Splinter & Ash, page 16
Ash steeled herself. Merewen was the only one in the group of three who’d been kind to her. Crispin treated her like cargo. Aylin ignored her. Merewen was gentle; her whole face lit up when she laughed.
Ash didn’t want to be the kind of princess who befriended people to be able to use them.
But she also needed to escape.
She let Merewen help her out of the wagon.
Outside, sunlight pushed through the cover of evergreen trees, taller and older than in the first place they’d made camp. Thick moss crawled across big boulders on either side of an overgrown road, making the wagon and the travelers look small in comparison.
Neither Crispin or Aylin acknowledged Ash’s presence, and Ash kept her focus on Merewen. She tilted her head. “Why do you have ink on your hands?”
“Oh.” Merewen hid her hands in her skirt and blushed. She guided Ash to a stream, and only answered when they were out of earshot from the others. “I’ve been trying to map the roads we pass. I want to be a mapmaker, you see. Have adventures like Aunt Talwin did.”
“But you hated Haven,” Ash said. She sat down next to the stream and stuck her hand in the water. It was as cold as Merewen had promised, but the moss that grew on the banks was soft and comfortable, and along the stream itself the forest opened up a bit. In the distance, the tall peaks of the Crescent Mountains marked the border with the Ferisian Empire. Ash shuddered.
“I’m sorry it’s so cold,” Merewen said, misinterpreting.
Ash pushed up her sleeves and let the water trickle over her arms. “It’s fine.” She longed for a warm bath and clean clothes, but the cold eased the ache in her hands. “Tell me about your maps.”
“I want to see more of Calinor. I don’t like Haven, you’re right. But . . . Clayden is lonely too,” Merewen said, identifying her coastal home.
“Is that why you stole me?” Ash kept her voice casual.
Merewen blushed deeper. “I wanted you to come home to us.”
“You want a friend,” Ash suggested. “I understand that.”
“You do?”
Ash nodded. “When my mother called me back to Haven, I didn’t like the city either. I wanted to see the midwinter plays, but I didn’t want to play a role at court. I wanted to be at home with my family, but instead I felt out of place, like I didn’t belong. I think my brother hated me being there.” She scooped up a handful of water and splashed it on her face. “It helped to make a friend. My best friend.” She suddenly realized how true that was. Splinter was her best friend. If her eyes were wet, it was only water. She pulled her tunic over her head, leaving just an undershirt. The cold tickled her shoulders and neck.
Merewen gasped. “Your birthmark.” Her fingers brushed Ash’s shoulder.
Ash craned her neck. She had a small birthmark the shape of a seven-point star on her left shoulder. She never paid attention to it. “What is it?”
“Look!” Merewen pulled the collar of her shirt down. At the tip of her shoulder, she had her own birthmark. It was lighter than Ash’s and slightly twisted—but it was a seven-point star. “It’s the same!”
“Oh.” Ash turned back to the stream and splashed more water on her face. “I guess.”
Merewen shone. “I knew it.”
Ash felt a stab of anger and cruelty. “Why are you lonely in Clayden, anyway?”
“Oh.” Merewen flinched. She stared at her feet. “I . . .”
Guilt crushed cruelty. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me.”
Merewen angled away. “When Nanna died, I couldn’t stay in the house where we lived. It was too big for me. Other families in Clayden needed it. I moved in with Uncle Crispin, Aunt Enda, and Aylin. But without Nanna and Talwin, something inside our family was broken. We didn’t lose the people we loved to the war, but we lost them all the same. And we were losing each other too.” Merewen pulled her knees up to her chest. “Then one day, a visitor came. A lord, on his way home from fighting, and he told us about you. For the first time in a long time, we had something that bound us together.”
“Vance? He told you about me?”
“He wasn’t the first. Nanna always said she knew you still lived. She felt it in her bones.” Merewen spoke with such clear conviction, the world shifted underneath Ash’s feet again.
