered they were standing in the opening to the command tent, nor were they unnoticed: a couple smiles turned their way, and one of Faris’s friends, over next to the cook tent, raised her fist in triumph, laughing out loud.

  Winn flashed his grin, then took Faris’s arm and they walked a little ways away. His face sobered. “The children are going to force an ending, one way or another, and Siamis is waiting. And if a miracle occurs and we are left alive, let us marry, and do what we can with what abilities we have. And maybe our children will join these children, and carry on the quest for peace.”

  Faris slid her arm around his waist.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  “I think someone has been doing magic down that way.” Leander pointed through the wind-twisted pines.

  “That’s by the water,” CJ said. She’d glimpsed blue between the trees, and the piny breezes carried the scent of brine. “How can you tell? You said you can’t do magic.”

  “They’ll land on us if we try,” Leander said. “Arthur said the whole region is laced with tracers. Everywhere outside of Bereth Ferian itself—”

  “—which they can’t touch. Yet.”

  “ Anyway, it’s a sense. Like you know where the sun will come up, even if you’ve gotten all turned around in the night.”

  “I can’t do that, either,” CJ said. “Not up here, anyway, when those pretty hissing lights are going all over the sky. When it’s not raining.”

  Leander grinned. “I like those, too. But you’re right, if they cover the stars, they’re confusing.”

  CJ nodded. “Never mind. If you think we should check, we’ll check. ‘Sides, Sartora and the girls said they were going to look that way. And Sartora said when we woke up that she smells Siamis somewhere around, so maybe you’re right.”

  “She said that?” Leander asked. “Smells?” His green eyes were quirked with enjoyment.

  CJ grinned. “Well, no, not exactly. You know how she talks. Means the same. I figure, Norsundrians gotta have a mental stench, same’s the villain-stench.”

  “Which is also mental,” Leander said.

  CJ just laughed as they picked their way downhill, CJ hopping to keep up because she would have turned herself into a mushroom rather than admit a boy moved faster in the woods than she did—even one who was a foot taller, and who had lived most of his life in such surroundings.

  “Tell you what surprised me,” CJ said, once they reached the shelter of a clump of willow trees. “Other night, before we all split up. Her and ol’ Boneribs and Arthur yakkin’ half the night. Arthur, it makes sense. He’s a little like her, in some ways. But Senrid? You’d think you couldn’t find two people more different.” She shrugged.

  Leander thought over that last evening, when the group had camped after the long walk east from Winn’s camp. He hadn’t seen much of Sartora yet, but so far she seemed painfully reserved and self-effacing—until someone made a comment about dena Yeresbeth or Old Sartorans. Then she talked with passion, and everyone listened respectfully. Even Dtheldevor, who tried heroically to smother her yawns.

  All listened respectfully, that is, except Senrid, who argued, questioned, or even teased. And�
��from what Leander saw—Sartora didn’t seem to resent it at all. Not like she resented the careful treatment she’d gotten from the adults just before they left the big camp.

  “There’s a cliff,” CJ said, pointing downhill. “Shall we go down there and eyeball around first? I don’t want to have to squelpsh all the way down this snorfling mountain just to have to slog our way back up again.”

  “I don’t know,” Leander said, scanning in a slow circle, as his insides quaked silently. Squelpsh. The rocky hillside behind them was silent, the rolling hills they glimpsed to the south seemed peaceful, and what they could see of the rough palisades leading down toward the shoreline seemed empty. But. “I don’t think we should break cover.”

  “We can stay in the bushes and wiggle out,” CJ offered. “We’re already muddy, and at least the air is warm. Ho! I do wish we were at home, snug in the Junky, getting ready for New Year’s Week. I miss the snow, and hot chocolate, and going out to play without worrying about the stenchiferous flap-brained elevens snilching up the landscape.”

  “I miss my desk,” Leander said. “I had at least three interesting projects going. And two of them would have helped us, I think, if I could have just learned the magic. And I miss a morning ride, no worries that I can’t solve, and First Snow.”

