Chapter 4
Chapter four
Ravenwood, said the weathered sign staked into the dirt.
At the forest’s edge, Lux could see the bark of the trees was red and not black.
That the moss was green and lush, not dark and putrid.
It was another of Shaw’s paintings here before her own two eyes, and she’d wanted to be here, experiencing it, for so long. But she couldn’t go in.
Lucena. Lucenaaa.
She shivered with the memory.
She’d not touched a single tree since abandoning Ghadra; she’d not even gone into more than a grove. A massive part of her wanted to—begged to, even—but she couldn’t force her feet to move. Today seemed to be no different.
No, today must be different. Because what was the point in testing if she could grow if she didn’t give herself the room?
“You can’t exchange fears,” she scolded her head. “Besides, you’ve been through worse.”
The bandage on her finger loosened again, and again, she pulled at the tail with her teeth. Riselda would have been perfectly horrified by her wrapping. The thought only made her grin. Good riddance, you wicked hag.
“I guess trees are not all bad,” she said to the wood. “Your relatives did eat mine and saved me a lot of trouble.”
Lux leveled her shoulders and straightened her spine.
Look at the difference in them. They even smell like they’re good.
She glanced to her left, into the distance.
Barnabus Pass wished her well on her journey, the snow-topped mountains glistening beneath the sun.
And that Edgar Dosem, for all his oddness, had told her she would find no greater welcoming than Ravenwood.
“Those trees cherish their travelers. Stroke one and see. Tell them Edgar says ‘hello’ while you’re at it. They’ll know whom you mean, even though it’s been so long.”
Lux stepped one foot beyond the forest’s edge and, ever-so-slowly, stretched out her hand—
Something whistled past her head.
She whipped around.
“Next one will stick if you move more.”
Lux took one lingering look at the stranger, from his worn hat to his battered boots, and snarled, “You wouldn’t da—”
A twang was her only warning. A second arrow snagged the folds of her cloak before ripping free.
She shrieked and leapt and heard him say, “Third one will really stick if you speak again too.”
Movement caught at her periphery; she didn’t dare look away from the man with an arrow nocked and aimed. Given the situation, whoever else came upon her was likely on his side and not hers.
A bandit was not a worthwhile—or even plausible—occupation in Ghadra’s marshland. But here? On the traveler’s road? Lux transferred her weight to her toes.
“Good girl. Now kindly hand over—”
She bolted into the forest.
“Hey!” screeched the voice at her back, but she’d already dodged behind a tree and kept running.
Remembering Edgar’s words, her hand whipped out and brushed a curled, green leaf, the velvet feel startling even as she ran for her life. “Please,” she huffed, her laden pack banging against her hip with painful slaps. “I came all this way.”
She leapt over a fallen log. Then promptly slipped.
She wasn’t on the road anymore, and fleshy toadstools carpeted the vast forest. Lux slipped again. If she died because of them, she’d carry her humiliation into the Beyond.
The bandits were relentless—because there was indeed more than one. She could hear them shout to one another in the reddened afternoon light, and she could do nothing but hope she was faster. She risked a glance backward and—
Devil’s tits, there are four of them!
Four of them and only one of her. And unlike howlers, they didn’t need to be upon her to snuff her life; they could do so easily from a distance.
They sprinted after her, and judging by their quick leaps and easy dodges, they were familiar with the terrain.
How many people do they chase through here?
Somebody could have warned her.
Lux ducked beneath a thick branch, more curled leaves trailing soft against her temple. If she could only outrun them—
A third arrow whistled by her cheek. A choked sob worked its way up her throat.
“Aim for her legs!”
No! She clutched Shaw’s knife with every modicum of strength she had, because she knew if she did end up with an arrow embedded somewhere, she would happily cut down as many of them as she could before Death called her away. She leapt over another fallen log.
“You flopping idiot! Not her legs! Aim for her—”
Lux didn’t register what else the bandit said. Because the road reappeared. And not only a road but a bridge loomed ahead. Wooden and arched and overgrown with thick green moss. It crossed a rushing, narrow river, the sides of which were steeped with boulders. She ran straight toward it.
She’d obviously done something wrong on her way here.
Made some big mistake. The crone had told her there were dangers.
Shaw had warned her to watch her dealings.
But she’d shrugged at them. She’d thought she knew.
She was a frequenter of Ghadra’s Dark Market, for saints’ sake—how worse off could anywhere else be?
Her first step onto the warped wood saw her slipping again.
This time it was the combination of moisture and moss.
And this time, when she pitched forward, an arrow ripped at her cloak—and stayed there.
Lux grabbed at it, but it’d dug too deep.
She couldn’t see the head of it at all, buried as it was in the wood. She whipped backward.
“Stay away from me,” she growled, brandishing the knife like a sword.
Angry, exhausted tears clouded her eyes. The bandits formed a blurred crescent in front of her, marking the knife’s threatening wave and keeping an appropriate distance. One woman. Three men.
I’ll skewer them all.
The reediest of them stepped forward, his speckled, white beard extending long past his chin. He waggled a finger in front of her knife. She knew it was the same finger with which he’d loosed those arrows. “Nah, don’t cry, pet.”
