Chapter 9 #2
But I had no time to mourn. We were too close to Rodsfell, and Eden was desperate to put as much distance between us and Nicosia as possible. “I’ll drown myself before I go back,” she promised.
I’d done little running since healing Renn, and it seemed there were drawbacks to my half-heart status I hadn’t realized.
Its beat quickened too rapidly during exercise, tiring me.
I fused more magic into it, but now was not the time to experiment with my craft-supplemented handicap.
My sentiment was the same as Eden’s. Run, or die.
Running kept me from thinking about what I’d lost in that dungeon.
The dark night surrounded us like tar, but the water provided a path.
A slick one, and we slipped on several occasions.
I returned Eden’s coat, and she gave me a second dress to pull over my ruined one, both for warmth and to hide the blood.
The water on our clothes turned to frost, and repeatedly we had to walk, Eden guiding me, while I staved off hypothermia.
Had I been any other crafter, we’d be near death now.
I wondered if the soldier who’d helped us knew I was a healer, or if she merely understood we were desperate.
By morning the stream widened and began to turn southward.
Rove was southeast, but for now the most crucial thing was to distance ourselves from the capital.
Surely people had noticed the absence of their king.
Surely someone had thought to look in the dungeons for him.
Surely he would come for us with the wrath of the gods, for he believed himself one of them.
I prayed he would think we headed straight south or took a main road. I prayed his dogs would not follow this stream.
We could not stay here forever.
Hunger gnawed on my stomach by the end of the second day, and we finally stepped out of the water to head south.
Eden had been able to save very little from her food trays that wouldn’t go bad too quickly.
There was nothing here—no roads, no towns, only a smattering of pine forests and endless miles of winter-starved grassland.
I wore my blanket tight around my shoulders, and again we traveled past dark, until both Eden and I stumbled from sheer exhaustion.
“Just for a little while.” I knelt in a bed of dry needles beneath a pine. “We’ll sleep just a little while, then keep going.”
We huddled together for warmth, the large blanket cocooning us.
I dowsed on us, healing blisters and bruises, and noticed the gold threading on one of my merlons had .
. . grown. The way a creeping plant coils around a tree.
It was subtle; had I not spent so much time in my lumis these past few months, I might not have noticed.
But it was there, climbing upward, as though helping to hold my half-heart together.
As though helping to make up for the missing blocks of green.
I cried silently into my hair. Thank you, Renn.
The cold was its own sort of blessing; because it made it difficult to catch restful sleep, it was easy to get up after a few hours and continue onward.
It was only near dawn that I thought of the risk of running into wild animals; there were bears in Sesta, or so I’d heard.
I’d been so fearful of humans, I’d never considered the chance of another creature harming us.
We saw deer as we collected pine nuts. Had we escaped even a month earlier, foraging would have been near impossible, but even the cold Sestan spring brought up wild leeks, dandelions, and chickweed.
We picked much of it, carrying it in our pockets and bodices, eating constantly.
The plants were not enough to fully fuel us, not with the desperate pace we kept, but it was something, and we were willing to take anything.
Our fourth day on the run, we found a little village—half a village, really, with only three homes widely spaced apart.
“Hem help us,” Eden sighed, heading straight for a farmhouse.
I seized her arm. “No, Eden. We’re still too close to Rodsfell. They might have sent out men looking for us, or orders to return us. We can’t talk to anyone. Not yet.”
Eden shook her head. “We’re two starving women. Surely they will be kind.”
But I would not risk it, and ultimately, Eden dared not try without me. So we circled the village until dark. I harvested too-young asparagus, and Eden stole a rough homespun dress and some men’s clothing from a line. We ran until we couldn’t anymore, ate, and fell asleep.
In the morning we changed into the stolen clothing, me into the homespun dress, and hid the old clothes in a burrow at the foot of a tree.
It took three more rainy days to find another village, slightly larger than the first. I still dared not go in, but I snatched a few eggs from a henhouse, drinking one myself and saving two for Eden. We rendezvoused behind a decrepit barn. Somehow, she’d shorn her hair to her nape.
