*
DELL DID NOT GO far, and once she’s gathered, we’re off, riding at a brisk pace through the morning, following the trail of broken limbs and trampled brush I’d left in my hurry. It shames me; even a half-blind Tracker could have followed that. I must be more careful.
A motion in the woods freezes us, and before I take another breath our weapons are both drawn and aimed. I don’t have time to worry—it’s an animal that approaches, not a human. I’d recognize that flash of gray anywhere.
“Brax!” I call. “What are you doing here?”
He’s whimpering. Concerned, I dismount and run my hands down his muscled legs, beneath his feet. I feel his stomach for any wounds, but find nothing. Lorcan’s watching from his palomino stallion, eyes curious.
The dread slides over me. Something’s happened. Brax has come to warn me of danger back at the camp. Trackers. Bears. Something.
“Dog!” I hear a girl whisper shout. “Here, doggy dog! Mangy old mutt!”
I dismount and run towards the sound, only to find Daphne crashing through the brush, more disheveled than ever. Her red hair is wild as flames and her uniform dress is shredded to her hips. Mud covers her front. The telltale signs of a fall. The instant she sees me she screams in surprise, then covers her mouth with both hands and shuts up quick.
“You scared the life out…”
“What happened?” I interrupt. “Where’s Kiran?”
And then it hits me. She’s left him because he’s dead. I step back and keep stepping back until I run into Dell. I don’t want to hear what she has to say.
“Riders,” she sputters. “Drivers. I was … at the creek and … and they came and found him. I thought maybe you sent them, but they didn’t look happy so I ran.”
I feel my jaw lock into place. I turn as Lorcan approaches and all I see when I stare up at him is the glowing scar down his throat.
“How many?”
“I don’t know. Five or … or six. We can’t go back there, Clover. They were mad. Really mad.”
But I barely hear her. I hardly register the feel of my foot in the stirrup or the strain in my arms pulling me up into Dell’s saddle. The next thing I know I’m leaning low over Dell’s neck, urging her to give me everything she’s got left.
*
EVEN AT DELL’S fastest, we don’t close in on the cave where I left Kiran until late afternoon. The mountain wind has cleared the area of the misting rain, and the sky is untouchable, infinitely far. I slow to a walk, taking my cues from Brax, who pads silently just ahead. When he lowers and the hair on his neck rises, I slide down.
I smell the smoke before anything. It’s strong, from a fire larger than I would have made. My stomach tightens. They’re not afraid of drawing attention like we are.
I’m alone. Lorcan hasn’t followed, or if he has, he’s a ways behind me. Maybe he’s with Daphne. Maybe not. I have no help if this comes to a fight. Not that Lorcan would help me anyway, considering how they cut his voicemaker out.
None of this matters. I’m not leaving Kiran to be butchered like the half-dead Watchers in the Witch Camps. I tie Dell’s reins to a low-hanging branch and leave her a hundred paces away.
Bounding over the creek, I approach the camp. There’s a hidden place facing the shale wall, close to where I challenged the bear. That’s where I’m hiding when I see them.
Five Drivers. All dressed in some mix of the same thing I’m wearing: Breeches, boots, a button-down shirt, a handkerchief. Their faces are clean, unlike the Drivers in the city. They’ve got nothing to hide out here.
The closest is a boy not much older than me. His hair is wavy and he hasn’t shaved, but it doesn’t look like he needs to all that often. His nose has been broken at least once—it’s crooked—and that tells me he doesn’t shy away from a fight. He’s casually guarding the edge of the stream with a long bow.
Twenty paces to my left are seven saddled horses, tethered to trees. Seven. Which means that there are two Drivers I can’t see from where I’m standing. I look back to the animals. My heart pounds so hard it hurts my chest. I begin to creep towards them, preparing to set them loose. I’ll have to bolt once the chaos ensues, but hopefully it’s enough of a distraction to steal Kiran away.
I adjust my position and from here I can see behind the boulders, to where my friend still lays. There’s another Driver hunching over him. The sixth.
A girl.
I stare at her a moment, in awe. I’ve never seen a Driver girl before. She’s got long honey-colored hair, plaited down her back, and she’s wearing a buckskin dress not well suited for riding.
She’s holding something in her hand. The sun catches it, and the metal reflects into my eyes. A knife.
She’s going to cut his throat. She’s going to take his voicemaker. Just like they did Lorcan.
