Shadows (6 page)

Mara had to agree with that. The temperature had dropped again in the wake of the one-day thaw, and her nose felt like a lump of ice glued to her face. She kept reminding herself not to lick her burning, chapped lips—and then licked them anyway.

Edrik led them a little farther to the left, until they intersected one of the stone fences. In its insubstantial shadow—it was only about four feet high—they rode out of the forest.

They moved from fence line to hedge line, zigzagging back and forth through the fields, like ghosts in the night. But though they seemed to be the only humans abroad, their horses weren't the only animals. Trouble came as they skirted a village. Edrik led them into a stand of woods . . . but the trees ended suddenly, and without warning they emerged into a farmyard. In the moonlight Mara glimpsed a tidy stone hut, a thatched roof, a low fence, a cowshed . . . and then a huge black dog exploded from the shadows, white teeth gleaming as it charged toward the horses, deep, bone-shaking barks shattering the still of the night.

“Back!” Edrik cried, and wheeled his horse and galloped back into the trees. Chell followed, Keltan turned with a little more difficulty and did the same . . . and Mara, somehow, between the onrushing dog, the skittish horse, her own pounding heart and her own inexperience, suddenly found herself sliding sideways in the saddle . . . and then fell heavily to the ground, the impact knocking the breath from her. As she lay trying desperately to draw air into her lungs, the horse reared and galloped after its stable mates . . .

...and the black dog reached her and stood slavering over her, drool dripping from its fanged, snarling mouth.

Warm Bed, Cold Steel

“S
TAFIN! HEEL!” a voice shouted. The dog growled once more at Mara, then turned and trotted back to the owner of the voice, just emerging from the cottage. Mara turned her head and saw a big man wearing an improbable patchwork robe lumbering toward her, a stout wooden cudgel in one hand. “What have you got, boy?” he said as the huge dog, so terrifying to Mara a moment before, romped around him like a puppy.

The man came closer. Mara, still struggling to breathe, couldn't say a word. He bent over. “Why, it's a girl!” he said in astonishment. His hand went to his unMasked face. “And me without . . . girl, what on earth are you doing out in the middle of the night?”

“I . . .” Mara began. “I . . .” It was no use. She still didn't have the air.

“You'd best come inside,” the man said. “Filia!” he called over his shoulder. “It's a girl! I think she's hurt!”

“A girl!” A woman's voice came back. “Well, bring her in, Jess, you big lump. Let me get a look at her.”

Jess tossed aside the club, leaned over, and picked Mara up as though she weighed no more than a baby. He carried her toward the house, while Mara, helpless, looked over his broad arm at the dark forest where Edrik, Chell, and Keltan must just be realizing she was missing.

Light flared in the doorway as Filia lit a lamp. “Take her into Greff's room, Jess,” the woman said. Mara could see her face now, unMasked, lined, a kind and friendly face filled with equal parts concern and bewilderment.

Jess turned to the right, ducking through the low door into a lean-to of a room, obviously a later addition to the original farmhouse, since its walls were of plastered timber rather than stone. It had two big windows, both shuttered, a chest, a small table, and a long, narrow bed. Her breathing was coming easier now, which allowed her to feel more clearly the sharp pain between her shoulder blades. Jess started to place her on the bed, then stopped. “She's bleeding, Filia!”

I am?
Mara thought.

Filia bent closer, and made a tsking sound. “Looks like you fell on something sharp, love,” she said to Mara. “But not to worry, it doesn't look too serious from what I can see. Hold her a moment more, Jess.” She bustled out and returned with a ragged blue blanket, which she spread on the bed. “There now,” she said. “I don't mind getting blood on that. Put her down.”

Gently, Jess lay Mara down. She gasped as her back touched the blanket, and sat up again in a hurry. “Ow,” she said.

“I'd best take a closer look,” Filia said. She waited a moment, then gave her husband an exasperated look. “That means taking off her jacket and blouse, you big lummox,” she said. “Which means you have to leave.”

“Oh!” Jess said. His face turned red. “Of course. Sorry, miss. I'll . . . I'll just go retrieve my stick.” He went out.

Filia shook her head in a bemused sort of way. “Not the smartest wolf in the pack,” she said to Mara, “but a wonderful man, all the same. Now, let's get a look at you . . .”

