Be honest? I could barely be honest with myself, but after his confession, what I held back seemed like a mountain, all the larger and darker for its secrecy. I could only create a larger mountain to hold back the truth.
“Not every family is like yours, Jase. I don’t see mine as often as you see yours. My parents are very important people. My father is the governor of a northern province, and my mother’s a general in the army. They’re always away. I rarely see them.”
He was silent for a long while as if mulling over my answer, then asked, “If they weren’t around, who raised you?”
The streets, hunger, fear, revenge, the merchants and quarterlords who chased me away. Desperation. A lonely world in the middle of a bustling city—a world he couldn’t begin to understand.
“Friends,” I answered. “Friends helped raise me.”
*
We were the poorest of the poor. My mother was beautiful but so very young. Too young to have me, but she did, and she loved me. We were rarely apart. Whatever she did to earn a few mouthfuls of food, I was there too. She stitched garments, washed clothes, wove tethers for amulets, and sometimes at the jehendra she sold the useless fragments of the Ancients that she dug up in the ruins. Many Vendans thought they could ward off angry spirits.
We had a silent language between us, street language, signals that helped my mother and me survive. The subtle flick of fingers. A hand held at the side, rigid. A fist against a thigh. A finger on the cheekbone. Run. Don’t move. Say nothing. Disappear. I will return. Smile. Because in a taut moment, some things were too dangerous to say with words.
It was the middle of the night when he came. I was awakened suddenly when I felt a finger pressed to my lips, Shhh, Kazi, don’t say a word, and she slowly pushed me to the floor between our bed and the wall to hide me. From beneath the bed, I saw yellow flickering light dancing across walls as he approached. We had no other way out, no weapons, but she had a heavy wooden stick in the corner. She didn’t reach it in time. He lunged out of the darkness, grabbing her from behind.
“I have nothing,” she immediately told him. “Not even food. Please don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not here for food,” he said as his eyes scoured the small hovel we called home, a cramped space in an abandoned ruin. “Someone’s had his eye out for a girl like you. You’ll bring a nice profit.” The moving light from his lantern made the planes of his face jump like he wore a distorted, hideous mask. Cheekbones, chin, a shining forehead, looming close then far, twisting like a monster as I cowered in terror beneath the bed. “Where is the brat you were with today?”
That’s when I knew I had seen him before, a Previzi driver, unloading his wagon of goods at the jehendra as merchants gathered around to admire the exotic wares. He walked by the stall later where my mother made amulets. He paused and studied us both but didn’t buy anything. The Previzi never did. Vendan goods were beneath them, and they had no fear of the gods or spirits. They didn’t need amulets.
“Come out, girl!” he yelled, lifting his lantern trying to see into the corners of the ruins that were our home. He shook my mother. “Where is she?”
My mother’s eyes were frantic black pools. “I don’t know. She’s not mine. Only an orphan I let help me.”
I wanted to run to her. Run for the stick in the corner, but I saw her hand, desperate, rigid at her side. Demanding. Do not move. Her fist against her thigh. Say nothing. I watched as he forced something to her lips, her hand striking him, her struggle as he made her drink, as she choked and coughed, and within seconds she went limp in his arms. I watched as he carried her away, her limp arms swinging as if saying good-bye.
Run, Kazi. Grab the stick. Save her. Now.
But I didn’t. And then the flickering lantern light disappeared, darkness closed in again, and I was alone.
When the light of morning dawned, I still cowered beneath the bed, too afraid to move. I stayed there for two days, lying in my own waste, growing weak and hazy with hunger and thirst. I finally crawled out, dazed, and searched the streets for her, drinking at the washbasins, chewing bitter cuds of thannis, because wild plants were the only thing that was free. Those first months were a blur, maybe because I was half starved, but somewhere along the line I stopped being afraid of the merchants who chased me away. I was only hungry and determined.
Someone’s had his eye out for a girl like you. Who? A rich merchant? A quarterlord? You’ll bring a nice profit. I never forgot the driver’s face, but it took me years to understand what his words even meant. I thought he took her to make amulets or wash clothes, so I searched every merchant tent and washbasin in the city. And once I got better at slipping into shadows, I found my way into every quarterlord’s home, thinking he was making her work there. She was nowhere. She had vanished, along with the Previzi driver who had taken her, perhaps to a remote province in Venda, perhaps to a faraway kingdom on the other side of the continent. She was gone.
“You’re quiet,” Jase said, pulling me from my thoughts.
“So are you.”
“Hungry?”
A stupid question. A placeholder for what was really on his mind. He was getting nervous. Unusually so. It made me wonder what kind of animosities the Casswell settlement might hold against the Ballengers. They were far outside the borders of Eislandia and in no way could be construed as being on Ballenger land. To my knowledge they had not been raided by them. Still, there could be grievances. Even settlements had to trade goods, and the Ballengers appeared to control the center of trading. He might have a good reason to be nervous. Just as nervous as I might be entering Tor’s Watch.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JASE
We were almost there. I knew this stretch as well as any. My blood raced, and my mind sprinted from one thought to the next. Getting home. Getting there in time. It was so close now. We just might make it. I wouldn’t let guilt get in the way of what needed to be done. There was too much at stake. Lives. History. People who depended on me.
I tried to keep her focused, pointing out features on the northern range, a cluster of trees, a rock formation, a pass, anything to divert her gaze from the southern range. I was buying minutes now, and there wasn’t a single one to spare. I had already seen our post hidden high in a rocky outcrop overlooking the valley. It was hard to see if you didn’t know it was there, but she had a keen eye and it wouldn’t stay camouflaged much longer.
As the valley turned, grazing horses came into view, and beyond that our small farmstead where the caretaker lived.
“One small farmhouse?” she said. “This can’t be the settlement.”
“Maybe there’s more at the end of the valley,” I answered, still trying to delay the inevitable.
And then she spotted the three riders galloping down a trail from the outpost, heading toward us. She stopped, her walking stick jutting out in a protective stance to stop me too. “Those don’t look like settlers.”
“I think we’ll be all right.”
“No,” she said, still not convinced, “settlers don’t wear weapons like that at their sides. They’re armed for trouble.”
As they drew close, smiles evident on their faces, her shoulders pulled back and her attention turned slowly to me, her lips parting slightly, a dull realization forming. Her eyes shot back to them again, the truth settling in, my lack of concern, the recognition in their eyes when they looked at me. They pulled up short in front of us, and one of them said, “Patrei, we’ve been watching for you, hoping you’d come this way.”