She spat again on the path before plucking an errant strand of hair that had escaped her scarf and releasing it to the wind as if it were her past, blowing away behind us. I licked my cold-chapped lips and felt the strain of a long walk weighing down my legs. The moon had reached zenith. We had been walking at least four night hours. All told, I supposed I had been walking fourteen or more hours since dawn, although of course the daytime hours in winter were of shorter duration and the nighttime hours longer. Tiredness was making me clumsy and dull.
“Do you think we might rest?” asked Kayleigh.
“Not yet.”
With the wind rising steadily like a beast slowly curling out of slumber, we walked for at least another hour. Rounding a corner and stumping to the top of a gentle rise, we reached a crossroads stone, a squat pillar more chipped at than shaped and no taller than my head.
The wind had changed timbre and smell. It blew into our faces from the south—one might almost say out of the stone—and it might even have been said to possess the memory of warmth, something once known and mostly forgotten. This change kindled in me a strange emotion, in the way one imagines the breath of a mother on a cold, frightening night calms her restless babe. I waited until Kayleigh had poured a few offering drops at the base of the stone, and then I went forward myself and let fall the last drops from the first of the two leather bottles Duvai had given me. It was a vinegary drink, tart and bitter, but in the instant of offering, I smelled as through the stone itself a sweeter, summery scent like flowers in bloom. I blinked, wondering if the shadows of the landscape beyond the stone had altered, but after all they had not. In moonlight, I saw the path ahead of me, and the empty hills, and very, very far away and below us in elevation a tiny burr of light marking a town’s watch fire. Was it possible we might reach Lemanis, the first leg of our journey, tomorrow? Sooner than I had dared hope?
The stars lay half hidden beneath a gauze of moonlight. My eyes warmed with tears, although I did not understand why I should wish to weep.
“Ah!” said Kayleigh.
I turned at her gasp.
Riders approached us on the path, hooves and harness muffled. She grabbed my arm, wrenching me sideways, and at first I thought she was trying to pull us out of sight, so I went with the drag of her weight. Then she kicked out my legs from under me, and not expecting this assault, I crumpled as the riders closed. She threw herself on top of me as I thrashed and shoved and got my left hand free. I punched her hard enough that she grunted, and with a burst of furious terror, I heaved her off me and scrambled to my feet as the rider in front pounded up and resolved into Andevai.
His mouth set in a grim line, he drew a sword. Its cold-steel blade gleamed where moonlight kissed it. His mouth was set in a grim line. The wind died, and the air grew so cold so fast I shuddered convulsively. I fumbled at the twisted mess of my garments and belt, knocking my bundle of provisions aside as I groped for my sword’s hilt.
“Are you all right, Kayleigh?” he demanded.
She struggled up and limped over to him. “Of course. Did you have any trouble following me?”
“None at all.” He clasped one of her hands, then let her go, still looking at me as if he expected me to vanish. “You laid a bright trail.”
His companion, wearing the livery of a House servant, pulled up a length behind him, mounted and leading another horse. He was no villager.
“You betrayed me,” I said hoarsely as I grasped the hilt.
Kayleigh looked at me across the gap between us. “I bear you no ill will. It’s only that he is my brother, son of the same mother, and I would do anything for him.”
“You would go willingly to the mansa’s bed?” I cried with all the scorn I could muster. “To bear the mansa’s bastard children who may be taken away at any moment to be raised in the House and not by you?”
“If I must, and if it will aid Vai, then I will do that,” she said with no tremor in her voice.
I could not fault her loyalty.
All I could do was draw my sword.
Because I expected him to come at me on the horse, using weight and height against me, I glanced to either side, trying to gauge where the land was most rugged, where I had the most chance to bolt while the horse would have trouble following in the half-light. As if he guessed my intent, he dismounted and strode forward so quickly I scarcely managed to wrestle the bundle from my back and fling it at him. He danced aside as the bundle sailed past him to smack on the dirt. I skipped back to place the stone between me and him.
He attacked.
He thrust. I parried. He cut; I caught his blade on mine, the steel singing where it met. Twisting away, I slashed back; he ducked left out from under the blade, which sliced across his right shoulder deep enough to catch in fabric, penetrate flesh, and cut free.