Over The Sea (26 page)

I nodded. “So we keep trying to do good things. And hope we last.”

“As well as fun things! As for you and the empty throne, I don't think you would have run away. You might have tried to talk Seshe into ruling, but when she told you she wouldn't, you might have done your best, for a time. Not forever. I know that. There is no forever with human things. There can't be. That goes for me being on the throne. What if Kwenz does get me, or even PJ? What if my cousin returns — and he's decided to grow up after all, and he wants the throne? His mother was heir ahead of mine, after all. I haven't seen him for a couple of years. When Kwenz was talking about subjects for that horrible spell, he made some reference to his brother and his ‘pet project', and I had an awful feeling that my cousin was their prisoner again.”

“Ugh,” I groaned.

“Then there's my other aunt, who just flat vanished — I don't even know if she's alive. What if she comes back some day — with an army? I don't even know what she was like, except that she loved magic, and wanted to learn it. What if her goal is to be a great sorcerer-queen?”

I heaved a sigh, feeling sick.

“Don't fret, CJ,” she said. “We do our best. You did right — and we won. If another situation happens, I know you'll do right. I know it.”

“I don't,” I muttered. “Oh, maybe I'll try, but if I flub?”

She laughed. “We all flub. I flubbed when I walked into that stupid trap. I should have seen it when Glotulae was so friendly and sweet and smiling in that nasty way. That's why we all have to look out for each other. Nobody else will! Come on upstairs. Faline wants more bodies for whatever game it is they cooked up. Let's go play.”

“Faline,” I repeated, then hesitated.

Clair paused, her greenish eyes wide. “You saw it too?” She asked, and came back in and shut the door.

I felt my face heat up. It seemed disloyal to even think anything negative about the girls.

“That she has ... a secret,” Clair breathed.

“Something,” I mumbled.

Clair whooshed out her breath — and I knew right then that she'd been feeling exactly the same. She gave me a little nod. “You too. Well, we'll just let her find her time and place then.”

“Yes,” I said.

And we went to see what fun the others had cooked up.

And so the days continued to slip by, full of games, laughter, good food, and beauty all around us outside. Yes, beautiful even was the bareness of autumn, for that long rain, full of hail and sleet, had stripped the rest of the trees and made mush out of the beautiful carpet of fallen leaves. The silvery and chocolate-brown branches and twigs etched against the cold blue sky, the way our breath plumed silvery in the mornings when the light slanted, low and golden, in the north, the rich smell of duff, were all beautiful to me.

I had to wear shoes at last, but even that made me gloat because the passage of time just emphasized the truth: that I was here forever!

We continued our patrols, and Clair continued her magic studies and went to work on those wards. I swung between times of furious study and times of furious running about trying to spy out any Chwahir or Auknuge spies.

We had some close calls, and even some tangles with Chwahir poking their noses into our area, and we learned to use our knives to do things like cut the girths of saddles, or branches to tangle between legs, for the Chwahir, with their enchanted eyes, had trouble seeing during the daylight.

PJ's ‘army' continued to be easy enough to get rid of. They were not picked for brains but for obedience, and all they were taught was to march and not muss their fancy uniforms. A few pies and illusions (one time giant spiders, another time the gloppy road again) usually chased them right back. PJ and his pals tried once or twice more to invade the forest. The first time they came with the yew canes themselves. One time mud balls took care of them. The second, a sudden sleet storm.

Meanwhile, Clair had gone on a campaign to get all the tradespeople of the cloud top to stop trading with Glotulae. The guilds promised to spread the word.

And so the autumn days got colder as the sun slipped farther and farther north.

One evening I was settling down to write up my records (I'm skipping a lot of things I wrote out in detail in those days, not knowing how a lot of our adventures would end up being pretty much the same sort of thing over and over) when Sherry came running in, panting.

“Trouble?”

Sherry gulped and nodded, her cheeks flushed. “Clair said to help. The Night-eyes are chasing someone.”

“One of us?” I hopped to my feet.

She shook her head. “But if they are chasing someone, it's gotta be someone on our side.”

