“They didn’t foresee what Queen Wilhulmia would do either,” said Saturday, shivering. She knew that what had started out as a dangerous exercise was now doubly so. The men in Voorstod would be anxious, fidgety, liable to strike out at anyone and everyone. She could feel their animosity like a palpable thing, like a wind blowing from the north. When she shut her eyes, she saw arms, pointed upward, handless, blood fountaining from the wrists. They were her own arms. She saw a throat cut. Her own throat. She fought down terror and asked, “When is the guide coming?”
“Yes,” said Sam. “When is the guide coming?”
“She’s here,” said Karth. “Been here for a while. I told her you’d finish your food before you started out with her.”
“Where does she take us?”
“Right through Skelp into Wander. The Squire of Wander will give you food and a bed tonight, then he’ll send you on to Selmouth, in County Leward. That’s as far as we’ve been able to plan. After that, you’ll have to deal with the Faithful, for they’re the ones who have the boy.”
The Commander crossed the room and knelt before Saturday, taking her cold hands into his own. “I can’t talk you out of this? It seems a dangerous and useless endeavor, Saturday Wilm. You could stay here in Ahabar, become a concert singer, have young men—maybe even old men—sending you flowers.”
She assayed a smile, managed to arrange a fairly good one, a little tremulous. “No sir, you can’t talk me out of this.”
“It’s a religious matter,” said Prince Rals from across the room. “So she says.”
The Commander looked at Maire, as though for verification of this. Maire merely smiled, a wry smile. Well, it was religious, in a way.
“Is it?” the Commander demanded of her.
“It is,” she nodded. “Yes. If you must have a category for it, Commander, you may file it under religious matters.”
The Commander shrugged; very well, his shoulders seemed to say. Oh, very well. He went to the door and beckoned. A woman came into the light, a person of middle-life, her hair turning gray at the temples, her face lined. “This is your guide,” he said to them.
“I’m your guide,” she agreed. “I don’t tell you my name. You call me Missus. There’s a vehicle outside.”
Sam knelt before his mother and reached up to kiss her, his lips gently touching the edge of her own. He hugged her.
“Oh, Sammy. Why are you here?” she asked him. “I wish I knew.”
“Here to keep Saturday company,” he said. “Why else.” For the moment, keeping Saturday company was the only reason he let himself admit to out loud. Later he would consider others. Such as acting the true hero and bringing an end to these senseless misunderstandings between people. Last night, deep in the dark, Sam had lain awake questioning himself, doubting himself, telling himself he was stubborn and intransigent.
“Maybe you’re supposed to be,” a voice in his mind had said. Theseus, maybe. “Maybe you’re supposed to be. Maybe there’s a reason.”
Heroes, he thought, had to be stubborn perhaps, had to be intransigent, had to cleave to their ideas no matter how many people tried to sway them, even if those people were their mothers or sisters or friends.
The two of them, man and girl, went out into the night with their small packs of clothing and food. No weapons. Carrying a weapon in Voorstod, so said Karth, would get them killed faster than anything. Besides, neither of them knew anything about using weapons. They were farmers. Act like farmers. Sam, ready to object to that, had swallowed his words and pretended to accept them.
They climbed through the barricade, watched stoically by a hundred troopers. Missus put them in the back of the much-used vehicle with their packs, then drove them out of the occupied area and onto the wide road leading north. Theirs was the only vehicle on the road.
“Do the people of Voorstod know they’re cut off from Ahabar?” Sam asked.
“We have eyes and ears,” said the woman. “There’ll be men going out tonight, seeing can they get through. By tomorrow, everyone will know how tight the blockade is, or whether the Queen is only playing with us.”
“Do the people of Voorstod know why?”
“Something the Cause did. They’re not saying what it was.”
In a bleak, emotionless voice, Saturday told her what the Cause had done.
“Seems a small thing to cause so much ruckus,” the woman said. “One Gharm. Here there’s hundreds every year. Whipped. Hands cut off. Feet cut off. Blinded.”
Sam turned his head away. Surely, he thought, surely she didn’t believe that. One, as a terrorist ploy, but not hundreds.
“You don’t sound as though you care,” said Saturday, sickened.
“If I cared about every Gharm that got mutilated, I’d do nothing but care,” the woman responded. “I save my caring for what I can help.”
“Your children?”
“What I can help,” the woman said, shutting off the conversation.
Skelp was a hilly region where the road ran up through rocky defiles and out onto steep uplands before plunging down again, almost to the sea. From the uplands they could see the coast, off to their right, the sea reddened by sunset.
“Not many people in Skelp,” ventured Sam.
“More than you’d think,” the woman said. “There’s villages west of us, where there’s good pasture in the mountains. Mostly herdsmen here in Skelp. And fishermen, down along the shore.”
“Lots of hiding places,” said Saturday. “For those who escape.”
“Lots of hiding places,” the woman agreed. “For those who know the country.”
“You know the country,” said Sam.
“Yes,” she responded. “Yes, I do.”
They drove on as darkness came. Gradually the land flattened.