“But Vance told you where to find me?” Ash squinted at the sunlight sparkling off the water. “How to find me?”
“Uncle decided to go to Haven. He’s good at moving things unseen. Grain for the other villagers. Wool. Messages.”
“Smugglers.”
Merewen didn’t deny it. “He’d been to Haven before, to visit Talwin. He knew his way around.”
“And Aylin infiltrated the guard,” Ash mused. To get someone into the palace guard implied that Vance was powerful and well connected.
“It was all for a good purpose! I’m glad he told us,” Merewen said. The words sounded like a challenge.
Ash pulled her tunic back over her head and gathered herself. “I’m glad I know more about you.”
It wasn’t a lie. Ash needed as much information as possible, to escape and to tell her mother. But she knew Merewen would interpret her words differently, and when Merewen beamed, Ash felt a stab of guilt.
“One thing I don’t understand,” Ash said, facing her. “If you want to bring me home, why did Aylin and your uncle talk about gold? Why does Vance want to see me? Isn’t it enough that you took me away?”
Merewen got to her feet and brushed her hands on her shirt. She pulled a small bundle out of her pocket and held it out to Ash. Inside were the rings Ash used to strengthen her fingers, the rings she could wear again now that some of the swelling had subsided. “Uncle told me Vance wants you out of Haven and the palace. I think he wants to make sure we did our job properly. I don’t think Uncle actually cares about the gold.”
Ash kept quiet, but a pit opened up in her stomach. What Merewen said didn’t add up. Crispin had said that Vance needed her, not just needed to see her. And Crispin was willing to ransom her to the palace if Vance didn’t pay up. But she doubted that Merewen would help her uncle if she thought he meant to trade Ash for gold. “What if he lied to you?”
Merewen shook her head so hard, her hair flew in all directions. “He didn’t. He wouldn’t. You’re here, aren’t you? We finally get to be a family again.”
“Yeah,” Ash said. Her arms ached, and her treacherous stomach grumbled when the smell from Aylin’s ember cakes drifted toward them. “I’m here.”
She plastered on a smile. “When we’re back on the road, will you show me your maps? I’d love to see them.”
Merewen settled into the wagon with Ash when they got back on the road, and she pulled out a well-used notebook. The pages were uneven, bound together between dyed leather covers. The first few papers were torn out, and the whole book was covered in ink stains.
“It used to be Aunt Talwin’s. Nanna gave it to me when I started sketching the town and the roads around it.” Merewen showed Ash the first hesitantly drawn maps. Some were nothing than scratches, where she had obviously tried to start a map before she changed her mind and blotted it out. “I kept sketching Clayden until I could trace every street and every house by heart.”
“May I see the rest of it?” Ash held out her hands. With Merewen next to her, she wasn’t bound, and it was a boon.
Merewen nodded.
Ash traced the edges of the book. “This was Talwin’s?” It felt odd and uncomfortable—and also a bit curious. If Merewen was right, this was her mother’s. If she wasn’t right, Vance had seen the family’s grief and lied to them. But how could someone Ash had never met be her mother? Her real mother loved her and was a part of Ash’s life.
“She used notebooks for her designs,” Merewen said. Her voice dropped low. “There were only a few designs in this one, and Nanna tore them out so I could have a book of my own. I wish she’d kept them.”
“I would’ve liked to see them.” Ash leafed through the sketches of a small coastal town. After the first tentative drawings, the maps became clearer and more detailed. The buildings looked realistic enough that Ash could imagine tiny people walking out of them. “You’re an artist. Which is your house?”
Merewen bit at a hangnail. She pointed at a small fisher’s house at the edge of town. “There.”
Ash steeled herself. “And Talwin—where did she grow up?”
“Nanna’s house.” Merewen pointed to a larger building in the center of the town, with small flowers around its edges and a kettle in front of one of the windows.
Ash smiled.
The sketches slowly morphed to maps of roads and forests and Haven.
The floating docks.
