Chapter Five

“OH!” Raffa exclaimed in a sudden moment of comprehension. “Trixin, do you get deliveries of compost, for the plants in the glasshouses?”

“Of course,” Trixin said. “How are you going to grow all those plants without compost?”

“Is it Fitzer? The driver who brings the compost?”

“Yes, Mannum Fitzer—that’s him. Why?”

The mystery explained: Da had been staying in Gilden, at Uncle Ansel’s apartment. He would have visited the glasshouses, maybe even done some work there, and that was how he would have met Fitzer. It was a coincidence that wasn’t: Fitzer couldn’t have known that the boy he helped was Mohan’s son.

“He—um, he’s a friend. Of the family.” Raffa was mindful of Trixin’s rather precarious position. She helped provide for her large family by working at the laboratory, a job she did not want to put at risk. She had agreed to tell him whatever she learned, but had adamantly stated that she did not want to know anything about what he was doing.

“Would you give him a message?” Raffa went on. “Ask him to meet me at the inn. The one near the ferry landing—he’ll know what I mean. And if you see my mam, tell her that’s where I’ll be later today.”

Trixin nodded. “This way, then,” she said.

She led him through the passage until they reached a turning. “I’m going on straight here,” she said. “You take the right, and you’ll be walking a ways. Keep to the left every time. And you’ll see some stairs, really steep ones—”

“I remember,” he said. “Jimble took me that way before. I’ll end up near the ferry, right?”

“Yes. . . . Oh, I almost forgot.” She reached into her apron pocket and took out a napkin-wrapped parcel. “I figured you’d have had nothing to eat except Garrison gluck, and I remember my da telling me how awful it is.”

She handed him the parcel. He unwrapped it to find an oatcake, split and buttered, and a handful of walnuts and dried apple slices. His mouth watered; in the excitement of the escape and the Chancellor’s speech, he hadn’t realized how hungry he was. He wolfed down half the oatcake in a single bite.

“My, that’s a pretty sight,” Trixin said, rolling her eyes.

Raffa chewed and swallowed. “It’s not the first time you’ve given me food,” he said. “I really— I mean, I don’t know how to say thanks—”

“Don’t be going all soggy on me,” she said over her shoulder as she marched off.

And that was her good-bye.

Raffa climbed the steep stairs. At the top was a pair of cellar doors that opened into an alley behind the inn’s storage sheds. He held his breath and listened but heard nothing. Cautiously he pushed up one of the wooden panels and peeped out through the crack.

No one was about. He clambered out, then sat down on the door frame in the shadows against the wall of one of the sheds. He pulled the leather rope out of his rucksack and began inspecting it, retying loose knots, doubling up frayed sections. It was work he really did need to do; it made him look like he had a reason for being there, and it also provided an excuse for him to keep his head down.

Guards would be searching for him after his escape. But it wasn’t only the guards; Raffa couldn’t help wondering about everyone he saw. Were they Afters? Or were they among those who had been chanting “AFTERS OUT!”?

Afters had come to Obsidia from lands all over the continent, which meant that you could not tell an After by his or her appearance. Some were fair, some dark like Kuma, and others every skin hue in between. The original settlers of Obsidia were mostly—but not all—fair-skinned. After two centuries of life together, there was hardly a family in the land without mixed blood somewhere in their lineage. Until the events of the last few weeks, Raffa had never wondered about whether people were Afters or not.

He didn’t like wondering now.

The sheds had once held barrels of appletip; he saw the rotting remains of a few barrels and smelled traces of the beverage. He could also see a newer storage building closer to the inn itself; the sheds appeared to have fallen into disuse. He heard voices in the distance as travelers arrived and departed from the inn, but no one came near the sheds.

When the sun had lowered itself to just above the horizon, he felt a stirring under his tunic. He brought out the perch necklace as Echo stretched his wings.

“Skeeto,” Echo said.

“Yes, Echo, I know you need to feed. But don’t go too far, okay? And whatever you do, stay away from people. I’ll whistle for you if I have to leave here.”

The bat chirped in reply, and as Raffa watched him fly off, he felt a mix of emotions: joy at seeing Echo in his element, so graceful and at home in the air, and worry that this might be the time Echo did not return to him.

He didn’t have long to fret, for soon he heard the sound of a wagon approaching. It looked like Fitzer’s wagon, but Raffa wasn’t taking any chances: He picked up the rope and ducked his head again. He would wait until the wagon passed him and then look up.

The sound of the horse’s hoofs slowed, and the wagon creaked to a stop right in front of him.

“You’d be young Santana—Mohan’s boy? Raffa, isn’t it?”

Raffa raised his head and saw the wagon driver. Sturdily built, with fair skin and reddish hair, Fitzer was wearing a brown tunic and trousers, boots, and a felt hat. He looked like a great many other working men—except for one thing.

The right side of his face was livid with a large purple skinstain, deeply scarred and pitted by acne. It made an ordinary face appear monstrous.

“Nothing happened, just born like this,” Fitzer said in a voice both good-natured and resigned. Raffa was abashed to realize that he had been staring. He searched his mind for some way to atone, and blurted out the first thing that popped into his head.

“Me, too,” he said.

It’s true, he thought, surprised by his own words. None of us can choose how we’re born, or what we’re born with.

A shadow seemed to fall across Fitzer’s brow as he studied Raffa’s face, and Raffa began to worry. Does he think I’m mocking him?

No, it seemed that Fitzer liked what he saw, for the shadow vanished. “Too true, young Santana,” he said. “Never heard it put that way before.”

