Shards and Ashes

  Soon we came into a field of rock and upturned earth, the scars left by earthquakes a century ago. It went for miles in each direction, and we had to pick our way through it.

  “This will be the most difficult part,” Braeden had said. “You’ll feel more secure, because you aren’t on the plains, but if you feel sheltered, so does everything else. Get through it as fast as you can and back out to the plains where you can see again.”

  I looked around. Twisted earth and upheaved rocks turned the land here into something almost beautiful. Hills and fissures, overhanging rocks, even patches of green where the upheaval had brought underground springs closer to the surface. It smelled of water, too, a rich scent, like lush crops in the rare year when the baking sun didn’t stunt their growth.

  Behind me, Priscilla was lagging, and I had to keep waving for her to catch up. She was sulking because when she’d seen the greenery, with its promise of fresh water, she’d wanted to stop. I’d explained why we couldn’t, but it didn’t matter. She was tired and aching and wanted rest, and I wasn’t giving it to her.

  When I looked back again, I caught a flicker to the east, where the sun was, already so bright it hurt. I squinted and shielded my eyes. The landscape was empty. I’d seen something, though. A dark shape against the gray-and-beige rock.

  As I motioned Priscilla forward, I caught another movement, almost directly to my left. A figure perched on a furrow of upturned earth. A human figure. When I turned, it dived for cover.

  I frantically waved for Priscilla. She pretended not to notice me. Another figure climbed over a rock to my left. My horse whinnied and sidestepped. I jabbed my finger at the figures, but when Priscilla looked, they were gone, and she just kept trudging along.

  I measured the distance between us. Too far for me to whisper a warning without the watching figures knowing they’d been spotted.

  “Outsiders won’t attack like hybrids,” Braeden had said. “The horse is too valuable to risk killing. They’ll follow you and wait until you dismount, but if they know they’ve been seen, they’ll swoop in.”

  I’d stopped looking around now, but could catch glimpses of movement in every direction as our pursuers crossed the rough landscape, drawing closer. I tried to turn my horse around and go back to Priscilla, but we’d been traveling down a narrow path between a fissure and a line of rock, and while there was room to turn, my horse disagreed, whinnying and balking, hooves stamping the hard earth.

  I waved for Priscilla. She pulled her horse up short and sat there, scowling.

  “I can’t go any faster,” she called, ignoring my frantic gestures for silence. “My horse is tired and the rocks hurt his hooves and I don’t understand why we can’t just—”

  A stone hit the ground, right at her mount’s front hooves. He reared up.

  “Priscilla!”

  I yanked the reins, hard enough that my horse finally started to turn. Priscilla managed to stay on her mount, but one foot fell from the stirrups and she clung there, leaning over the beast, reins wrapped around her hands, eyes wide. Another rock struck near the horse’s rear hooves. Then another hit his flank, so hard that I heard the impact. The horse bucked. Priscilla flew off. The Outsiders charged, seeming to rise from behind every outcropping of rock, swarming toward us.

  My horse tried to twist and run. I held the reins tight and spurred her on. I reached Priscilla before the Outsiders did. I grabbed her outstretched arms and heaved her up, nearly unseating myself. I managed to haul her on just as an Outsider leaped. He caught her foot. The horse’s back hoof kicked him in the stomach, and he sailed through the air, spitting blood.

  I righted myself in the saddle. We were surrounded. Eight Outsiders. All men. They were filthier than the refugees who’d come to the fortress, some wearing ragged clothing, some wearing only a loincloth, one wearing nothing but a bluish paint streaked across his body. Their hair was as long and matted as their beards. Savages, ultimately not much more civilized than the hybrids. But they were human enough to keep their gazes half fixed on the riderless horse, now snorting and pawing the ground.

  I looked for an escape route. There wasn’t one, and even if they were watching the horse, making sure they didn’t lose it, the other half of their attention was on us and the second horse. I pulled my dagger from my boot. One saw it and snarled. He charged, but I was already in motion, spurring my horse toward her stablemate.