That name. He barely dodged the swipe of her blade, but still, he did dodge it, and Lux found herself pinned bodily to the bridge in the next breath. A rough hand brushed her tears away.
“Shh. We only want that bag of yours. Goldquins you have in there, hmm? We saw you in Loxlen.” His hand reached for her pack.
But that was where she drew the line. Pushing forward, Lux used her free hand to slap the expression from the bandit’s face. Grooves of red lined his cheek in the aftermath. Her pinky finger stung as the bandage flew free.
“Why, you little—”
The man’s irises rolled upward.
“Viktar! What’s the matter?”
Lux scrambled backward until her back met the bridge wall. She clutched the pack to her, her knife pointing out—and she watched as the three remaining bandits crowded the fallen man where he lay unmoving on the bridge. He’d keeled over.
Dead, she thought confidently, the feel of it stealing through her. Not even a shallow breath marked his chest now.
“He knew he had a bad heart! What was he thinking, wrestling with a girl spry enough to be his daughter?” The man dropped to his knees beside Viktar, swiping tears from his own scarred cheeks. “Come back!”
“He’s not coming back, Sven,” said the woman, her hand on the man’s heaving shoulder. “Can’t bring back the dead.”
Lux’s teeth clacked together. Don’t say a word! her head demanded, and so she tried again to free herself instead. Her cloak only ripped further. The tearing drew the attention of the woman, whose hard eyes ground against Lux’s.
“Best lash the girl up,” she said.
“No,” growled Lux.
The woman’s gaze dropped to the knife. “Then give us the coin.”
“Absolutely not. I’ll starve.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll get a job. Or married.”
“Or you could do either of those things yourself and leave me be. I earned what I have; I didn’t steal it like a coward.”
The remaining sets of eyes focused on her.
“I’m married already,” said the woman, in the same tone Lux had once heard someone mention their rotted tooth. “And this is my job.”
Lux hacked a horrible laugh. “This is a crime.”
“What do you do then?” said the youngest of them.
Lux’s glance slid to the body slumped on the bridge. If her only options were to be tied and stolen from or threatened then stolen from—
Don’t even think of it.
Too late.
“I bring back the dead.”
Sven’s mouth fell wide, his nose and eyes running yet. “What’d you say?”
“Sure you do,” snorted the youngest bandit, his mouth twisted arrogantly beneath his crooked nose. “How convenient for you to suddenly possess some rare brilliance right as we’re about to rob you.”
“Believe me or don’t. But I’ve the book I use to perform the enchantment, and nearly all the ingredients. Though Loxlen is alarmingly short of marsh snapper eyes.”
“What the devil is a marsh snapper?” asked the crooked-nosed bandit, his attention traveling to his companions. “Any of you heard of that?”
“Me,” said Sven, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “Big-beaked turtles.”
“Me,” said the woman. Her voice was quiet but stern, and when she leveled her gaze at Lux, it was the same. “Say you can revive the dead, girl. That’d be a mighty sought after service. What were you doing out by Ravenwood all alone?”
Lux surveyed the bedraggled trio, the dead man at their feet. Their worn boots were each coated with forest debris, bits of mushroom clinging to the toes, their shirts faded and stained. The woman’s skirt had a tear down one side, crudely sewn.
“Why do you care to know?”
The woman’s stare sharpened. “Because it’s helpful in assessing threats: a skill we need to survive.”
“Will you get this damned arrow out without tearing it all the way through if I tell you?”
The bandit inclined her head.
“I’m making my way to the coast.”
Lux didn’t add further details. There was no possible way the bandit could think she would.
That she would reveal how she’d spent her entire life in a miserable city, that she’d lost the only family she’d had and then lost the one she’d thought had returned.
That she’d always wished to see the natural wonders of the world but had never allowed herself the dream.
That she’d gone from one quaint village and bustling city to the next, keeping her eyes sharp in search of bottled silver or whispers of ageless beings.
The bandits couldn’t think she’d share all of that.
“What for?”
Or maybe they could.
Lux huffed. “I told you all I’m willing to. Now get this arrow out of my cloak. If you want him revived, I have twelve hours to do it, and none if we don’t find those eyes.”
She directed her demand to Sven, the only one who seemed to be truly in mourning. The man needed no further push; he scrambled forward and yanked the arrow free.
“What!” shouted the youngest of the three.
“Shut your fat mouth, Lars! Did you hear what she said? She’ll bring him back for us! If it were your family lying here, you’d do the same.” Sven reached out and gripped Lux’s forearm, hauling her to her feet. “We shouldn’t be going after children, anyway. Viktar’s been getting too desperate.”
Lux didn’t bother arguing over being called a child. So long as they didn’t shoot her full of arrows and steal The Risen, they could think of her as a toad. Sneering at the two holes marring her cloak, she looked up to catch the woman staring at her with a thoughtful tilt to her head.
“I know where to get you the eyes you need,” the woman said. “We’ll take you to Verity.”
“Verity!” whined Lars, a second before he doubled over from an elbow to the gut.
“I’m Magda.” The woman held out her hand, and Lux looked from it to her wrinkled hazel eyes and back again. “The coast, you say? Let’s get you there.”
Lux put her hand in the woman’s.
It wasn’t cold.
But it wasn’t warm, either.