The first thing I saw was that the party hadn’t been “nearly ready to move again,” as Elias had told us. There were signs all around that others had been in the middle of their lunches too. But no one was eating now. Everyone was on their feet. Some people, particularly those with children, were rushing toward the back of the camp with their little ones. Others—mostly men—were stalking toward the front. Until now, I hadn’t realized how many weapons were in this caravan. Guns and knives abounded.
“What’s going on?” I asked one woman.
“Icori,” she said. “Best hide with us.”
Cedric and I looked at each other in disbelief. “Icori haven’t been in Denham in nearly two years,” he said. He put out an arm to stop me when I started to move forward. “You don’t have to hide, but we probably shouldn’t go bursting into the middle of this until we know what’s going on.”
“I just want to see.”
Cedric reluctantly moved through the crowd with me. He wasn’t the type to try to tell me what I could or couldn’t do. But I had a feeling that if there was any sign of danger, he’d toss me over his shoulder and carry me away kicking and screaming.
We stopped near the edge of a group of would-be prospectors, all with guns drawn. It gave us a clear vantage down the dusty trail through the woods. There, Warren and several other armed men stood in front of two men on horseback who met every description of the Icori I’d ever read or heard. Well, except for the part about them being bloodthirsty demons.
Dress and styling aside, these two looked pretty human to me. One was an older man, late fifties perhaps, with a bushy red beard and a tunic of green plaid. He was the size of a bull, and despite his age, something told me he could hold his own against a younger man in a fight. Probably a dozen younger men. The rider beside him didn’t look much older than Cedric. His bare, muscled chest was painted with designs of blue woad. A tartan in that same green plaid was draped over one shoulder and held with a copper pin. White-blond hair hanging loosely to his shoulders contrasted with his skin. He was the one Warren seemed focused on while speaking.
“And I told you, you have no business here. Icori are not welcome on Denham lands—or any civilized Osfridian lands. Go back to the territories you were ceded.”
“I would gladly do that,” the blond man replied, “if your people would stop trespassing onto our lands.” There were two notable things about the way he spoke. One was that he was remarkably calm, given all the guns pointed at him. Second, his Osfridian was nearly perfect.
“No one wants your lands,” said Warren, which seemed slightly inaccurate given all that Osfrid and other countries across the sea had taken. “If anything, I’ve heard rumors of your people harassing our lands up north. Should that be true, you’ll have real visitors in your lands in the form of our soldiers. A little more serious than these delusions you’re prattling on about.”
“The burned villages I’ve seen aren’t delusions. We demand answers.”
Warren scoffed. “Forgive me if I don’t really feel the two of you can make demands. There’s a lot more of us than there are of you.”
“Shoot ’em!” someone called from the crowd. “Shoot the savages!”
The Icori man remained unfazed and never looked away from Warren. “I’d hoped we wouldn’t need shows of force to open a dialogue on protecting innocents. I’d think that’s what civilized men do.”
“Civilized,” sneered Elias. “Like you’re ones to talk.”
“This civilized man is going to give you the chance to leave with your lives.” Warren’s words suggested generosity, but his tone was pure ice. “Not far ahead is a northward trail that cuts through the corner of Denham and leads over to the western territories. I’m sure you know it. I’m sure it’s what you took to get here. Turn around right now and go back. If you move fast enough, you should be out of Denham by sunset. I’m going to leave a group of men to guard that trail’s intersection and scout it out in the morning. If there’s any sign that you are still in our lands, you will die.”
“Shoot ’em anyway!” someone yelled.
The Icori murmured something to his companion. The bearded man scowled and answered back in their own language. The blond man turned back to Warren. “We will take our conversation elsewhere. Thank you for your time.”
The Icori turned around on their horses, and I held my breath as several men held up their guns and aimed at the Icoris’ backs. Warren noticed this too and held up a hand of warding. The Icori horses quickly moved from a walk to a gallop and were soon out of range.