The market. She wondered where the best market stalls were to buy candied berries.
The palace.
Ash stared at Merewen’s sketch of the palace for what felt like an eternity. She committed every pencil stroke to memory. Merewen had drawn the curtain walls. The gates. The secret passageway from the second floor to the battlements. Three other passages that Ash recognized, passages she’d explored with Splinter, and a fifth one she didn’t know. She needed to tell Uncle Lam about it when she was—
Home.
Ash felt a fierce stab of homesickness. She gripped the book so tightly her hands ached.
“I’m sorry,” Merewen whispered.
“For what?” Ash wanted to know. “For stealing me? For showing me this?”
“I’m sorry that you’re hurting.”
Ash winced. She believed Merewen’s words were genuine. She even liked the girl. But that wouldn’t stop her. She held the book to her chest. “I know this means a lot to you, but . . . would you mind if I hold on to it today? Until we reach our destination? I’d like to spend more time with it.”
Merewen toyed with the leather necklace she was wearing, and Ash ran her fingers over the cover. She knew what it would look like. Merewen would assume that Ash cared. That it was personal to her too. And it was, just not in the way Merewen would think.
Ash hated to give a lonely girl hope only to snatch it away, but it was for a noble purpose. Didn’t that count for something?
“Until we get to the meeting point,” Merewen allowed.
Ash clung to the book. “Do you have to tie my wrists again?”
Merewen shook her head. “I think it’ll be fine.”
“Thank you.” Ash curled up with the book in her hands. She paged through the maps slowly. Clayden. Haven. And finally, when Merewen climbed out of the wagon, the roads that they’d followed. She memorized them all.
The long meandering stone street that rolled out of Haven.
The smugglers’ routes that wound through the Royal Forest, across the heaths, across the moors.
And this forgotten path through the Heartian Woods, the centuries-old forest that blanketed the northern hillsides.
Ash compared Merewen’s maps to the maps of Calinor that her tutors had showed her. She knew how close the woods were to the Crescent Mountains that marked the border with the Ferisian Empire. She was in the most dangerous part of the kingdom, especially for a lost princess. But if she reached the encampment that guarded the border, its knights and soldiers would be able to help her.
Better yet, Splinter’s brother was stationed there. Anders. He’d help her.
He’d get her home.
She studied the map of the woods until she was convinced she knew every twist, turn, and crossroads of the path they took. She knew her way back. All she needed to do was listen closely to what happened outside and bide her time. So she did.
The light that pushed through the wagon’s cracks grew a darker orange.
Crispin commented that he couldn’t wait to collect the gold and leave the bulky wagon behind.
They slowed down to a halt, and Ash heard Aylin’s boots hit the ground when he dismounted.
Now.
Ash threw herself against the wagon door. It slammed open with a loud crack. Ash saw the heads turn. Crispin. Aylin. Merewen. But she had the advantage of surprise. She leapt off the wagon, the impact like a hundred needles pushing through her ankles at once, but she was fast and determined.
She grabbed the reins of Aylin’s horse right when Crispin came to his feet with a growl.
She ducked out from underneath Aylin’s flailing arms.
Crispin shouted something, but she didn’t hear. Didn’t listen. With the reins in one hand, she clung to the saddle.
“Ash, no!” Merewen ran toward her.
And Ash pulled herself into the saddle, shouting for the horse to run.
The horse bolted. Ash knew they couldn’t keep up this speed for long—she was barely holding on—but she pushed the horse as hard as she dared.
It had to be enough to get away from the camp.
The last thing she saw was the deep betrayal etched on Merewen’s face.
Then the trees closed around them and swallowed them whole.
Chapter Twenty
Ash
The horse, a small blue roan, was fidgety and nervous under Ash’s touch. Ash had never been the strongest rider, and she jumped at every sound. The trees rustled on either side of the path, and the clouds overhead cast shadows on the road. They left tracks everywhere. The best thing she could do was to get out of the woods and keep going until she got help. Try to outrun her inevitable pursuers.