  “I miss chocolate pie.” CJ groaned with artistic fervor. “You’d think someone could figure out how to fix it for camp!” She paused, looking southward. On the distant rolling hills she could just make out a flock of sheep moving, cloudlike, through the tall green grasses. She turned away. “You checked the slate?” she asked.

  “While ago. Nothing.”

  CJ wasn’t sure which she dreaded most, Senrid’s group finding Siamis first, or her own. The thought of happening on him was nasty—and so was the notion of deliberately going to face him and his creeps. But that had been the agreement: whichever group saw him first would apprise the other, and wait, so all could act together.

  And she would show no more fear than any stupid boy would.

  CJ slapped the rough bark of a young pine tree. “At least you don’t worry about elevens. Or do you?” she muttered, studying the tree.

  No answer from the tree.

  Leander made the sign for silence, and they picked their way down a steep, rocky incline, staying within the close-growing greenery.

  Below was the cliff CJ had pointed out.

  Leander dropped down into the long grass and snaked forward, the sharp astringent scent of broken grass tickling his nose. CJ followed, her black head rising cautiously as she tried to peer downward.

  From far above and to the north, they heard the harsh “Kek! Kek! Kek!” of a hawk. Farther away, the cries of seabirds answered.

  Leander stilled.

  “What is it? What is it?” CJ whispered, peering upward frantically.

  “The hawk. A warning. They are here.”

  They elbowed forward, then peeked downward, taking care not to disturb the line of growth along the cliff edge; Leander silently demonstrated how making that rustle and wiggle would be visible from below.

  CJ ducked her head in agreement. She peered cautiously, trying to see with one eye between the gently nodding ferny leaves of a plant, and a tuft of sharp-smelling grasses. At first all she could perceive was a weird sheen to the air all along the coast.

  Leander drew in a long, audible breath.

  CJ inched a bit closer to the edge. Several human figures milled around on the sandy shore. She counted the Norsundrians—three—and the rest were kids. Three . . . four . . . five. Two kids busy with swords, two not. And . . . one of them twirled lazily, her embroidered and lace-trimmed lavender and gold gown belling in the breeze.

  I know that dress. CJ was astonished. And that silvery-blond hair.

  “Kitty.” Leander sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face. “What have I done?”

  “Nothing. She was perfectly safe with Lina, like we told you. C’mon, we gotta find the others.” CJ poked Leander. His profile made his feelings clear: he blamed himself for whatever had landed Kitty in Siamis’s clutches.

  I left her too long, he was thinking. And he knew why. It had been so much fun, so free, not to have to act as her guardian.

  The result of his selfishness? Kitty was Siamis’s prisoner.

  CJ writhed with impatience. She knew that Siamis had not gone all the way back to Mearsies Heili just to pinch this girl who was sometimes a little tiresome, though she certainly felt the right way about villains. That only left one possibility: that Kitty had managed to pick a quarrel with easy-going Lina, and had dusted off, straight into Siamis’s arms.

  Didn’t that sound just like her!

  “Slate,” CJ said, when Leander still hadn’t moved. “We gotta find Sartora.”

  He jerked, as though woken from sleep, then began wriggling backward. CJ followed, and when they had reached the shrubs, they got up, turned—and stiffened in shock.

  Two Norsundrians stood there, the light-haired one just a little older than Leander. Both were grinning.

  “Siamis wants to have a word with you,” the big dark-haired one gloated.

  “A word,” CJ snarled. “I’ll give HIM a word—” She sucked in her breath and shrieked, “AAARGGGH!”

  o0o

  A scream echoed like sound shards off the rocky cliffs above the narrow forest path where Sherry, Irene, and Liere were walking.

  “Uh oh,” Sherry exclaimed.

  Irene raised a finger. “That,” she pronounced, “is CJ.”

  Terror made Liere’s heart thump. “They found Siamis. Has to be.”

