"If I'd been one of Rosten's men, you'd all be in prison or worse. I followed you because I could!"
"The pup speaks true," said Moravian. "Our precautions are perhaps lacking. With all the new troops in the streets –"
"It's not the streets we need fear," said Daelyn. "It's the passage outside the gates yonder. Anything we do in here can still be explained away. But not once we go beyond that wall."
"Then I say let's get going," Gerard said with a glance at the sky. "Before we're caught out."
The women had said naught this entire time, but that was no surprise. They wouldn't have been used to speaking for themselves. They had merely stood, waiting to be told what to do.
Watching them place their lives and those of their children in the hands of others, I'd never been so grateful to my mother for making the choice to raise me as male. The risks had been huge, and still were, but her choice had allowed me to at least be able to think for and defend myself. Guilt slashed at me. I hadn't once tried to contact her in all the months I'd been in Daelyn's employ. I vowed to seek her out...if I survived the night.
"Right. We're almost there." Penryn nodded toward the distant end of the field, where the crumbling city wall separated the fields from the others outside, and the forest and mountains beyond. "After that, it was up to you."
"There's one small item we've left undiscussed." The hissing, whining voice curled out of the shack's darkness. A man stepped out of the shadows. He wore Alyrian fashion, but badly, as though he weren't used to it. His doublet hung open, unlaced, beneath a too-long cloak that hung ragged-hemmed on the ground. His codpiece bobbled unbound with every step. His hair was long, though not as long even as mine, and it was as dirty and unkempt as the rest of him.
"Ho, Barnabus," said Freet. "You've got your fee. Be off with you until the next time."
I couldn't miss the way the women moved away from Barnabus and clutched their children closer. The small boy and girl clung to their mothers' legs, and when he bent to leer at the girl, she hid her face and began to cry.
"Oh, not so nice to Barnabus now, are we? When we have what we wants from old Barnabus?"
Now I could smell the man, a mixture of old sweat, ale and rancid food. I backed away, putting myself in front of Daelyn. Barnabus turned toward Carinda.
"Mistress, old Barnabus has left his home, risked his life, to serve you. Alls he asks is a little more respect."
Carinda's nose wrinkled. "And your service has not gone unnoticed, Barnabus. Your work here is greatly appreciated."
The man cocked his head in a grotesque parody of simpering flirtation. "'Tis dangerous work, living here in Alyria, finding the women what wants to leave their homes and making certain they get here without getting caught...."
"And you are well-paid for your endeavors." Daelyn skillfully cut off the man's rant. "More than well-paid. You have the gratitude of two monarchs."
Barnabus's sly, sidelong glance sent a chill running up my already shuddering spine. "Yes," was all he said, but gave that single word a depth of meaning I didn't like.
Daelyn seemed to notice it too, because he stepped closer and clapped him on the shoulder. "We don't do this for the glory, Barnabus."
"Of course not, my prince." The man's lips sprayed spittle as he spoke.
Daelyn stepped back from him with a barely contained wince. He turned to me. "Here you are, Aeris, and though it's not my choice, I see no other way than to have you come with us."
"Can he be trusted?" cried Freet.
My fists went up. "Of course I can."
Lir gave a low chuckle. "Trusted to jump to conclusions and take foolhardy risks."
"Enough!" Carinda snapped at us. "We don't have time for this muck. Let's get these babies to safety."
I was ashamed to have forgotten the children waiting in patient silence beside their mothers. "I want to help."
She nodded, then turned and scooped one of the larger children. "Carry the other one."
He was lighter than I expected, his legs bony under the layers of clothes. I held him on my back, and his little arms clutched around my neck as he gripped me with his legs. His head rested between my shoulder blades.
I'd never held a child before. My uncle's sons had all been born much later than I, and most had still been in their mothers' care when I left. Men are not interested in their offspring until the lads are old enough to stop shiteing in their clouts. Infants and toddlers, no matter their gender, wear the same clothes, leave their hair uncut, live in the same rooms. When a boy is five, old enough to feed himself and wipe his own arse, he's taken from his mother and sent to live with his father and brothers in another part of the house if the family is poor or middle class, and perhaps in another house altogether if the family is wealthy. He's given his first set of silks, his first case of unguents, oils and perfumes, his first circlet to bind back the hair that will never again be cut unless in punishment for breaking the law. He's trained in the tasks considered worthy of men: fighting, hunting, fishing, falconing, story-telling, dance. Girls are given their first haircuts and follyblankets and sent to work wherever it is deemed they can provide service. By the time they reach their first flow, most young women will have also been assigned a man to bear children for.
Carrying the child, I'd never felt so protective of anything in my life. I followed the others as they set off over the frosted field, and though the child was light, his weight was greater than any load I'd ever held.
