Lark

I never thought anything could be as big as the canyon walls of Three Lines, until we rode into the shadow of the redwoods.

“By the Light,” Veran breathes. He’s been repeating the phrase for the past half hour, craning his head this way and that, not even bothering to hold the reins, twisting to stare up the soaring trunks. I did, too, at first, squinting up at the treetops swallowed by mist, but now I keep my head down. A feeling of being closed in—netted, caged—has been growing in my stomach, and I can’t shake it.

“And these are—alive?” I ask dumbly.

“So alive,” he says. And then—“Blessed Light!”

He pulls his horse up short and slides off, making for a massive, sweeping trunk, the biggest one we’ve seen yet. I grab his horse’s dangling reins before it can amble off. Veran approaches the tree with both hands cupped toward it, as if receiving a gift. His head is thrown back, searching for the crown hundreds of feet above us. He reaches out and touches the trunk with one set of fingers, and then begins to circle it—he disappears around one side, and it takes a full twenty seconds for him to materialize around the other.

I stoop my head. It’s raining, something I would normally welcome, but it’s been raining since we crossed the ridgeline of the mountains yesterday, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so wet for so long. I pull the hood of the minister’s soggy cloak farther over my head. I miss the protective brim of my hat.

“Veran,” I say. “Come on. They said the house is supposed to be this way. Are you talking to that tree?”

He turns reluctantly back for the horse. “Thanking it.”

“Thanking it for what?”

“For just—” He mounts and gesticulates emphatically, waving his arms first between him and the trunk, and then all around, like that’s an answer. “The very air breathes—can you feel it?”

“You’re weird, you know that?”

He grins and nudges his horse. “Ah, Lark—ethnocentric bias. Don’t let your uncle hear you.”

The knot of anxiety in the pit of my stomach grows a little sharper, a little colder. “What?”

“Ethnocentric bias—thinking your worldview is the only, or best, worldview. It’s something your uncle Colm hammers in to all his students on the first day of class. Skies forbid you ever use a word like weird in his discussions.” He barrels his chest and exaggerates what I can only guess is a Lumeni accent, bearing down hard on his r’s. “Never allow yourself to devolve into a dichotomy of right and wrong, of normal and not normal.”

There are two words I don’t know in that sentence—the two that started with d’s—but that’s not what makes me uneasy. Normal and not normal? A worldview? I picture that man I attacked in the stagecoach, weeks and weeks ago, back when things were all in their right places. I remember his well-made clothes, his crisp tattoo, the casual way he encouraged me to take his money, his matches.

I must have looked so pathetic to him, a feral, cultureless outlaw. Someone to be pitied. And now my campmates—except for Rose—are heading to his house. They might already be there. And when the ambassador and the princess get there a few days later, the news will be out—that the professor is related by blood to the dirty, ignorant bandit who wrecked his stage and stole his shoes.

And if that’s his outlook, what will his sister—

The queen.

My mother.

What will she think?

Veran must mistake my daunted silence for remorse. “It’s okay,” he says. “Think me weird all you want—my folk consider it good policy to offer thanks to your environment.” He’s in a jolly mood—the giant trees have brought out a kind of bouncy excitement. He gives his horse a little kick. “Come on—I think I see a light up ahead.”

We plod down the track, the horses’ hooves muffled on the wet redwood needles. Shockingly green ferns press thick around us, growing as tall as I am and drooping with rain. Rat keeps plunging into the brush, despite me calling him back—I can’t help but feel that if he were to get too far away, I’d never find him again in this dense, skyless maze.

I catch a tendril of smoke, and I lift my gaze from the horse’s mane. Through the trees peeks a squat cabin made of unfinished logs, its mossy roof a slice of green against the red-brown trunks rising around it. The windows gleam yellow through the rain, and smoke curls from the clay chimney. A few outbuildings are scattered here and there—a coop of turkeys, a woodshed, and a one-walled stable surrounded by a small paddock, where two horses and two mules cluster around a trough of hay.

We don’t get much more than a glimpse, however, before a figure leaps up on the porch. There’s a flash of metal, and I tighten my hold on the reins, causing my horse to throw its head up. My gaze darts around for cover, a place to fire from—and then an escape. My hands have closed on both the stock of the crossbow and a handful of quarrels before Veran urges his horse ahead, his arm raised in the air.

“Iano!” he calls, relief flooding his voice. “Iano—it’s us!”

I stop plotting escape routes and look back to the figure, who’s standing sideways in the rain. As we get a little closer, I realize it’s because he has a long, bone-white bow drawn back to his ear. I stare at the old-fashioned weapon—the only ones I’ve ever seen are a splintered old thing collecting dust on a shelf in Patzo’s general store and depictions in petroglyphs.

