Floodpath Read online

  I look away, in part to avoid his searching gaze. I stare at the press, the stamps, the ink, the half-formed thoughts pressed into paper.

  “Maybe we can still print it, whatever you come up with,” Soe says, clearly trying to find some compromise. “We can keep making the stamps if you’d rather write it out that way. But . . .” She nods apologetically. “I am going to need my press back. I have orders from town I have to fill.”

  I sigh. Then I point to one of the scraps of paper, and, looking between the two of them, bring my fingertips together.

  “More,” I say.

  “More paper?” Soe asks. “I can get you more. I’ll have to run back to town in a day or two for deliveries. I can get more from the ragpickers then.”

  I nod, trying to force myself to look on the bright side. I don’t think Kimela set up my attack. But chances are good she’ll have more current information than any we’ve been able to glean so far. If she’s the ashoki now, she’ll have already started her scrutiny of the court. Surely chaos this big has to have left some trail.

  I look back to Iano. He gives me a placating smile.

  “I know you want to aim bigger,” he says. “But I think it’s best to stay within our means. Stay small. That makes sense, right? Kimela first.”

  I force everything I have into returning a half-formed smile.

  He nods and gets up to help Soe with their parcels. I stare absently at the cluttered tabletop.

  Stay small.

  For whatever reason, instead of the piles of paper and ink and words teetering around me, I get a vision of that empty room in Utzibor where I was locked for six weeks. Four walls and a bucket, with only a tiny airhole to the world outside.

  Stay small.

  Lark

  “I don’t know.”

  “But just think, Lark, think what we could do. This could end everything—the quarry marches, the trafficking rings, work bonds, abductions . . .”

  I open my hands. “Me threatening one person could do all that?”

  “It could be a start, at least.”

  I look down, where Rat is sitting between my knees. He’s been exiled to the porch all day and happy to have company. I scratch him absently behind the ears, my stomach still turning at the thought of Veran’s plan. He’s taken a seat across from me, on Soe’s overturned cast-iron cauldron, and he’s watching me anxiously.

  I drop my gaze to my hands, spotted with ink, sticky with resin, and sliced with the carving knife. I turn my palms over, studying the tattoos along my wrists. Perseverance. Strength. I’ve been thinking of them a lot today—they’ve been right in front of my face as I hauled the screw press down or whittled the next wooden block or pressed a line of letters into the sand. Never in my life have I been so saturated with words—I’ve never been good with them, or needed to be. Silence was a preferred trait among both the slavers and rustlers—no chatter, no talking back. Reading was even less useful than talk.

  But today, this day filled to the brim with words and letters, broken apart and put back together, shaped by our fingers, cast into sand . . . while it’s worn me nearly to the bone, there’s the oddest feeling of accomplishment whirling around in my stomach.

  I did something—something beyond just scrapping to survive, or swinging a punch, or stealing a loaf. I made something. It’s not done, and it’s not perfect, but if anything, that’s only building this little flare inside me. I did a useless, frivolous thing. Tamsin had most of the big ideas, but I—I made them work.

  Veran’s clearly bursting with impatience. His fingers fidget on his knees. The fringe twitches on his boots. “Are you worried about not having your sword and buckler? We might be able to find something in town.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . .” I rub my face. So many things come to mind. There will be guards—lots of guards, if these ashokis are as important as everyone says. This isn’t my terrain. I don’t know the land, I don’t know the road, I don’t know where the angle of the sun will help me or hurt me. I don’t know my horse. I don’t know my new companions like I knew my campmates. I don’t know that Iano or Soe will fall into line behind me. I don’t know that Tamsin’s physically strong enough. I don’t know what Veran—knuckleheaded, heroics-obsessed Veran—might do in the heat of the moment. With a lurch, I think of Pickle, his last impulsive fight on top of the stage, and the fall that broke his body and let his life out.

  My stomach clenches. “I just don’t know, Veran. I don’t feel good about it. I get the feeling more things could go wrong—really wrong—than right. And . . .” I rub my face. “I don’t . . . I don’t know that I’m the same person who stepped up in your stage a few weeks ago.”