Alyria had once been contained by a city wall that had fallen mostly into ruin over the past hundred years. The country's last great war had been the Battle for Protection – a war to keep out the traders and travelers the ruling body believed brought the plague that killed the male children. With only one border open to the outside, Alyria hadn't been difficult to defend. Those traders who now braved the trip over the mountains, across the desert or over the sea brought little and took away less. Alyria subsisted on its rich and fertile soil, its multitude of natural resources, and the laboring backs of its overabundance of women.
We reached the far edge of the joba melon field and the crumbling pile of brick that now served only to disrupt the sowing, plowing and harvesting of the fields. When we stopped to crawl through one of the broken places, Lir took an infant from the woman who needed to tend one of the older children for a moment. For an instant, the sight of him cradling the baby had my heart thumping fiercely. The hands I knew were capable of killing a man held the little one with a tenderness so obvious it brought tears to my eyes. He looked up and caught my gaze with his.
The silence stretched and grew between us, an exchange of no words but much emotion. Lir had reached down deep into my soul and pulled out all my secrets. All my hopes. For that brief moment, I felt he knew all of me.
Then the baby in his hands let out a whimper and he handed it back to the mother. The moment passed, but not the feelings it had risen in me. Foreboding swept over me, and I twisted my back to let the little boy slide down and take my hand, instead.
Freet and Penryn had been the first through the hole in the wall. Gerard followed, hand on his sword, and then two of the women and an infant. Carinda went next with the child in her arms. Just as Daelyn put his foot to the bricks, we heard the first cry.
Lir looked back again at me, our eyes locked, his wide and full of fear. He pushed Daelyn out of the way and leaped through the hole, sword already drawn.
I pressed the child's hand into that of the woman behind me and followed Lir. The smell of blood hit me as soon as I went through the wall. Most of it came from the huddled forms on the ground, two of them. One with silver hair. The other with flaming red.
Penryn sliced at two men who wore the white shields of Rosten's army. Guards. A third met Lir's blows with more luck than skill as Lir slipped on the icy ground and went to his knees, then rolled away from the soldier's hacking sword.
The woman holding the baby cringed against the wall, her bundle clutched against her. Moravian s
tood in front of her, fighting off yet another of Rosten's men. Carinda had put down her burden next to the woman. The girl-child wailed as Daelyn's sister waded into the fray, her dual daggers flashing.
I counted six soldiers. Rosten had his men patrolling in groups of threes to better utilize the small forces he had over a greater area. As Lir had said earlier, the army was stretched thin. These men were in the wrong place, at definitely the wrong time.
I'd been learning from Lir for months, but the lessons had never ended in death. This was no game, no lesson, and I froze at the wall before I could join the fight.
Carinda's shrill cry pierced my ears as she swung again and again. She felled one of the soldiers fighting Penryn, then whirled to battle against the other. She moved with grace and strength that matched Lir's. I would not have believed a woman could fight so well...and then the moment of indecision passed as I realized I was a woman. And I could fight that well.
I wore no sword, which meant I had only the Art and my desire to use it. It would have to be enough. I ran toward the soldiers and bent low to stumble them with well-placed kicks to their knees. Lir stabbed one who went to the earth.
Blood bubbled from the man's lips as he let out a curse. "Mothers' Milk! We only wanted to stop for a smoke out of that bastard Book Monster's sight!"
Then he fell silent and I had no time for sympathy, because the others were slicing, slashing and fighting. Another soldier went down, and in desperation his comrade looked toward a more defenseless target. Without hesitation, he ran his sword through the body of the woman huddled against the wall. She fell. The baby she'd been holding fell to the ground, and the little girl ran forward and grabbed up the bundle.
Time had slowed for me, as it always did when I practiced the Art. Now it seemed to stop. The soldier turned toward the child struggling with the infant. He raised his sword, his lip curled, his face a mask of fear and hatred. The sword began to come down.
I don't know how I moved so fast, only that I did. I could not let him kill a child. His sword whooshed over my head as I ducked and came up again on the inside of his reach. I punched him in the jaw, once, twice, then jerked up my knee to ram his cod into the tender place between his legs.
The fist not holding his weapon came up and hit me in the gut, and though I bent, I did not break. My head came up and cracked his chin. He flew back, slipped on the ground and went down. Instantly, I jumped and landed with my weight on his stomach. The soldier dropped his sword. He gasped and spluttered. I jumped again, my every moment seeming to take forever but really only lasting moments. This time, my feet landed one on each side of his head. I bent at the waist to stare into his face, and then I jabbed out his eyes with my forefingers.
He screamed, a sound so long and loud it made my ears throb with pain. As he writhed on the ground, I lifted my foot and slammed it into his face. Bone crunched. Blood flew. The soldier lay still and quiet.
I became aware of the sound of my own harsh breath, and of the murmurs and cries of the children and women. I turned to face the carnage. All the soldiers had been downed. Penryn nursed a bloodied arm, while Moravian wiped blood from a gash on his cheek. Lir appeared unhurt until I saw him limp as he came toward me. My eyes sought Daelyn, who showed no sign of injury, and Carinda and Gerard both stretched their arms and twisted their bodies as though to check for wounds.
