Forgotten - Kingdom Gone Book 3, page 10
The road would have more dangers, would take more time. She drew the horse to a stop and frowned at the horizon. A long ride and who knew how many towns along the way. It was silly not to use the pocket, and yet she hesitated. She stared down the road and remembered the way her head had spun, the way the ground seemed to fall from under her feet at the same time the world glowed and sparkled.
She’d just decided to move off again, to take the long and riskier path when the sound of hooves reached her. Someone rode in her direction, and they came from ahead, from the way she most pressingly wanted to travel. Now that the path was blocked, the urge grew. The sense of panic at the idea of actually using the pockets made her pulse race even more than the idea of any human confrontation.
She wouldn’t do it. Still, she backed the horse a few steps and turned him around. She could wait beside the pocket, just in case. If the rider was a stranger, they’d probably pass her without taking too much notice. They’d probably ride on and leave her to go about her own business. Like Nel’s partner had, perhaps?
The feeling tickled again. Old Space close by—it made her want to vomit, even before she’d found it. The nausea helped her locate the pockets more easily than any human should have been able to. She used it there in the dark, felt her way to the rift and became less inclined to cross into it the nearer it got. Only a stout stump marked the border, a leftover from when proper trees might have grown along the road. This one had been cut long enough ago that new shoots sprang from it like dark fingers.
Payne had to kick Malcolm’s horse to convince it to leave the road. It chose to jump over the edge, though it was only built up perhaps a hand’s span from the surrounding fields. In the dark, the horse decided she was riding it off a cliff. The movement jerked her back, left her clinging for her balance while the horse skittered toward the stump.
Too close. She bailed off on the far side and only remembered to keep the reins in her hand at the last second when the horse’s body was safely between her and the pocket. Its fat rump swung around, pranced right through the membrane without crossing into it. She flinched and tugged at the bit, dragged the suddenly flighty animal to the side and tried to get him settled again.
By the time he stood still, the hooves on the road rang loud and near. The rider made a weirdly bouncing silhouette against the blacker mountains in the distance. The first glow of dawn edged the range and threw long gashes across the field where she waited, praying her horse would stay quiet and the rider would find them uninteresting enough to ignore.
There was only one horse coming, but as it neared Payne could see why it threw a strange shadow. Two people rode it, and the heavy beast stepped with a ponderous gait that belied its draft nature. Malcolm and Sariah, riding the cart horse and not likely feeling very kindly about her. Damn. She pushed against his horse’s chest and it sidestepped, leaving her open access to the pocket, the horrid escape route. She might be able to drag the animal with her, but in case she couldn’t, she plucked the bag of Nel’s ashes from the pommel and tucked it into her waistband.
The horse squealed, announcing them and earning a friendly whicker from its big buddy in the road. The low rumble of Malcolm’s voice reached her, but not his words nor those of his higher-pitched companion. No matter. She could guess what they were discussing…and who.
Payne contemplated calling out a greeting. They already knew she was there, and it might buy her time to make conversation, might even give her time to think up some plan that didn’t involve slipping though the pocket. As the light teased it, she could see the shimmer in the air, the ripple that neither of them should be able to perceive. She opened her mouth, even, but the sound of hooves devoured her urge to speak. This time, many riders approached and, judging by the thunder they made, they came fast and on more horses than she cared to count.
Now Malcolm shouted a curse. The draft horse squealed, and a dance of flame appeared in the road from the same direction Payne had come. Torches flickered between the scrub, from the town, no doubt, and full of Nel’s story. These men would be out for her blood. They’d be afraid of her as well, if the man’s terror had spread. She’d be able to use that, to keep them at arm’s length. She wouldn’t have to use the pocket.
She eased closer to it just the same. She put her hand out and considered touching it.
“She’s going to bolt!” Sariah had slipped down from the draft horse and slunk nearer. Malcolm sat the fat horse in the road, but his partner moved at its edge now, close enough Payne could see her sneering. “She’s found a pocket.”
“Yes.” Payne stood taller and pretended to stroke the membrane she didn’t want to touch for real just yet. “I have. So you can go ahead and ride off, thank you.”
“You took my horse.” Malcolm sounded more offended than angry. He might have made her laugh if she hadn’t been darting glances between his partner and the dark mob riding straight for them.
“They’re going to want me dead. I killed one of their friends.”
“It’s a gang,” Sariah said. Behind her Malcolm cursed. Now he was angry, but it was his hound that snarled. “You’ve pissed off the Shades. Should have stayed with us after all, it seems.”
“I think I like them better.” Payne forced herself to watch the woman instead of the gang. The torches were too close though, and some of them had wandered from the road, drifted around to circle wide and pin her where she was…where she didn’t want to be. “They’re prettier than you are.”
“Let’s leave her to them, Mal. Please?”
“Don’t.” Payne reached for the membrane and this time made contact. Sariah froze mid lunge, but her sudden move had brought them too close. They stared at one another, and Payne heard Malcolm’s heavy mount jump down from the road. Its huge feet thumped nearer as he joined them.
“Let me talk to them.” He circled too, rode around the pocket with his eyes fixed on the approaching torches.