  Irene laughed, her ponytail swinging as she whirled around. “Let us seek the sound of pocalubes! Cause I think old snore-face Siamis found her.”

  “Pocalubes?” Liere repeated, following Irene’s quick steps.

  Irene stopped short, hand raised. “Didn’t we explain?” she asked with dramatic surprise.

  “It’s a very exact insult form,” Sherry said earnestly. “You have to have at least seven describing words before you get to your insult. We got really, really good at pocalubing the Chwahir villains.”

  “You did. And Devon also told me about those.”

  Sherry nodded quickly, her expression odd—half-frightened, half-laughing. To Liere she was clear and uncomplicated as spring water. Irene was more like lace work, all knots and complexities.

  She sounded heartless, but Liere had already figured out that Irene—most of whose days involved playacting of various forms—really wouldn’t believe CJ was in actual danger until she saw it. Everything in life seemed to be a play to Irene, and she was always in the center of the stage.

  Liere decided she was going to have to introduce reality right away. “Let’s run.”

  The two Mearsieans looked startled, but complied.

  Liere pressed the slate against her chest so it and the dyr wouldn’t thump She had better write to Senrid as soon as they had a location on the Norsundrians.

  Already, it seemed, his plan had gone awry.

  o0o

  No animals came to rescue Leader and CJ.

  In fact, it seemed to Leander, who looked about covertly, that there were no animals about at all. Even the seabirds who’d been circling lazily overhead had vanished. Maybe it was because of the oppressive sheen of dark magic shimmering subtly all about them—either that or those had been spy birds.

  His steps lagged as he tried to scan the sky, but a sudden, vicious thump between the shoulder blades made his head rock back and he staggered forward.

  “ . . .knock-kneed bile-faced pilch-brained . . .” CJ’s mutter increased in volume.

  “Shut up,” came the inevitable command.

  “YOU shut up,” she snarled right back.

  The urge to snicker—mixed with fear —made Leander’s insides shivery. The Norsundrians had searched them and took everything, both their knives and Senrid’s carefully written spells. Leander had practiced the spells, but he was not so sure he could risk
coaching the off-world kids in dark magic without a prompt. Where was Senrid?

  “—STUPID gnackle-nosed grouse-mouth—”

  Smack. CJ fell down. She scrambled up, holding her cheek. Leander winced and looked away as the Norsunder shoved CJ ahead down the path. Leander’s mind veered like a wingshot bird between CJ’s running insults (now just mutters) and a jumble of observations: that sheen in the air; the fact that he and CJ were still alive; Kitty’s astonishing presence; the quiet little bay.

  Senrid was right, Leander thought. Or, almost right. He was right about where, and even when, because the sheen had to be a rift access. But he hadn’t been right about the kids managing to stay unseen.

  Sick at heart, Leander wondered if Siamis was killing time until eleven o’clock, when their magic would be strongest, to make that sheen into a rift. And he was waiting for someone whose death would force the magical transformation.

  Senrid was right about that, too. About everything—everything except us being able to thrash Siamis’s plans.

  Shut up. Shut up.

  There had to be something to try. Think.

  The opportunity to escape narrowed with every step that brought them close, then face to face, with the tall blond man with light-colored eyes who waited, smiling gently.

  “You both are very far away from home,” Siamis observed, as the Norsunder handed over Senrid’s neatly-written spells.

  Siamis knew who they were.

  As CJ’s high, clear voice started in with insult-laden bravado, Leander sidled a glance sideways to locate the others. All five were in sight, Kitty and a boy holding swords—doing a slow kind of playacting fight—and the others watching. So no one had been forced into any kind of killer spell. Yet.

  Yeah, Siamis was waiting for someone.

  “ . . . and if it weren’t for you, I’d be home right now, enjoying a piece of chocolate pie, and making up a new song about how gum-brained you Norsunder pustules are!” CJ finished, whooping in a shaky breath.