With Filia's help, Mara slipped out of her jacket and blouse and undertunic, then hugged her arms across her breasts while the farmwoman examined her back. “How . . . how bad is it?” Mara said, the first sentence she'd managed to speak since falling from the horse.

“Naught but a nasty scratch,” Filia said. “From a sharp rock or a bit of root, most like. I'll have it cleaned up and bandaged in a jiffy. You just sit tight for a moment.” She got up and went out, closing the door behind her.

Mara, still hugging herself, looked around the little room. Besides the bed and chest and the little table on which the lantern rested, she saw a shelf attached to one wall. On it were half a dozen wooden carvings of birds. They weren't extraordinarily wonderful carvings: Mara had seen far better in the Outside Market, never mind the high-end shops of the Inside Market near the Palace gate. But she thought, from looking at them, that they had probably been done by a child; and as the work of a child, they definitely held promise. She could have done better, but then, she'd had a lot of practice sculpting as apprentice to her father.

Her father. He would be looking for her the very next night. How was she going to get away?

She shivered, and wished Filia would hurry up. The room was warmer than the air outside, but not by much. It was certainly too cold to sit around half naked.

Fortunately, Filia returned within five minutes, with a basin of steaming water and a folded-up piece of white cloth from which she tore several strips. The first she used as a rag to clean the wound Mara couldn't see but could certainly feel; she gasped. Then Filia tore three more strips from the cloth and had Mara lift her arms so she could wind them around her chest and back. When she was done, Mara looked down and sighed. Bound in the bandages, she was even more flat-chested than usual.

I could pass for a boy
, she thought.

“I'll need to wash the blood out of your clothes,” Filia said. She frowned. “I've got mint tea brewing in the kitchen,” she said, “and that's where we'll want to hear your story. But you'll need something to wear . . .” She got up and went to the chest, opening it to reveal neatly folded clothes. “You're about the same size as my son . . . was.” Her voice caught before the last word. She pulled out a brown shirt and held it up. “You can wear this.”

Mara pulled it on, grateful for the warmth, then followed Filia into the kitchen, where Jess already waited at a well-made table of dark wood. The fire had been stoked and blazed cheerfully in the hearth, and a kettle hanging over it issued a steady stream of vapor. A tub in the corner steamed, and Mara, glancing in, saw her jacket and shirt in the pink-tinged water. “I'll pull those out to dry,” Filia said. “Jess managed to rub most of the blood out of them, I think. You just sit at the table.”

Mara sat. Filia pulled the dripping jacket, blouse, and undertunic from the tub. “Don't just sit there like a frog on a log,” she said to her husband. “Work the pump. I need to give these a rinse.”

Jess, as obedient to his wife as the big black dog had been to him, got up and began cranking the wooden pump handle. Water poured into a wooden trough that guided it out through the wall. Filia worked the clothes under the clean water for a few moments, then said to Jess, “That's enough. Now you pour the tea while I hang these up, and then we'll talk.”

While Filia draped the clothes on a rope strung across the kitchen in front of the fire, where they hung, dripping onto the stones of the hearth, Jess took the kettle from the fire and poured clear green tea into three clay mugs already sitting on the table. Mara wrapped her hands around her mug to warm them, and took a long sip of the blessedly hot liquid, trying to look unconcerned and at home, while all the while her heart fluttered. What could she tell them? What
should
she tell them?

Filia sat down next to her husband. He looked far less frightening in the light than he had as a dark shadow in the farmyard. His bald head glowed in the firelight and his gray-bearded, bushy-browed face was as lined and kindly as his wife's. “Now, then, child,” said Filia gently. “What's your name?”

“P . . . Prella,” Mara said. The real Prella, far away in the Secret City, surely wouldn't mind.

“Prella,” said Filia. “And how old are you?”

“Fourteen,” Mara said, thankful once again to Ethelda, who had been present at her Masking on her fifteenth birthday and had healed her torn face so well after the Mask failed that no scars remained.

“Not long until your Masking?”

“Not long,” Mara said. “Two months. Fourteenth of Waterspring.” That was her mother's birthday.

“Where do you live?” Jess rumbled. “You're not a local girl.”

“Riverwash,” Mara said. It was the only village name she could be sure of; one of her classmates had had an aunt there and had told tales, after returning from a midwinter visit, of how impossibly dull a place it was. Located on the river, just as the name implied, it lay a few miles north of Tamita. She hoped it was still far enough away that neither Jess nor Filia knew its inhabitants well.