The Icori encounter was all anyone could talk about for the rest of the day. Opinions were understandably mixed. Plenty were in the “shoot ’em” camp. Others thought Warren’s act of compassion only showed what a noble spirit he had.
“It was all a bluff,” an older man told Cedric and me at dinner that night. He paused to turn his head and spit. “He had no other choice. If he’d killed him, there’s always the chance of triggering another war. No one knows how touchy the Icori are these days. And that whole nonsense about men guarding the trail is . . . well, nonsense. Icori don’t need trails. If they want to slip away and melt into the woods, they can.”
I looked across the heads of the other settlers, off to where Warren sat on the opposite side of camp. He had a bigger group of admirers than usual, all lauding him on his masterful act of diplomacy. I’d thought it was well done myself until I heard our companion’s commentary.
“The Icori were much more composed than I expected,” I remarked. “I’d be a lot more hostile if I’d been forced from my land.”
“Twice,” the old man reminded us. “Don’t forget the heroes who threw them out of Osfrid in the first place. Good King Wilfrid. Suttingham. Bentley. Rothford.”
I tried not to wince at hearing my ancestor’s name. The settlement of Osfrid had taken place so long ago that it was easy sometimes to forget that the savages Rupert had fought there were the ancestors of those who’d fled across the sea and made new lives for themselves in these lands. Or tried to, at least.
“This place is so vast,” I told Cedric later. “Adoria’s a hundred times the size of Osfrid. Shouldn’t there be enough room for all of us this time?”
He gazed around us. Nightfall was upon us, but we could still make out the enormous trees as they reached up to the stars. “Greedy men never have enough room. I don’t know what’ll happen to the Icori—or this land. Osfrid was once this wild too, and now it’s clear-cut and parceled.” He looked back down and slipped his arm around me. I caught the scent of his vetiver, reassuring me not all civilization was lost. “One thing I do know is that they’ve increased nighttime watches. You and I are going to have to go separate ways tonight.”
“Are you sure?” But even as I spoke, I knew he was right. I could already see patrols assembling. “I won’t sleep nearly as well.”
“I’ll actually sleep better,” he muttered.
“You don’t like sleeping by me?”
“I like sleeping by you too much. I spend half the night thinking about—”
“Hey,” I warned. “There are children nearby.”
Cedric gave me a look of mock chastisement. “What I was going to say is that I spend half the night thinking about when we’re getting married. The places your mind goes. Someone should have sent you to finishing school.”
“Technically, you sent me to finishing school. So you’ve got no one to blame if you want me to behave differently.”
He drew me in for a kiss. “Now why would I ever want that?”
So there was no more shared sleep between us for the remainder of the trip. I missed it—achingly so—but I kept reminding myself this was all just another step along the path to our future. We would endure.
“You and your young man didn’t have a fight, did you?” Mistress Marshall asked me one day. We were both riding in the
wagon, and I was wondering if I should be concerned that I no longer noticed the rattling.
“Why do you think that?”
She gave me a knowing look. “Just noticed you’ve been sleeping by our wagon again these last few days.”
I felt a flush sweep over me. “Mistress Marshall—it’s not—it’s not anything like that. Nothing happened. We were just sleeping together. I mean, like, actually sleeping. Then we decided it’d be best to stop after the watches increased.”
“Very sensible of you,” she said. I couldn’t tell if she really believed me.
“I mean it,” I insisted. “We’ve behaved—that is, well, exactly as we should. And we’ll keep doing that.”
Her smile was kind, despite a cracked tooth. “Perhaps. But you’re very young. And I know how hot young blood can run. While you’re under my roof, I’ll make sure you’re respectable and keeping with the virtues dictated by Uros. But when you’re not under my roof . . .”
I couldn’t meet her eyes. “Mistress Marshall, we intend to behave with the utmost decorum until we’re married.”
