air. He twisted out of his bedroll, and in the half dark he saw the thief from Sarnak astride the novice as she struggled under his weight. Stumbling toward them, he heard the sickening sound of a blow, but before a second could land, he had the thief by the neck and hurled him across the loft.
'Sweet goddess,' he muttered when he saw the girl's face.
Clutching what was left of her shift, she gasped for breath as he placed a blanket around her shoulders. When he made an attempt to hold her, she crawled away, shuddering against the timber beams of their shelter.
He heard a noise behind him and turned to where the thief was, on his feet, pulling up his trousers, a look of hatred in his eyes.
'I just wanted a poke,' the thief spat.
Sir Topher pushed the thief hard, and the boy staggered again. It had been his decision to have the thief untied these past two nights, and for that he would not forgive himself.
He grabbed the thief and tied him tightly with the ropes attached to the beams, catching a blow to his temple that almost sent him reeling. When he returned to the girl, he crouched at her feet and slowly reached over to lift her chin, startling her. She pressed herself farther into the wall, covering her head with shaking hands. He looked from one corner of the loft to the other. The thief was hurling abuse, spitting with fury and tugging madly at his ropes. Here was Lumatere's future, Sir Topher thought despairingly. Two wild animals with nothing but rage and hate.
'Did he...' He could not bring himself to say the words, and after a moment she shook her head and looked up, her face stained with tears.
'My shift is torn,' she whispered. 'I cannot wear it.'
Across her cheek was a purple bruise where the thief's fist had connected, and her lips were swollen and bleeding.
'He knows no other way but ugliness,' Sir Topher said quietly. 'He was taught no other lessons but those of force. His teachers have been scum who live by their own rules. No one has ever taught him otherwise.'
'Am I to forgive him?' she said, her voice shaking with anger.
'No,' he said sadly. 'Pity him. Or give him new rules. Or put him down like a wild animal before he becomes a monster who destroys everything he encounters.'
When he went to move away, she grabbed his sleeve.
'I think they are all dead.'
A chill went through him. 'Finnikin?'
'No. All the young girls,' she said in a small broken voice. 'Inside Lumatere.'
'What are you saying, Evanjalin?'
'Tonight I walked through the sleep of one who mourned the death of a neighbor's daughter, cursing an ailment that seems to be taking the young girls of his village these past five years. I remember another sleep six months back when a young tanner grieved for a girl who could have one day been his sweetheart.'
'You are not yourself, and your sleep was troubled.'
She shook her head. 'No, Sir Topher. We need to return to Lumatere. Our lifeblood is dying, and we need to set them free.'
The next day, they traveled on foot to the closest village, hoping to secure a second horse. They took the thief from Sarnak with them, his hands bound by a rope attached to Sir Topher's waist. The moment they stepped into the crowded marketplace, Sir Topher heard the novice gasp in anger and then she was pointing to where
'Of course, I'm sure. They must have come across it in the ravine where we left it for Finnikin and the captain.'
'Evanjalin, they are the slave traders,' Sir Topher warned as she hurried toward them.
But Evanjalin could not be stopped, and Sir Topher followed, dragging the thief with him.
'That's our horse!' she shouted to one of the men. When he ignored her, she poked him and repeated, 'That's our horse.'
'Do you have papers?' he asked pleasantly.
'We need that horse,' she said, her voice shaking with emotion.
'Then you may have it,' the man said, twisting his lips into a sneer. 'For ten pieces of silver.'
Evanjalin swung around to stare at Sir Topher, gripping her head in anguish. They both knew that without the horse, Finnikin and Trevanion would be caught as quickly as they escaped.
'We have five pieces,' Sir Topher said.
'Then I would suggest you find yourself a peddler and buy this girl a pretty dress,' he said, looking down at Evanjalin, who was dressed in Finnikin's trousers and jerkin.
Then the man's expression changed. He stepped closer to Evanjalin and grabbed her face. 'She would make a fair exchange. Even with the bruises. The traders of Sorel have a great need for sturdy young things.'
'She's not for sale,' Sir Topher said quickly.
Evanjalin shook free, a shudder passing through her body. She pushed the thief from Sarnak in front of the trader. 'But how much would you give us for him?' she asked.
With each day of his imprisonment, Finnikin's frustration grew. Fearing that their work outside the mines would come to an end and all hope would be lost, he challenged his father constantly. But it rained for days, and Trevanion argued that to escape in such conditions would hinder them the moment they were free.
'Why not now?' Finnikin whispered to his father on their first day without rain for a week. 'Today's guards are a lazy lot.'
'Keep silent and do not question me,' Trevanion said sharply.
So yet another day passed, and that night in their cell when Trevanion transferred his rations to Finnikin's bowl, Finnikin felt his rage and frustration boil over.
'Do not treat me like a child to be fed and kept alive,' he hissed, shoving the food back into Trevanion's bowl.
'Then do not act like one. Eat!' Trevanion ordered. 'We will have only one attempt at this, Finnikin. If it fails, you will grow old alongside me in this cell, and at this moment I have two desires. One is to see my son free, and the other is to choke the life out of the witch who put him here. But we are at the mercy of patience, luck, and timing, and today is not the day for all three.'
'And what if you are wrong?' The moment the words escaped Finnikin's mouth, he regretted them.
'On the third day of the first week of each month,' Trevanion continued as if Finnikin had not spoken, 'the Sorelian palace guards make their journey to the mine. If we had escaped, they would have passed us on the road to land's end.'
Finnikin could not meet Trevanion's eyes. 'I will never question you again, sir.'
When he looked up, he saw the slightest twitch play on his father's lips.
'I'm sure you will,' Trevanion said. 'I'm counting on it.'
The more time Finnikin spent with his father, the more he became accustomed to the long periods of silence between them. Sometimes they lasted for hours, and then he would hear Trevanion's voice deep in the night.
'I will ask you this once and then I never want it spoken of again,' his father said quietly at one such time.
Finnikin knew what his father was going to ask and waited for the question. When it didn't come, Finnikin turned to face him. 'It was a girl child. Tiny, they said, no bigger than my palm. Seranonna delivered the child and went to the stake with your child's blood on her hands, mingled with Isaboe's. They said it was a blessing that Lady Beatriss and the babe died together.'
But Finnikin did not speak about the post where they had tied up the midwife and the healer and the young girl with smiling eyes who had once given him a tonic. Nor did he say that he would never forget their deaths for as long as he lived. The smell of burning flesh, the screams of agony that seemed to go on forever. Then the silence. He could not tell his father the truth about that day. How in the village square at the age of nine he had his first kill. He had used a dagger, its point heavy for a quick, clean, long-distance lunge. The type of dagger that would fly