  Don’t feel like the same person.

  Not sure I want to be the same person.

  It’s been a slow slide, starting with the decision to leave Three Lines and travel into the desert with this stranger—someone I’d never have said yes to back in the days of Arana and Bitty, when we were at our highest. And then came that trek across the desert, that fight at Utzibor, that killing strike to Dirtwater Dob. The ride into Pasul—that was the last little slip of normalcy. After that came the posthouse, the man, the girl—my father, my sister. The blind race back to Three Lines, and then the gutting feeling of finding it empty. Losing Jema. The water scrape. Tellman’s Ditch.

  And then today, this weird, upside-down day, when for the first time I was up to my ears not in sand or sweat or blood, but words.

  Maybe that’s why I’ve been so absorbed in my tattoos today. Before all this, they were my identity—a sun, a sword, a lark. Now they seem like a record. A diary of a past life. Petroglyphs, carved in old stone.

  Veran’s fidgeting has stilled.

  “You are still the same person, Lark,” he says quietly.

  I shake my head—I hadn’t meant it to be a dig at myself, that I’m not the same as the bandit who held a knife to his throat out by the South Burr. But before I can speak, he turns, reaching for one of the many parcels they’ve brought in from town.

  “I have something for you,” he says. He pushes a quilt aside and pulls out a bundle of clothes. He hands me two long-sleeved button-down shirts and a new handkerchief, bright red. I rub the stout fabric between my fingers appreciatively.

  “Thanks,” I say. “That was nice of you.”

  “Oh.” He waves a hand, still rifling through the bundle. “Those are just the basics. Have a look at this.”

  He shakes out a vest and holds it up so I can see. In the fading light, it looks blue, with bright gold threads shooting outward. He watches my face, his eyes dancing.

  “Wow,” I say. “Uh . . . that’s something. How much did that cost?”

  “Bah—I don’t remember.” He drapes it across my knees, and Rat snoots the fabric with his nose. The buttons flash as they move. I lean back, almost unwilling to touch it.

  “And,” he says, with an air of anticipation, reaching into the sack.

  “And?” I repeat, looking up. “Veran, how much did you spend?”

  He doesn’t answer. He slowly straightens, bringing out a crisp, clean-edged cowhide hat.

  I stare at it. It’s a thing of beauty, with brown and white patches and a rolled brim, and a leather braid running around the base. It’s the kind of thing I’d swipe off a traveler in a stage and slap down triumphantly for Patzo in Snaketown, winning me a sack of beans and a pound of bacon and a night spent comfortably in the woodshed.

  “Since you lost your old one,” he says, holding it out between his fingertips.

  Hesitantly, I take it, since that’s clearly what he wants. I set it on top of the fine vest. I can’t think of anything to say. I’ve handled clothes this nice before, but it’s always to pass them on to my campmates or trade them in town. I can’t imagine myself actually wearing them. Suddenly I feel dirtier than ever, the sweat and blood and ink from today all sitting heavy on my skin.

  Veran leans forward, his wrists draped off his knees. “Lark, li
sten . . . I know a lot of things have happened in just a few weeks. And I know a lot of it was my fault. Sending your campmates away, losing your horse, bringing the soldiers after us. But . . . despite all that, despite being here in Moquoia, you’re still the same person. You’re still the Sunshield Bandit. Whether or not you still have your old sword or your old hat or any of that doesn’t matter—it’s still who you are. And you can still use it to help those people in Tellman’s Ditch.”

  He’s speaking gently, sincerely, trying to reassure me without realizing that he’s doing just the opposite. That title, the Sunshield Bandit, given to me by sheriffs and angry posses across the Ferinno, plastered across bounty sheets, settles deep in my gut like a stone. My thoughts flicker to my tattoos again, and I realize—they’re not a diary. They’re a proclamation, sunk into my skin, the same as my slave brand. Past life or not, I’ve still marked myself as the outlaw who terrorized the Ferinno.