  “What are you—?” Priscilla began.

  As we closed in on the horse, I raised my knife.

  “No!” she shrieked, both hands clutching me, fingers digging into my sides.

  I slashed the knife and caught the other horse in the flank. He let out a scream. Then he bolted. Seeing their prize escaping, six of the Outsiders tore after it. The oldest one shouted and snarled and waved, as if trying to call some back, but none listened.

  I gave my horse full rein then, and she galloped back the way we’d come. An arrow whizzed past. A second caught the folds of my shirt. But they didn’t dare risk hurting the horse—or wasting arrows—so after two shots, they settled for chasing us, howling and raging as they fell ever farther behind. Twice, the horse stumbled on the rocky ground. Once, I thought she was going down, but I managed to rein her in, slowing her enough to get her footing and keep it, and we continued on through the rocky divide.

  When we reached the other side, I took us a little distance out onto the plain, then stopped my horse and slid off.

  “You don’t need to do that,” Priscilla said. “We can both ride.”

  I certainly was not walking so that she could ride. I resisted the urge to snap that and said, “You need to get off, too, before the horse keels over from exhaustion.”

  “O-out here?” She looked around. “It’s not safe.”

  “That looks like a sheltered spot over there,” I said, pointing to a pile of stone, oddly out of place in the empty plain.

  It was the next stop on the mental map Braeden had given me. He’d called it something I hadn’t quite understood—an Outsider term. As I drew closer, I realized it was a pile of ruins. The remains of a building from the Old World. There weren’t many of them left—they’d been scavenged decades ago. But this one was a twisted mass of man-made rock and metal rods that looked as if it had been fused together in a giant oven.

  “Wh-what is it?” Priscilla asked as we drew closer.

  “A building from the Old World,” I said. “Destroyed by some kind of bomb, I think.”

  “Bomb?” She said the unfamiliar word like I must have repeated Braeden’s Outsider term. If you hadn’t read every book in the fortress’s collection a few times, there were a lot of words you wouldn’t know—ones that had dropped from our vocabulary because we had no use for them. Even I wasn’t sure exactly what a bomb was or whether one had done this.

  I crawled through what must have been a doorway. Inside, it was hushed and cool. I picked my way through the rubble until I saw Braeden’s message: “Soon.” I wiped it away quickly, but there was no rush—Priscilla was still outside.

  “Get in here,” I said. “We need to rest, and this is safer than any pile of rock. We can stay here for a while.”

  She finally came in. She didn’t look around, just walked straight into the main room, stretched out gingerly on the ground, and laid her head on her arm. As she rested, I continued poking about.

  When I first heard the growl, I was near the back wall, in a separate room. I wheeled, ready to race back to Priscilla, but the rational part of my brain said it was only the wind whistling past. A real growl meant hybrids, and if one got anywhere near the ruins, the horse would have let us know. But when the growl came again, closely followed by Priscilla’s shriek, I stumbled back to her so fast I reached the main room only to trip on the rubble and fall face-first, barely catching myself as I hit the ground.

  As I lifted my head, Priscilla raced over to help me.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I think it’s Braeden.”

  I loo
ked up to see a massive black wolf in the doorway. Saliva dripped from its open mouth. Blue eyes held mine. Human blue eyes, one of them filmed over, as if blind.

  “It’s a werewolf,” I whispered. “But it isn’t Braeden.”

  “How would you know?”

  I didn’t answer. I’d seen Braeden in wolf form. His dark eyes stayed the same and his fur matched his hair—medium brown. This wolf was almost black, with grizzled gray around his mouth. Older. Bigger, too. A lot bigger.

  “Don’t break eye contact,” I whispered. “We’re going to back up—”

  “To where?” Panic edged into her voice.

  I reached out and gripped her arm, my gaze still holding the wolf’s. “We’ll find another way out.”

  There wasn’t one. Not that I had seen. But she nodded and rose to her feet.