“Since when has talking to fanatics helped us?”
“Halt! You there,” a voice shouted from the road. The night fell suddenly empty, devoid of beating hooves and quiet as a breath. “Who are you?”
“I am Malcolm Fairbright.” His voice echoed over the mumbles from the mob. It drowned that noise, but it didn’t hide the way they moved, systematically, to surround the pocket. “These women are my companions.”
“Are you Shade or Starlight?”
“Neither.” Malcolm growled his answer and the Shades muttered.
“We’ll see.” One rider spoke for the rest. He sat his horse without moving, the animal as still as the stump even though its companions jostled and shifted for position. “One of our men was attacked on the Port road.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Malcolm’s answer almost covered her snort.
Payne cleared her throat and tried to hide it as best she could, but the nearest rider edged his horse toward her and Sariah. He had a long weapon poking back from one hip. No doubt they all did. She caught the curve of a bow as well. The bastards with those didn’t need to touch her to kill her.
“I’m sure you are.”
“It was jus’ one woman.” Nel’s voice, Payne recognized. It trembled a little more than on their first meeting, and from the sound of it, he hid at the back of the crowd. “I din’ see her face neither.”
“Shut up, Nel.” The lead Shade held his torch high, lighting a wider circle and showing off his ragged, poorly shaven face. He wore a black cloth wound around his head, and his hair matched the rag. His band squeezed nearer.
Payne reached for the pocket.
“Don’t!” The rider nearest her, the one who’d moved in when she’d let out her derision at Nel’s story, commanded and pushed his mount another step. He had a torch as well, and he reached with it, tried to illuminate her enough for Nel to identify her. “This one would like to run, Brole.”
“Would she? Have a look at her, Nel.”
“D-don’t touch her,” Nel ignored the order, or else his mount refused his command. He failed to ride away from the mob. “She can kill you just for touching her.”
“And what business did anyone have touching her?” Malcolm snarled and urged the draft horse in behind Sariah, making a wall between the Shade leader, Brole, and where they stood. “Why did this man touch her in the first place?”
“Listen, stranger. You don’t affiliate with anyone, that’s fine by me. Your business. But this is Shade territory and my man was a Shade. On the Port road he can pretty much touch whoever he sees fit.”
“Sounds like he got what he deserved.” Sariah muttered it, but Payne heard. The nearest Shades probably did too, as the torchlight brightened. Still, it was the first time she’d felt even the barest agreement with Malcolm’s hound.
“That’s her!” Nel’s voice squeaked from behind his leader. “I think tha’s the one that done it.”
“Is that so?” The Shade leader leaned over his pommel. “Is you the one that done it, then?”
“No.” Payne inhaled and let her mind center. She’d have to open the damn pocket after all. If she meant to keep one set of idiots from killing the other, she’d have to vacate and diffuse the situation. “He’s as dull-witted as his friend was. I’m the one that done it, moron. And I’m not with them, either. They’re lying.”
She turned and showed the nearest rider her teeth. He lowered the torch and she faked a lunge at him, used the small motion to ease closer to the pocket. She could just step through now, but her stomach rolled at the thought.
The rider cursed and reined back. Payne inhaled and pulled on the energy inside her that would open the rift, the way she’d done only once or twice before, the way he had taught her.
“She’s running!” The Shade shouted at the same time Malcolm did. Sariah lunged for her, but something knocked Payne on the shoulder before the girl could reach her. It pushed her back. She stumbled along the membrane, grasping at the pocket. But her arm resisted the movement, fluttering uselessly and sending dull pain across her chest.
She reached with the other hand and felt the tingle of the boundary. Everything else blurred. She heard them shouting, saw horses circling like shadows with little flames above, but her ears roared and her stomach clenched. She hadn’t crossed yet, and already her head swam.
Her chest hurt. Her fingers went there absently and found an anomaly just below her right shoulder. No wonder her arm disobeyed. One of the bastards had shot her. Sariah grabbed at her, snarled and ordered her to “stop moving.”
Payne snarled back. She had an arrow in her shoulder, sure, but it hardly felt like a scratch. She pulled back and twisted her body, throwing off the girl. Then she reached with her good hand and found the membrane. Her legs might have wobbled a touch when she opened the rift. Her face may have scrunched in disapproval, but she opened it just the same. She turned her back on the Shades and her would-be-captors and dove into the lesser nightmare—a date with Old Space.
Chapter Thirteen
The sun burned overhead as if it meant to return Farine’s rosy outlook single-handedly. The weather had shifted toward warm again, at least for the day, and the few birds that had straggled in their autumnal departure did their best to sing away any traces of melancholy.
Farine glowered at the sky. The clouds puffed and drifted, making her think of the faire which made her think of Kerrigan and the work they could be doing. She dug her fingertips into the soft dirt and tore up a small chunk of the lawn. The garden had become Hadja’s favorite pastime, and while Farine had managed to avoid the place for a few days, that morning her maid had been particularly insistent that she “join her for a wander.”
Which meant no sneaking up to the workroom to draw sigils. It meant no whiff of incense and smoke in her hair at night and no tingling in her palms to ease her restlessness.