  The little burst of pleasure from a minute ago over a day spent on a fanciful word machine crumbles away, leaving guilt in its place. In the excitement of helping Tamsin, I forgot Tellman’s Ditch—literally forgot the people being marched inland. I didn’t think of them once. I sank into a day of distraction without a single thought, while they’re getting parceled out and forced onward, over the dusty plains and into the cold mountains, into a life beyond anybody’s reach.

  I let out my breath, my fingers tightening on the brim of the handsome hat. As Veran watches, I tilt it to check the size, but it looks large enough to go over my hair. My dreadlocks are bound up in a thick bun—I reach up and unwind the cloth holding them there, and then pull them back into my old ponytail. I lift the hat and settle it over my head. It’s a good fit, snug enough to stay on without pinching.

  I’m not sure why that should disappoint me.

  Veran’s smiling, his eyes agleam in the light coming from Soe’s windows. I take a breath.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I got carried away today. We shouldn’t waste any more time.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he says quickly. “I think what you and Tamsin did is amazing. I can’t believe you thought of casting the letters in sand. Everyone at the university is going to lose their minds—your uncle Colm—”

  “No,” I say, straightening up and spreading out the vest over my knees, my fingers tracing the rays of the sunburst embroidery. “I shouldn’t have gotten distracted. This is too important.” I pull out the bandanna from the work shirts and knot it around my throat. “Get me a sword—not the toothpick one Iano has, but something broad, single grip. I don’t need anything else.”

  “Not a shield?”

  “There’s hardly any sun for me to use, anyway. It’ll be fine. Can you get me a sword?”

  “Soe will have to go back into town in a day or two—I’m sure she can buy something from the metalsmith if you’re not picky.”

  I nod. “Good. Do you know where you plan to confront this ashoki?”

  “She’ll be traveling from Ossifer’s Pass, so she should be coming in from the north.”

  “Tomorrow you and I’ll go out and scout the road—figure out the best place for the ambush.”

  His eyes flicker in excitement. “Got it.”

  I’m reminded again, uncomfortably, of Pickle. “You sure you’ll be up to this?”

  “You tell me what to do,” he says confidently. “I’m all yours.”

  I’m not sure I like that, either.

  Nothing good seems to come to the people who get tied up with me.

  Veran

  Four days. We have four days to solidify our plan to confront Kimela and get some answers—maybe all the answers. I’m still placing my bets on Minister Kobok’s involvement, but I can’t deny that Kimela has the most tangible reason to want to get Tamsin out of the picture, and I can’t forget the sly way she insulted my country and my folk at the Bakkonso Ball. I think of the way Lark stepped up in my stage a few weeks ago, how she filled the little space, menacing with purpose, and how I babbled like an idiot when faced with the point of her knife. I have no doubt that Kimela, when faced with the same threat, will give us whatever information she knows—and as she’s the new ashoki, I’m hoping it will be a lot.

  The big thing will be making sure any guards are detained long enough to let Lark and Tamsin get in the coach. So the day after our foray into Giantess, Lark and I ride out to the road leading into town. She’s wearing one of her new work shirts, but none of the other purchases—we both agreed they’d be too conspicuous if seen by a passerby, and we need to keep her involvement secret until the day of the attack. If word gets out that the Sunshield Bandit has been spotted outside Giantess, Kimela might change her route altogether and spoil everything.

  It’s a thrill riding through the countryside with Lark, weighing the merits of various terrain and landmarks. For two days, we poke among outcroppings and weave through redwood stands, fluffing up duff and debating hiding places and escape routes. She clambers into embankments and has me ride by, studying the angle of travel and the confines of the space. She rides ahead with instructions for me to wait ten minutes, then follow and try to pick out her hiding place. It’s rough, satisfying work, and we arrive back at Soe’s exhausted but grimly satisfied with our decisions.

