Floodpath Read online

  “This is an essay Tamsin has written,” Lark says as I hand it over, “explaining the root of the problem in Moquoia and the steps the court can take to fix it.”

  Kimela’s gaze flicks to the pamphlet, then back up to me. She seems to gather herself to say something, but stops and looks again at the paper. She takes it, staring at the text.

  “What on earth—who wrote this? Who can scribe like this?”

  Oh, bless the colors, a lucky break.

  Lark glances at my hands. “Tamsin says read it, and she’ll tell you.”

  Kimela clucks her tongue in irritation, but nevertheless her eyes begin to dart down the page. Furrows form around her mouth, but I use her momentary distraction to turn back to Simea.

  What happened outside Vittenta? I ask, and Lark translates.

  She’s sitting pressed firmly against the seat, with her hands buried inside her cloak. “I was pulled out of the coach and bound by the attackers. I didn’t see what happened to you. When they said you’d died, I believed it.”

  You fell on me, I say, lifting my eyebrows in surprise. I thought you’d been shot.

  “I was trying to protect you,” she says.

  I struggle to make sense of this, but as I’m placing her story alongside the events I remember, a distant, shrill whistle pierces the air. Lark and I go still, straining to hear. It’s that two-note birdcall, the one Veran told us is the cardinal. We exchange a quick glance, frowning.

  All is well, I sign, and she nods. He must be merely keeping us updated about the guards around the bend.

  “Wait just a moment,” Kimela says, now skimming the second page of my essay. “Look here, Tamsin, you completely gloss over the impacts that reducing bond labor would have on our social services, our health care system—you act as if it’s just going to create a dip in our economy, not undo centuries of social infrastructure . . .”

  I jump to move my hands.

  “Tamsin knows there are more considerations than are named in the text,” Lark says. “But the point is that these things are . . . lut’uw . . . sorry, Tamsin, I do not know . . . they are in to being fixed,” she stumbles, and then, on a whim, she goes off my signs, locking sights on Kimela. “And these things—people services, health system—these are not so important as the lives of slaves, the lives of families and children.”

  “Not so important!” Kimela exclaims, her grip creasing the paper. Outside, the cardinal call comes again—Veran is being overcautious, it seems. “You were on this nonsense before, Tamsin, when you were ashoki. Do you know how it sounds to your colleagues in court, when you dismiss their industries as unimportant? I come from the rice families of Ketori. How dare you suggest dismantling such a pillar of Moquoian trade by wrapping it all up in laborer welfare?”

  Just read the rest of the essay, I say, and Kimela flicks her hand at Lark as the words come out of her mouth.

  “No, I will not. I can see where this is going. I am the ashoki now, Tamsin, not you, and I will inform you that I have brought some balance back to the court you rocked. Moquoia in danger, indeed! You’re the one who went and tipped it on its head!”

  She closes the pamphlet with a curt slap and holds it back out to me. From outside, Veran shrieks the cardinal’s call again. My anger flickers briefly in his direction—if he’s not careful, he’s going to give away his position.

  “Bond labor is wrong and has no place in Moquoia anymore,” Lark says carefully, watching my fingers. “But there are ways to undo it without destroying the country.”

  “A fanciful dream of the unpatriotic and overemotional,” Kimela says firmly. “Moquoia wouldn’t be half what it is without bond labor. Blessed Light, do watch where you’re putting that thing!” she cries, leaning away from Lark’s sword, which has jumped toward her.

  Lark drives it into the quilted seat back just a few inches from Kimela’s left ear. She leans forward, her teeth gritted over her red bandanna, and Kimela has the wherewithal to remember her terror. Lark spits a few words in Eastern. Veran whistles a fourth time, his call cracking on the final note—by the colors, what is wrong with him?

  There’s a sudden shout from up top, and the whole carriage rocks. Something that sounds remarkably like a crossbow quarrel thumps the side of the coach.

  “Tamsin!” Iano calls, his footsteps hitting just overhead. “Lark! Get out of there! The guards are coming!”

  Lark reels back from Kimela, jerking her sword out of the seat back. At exactly the same moment, Simea flings herself from her seat toward me.

  She’d have made contact if Lark hadn’t moved—instead, they collide, and all three of us ricochet in the cramped space, our legs tangling. I land against the door, and it hinges open, swinging over the empty space just off the road. Rain pelts my face. There’s shouting outside. I struggle to free my feet from the pile of us on the floor. It’s only as Lark gives her own yell, twisting awkwardly toward Simea, that I see the knife.

  It’s wrapped in Simea’s fingers, and it’s arcing toward me. Lark launches herself off the bench and plunges the end of her sword into the dark folds of Simea’s cloak. She spasms and gasps. The knife falls. Kimela screams, high and long. The coach rocks, and the far door bursts open. A crossbow is thrust into the space, and Lark rushes to deflect it—but misses. Her fist swings by it ineffectively, as if she’d forgotten her shield wasn’t on her left hand. The quarrel fires, missing her head by inches, but the mistake has thrown her off balance—a black-liveried body barrels into the coach, slamming her against the edge of the seat. She gives a snarl; there’s a horrible groan as their grappling bodies land on the bleeding Simea. Kimela is still screaming.

  Lark twists in the guard’s grip, his burly arms wound under her shoulders. Her eyes find mine. Her last movement in the tiny space, filled now with the tang of blood instead of perfume, is to kick.