It made her look like Adrinn.
We’d discussed disguises, but not precisely how we’d pull them off. Still, while I mourned her hair, the next day she seemed happier, despite the cold and the weariness and the hunger. As though she had truly become the character she’d envisioned for herself.
“We’re just a lost couple, newly married,” she offered with a sincere smile. “A man and a woman. No one can hurt us, now.”
I didn’t know how much time Eden had spent outside a castle, but while I did not share her sentiment, I did not negate it, either. In the end, it didn’t matter. Nicosia had already hurt me in one of the worst ways possible.
He’d taken my sister.
The hunger grew to a point where we could no longer soothe its edges with magic and vegetables—especially Eden, who had less fat on her body than I did, less to sustain her through the long, though warming, days.
I felt it was my fault. Not because I had spurred our escape; I would have done so in the dead of winter if necessary.
But had I Ursa’s strength, perhaps I could stave off our pains a little longer.
Had I Ursa, I might not notice the yawning stretch of land around us, or the emptiness in my own mind.
How could I feel so alone with Eden constantly at my side?
Even tethered to the Egroran, I’d never felt so alone.
A pulse of warmth, of concern, threaded through my link to Renn. I latched on to it with the talons of a hawk, desperate for its company. For its assurance. For its hope.
When we found a dirt road heading southeast, we took it.
We avoided line of sight by citizens where we could, but in wide-open stretches between woodlands there was little to do, lest we lose the road.
Fortunately, we passed very few on the way, all folk who weren’t overly concerned with us.
I caught two older men speaking of the war as they drove a heavy wagon north.
“Might as well give up. The king always gets what he wants,” said the first.
The second shook his head. “But an angel of fire? The verses say—”
“Propaganda,” called the first. “You know I don’t believe in any—”
They then left my hearing, and I feared their notice too much to follow and catch the end of the conversation.
Be careful, Renn.
When we found another tiny village, I agreed to try to talk to someone. We would not survive the trip on our own, not this ill-prepared.
I practiced my Sestan accent with Eden, since Eden could not believably drop her voice to pull off the masculine character she’d adopted.
Next was to choose the house. I had no idea how many men would be in the village, since Nicosia might have drafted them.
But I didn’t want to stay with a man. At least, not a lone one.
An elderly couple would do, or perhaps a new mother who needed help with her children. Someone as desperate as we were.
We skirted the houses in the twilight, me taking the lead.
That one had too many clothes hanging on the line, which meant it was crowded, and those living there would struggle to find room for newcomers.
This one was completely dark; waking someone for shelter would not garner hospitality.
I approached one farther out with a single candle in its window, but froze as I neared.
“Nym?” Eden asked.
An old cellar hatch on the side of the house caught my eye. In the dimming light, I could just make out a symbol carved into its corner—like a lowercase cursive Z with two circles on either side of its unfinished tail.
The same I’d seen in the stolen scriptures. The same I’d seen under the bed in that awful room.
But did it mean good tidings, or bad?
I hesitated, ultimately determining that anything related to Rodsfell and its heinous king was better left alone.
I moved deeper into the village, stopping at a small home still lit from within, with a thin stream of smoke slipping from its chimney.
A petite, middle-aged woman opened the door, the sunset dyeing the sky a deep orange.
I hoped her eyesight had faded with age, and she couldn’t see our haggardness.
“Ma’am,” I said in my best Sestan accent, “we’re so sorry to bother you. We’ve gotten lost from our caravan . . . I think we’re going in circles.” My eyes burned. “I’ve nothing to pay you with, unless you’ve someone who is sick. I’m a nurse by trade—”
To my vast relief, the woman stepped back and opened the door. “Come inside, sit by the fire. I’ll see to you.”
“Thank you,” Eden whispered.
The relief doubled as Renn’s poured through our connection. Relief that I was relieved, perhaps. Our connection reminded me of what I’d had with Ursa, and I hugged myself, clinging to the sliver of his presence, wishing for his voice.