“Oh, tell her I said hello,” Ella said, carefully handing the pottery shards to Frae. “Perhaps we could walk with each other again tomorrow?”
Frae was embarrassed that she had let Ella carry her broken bowl the entire time. You should have asked for it, so you didn’t bother her! But she had been too meek to raise her voice. Now her mind still reeled, and so she merely nodded.
“Good. I’ll see you then, Frae.” Ella smiled and began to backtrack along the road, her long braid swaying as she walked.
Frae turned to take the path that would lead her home.
She paused, staring down at the pieces again. She didn’t want her mother to see the broken bowl, so she hid the shards in the tall grass. Then Frae panicked, because she also didn’t want Mirin to know those boys had thrown mud at her—she didn’t want Mirin to know what those boys had said—but her plaid was stained. She quickly removed the green-and-red-checkered wool, turned it inside out, and draped it back over her head. There. Mirin would never know.
Frae sighed and continued along the path, her heart lifting when she saw Mirin waiting for her at the garden gate.
“Frae? What is this?”
Frae was reading by the fire later that evening, but she stiffened at the sound of Mirin’s voice. Without even looking up from the page, she knew what her mother was asking about.
Slowly, Frae lifted her eyes.
Mirin was holding up her mud-stained plaid, which Frae had tried to hide, crumpled up behind her oaken chest.
“Why is your plaid dirty, darling?”
“I slipped on the walk home,” Frae murmured, glancing away. Her face felt hot, and she hated lying. She hated it, but she couldn’t bear to tell Mirin the truth.
Her father’s a Breccan.
Frae felt ashamed of those words. She didn’t know what to do, but it felt far more terrifying to speak the words aloud to her mother. Because what if they were true?
“You should have told me earlier, Frae,” Mirin chided gently. “Then I could have washed it for you before the sun went down. You’ll have to wear the older plaid tomorrow.”
Frae nodded, relieved when Mirin set her mud-stained plaid aside.
While her mother wove on the loom, Frae continued to read. Or she tried to. The words swam on the page, and Frae’s heart felt heavy and sad. She missed Jack, and he had only been gone for a day. The cottage felt vastly different without him, like a wall had crumbled and cold air was creeping in.
“Mum?” Frae asked, hopeful. “Have you heard from Jack?”
Mirin lowered her shuttle. “No, but remember what he said before he left? It will take him a few days to reach Adaira. And then he will send word to us.”
“You’ll tell me when the letter arrives?” Frae asked, worried she might miss it.
Mirin smiled. “Yes. We’ll read it together. How does that sound?”
“That sounds good,” Frae said, returning her attention to her book. But the words still seemed to blur together. She couldn’t focus on them, and she sighed. “Mum?”
“Yes, Frae?”
“What do you think Jack is doing right now?”
Mirin was quiet for a breath. “I imagine he is sleeping beneath the western stars in a valley.”
“Sleeping?”
“Yes. If he’s traveling and it’s dark, the best thing to do is make camp and rest.”
“He’s not with Adaira?”
“No, not yet. The west is very big, I hear. There are many hills cloaked in bracken and woad and wildflowers and mist.”
Frae perked up. “How do you know that, Mum?”
“Someone once told me, darling.”
“Who?”
Mirin stilled for a moment, and Frae thought she saw her mother’s mouth press into a thin line. But she must have imagined it because Mirin continued to weave, seamlessly.
“A friend told me. Now why don’t you read aloud to me, Frae? I would love to hear another story in one of your books.”
Frae glanced down at the open page. She thought for a moment, chewing on one of her nails. She wondered: If my father is a Breccan, does that mean Jack’s is too?
For some reason she couldn’t explain, the idea gave her comfort.
It reassured her that Jack would be safe in the west.
Frae began to read aloud to Mirin.
Chapter 21
Jack woke with a splitting headache, his cheek pressed against cold stone. He didn’t know where he was, and his heart began to pound.
Don’t move yet. Don’t panic.
From his place sprawled on the floor, he took in his surroundings.
Rough-hewn walls of rock, a constant dripping sound, moldy hay for a bed, a bucket of refuse in one corner, overwhelming darkness with only one source of light to pierce it—a torch burning in a sconce beyond an iron-barred door.
He was in a prison.
He tried to swallow his fear, but it caught in his throat. His mouth was parched, as if he hadn’t had anything to drink for hours. He felt frozen to the floor as he continued to lie there, unmoving.
But his mind was burning, racing, reeling. For a moment he couldn’t remember anything, his memories spilling through his fingers like water. Like wind.
Don’t panic, he told himself again. Relax and remember what happened. What brought you here, and how will you get out of it?
His tongue stuck to his teeth as he controlled his breaths—slow, deep drafts of air. The tension began to ease its iron grip on his lungs and heart, and Jack coaxed his mind to remember what had happened.
There had been a hill, a bracken patch. Rab Pierce and his men on horses. A firepit, a pretense of friendliness. Jack remembered that they had taken his harp and his golden half coin. He remembered thinking that Rab would slit his throat. That when they had held his face over the fire to burn him, the flames had spontaneously died into smoke.
Jack shuddered, wondering how long he had been lying on this floor. Then his thoughts turned to how he was going to free himself.
He began to move, testing his arms. They felt weak as he pushed himself up.
“Ah, the Mad Thief wakes at last,” said a voice with a strange lilt. A voice so close that Jack could have reached out and touched its owner.
Someone was in the cell with him.
Dread pierced his chest like an arrow as he slowly angled his head to the left.
A fellow male prisoner sat against the wall, legs extended before him and crossed at the ankles. He was young and pale with a hollow aura about him. A scar marked his cheek, drawing up one corner of his mouth into a permanent grimace. His hooded eyes caught the sheen of torchlight as he regarded Jack.
“Where am I?” Jack said, his voice croaking. He tried to swallow again.
“A curious thing, to not know where you are. Although they did say you possessed only a shred of your wits.”
Jack merely stared at his cellmate.
“You’re in the dungeons of Castle Kirstron, Mad Thief,” the man said with a sigh.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”