  “Don’t break eye—” I started.

  The wolf growled, the sound reverberating through the hushed room, and Priscilla leaped up to run. The wolf lunged. I dived out of the way. Priscilla flew into the wall, as if the wolf had hit her, but he was still running. I looked up to see a man in the doorway, his hands lifted, fingers sparking.

  A woman appeared behind the man, pushing past as the wolf brought Priscilla down. I started to run to Priscilla, but the first man hit me with magic, knocking me off my feet. I saw Priscilla twisting under the wolf as she tried to fight it off. The woman said something—words I didn’t understand—and Priscilla stopped. Just froze.

  Something hit my side. I caught a flash of fur, felt claws scrape my leg. I tried to rise, tried to drag myself away, but a second wolf had me. Still I fought. Then fangs clamped down on the back of my neck, pinning me to the ground, and I stopped struggling.

  “The Branded,” Priscilla whispered. “We’re dead now. Worse than dead.”

  She moaned and huddled on the dirt floor of the hut. Our attackers had brought us there, thrown us in, and left us. It felt like half a day had passed, just sitting there in the dark, waiting, listening to Priscilla.

  When the door flap opened, the sudden blast of sunlight was so strong it blinded me. I felt fingers grip my forearms. Someone yanked me to my feet. Priscilla screamed at them to leave us alone, that she was a Second’s daughter, and her father would hunt them to the ends of the earth if she was harmed.

  The man who held me only laughed and kicked at her when she tried to attack. Then he dragged me out, stumbling, into the bright midday sun. As he led me, I blinked hard and looked around. I’d been blindfolded when they brought us in. Now I saw that we were in a camp filled with leather tents. People milled about, mostly men, a few women, no children or elders. A raiding party. Some looked over at me as I passed. Most continued with their tasks—sharpening weapons, cooking food, tending to the small herd of horses tied nearby, my own mount now among them.

  My captor said nothing, just led me along, one hand on my arm. When we reached another tent, he opened the flap and prodded me inside.

  Again, I was blinded, this time by the sudden dark, and I stumbled. Fingers gripped my arms and steadied me. They pulled me inside, and the door flap closed. Then arms went around me, lips coming to mine in a deep kiss.

  “You did it,” Braeden whispered when he pulled back.

  I blinked. There was a small lantern blazing, and after a moment, I could see him in the dim light. His cheek was cut, healing now, along with a blackened eye. I hugged him, tight and fierce, and when he stiffened a little, I remembered his back, whipped and branded. I tried to pull away, whispering an apology, but he hugged me again.

  “You really did it,” he whispered.

  I looked up at him. “We did it.”

  A smile. A kiss. Then he led me to a blanket, where dried meat and water waited. I took the water first, gulping it.

  “You weren’t hurt?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “You knew it was me, didn’t you?” he said. “The wolf that took you down? I thought you would, but then I wasn’t sure you did.”

  “I knew,” I said. “I’m just a good performer.” Another gulp of water. “So it worked? The Branded took you in?”

  “I had to fight a few rounds to prove my worth, but they can always use werewolves, and young and healthy is even better. It doesn’t hurt that they lost their blacksmith in a raid last year.”

  “Good. So now . . .”

  I took a deep breath. My heart hammered so hard my hands shook. Braeden squeezed them.

  “It’ll work. The hard part is over. Now we just need to—”

  The tent flap opened, and in walked a massive man with grizzled black hair and blue eyes, one cloudy and sightless.

  “So, girl,” the man said. “What are we going to do with you?”

  The Branded. That’s what those in the fortress called them, in hushed tones with averted gazes. They might fear the hybrids and the tribes, but it was the Branded they invoked to frighten children. The greatest danger in the Outside, one the fortresses themselves created by casting out those with supernatural powers and branding them. Did they not realize that those branded outcasts would find each other? That they’d create their own tribes, more organized, more powerful, and more dangerous than anything in this barren world?