“Intentions and actions rarely line up. And in the event your intentions go awry, I don’t want you to get in trouble.” She handed me a small burlap bag with a spicy smell. “These are cinnamon thorn leaves. You know what these are for?”
I gulped and, impossibly, felt my blush heat up even more. “Yes, ma’am. Our teachers at Blue Spring Manor—back in Osfrid—told us.”
“Well, that’s good,” she said. “Saves us both from an embarrassing conversation.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. As it was, I really didn’t think my mortification could get any worse at that moment. I tried to hand the bag back to her.
“Thank you, but I really don’t think I’ll need these.”
She refused the bag. “I’ve got plenty. They’ve kept me at six kids. If they keep you from having one before you’re ready, it’ll be well worth it.”
I might have tried handing it back to her again, but then I heard a shout from farther up in the caravan. “The eastern tributary! We’re at the eastern tributary!”
Cheers sounded, and I looked back to Mistress Marshall. “What does that mean?”
“It means, my dear, that we’re about to cross into Hadisen.”
Chapter 23
Aside from the tributary itself, there was no ostensible difference between Hadisen and the far reaches of Denham. We crossed the shallow water and continued on. Certainly, the land had shifted from what we’d left in Cape Triumph and its outskirts. Vegetation had thinned out, and the peaks of a low mountain range grew clearer in the distance. The famous gold mines were located in the foothills of those mountains. The lowlands contained greener farmlands, such as those the Marshalls claimed.
We’d been traveling for just over a week when we arrived in White Rock—Hadisen’s capital city, such as it was. Excitement and a renewed sense of energy filled our party as we crossed into the town’s limits. Had I seen it immediately after Cape Triumph, I would’ve been disappointed. But after days and days of trees, it felt as urban as Osfro. In reality, it was still a city in its early stages, with dusty tracks for roads and at least half the businesses being run out of tents. As in Cape Triumph, a mix of people walked the streets, but there were no elite well-to-do in this group. All belonged to the rough working class.
There was one fairly large house noticeable on a hill in the distance, almost as nice as Wisteria Hollow.
“That’s the governor’s house,” Warren said, riding up on his white horse. He dismounted effortlessly. “Where I’ll be staying.”
The words hung between us a moment, and I regarded the fine house with a moment of envy. “Tamsin will be pleased,” I said at last.
He gave me a small smile. “I hope so.”
In White Rock, a new sort of chaos ensued. This was the launching point for all the settlers. Some already had claims and plots assigned to them. They looked over maps and surveys, trying to determine where their lands were and how long it would take to get to them. Other settlers had come here blindly, carried along by a dream. They either solicited Warren’s agents for land to buy or lease, or else they sought work among those more established. Residents of White Rock, seeing new blood, were eager to come and sell their wares.
“I’m going out to my claim tonight,” Cedric told me later. He’d been consulting a map with several other men. “Ours are near each other, and we’ll go together.”
“I wish I could go too,” I said.
“I saw where the Marshall place is. It’s only about two hours’ ride by horse.”
“A regular horse or Lizzie?” I asked.
“Lizzie will do just fine. Let me see what shape the claim is in, and then I’ll bring you by.” Seeing my disappointment, he touched my face and drew me close. “It’ll only be a day or two.”
“I know. I just hate parting again after everything that’s happened.”
“Cheer up, you lovebirds aren’t parting for long,” said Mistress Marshall, striding up to us. “And he’s right—we are relatively close by. You’ll get there soon enough, though you might not want to after you’ve stayed with us. A wild claim isn’t going to look nearly as comfortable as a well-to-do homestead.”
Mister Marshall had been out to Hadisen a number of times, overseeing the construction of a house before bringing his wife and children. I wanted to be with Cedric, but a secret part of me was eager to sleep under a real roof in a real bed—especially since the sky was finally threatening rain. I also wondered what the odds were of taking a bath. There was so much dirt under my fingernails that I could no longer see the whites.
