I’m the last one awake. Rubbing my eyes, I lift my head and realize I’m alone in the workroom. The dappled morning sun streams through the window.
I scramble to my feet, wincing at my stiff neck. The door to the kitchen is closed—from beyond comes the sound of murmuring. I stumble toward it and find the others sitting around the table with empty breakfast dishes in front of them.
Everyone except Lark, that is. My eyes sweep the room once, wondering if she’s holed up in a corner, when Tamsin sees my look. She points toward the window.
“Outside?” I ask.
She nods and mimes a swinging motion, like an ax. From the yard, I hear the faint chop of a metal head hitting wood.
“Splitting wood?” I repeat. “Why is she—”
“She said she wanted to,” Iano says. “I expect it was an excuse to get out of the house. Are you still planning to come into town with us?”
“Yes. Have you asked Lark?”
“She wants to stay,” Iano says. “It’d be too dangerous for her to come in with the new bounty posters up, anyway. She’s asked for a sword, though it’s going to be hard to find one. She turned up her nose when I offered my rapier. She called it a word I didn’t recognize—otieni, I think.”
I smile. “Toothpick.”
“Hmph.” He maintains a princely facade, though Tamsin grins. “Well, she wouldn’t take it.”
“She’s used to a broadsword.” I look at Tamsin. “Are you sure you’re ready to be here with . . . just her?”
She nods and waves a hand. “We’re goo’,” she says with conviction.
I take a small sip of air. It’s not that I don’t believe Tamsin—but I want to hear it from Lark. I can’t think what could have changed in the short time between last night and this morning to make Lark move past the realization that Tamsin used to scribe for slavers.
“I’m going to talk to her,” I say.
“Here, eat something,” Soe says, handing me a sticky bun studded with walnuts. “We’ll leave once we clean up.”
I thank her and head out onto the porch. It’s an absolutely gorgeous morning, cool and damp, the sun filtering through the mists hanging between the trees. Birdsong rings through the lower branches. I pick out the clear call of a meadowlark before again hearing the telltale crack of an ax head in wood. I descend the porch and round the house to the woodshed.
My steps slow as I near the splitting log. Despite the cool of the morning, Lark has stripped off her shirt, wearing only her breast band. I remind myself that I’ve seen her in less than that at our first real meeting in Three Lines, but nonetheless I try to focus on the glint of the ax head as it arcs downward, splicing easily through a short length of hardwood. Rat jumps up at my approach, brushy tail wagging eagerly. I scratch him behind the ears, keeping my bun out of his reach, and clear my throat.
Lark looks up, the ax above her head, the sunlight gleaming off her ropy muscles. I expect I could count every ridge lining her stomach, but I’m not going to because I am going to focus on her eyes. I am intensely focused on her eyes.
That doesn’t exactly help though—she has nice eyes.
Really nice eyes. The sunlight makes them gold.
She lowers the ax. “Hey.”
“Hi, hey,” I begin, too loudly. I clear my throat again. “How, uh, how did you sleep?”
“Pretty good, actually. It’s nice listening to the rain without being stuck out in it. What about you?”
“Good, yeah, good.” I gesture to the bun. “Did you eat?”
“Plenty. We’ve been up for a while.” She leans on the ax. “You’re going into town with the others?”
“Yeah, if that’s okay.”
“I’m still not convinced it’s a smart idea, but the others don’t think anybody will recognize you or Iano, and Soe can’t purchase everything we need while she’s selling at her table.” She straightens from the ax and lifts it again. “Besides, I have a job for you.”
“A job?” My nerves fray a little more—I can’t get a read on her this morning, and it’s unclear whether she’s going to request I do something helpful or direct me off the nearest cliff.
The sunlight on her bare skin isn’t making things any clearer. Since that first conversation in Three Lines, I had forgotten about the howling coyote tattooed on her rib cage. I can barely think of anything else now as it ripples when she brings the ax down to quarter the hardwood she’s working on.
Eyes.
“Yeah.” She tosses the quarter onto the pile. “Keep your eyes open. Check the town sign boards, listen to the gossip. Maybe there will be something that could help us. News, or mention of Port Iskon. Somebody has to know where it is, even if the prince and Tamsin don’t.”
I don’t miss her use of the word us. We’re a team again. A flush warms my stomach.
“I will. And, Lark . . . about last night. I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear about Tamsin . . . I didn’t really think about it . . .”
“Oh, the shock,” she exclaims, and to my utter surprise, she smiles. It’s fast—a flash, quick as a bird wing, and then it’s gone. She shakes her head. “The number of things you don’t think about could fill a book.”
