Unlikely (Kingdoms Gone), page 8
She was pretty sure no one ever had.
The girl, Maera, hid in the grass on Hadja’s side of the fence. She hunkered down in the weeds and herbs where the men in her father’s shed couldn’t find her. When Satina passed, Maera turned in her direction. The girl smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes, one of which had a purple bruise around it. A shout from the smithy had her back to hiding in an instant, and Satina marched on to Hadja’s herbed path, grateful for the soothing aromas.
It had already started, the Starlight invasion. How many more children would suffer bruises, or worse?
She stomped up the path, huffing the scent of herbs until she felt light-headed. Hadja stood up as she swept by. The woman said something, but Satina didn’t catch it. She didn’t slow down, didn’t calm down, until the cottage warmth enveloped her and the scent of something roasting momentarily triumphed over her rage. She hadn’t eaten all day, and her stomach rumbled in protest.
It held nothing but the Tinker’s alcohol, and the scent of meat was nearly too much for her. She grabbed for the nearest stool and flopped into it, lowering her head to the table. The door opened and Hadja’s soft footsteps padded inside. Satina didn’t even look up. She listened to the woman moving about the cottage and let the smells drive her thoughts away from gangs and Old Magic for just a moment.
Hadja returned to the table. She set a bowl down, followed by a second. Then she perched on the open stool and waited for her cooking to lure Satina back to lucidity. It didn’t take long. The scent of garlic and sage pulled her head up as firmly as if a hand lifted her. She slid the bowl over and inhaled the fumes before digging in.
They ate together without questions, but the air hummed with expectation. Hadja had patience, but she also had a power of her own, maybe not magic, but compelling just the same. When Satina’s scoops slowed enough that she could breathe between bites, she found the woman’s eyes drifting to her. The old fingers folded under Hadja’s chin, and the urge to speak overwhelmed her.
“The gang has found your castle ruins.” She took another bite, hoping for some reaction, but Hadja only nodded and pressed her lips tighter. “They shot one of the Gentry. I don’t know if she lived or died.”
That time she earned a grunt.
“They’re going to dig there. They’ll never leave now. The whole town will suffer or—”
“Or learn to live under gang rule. Yes. I’ve seen it elsewhere too, missy. You’re not the only one who’s traveled.”
“What do we do?” Her hands shook now, and she set down the spoon.
“We?” Hadja laughed. “Are you planning on staying to help?”
“Of course.” She jumped from the stool when Hadja’s fist banged against the table. The woman’s face split into a grin.
“Good! There now, sit back down.”
Satina shook her head. She saw a fight in the woman’s eyes, saw the same things she felt reflected back. “Marten wants to give up. He wants to…”
“Don’t judge him too harshly.” Hadja waved her to sit. “Sit down. The man has been through more than his share of fighting, he’s lost more than his share too. Can’t blame him for not wanting to lose more.”
“But they’ll take over his shop. They’re already stealing from him.”
“Wasn’t talking about the shop.” Hadja stared at her, waited. Her eyes pierced Satina’s front as if it were mist.
“He told me to go away.” The sob burst from deep in her chest. Her eyes spilled tears she didn’t know she’d been checking. “He. Told. Me. To. Leave.” She gasped the words between shivers.
Hadja’s hand covered hers. The woman’s gaze softened. Her voice soothed instead of scolding. “Come now. Come on. Why do you suppose he did that?”
“He’s mad at me for letting the boy go.” She sniffed and wiped at her eyes with her free hand. “He blames me for bringing the Starlights.”
“Not likely, that. Try again.”
“Well, maybe he doesn’t want me to get hurt.”
“Now see, I knew you were a smart girl. Eat. I’ll get you a cloth.”
She stood and wandered into the back room. Satina obeyed her orders and cleaned the rest of her bowl. She felt better with something solid in her stomach. But her eyes burned now from the trickle of tears that continued to run their course. When Hadja returned and handed her a scrap of fabric, she wiped her face and blew her nose into the square.