"Aeris," Lir began, then looked at the soldier underneath me.
I lifted my hands, my bloody hands. In the moonlight it was as though I'd dipped my fingers in ink. I blinked, all at once woozy, and if Lir had not reached out to capture my arm, I'd have fallen.
What does it take to kill a man? Envy? Anger? Desire? That night I learned death is a simple tool, and all one needs to wield it is strength and motivation.
"I could not let him kill the child." My explanation sounded slurred, my words broken by the chattering of my teeth. Somehow, I'd lost my cloak, and now I stood in the frigid winter-coming air with naught to cover me but my tunic.
Lir looked away from the soldier and gathered me close to him. "Aeris, you're freezing."
He was holding me, but I could not feel his warmth. I could not smell nor see him. All I could see, smell, feel, taste was the blood on my hands. Blood I'd spilled.
My knees buckled. Lir held me up. In a moment, Daelyn was at my other side. At his touch, my vision steadied, my focus returned. I turned to look into his face.
"I couldn't let him kill the child."
"I know, love," said Daelyn. "I know."
Over Daelyn's shoulder I saw the boy I'd carried on my back. His eyes were wide in his pale, small face. He looked at the bodies on the ground, but he didn't speak. He didn't even weep.
I pulled away from Lir and Daelyn, and went to the child, and I took him in my arms. He was stiff, unyielding, and when I pulled away to look more closely at his face, all I saw in his eyes was my own reflection. I kissed his cold cheek.
"You're all right now," I told him, but he didn't answer.
"What in the Void happened here?" Carinda demanded. She stalked toward Daelyn and kicked one of the fallen soldiers out of her way. "You told me there were no border patrollers!"
"And so I believed." Daelyn's voice steadied. "Believe me, sister, had I known...."
"Had you known?" Carinda cried. "You ought to have known!"
Daelyn jerked his head toward Moravian and Penryn who'd bent over Freet's torn corpse. "We lost one of our own tonight, sister. Don't think this is any less horrific for us than you."
"They were avoiding their duties." Lir spat on the ground near one of Rosten's men. "They were supposed to be patrolling the city, but they snuck here, together, for a quick fuck and a smoke."
He pointed toward the bedroll tossed near the wall and the still-glowing embers of several cheroots. "Rosten's rules forbid fornication and inebriation while on duty. They came to smoke some herb and take a break. That's all. No plot. Just an unfortunate accident."
Barnabus, this whole time, had been cringing behind the wall. Now he stuck his head through the gap and gasped at the sight. Carinda turned toward him. "What know you of this, Barnabus?"
"Nothing, I swears it!" The nasty man cringed before her upraised hand. "Old Barnabus only brings the women to where the masters say he must!"
"He's too stupid to betray us," Lir muttered. He turned to Carinda. "It was misfortune. No more."
Now she gave her glare to him. "I say it's more than that!"
The boy in my arms began to shudder and shake, though he remained silent, his eyes dry.
"These children need to be taken care of," I said loudly. "I don't care how the soldiers got here. The children need to be warm, and fed. And taken away from here as fast as they can."
"My lady, the lad is right," Gerard announced. "We should get the women and children there before something else happens."
Carinda let out a low, agonized growl as she looked around the bloody ground. "My only joy is that we murdered all these bastards. These fucks!"
Her vehemence didn't shock me, but I could see no place in it right now. "The children. My lady."
She fixed me with her solid glare. "Had you not followed us, had you not wasted our time back there, we'd have been on our way and long gone before those fucking ruffians decided to jump their duties!"
I got to my feet to face her. She raised her hand to me, and I blocked the blow easily enough. We were well-matched in height and size, and likely in skill, too. She didn't try again. Instead, she shoved her face close enough to mine to sniff my skin. She stared into my eyes, hard.
"Have you told him your secret?" She whispered so only I could hear. "How can you expect him to trust you if you don't even tell him who you really are?"
Then she stalked away, barking orders at Gerard, who took them as meekly as a folly accepts orders from the man of her house. Gerard again lifted the children into his arms. The women carried the baby whose mother had been killed, while Carinda took the other. They set off acro
ss the fields at a loping run that soon took them beyond our sight to the trees beyond.
Penryn and Moravian lifted Freet between them, in an echo of what had happened earlier. Only now he hung from their arms with the lolling bonelessness of the dead, not the merely drunk. They dragged him to the edge of the irrigation pond, lashed rocks to his ankles and wrists, and rolled him in.
"Thank the Invisible Mother the pond hasn't yet frozen," Daelyn said as he watched the men come back to help Lir drag the other bodies into the water as well. He looked around at the bloodied ground. "Pray for snow, Aeris, to cover our tracks."
I said nothing. I'd gone from cold to hot to cold again, and now my body was so sore and weary I feared I would never make it back to the White Palace. My feet moved when I pushed them to, and I followed the others as we ducked and ran through fallow fields and again through the now-empty streets. Dawn was close when at last we reached Regent Square and the gates to the fight field.