Chapter Sixteen

For a frozen moment, all I could think was that Zaira had somehow cursed the village, and everyone was dead. But the fallen man’s back rose and fell with harsh, labored breath.

Terika slid down from her horse and ran to his side. Lienne drew her pistol and covered her Falcon’s back, scanning every doorway and window, every barrel and stone.

Bree called to the Callamornish soldiers that made up half our escort, “Eyes out! Braegan, take your squad and search the houses for more people. Don’t touch anything!”

I threw open the coach door and hurried over to Terika, who now knelt next to the man in the road. He seemed unconscious; his skin was pale and clammy. Terika peeled back his eyelid, smelled his breath, and touched deft fingertips to his wrists, throat, and forehead.

“Is he sick?” I asked, fear of plague roiling in my stomach.

Before Terika could reply, cries came from the houses the soldiers had entered, one after another.

“There’s a family in here! They’re alive, but they don’t look good!”

“Found an old man … Argh, no, I think he’s dead.”

“Six in here! Two conscious, all too weak to move. They need water!”

The weight of my apprehension doubled with each cry of discovery. The instinct to flee, to get out of here and away from any possible contagion, pulled at me with strong hands, urging me to run.

Bree took command, dispatching a couple of soldiers trained in the rudiments of field medicine to triage the sick, and sending more to check the outlying houses, and still others to bring water and see what else the stricken villagers might need. Zaira stood back with a hand pressed over her nose and mouth, eyes wide, the stark dread on her face of one who has seen plague before.

But I didn’t smell sickness. There was a different scent on the air, dissonantly sweet. Something very like … lilacs.

“Terika?” I asked, my voice betraying me with a slight quaver. “Is it poison?”

Terika rose, suddenly, and cried out, “No one touch the water!”

A pair of soldiers stopped in the act of hauling up a bucket from a well beside one of the houses. Fear whitened their eyes, and they dropped the bucket back with a clatter and a hissing slither of rope.

“Banebriar,” Terika said, her voice tight and her face grim. “I’ve seen it before. The Lady of Thorns sends it creeping across the mountains from Sevaeth, its roots seeking drinking water to release its poison. We need to act quickly, or everyone here will die.”

Zaira dropped her hand from her face and took a step toward Terika. “What can I—”

Terika ignored her, turning to Bree. “Please.” Her voice scraped from her throat, hoarse and raw from strain. “Can you send someone to check on my grandmother? She lives in the farmhouse up on that hill, beyond the pine grove. I need to know if she’s all right.”

Bree nodded and sent a soldier immediately. Then she asked, “I’ve heard of banebriar. Is there an antidote? Tell me what we need to do.”

Terika closed her eyes for a moment, her lips moving.

This was her home. It sank in, like muddy water through a picnic blanket. Terika’s grandmother had raised her; all these people were her neighbors and friends and family from before she came to the Mews, and from all her visits after. And now she had to try to remember alchemical remedies she might have learned five years ago when for all she knew, her grandmother could already be dead.

But she didn’t break down with wails or shrieks, or go running off to find the people she loved. Her eyes flew open, and she nodded, with firm resolve.

“I can make the antidote. I have most of the ingredients, and I know where to gather the rest locally. But it’ll take time to collect everything and brew it.”

Bree leaped into action, commanding soldiers to search the town and bring Terika everything she needed. Purposeful bustling immediately replaced horrified staring. After a long string of commands, Bree turned to Zaira and me.

“Can you continue on to Highpass? Tell them what’s happened, and have them send more help?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

Terika was already pulling bags out of the coach, muttering about alchemical supplies. A soldier helped her heave out her things; Lienne called for the Raverran soldiers to find her a good worktable, untainted water, and candles.

Zaira took half a step toward her, then turned away, grimacing. She didn’t say anything to Terika before climbing into the coach.

“If you won’t apologize, aren’t you at least going to say good-bye?” I asked her, as I clambered in after her.

“Didn’t you see her? She’s a bit busy right now.” Zaira slouched in her seat. “I won’t deny I stepped right in a pile of dog dung, there, but I never did do anything by halves. Now she’ll know she’s better off without me.”

Then the coach was rolling, and it was too late for parting words. Zaira stared out the window after Terika’s back as she disappeared into a house, arms full of ingredient bottles, soldiers coming behind her with alchemical supplies.

“They’re in good hands,” I murmured.

“Damned right they are. Terika’s the best.” Zaira sighed, and touched gentle fingertips to the window glass. “I can’t believe they were actually all dying. That old hag had better survive.”

The coach bumped to another unexpected stop. I exchanged alarmed glances with Zaira; we were barely more than an hour out of the village, not even halfway to Highpass. Sergeant Andra rapped on the window, and my spine tensed. If she was the traitor, this could be a trap.

“Callamornish runner coming,” she announced, in clipped tones. “Looks urgent.”

