Chapter Two
It’s dark when I wake. I’m cocooned in a bedroll, lying beside a low, crackling fire. Beside the flames, something is spitted
above glowing embers. It drips occasionally, and fat hisses on the coals, filling my nose with the scent of rabbit meat. Saliva
floods my mouth, and my stomach turns over—in both welcome and dread. It’s been empty of all but the wateriest gruel for weeks.
I sit up, using my good hand for leverage. The other is bound tightly to my chest. I look down to find bits of abalone shell
sewn into the seam of the fabric. I’m wearing a sling made of Suratian pants. A dead man’s pants.
My shoulder throbs, but it’s nothing like before. My lips are less parched, and I swallow easily. The stranger must have given
me water while I slept.
He’s nowhere to be found, but the hair pricking at my neck tells me I’m being watched. “Thank you for saving me,” I say to
the night sky.
He melts from the trees, a massive, blurry bear shape that coalesces into something more recognizable as he nears. His movement
is silent and deadly, like he’s stalking me, but once he enters the range of firelight, I shake off the feeling. He’s a person
like any other. Just quieter. And a whole lot larger.
He sits cross-legged on the opposite side of the fire, and the dancing flames make shadows of his eyes. He unsheathes a dagger from his belt and begins to whittle at a pine branch.
“When the caravan was attacked, I heard something,” I venture. “A banshee maybe. I think it killed some of the raiders.”
He says nothing.
“It might still be around,” I press on. “If you like, I’ll keep watch so you can get some sleep.”
His gaze snaps to mine, as if I’ve surprised him. Then his eyes crinkle with a hint of a smile. Or maybe I imagine it. “No
need,” he says. “It ran off.”
“You’re sure?”
Swick, swick goes his dagger. “I’m sure.”
I pull my knees to my chest, wary of jostling my shoulder. “Thank you also for the sling, and for setting my shoulder,” I
tell him.
He grunts.
“You’re quite proficient with a bow and arrow, by the way,” I say, indicating the aforementioned bow with a lift of my chin.
It’s propped against a boulder. Almost as tall as I am. Its scalloped shape and thick grip are made for long-distance accuracy.
A fine weapon to match his Thordin stallion and steel-toed boots.
Still he says nothing.
“You must really despise enslavers,” I add. “You took out six of them in only moments.”
His whittling comes faster, harder. “Not that many,” he says.
“Exactly that many.”
“You counted?”
“I remember.”
He sets the pine branch on the ground beside him and looks at me, straight on. “You were in a cage. You could not have seen.”
But I did see. Maybe as he dragged me partly conscious from the cage. It’s in my memory as clear as day, this flash of a painting.
Ten people on the ground, four of them mangled, six of them with arrow shafts sticking from their bodies.
A flash, a moment, is all I needed to remember. It’s all I ever need.
“Six,” I say firmly. “Two by the wagon. One on the slope leading into the trees. Two on the east side of my cart. One behind
it. You were shooting from the ridge, yes?”
He leans forward. “Do you always remember so clearly?”
“Always. It’s my . . .”
“Gift. It’s your Gift.”
“No.” Discomfort snakes in my belly. Gift talk is reserved for the closest of friends. “It’s a gift, but not my Gift.”
I half expect him to ask about my Gift outright. It would certainly fit with my meager understanding of this person if he
were to bludgeon the rules of social discourse and force the issue. I’m largely relieved when he does not.
More fat drips from the rabbit and sizzles on the coals. I yearn to grab it, to burn my mouth and fingers and devour it mostly
raw. If Anja were here, she would insist on a little salt rub first, no matter how hungry she was. Maybe a bit of wild sage.
I swallow hard.
Time to make myself too busy to feel.
I get to my feet slowly, testing muscles that have sat mostly dormant for weeks.
“What are you doing?” the stranger growls at me.
I glare down at him. “You say it’s safe. So I’m going to gather some pine needles and make a tea.”
He seems perplexed. “Why?”
“Because in an hour, maybe less, I’m going to beg you relentlessly for some of that rabbit meat. But I haven’t eaten anything
solid in weeks, and in all that time I had very little water, so I’m going to put some hot, fresh tea in my belly first.”
“Oh.”
I step away.
“Stay where I can see you,” he barks at my back, as if I were capable of going any farther.
It has been a dry autumn, and the pines are full of needles perfect for steeping. I gather them absentmindedly, placing them
in the pockets of my filthy apron. As I work, I plan.
