“They’re shooting at us!” Meg screamed.
They charged down the road, letting the horses have their heads.
“I’m going to shoot back!” Jilly shouted, turning in the saddle.
“Jilly, don’t!”
Anthea cried out in a panic as her cousin pulled her pistol out of her embroidered coat. She crouched low on Florian’s neck, waiting to feel the burning punch of a bullet entering her side again. Anthea whipped at Leonidas with the end of her reins. They had to get out of there before someone shot them—or, worse, before Jilly killed someone.
The townspeople followed them much farther than Anthea would have thought. At least they were on foot, not in motorcars, and soon they fell behind the three girls on their horses.
Anthea still kept them running as long as she dared, though. Just in case. Just to be sure. But the horses were tired already, and finally she signaled for them to slow to a walk. They had automatically gone north when they left the town, and now they came to another crossroads and Anthea pointed them north and west without asking.
“You should have let me shoot at them,” Jilly grumbled.
“How would that have helped?” Anthea asked.
“It would have made me feel better!”
“They shot at us,” Meg said. “They shot at me. I’m a princess, and they shot at me.”
“Last year some farmers shot Anthea so that they could keep Florian,” Jilly pointed out. “They didn’t even know what he was.”
“I remember when you came to Bell Hyde the first time,” Meg said. “I remember … I thought … did the hunters know you were a girl?”
“Yes, they did,” Anthea said shortly.
Anthea let them pore over the details of last year’s debacle as they continued to walk up the road. Meanwhile, she thought about what they had just done in the small town of Pickerton.
They had ridden into the center of town, gesturing for those who saw them to come along with them. In the middle of the town, where a large church overlooked a cobbled square, they had stopped and asked to see the mayor. He was already on his way, still weak from the Dag and leaning on the arm of his son. Most of the town looked as though they had been ill, or were exhausted from caring for the ill, but the sight of three girls on horses clopping down their streets had brought them all to the square.
The people stayed well clear of the horses. Some of them had their children hidden behind them, or were shoving them into the doors of houses and shops and telling them to stay put. Anthea uneasily noticed that there were far more men than women. Had the women died, or were they staying away?
“Good day to you all,” Jilly called out cheerily. “My name is Jillian Thornley, and I am one of Her Majesty Queen Josephine’s Horse Maidens!”
Gasps rang out. Jilly smiled even more broadly, but Anthea felt cold beneath her heavy coat. Those weren’t gasps of awe and amazement. Those were the gasps of respectable people being shocked and offended, a sound she knew all too well.
“Jilly,” Anthea whispered.
“I am Princess Margaret,” the princess said, urging Blossom forward. “I have here a letter from my mother, the queen—”
“How dare you!”
One of the few women there had shouted out. She had a red patch on one cheek of fresh scars from the Dag. There was a small boy half-hidden in her apron, but now she shoved him into the arms of the man beside her.
“How dare you use the name of our good queen this way?” The woman shook her fist at them. “How dare you use her name to come here and spread this filthy plague! Is it not enough that hundreds of us are dead? Do you have to kill the rest and defame the queen, too?”
That was when several of the men had pulled out guns. That was when the Pickerton constables had moved to the front of the crowd. When Meg had shrilly insisted that she was a princess, and someone had spat at her.
That was when Anthea, her heart in her throat, heard a memory of a gunshot and felt the ghost of a pain in her side. She spun her horse around, and began to ride, straight back the way they had come, straight out of that town.
The others followed her, and the townspeople followed them, and there were warning shots fired over their heads. They didn’t get a chance to show off their new brooches, or leave any medicine, or ask what else the people might need. They could only run, and keep running.
“Where to next?” Jilly asked as they stopped at a crossroads. She pulled a map out of her saddlebags and unfolded a portion.
“We’re going to Upper Stonesraugh,” Anthea said. Her heart was still hammering.
“Along the way we would hit quite a few towns,” Jilly said. She pulled a pencil out of her pocket and started to make notes.
