Law of the Broken Earth (27 page)

“No!” Mienthe cried, understanding that the guardsman meant to delay the Linularinan soldiers just that small time that might let her escape, and understanding as well that if he fought, he would die. “No!” she said again. “Don’t fight them!” Then she whirled and fled back the way they had come, hoping that once she was clear, the guardsman would let himself surrender, knowing that if she stayed he would certainly fight, and anyway she did not dare be captured herself.

Behind her, swords rang. Before her, the darkness offered not safety—there was no safety anywhere—but at least some measure of concealment, at least until she ran into the other company of Linularinan soldiers. She looked for a way to get away from the lane, to slip away sideways. She tested one door and then another, but both were locked and no one came when she pounded her hand against the doors. She dreaded every moment that she might see the shine of lamplight off the painted wood
of the buildings and the damp cobbles, or hear the sounds of approaching soldiers. Above, the moonlight slid across the shingles of the roofs.

Ahead of her, Mienthe heard the flat sounds of boots on the cobbles. Light shone dimly, not yet near, but coming nearer. Behind her, she was almost certain she could hear more boots. She stopped, looked quickly about, and then leaped for a handhold on the windowsill of a house. The window was shuttered tight, but she got her foot up on the doorknob of the house and hauled herself upward. The windowsill provided her next foothold, and she tried hard not to think about falling—she would break her ankle on the cobbles and then she would certainly be caught—the moonlight picked out the details of the upper story of the building, but also mercilessly revealed Mienthe to anyone who glanced up from below. The upper windows were also shuttered, but besides the balcony there was a trellis with vines. The vines would never hold her weight, but she thought the trellis might, and anyway she could not find any other foothold.

Below her, the two companies of soldiers approached from opposite directions. They would meet almost directly below her, and then how long would it take someone to look up? Mienthe gingerly committed her weight to the trellis. The sweet scent of the flowers rose around her as she crushed the vines. It seemed to her that the fragrance alone would draw someone to gaze upward, and on this clear night there was no hope of clouds to veil the moon. Mienthe tried not to make a sound as she pulled herself upward, got first a hand and then a knee onto the balcony railing—the railing had seemed sturdier before she needed to balance on it. She laid one hand flat against the
rough wood, reached upward with her other hand, and felt along the edge of the roof.

Below her, someone suddenly called out.

Mienthe didn’t glance down. She was obviously a woman. Would they shoot a woman when they didn’t even know who she was? Or, if there was a mage with them, would
he
know who she was? Then they might shoot her—or just climb after her—probably a soldier would think nothing of this climb. Mienthe gripped the edge of the roof with both hands and scrambled to get her foot up to the top of the trellis. For a sickening moment she thought she would lose her hold and fall. Her arms trembled with the strain. Then she got a proper foothold at last, kicked hard, heaved, and managed to haul herself up to the roof.

The roof tiles proved more slippery underfoot than Mienthe had expected. She made her way up the slope of the roof as quickly as she dared and then over the peak and down the other side. Behind her she could hear soldiers scrambling up the wall after her, and then a loud ripping, tearing sound as—she guessed—the trellis pulled away from the wall under their greater weight. The crashing noises and curses that followed were gratifying, but how long would it take the rest of the soldiers to get out of the lane and around to the other side of the buildings? So long that Mienthe would be able to get down and run for some other hiding place? What hiding place, that they could not immediately find?

Reaching the edge of the roof, she indeed found a handful of soldiers there before her, along with a mounted officer. Two of the soldiers had bows, but it was the officer on the horse who frightened her. Without even
thinking about it, Mienthe crouched, ripped up a heavy tile, and flung it down. Though she had not stopped to aim, the tile sketched a wide curving path through the air and hit the man in the face.

The Linularinan officer crumpled backward off his horse, but Mienthe, in flinging the tile, lost her precarious balance, staggered sideways, tried helplessly to catch herself on the empty air, and fell off the roof.

