Tomaaz left the house and wandered toward the road, away from Lofty and the other perimeter guards. He didn’t need Lofty’s joviality or jokes tonight, just a bit of time to clear his head. The last twelve days had been a whirlwind: Pa nearly burned at the stake and being thrown in jail; Ma gone, perhaps in danger; Lovina’s awful injuries; and Ezaara … shards, he missed his twin sister.
In the field near the roadside, the carrot tops feathered in the breeze. Tomaaz stared at the sunset’s golden light playing on the greenery, losing himself for a moment.
Footsteps crunched along the gravel road. A figure was approaching, dressed in baggy breeches—a slim woman in men’s clothing. Something about her seemed familiar, but with the sun at her back, he couldn’t see her features.
She drew level and turned to him, her thin face tinged by the sunset glowing off the Grande Alps. The evening breeze tickled its fingers through her brown hair. Her eyes were blue and she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her baggy breeches were rolled up and she was wearing an over-sized boy’s jerkin. It was only as she nervously lifted a scarred hand to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear that Tomaaz recognized Lovina.
He gazed at her mutely.
“I, ah …” She froze for a moment, eyes wild like a trapped rabbit, and then spun to go.
Tomaaz took her hand. Shock registered on both of their faces. They stood a few paces apart, he holding her hand and she, startled, staring at him.
He released her, his breath escaping. “Don’t go!” he whispered. Had he scared her?
She nodded, waiting.
“Lovina, I—” How did you tell a girl who’d been beaten and abused for years that you were dumbstruck by her beauty? A girl who hadn’t even trusted the people who’d tried to heal her. A girl who would need years to fully trust, if she ever could. His breath sawed in and out of him. The moment stretched, the tension in their gaze searing through him. “Lovina, I’m glad you’re here.”
She smiled, lighting up like a splash of water in the sun.
Last Stop
Crows were thick on cottage roofs on the outskirts of Last Stop. Marlies approached, her hair wrapped in a peasant’s scarf, a long dress over her riders’ garb and her rucksack hidden in a sack on her back with firewood poking out the top. Marlies adjusted the firewood. It was a flimsy disguise, but better than nothing. She had enough freshweed to last her a few more days, but she was still ages away from Death Valley. She’d need to find another way to evade the tharuks hunting her.
She kept to side alleys. Music filled the air, and laughter and merriment came from the center of town. Tharuks roamed the streets. Had everyone here grown used to the presence of these monsters?
Coming around a corner, she walked smack into a tharuk’s back. “Excuse me, kind sir,” she said with what she hoped was a Last Stop twang. She bowed, squinting in case it noticed her turquoise eyes.
The beast snarled through dribbling saliva. Its nostrils twitched. A tracker.
Marlies kept her head down, subservient and bowed over under the firewood. Her heart hammered. She thanked the Egg for freshweed, hoping hers was still effective. This was not the place to pick a fight.
“Doesn’t look like the female,” muttered another tharuk to the tracker she’d banged into.
The tracker deliberated, sniffing the air.
It was surprising it could smell anything other than tharuk stench.
“It’s tall enough, but it doesn’t smell right,” the tracker concluded.
“Move on.”
Relief flooding her, Marlies moved past.
“Not so fast.” A thin tharuk with black eyes stepped out from a bakery next to a cobbler’s shop, blocking her way. “Where are you heading?”
Shards! A mind-bender. Marlies kept the cobbler’s store foremost in her mind. “Need new shoes for my boy, sir,” she answered, head down. She pulled an image of Tomaaz’s face into her mind, as he’d looked when he was four.
“And the wood?” barked the mind-bender.
She could feel the mind-bender pushing at her thoughts, making her head spin. “To sell, sir, in the square.” Not knowing what the square looked like nowadays, she kept the cobbler’s shop in mind, and the torn feet of a Lush Valley littling she’d healed last week—and her fear of tharuks, just to be convincing.
“Very well,” the mind-bender barked. “Get your weakling son some shoes.”
The mind-bender shoved her. She stumbled, righting herself, then ran into the cobbler’s shop. Marlies made a show of examining the shoes, then bought the cheapest littling pair in the store, fishing the coins out of her healer’s pouch.
“A healer?” whispered the cobbler, eying her pouch. “Rare nowadays.”
“Just an old pouch I found at the market.”
“I’ll trade you the shoes for a remedy. My wife has had a belly gripe for a week.”
Marlies glanced at the tharuks loitering outside. Was he a spy? Would he sell her for a reward?
“Please,” he pleaded.
She’d taken a healer’s oath. How could she refuse? Marlies slipped him a measure of koromiko. “Cook this in water and have her drink the tea,” she whispered. “Thank you for the shoes,” she added loudly.
“My pleasure,” he said. Then, making a show of polishing the shoes, he whispered, “Stay at The Lost King, in the square. I’d get a room now before it fills up for the harvest festival.”
The Lost King? Was that some oblique reference to Syan, Zaarusha’s dead mate? Or even Yanir, his rider? It might be possible. Last Stop had been named after Anakisha. On the way to her final battle, she’d stopped here, for reasons unknown. After her death, the villagers had renamed the town. Nodding, Marlies
