The Girl of Fire and Thorns Complete Collection (5 page)

7

Z
ITO rolls with the jaguar, striking it with his spear. “Run, Alodia!”

I spin. My ankle catches in a root, and I hear a great crack like splintering wood. I scream, falling to my knees. Through a haze of tears and a red curtain of pain, I see death leaping toward me. The jaguar has abandoned Zito to attack me.

I fumble for the knife. I pull it from my belt and yank off the sheath, which I fling at the jaguar with a cry of fury. It bats aside the piece of leather with a giant paw the way a man swats a harmless mosquito. It leaps, but I roll, and the snapping jaws barely miss my neck; the raking claws slide off my leather vest.

The cat lands behind me, and I barely have time to twist on the ground to face it before it is on me again, forcing the air from my lungs with the weight of its body.

I grab a fistful of fur and flesh at its throat and, with strength born of desperation, hold the jaws at bay just enough to avoid having my skull crushed. Its warm breath reeks of sour meat, and one fang is dark with rot. The cat snarls as it rolls its head, trying to pull loose from my grasp. Claws rake my shoulder, trailing white-hot pain.

But I do not let go, and I stab wildly at its face, over and over, until the knife slides into a yellow eye. The jaguar roars, wrenching its head, yanking the knife away. I grab for the hilt, trying to reclaim it, but the massive cat collapses on top of me.

I pound at the animal with my fists. Seconds or minutes pass until I realize the creature is limp and dead. I manage to shift a little, just enough to fill my chest with air. A sob of joy at deliverance wracks my body.

After collecting my breath, I try to shove the cat aside, but I can’t. I start to leverage my way out, but I scream the moment my ankle pushes against the ground.

My tears dissolve into laughter. I have killed the jaguar, but it may yet kill me.

A shadow passes over me. Then, a grunt. The cat is flung aside.

“Zito!”

“Alodia! Are you—?”

He crouches beside me and peers toward my wounded shoulder. It’s probably bleeding badly. I hardly care. “Zito, I thought you were . . .” I can’t even say it.

“
You
were its target,” he says. “It saw you limping and pegged you as easy prey.” I wince as he pushes back my sleeve to get a better look. “Poor creature—it had no idea who it was tangling with.”

“We have to cut open the cat’s stomach,” I say. “We have to find out if it . . .”

He nods, wrenches his knife from the cat’s head, and expertly slits open its belly. Organs spill out, steaming and stinking. He grabs the white-pink stomach and slices it open. The contents ooze out, like stew from a cracked bowl. I don’t know what I expect to see—the girl’s body, her face, her other muddied shoe—but none of it is there.

Zito pokes through the mess with the knife. “This hunter has not been eating well. I see a feather. Small rodent bones.”

“Then whose blood was in the garden?”

He shrugs for an answer, shifts to the other side of the creature, and stares at its hindquarters. A faint rosette pattern is barely visible in its matted black fur. “There’s an arrow deep in its haunch,” Zito says. “It was the hunted, not the hunter. Maybe it leaped into the garden to escape. The blood smears were the jaguar’s, not the girl’s.” After a pause, he adds, “You were lucky, Alodia. If the cat had not been injured and starving, you may not have been able to handle it.”

It’s getting harder to think as the fear and fury of battle dissipate, leaving only agonizing pain in their place. “That doesn’t make sense,” I manage. “If anyone in the village shot it, they would have raised the alarm.”

I don’t like the look that passes across Zito’s face.

He thrusts the knife into the cat’s flank, digging and prying. Blood oozes slowly now that the cat is dead, disappearing into the thick black fur and leaving a sticky sheen. A moment later, Zito pulls out an arrowhead. A string of muscle sways from the serrated edge. The shaft has been chewed off.

“Zito?”

“This is an Invierno arrowhead,” he whispers, and his eyes lift and scan the surrounding area. “That would explain what drove the jaguar out of the mountains. And perhaps more than that. We need to get back to Khelia Castle immediately.”

But it’s too late. Speak of evil, and you summon it. Voices filter through the jungle.

“It came from over there,” comes a clipped voice.

“The cat is long gone by now,” says another.

“The whole castle was out looking for it last night. They’ll come again. We need to find that arrow before they do.”

Zito and I must escape. But I’m in no condition to go anywhere.

8

Z
ITO slips his arm under mine and pulls me up. “Pray there is a cave or shelter among those rocks,” he whispers. He places the hilt of the knife in my mouth. “Bite down. Do not cry out.”

The taste of jaguar blood makes me choke, but I swallow the bile as it rises. Zito leans on his spear, dragging me along as fast as he can manage.

The trees conceal us, but my foot dangles uselessly. It snags on a root, sending us both sprawling. The knife cuts my cheek as I slam the hard earth, but I do not cry out. I will not cry out.

A startled exclamation filters through the trees as the bandits find the dead jaguar.

Zito lifts me again, sees the blood on my face, and slides the knife into his belt. We limp onward, with barely two good legs between us. My head throbs. I hear him talking to me, as if from far away.

“This is well concealed,” he says. “Hard to reach, hard to find.”