Ash turned around. She didn’t see anyone yet.
The path ahead was empty too, and after an hour of clinging to the horse, Ash’s muscles were screaming in pain. She sat back and tried to relax a little, letting the horse slow to a trot. She laughed. She wasn’t a princess who needed to be saved. She could save herself.
Splinter would be proud.
She patted the roan’s neck. “I don’t even know your name,” she whispered. “But you can get me to safety, can’t you?”
The horse snorted and Ash smiled. “Thank you, you beauty.”
She let the tangy, sharp forest air fill her lungs. Some of the tension of the past days slipped off her shoulders, and the horse calmed too.
She couldn’t let her guard down entirely. She needed to plan. Anders would help. Once she reached the Calinoran encampment on this side of the Crescent Mountains, she’d be safe. Or at least safer. She would get word to her mother and Splinter, and she would tell Uncle Lam about the passage Merewen had sketched.
She would find out who Vance was.
Overhead, an owl hooted, and Ash tensed. The reins dug into her hands, and she struggled to unclench her fingers. She had to find a place to water her horse and rest before night fell, off this overgrown path.
She kept going until the path crossed with a broader road. Tendrils of frosty air crawled through the trees. Hunger slowed both Ash and the horse.
“Only a little bit farther,” Ash promised.
Once, twice, she thought she heard hoofbeats, but the road remained empty. The roan had outrun the draft horses. And Ash slowed down, to be more careful with their tracks.
“You’ll come home with me, and the royal stables will feed you all the hay and all the apples you want.”
Eventually night caught up with them, like an inkblot running through the woods. The dark air grew colder still.
The Crescent Mountains’ two highest peaks crested over the tree cover, stars beginning to appear all around them, and Ash felt another bubble of laughter pop up.
She was on her own. She was terrified. But she was free.
In the distance, another horse whinnied.
Her hands trembling, Ash slipped off her roan. Her knees buckled, and she snatched the reins.
Half running, half falling, she pulled the horse into the thicket away from the road. Her heart hammered. She crouched low to keep herself from falling and to keep herself from being seen, and to her relief her horse started munching on the moss and herbs that covered the ground.
She wished she had a weapon, but all she had was the coil of rope that she’d stolen, which she’d wound around her waist. At least it would help her secure the horse overnight.
Ash shivered. She should’ve brought the thin blanket too. And food. Anything. It was all the more reason for her to get to the encampment as soon as possible.
Hoofbeats echoed across the road. On the horizon, Ash could make out a single solitary rider. A knight.
“All the knights in the kingdom would fight and die for you,” Splinter had told her once.
She let him get closer.
In the gathering darkness, it was hard to make out the colors of his overcoat—it seemed colorless, until the gray softened to light brown and the black to a purple. It was familiar to Ash, but the traveler had a hood pulled over his head, and the fear of the flight still coursed through her.
The knight kept his eyes on the road ahead and whistled a merry tune, one Ash was certain she’d heard before.
Then it hit her. The song—though off-key—was one the musicians had played the night of her birthday celebrations. And at that moment, she knew who he was.
The grumpy, judgmental knight captain. The son of the Labanne family.
The Labannes were friends of her mother.
Their son had been Anders’s best friend, growing up. Splinter had told her so herself.
He might not think much of her, but he was sworn to protect her.
Ash started forward before she fully realized what she was doing. The roan, eating happily, shook his head and snorted when she tried to move him.
The knight brought his horse to a standstill. He reached for his sword. “Is anyone there?”
“Lord Labanne?” Ash’s voice croaked. She stepped out of the thicket. Some of the branches grabbed at her as if to keep her away from him, but she brushed them off.
The knight captain’s eyes grew wide, and he slid off his horse. “Stars! Princess Adelisa?” He unbuckled his cloak and wrapped it around her. “Your highness, everyone is looking for you!”