She did not have time to cry out, but also she did not exactly fall, although she did not know what other word she could use to describe what happened. It was as though she followed the same curving path along which she had thrown the tile; it was as though she rode a sense of balance she had not recognized until she fell along an invisible current in the wind or an unseen ribbon of moonlight. There was no time to be amazed. She fell, and then she was standing on the muddy ground next to the startled horse. The animal shied violently, only Mienthe caught his rein and flung herself into the saddle, wrenched his head around, and let him go.

Only one soldier tried to catch her, and he missed his grab for the horse’s rein. The horse’s shoulder struck him and flung him aside, and then Mienthe was past, weaving through the maze of the town’s last scattered buildings and then pounding along a muddy moonlit road, heading out into the marshes and sloughs of the wide Delta.

She did not look back. If anyone followed her, she did not know it.

Mienthe did not stop again until near dawn, after putting miles of tangled, difficult country between herself and Tiefenauer. She had not kept to the road but headed
straight for Kames. Or, at least, straight for Tan. She knew exactly where he was. Despite everything, she felt a great lightening of her spirits to know that he was far away to the east and that she was heading toward him. She found it difficult to imagine how she had let him ride east without her, almost impossible to picture herself heading, now, either north after the queen or back toward Tiefenauer.

The ordinary night sounds of the marshes surrounded her: the rippling splash of a stream, the rattle of the breeze through reeds, the rustle of leaves and the creak of leather as her tired horse shifted his weight. Above, the moon stood low over the dark shapes of the trees. To either side, water glinted like metal. Mienthe was cold, shivering; she could not feel her feet and her fingers were cramped on the reins. No one else was in sight, and though she held her breath and listened, she could not hear any voices calling.

Birds called, though, sharp trills and buzzes and one rippling little song that rose and rose until it seemed it must go beyond sound to silence, but after the song had climbed as high as it could go, it tumbled down again in a burst of notes. Mienthe knew the bird that made that song. It was a little speckled brown bird with a yellow throat. Though she could not see it in the undergrowth, she realized that she could see branches against the paling sky and that dawn had arrived.

There was a raw chill in the air. Though she worried a little about the smoke, Mienthe made a small fire. Steam rose from her clothing and boots. The boots, which had been good ones, ankle-high and embroidered around the tops, were undoubtedly ruined. She hoped they would
be wearable for a little while yet; a day at least, until she reached her father’s house in Kames. She did not know what she would find there. She did not actually expect a welcome, or, unexpectedly determined as Tan’s enemies seemed to be, much safety. But she thought she might at least hope for dry boots.

Now, on her own and more or less safe, she had time to think—too much time and far too much solitude for her peace of mind.

She wondered where the queen and the royal party might be. Safe in Sihannas? She wondered about Tan. How far in front of her was he? Would he find her father’s house—would he be safe there until she could come? Would
she
be safe until she got there?

If there was a Linularinan mage behind her, he was probably much better trained than Mienthe. Only stubbornness and luck had got her out of that strange magecrafted trap in Tiefenauer, and then more luck had kept her from falling right into Linularinan hands when she toppled off that roof. She hoped the guardsmen she had left behind were all right. She did not know enough to guess whether the two might have gotten away, or whether the Linularinan soldiers might have spared the one who had set himself in their way to guard her flight.

Where, she wondered, was the Linularinan mage now? As soon as the question occurred to her, Mienthe was certain he was somewhere close by, far too close—just out of sight—probably hidden at the edge of the tangled undergrowth on the far side of the stream, looking at her. Telling herself that this was unlikely to the very edge of impossibility did no good at all. Mienthe stood up, peering intently back across the stream, but she could see
nothing. Birds called: long liquid trills and rattling buzzes and a sweet three-note song that sounded like someone calling
mock-e-lee, mock-e-lee
.