“A few towns?” Meg sounded panicky. Blossom whickered and ramped sideways a little, sensing her rider’s mood. “How many is a few?”
“They won’t all be like this,” Jilly said breezily.
“They will,” Anthea said.
She rubbed Florian’s neck. Then she reached over and stroked Leonidas as well. Her heart broke a little. How could people not love these beautiful creatures on sight?
“My mother has done her work too well,” Anthea said. She didn’t add, “And so has your father,” not wanting to hurt Meg’s feelings.
Anthea felt a tear slip down her cheek.
Beloved.
I’m all right.
You are not.
I didn’t think it would still hurt so much.
“Well,” Jilly said, “what should we do? We have to press on!”
“To Upper Stonesraugh,” Anthea said, choking on the name because of the thickness in her throat.
Jilly looked at Anthea, her mouth open. “Are you crying?”
Anthea steeled herself for the teasing, but instead she looked over to see Jilly reining in Caesar, pulling him close to Florian. Jilly dropped her reins and threw her arms around Anthea.
“It will be okay,” Jilly said.
“It won’t,” Anthea said. “It just won’t! We’re going to fight this battle all our lives and we’ll never win.” She began to sob, huge ugly gasps, heaving into her cousin’s shoulder.
“Get down,” Jilly said. “We’ll fall!”
“Florian won’t let me,” Anthea hiccupped. “I can’t fall off Florian.”
I would never let you fall, Florian said, stung by Jilly’s words.
I am sure she only meant that I would make her topple off, Anthea said soothingly.
Nevertheless, Anthea got herself together, and managed to sit up straight. She took out a handkerchief and mopped her face. Then she offered another to Jilly, whose coat was honestly so tightly fitted that Anthea wasn’t sure it still had pockets.
“Can … can we just go straight to my mother’s village?” Meg asked, turning Blossom in a tight, nervous circle. She seemed even more upset by Anthea’s weeping than she had been by being shot at.
“We really, really should,” Anthea said.
“Can’t we try even one more?” Jilly wheedled. “Just a tiny village?”
“We can’t,” Anthea decided.
She had been worrying about something the entire journey away from Upper Stonesraugh. She had been distracted by Meg joining them, distracted by the new Horse Maiden brooch that graced her coat. Distracted by their reception in Pickerton.
But she could not be distracted anymore.
“Finn has not sent a message,” she said. “At all. Nothing. No ‘all is well,’ or ‘I found an amazing book.’ Nothing. Nor has Caillin MacRennie.”
“We are very far away,” Meg said doubtfully. “Aren’t we?”
“Not too far for Constantine,” Anthea said. “They should have sent a message by now. He should have brought Constantine out of the standing stones to let us know they were all right.”
“Constantine?” Meg said in shock. “Finn brought Constantine south of the Wall again?”
“Well, your mother told him to,” Jilly said. She put her map away and turned Caesar toward the left-hand branch of the road.
“No she didn’t,” Meg said, turning Blossom to follow Caesar. “She never would have endangered Finn and Constantine.”
“I’ve seen the letter,” Jilly said. “She clearly said to ride Constantine there, and show him to the villagers.”
“No, in Thea’s letter she advised her to take Florian,” Meg argued. “So that the people could see how strong their bond was. But in Finn’s she said to leave the herd stallion home.”
“What letter?” Anthea pulled up. “She hasn’t sent me a letter since days before Finn was told about the village.”
“She showed me both,” Meg said, reining in Blossom and looking back at Anthea in confusion. “She sent them at the same time. She hadn’t gotten very many letters from you since the Dag spread so much; she thought you were just busy, but she never would have sent a letter to Finn and not to you, too.” Meg wrinkled her nose. “I’ve honestly been a little jealous of you, and Jilly,” she admitted.
Normally Anthea would have been flattered. Normally she would have rushed to reassure the younger girl. But she was frozen in place.
Beloved?
Someone stole my letters, my love. Someone changed Finn’s letter.
“We have to get to the Last Village right now,” Jilly said in a strangled voice.