“It’s a bit chilly.” She looked out over the hedges and willed the trees to toss a little. “Maybe I could go and fetch our wraps.”
“There’s no need, Fari. It’s a blazing day.” Hadja’s voice chastised, but she couldn’t even be bothered to look in her princess’ direction. She paced along a row of sage, plucking at the occasional leaf and continually gazing out to the road that led away from the cottage to the village beyond. They’d been blessed, in Farine’s opinion, to find the garden empty today, but Hadja had obviously expected to visit with its new tenants, and between her plucking and clucking, she made absent-minded gestures with her right hand. Farine knew she petitioned her Powers, that her fingers traced invisible symbols. Usually she tolerated the compulsion in good humor, but today it only reminded her of what she was missing in the workrooms back at the palace.
“Well it would give me something to do!” She snapped and earned more of Hadja’s attention than she’d actually wanted. The woman stopped and regarded her through narrow eyes that had already begun to wrinkle Farine noted, not entirely sympathetically.
“You mean it would allow you to slip up to the Users’ level.”
“At least there I have something useful to do. They’re not here, Hadj. Why are we still sitting around?”
“Since when are you interested in magic, Fari?
“Who says I am?”
“You’ve never shown the least curiosity. Not in all these years.” She squinted until her eyes were little slits, a serious face that meant she already suspected the answer.
“I’ve never shown interest in praying magic, maybe. But this is different.”
“I’d say it is. I’d say a few Users would do well to incorporate a little more prayer into their meddling.”
“Why? If it works without all the groveling?”
“Groveling!” Hadja’s hand moved again, started the gesture and then dropped to her side before finishing. She stalked to where Farine sat and squatted in front of an azalea, still scowling. “Groveling. Do you have any idea, child, how big the Powers are? Do you understand how insignificant we must seem to them?”
“Hadja.” She wanted to remind the maid that she was a princess, and hardly insignificant, but Hadja was her friend too, and even frustrated as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to be that hurtful. Instead, she picked at her skirts and sighed.
“Fari, how much thought do you give to bees?”
“What? What do bees have to do with it?”
“I imagine that a queen bee feels very significant in its own hive. Do you think, if she buzzed in your ear, that you’d have a second thought about slapping at her? Maybe even squishing her?”
“You’re saying we’re bees now?”
“I’m saying the Powers are too big to worry about us. Too big, maybe, to even see us. But more than that, we are too small to understand them.”
“Then why bother?”
“Sometimes a thing becomes what you expect it to.” Hadja’s voice drifted into a soft chant, a tone that didn’t ask for response. She was talking to her own thoughts now, working out something for herself, but where most days Farine would take the excuse to tune her out, today she listened. Today, the idea of learning what she could about Powers and magic didn’t seem the least bit boring. “Sometimes. Yes. Our expectations might affect them, might them into our own image, like a mirror. Like the Rosy Glass.”
She trailed off and stared over Farine’s head now. The furrows in her brow unrolled and her eyes widened to her proper, still-youthful expression. She shook off her musing and smiled, and Farine knew before Hadja spoke that the inhabitants of the garden cottage had returned.
“Here comes Miriam at last. Don’t roll your eyes, Fari. Shame on you. You used to know how to be nice, once upon a time.”
“Maybe I’m just changing to fit your expectations?”
“Pah! The mouth on you today.” Hadja stood up, snorted and then shifted focus to the pair that wandered up the little path.
The garden sat back from the village road, but a thin lane curved off to reach the cottage. Once, the palace herbalist would have lived here, nursing both the villagers and the royal family alike. In the years since her mother’s death, however, the cottage had been vacant. A groundskeeper weeded and cared for the plants, but the herbalist enjoyed the comfort of her father’s court and a room inside the walls.
The blooms were too often left on the plants to wither and fall. The sage grew straggly for lack of pruning and the grass around the plots thickened with wind-sown invaders from the herb beds. The cottage thatch looked fresh and well kempt, and the old pump behind it still brought fresh water to hand easily enough. At least it proved a comfortable home for Hadja’s orphan and her mistress. No doubt, more comfortable than the village hovel where the girl had been born.
Farine wanted to feel bad for her. She had lost her mother as well, and that fact should have forged some kinship between them she supposed. She guessed it was what Hadja and Miriam hoped for. But the child was vile-tempered and rude, always sticking out her nasty tongue or crossing her eyes when her caretaker’s back was turned.
Even now she trailed behind the goodmother, scuffing her feet along the path with a sullen expression twisting her young features into a much older mask. They’d cleaned her up at least. She had golden hair now, though it still tangled into straggly ropes. Hadja’s friend had obviously tried to brush it out, had made an effort to tie back the front into some semblance of order. The child’s face was clean and her clothes might have been before she’d dragged herself to town and back. She kicked up enough dust just on the little path to make a cloud around her knees.
They’d done enough of a job, however, that Farine could guess her age more accurately. Ten years old at least, older than she’d first suspected. When her escort waved and cooed at Hadja, the girl’s head snapped up from her toes and she snarled in their direction. Miriam continued to wave merrily without notice, and Hadja clucked and waved back.
