Shada
was cruel. Shada woke to pain that reached from her throat into her chest. She tried to lie still, but the wagon’s bouncing would not let her.
She heard a noise. A young soldier lay in a cot next to hers. It was Private Merin, the astronomer. Between them knelt Father Brin, murmuring a prayer.
“What…” she began then did nothing but cough for a while. Putting a hand on her throat, she touched a small bandage in the spot where her attacker’s knife had cut her. Her head ached where his blow had landed.
Brin had jumped a little when she spoke. He replied softly, “I’m glad you’re alive, Caretaker. What would we do without you?”
His greeting lacked spirit. He looked pale and haunted, older even. She had hardly spoken to him before now. Usually, he followed in Arumin’s wake, his piercing eyes assessing everything for its use. He struck Shada as profoundly selfish. She wondered what had happened to produce such a change in him. That raised the question of how long she had slept.
Her throat stung from her first attempt to speak. She was not yet brave enough to try again. Filling much of the wagon’s interior was the unconscious form of Private Hulgar, whom Shada knew only by sight. On the floor sat the Lady’s box. Its door hung open, displaying its empty interior.
Shada sat straight up and gasped, “Where is she?” Coughing less this time, she looked around for her boots. Her voice was hoarse.
Brin put a finger to his lips. “They don’t know about her.”
She lowered her voice, grateful to speak with less pain. “Who doesn’t know?”
He gazed at the sleeping soldier. “Some people no one expected to see again. The convicts from the old prison camp.”
Shada tried to stand in the cramped space. Dizziness nearly toppled her. Compromising, she waddled to the wagon’s small window on her knees, refusing the priest’s offer of help. She rose, braced herself, and looked outside.
The company’s wagons rolled along a jungle road, probably the same road the crusaders had traveled the day they arrived. Some of the Ronians trudged beside the wagons, unarmed. Others sat huddled in the vehicles. A larger group of shabbily dressed men and women held them captive, walking alongside with weapons that included the crusaders’ own rifles.
Some of the Ronians’ faces were desolate. Others showed violent terror like that of trapped animals. Shada lowered herself to the floor. Brin had gone back to prayer. When he stopped for a moment, she asked, “What happened?”
His sigh was less annoyed than resigned. “Something attacked us at the tower last night.”
Throat still stinging, she attempted a longer sentence. “You don’t know what it was?”
“The men call them wraiths. I didn’t think they were real. All I know is that there were a lot of them. They captured the company and handed us over to the convicts. I’d never believe it if I hadn’t seen it.”
Shada leaned against the wall. A thought struck her, and she cried through the pain, “Where is Nor?”
Brin’s eyes widened a little at her disproportionate concern for the monk and her familiar use of his nickname. She blushed. But his answer was grave. “We don’t know. He, the captain, and a few others left to find the wraiths and speak to them. We haven’t seen them since.” Maybe he realized how grim that sounded, because he added, “But apparently, they weren’t gone long before the wraiths arrived. They might have returned after the convicts took us.”
Shada breathed deeply and clung to that hope. She had no idea why the captain would wish to contact those beings, but if that contact had gone badly, it could have caused the attack on the tower.
“Speaking of that, keep your eye on these two.” Brin’s voice was flat as he nodded at the two soldiers. “They betrayed us. Let the wraiths in. We’ll be lucky if our own men don’t knife them before they can face proper justice.”
Shada stared at Merin and Hulgar. Blue crust dotted the skin of each man.
Traitors? She could not imagine what they could gain by turning the company over to enemies. There must be a slim possibility that it had been an accident.
Then again, another traitor had tried to steal the Lady last night. Privately, Shada had taken to calling him Boots, since he’d mentioned his boots, and naming him something silly made his memory a little less terrifying. She would have to tell the others about him. There could be other spies in the company.
But her immediate duties lay elsewhere. “What’s happened to the Lady?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “The waytower burned down.”
That would be the fire her attacker had started. The Lady could not have been destroyed by it. She could fly, slip under doors, go wherever she wanted. Shada didn’t know if the Lady could be destroyed. All of which made her disappearance stranger. It was Shada’s duty to find her, all the more so if Shada’s rebelliousness had driven her away.
Shada had to get more out of Brin, who seemed eager to stop talking. “Hasn’t anyone seen her?”
The priest shook his head, distracted. “I haven’t. Maybe someone else has. The convicts are always watching, so no one’s had much chance to talk. A lot happened last night, but I only saw pieces of it.”
She nodded impatiently. “Go on.”
“The wraiths surrounded the tower. But it was burning, and they mostly kept their distance. Then the convicts arrived—they must have befriended the wraiths somehow. Most of the company was still in the tower, but everyone would have burned inside it if they hadn’t surrendered.
“I heard one man disappeared completely. You were the last person they carried out. Someone found you in a hallway.”
His voice held a question. She answered, “I don’t know what happened to me. Maybe the Lady saved me.” The Lady had certainly saved her from Boots. Mere hours after the Lady had stated her reluctance to intervene in the company’s affairs, she had been forced to help Shada again. Now she had gone.
A surge of fear took Shada, and she stood up. “I’ve got to find her.” Talking was getting easier.
Brin’s mouth opened as he searched for words. “You can’t go out there.”
“I have to. I’ll ask the others if they’ve seen her.”
The priest stood and leaned in close. She wondered if he would physically stop her from leaving. “Don’t call attention to yourself,” he whispered. “When we get to the prison, you won’t want these people to notice you if you can help it. Not for any reason.”