  Lark doesn’t stop to rest once we’re back at the cabin, though. She goes right back to teaching Tamsin sign language in between whittling little blocks for their resin letter stamps. Tamsin still seems determined to write out her essay using her co-opted screw press, and none of us are brave enough to contradict her. While we sit in the kitchen—Lark in the corner in a pile of wood shavings—Tamsin bends over the grooved wooden plate, painstakingly sliding letters into the grooves with her lips pursed in concentration. It makes my head spin to watch her—she has to compose each word backward, and near the bottom all her sentences are full of gaps where she and Lark haven’t finished making enough stamps. At the end of each day she gives Lark a list of the letters she needs, and Lark obligingly uses her bootleg branding-iron technique to cast more in the sand.

  I’m hoping that perhaps the novelty of seeing all those letters printed in neat, even rows will work in our favor. We’re all getting better at recognizing Tamsin’s most frequent hand signs, but without her voice, our plan hinges on Kimela taking the time to read the essay in full. The lines of stamps—more crisp and compact than a woodblock, more precise than handwriting—might not be fast, but they’re certainly different. The fragments that Tamsin has managed to get out of one of the small presses—the big one being reclaimed for pressing the goods from town—are so unusual in appearance, it may be just the extra hook we need to keep Kimela’s attention.

  On the third day, Soe goes into town with her newly pressed goods. We spend the day around the cabin, hashing out the finer details of our plan. I’m halfway concerned that she’ll return with word that there are bounties up for Iano and me, or that soldiers have poured in on the report of that woman with the twisted eyelid who shadowed me on market day. But Soe returns with news that everything seems normal. From her cart she hands Tamsin a giant stack of rag paper, more than she could possibly need, and to Lark she hands a burly, fullered sword with a squat hilt.

  “That’s the only thing he had that matched your specifications,” Soe explains as Lark tests its balance. “He offered to forge something more to my liking, but I told him this one would do.”

  “It’ll do,” Lark confirms, giving it an experimental swing.

  To me, she hands over a long, toothed crosscut saw and several wedges, the kind my ma has her scouts and sawyers use for timbering. I handle them as if they were relics. Never have I been allowed to help fell or buck a tree, whether it’s an infested pine to be taken down or a timber oak bound for the Paroan shipyards. Now that I think on it, examining the teeth of the saw, I don’t know why. These saws are meant for two people to operate, so if I were to collapse on the spot, my partner would know right away. I’m hardly going to lie around unconsci
ous while trees fall without anyone knowing. Felling, limbing, bucking, hewing . . . they’re all inherently dangerous jobs anyway. There’s an endless well of tragic tales, some true, some not, that scouts tell around their fires about deadly mishaps brought on by a hatchet or a handsaw.

  I turn the wedges in my hands, suddenly stung by a sense of injustice. Why should my parents, after all, keep me from such a task? Why should they keep me from any of it? Mama knew how much I longed to be in the woods. I begged, I pleaded, I tried every treatment she researched and several more I unearthed myself for slowing or stalling my seizures. Anything for the chance to earn my florets, the first and most basic badge signaling the transition from trainee to scout. Instead, I was kept back, kept inside, kept in bed, while my mother leaned over me, her own silver florets worn from their decades on her uniform collar.

  I close my hands on the wedges. I’m done letting my parents’ overcaution keep me from the things they always warned me against. I’ve already proved I can travel cross-country, even if I did collapse twice along the way. I even dug a seep and revived Lark. Why should I be any more afraid of timbering, or ladders, or walkwires?

  I ignore the tiny voice in my head, speaking incongruously in my older brother’s voice, reminding me of how I nearly fell apart when Lark collapsed in the water scrape.

  Shut up, Vynce, I think furiously. You’re just worried I’ll finally beat you at something.

  So, on day four, Lark and I take the mules and cart back out to the place she’s chosen to stage the attack. We’ve been calling it that—the attack—but we’re hoping the landscape will do most of the work for us. After crawling over nearly every inch of road and bank for three-quarters of a mile, Lark has picked the spot. It’s a hairpin curve set into a steep slope, hemmed in by dense bracken and redwoods. On one side, the bank rises up toward a squat summit; on the other, it falls sickeningly into a deep ravine, so choked with sword ferns and sorrel that the stream at the bottom is apparent only by the distant chatter of invisible water. Any coach team is going to take their time going around this bend, and, most useful to us, it’s impossible to see around it.