Chapter 35
MARIS
Nobody tells me to stay behind.
They might have tried, in another version of this evening.
But I come back through the bakery door, untie my apron and drop it on the counter, and when I've grabbed my coat from the hook the decision is already made and on my face, and Brennor takes one look at me and doesn't open his mouth to argue.
"Which road did he take?" he asks instead.
"South gate. Into the forest." I button the coat with fingers that are steadier than they have any right to be. "Kaedrin went ahead. He'll track them faster alone."
"Then we follow and we come up behind." Brennor turns to the crowd outside. "Who's coming?"
More hands than I expected.
The wardens are already there — two of them, with lanterns, moving to the front.
The cartwright and the grain merchant who flanked them at the council square are still present.
Geld is there, which surprises me. The mill workers' wives.
The older woman from inside the bakery who'd been talking to Elin when it happened — she's traded her shopping basket for a lantern from somewhere and her jaw is set hard.
Sister Anawyn appears at my elbow. "I'm coming. Don't argue."
"I wasn't going to," I say.
We move out.
The south gate is open and the road beyond it is clear in the fading afternoon light.
I push my way toward the front of the group and find Kaedrin's tracks where he left the road — there, at the road's shoulder, the pressed grass and the disturbed soil where he turned off fast and didn't slow down.
I follow that line with my eyes into the trees.
"He went this way." I step off the road.
The group follows me until the tree cover closes in and the light drops sharply. Then the wardens move to the front with their lanterns, and the group slows, and I hear the murmur of people adjusting to the dark and the uneven ground.
Thirty feet in, the trail Kaedrin left is visible if you know what to look for — I've watched him move through this forest enough times to recognize the signs.
A heel scuff at a root, a broken-back twig at chest height, the faint compression of leaves where someone moved fast and didn't lift their feet fully.
I follow it another thirty yards before the group stops behind me.
"Maris." One of the wardens, voice low. "We're off the road. Do we know where this leads?"
"North-east," I say. "Following whoever took her."
Brennor steps up beside me. He's been quiet since we left the square, doing the thing he does where he processes before speaking. His eyes follow the tree line ahead, then turns and looks at Sister Anawyn.
"The old ruins," he says. "You know the ones I mean."
She comes forward. "I haven't been out there in years, but yes.
" She nods slowly in the direction the trail runs.
"There's an old settlement ruin on the ridge, pre-town, maybe a mile and a half northeast. Dressed stone, mostly standing on two sides.
It would give cover and height." Her eyes find me.
"It's far enough out that no one would stumble across it. But if someone knew the forest—"
"He did," I say. "He had maps."
Sister Anawyn and Brennor exchange a look.
"The ridge path runs along the creek bed," Brennor says. "If we follow the water we don't need to track through the dark — it takes us to the base of the ridge and the ruins are above it." He nots at the wardens. "I've been out that way twice. I can lead."
"Then lead," I say.
He moves forward without further discussion and the group reshapes around him, the wardens flanking with their lanterns, Sister Anawyn close behind. I stay near the front, behind Brennor but ahead of the main body of the group.
The creek sound reaches us before we find it — a low, steady rush over the stones, the forest noise opening up around it.
Brennor steps down to the bank and picks up the pace.
Lantern light moves across the water in shifting orange patches, and the trees along the bank thin enough that the footing is manageable.
I walk and I don't let myself think about where Elin is or what she's doing or whether she's still talking to herself because she’s frightened. I think about the ridge. I think about the distance. I think about one foot and then the next.
Beside me, Sister Anawyn matches my pace without difficulty.
"She's brave," she says quietly.
"She's three," I say.
"The bravest people usually don't know enough to be afraid." She says it without comfort in her voice, just as observation. "She gets that honestly."
I don't answer that. I keep walking.
The creek bends northeast ahead of us, exactly where Brennor said it would, and the ground begins its gradual rise toward the ridge.
The creek path is slow going in the dark.
Brennor sets a pace the group can manage and nobody complains about it. The lantern light bobs along the bank ahead of me, catching the water in moving patches. My boots are wet from a misstep at a shallow crossing and I don't slow down for it.
The townspeople around me are quiet in the focused way of people with a purpose. The cartwright is behind me to the right. The mill workers' wives are further back, keeping pace. Even Geld, his broad shoulders visible when the lanterns sweep that direction, his expression set and dark.
Someone passes me a lantern without being asked. I take it.
They've come out here, in the dark, for Elin. Not for me, not for the investigation, not to see how the story ends — for a small girl they mostly looked away from. I don't have a place to put that yet, so I carry it alongside everything else and keep walking.
"There," one of the wardens says, holding his lantern high.
A cluster of people have stopped ten feet ahead, gathered around something on the ground. I push through them.
Pip.
Face down on the leaf litter at the path's edge, one cloth arm tucked under the body, corkscrew curls embroidered on the head. Exactly the way Elin drops her when she's moving fast and loses her grip.
I crouch and pick her up.
The doll is cold and damp from the ground.
I press it against my chest with both hands and stay crouched, and I don't cry because if I start I won't stop and there's still ground to cover.
Around me, hands come onto my shoulders, my back, my arms. People I've known for all my life and people I barely know and all of them present, all of them here.
Someone says her name — Elin's name — quietly. Someone else squeezes my shoulder and doesn't let go for a moment.
I stand up. I still have the doll pressed to my chest.
Sister Anawyn is beside me. She stays silent, just stays close, which is enough.
We walk another minute before she speaks. "You're blaming yourself."
I look at the path ahead. "I took my eyes off her."
"You were serving a full bakery."
"I felt wrong about him the moment he came in." My voice stays flat. "The hood. The way he moved. I noticed and I kept serving customers." I grip the doll tighter. "And I asked Elin to help because I was too busy to manage the crowd myself. I put her in the room with him."
"You put her in the room with customers," Sister Anawyn says. "Same as every other afternoon."
"I knew something was wrong."
"You noticed a man with a hood. That's not the same as knowing a kidnapper is about to move in a crowd of thirty people." She keeps her voice low so no one else hears. "There was nothing more you could have done in that moment."
I don't respond to that. She's not wrong, and it doesn't help.
"The whole town came out tonight," she says, after a moment. "That means something."
I follow the people moving along the creek bank around me with my eyes. Lanterns ahead and behind, the steady sound of two dozen people covering ground together, no one complaining about the dark or the wet or the hour.
"I know," I say.
"They came for her," Sister Anawyn says. "Whatever happened before — they came for her tonight."
I hold the doll and walk.
The guilt sits exactly where guilt sits — low and heavy, under everything else, not going anywhere.
I gave Elin a job because the bakery was full.
I didn't act on the unease when I felt it.
I was three steps away from her when Fenwood moved and I might as well have been across the valley for all the good it did.
I know Sister Anawyn is right. I know it, and I will still carry it for a long time.
But there is a ridge ahead of us and my daughter is somewhere on top of it and Kaedrin is already there, and the only thing that matters right now is closing the distance.
"We keep going," I say.
"Yes," Sister Anawyn agrees.
I turn to the group around me and I watch the path ahead and then at them.
"We keep going," I say, louder.
Brennor nods once. The wardens lift their lanterns. The group moves forward, and I move with them, Pip pressed against my heart, the ridge rising dark above the treeline ahead.