“I’ve got to try,” she replied. “I’ve got to do something while I have a chance.”
“There is no chance!” His intensity startled her. Without trying, she was getting close to whatever had so upset him. Part of it must be simple fear for his life, but that was not all.
She waited and listened, expecting him to go on. If he proved himself too distracted to reliably judge danger, she would feel like less of a fool for leaving this wagon.
But instead of saying more, he knelt to return to prayer. Only when she kept watching for a few minutes did he speak again. “I didn’t want to shock you after what you’ve been through, but I can see it’s no use.” He paused self-consciously. “Here it is: the convicts despise Ronian soldiers. When we get to the prison, unless there’s another miracle, they’ll probably kill all the soldiers in our company. They may spare me and you if we’re lucky.”
Chills ran down her spine. She had known death was possible, of course, but Brin’s reminder made it real and made her feel powerless.
She wanted to keep talking more than ever. That could make what awaited down the road feel farther away. “Father Brin, may I tell you something?”
He nodded. Since he did not seem to care about formalities, and the two soldiers slept on, she sat on the bed near him and spoke, keeping her voice low to save her throat. Coughing here and there, plowing on despite the pain, she told him about her dispute with the Lady: how Shada had disobeyed her, talked back when corrected, and challenged what she was told. She told Brin this might be why the Lady had disappeared.
She wished she was talking to Nor, though one hardly had a right to choose in these matters. She did not fully trust Father Brin, but he listened without complaint.
Until she told him about Boots. He grew still as she related the attack. When she told him Boots had meant to kill someone before he left, Brin grunted and bent as if he was concealing a punch in the gut.
This surprised her. She had assumed her attacker meant to kill her, but perhaps Brin thought otherwise. She was deciding whether to broach the subject when a voice startled her.
“I keep hoping it was a dream,” said Merin. He stared into space, talking to no one in particular.
Brin did not answer. After Shada’s story, he had turned to stone.
Shada filled the silence. “If you mean last night, I’m afraid not.”
He raised a hand and examined the blue residue on it. “I can’t feel it anymore. Its effect has faded, thank the Goddess. But I remember how it felt. What it made me do.”
Shada watched him pull a speck of blue from his hair and roll it between his fingers. She asked, “Did that stuff hurt you?”
Merin’s face reddened, and his mouth twisted. Patches of blue residue stood out on his face and in the corners of his eyes. “Yes, though not how you might think. It led me to betray everyone.”
Shada moved and sat on the floor in front of him. “It must have given you no choice. Did it cause you pain? Torture you?”
“In its own way.” He did not meet her eyes.
“You couldn’t help it, then.”
“Who can say?” His voice became wistful. “I’d never imagined a feeling like it. Once I felt it, I would have done anything to feel it again.”
Shada gulped. She tried to put her hand on his, but he pulled it away. “It’s still on me,” he said, his lip trembling. “Its effect fades with time, but you don’t want to feel it even once.”
“Well, it’s over now,” said Shada. “You can try to forget it.” The words were inadequate, and she wished she could take them back.
He shook his head but replied, “Yes.” His voice was dutiful. “We’ll get to the prison soon. You and Father Brin should tell the convicts that we’re holding you by force. If they think you’re friends of the Ronian army, they won’t be kind to you.”
“Do you think they’ll kill you?” Her head ached where her attacker had struck her.
“I’ve tried to think of reasons why they wouldn’t. They could hold us hostage to force concessions from Ronia. But the empire won’t bargain with the likes of them.”
The wagon’s interior was suffocating. Shada said, “But they didn’t kill us last night. So there’s hope.”
“A quick death may not be what they have in mind. Especially for the bishop.” Embarrassment flashed over Merin’s face as he glanced at Father Brin, kneeling between them.
Shada, too, had forgotten that Brin was more than an assistant to Arumin. Everyone knew it, though of course no one mentioned it to them. Their relationship apparently brought them no trouble, maybe because of the bishop’s power.
Brin must have sensed the others watching him. If he blushed, it was overshadowed by his fearful pallor. He sighed, a despairing release of tension. Maybe he was glad someone had mentioned the real cause of his distress.
“The bishop knows his duty,” he told them in a low voice. “To spread Huire’s word. He must simply do it. If he does, all else is secondary.”
Shada tried to sound hopeful. “When I see him, I must tell him about my trouble with the Lady. He’ll know what to do.”
Brin swallowed audibly and nodded. “Yes. He’ll hear your confession. He’s wiser than me.”
“And he needs to know about the man who attacked me. He might know what it means.”
Brin closed his eyes. A moment later, he nodded.
He fell into opaque silence. The others joined him for a time, listening to the bouncing and creaking of the wagons. Soon, Brin moved to pray next to the sleeping Hulgar.
After a while, Merin spoke. “We need the captain. But I dread seeing him after what I did.”
Shada put her hand on his knee, and this time, he did not protest. She was comforting herself as well as him. The Lady was gone, she did not know why, and she could not begin to search for her because she was trapped in this wagon. Her throat still itched and stung. Meanwhile, all of them were rolling toward an unknown fate. For the moment, she felt beaten.
“Well,” she said. Not wishing to leave it there, she added, “Nor and the captain are very determined men.”
“Yes,” Merin replied. “They have courage. More than some of us.”
Shada remembered a cold knife on her throat. “They do. Then again, how much difference can courage make in a place like this?”