“Better?”
“Thank you.”
“Now.” Hadja sat and banged her elbows onto the tabletop. She stuck her chin into her palms and pursed her lips. “Now we need a plan.”
“What?”
“Well, we can’t exactly storm up to this Vane fellow, just the two of us, and demand he gets out of town.”
“But we can do something.” Together. She felt lighter with an ally. The task seemed less impossible. “You have an idea?”
“Nope.” Hadja dashed her plans, but the old woman’s eyes still sparked with rebellion. “But we’ve a wealth of power between us. Has to be something we can come up with to stop a little band of Starlights.”
“Are you a Shade?”
“Wh—where did you get an idea like that?” Hadja snorted. She didn’t look away, or flush or give any sign of guilt. “No time for either of that lot.”
“There’s a symbol in your cellar. I couldn’t help but notice them.”
“Eh. Well, next time look closer. Those aren’t gang symbols, goodmother.” She sat up taller and her eyes glazed a bit, lured away by some thought Satina couldn’t guess at. “Where do you think that lot came up with their flashy badges?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I do. They stole them, like everything else they claim.”
The thatch pattered as the clouds finally gave up their rain. Satina eyed the rafters, expecting the force to breach the cottage’s defenses. Nothing dripped under the first assault, however. She frowned and eyed her bowl without realizing it. Hadja whisked it away to be refilled.
“So the symbols in your cellar are something else, and the gangs took them?”
“Twisted them, you might say. Even the gangs come from something older. Did your parents teach you nothing of the Powers? You’d think with your blood…oh.”
The woman trailed off, and Satina waited, twisting her fingers together and finding more filth than she liked under her nails. So long on the road, and so little time to worry about things like clean nails.
“Well,” Hadja brought her more food, but this time she just stared at it. “Don’t you worry. Our Skinner will come around eventually.”
“He’s not really a Skinner, is he?”
“Sure he is. Sure.”
“I don’t understand. He only meant to teach that boy a lesson, and he doesn’t really hurt anyone.”
“Maybe it’s not the man you don’t understand. Maybe it’s the word itself.”
Skinner. Had it come from something older as well? If it had, if it meant more than she believed, what did that make her? What did Granter really stand for? What else had her education lacked? She could see the understanding of that in Hadja’s eyes, and dropped hers back to the bowl of meat she didn’t feel like eating.
“You’ve had a rough morning,” Hadja said. “And a night on the ground, no doubt. Why not take some rest in a real bed?”
“What about the gang? We have to—”
“Sleep, child. You’re out of steam. We’ll have time to plan later.”
Satina nodded. Her bones complained already about the night on the ground, and her muscles had gone soft and unresponsive.
“There you go. Good.” Hadja helped her up, steered her toward the curtain. “Don’t you worry. You get some rest, and I’ll do some thinking.”
“Think for both of us.” Satina stumbled through the curtain without pulling it aside. It veiled her for a moment, a thick shroud she could hardly breathe through. The rough fabric scratched her bare arms. She pushed on, straight in where she knew the bed waited, and the curtain dragged back over her head and into its proper position.
The last thing she heard before sleep swept her away was Hadja’s chuckle, her soft steps back to the kitchen. She could do the thinking tonight. Satina closed her eyes and was out.
Chapter Ten
The standing stone blazed like a torch. The old symbols didn’t simply glow, they danced and writhed and whispered their secrets to Satina. She reached for them, pointed one finger like an arrow and followed the curves and slashes as if drawing them. Where had Vision gone? She examined every symbol, every twisting line looking for the one mark that would let her see again.
A scream tore through the night. She looked up, away from the brilliant sigils to a black sky and the body falling toward her. Its wings thrashed and dripped blood. Huge cat-eyes bored into her as the fiend fell and fell.