Zaira and I descended warily from the coach, stepping out into a stiff, icy wind that cut along the mountain ridge we were climbing toward Highpass. The forested flanks of the ridge fell gently away on either side, and I could see the green cradle of the village fields below. A footpath intersected our road from the east, running along the mountainside above the village; it was along this narrow dirt track the runner came, waving desperately, one arm clutched to his side, with the frantic staggering gait of one driven to run past his own endurance.

Zaira swore. “He was one of the guards we left with Terika.” We’d split our forces, both Callamornish and Raverran, leaving two dozen in the village to protect and help Terika and Bree, and taking two dozen to guard us for the remaining few hours to Highpass.

“But he’s not coming up the road from the village,” I muttered, frowning.

Our remaining escort gathered around us, some of them sliding off their horses to go meet the approaching runner. But he shook off their help, lifting his head to call out a ragged gasp of a message:

“The princess needs reinforcements!”

The Callamornish soldiers in our escort dismounted and began grabbing guns and powder horns at once.

“What happened?” I asked, hurrying toward the messenger, but Zaira practically bowled me over on her way past.

“Is Terika all right?” she demanded, her hands curling to fists at her sides.

The soldier struggled to catch his breath. Sweat drenched his temples, despite the deep chill in the air. A pale fuzz marked his upper lip; he seemed barely old enough to wear a uniform. “Princess Brisintain and the alchemist, Terika …” He sucked in a breath, even as his Callamornish fellows pressed a water flask into his hand. “They took a dozen of us and went to gather some ingredient from a place Terika knew.” He pointed back over his shoulder, at a notch in the eastern slope of the mountain we were climbing. “There, up the mountain, right by the border. But we stumbled into a Vaskandran raiding party. The princess ordered me to run to intercept you, to ask for help.”

Shame quavered in the boy’s voice. She’d done it to spare him, and he knew it, and it was killing him.

Oh, Hells. Bree. She could be dead by now—and Terika, too.

Corporal Braegan and his squad were already slinging muskets over their shoulders. “How many?” he demanded.

“We took a dozen, and left the rest in the village.” He pulled in a broken breath, bracing his hands on his shaking knees, bent nearly double. “There must have been … twenty of them?”

I scanned our two dozen soldiers, struggling to push aside the desperate worry clutching at my chest and think clearly. Highpass perched on the western side of the mountain, separated from the village and the notch above it by the long ridge we now climbed. We could reach Bree and Terika quickly from here, before the road left the ridgetop and swung left along the mountainside, but getting help from Highpass would require hours of travel there and back. We were the only hope they had.

“We can’t leave Lady Amalia and Zaira unguarded,” Sergeant Andra snapped.

“That’s fine, because I’m going with them,” Zaira said roughly, fury simmering in eyes that dared anyone to contradict her. “That should even the odds, and then some.”

Andra regarded her analytically. “It certainly would. Lady Amalia? Shall we assist the princess and our Falcon? Most likely the raiding party will run at the sight of reinforcements, if they’re still there.”

I didn’t hesitate. “Of course.”

“We can’t take the coach on that path,” Andra said, frowning.

“You can’t even take horses on it,” the messenger reported, between gulps of water. “It gets rocky. We’ll have to go on foot. Hurry!”

I turned to Andra. If she was the traitor, I didn’t want her with us in such a dangerous situation. “Take the coach up to Highpass. Get reinforcements in case we need them, and an alchemist to assist Terika with the cure for the villagers.” Or to replace her, if she was hurt or killed, but I wasn’t going to say that in front of Zaira.

Sergeant Andra looked as if she wanted to argue, but she swallowed it and saluted. “As you command, my lady.”

I ducked into the coach to grab my satchel. I dipped a hand in as I hurried back to the others, to make certain my emergency elixir bottles were in there—enough for three days, which my mother and I had deemed sufficient time to find a competent alchemist in any corner of the Empire—and my fingers closed on the cold nub of Marcello’s button.

“Look,” I muttered. “We’re bringing a couple dozen soldiers with us. Are you happy?”

“Who are you talking to?” Zaira asked.

“No one.” Even in a crisis, I had no desire to subject myself to whatever ridicule Zaira would devise if she learned I was talking to a button.

We jogged after the soldier boy along the narrow footpath. I puffed clouds of steam and kept my hands tucked into my sleeves against the chill air; there’d been no time to pull on the soft leather gloves tucked in my satchel.

The trail cut along the mountainside through low scrub pine, then began a rocky climb toward the notch we’d seen from the ridge. My city boots scrabbled and slipped on the stones, and I scraped my palms catching myself on my hands more than once. Zaira hopped from rock to rock more nimbly, though she had to tie up her skirt to keep it away from her ankles. Fear for Bree and Terika scraped like a clawed thing at the inside of my ribs, urging me faster despite my unfitness for mountain scrambling, but I couldn’t help a sigh of relief when the path leveled out again.

Then we rounded a bend and saw bodies strewn across the trail, lying twisted where they’d fallen among the roots and rocks.

“Grace of Mercy! Watch the trees,” Braegan shouted. Most of the soldiers faced outward, muskets ready, covering the handful who ran to check the fallen.

I sucked in a breath sharp with horror. One of the corpses wore a scarlet uniform.

Lienne.