I’m not sure what this stranger has in store for me. He seems to mean me no harm. If so, the first thing I need to do is eat
something. Get my strength back. Bathe and find a fresh change of clothes—these smell like sweat and human excrement, no doubt.
Then I need to find coin, or at least something to trade. My family’s inn was flaming higher than the treetops last I saw
it, but maybe I can dig through the burned rubble to the cellar. We always kept extra supplies there, including a clay pot
with some spare money. Maybe looters missed it.
I’ve been traveling south—and downhill—for several weeks.
Getting back will take a long time, and I’m in no shape to tackle the steep inclines of the king’s road.
Besides, winter is fast approaching, and I shouldn’t attempt it without being properly outfitted.
Maybe I shouldn’t travel alone at all. Where there is one group of enslavers, there could be more.
And if they would dare attack an entire inn full of people, they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to attack a girl traveling alone.
I need to find work. Then, come spring, I’ll go home and salvage what I can. I just hope there is something—anything—to go
home to.
Maybe this strange young man can lead me back to the cage cart. Surely there’s some scavenge to be had. The enslavers were
well outfitted with studded armor, weapons in good polish, several horses. The gods would not deny my right to the leftovers.
Then again, I’m not sure I can face my sister’s body, to see her dead and decaying, to be unable to lay her to rest properly
with only one good arm.
I return to the fire with pockets full of pine needles. The young man’s eerily colored eyes track me mercilessly as I approach,
and once again I’m caught by my own certainty: He could spring to action at any moment. He is like a boulder about to roll
off a cliff. Silent and still, but when the right pressure is applied, deadly.
“Will you show me?” he asks. “How to make this tea?”
I almost drop a handful of needles. What kind of trapper or rover doesn’t know about pine-needle tea? I wipe the surprise
from my face. “Of course.”
He lets me rummage through his saddlebags to find a kettle and a ladle.
I put water to boil by the fire and explain.
“This tea keeps the scurvy away during the winter. The best needles are the older dark green ones. Never go searching for them on the ground—those might have mold or animal droppings.” I drop all my pine needles into the kettle.
“See how they float? Wait for them to sink. That’s how you know your tea is ready.
Usually I don’t use so many needles at once.
But I don’t want to wait that long for them to fully steep.
If you want a treat, add mint leaves. If you’re wealthy and want a real treat, a few drops of lemon juice make a kettle of pine-needle tea absolutely sublime. ”
I study my benefactor as I stir the mix to see what he thought of my quick lesson. He stares off into the trees. I might as
well have been talking to the log he sits on.
“Why did the enslavers come after you?” he says.
“Why do enslavers go after anyone? They said they wanted us for the Dhakaran mines.”
His eyes narrow. In the firelight, they look almost red. “Then why did they leave you all in such poor shape? They should
have fed you. Clothed you. Tied you in such a way as to preserve your arms.”
My stomach tightens. It hurts to think about what they did. It will hurt for a long time, I think. I breathe deep through
my nose to steady my suddenly racing heart. “They said that only the strong survive.”
“How long were you a captive?”
“Three weeks, I think. Maybe less. It felt like more.”
“They traveled slowly then. You should have been on a ship to Dhakar by now.”
He’s right. A group of illegally seized people should have been rushed to the coast, lest the enslavers chance being caught.
“Did they violate you?”
I take a step back. “What?” That’s almost as unseemly as asking after my Gift.
“Did they violate you? Or any of the other prisoners?”
“No.” And suddenly my heart is racing so fast no breath can steady it. Why does he want to know? Does he want me for himself?
Is that why he rescued me? I take another step back.
He doesn’t seem to notice my sudden terror. The words drip out of him carefully, like slow molasses, as he says, “Girl, I
do not think they wanted you for the mines.”
“They said—”
“They lied.”
I return to the pot and give it another stir, just to give my hands something to do while my mind whirls. “It is odd,” I admit,
“that they attacked an inn full of people. Enslavers usually pick off the weak. The isolated.”
“Yes.”
“What they did was an act of war.”
“It was.”
“And then they took their time hauling us through the pass. Some days I wondered if we wandered in circles. Like they wanted
us weakened and starved.”
“Interesting.”
“There was a fire thrower among them. Too strong a Gift for a low-life enslaver.”
“Yes.”
“So, you think they wanted us for . . . the sex trade?” My face burns. My mother, if she were alive, would have had apoplexy if she heard me discuss such things with a person whose name I don’t even know.
“No.”
I drop the ladle into the kettle and turn to face him. “What, then?”
He rubs at his chin with a giant hand. He has the tiniest bit of stubble below his bottom lip, like a boy about to become
a man. “Where are you from, exactly?” he asks.
