CHAPTER TWELVE
The pines swallowed Anya in seconds. Sy started to call after her but lost his nerve and his breath all at once.
He pressed his back against the trunk of a pine tree, counted the minutes as they passed, imagining instead he counted the time between spells in a sitting room.
A Sangfeder mandated safety practice, as if a minute’s restored blood would make the slightest difference.
He supposed it would, if he could ever afford more than a single minute’s rest. But who would mandate that?
After five had gone, the sound stopped completely, or grew too faint for him to hear. Five more minutes passed. Anya did not return. And five more. And five more.
She had been quite adamant that he wait here. Instead of count minutes, he counted the many reasons he should obey. The many reasons he shouldn’t.
The indignity of being unable to hold up his end of their agreement.
The lie that agreement truly was. The ever-compounding cruelty of betraying her when he took the phoenix and every cent of the prize money for himself.
The strangeness of her behavior, of the illness plaguing her she insisted he couldn’t cure and wouldn’t describe.
When it came to the Lichtenwald, Anya kept very little close.
So why this? What secret was she keeping on the forest’s behalf?
Or was it the forest’s secret at all? Just before she slipped into the mess of green, when she’d pulled an arrow from her quiver, he’d noticed one of her arrows was marked with a small, deep X. Only one.
She had obscured her family’s heritage. She may still have connections.
She may have intended all along to take the phoenix to the king without him, to use it as leverage to regain her lost holdings.
She had no reason to remain loyal to him, and every reason to use him – until he was no longer useful.
For what of his secrets? She knew now that he needed the prize for his debt, but not that he meant to take the entire thing, leaving her penniless.
And despite what she thought, what he’d let her think, he wasn’t entirely useless.
He knew his body, and he still had enough blood for a spell or two in him. Perhaps, in desperation, three.
So he was only mostly useless.
And slow.
The honorable thing to do would be to go after her, spend his scant blood to help whoever was hurt, whether it was one of the others or a stranger. Make himself useful. No – to part from her, from all of them, to fend for himself and free her from his burden, a burden he should, must, carry alone.
But he had foregone the path of honor when he had placed that ad.
Anya hadn’t. She meant to honor their bargain, she’d said after he’d wrecked himself saving Sabina’s friend.
After she’d rushed to defend a camp full of competitors, people she despised, from a hungry bear, a creature whose ire she thought they had earned and deserved.
After she’d gripped his hand while he bled like she thought he might die. Like his death would stain her.
Even now, rather than run from the danger, she rushed into the unknown on the mere prospect of a stranger in distress.
Now, why would someone like that agree to catch one of the Lichtenwald’s most mythic and magnificent creatures, the only one of its kind, for a cruel, covetous king?
He’d seen the way she’d manipulated the others at dinner.
Why had he assumed she treated him any differently?
He had obviously misread her quite remarkably, sitting beside her on that mossy stone.
Understandable, mired as he was, body and soul, in fear and blood loss and stress, in the strain of staving all of it off with every ounce of determination he possessed.
But in that moment, he had not been afraid or stressed – or particularly conscious of anything, really, except the way her eyes, honest and open and green as new beginnings, had found his.
The way her breath had hitched. The way he found himself moved as if by instinct, as if by compulsion, toward her.
The way she had turned from him. With alacrity.
He shut his eyes and thumped the back of his head against the tree in abject mortification, then again to clear his head.
He couldn’t puzzle her out. Too many pieces, and none of them matched.
It was obvious she needed the money. For all her actions spelled honor, for all her words spelled a fierce and fearsome pride in her profession and in the forest, it simply didn’t fit that she would willingly provide Edgard, a man she despised almost as much as Sy did, with such a miraculous boon.
An ever-lingering life, spreading foulness.
Not for a new roof. Not for a fence.
But for the cure to a debilitating illness? A skilled spellscribe’s magic could not cure it. What about a phoenix’s?
What if it was simple, so stunningly simple he had overlooked it? The sound they heard – it could have been anything. A person, a fox.
A bird.
She meant to take the phoenix herself and leave Sy, his usefulness spent, to the trees.