Iano lowers the bow, his face split with shock. Words tumble out in Moquoian, too fast and too muddled by rain for me to catch.

“I know! We weren’t sure we would make it a few times, but here we are.” Veran kicks one leg over his horse and jumps off. “Is Tamsin here? Is she all right?”

The answer comes in the form of the front door opening in a wedge of golden light. Two figures crowd on the threshold. Veran runs forward eagerly, calling greetings and questions. I follow more slowly, dismounting and once again gathering up the reins of his horse, leading them both forward.

Tamsin looks a lot healthier after several days of food and rest. Her skin is less gray, and her cheeks and eyes aren’t quite as hollow. She gives Veran a short hug, patting his back, before looking past him to me. Next to her, a girl about our age stands wearing an oily apron, her long black hair in a thick braid. Veran immediately starts chattering to her, introducing himself and me, with a whole string of titles and accolades that go sailing untranslated past my ears. I stand between the horses, inexplicable dread rolling around in my stomach like a round of bad meat.

Silently, Tamsin detaches herself from the fray and comes down the steps.

“Hi,” she says.

I swallow and try to find my Moquoian. “Hello. You, um, look more good than you did.”

She nods in thanks. “You okay?”

“Yes—I am okay, yes.”

She smiles wryly, knowing it’s a lie. She says something, and I have to ask her to repeat it, which I feel bad about. She says it again slowly.

“I wa’n sure you’ come.”

“I . . . was not sure also,” I acknowledge. “How—how is your mouth?”

“Shi’,” she says, the t at the end unpronounced but suggested. I laugh nervously, and she smiles again and takes the lead of one of the horses. Waving a hand, she beckons me toward the little paddock.

“No’ much room,” she says, opening the gate. We turn the horses inside, looping their halters on a peg under the stable roof. They mill with the others, bumping and jostling in the small space. One of them—the only other mare, I realize—sets her ears back at the presence of a new female. Herd mentality. There are a few agitated snorts.

Tamsin leans against the paddock fence. I break my attention from the horses back to her. She looks me up and down, and I wonder what it is she wants to say. The last time she saw me, I had turned tail and run away into the desert, leaving the rest of them to face a mountain of trouble alone.

She is pursing her lips, as if considering her words, when Iano jogs toward us, his breath misting in the rain.

“I’m sorry, Tamsin, I’d have done that,” he says. He gives me a slight bow, a baffling gesture, and switches to accented Eastern. “I’m glad to formally meet you, Princess Moira. From what Veran says, it sounds like you’ve both been through a lot.” He motions toward the house. “Come, let’s all get inside.”

I stand with my ears ringing as he loops his arm around Tamsin’s shoulders and begins to walk back toward the house. That name sticks to me like sap on a tree. I want to shout for Veran to tell him, prince to prince, not to use it, but I’m already so mixed up and turned around and hollowed out that I don’t see how I can. I follow them numbly through the rain and climb the steps to the porch.

Before I reach the door, there’s murmuring inside, and Iano looks over his shoulder at me.

“My apologies, Princess,” he says. “But Soe is requesting the dog stay on the porch. She says she’ll fix a bowl of scraps for him.”

I’d like to request that I stay on the porch, too, scraps or no, but I only nod and tell Rat to stay. He drops onto his haunches, watching me until I’ve slipped through the door and closed it on him.

The house is warm and bright, and filled with cooking smells and steam. A fire burns in the hearth. Iano helps Tamsin to a bench close to the flames, and she looks around him to me, patting the seat next to her. I pretend I don’t see her and instead shove myself into the shadowed corner by the door.

Veran is flitting around, helping the girl with the braid put bowls and spoons on the table, hopping back and forth between Moquoian and Eastern once he sees me come in. I realize his twang comes through no matter which language he’s speaking.

“Lark, this is Soe, she’s Tamsin’s friend. Oh, I can reach that. It sure smells good. Yes please, I’d love some cider. Lark, do you want cider?”

“Uh, sure,” I say, not exactly sure what I’m agreeing to. I press a little farther into the corner. Soe turns to regard me while stirring a simmering pot. Her eyes are two different colors, like my old campmate Voss’s were—one dark brown, one as blue as the desert sky.

“The Sunshield Bandit,” she says, looking me up and down. “I admit, I half-thought you were only a myth. You’re not at all like the stories, though—they always put you on a big black horse, with a big black hat and black grease on your face, and carrying that mirror shield, too.” She shakes her head and turns her attention back to her ladle. “I guess tall tales always do get embellished.”

By the fire, Tamsin shifts, as if uncomfortable. She ducks her head, fumbling with something, and then she looks up. “Hey,” she calls to Veran. She holds up a small black slate with letters scrawled in chalk. I squint at them.