There was, Mienthe gradually realized, no one there. The birds would not be singing so freely if anyone was hidden there—and no one was, anyway. A Linularinan mage would hardly have crept after her by himself and hidden to watch her. How silly she had been, to feel one might have! The conviction was fading—it was gone, and Mienthe could not even really remember how it had felt to be so certain. A ridiculous certainty! No mage would be slipping about by
himself
, and she could hardly fail to notice a whole Linularinan company stomping through the marshes after her. And the Linularinan mage, whoever he might be, could not really be
very
powerful, or Mienthe would never have been able to wind herself backward out of his magecrafted trap.

There was nothing to fear. Any sensible person could see that there was nothing at all to fear in the marshes, however damp, or in this clear spring dawn, no matter how chilly or uncomfortable. She told herself this, firmly, and as she cast one final uneasy glance across to the west, the sun came up above the trees and the moon became pale and transparent against the brightening sky, and then it was full day. At last. The last of her nervousness lifted like mist, warmed away by the sun. She rose stiffly and, having nothing better, rubbed the horse’s legs down with handfuls of coarse marsh grass. The animal deserved better of her than muddy grasses and a tired pat, but she had no grain to give him. At least he seemed to have no serious cuts or bruises.

She could see no sign of pursuit, no suggestion that any
Linularinan in the wide world had ever defied the proper bounds of his country to cross into Feierabiand. Indeed, now that her earlier fear had eased, Mienthe found it difficult to believe that any Linularinan soldiers had actually crossed the Sierhanan at all. She felt as though she had probably dreamed everything of the past night. She thought she might awaken at any moment to find herself in her own room, lilac-scented lanterns glowing in the predawn dimness and the gentle sounds of the stirring household around her. It was hard to believe that she was already awake, that she really was cold and muddy and in desperate need of hot water and soap and tea, and that the great house lay miles and miles behind her.

No maid called her name, and neither hot water and soap nor tea appeared, alas. Only the horse shifted restlessly across the damp hillocks of mud and grass, his hooves crunching through the winter’s litter and leaving deep marks in the muddy ground. Mienthe sighed, climbed to her feet—her joints creaked—and went to investigate whether there might be a bit of hard bread in the saddlebags.

There was no bread, but there was a little cloth bag of dried apples and another of tough jerky. Mienthe ate the jerky and fed the apples to the horse, and after that felt rather more cheerful. The horse, a big sorrel animal that looked as though he had Delta blood in him, pointed his ears forward and seemed a little more satisfied with the morning as well, even when Mienthe put on her wet boots, kicked out the fire, and lifted herself—rather awkwardly, with neither mounting block nor helpful groom—back into the saddle.

The horse picked his way slowly among broad-boled
trees in woodlands that did not seem ever to have known an ax, lipping at leaves and the grasses that grew in sunny glades among the trees. While the horse might breakfast on leaves, Mienthe was not finding the jerky she’d eaten a wholly adequate breakfast with which to face the long day. And her feet slipped and chafed inside her clammy boots.

It was all rather disheartening.

Mienthe kept as far as possible to drier ridges, which provided brief, welcome respites from the mud of the lower-lying regions. Her boots had begun to dry at last, but water came chest-deep on her horse in some of the unavoidable marshy areas. Mienthe kicked her feet out of the stirrups, tucked her feet up, and stubbornly kept riding east, until at last she found herself emerging from the shadows of the marshes and riding down a final bank onto the broad, hard-beaten surface of a true road, and lying before her, in the brilliance of a clear afternoon, the wide brown width of the lower branch of the Sierhanan River.

She encouraged her horse to trot. He did not want to do that, laying his ears flat and jigging sideways when she tried to make him, and after the night and day they had had Mienthe could hardly blame him. But the horse was good-tempered enough to lengthen his stride into the fast, swinging walk that was almost as fast as a trot would have been, the walk that made Delta horses so desirable as plow animals. That was good enough. Mienthe did not really want to sit a jarring trot, anyway.