I don’t wait another moment. The muscles in my legs quiver, and I jerk to a stand, but before I can run something thin and rough flies over my face and ratchets around my throat. My hands drop the bow, swooping up to pull it loose. My body bucks, and I crash against someone behind me. My heel connects with his shin, my elbow sinks into his side, and I’m rewarded by a grunt and the loosening of the cord.
Growling. A sharp wince. Brax has him by the leg. In one last effort, the Driver boy shoves me hard into the stream, right in front of the clearing before the cave and his people. I’m surrounded. My eyes glance from face to face. A driver with bushy eyebrows holds a dagger in his left hand. The boy guarding the clearing has an arrow aimed directly at my heart. The one with the rope is older—maybe twice my age—and has spots on his skin. He’s where I’ll start; he’s already breathing hard from my hit. There is a girl I’d thought was a boy earlier. She’s got a bow too. No one else holds a weapon.
I’m not completely unarmed. I have Brax, crouched beside me, growling and snapping his jaw.
“Stay away from him!” I shout, careful not to use his name so they won’t know he’s talked to me. “Don’t you touch him!”
They don’t look to each other. They keep staring at me, playing perfect mute Drivers.
The girl with the buckskin dress draws my gaze. Her lips are pulled down in a thin frown, and when she moves through the parting crowd, I can see she’s limping. Boards have been fastened to her ankles to keep them perfectly straight. She hunches over a crutch latched to her right forearm. The knife gleams from her right hand.
A shuffle to my right. I spin, ready to defend, but the wavy-haired boy does not move any closer. He’s still holding the loaded bow, though now it’s aimed at the ground. He’s staring hard at me as though trying to read my mind. I can see his teeth grinding in his sun-weathered jaw.
The air seems to be thinning. I am aware of every movement of those around me.
“Leave them be.”
I jerk back towards the strained sound.
Kiran’s conscious, leaning against the shale cliff behind the girl with the boards on her legs. A sob bursts up my throat when I see he’s okay, and that his face is flushed with life, not illness. His shirt is open and his wound has been redressed.
“Kiran,” I whisper. He sends me a weak smile and I nearly buckle to my knees. I don’t care how he’s better, I’m just glad he is.
The girl’s eyes twitch in response to his words. Her mouth drops open in silent question. Absently, she worries the metal shank in her hand.
“She’s one of ours, Kyna.”
Kyna, the one he spoke of in his fever dreams. I glance to the braces on her legs. I’ve a soft spot for fragile women, he once said when he’d spoken of Daphne. I wonder if he was talking about this girl. Kyna.
Whispers. The Drivers are speaking to each other. It takes a full beat to realize he’s talking about me.
“She’s got Driver blood?” Kyna asks. Her voice is like his, but higher. It takes me a moment to decipher the words.
“No, I don’t,” I say. My ma conceived me in the city; it’s why she was marked. My father was some faceless buyer. A Magnate.
“She says she’s not,” says Kyna.
Kiran must be lying. He’s probably told them this to free me.
“She doesn’t know,” he says.
“It’s the outcast!” someone calls from behind me.
The eyes of every Driver, Kyna included, whip back to beyond the fire, to where Lorcan approaches, knives braced in both hands. They do not threaten him with their weapons, but seem frightened all the same.
I flex my fingers then pull them into fists, stronger with Lorcan near, but surprised by his presence. I hadn’t even heard him sneak up.
“What is going on?” Kyna rubs a hand over her forehead. “What is he doing here? And how do you know she’s like us?”
“Her stories,” he says. “She talks about the outcast. She calls him by name.”
“I…” I shift from one foot to the other, not sure what I’m supposed to say to get us out of this. “It’s Lorcan,” I finally say.
“Who told you his name?” Kiran asks.
“My ma.”
Kiran takes a slow, pained breath. “She wouldn’t know who he was unless someone told her, and the only one the outcast ever said he told was the girl he met in the city.”
They all seem to know who he’s talking about. Grim looks are exchanged, and all of a sudden I feel like I’m on display, like I’m on the auction stage again.
Shades of doubt slide over me. If Lorcan was my father, my ma would have told me.
“Of course,” I say. “Lorcan’s my father.” I’m just playing along, but all the memories are flashing before me. Lorcan teaching me to use a bow, to set snares. His long walks with my ma. The worried anger when I’d broken my arm falling from his horse. The blueberry pie on my birthday.