“Thank you,” she breathed to him, letting her hand run over his smooth neck before he nipped at her. He climbed easily through the jagged peaks that were increasingly a struggle for Sir Gorrann’s brown mare, Cyndy. The air became thinner and cleaner, and Dinah relished the sharp, cold breaths that cleared her mind.
They stopped to camp for the night, and Dinah was allowed her one question as the Spade stoked his nightfire. She asked about Harris, and learned that he had been imprisoned in the Black Towers. He was part of a group being forced into slave labor, helping to reinforce the Iron Gates, and so Sir Gorrann said that Harris was outside for a few hours most days. He confessed that the old man looked broken, weary, and sad. He was often covered with bruises and cuts inflicted by the Clubs. This news broke Dinah’s heart, and afterward there wasn’t a day that she didn’t think of Harris’s kind face and soft hands. He had delivered her from her mother’s womb, loved her the way her father should have, taught her everything she knew, and now he was in pain. It was unforgivable, and the white-hot rage she felt toward her father could have burned the Twisted Wood to the ground. To her devastation, she learned that Emily had been beheaded for treason in a public execution, based on the shabby testimony of Nanda and Palma, Vittiore’s ladies-in-waiting. The Spade didn’t talk to her for the rest of that evening, and Dinah was grateful. She stared out at the Wonderland stars, bunched together in small clusters, and didn’t bother to wipe the tears that dripped down her face. Her life was like nightfire—a place that once burned with bright hope, now nothing more than a flickering blackness, her suffering invisible to the naked eye.
Six
In the weeks that followed, she woke sore but rested. Together, they gulped down a quick breakfast of stale bread and game before her training began. After days of working on balance, Dinah finally got her sword back, and with it her pride. She was covered in bruises, but each one had taught her a painful lesson, one that she would not soon forget. Pain cemented things in the brain the way reading did not.
After sparring, they continued to make their way east, going painfully slowly as they navigated their way over pebbly ground and fields of strewn boulders. The Yurkei Mountains were upon them now, and the farther they got from the Twisted Wood, the less she feared her father finding them. The rocky outcroppings and grooves in the earth provided minimal protection once they reached the tree line, but there was no one around. The Spade had delivered them from the king’s hands, as promised.
In the evenings, Sir Gorrann would tell her of the politics and rumors swirling around Wonderland. Some she knew and some she did not know. He told her dark stories of the Spades, stories that entertained while making her blood curdle. He never spoke of his own past, which made Dinah even more curious about where he had come from and why he was here. When she pressed him for answers, he simply walked away, leaving her in uncomfortable silence.
After one morning’s lesson—which consisted of repeatedly striking targets that Sir Gorrann had marked with charred wood—they started their hike early due to the abundance of ominous clouds in the west, and continued to make their way toward the mountains. The weather had turned in the last few days. Cheerful and glossy spring had changed into sopping warm rains and foggy nights. As she was almost constantly damp, drenched, or drying, Dinah had never known that being wet could be so miserable.
The pair circled their way around boulders that resembled hulking granite giants, ones that even seemed to dwarf Morte. That day had proved the most challenging climb so far, and both were exhausted from leading their steeds over the rocky switchbacks that led up a nearly sheer cliff face. Dinah felt a question alight on her tongue. The Spade had shared so little about himself, and her curiosity grew more potent every day.
Hoping that the discomfort and distraction of the climb would ease his fury, Dinah dared to speak the question: “Sir Gorrann, what happened to your family?”
The Spade flinched as he nicked his arm on a sharp rock outcropping. “Damn! Look what yeh made me do. Been dying to ask, have yeh?”
Dinah shrugged, the motion giving Morte’s new leather reins a shake, a gift from the Spade. Morte regarded them humorously, seeing how he could break them on a moment’s notice. Most of the day, they were rarely anything other than decorative.
“Perhaps. It’s either that or tell me exactly where we’re going in the Yurkei Mountains.”
The Spade took a deep breath and stared aimlessly at the sky with his dark gold eyes. “Fine. I’ll tell yeh about my family. What I’m about to share cannot be repeated, understand? And once I tell it, yeh may not ask any questions about it. I’ll not have you pestering me for feelings that I’ve long buried.”
Dinah nodded. “I won’t. Promise.”
“Fine, then.” He turned slightly back to look at her, his long gray hair blowing in the breeze. “Cling to the wall, Princess, or this coming wind will rip yeh right off.”
Dinah pressed herself against the stony slate and continued to watch him silently. The Spade stared off into the distance, his eyes focused on something she couldn’t see.
“I grew up in the Twisted Wood, farther north from where we’ve been. That’s why I have a bit of an accent, yeh see? A small village called Dianquill. Yeh’ve probably never heard of it.” Dinah shook her head, her eyes trained on the hundred foot drop before her.
“I was just fifteen years old when I met Amabel. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, this tiny red-haired girl, obviously hungry and dressed in filthy rags. I gave her some Julla fruit that I had in my bag, and she scampered off into the trees. ’Twas weeks later when she found me out hunting. In return for food, she taught me how to track. Though I might seem skilled to yeh now, I am nothing compared to Amabel. She could track a deer for a hundred miles and at the same time follow the path of a man who had walked that land twenty days prior.”
Sir Gorrann paused to take a long drink from his waterskin. “We married when I was nineteen, and I tell yeh, I have never loved another woman. Every morning when my eyes open, I can see her face—her long red hair, her bright eyes, wild as the sea. Hunting became almost too easy with Amabel’s tracking skills. We had a bounty, and life was sweet and easy. After our third year of marriage, we welcomed a daughter, Ioney. She looked like her mother. I bet Amabel that I could never love anything more than her, but I lost that wager the moment I first laid eyes on our little Ioney. Our family was complete, and I wanted for nothing. I was a happy young man. Then they came. It was a damp spring day, not unlike this one . . .”