YOU SAID SOMETHING ABOUT KOBOK?

“Oh, right,” Veran says, bringing me a mug of something hot. “He was at Tellman’s Ditch, ordering them to separate out all the workers from Port Iskon. It sounds like he did the same in Redalo. He’s moving them from the quarries out to the islands.”

Tamsin’s brow creases in confusion, and she wipes her slate and starts to write another question. Before she can finish, though, Iano cuts in.

“What on earth were you doing in Tellman’s Ditch?” he asks, setting a mug of cider in front of Tamsin and sitting down beside her. I lift mine to my lips—the drink inside is tart and spiced, but so hot it burns my tongue.

“Trying to find a way not to die,” Veran says, holding his bowl to Soe to accept a ladle of stew. “We were hoping to steal some supplies, but we ended up—uh, we ended up sort of stealing Kobok’s coach.”

Iano reels back from the spoon he was about to put in his mouth. “Stealing his—?”

“Yeah, uh.” Veran’s gaze flicks to me. My fingers tighten on the hot mug, and I fix him with a stare that I hope conveys how much I don’t want him to tell this group of strangers how we hijacked a court minister’s two-in-hand while setting his property on fire. We might all be momentarily hiding under the same roof, but that doesn’t change the fact that I have a bounty set by the government run by one of the people in this room. If I’ve learned one thing in my dealings with town sherrifs, it’s that nothing unites two squabbling political factions like a common, dirty outlaw.

Iano sets down his spoon. “I think you must have gotten your translation muddled—surely you mean you borrowed the minister’s coach? That word you used—stole—it implies you took it without asking.”

“I know what it means,” Veran says defensively, looking from me to him. “We stole the coach. Well—Lark stole it.” My stomach lurches. I think he’s trying to be modest, but all I can see is the reward money on my bounty sheet jumping higher with every word. I might already be worth double my old amount.

Veran doesn’t stop though, despite my attempts to set him on fire by mental power alone. He continues, not seeing my gaze, “We drove north across the water scrape and left it a few miles from the North Burr. Those horses we rode here were the team.”

Tamsin gives a great shout of laughter, slapping her knee. Iano, on the other hand, blanches, his pale face going bloodless. Soe comes to me with a bowl of stew, keeping the amusement on her face turned away from Iano.

“I’m sure . . . I’m sure you know that wasn’t strictly appropriate,” Iano says hesitantly, his gaze jumping to Tamsin, who’s now clutching her stomach with laughter. “I’m sure you and Moira were only doing what was necessary to survive and reach us. As long as . . . there was no damage done, I suppose . . . one can always plead the necessities of survival . . .”

“We’re on the run,” Veran says with some surprise. “You’re on the run. We ran from the palace together, Iano. It was inevitable that we’d have to break some rules.”

“I’m on the run from an enemy in the palace, not the entirety of my court,” Iano replies with a dignified air that puts me on edge. “We didn’t break any rules by leaving the palace. We didn’t even break any rules by coming here. You’ll forgive me if I prefer to keep it that way. Perhaps it doesn’t matter as much to you, but I’m not thrilled at complicating the relationships with my political allies by stealing from them.”

Kobok’s not your ally, I think, but I can’t bring myself to say anything. Because if this prince says he’s on the same side as that minister . . . then I’m not sure what we’ve just walked into.

Veran obviously shares my thoughts, but not my reticence. “Kobok might not be your ally, though!” he says. “He was in a rush to cover something up in Tellman’s Ditch, and he was always badgering me in court. What if he’s your blackmailer?”

“You don’t know that he is,” Iano says. “And if he’s not, I need him on my side. He’s one of the most influential people in my court. I won’t antagonize him before I have all the facts.”

Royalty protecting their own. Of course. I was stupid not to expect this. My stomach is now so jumpy I set down the bowl of stew—and I’d been looking forward to it. Veran looks like he’s about to say something else—something that will probably bump my bounty up another fifty or sixty keys. I jump to speak first.

“Port Iskon,” I blurt out. “Where is it? Why are the workers from there so important?”

“Oh, yes!” Veran twists to face Tamsin again. “Yes—Kobok was only interested in redistributing the workers from Port Iskon. Why would he be so concerned about that one place? Where is it?”

“Port Iskon?” Iano cocks his head, confused. “There’s no city by that name in Moquoia.”

“That’s what I thought—but, Tamsin, surely you would know, or Soe, since you were part of the trade for a while . . . is it a secret place? A secret name?”

Tamsin shakes her head and shrugs apologetically.

“Not at all? You can’t recall any mention, from any of the documents you copied?”