“Of course.” I turned toward the entrance to the other room. “Girls! We got some decoying to do!”

And so we did, Diana being detailed to find out where the fugitive was, as she was by far the best at trail-craft. The rest of us fanned out, moving toward where the fugitive was being chased.

I stayed with Sherry. We actually saw Chwahir a couple times. Daytime they were clumsy, but at night they could move quickly and well, because they could see well. A couple of patrols went by, slashing at bushes and low branches with spears and swords.

Sherry and I slunk away, hiding in a blasted tree that had long gone to moss on one side. They moved straight west, staying north of us. We eased out and continued on, Sherry falling down only once, when we climbed a pair of trees to scout — and she didn't notice that the Chwahir had hacked nearly through a low branch, a typical piece of pointless meanness.

But the duff on the ground cushioned her fall and we continued on, our breath clouding briefly in the cold, pale-blue moonlit air.

Presently we heard running, and persistent bird calls; the signal pulled us northwards, well toward the Shadow. Uncomfortably close, but I didn't have time to think about it because I heard girl voices clear on the cold air. One sharp girl voice, one low, angry one. Irene and Dhana.

Sherry sighed, whispering, “Oh, no, back to that again.”

Squabbling.

Then we heard crashings and cracklings behind us, and Sherry and I both took to the nearest tree. I swung myself up onto a branch just moments before a figure stumbled into the clearing below, kicking up leaves and duff.

“Pst! Up here!”

The figure stopped, arms windmilling, looked around, and then up. Through pleated bare branches the sinister red glow of magic torches bobbed nearer.

“Why didn't I think of that?” groaned the newcomer, and two strong hands slapped onto the big branch just below mine, but then the figure grunted, I heard a splat, a thok, and a hiss of pain, then a breathless laugh. “Million trees ... never looked up once ... blasted skirt!”

I realized she'd tripped on her skirt while trying to get purchase on the tree trunk, which made her slow in climbing.

Irene shouted something angrily —

And then the clearing filled with red torchlight as twenty or so Night-eyes stampeded in, all of them looking up at us.

Never mind the ignominious trip to the Shadow. It had happened enough times to one or another (or a few of us) by now to make us scared, and determined, but not terrified.

Kwenz's orders, we'd realized by now, were not ‘kill on sight' but ‘grab for hostages'. So we'd learned not to do any fighting while we were vastly outnumbered, at least not at night.

I kept trying to get near the newcomer to ask her questions, but she was far ahead of me, surrounded by the biggest group of Chwahir patrollers. On either side of me, Irene and Dhana
still
kept up their squabble, in terse muttered insults that, I swear, made one of the Chwahir — a tall gangling fellow maybe six or seven years older than we were — snort and then clear his throat. Supposedly only the leaders understood Mearsiean (Kwenz didn't want them fraternizing) but you never knew.

We got to the Shadow and were tossed in the holding cells just outside the stable, some took up station as guards, and others went off to do whatever it was they were supposed to do. Their leader, of course, had miles of stairs and halls to tramp in order to report to Kwenz.

As soon as we were alone, I muttered, “Let's do a head count.”

“Here,” whispered the new girl, then she laughed.

“Here,” said Irene. “No thanks to Mistress Pickle-tongue.”

“Here,” Dhana promptly replied. “Our gift from Princess Bigmouth.”

“Here,” Sherry sighed.

Faline did not reply, and I knew she'd been grabbed. That meant she'd managed to slip off somewhere.

Relieved, I whispered in Irene's ear, “Why are you crabbing at Dhana?”

“Because she will
not
leave me alone,” Irene replied. Loudly. In her most injured voice.

Dhana snorted. The cell was wholly dark, but I could hear her fingers rubbing over her forehead. I'd meant to remind Irene that Dhana's moods were always nasty when the weather was dry, but my words withered before my tongue could shape them. She knew it. But she was enjoying her battle too much to listen.

So I turned to the new girl. “Glad Diana managed to find you, but who
are
you?”