  This was why I had informed on Braeden, rather than just helped him sneak over the wall. He needed that brand. While not every branded Outcast was accepted—those rejected were killed on the spot—we knew he’d be a prize recruit. As long as he bore the mark.

  A mark I did not bear.

  “The boy tells me you have no powers,” the grizzled man said. “You’re certain of that?”

  “As far as I know.” If I had, this would have been much simpler. I didn’t say that, of course, only dropping my gaze respectfully.

  “That’s a shame. You would have made a good addition to our tribe.”

  Beside me, Braeden stiffened. “She brought you—”

  I quieted him with a hand on his arm. I tried to be discreet, but the man noticed and laughed.

  “He said you were a smart one,” he said. “I see he’s right. I’m well aware of what she brought, boy. Reminding me is not appreciated.”

  “I’m young and strong and healthy,” I said. “I can read and write. I can cook. I can sew. I can farm. I can tend livestock. I can fight, too. With weapons or without. I can ride. I can hunt. I can slaughter and skin. I can do anything the tribe requires of me.”

  “Almost anything,” Braeden said, his voice a growl as he gripped my hand.

  “Put your back down, boy,” the man said. “You’ve made the situation clear, and I don’t need that reminder either.”

  The man circled me, his gaze critical, assessing my health, my strength.

  “Anything I don’t know, I can learn,” I said.

  “I’m sure of that. Braeden tells me this plot was your idea?”

  Not entirely true, but it did me no good to be modest, so I nodded.

  “I don’t know what you’re expecting, girl, but life here isn’t going to be as easy as it was in the fortress.”

  “No life is easy,” I said. “It’s just a different kind of hard.”

  “True.” He looked toward the door. “It’s a good horse. We were hoping for two, but we can raid those that stole the other one. About the girl, though . . . You’re sure her father wants her back? She’s not a son.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but without a son, she’s the only way he can hold on to power and pass it along to his kin. The First is old. He will die before next winter ends. Everyone is certain of it. He has no living child. Both the Second and Third will want the position, and they know that an alliance is the best way to solve the problem. If Priscilla marries the Third’s son, both can rest assured of their legacy. They will each move up one post with the promise that the son will become First after Priscilla’s father.”

  The grizzled man shook his head. “It’s all too complicated for me. But that’s the fortress way, and if you’re as smart as you seem, you’d know that
your gift is useless if they don’t want her back.”

  “They will.”

  “You took a big risk, expecting her to follow you. Would have been easier just to take her.”

  “I knew she’d come, and it worked better if she thought it was her idea. Also, this way, the fortress will never know I betrayed her, so they won’t have the excuse to exile my friends.”

  The man smiled. “Good. Loyalty is important here. All right then. We accept your gifts. Welcome to the Branded, girl. There’s just one more thing we need to do. . . .”

  I stood by the fire. There was no crowd here. No onlookers at all. Only those who needed to attend. Everyone else continued with their work.

  It was Braeden who held the brand in the fire. The camp had been using the stable master as a smith, and the grizzled man—the camp leader—offered to let him do it, but Braeden said no. The leader seemed surprised, but I understood. Braeden didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.

  Braeden gave me a piece of leather to bite down on. I didn’t refuse it. I couldn’t start my life here screaming in agony.

  “If you have to cry out, they’ll understand,” he whispered as he took out the brand.

  “I won’t.” I smiled back at him. “It’s only a burn.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to—”

  “I trust you.”

  “I mean I wish it wasn’t necessary.”

  “It is.”

  He moved me into position, lying flat on my stomach, which he said would be easier. I lifted my head and looked at Priscilla’s tent. If I strained, I could hear her crying. Did I feel guilty for what I’d done? Yes. Did I wish I hadn’t? No. I knew what I had to do, and I did it. Sometimes, that’s the only choice you have.

  Braeden lowered himself to one knee beside me, and I could feel the heat of the brand over my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  “I’m not,” I said, and closed my eyes as the metal seared into my flesh.

  Necklace of Raindrops