He found he couldn’t blame her. She was only behaving how he planned to when the time came.
How he had prodded her to by insulting her, begging her in the only way he could to leave him behind and spare him making the decision himself, spare him these ceaseless contradictions.
To free him from her debt. Let him find his future on his own, whatever fate may bring.
Then, feeling the metal in his hands, remembering the danger of the tool he held, his mind caught up to him. She left him her shotgun. Gave it to him. Showed him, her hips against his, how it worked. All her supplies, including her waterskin, were still there, unguarded.
She meant to return. He relaxed, a bit; she would return.
Then he tensed all over again when he remembered he would have to be rid of her, somehow, eventually.
And again when he heard someone speak his name.
He spun around. “Anya?”
But it wasn’t her voice. He couldn’t pinpoint its source or direction. Its tone, or its volume. It wasn’t a voice at all, he realized. And yet, it had spoken.
Blood loss was affecting him more than he’d anticipated, that was all.
His behavior that morning was proof enough of that.
The berries Anya had given him had helped him immensely, but their efforts had long been expended.
Though he had no hint of an appetite, he reached for his bag to find something to force down his throat.
Then he heard it again. His name. Not heard; felt. An urge. A voice from both within and without. From nowhere. It could almost be the wind, but judging by the leaves, the wind did not stir. Even the breaking clouds sat heavy above.
“Promising,” he mumbled, stepping away from the pine. His chest tightened as he scanned the dense trees for…anything. Anya, bears, squirrels, even another scribe. Something solid. Something real.
A noise, definitely real, definitely from outside of him. A rustling, in the brush. He turned toward it.
“Hello?” The gun felt heavy in his hands. “Anya?”
Nothing answered.
“Anya,” he called again, louder. “If you don’t answer me, I’ll have no choice but to come after you!”
It was then that he realized the birds had gone silent.
Wait here, she had said, but what if something happened to her?
What if she was injured and couldn’t call out?
If someone had blinded her, taken her tongue?
Was that not why she had agreed to work with him in the first place?
Sabina had already hurt her, frightened her, prank or no.
She might do worse. Any of them might. He certainly hadn’t cared for the way Aquila had threatened Anya, or the look he gave her when they parted.
Here was a chance. If he could prove himself worthy of their agreement, sham that it was – if he could repay the debt he already owed her – perhaps the shredding of it would come easier to him.
She hadn’t been gone half an hour. He could go after her.
He would. Make up for his cruelty, past and future.
He strapped Anya’s ammunition pouch to his belt and carried the gun as he had seen her do, slung over his shoulder with the barrel open.
It was heavier than it looked, but he was weaker than he had been when they set out yesterday morning.
Much weaker, in fact. Though David had done an admirable job healing his back, he could still feel phantom claws tearing his flesh, phantom blood dripping down his back.
Whatever had drawn Anya away, he desperately hoped it was not another bear.
He took a quick inventory. Satchel, all his supplies clean and ready.
Shotgun, slugs for the big shit, food. Knowing the value of bandages, no matter how unkempt, he had kept the tattered, bloodstained shirt, stuffed it in his rucksack.
He tucked the rowan branch Anya had given him into the flap.
The leaves and flowers peeked out the top like a flag.
Then, prodded by a voice he knew was his but wished was not, he turned and rummaged through Anya’s bag. She hadn’t needed to use it. If he got lost looking for her, he would need it more than she did. With one last prick of remorse, he plucked the map free.
Everything else – both their bedrolls, Anya’s messenger bag and waterskin – he left untouched.
Though this was the only rowan tree he could see, he reasoned it would be easy enough to mistake it for another, and easier to mark the spot on his return with these signs of humanity – and if Anya returned while he was gone, she would know he hadn’t betrayed her.
Yet.
Probably.
With a noise somewhere between growl and sigh, he plucked a scrap of paper from his dwindling supply and hastily scrawled a penciled note.
Gone too long. Off to find you. He secured it by puncturing the parchment on the end of one of the rowan’s branches.
Then, gripping the shotgun like a torch in the night, set off in the direction he had seen Anya disappear.