“Riverwash?” said Jess, frowning. “That's a long walk from here, girl.”

“I wasn't walking, I was riding,” Mara said. “When your dog came charging out, my horse threw me. Then she galloped off.”

“Riding? At night? Through the woods?” Jess shook his head. “Of all the fool . . . why weren't you on the road?”

“I got lost,” Mara lied. “I was riding with my brother, and we were late setting out, and he said he knew a shortcut to a village where we could find an inn, but then it got dark and somehow I lost him and then I didn't know where to go and then I came on your farm and then your dog came out barking and I fell and . . .” Cold, hurting, and worried, she didn't have to work very hard to conjure up a few tears. Sniffling, she swiped the sleeve of her borrowed shirt across her nose.

“Your brother must be worried sick!” Filia said, voice full of concern. “But I'm afraid we can't do anything about that until morning.” She leaned forward and patted Mara's hand. “You sleep in Greff's room tonight. Tomorrow we'll take you into Yellowgrass. Like as not your brother will be there waiting for you.”

Mara nodded, still sniffling. “Won't . . . won't Greff mind? His room, I mean?”

Filia smiled a sad smile. “Greff's not here,” she said. “He turned fifteen a year ago and was chosen to join the Child Guard. A great honor. We were very pleased.” She didn't sound pleased. She sounded on the verge of tears herself.

And she doesn't even know what I know
, Mara thought, feeling ill.
She doesn't know that the Autarch is sucking magic—sucking
life
—right out of the Child Guard, that none of them thrive while in his service, that some of them die.

Ethelda had told her that. She'd also told her, in one of their recent conversations, that as time went along, she feared
all
of the Child Guard would die: that the Autarch, needing to draw ever more magic to stave off his own aging, wouldn't be able to help himself. “He'll suck them dry and discard the husks,” she'd told Mara. “It's already starting to happen. Any child taken into the Child Guard now I fear is as good as dead, if the Autarch remains on the throne.”

“How wonderful,” Mara forced herself to say to Filia.

The farmwoman said nothing to that. “Into bed,” she said. “We'll talk in the morning and figure everything out.”

She showed Mara to the lean-to room, said good night, and went off to bed with her husband.

Mara wanted nothing more than to lie down on that inviting bed, pull up the covers, and sleep until morning . . . but instead she sat, waiting, thinking she would sneak out as soon as they were asleep.

Her plan survived only as long as it took for her to crack open the door and peek into the hallway.

The big black dog lay across the threshold of the main door. His eyes locked on hers as she peered out. He growled.

Swallowing, Mara eased the door closed again. For a moment she considered trying to climb out the window, but the dog would surely bark if she did that, and Jess had only to let him out the door and he would have her again.

Looks like I have no choice but to spend the night
, Mara thought.

She undressed and climbed beneath the covers into that warm, dry, blissfully comfortable bed.
Well, it could be worse
, was her last thought before sleep took her.

She woke refreshed, hungry . . . and even more worried. (
It's the eleventh of Winterwhite! Only two more days . . .)
Sometime before she'd awoken Filia had brought in her own clothes, neatly mended and dried; she wondered how the farm wife had had the time. She dressed, then asked diffidently where she might “refresh” herself and was pointed to an outhouse a little way down a path through the farmyard. The big black dog was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Jess.
Probably busy with farm chores
, she thought.

The outhouse wasn't as bad as she'd thought it might be, but as she came out, blinking in the morning sun, she almost jumped out of her skin as a voice from behind her said, “Are you all right?”

She shot a quick look around to make sure Jess wasn't in sight, then sidled around to the side of the outhouse out of view from the house. “I'm fine,” she said to the lurking Keltan. He looked cold and dirty and miserable and she felt a little bit guilty to be clean, well-rested, and about to be well-fed . . . but only a little.

“Good,” he grunted. “Grand. Now let's go.”

“Not yet,” Mara said. Struck by sudden inspiration, she said, “Come inside with me. Filia will feed you.”

Keltan started. “What? No!”

“No, it's perfect,” Mara insisted. “I told them I was out riding with my brother and I got lost. And just look at you! You obviously were searching for me all night. Now you've found me, we'll be able to ride calmly away and they'll never question the fact we were here . . . or tell the Watchers about it, which is more to the point. Otherwise they're going to take me to the village.”