Ani snorts. “Any other girl in this town would be jumping at such an opportunity.”
Any other girl in this town would have less chance of being ridiculed by a court obsessed with beauty and fine manners. “Not enough horses there,” I grouse. “And not enough work to do.”
“You are such a stick in the mud,” Ani says, smiling faintly.
I’m so glad to see that smile, I shrug and say, “Mud is very comfortable.”
“There’s more to life than horses, you know.”
“True. There are smithies too.”
Ani shakes her head, the smile dropping away. “When would you go?”
I sigh. “Soon. And I’d rather not go just yet.”
We keep walking, following the path around past the road I came in on.
“I dreamed about her last night,” Ani says abruptly. “About Seri. I dreamed I was walking with her, and we were laughing about something, and then I turned around and she was gone. I couldn’t—I could barely breathe when I woke up. I couldn’t sleep again. I can’t not think about her, Rae.”
I nod, because I don’t know what to say.
“Mama says it isn’t my fault. That, if they were watching her, it would have happened anyhow. That I did well realizing she was missing so quickly, and getting help, but she was my responsibility. I let her go off instead of walking her there . . .”
I stop and wrap my arms around Ani and let her cry again, wishing I had a way to stop her pain, to undo what has been done.
Eventually, Ani steps away and wipes her nose on her sleeve, her eyes red and puffy. “Sorry,” she says.
I shake my head. There’s nothing to apologize for.
She threads her arm through mine and we turn back to town. “So,” she says roughly, and for a moment I think she will start crying again. But then she clears her throat and asks, “Why don’t you want to go to Tarinon?”
I shrug, my uneven gait all the more obvious beside her steady step.
“I think you should go,” Ani says.
“Why? There’s no real need for it.” I eye her askance. “I didn’t think you would want me to leave.”
“I don’t,” she admits. “But can you tell me, truly, why you don’t want to go?”
What is it that’s holding me back? I hesitate, thinking of all I’ve heard of the court, and admit, “I don’t want anyone’s pity.”
A silence.
Ani’s arm tightens around mine. “People are stupid wherever you go. That doesn’t mean you should never leave home.”
“I know,” I concede. Yet I don’t see any reason to expose myself to more than I must.
“Good,” Ani says as we near her home. “So when do you leave?”
I let out my breath in a helpless laugh. “Are you all trying to get rid of me? And here I thought we were friends and my family loved me.”
“All true,” Ani says. “Which is why you had better tell me when you expect to leave next time we meet.”
As if it were as easy as that. I shake my head, look up at Ani’s house, the darkened window of the room she used to share with her sister. The room that is hers alone now.
“I don’t want to leave,” I say, and Ani hears the change in my tone. She pauses beside me. “I don’t want to leave you alone with your grief and go off to the palace, even if Melly would like my company.”
For a long moment, Ani stands with her head bent, her eyes on the hard-packed earth underfoot. “Perhaps you could ask someone there,” she says, the words so soft and unexpected I don’t know what to make of them. She turns her head, and her eyes are as deep and dark with grief as they were yesterday, as if there were no light left in her at all. “Tarinon is a big city. Someone there might know more about the snatchers—have an idea where the children are taken. They must know more.”
“It’s possible,” I allow. For the chance to learn what’s happened to Seri, I could easily put up with being snubbed. Melly might be able to help me find out what the guards have learned about the snatchers, what the king thinks. Though I don’t think she could influence anyone—she and Filadon are not especially high in rank.
Still, it might be worth it to simply ask the questions. To do something.
“I’ll still be here when you get back,” Ani says. “And it will be easier knowing you’re doing what I can’t.”
I nod. But will it make a difference? Couldn’t I learn the same just by writing to Melly? It’s not like I’m going to take on the snatchers myself.
“Think about it,” Ani says, and squeezes my hand.
“I will,” I say, and walk with her back into a house that will always feel a little emptier than it was.
Sometime in the middle of the night I jerk awake from a deep, heavy sleep. I sit up, muzzy headed and afraid, and realize with a sickening lurch that Niya isn’t sleeping beside me anymore. She’s gone.
No. She can’t be. She’s slipped downstairs for something. Anything. I wait, but there’s no sound of movement in the house. After a few increasingly shaky breaths, I rise and let myself out of the room. By the time I reach the stairs, I’m hobbling as fast as I can. Only about halfway down do I catch a hint of lamplight coming from the kitchen.
I make myself take a slow, deep breath. It was foolish of me, I know, that irrational, unspeakable fear. There was no reason whatsoever for Niya to leave our room and then somehow get snatched. I’ve just let myself get carried away by my own fears. I give myself a slight shake and pad down the stairs slowly and steadily, as I would normally.
In the kitchen, Niya sits on a stained old blanket, kept for dirty work, one hand resting on the stray dog’s back.