Satina sat up, gasping for breath, shoulders heaving. Sweat drenched her nightshift, making the thin fabric cling to her in a twisted sheath. Her room had grown warm, suggesting Hajda had a good fire burning. The sky through the tiny strip window in the cottage’s rear wall was midnight blue and clear enough of clouds for a few stars to twinkle through. The storm had ended, and the hour was late.
The dream hazed over rapidly, and she grasped at it, sure some detail had offered significant information. It hadn’t felt like an ordinary dream at all. The fiend’s bloody wings fluttering, casting shadowy patterns over the old sigils. Of course, the pockets didn’t align like that in the waking world. The stone stood half way across the courtyard from the suspended rift. She chewed on the images. The glow of old magic, the fiend’s wounds, her body bursting from the pocket in mid-air.
A pocket in mid-air. Could they use that? An idea whispered to her, but it flitted away quickly in the sound of thumping on the cottage door. Satina held her breath. Her hands grabbed the thick quilt and tucked it up under her chin. Hadja’s steps pattered to the door, her voice grumbled at the visitor. Had Marten come late for dinner? She strained to hear the voice that might confirm it.
Instead, Hadja’s words sharpened. The woman’s steps thudded to the curtain, far more loudly than she usually moved. Her voice screeched as well, unnaturally high in pitch. It carried easily through the curtain. “She’s sleeping.”
Satina heard the warning there. She fell back to her mattress and held perfectly still. The blanket covered her to the shoulders, and her hair fell over the side of the bed. She tried to relax, to make her breathing rhythmic, but inside her chest, her heart pounded.
The curtain rustled aside. A second passed, and another, before it dropped back into place. From the other side, she heard Vane’s voice. The gang leader spoke in a low tone, a soft thunder that filtered and lost words through the curtain barrier. “Business with you,” she heard that much, and strained for more. The voices hushed, however, and she was left with only mumbling and the sound of footsteps to sort out the scene.
The front door opened and shut. Satina wanted to sit up, to rush out and question her host, but something held her in place. A coil of fear lodged in her chest and she waited and listened. Soft steps outside the window, the sound of the root cellar door clanging against the ground. Hadja. Which meant the steps pacing across the floorboards belonged to Vane.
The curtain pulled back, not softly. The noise required a response, and Satina moaned softly and shifted farther onto her side. The gang leader stood in her doorway. The sound of his breathing reached her only a few feet away. Her pulse thrummed, and outside, the cellar door banged closed. The curtain fell again, but she was still too terrified to breathe. She waited while her lungs tightened until the cottage door opened again. It thumped hard against the wall, and Hadja tramped inside.
“This should do the trick,” she said. “But it can be traced. I wouldn’t—”
“I didn’t ask what you would.”
“Of course.”
They spoke in louder voices now, and she knew one meant to wake her and the other to warn her not to budge.
“You’ll tell the goodmother I was here.”
“Just as soon as she’s up. Poor thing. She’s been on the road so long I doubt we could rouse her now.”
“No. Of course. Let her sleep for now.” The door creaked open yet again. “Do make sure you let her know I want to speak with her.” He raised his voice again, ridiculous, obviously fully aware that she listened now. “I’m quite certain she’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
“I’m sure she will,” Hadja answered. Even through the curtain, Satina could hear the defeat in her words. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to move from the bed. The idea of facing Vane now, when he knew she’d been listening, pretending to sleep, made her cheeks burn.
She remained there, frozen, after Vane had gone. She counted, tried to imagine his long steps on the path, and guess how far he’d gone with each breath. Hadja walked softer again, she moved to the fire and back twice, then something clanged softly and the front door creaked. Steps in the back yard moved her at last. Her counting put Vane well past the stables by now, and she guessed Hadja returned what she’d brought him to the cellar.
Satina needed to see what that was.
She pushed the quilt away and knelt on the bed, holding to the window sill and peering out and down toward the privy. Hadja already stood in front of the root cellar. She cradled something in the crook of one arm, but bent down and set it in the grass before wrestling with the heavy door. The woman’s old frame hunched even more under the weight of the wooden panel. She struggled to lift it, reaching far over her head to swing it fully open. Satina should have rushed to help her, should have felt the slightest urge at least.
