I hold my breath, waiting to see how bloody it’s about to get, prepared to shut my eyes against it.
One person at the front of the line retreats, apparently deciding we’re not worth it. I pray the others will follow suit.
And then there’s a ripple in the crowd, as though people in the back are pushing toward the front. Kellyn, with his superior vantage and height, swears.
“City guards!” he calls, and turns tail.
Ah, they will have weapons.
He soon surpasses the rest of us with his impressive leg span, and he veers from the road instantly, plunging into the trees. Quick thinking, since we’ve no guarantee of outdistancing trained guards. Our only hope now is to lose them in the forest.
I hear their shouts behind us as leafy branches scratch my cheeks. My boots sink into the wet earth, slowing me down. Secret Eater throws me off-balance, the weight of my secrets pulling me to the left.
We twist and turn, Temra and I hiking up our skirts to prevent them from getting caught. Petrik has the best of it; his blue robes were replaced by fancy dress pants and a frilly shirt for the morning’s service.
Kellyn turns his head over his shoulder regularly to make sure we’re all still behind him, and I look back to see where the city folk are.
Not nearly far enough away.
As Kellyn returns his attention to what’s in front of him and rounds another tree, he windmills his arms, trying to slow his momentum. “Stop!” he shouts, but it’s too late.
A decline lies ahead.
Barely better than a drop, really.
We tip over the edge and slide downward. I lose my feet, going onto my rump as the mud slicks underneath me.
In fact, part of the earth seems to tumble down with us.
Mudslide.
Petrik is falling end over end to my right, and Temra is on her side, her dress coming up to her hips with the slide.
I think I’m screaming. I know Petrik is. I wait for the solid ground that has to follow, surely, and wonder how bad the impact will be.
Instead, everything disappears.
No ground. No mud. No sliding.
I’m falling.
I hear a waterfall churning somewhere nearby, can barely make sense of the noise over all the sensations coursing through me.
And then my knees buckle as my feet crash into the surface and water fills my mouth. At first I can’t tell up from down. Then my body slams into a rock, orienting me and bruising me at the same time.
I manage to get my feet under me and kick up toward the surface.
But Secret Eater will have none of that.
The sword is heavier than ever. Each time I swim a few feet upward, it drags me back down. In a full panic now, I twist my fingers around the knot holding it to my waist, but the leather won’t loosen now that it’s wet.
Something brushes against me in the water, and I shove away, imagining large fish and birds and who knows what else.
Until a hand wraps around my arm and hauls me up. I kick for all I’m worth, and my savior does the same.
When I finally break the surface and take my first drag of blessed air, I think I’ll find Kellyn grasping my arm.
But it’s Temra.
“I’ve got you,” she says. “I’m not letting go.”
We kick to the shore, where I see Kellyn dragging Petrik out of the water. They’re screaming at each other, so at least I know they’re both breathing.
“—grown man doesn’t know how to swim?”
“I was raised in a library! There were no lakes or rivers or damned puddles in the library!”
Once I crawl onto solid ground, I roll onto my back to breathe. Mud and rocks and even small trees still plunge into the lake from where we fell, the slide not done yet.
The guards are blessedly absent, finally, deterred by the dangerous drop.
We made it.
Kellyn urges us up and finds the nearest road leading out of the city. The visible threat may be gone, but it could easily return.
After a few hours, we finally rest. Kellyn clears a path through the trees, and we slump onto the soft mosses on the ground, each of us out of breath, a hundred or so feet from the road.
“Everything’s gone,” I say. “Our spare clothing, all the supplies, the horse.”
“Poor Reya,” Temra says.
“They won’t hurt the horse,” Petrik assures her. “She’ll likely have a very good life on that estate. You needn’t worry.”
“At least we have the weapon. Weapons,” she clarifies to avoid specifying the sword. “And we have money, don’t we?” Temra turns to me. “You always carry a large purse on you. Just in case.”
At that question, I turn my accusatory stare to Kellyn. “No, we don’t have any money. Not anymore.”
“Did it fall in the lake?”
“No,” Petrik supplies. “The mercenary wouldn’t come help us save you unless he was properly compensated. We would have been there sooner if Ziva hadn’t had to convince him to come.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Kellyn says. “That’s not what happened.”
“Really?” I cut in. “What would you say happened?”
“I said taking on the whole town would be stupid. I meant we needed a plan before jumping in!”
Petrik is shaking his head before Kellyn finishes his sentence. “You only came once Ziva handed over everything she had on her. You’re despicable.”
“You all wanted me to take on a hundred villagers! Excuse me for hesitating! Besides, it’s not like you didn’t pause to grab your books before coming to alert Ziva.”
“They were already packed! It didn’t even take a second to sling them over my shoulders! I had to grab the weapons, anyway. I knew we would need them in the fight. Don’t try to put this on me. You’re the one who didn’t leap to Temra’s defense immediately.”
“Never mind that now,” Temra says, breaking up the argument. I’m impressed by her sensible tone. She should be furious. She’s the one who almost died. “We need a new place to lie low, and we need supplies.”
Temra, Petrik, and I huddle together, exhausted and wet. “I have some food in my pack,” Petrik says. “We can gather fruit to take with us. There’s no helping sleeping on the ground at night, but if we stick together, we should be all right.”
Temra nods. “We need a destination. Someplace to start afresh.”
“We’re already headed in the direction of Lisady’s Capital,” Petrik puts in. “The big city would be a good place for you two to start over and hide.”
Oh, I do not like that idea. “We could just as easily lie low in the woods. Away from people and things. We could live off the land.”
“We don’t know how to hunt, Ziva, and I don’t think either of us fancies living off fruit until the end of our days. I’m with Petrik. We should hide in the capital. There will be job opportunities there. We can find a little place to rent and call our own.”
“To rent a place, we’d first need money. We don’t have any.” I can’t help the look I slide Kellyn’s way.
Before he can speak, Temra says, “We’ll sell one of your weapons. The spear. None of us has the skills to use it. This way it’ll be put to good use.”
I want to argue. I feel a shiver go down my spine just at the thought of living in the capital. But Temra’s logic is sound. There’s no way for me to talk around it.
“What is happening?” Kellyn asks from behind us all. “You think I’m just going to take your money and run? I’ll get us supplies. I’ll get you to the next city. We’ll be fine. Besides, I’m not going anywhere until I have that magicked longsword. Where the bladesmith goes, I go.”
The three of us lower our heads together once more. “I don’t like it,” I say. Specifically, I don’t like him.
“Me neither,” Petrik agrees.
“Doesn’t change the fact that we need him,” Temra says.
“You’re an excellent fighter,” Petrik says. “We’ll get by.”
“As excited as I am for you to finally acknowledge something about me, I’m not enough fighting power, and you both know it. What happens if we run into more wolves? Or bandits? Or our pursuers?”
She’s right.
I hate that she’s right.