Cedric and I parted with a kiss, and I watched him for as long as I could as I rode away in the Marshalls’ wagon. The scrappy little town grew smaller and smaller, and I caught one last sight of Cedric holding up his hand to me before all was lost in dusk’s shadows. When we reached the homestead, night had fallen completely. I could just make out the house, a cabin built with crosswise logs. From the outside, it didn’t look very big.
As it turned out, it wasn’t that big on the inside either. We had a large common room to be used for pretty much every household task: cooking, eating, sewing, entertaining, and so on. A tiny bedroom to the side was reserved for Mister and Mistress Marshall. Upstairs, in a loft, a partition separated out two bedrooms—one for the girls and one for the boys. I was sharing a large bed with the three girls. I hoped none of them kicked.
We spent the rest of the evening hauling in supplies before the rain came. Cape Triumph’s sheltered position protected it from storms, but they could sometimes blow through to Hadisen with a vengeance. Most of the journey so far had been about endurance, and this was my first real taste of hard labor. Mister Marshall and a couple of the boys helped put the livestock in their barn. We finished just in time, and Mistress Marshall cooked us a pot of millet and dried meat for dinner over the hearth. We sat on a long bench at the table to eat. It wasn’t comfortable, especially with my aching muscles, but it saved us from sitting on the hard-packed dirt floor.
“It won’t stay like that forever,” Mistress Marshall said, pointing down. “We aren’t savages. We’ll soon have straw to cover it.”
When it came time to sleep, I picked a spider out of the bed and hoped there weren’t any more. We blew out the candles and listened to the rain pound against the roof as we lay huddled together in the large bed. It turned out to be a steady downpour, not a fierce storm. The roof didn’t leak, so it had that going for it at least.
Lying there in the dark, I remembered that I was a countess of the blood, a peeress of Osfrid. The anxiety I’d felt on my first day on the Hadisen journey rose within me, and I tried to think of Cedric’s words, that my difficulty came in simply adjusting to a situation I wasn’t perfect at. It was comfort enough to help me fall asleep, though I had to wonder how anyone could feel
like an expert at living in a cabin on the brink of civilization.
Cedric didn’t come the next day as he’d said he would. Or the day after that. At first, I was annoyed by the delay. But as more days added up, I began to worry. The Marshalls told me all was probably fine, but the fear gnawed at me. I had plenty of time to think about all sorts of terrible possibilities because I was constantly engaged in manual activities that taxed my body more than my mind. My academic lessons wouldn’t begin until the homestead was set up, and I didn’t mind pulling my share for the Marshalls. But I was hopelessly underprepared.
The skills I’d learned as a noblewoman were useless. And most of the Glittering Court’s lessons were as well. No marriage possibility had ever ended in a scenario like this. We’d practiced tasks that the mistress of a modest household—like Nicholas Adelton’s—might need to supervise or even help out with if the other servants were busy. But there’d been no preparation for the chores that met me out here. I learned to milk cows and churn butter. I ground hard corn into fine grain. I dug in the earth to plant seeds for vegetables and herbs. I cooked batches of simple, hearty fare that was low on taste but could feed a large crowd. I made lye soap—which was pretty much my least favorite job of all.
There was no party planning. No dancing. No sugared glass plates. No music in the conservatory. No conservatory.
And my hands were . . . well, not what they once were.
When Cedric finally showed, I was sweeping the cabin’s earthen floor—something that seemed completely pointless to me. It mostly felt like I was moving dirt around. I’d been up since sunrise, and it was only one of many grubby chores I’d performed. I looked up to wipe my brow, startled to see Cedric standing in the doorway, regarding me with an astonished look. I let the broom drop to the floor and threw myself into his arms, nearly knocking him over in the process. He used the doorframe to steady himself and then wrapped me to him more closely. I rested a hand on his chest, taking in how real and solid he was.