Instead she sat paralyzed, her eyes fixed on the clay jar Hadja had left in the grass, the one she’d brought for Vane. What had she said? It can be traced. Satina dug her fingernails into the window sill and read the sign printed on the jar’s side. Death.
The door landed with a thump, and Hadja bent and retrieved the jar. She carried it down the steps into the dark. Death, and she’d given some to Vane. Satina would have bet on it. Whose death, however, she couldn’t begin to guess. She didn’t want to.
When Hadja emerged from the hole in her yard, when she wrestled the door back into place and padded her way back around the house, Satina didn’t move from the window. She didn’t get up. She didn’t leave her bedroom, and eventually the living room fell quiet, the woman went to bed, and she was left to stare out at the dark sky and worry.
“Can you think what he might want with you? Have you spoken to him at all?”
“No.” Satina poked her spoon into the bowl of mush and shrugged. “I don’t know what he wants.”
Hadja just made a thoughtful noise and continued her pacing. She pulled things from the cupboards, bits of cloth and herbal packets, a jar of something dried that looked like it might have been an animal once. All these she piled into a stumpy basket sitting on the table. They’d only spoken in fits and starts since Satina had crawled from the safety of the little back room. Now, Hadja covered the basket with another square of cloth and nodded her satisfaction.
“There. You can just run that up to your Skinner when you’re done.”
“What?” She stared at her gruel and debated actually eating, just to postpone the task. At least it shifted the topic from Vane, but she wanted to talk about Marten even less. “I’m not sure he’s interested in seeing me today.”
“Had a wee spat, did we?”
“Not exactly.”
“No matter. I’m sure it’ll all blow over with the new day.” The flippant comment didn’t soothe her worry. In fact, her dread congealed into a wad of nerves. What if Marten had been Vane’s target? Did she have time to warn him?
“I’ll go now,” she said. “My stomach isn’t quite ready for food again.”
“You’re sure?”
Satina already had the basket handle looped over her forearm. She nodded, not quite looking her host in the eye, and darted out the front door. She took huge sucking breaths along the path, inhaling as much of Hadja’s herbal defenses as she could before hitting the dirt track and turning left.
She nearly tripped over Maera. The blacksmith’s daughter waited in the road for her, right outside Hadja’s field. She grinned when Satina burst from the weeds, ducked aside to avoid being trampled and then fell in step beside her.
“Good morning, goodmother,” she said. The words came out as a sing-song greeting. The girl’s steps bounced.
“Good morning, Maera. Your spirits are high today.” She checked the girl’s face, still bruised and purple around her left eye. The injury didn’t dim the smile one bit.
“Oh yes.” She fell silent as they passed her father’s smithy. The hour was early enough that no blue-booted customers crowded the shed. Maera’s father labored at the forge under the roof alone and with great puffs of steam and heat wafting out into the street. When they’d taken three steps beyond his site, the girl continued, “Satina?”
“Hmm?” She scanned the roadside. More tags marked the end of the alley she’d fled through. An oily, gray cat sat on a stone block just inside the mouth. Someone had tied a blue ribbon round the poor thing’s neck.
“Will you grant me a wish?”
She stopped walking, stopped frowning at the cat and turned. Maera gleamed up at her, wide-eyed and overflowing with hope. “You want my help?” She had to be certain. The girl would need to understand the consequences of running, the hardship. She focused on the purple mark and nodded. It would be hard to get her away from the father, but she’d do it, if Maera asked her.
“Yes.”
Satina put a hand under Maera’s chin and tilted the girls faced to the light. She squinted at the bruise. “Your father?”
Maera shrugged. “It’s not that.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I’m in love, Satina!”
Her hopes crumbled. A fearful tremor replaced them. She had a feeling she knew what was coming. She’d seen Maera spying in the grass, and the scene took on a completely different meaning. “Who, Maera?”
