Deciding against arguing, I rose and slipped into the room where I had spent the night alone. Curling up on the bed, I pulled the blanket around my shoulders and waited for midlight, begging silently for it to come and then fearful that it would. That it would and he wouldn’t arrive with it.
Moments slid into long minutes. I couldn’t be certain how much time passed, but then I heard Mirelya talking to someone. I sat up with a lurch, excited with the possibility that Fowler was back.
I swung my legs over the bed, but then paused. The other voice was unmistakably male, but too reedy to belong to Fowler. Standing, I inched toward the door.
I moved to the door covering, my hand hovering in midair, some deeper sense stopping me from pushing the covering and going through.
“I don’t care who told you that. They were confused,” Mirelya was saying.
“Perhaps you’re confused, old woman.”
That voice. Anselm.
My breath locked tight in my lungs. I held myself immobile, my fingers curling into knotted, bloodless fists, my nails scoring into my palms. I recognized the voice. I’d never forget it. Not mere days after he had attacked us. Not years from now.
“I’d know if I let any strangers into my home,” Mirelya snapped, her dislike strong in her voice, but there was something else. She was speaking loudly, stalling obviously. Everyone knew she had taken me and Fowler in. Any random passerby could confirm the truth. Or he could search the cottage.
I understood her purpose with sudden clarity. She was warning me. Giving me time to prepare. Hide. Run. Turning, I moved quickly, slipping my jacket over my tunic and snatching up my dagger and sword.
“I was told an older boy went out on the boats, but a younger boy stayed with you.” Footsteps sounded and I knew he was moving, circling the room, coming closer to the flap covering. “These two sound like they could be my friends.” His voice took on a silky quality that Mirelya didn’t mistake.
“If they’re your friends, how is it you’re not with them?” she challenged.
“We got separated running from dwellers.”
I inched away, still straining to listen as I came closer to the window. When I felt it bump my back, I turned, reaching for the edges of the tarp covering. I loosened the ties anxiously, my fingers tripping in their haste as I untied the fabric from the knobs at the window’s edge. Securing my cap snugly on my head, I swung a leg over the sill and slipped out of the cottage.
I settled my weight carefully on the wood planks, trying not to make a sound. There was only stillness at this back side of the cottage. I didn’t sense a flow of people like in the front. I inhaled and smelled only trees before me, the crispness of leaves fluttering softly in the breeze, the pungent musk of the centuries-old bark.
I pressed myself along the exterior wall of the house, not straying far from the window, still listening for sounds within. My ears separated their voices from the other noises around me. I waited, hoping, my lips moving in silent entreaty for him just to take Mirelya’s word and turn and leave.
A crash carried from inside the cottage. He didn’t believe her.
Mirelya’s voice rang out, “You can’t go in there!”
I pushed off the wall, knowing he would see the open window with its dangling cover. He need only to stick his head out and I would be discovered. One look at me—disguised or not—and he’d recognize my face.
Breathing raggedly, I moved, skimming a trembling hand along the side of the house until I rounded it and came to the front. My feet flew, relying on my memory combined with instinct as I followed the path that wove between trees and homes, bypassing villagers.
I had not gone very far when I heard a bellow. I froze for a moment before resuming my pace.
The cry came again and it was distinctly male and closer. Reedy and thin, it wrapped around me like a closing fist.
“Stop!”
My heart lurched. The heavy beat of his footsteps followed his cry. He was coming after me.
I ran. Desperate fire burned through me. My ears strained, listening and feeling with my skin, with my every nerve and pore and muscle. It didn’t even matter if I fell. If he caught me I was dead anyway.
No one would stop him.
I bumped a woman’s shoulder. She snapped at me in annoyance. I rushed ahead. There were more sounds behind me. He wasn’t being careful in his pursuit of me either.
Someone stepped into my path before I could stop my momentum. We collided. I fell over him in a tumble of limbs. I staggered back to my feet, gasping out an apology as I continued ahead.
I reached the bigger thoroughfare that we had walked down when we first arrived. It was bustling with people this time of day. The fresh aroma of bread and dried meat filled my nose and made me ache for home even as I was running for my life. Perhaps because of it. The thought of Perla flitted across my desperate thoughts. My warm bedchamber. Sitting with Sivo before the fire as he sharpened weapons.