“She felt so much lighter an hour ago,” Tristan jokes, his sweaty face shining in the gleam of our magelights. He’s trying to change the mood and get my thoughts off this downward spiral.
He doesn’t have to read my mind to know why I’m acting sullen and twitchy. He’s never felt the soaring bliss of the Gift firsthand, but he knows what it’s like through my memories. I feel twice as weak now that he’s called me out on it.
“I’ll carry her for a while,” I say, as if physical strength could somehow make up for what I’m lacking in willpower. I try to take all of Lillian’s weight, but Tristan won’t let me.
“So you’ll be completely exhausted by the time we’re outside the walls with the Woven? Don’t be dense. You’re better at fighting them than me.” Tristan’s glare softens. “Look, I’m tempted too, okay?”
“You don’t seem it,” I snap.
“Yeah, well, I’ve had more practice at wanting and not getting where she’s concerned.”
I don’t know what to say. Lillian has claimed thousands of people, but she never claimed Tristan. She did that to make it clear it was me, the poor Outlander, not Tristan, the son of a rich Councilman, who was her head mechanic. She did it for me, and Tristan has been shut out ever since—a mechanic whose witch won’t claim him. He’s never blamed me for Lillian’s decision, but if his jealousy is a thorn between us, than this is the thicket it came from.
We come up from the other end of the smuggler’s tunnel, past the edge of the Woven Woods. Above ground and out in the open and I feel like I can breathe again. Danger is immediate and basic in the woods, and I’ve always been more comfortable with that than with the hidden barbs and double speak of the city. Tristan isn’t. Dusk has fallen and it’s nearly black in the shade of the old-growth trees. His eyes keep darting around, distrusting every shadow. I read the ground and smile at him.
It’s okay, I tell him in mindspeak. There are no Woven tracks.
He smiles and nods back at me, but I know this is hard for him. He never learned how to track when he was a kid, like I did. Learning how to track is like learning a second language. If you start young enough you can do it flawlessly, but come to it too late in life and you’ll never be wholly comfortable with it. He has good feet, though, and he can move through the brush almost as quietly as I can.
The snap of cool air has cleared my head and given me a second wind. Adrenaline kicks in now and I heft my half of Lillian with more ease. There were no Woven at the exit of the tunnel, but we’re close to the city. It shouldn’t be long before we encounter some.
I can’t see the moon rising, but I know it’s there because the gloom has a texture to it. A moonless night is flat black and you have to use the stars to tell the time—which is hard to do when you only get glimpses of the sky through the treetops. We enter a clearing and I catch a faint silver shine glancing low off the glossy side of the leaves. From the angle I know that the moon is about two fists high in the sky. The night is young yet. A half past eight, give or take. Reading the darkness relaxes me.
Where are we going? Tristan asks in mindspeak.
Caleb, I reply.
I reach out to our other stone kin, feeling my way toward him. Caleb’s one of Alaric’s elite guards and always knows where he is. I get a faint reply from him—not enough to actually discern words, but enough to know which way to go. I alter our course slightly in his direction.
I count my heartbeats to keep track of time. I don’t need to, I suppose, but it gives my mind something to do other than obsess about Lillian. After ten thousand beats—about an hour and twenty-three minutes and six and a half miles—I find Caleb’s trail. Our tribe doesn’t leave much of a mark on the forest, but the passing of so many feet and so many horse hooves is impossible to hide. Even Tristan can see the churned earth, and I feel an unloosening inside him as he does. He’s relaxing too soon. Two hundred yards ahead, I spot Woven sign. Lots of it. They’re tracking our people.