He drags me forward, and the world goes black. My next sense is that we are halfway up a sloping wall of rock and scrub. Zito no longer carries his spear. One arm is wrapped around me; the other pulls both of us upward.

I hate this. I hate the fear. I hate that I must be helped.

Darkness looms. At first I take it for a shadow, but my hazing vision clears to reveal a small cave, just large enough for me to crawl inside.

“You go first,” I say. “Pull me in.”

“Shhh,” he whispers, gently easing me sideways into the narrow opening. “Hide here. I’ll run back to the castle and bring help.”

I grab his arm. “I’ll go with you.”

“No.” He hands me the knife, hilt first.

“You’ll need it if they catch up to you!”

We hear voices in the distance.

“I must run,” he says, pulling the knife back with reluctance. “Stay quiet. Stay
alive
. I’ll be back.”

And just like that, he slips away. Tears well up in my eyes. I tell myself it’s from the pain. That’s the first thing I must do, then. Bind my ankle. Immobilize it and stop the swelling.

I scoot farther back into the cave, where the higher ceiling allows me to sit upright. The sun is above the horizon now. Enough light filters in that I can see my ankle.

It would be better if I could not. It is purple and swollen, and my foot turns at an odd angle. It’s not broken—it’s dislocated.

I’ve dislocated fingers several times. There is nothing to do but yank them back into place and bind them up until they heal. Surely the principle is the same with an ankle. The good news is that the pain will be much diminished once I accomplish it. It might even support my weight, should it come to that. I unlace my boots, then brace my foot against the wall. I lean over and press my fingertips into the swollen skin, looking for the right grip. Red spots dance in my vision.

I take three deep breaths and shove my ankle into place. Bone scrapes bone. The cave darkens.

When I come to, I am dizzy and my vision is blurry, so it is a full second before I realize the shadow leaning over me is a person. I prepare to strike, hard and fast, when a small hand covers my mouth.

A girl’s hand. Lupita’s hand.

“Your Highness,” she whispers, her voice trembling.

“Lupita!” I grab her and hug her tight. “How did you—?”

“I’m sorry! I just wanted to find the scarlet hedge nettle. For the flowers—”

“I remember. You’ve been here all night?”

She buries her head in my chest. I stroke her hair.

“What happened, Lupita? Tell me. But do it quietly.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” She swallows hard. “I was going to look for flowers, climbing over the wall. And then . . . and then I heard . . .”

“Espiritu.”

She nods.

“We have killed him, Lupita. He’ll never hurt anyone again.”

“He leaped onto the wall, and I was so scared. I jumped down and started to run. Then there were men in the woods. Perditos. I didn’t know where I was going. I just ran and ran until I came here.”

I marvel that this small child made the same drop that injured my ankle. “It’s all right. Do you remember Lord Zito?”

“The man with the funny voice?”

“He’s the one who brought me here. He is running back to the castle for help.”

“I hope he is a very fast runner,” she says. She gestures for me to come see, and I drag myself toward the opening.

The rising sun has revealed a small meadow between the cliffs and the jungle below. It holds a camp—the remains of a fire and some scattered supplies.

“They hid here last night, when the soldiers were searching. I wanted to sneak past them, but—”

“You were smart not to try. But no one is down there now.”

She gasps and melts back into the shadow of the cave.

Men with faces painted black emerge from the trees. Bones from their anklets rattle as they walk. They wear clothes hacked from poorly tanned hides, and their hair hangs in clumps. Perditos.

But they are not alone.

A tall, thin man with long white hair and a supple cloak accompanies the bandits. The staff he carries bears a glowing jewel in an iron cage at its tip.

An Invierno. Not just an Invierno, but an animagus, one of their powerful sorcerers.

Behind him come two more Perditos, dragging someone else, and my heart is in my throat even before my mind makes sense of the scene.

They have captured my steward. He hangs limp between them, and blood drips from a gash on his forehead.
Oh, Zito.

No rescue is forthcoming. It will be up to me to save us all.

9

“L
UPITA, you must help me,” I say. “I need you to bind up my ankle as tight as possible.”

“How?” she whispers.

I start untying the stays on either side of my stiff leather vest. “With this. Here, help me get it off.”

Her fingers are more nimble than mine, and her hands shake less. In a few moments, we have it off and the two pieces separated. The front piece is shaped oddly, the rawhide sculpted to my curves, but it has a little more flexibility than the back.

Outside, the Perditos argue loudly. I feel a desperate need to hurry, even if I don’t know my next step.

“Now the sleeves of my shirt,” I say. They are also held on with laces. I wince when Lupita’s efforts scrape at my injured shoulder and breathe relief when she’s done pulling the sleeves off my arms. I tie them together and wrap them crosswise around my ankle. I need three times their length, but it will have to do.

I grab the front half of my vest. “We need to roll this up. Leather armor is not very flexible, so you’ll have to press hard.” I show her what I mean and hand it to her. “We’ll wrap it around my lower leg, as low as we can and as tight as we can, and then we’ll tie it in place. Can you do that?”