upon. The band was snowed in; their hideout was part cave and part a stoutly built fortress of stone and massive logs. Aleksia was fairly sure that they didn't know who had built the place originally, and probably would never have dared to use it if they had known.
Trolls. Only trolls were big enough to have felled the trees these logs came from, and strong enough to move them here. Why they had built this place, Aleksia had no idea, nor why they had abandoned it. Perhaps a Hero had come along and tricked them into the sunlight. Perhaps they had just wandered off. They might come back today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now, or never.
This mattered not at all to the current situation. And it was very important this time that Aleksia hear what was going on. Her point of view was a huge old mirror, very dusty and tarnished, that had been shoved over against the wall of this, Valeri's room in the outer fortress. Her father, Aleksia had learned, had claimed this room as her nursery long ago because it had a fireplace. She had kept it because she liked her privacy.
Aleksia could only hear and see through reflective surfaces, although it was surprising how many of those there were that people were not aware of. A drop of water in a forest, the shiny surface of a metal cup, even a bit of mica embedded in a rock wall — any and all of those were enough for her to see and hear through. So it didn't matter how tarnished and dusty this old mirror was, it still served.
“Give over,” Valeri said, pushing Gerda's hands away from her head. “And hand me that knife. I'm tired of this.”
Gerda picked up the scissors instead. “If you are going to have your hair chopped off, let me do it and make it tidy,” she retorted. “You don't have to go about looking like a magpie's nest.”
The Robber Girl snorted, but let Gerda cut her hair for her, long black tresses falling around her like Autumn leaves. When she was done, Gerda handed her a hand-mirror and she surveyed the result and grunted her approval. Her hawk-sharp face was suited to the shorter hair, Aleksia thought. Having it braided up made such a face, all angles and planes, look even more angular than it already was. “This business of being a lady gives me a pain,” she announced. “It was fun to play at it, but it gives the men ideas. I don't want 'em thinking of me as somethin' they can pounce on.”
“Like me, you mean,” Gerda replied steadily. There was silence in that cramped, cluttered room. Then Gerda bent over, picked up all the hair and tossed it into the fire without a word. Valeri took out her knife, cut the women's clothing she was wearing off herself, and pulled on her usual leather breeches, heavy woolen shirt and leather vest. With a look of contentment, she strapped on a belt with two heavier knives on it, as well as a whip. She crammed a wool hat on top of her newly shorn head.
“Now I feel like meself,” she said, with pleasure. Then she stopped, and looked sharply at Gerda. “You noticed,” she said. “'Bout the men, I mean.”
Gerda raised her chin. “You'd have to be blind not to. And deaf. They're just waiting, like crows watching something dying — ” She caught herself and looked away.
Aleksia smiled. This was going well….
Valeri put her hands on her hips. “Aye, and they think I dunno. That I dunno my rabbit ended up i' the stew an' my fawn ended up there, too. They think I just forget things an' don't care about 'em no more.” She clenched her jaw. “Bet they're just waitin' for me to get tired of bein' a lady an' not needin' you.”
Gerda nodded wordlessly.
“Well, I might get tired of things sometimes, but that don't mean I don't care about 'em.” Valeri's eyes flashed. “An' what's more, I haven't forgotten about things since I was nine an' they ate my deer. I see when my things disappear. I just don't say anything. But I'll tell you what, missy. They ain't getting you.”
And just like that, Gerda found herself with a rucksack in her hands, shoving things in that Valeri threw at her. Of course, half of those things were weapons, which Valeri then took back, muttering something about a rock being more use to someone like Gerda. But it certainly was not much more than an hour later that they had a tolerable pack put together, with a bedroll tied atop it and plenty of journey-bread in oiled paper inside the top. Gerda looked at it doubtfully, then back up at Valeri. “But how am I to get past the men out there?” she asked.
Valeri grinned. “You just leave that to me. You put on them things, and be ready when I come for you.”
Gerda shook her head, but obeyed, pulling on the thick woolen breeches — though she settled her discarded skirt over them, Aleksia presumed for modesty's sake — the knitted wool shirt and the leather tunic. She put on two pairs of stockings to make the too-large felt boots Valeri had thrown at her fit, then crammed on the battered fur hat and sheepskin shepherd's coat. And just as she was swinging the pack onto her back, Valeri reappeared.
She put her finger to her lips, eyes sparkling with mischief, and beckoned. Gerda followed her out into a cavern that the bandits used as their main room. Aleksia flitted her point of view to the reflective surface of an overturned silver goblet.
There were snoring bodies everywhere.
Carefully, they picked their way through the sprawled bandits, Valeri leading Gerda deeper into the caverns. She stopped once to get a lantern and lit it with a candle left there for that purpose, then made her way to a hole in the wall only a little taller than a man. That allowed Aleksia to transfer her focus to the glass of the lantern.
They both plunged into the darkness.
Valeri's lamp cast just enough light to show that they were in a narrow tunnel, too rough and too small to have been carved out by the trolls. Likely, this was the original cave that the trolls had enlarged. With the lantern held out in front of them, Aleksia had a fine view of the tunnel. Well, a few feet of the tunnel, anyway.
The two young women were very quiet. Finally Gerda whispered, “Is it safe to talk?”
Valeri chortled. “Oh, aye. Them back there won't be waking up any time soon. I rolled out a keg of brandywine for 'em.” Her laugh grew deeper. “Not the first time, neither. See, I'm the one thet brews it. Papa, he got no notion where it comes from, and he'll be all over 'em to find out which one of 'em does the brewing. They can say for true it ain't one of 'em, an' Papa never thinks of me. I been doin' that since one of the lads we ransomed showed me how. He figured he'd use it t' get into me breeches, but he got ransomed 'fore he could try.”
There was a silence from Gerda that Aleksia could only imagine meant she was stunned by Valeri's bluntness. Not that Gerda could possibly be ignorant of sex — the town she lived in wasn't that large that a girl her age hadn't seen animals and possibly even servants fornicating. But in Gerda's class, you didn't talk about it.
