I lay on my usual cot pretending to be asleep while Brother Thistle and Sister Pastel slumbered in adjacent cots. Arcus had chosen the mattress closest to the door, a shadow guarding the abbey from my dangerous presence.
At first I’d feared that Arcus planned to keep awake all night to watch me, but after giving me a stony look and ordering me to sleep, he settled down on his bed. He gave no indication whether he was grateful for my help saving Sister Pastel, or whether he believed I had started the fire in the first place. Perhaps at that moment he didn’t care. He’d moved slowly and seemed very tired, as if the effort of putting out the fire had taken every scrap of strength from his body.
When everyone’s breathing was slow and even, with only a rattling cough occasionally breaking the silence, I picked up a pair of leather boots that sat discarded by Brother Thistle’s feet, which were not that much bigger than my own. I took a thick cloak that hung on a peg on the wall and crept barefoot to the door.
As I turned the knob, it creaked slightly. I froze and glanced sharply at Arcus’s solid bulk. He slept on his side, his hood still firmly covering half of his face. Was that a slight hitch in his breathing? I waited, silent and breathless. Finally, when he didn’t move, I turned the knob and opened the door.
I felt my way in the silken dark to the arched eastern door of the abbey before putting on the boots, then crunched over the frozen ground to the kitchen, where I found a leather satchel and filled it with apples, hard cheese, a bit of dried meat, a few nuts and seeds, a sharp wood-handled knife, and a waterskin.
I knew from Brother Gamut that a small room adjacent to the kitchen served as an apothecary, where he dried and ground his herbs. Glass bottles lined the shelves. Inspecting each label, I chose the ones I thought most valuable. If the abbey had any silver or gold adornments—candlesticks and such—I would have taken those instead. But I hadn’t seen anything worth stealing.
I found a second leather bag and filled it to bursting with glass bottles, careful to wrap each in linen bandages.
When I reached the stables, the horses grew agitated, perhaps still unsettled by the smoke that lingered in the air from the church fire. One of them was Arcus’s massive, fiercely elegant white stallion. He snorted and stamped and rolled his glinting eyes at me. Instead, I approached a yellow-coated mare that greeted me with a blink of her soft brown eyes. I stroked the space between them and was relieved when she didn’t shy from my heat. In minutes I had her saddled.
We left the stables and rode west. As the mare proved steady and I found my seat, I lengthened the reins, the muscles of her back rippling. A sensation of freedom shot through me, heady and wonderful, and I squeezed my legs tighter, eliciting a burst of speed from the mare’s flanks. Every breath exploded in my ears as I waited for a shout from behind me or the jolt of hooves clattering across the forest floor.
But then I crossed the western boundary Arcus had set, and the quiet woods folded around me like the arms of an old friend.
The mare found a path through tall, fragrant pines and leafless oak and sycamore trees, and I let her follow it.
I would find a port city where I would sneak onto a ship. Tevros was northwest of Tempesia, but I wasn’t sure how far or where it was from here. As I considered which direction to go, my stomach rumbled out a reminder of a more immediate problem.
I leaned over to check on the leather satchel that held the food—and cursed. It wasn’t there! It must have become dislodged when I’d let the mare gallop and would be too hard to find in the dark. I struggled not to panic.
If I had better control of my gift, I could use it to hunt, to roast a squirrel or winter hare where it stood. But that kind of deliberate use was well beyond me. I’d have more luck making a trap, but I had no knife to cut twigs or branches, as it was in the same satchel as the food. I could only hope the path led to a village.
Rather than riding into a gorge, we stopped for the night under a canopy of pines. The next morning, I watched the sunrise paint the mare in streaks of gold, like butter melting on a soft piece of freshly baked bread.
“I’m going to call you Butter,” I told the horse with a pat. She snorted softly in reply.
While Butter ate withered grasses, which I hoped wouldn’t make her ill, I gathered some edible roots for a meager meal. My throat was parched with thirst, but there was no sign of water until the afternoon of the second day, when a distant rushing noise brought Butter’s ears up. A lively river churned over rocks. After drinking our fill, we followed the river’s course until it veered over a cliff. From there, we turned south and found path after winding path as the sun set again.
It was eerily quiet. An acrid, burning smell tainted the clean forest air. It wasn’t the smell of freshly burning wood, but the stale echo of things burned and left to decay.
We came upon a maze of wooden buildings, houses, and shops that were broken and charred and caving in on themselves.