“Has Clair told you — ”

Just then we heard voices outside, and the clatter of keys in a rusty lock. Then the door swung open, torchlight streamed in, and Kwenz stood outlined in red light. We couldn't see his face, only the faint reflection of light on the outside of his eye sockets, and in his beard, but he could see all of us.

“Ah,” he said, looking at me. “I shall prepare a suitable message for that young brat up on the mountain.”

“Prepare a suitable message like you're going to drop dead,” Irene stated.

“Like you're going to take up the flute,” Sherry added.

“Ho hum,” I snarled. “The usual sinister speechifying.”

I'd like to think we made him angry with all our backtalk — I certainly believed it back then — but the truth is, I think he thought we were funny. He wheezed a laugh that we all thought sinister, motioned, and the door was slammed shut.

Not long after it opened again, and this time there was no Kwenz. The guard in charge said, “They're all yours,” in a bored voice.

And a deep, growly voice that was somehow familiar, “Joy.”

A laugh, and the guard was gone.

“Come along,” a guard snarled at us.

There was something odd about that guard. I couldn't tell you how I knew, I just knew he was familiar. Like I'd known him well, yet I didn't recognize his pasty face.

“Fire!” came a shout from the other end of the stable.

All the other guards looked round. The stable had the most wood in it, and of course their horses. We heard stamping and whinnying, and the Chwahir stampeded, forming a bucket line to the great trough leading off from a well.

The guard had vanished.

“Diana,” Sherry breathed, and we all relaxed a little. The horses would be safe, then. Diana would have looked out for that first thing. And that meant we didn't have to stay and help save them — we could get away.

Little flames licked here and there (she must have touched a torch to every bit of scrubby grass around) as we dashed away. When I looked again, out of the side of my eyes, Faline had suddenly appeared. And she was wearing black clothes that looked a whole lot like Chwahir guard clothes.

She was running beside the newcomer, who was quite tall — even taller than Seshe — and had a very long stride.

Over the drawbridge, which was empty just then, and then Diana hissed, “Up here!”

She knew all the trails through the scrubby mountainside; she led us to safety.

Much, much later, we collapsed into the Junky, glad to be back in the warmth and quiet. The night had gotten considerably colder, a sharp, dry cold wind howling over the desert to the west.

We all dropped down onto the rug, and Seshe came from below, still in her clothes, though by now it was very late. She went straight to the MP to write a message, and then to the kitchen, where I smelled the lovely scent of chocolate.

But I forgot about that as I stared at the newcomer, who stood in the middle of the rug, looking around in amazement. Dhana was trying not to laugh, though I could see she had a headache; Sherry shook with silent laughter. This girl had to be the strangest looking girl I'd ever seen: a square, brown face, long arms and legs. She was the size of a grownup but there was no grownup figure in that horribly fitting pink gown — flat front, no hips, big bony wrists and hands, muscular arms, and big bare feet sticking out below. The dress had been made for someone much shorter and plumper through the middle. We stared at her, and she stared at us and the underground cavern, then raised a hand to scrape back her mop of short, thick brown hair that looked like it had been sawed with a knife sometime last summer.

She looked at us. “Which one of you is the shape-changer? That was a good trick.”

Irene gaped. Dhana looked vague; Diana stared.

Sherry gasped, turning to me — I spread my hands, but even as I did it, I sidled a peek at Faline, who had gone so white her freckles stood out like some of Fobo's polka dots. Except her expression was so stricken I had no desire to laugh.

Before anyone could speak, Clair appeared, took one look at the girl and her eyes rounded. Then she did something surprising: she took hold of the girl's thick wrist and transferred both of them out, all without saying a word.

“
Shape
-changer?” Irene said in a dramatic voice.

Seshe brought out the chocolate on a tray. “I think,” she said, without quite looking at anyone in particular, “maybe we ought to settle that among ourselves. But only so we're comfortable. I don't think Clair would care.”

“I'll drink hers,” Diana said, jerking her thumb over her shoulder at where the newcomer had been standing. She obviously wasn't going to nose into anyone's secrets.