Raffa wasn’t quite sure where to look. The skinstain darkened one side of Mannum Fitzer’s face so that the other eye stood out. Raffa found himself wanting to look at that eye more as they talked. He had to remind himself to look at Fitzer’s whole face.

“We’ve met before,” Raffa said, “sort of.”

“If you mean that your da has talked about you, sure upon certain,” Fitzer said. “Don’t think I ever met a man prouder of a son than he is.”

Raffa’s face grew warm with both surprise and pleasure; his father rarely praised him. He wondered what Da had said to Fitzer.

“Thank you, but that’s not what I meant,” Raffa said. “I owe you.” Pause. “For a ride.”

Fitzer cocked his head. “What do you—” Realization lit up his eyes. “Oh, shakes! That was you, was it?” He barked out a great guffaw of laughter. “You’re very welcome!”

Raffa grinned. A whole long conversation had just taken place between them in only a few words.

Fitzer climbed down from the wagon. “Looks like we can talk here for a bit,” he said. “I’ll tell you what there is to tell.”

After looping the reins around a post, Fitzer sat next to Raffa.

“First thing I have to say won’t be easy to hear,” Fitzer said. “I just came from seeing your mam. But I’m to take you to a safe place, and you’re not to try to see her.”

Raffa wanted to beat his fists on the wall and cry like a baby. Why? Why can’t I see her? He blinked hard a few times. “I guess you’ll be telling me the reason,” he said, his lips stiff.

“I will,” Fitzer said. “Your mam, she’s been pothering ever since she came to Gilden in the fall, in between her trips to look for you. She’s so good at it that all the Commoners want her. Even the high-ups like the Chancellor. So for a while now, your mam has had the run of the Commons, visiting all their homes and chatting with them, and even more than that, talking to their servients and tendants. I guess you could say that she’s been working as kind of a spy.”

Mam, a spy?

Raffa’s mouth fell open, but just as quickly he snapped it shut. Why not? Hadn’t Trixin agreed to do the same kind of thing, and her not even a grown-up yet?

And in that instant, Raffa understood Mam’s behavior in the Hall of Deemers. She had not testified against Mohan, but she had also refused to bear witness on his behalf. And she had been sitting with Uncle Ansel, who had betrayed Raffa in more ways than one.

It’s because she couldn’t give away what she was doing. She had to stay in their good graces, Uncle Ansel’s and the Chancellor’s, so she could keep finding things out.

“Took a while, but eventually she pieced together what the Chancellor was planning. Nobody could believe it at first. But she and your da and other folks started making plans of their own.”

“Oh!” Raffa felt as if he had just shed a coat made of stone. For months it had seemed to him that he and Garith and Kuma were alone in fighting the Chancellor. What a relief to know that his parents had joined the cause! At the same time, he found himself a little miffed that plans had been made about which he knew nothing. Don’t be silly, he told himself firmly. We couldn’t have defeated her alone—we’ll need all the help we can get.

“Your mam found out about the move to evict the Afters from the slums more than a week ago,” Fitzer said. “And since then, it’s been all shakes and tremors, everybody getting ready in secret. Afters have been leaving the slums a few at a time. We didn’t want the guards or anyone to know that we knew. And most of the rest are going to leave, too. Not in three days, and not to the Suddens, but tonight.”

He shook his head regretfully. “There’s some who are staying. They can’t believe it, or don’t want to. No convincing them to leave.”

“Leave to go where?” Raffa asked.

“To the Forest. To hide and to get ready to fight.”

At these words, Raffa felt a swash of eagerness and excitement.

The Forest of Wonders! It was many things to many people. To Gildeners, it was frightening and unknowable. Their ideas about the Forest were twisted with half truths and exaggerations, rumors and whispers of deadly plants and deadlier beasts. Those from the outlying farmsteads and settlements did not fear the Forest so much as they respected it, preferring to collect their firewood from less forbidding woodlands.

Raffa’s friend Kuma was among the few who rejoiced in exploring the Forest alongside her friend Roo, the great golden bear. And the people who most loved the Forest were the apothecaries, like Raffa’s family. Raffa had spent his whole life learning about Forest plants, some dangerous, others healing or healthful or delicious. The Forest was one of his favorite places in the whole world, and he had not been there in more than half a year.

“Folks from the settlements have been in the Forest for a good week now, getting ready,” Fitzer went on. “Nobody knows the Forest very well, except maybe you pothers, but the guards are mostly Gildeners, and they don’t know it at all. It’ll give us an advantage when the time comes.”

When the time comes.

Fitzer explained still further. What Raffa’s mother, Salima, had discovered confirmed his worst fears. The Chancellor, anticipating that there would be resistance to the evictions, had prepared the animals for a battle in the slums. Her earlier assertion that the animals were being trained to do the work of humans was merely a ruse to cover her actual intent. Mohan and Salima had allied themselves with a small group of others to lead the opposition, and the decision had been made to set up a base camp in the Forest.

“We’re not going to let her chase the Afters out of Obsidia. It’s as simple as that,” Fitzer said. “Not without a fight, anyway.”

Once again Raffa was shaken by a sense of guilt and obligation. Not only had his use of a rare scarlet vine led to the dosing of the animals, but his actions since then had endangered his family and friends. He had to make up for that somehow.

The adults would shoulder the main burden of planning the resistance. But there has to be something I can do. Something real.

How could he help? What was he good at? Well, that was easy.

Apothecary.

Pothering is part of the problem. Maybe it can be part of the answer, too.

Raffa frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown, not a downcast one. He was thinking hard.

Thinking of ways to use apothecary to defeat the Chancellor.