“You have to understand, the black market runs differently from the state trade,” Soe says, taking a seat at the table. “The ring Tamsin and I worked in never used the resources of the government contracts.”

“There weren’t folk who bounced between systems?” Veran asks. “Folk who—”

He never gets to finish his thought. The jumble of Moquoian is finally starting to settle in my head, and as it does my whole body flushes with shock, hotter and sicker than when Iano was dancing around calling that trafficking minister his ally.

“Tamsin,” I bark, “was a slaver?”

The room goes silent. Every head turns to me. Tamsin’s earlier laughter ghosts away.

Veran tilts his head. “I thought I told you that a few days ago, in Three Lines.”

I slide back to Eastern, unable to organize my thoughts in Moquoian. “You said she got caught up in the slave trade—Veran, what did you expect me to think that meant? I thought she’d worked under bond.” I lean forward off the wall. The brand on my right arm stings. “You mean to tell me I tore my life apart and dragged your ass and mine across the Ferinno to rescue a slaver?”

Veran’s face goes red, and he glances at the others. “Lark, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that’s what you thought—but all the same, it’s not quite what you think—”

I look past him to Tamsin again. She’s staring at me, her lips pressed together.

“Were you a slaver?” I prompt in Moquoian.

A storm of voices erupts around the table.

“You don’t understand—”

“She was as much a captive as the others, Princess, I’ll thank you not to presume—”

“And anyway, it was ages ago—”

I keep my eyes fixed on Tamsin. Through the clamor of folk all rushing to defend her, she holds my gaze and nods.

I turn on my heel, unable to breathe in the hot, airless kitchen. I wrench open the door and storm out onto the porch. Rat lifts his head from his paws, and then hops up to follow me down the steps. Over in the little paddock, the horses are still agitated—the two mares are at odds, nipping and squealing at each other. The geldings are crowded together, skittering here and there to avoid the clash. I move toward them—the second time, I realize, that I’ve run off into the rain from the crowd inside.

Veran seems to think the same, because he comes after me like a shot.

“Lark!” He grabs for my wrist and then immediately drops it, jumping out of reach like he’s afraid I’ll hit him, which is fair, since it’s how I’ve reacted all the other times he’s touched me—except for this morning, when I woke up to find him an inch away, hands around mine.

“Lark, please don’t leave. Please don’t ride away.”

I spread my arms. “Where would I go?”

“Blazes, I don’t know. Please, won’t you—”

“I’m not coming back inside. It’s all just parlor games to you, isn’t it?” I wave at the house. “It’s just politics, just talk. You’ll jump to defend someone who profited off human lives, because she’s one of you, and because she could be worse. But some of my friends are dead because of people like her, and because of that prince, too—protecting his powerful friends to keep things from getting complicated. And you’re the same, Veran.” I shove my finger in his startled face. “You are no different.”

“I—”

“Maybe you’re not the one making the laws in this country, but you benefit from them, and you’re just as clueless as Iano is.”

“I know,” he says quickly. “I’m sorry. You’re right to be angry.”

I stop, breathing hard, and drop my finger back to my side, clenching my fists. He takes his own breath and goes on.

“You’re right. I didn’t think about how it would feel to find out about Tamsin, or how it would feel to join up with Iano. I know it’s not the first oversight of mine that you’ve had to take the consequences for. Lark, if this isn’t right—if you want to leave—we can. You can, I mean—if you don’t want me to come, I won’t come. You don’t have to join forces with Iano and Tamsin if you don’t want to, and this doesn’t have to be your problem to fix. I’ll do whatever you need me to do, but, please . . .” His forehead creases under the bruises and sunburn and grimy rain tracks. “Won’t you . . . won’t you just stay until morning? Please. We’ve been running for so long.”

I release my breath. I can’t stand the helpless look on his face, the rain flattening his curls that had just started to dry, so I drop my gaze to his feet. But that doesn’t help, either. My eyes immediately travel to the hacked fringe and missing laurel medallion on his boot.

I rub my forehead and turn away from him, toward the paddock.

“I’m not going to leave tonight,” I say, “but I’m not coming back inside. I can’t deal with it right now, Veran—I can’t. Those people . . . No. Not after everything that’s happened this week. Just . . . leave me alone.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to walk our mare down to graze somewhere—she’s stressing the other one out.”

“Won’t you . . . eat something, or—”

I head away from him without turning back. “No.” I put as much finality as I can in that one word.

His dejected response comes after the barest pause. “All right.”

I’m a few more feet away before I call back. “Veran.”

He hasn’t moved. “Yeah?”

“Tell Iano not to call me Moira.”

“I will.” Perhaps there’s a bit more life in his response, a bit more hope, but I don’t turn back.

I dip my head against the pattering rain and head off to find a shred of something that makes sense.