“I won’t deny it,” I say, trying to contain my surprise at her easy mood. “But I’m thinking about things now, and I just want to be sure you’re okay with being here—”
“We’re good,” she says with conviction, echoing Tamsin. “We had a chance to talk, as much as we could with my crappy language and her crappy mouth. I’m not as mad as I was before.”
“No?”
“No.” She places another log on the block and hoists the ax again. “She may have made a stupid mistake—one that made things worse for a lot of people—but then . . .” She swings the ax down. “So have I. Way more than one, in fact. At least she didn’t know what she was getting herself into.” She jerks the ax head out of the splitting block.
I think quietly of her campmates, the ones she’s lost—Pickle, in the wagon chase. Rose buried back in Three Lines. My thoughts travel east, toward Callais. The rest of her campmates must be almost there by now, if everything has gone all right. Rou and Eloise are probably only a few days behind them—if the worst hasn’t happened to them, either.
“I’d argue that you didn’t know, either,” I say, and if my voice was louder than I meant it to be before, it comes out too quietly now.
“I knew enough, and I made bad choices anyway.” She stares at the now-empty splitting block, the ax drooping in her hands. “Over and over again. I did my best to get the easy ones back home—Bitty and Arana and all the rest. But I didn’t even make an effort with the rest. Lila, and Rose, and Little Whit . . . Saiph. Pickle. They needed things I couldn’t give them, but I kept choosing Three Lines. I kept telling myself they were better off with me than out in the world.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I insist. “The world hasn’t made itself an easy thing for you to trust. You can’t blame yourself.”
She shakes herself. “Well, I’m gonna, and I’d like to see you try and stop me.”
I draw myself up, matching her brassy tone. “Challenge accepted.”
She tilts the ax in her hands, just an inch. The head dips into a patch of the slanting morning sunlight and beams a flash of it into my eyes. Unprepared, I jerk my head and swear. She grins. In retaliation, I toss the last two bites of my sticky bun at her, which she deflects easily with the ax handle. Rat lunges for the fallen pastry and inhales it.
Lark laughs then—not a snort, an honest-to-goodness laugh. I quit rubbing my eyes to watch, stopping just short of actually gawking. Her laugh sounds like Eloise’s—if you maybe dropped it an octave and roughed it around the edges. It’s warm and bright, like the flashes of sunlight she throws around.
“Wasting food.” She shakes her head, still grinning—this is a record. “I keep telling you. You’re a terrible outlaw.”
I return her grin, my brain tripping over itself to think of something funny to say back, something to make her laugh again. But I’m too slow—over my shoulder, I hear the cabin door open.
“Veran! Are you ready?”
Suddenly I don’t want to go into town. What worthwhile thing will there be in town, anyway? At the moment, it seems much more pressing to stay right here at Soe’s splitting block and make Lark laugh again.
Her grin has melted away, though hints of it remain in the rounds of her cheeks. She jerks her chin over my shoulder. “You’d better go on—they could probably use help hitching the cart.”
Reluctantly, I turn. Fat lot of help I’ll be—I’ve never hitched a cart myself.
“Veran—hang on.”
I look back.
Lark sets the ax head on the block and wipes her forehead. She opens her mouth, and then hesitates. First a laugh, now a hesitation. I raise my eyebrow. She sees the expression and shakes herself.
“Look, what I’m trying to say . . . because, see, I’m trying to be less mean.”
“Less mean?” I ask, bewildered.
“Yeah, you know, just . . .” She gestures vaguely to herself, her skin dewed with sweat and mist over her muscles. “What I meant to say a second ago was, thanks. For getting them out. My camp. I keep thinking about what would have happened if they’d all been there when the soldiers came.”
“I should have asked you first,” I say.
“I’d have said no, on principle,” she says. “That was well before I trusted you.”
“Which suggests that you trust me now,” I say, hoping for a laugh again.
I don’t get one. She nods. “Well, yeah.”
The answer hovers between us for a moment. That warmth I was feeling in my stomach blooms into fireworks, snapping and crackling around my rib cage.
“Veran!” Iano calls again.
“I’ve never hitched a cart,” I blurt out to her. I point toward Soe’s tiny paddock. “I’ve only ever seen it done.”
She rolls her eyes and gives one of her usual snorts. She sets down her ax, picks up her shirt, and starts to move past me. When she’s in range, she reaches out, grabs a handful of my hair, and gives my head a little shake.
“Knucklehead,” she says. She lets go and bumps my arm. “Come on.”
I follow her. Her shoulder blades bunch together as she works her arms through her sleeves. Before she flips the shirt over her shoulders, I see a tattoo I’ve missed before—a bird on her right shoulder, vaguely larkish with its dark collar and long open beak. I want to ask her who gave it to her, and when. Who gave her the others? When did she decide she needed them inked into her skin? And—are there more I haven’t seen?
I want to see them.
I want to know them all.