“I’m an innkeeper’s daughter. My family owns the Three Corners Inn, on a bluff overlooking the spot where the borders of Grimsvold,
Iola, and the Surat Confederacy meet. We’d be a proper town if we weren’t so high up in the mountains. Winter visits us six
months of the year or more. But the borders make it a good trading post, and we have plenty of customers the rest of the year.”
I stick my hand out. “I’m Bria Angarsold, by the way. Nice to meet you.”
He just stares at me.
I stare right back, saying, “This is the part where you pretend to be socially astute and offer me your name and your hand
in return.”
Slowly, his hand reaches out, engulfs mine.
Something zings up my arm, into my chest, and I find myself pulling away.
He lets go, leaving my hand strangely cold. “I spend most of my time alone,” he says, no hint of apology in his voice.
“I never would have guessed.”
He says, “Bria Angarsold is a strong Grimsvolder name.”
“I’m a strong Grimsvolder.”
His lips twitch. “You can call me Titus.”
“A strong Corthan name.” And a common one. There’s no chance I could identify his family or trade by such a name. I was expecting a Dhakaran name, but his size and heavy features indicate Corthan ancestry too.
The man who wants me to call him Titus says, “Tell me, Dama Angarsold—”
“Just Bria.”
“Bria. Was there anyone at your inn, or at the trading post, with a Gift grand enough to attract attention?”
“No!” It’s out of my mouth before I let myself ponder the answer. It is the height of rudeness—nay, the greatest violation—to ask a lady about her Gift, Ma always said. But these are not normal times. I am all alone with a stranger with not a shill to my name, and I want answers
about why this happened to me. So I say, “All right, maybe. Yes. My sister, Anja.”
His stare deepens, if such a thing is possible.
I sigh. “Anja had the makings of a great alchemist,” I tell him. “We were saving our coin to send her to college. Because
her Gift . . . you see, she could eat something, anything, and know its properties. Just like that. Like magic.”
His eyebrows raise. “Explain,” he commands.
“The Gift-fever came upon her when she was thirteen years old. It made her eat a mushroom. A blue belly. Deadly poisonous. She vomited for a day and a half. But once she recovered, she went back into the cave where it had been growing and gathered a whole handful. She brought them to the kitchen, pounded them into a poultice, and applied it to our milk cow, whose teats had dried up. That cow produced so much milk during the next year that we had to . . .” My throat closes, and I blink rapidly to stanch the flow of tears.
He waits patiently for me to gather myself.
I swallow hard. “She proudly showed off her Gift to everyone, to my mother’s shame. She was always eating things. Raw cotton.
A spiderweb. Wood shavings. Said she couldn’t truly know something unless she’d had it in her mouth. Which we later learned
was not something you should say in mixed company at a busy inn.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Still in the cage you pulled me from.”
“I’m sorry.”
I nod some approximation of thanks.
His stare finally wavers. Then he’s looking everywhere but at me when he says, “I didn’t know they would kill everyone rather
than see them freed. I’d hoped to save more.”
“She was already dead when you arrived. But some of the others . . .”
“Is that tea ready?”
I’m glad to talk about something else. “Ready enough. Hand me that cup. Let it cool before you sip.”
I dip cupfuls for both of us, then settle on the log beside him, careful to keep some distance between us. He frightens me,
for reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that he is a perfect stranger. But a girl can always count on hot tea to
create a companionable silence.
After a bit, I say, “Did I answer your question?”
“What question?”
“About Gifts. Do you think my sister’s was enough to attract attention?”
He sips, savors, swallows. “This is fine tea,” he says.
“I didn’t realize there were mines in Dhakar.” I try again. “I thought the country was a wasteland, its people scattered across
the Sunderland.”
He frowns, and I worry I might have offended him by bringing up the lost nation, but he says, “I think you’re right about
the lemon.”
I glare at him. He can be as evasive as he wants. I’ll just try again tomorrow. I’m an innkeeper’s daughter, after all. I
can get anyone to talk.
After drinking our tea, we divvy up the rabbit. I fall on it like a madwoman, and when I’m done, I crunch the bones in my
teeth seeking marrow, and I lick my fingers with all the social grace of a child.
“Get some sleep,” he orders.
Now that my belly is finally full and my body is warm, sleep is the thing I want most in the world. I slip back into the bedroll,
careful of my shoulder. “Good night,” I tell him. “And thank you.”
If he responds, I don’t hear.
In the morning, Titus is gone, leaving me stranded on a frosty mountainside.