  Her boot hits my calf so hard I can feel the worn tread of her soles, and I slip backward, my fingers just missing the doorframe. One of my feet lands on the soft, perilous edge of the road—the other swings out into open air. The rain-soft mud gives way beneath me.

  I fall, first through air and then through brush, rolling and tumbling uncontrollably into the fathomless forest below.

  Lark

  I hit the wet road face-first. On principle, I start to roll over, but the guards are expecting this. A reinforced toe flies in from nowhere and connects with my ribs, bringing a shocking flush of pain in my lungs. I gasp, dizzy, trying to drag my sword out from under me, but someone puts a knee on my back, crushing out the last of my breath. One by one, my fingers are pried off the hilt, and then my hands are planted firmly behind my back. I feel the rub of a rope.

  “She killed my maid!” Kimela is shrieking. “Look at her—she’s dead! The Sunshield Bandit murdered her!”

  I give a feeble buck, my cheek grinding the dirt, but there are hands all over me now, and the race of pain up my side only grows worse. Someone grabs my ponytail and lifts my head—the fancy cowhide hat must have fallen off in the coach—and pulls my bandanna into my mouth, knotting it tightly behind my neck. A bag that smells like wood shavings and rusted metal goes over my head. My boots drag against the mud in a final attempt at a kick, but it takes only seconds for my ankles to be bound together, too.

  Following that comes a kind of stunned silence from everyone—me, the ashoki, the guards, the woods.

  “What . . . what should we do, Captain?” asks a voice, sounding like she’s still trying to process what just happened.

  “There were more bandits—they must have fled into the forest. You two—stay here with the coach. Lock the doors. Uerik, work on clearing that tree. You, and you, make a sweep of the banks. Lieutenant, you and Portis ready your horses.” Someone nudges me with their boot. “You’ll take the bandit back to Tolukum.”

  There’s a murmuring of affirmations and a rush of crunching boots and hooves. The rain spatters the cloth sack over my head, seeping down my face.

  Veran, I thin
k hazily. If you ever wanted to play the hero, now would be a great time.

  But the woods remain silent.

  Veran

  By the time I’m sure the guards have made their final sweep of the forest and given me up as lost, it’s edging past the afternoon. The rain has let up, and the air is heavy and warm. The distant sounds of chopping and sawing have stopped, so the tree must be cleared from the road. My legs have cramped from staying tucked up inside this rotting, half-buried redwood log, and I’m painfully thirsty, but I still don’t dare to move from my hiding place. I’m hoping, perhaps, that I’ll simply die inside this tree. Maybe I’ll seize again and it will be my last, my brain’s final misfire.

  But the minutes slide consciously on. It’s only as the heat reaches its peak that I hear a sound I’ve been dreading. A goldfinch, inexpertly whistled. Per-chick-o-ree. A call for location. One of them remembered.

  I let the call pass twice before I answer. I hear footsteps hurrying through the bracken, and finally I crawl out of the log and through the sword ferns. I emerge coated in sweat and grime just as Iano and Soe push through the foliage. Soe has a strip of her cloak bound around her wrist.

  “Veran!” Iano gasps. His eyes flick around. “Where’s Tamsin?”

  “What do you mean, where’s Tamsin?” I ask. “I assumed she was with you. She was in the coach under you.”

  His face splits with panic. “No! We fled the coach when the guards came back, like we planned. Is she with Lark?”

  “Lark is gone,” I say, the words thick and distant. “They tied her up and put her on a horse and rode back toward Tolukum.” My stomach turns as I remember the pile of guards holding her down, the rib-breaking kick to her side, the tool bag pulled over her face.

  “Tamsin wasn’t with her?”

  “Not that I saw. I figured she must have escaped with you. I only saw what happened after you had left.”

  Iano stares at me, his eyes wide and blazing. “And you just . . . you just watched?”

  “Yeah. Until the guards started searching the woods,” I say. “And then I ran.”

  He gives a shake. “Where’s my bow?”

  “I lost it,” I say. “Back at the rock.”

  “What happened?” Soe asks, cradling her arm. “We heard you whistling the all clear . . .”

  “I messed up,” I say. “I whistled you the wrong bird. I meant to warn you that the guards had realized something was wrong, but I panicked. It’s my fault.”

  For a moment, there’s only the thick, stifling silence of the forest around us.

  Then Iano lunges.

  His hands close on my collar. I trip over a tangle of ferns and land on my back with his knuckles jamming painfully under my jaw.

  “You stupid fool!” he shouts down at me, shaking my collar. “You damned idiot! This was your plan, your idea, you demanded that you be in charge, and look what’s happened!”

  “Iano, stop!” Soe drags one-handed at his shoulder. “Keep your voice down—the guards might still be around!”

  Iano does drop his voice, to a gritted hiss, but the pressure from his knuckles doesn’t let up. “Tamsin could be dead! She could be hurt! And you got Lark captured—do you know what will happen to her at Tolukum? Do you know what the sentence is on her bounty sheet?”

  “I know,” I say, my voice a dead thing. “I know. I know. I know.”

  “You ruined everything, you’ve undone it all—”

  “I know,” I say, my words cracking from the pressure of his knuckles against my throat.

  “Iano,” Soe whispers fiercely, still pulling his shoulder. “Stop it. Let him up. We have to think about this.”

  His fists tighten, his eyes just inches from mine, and if he’d only squeeze a little harder, I might slip into blissful unconsciousness. But he reluctantly lets go and leans back. I stay where I am, breathing shallowly, staring up at the towering crowns of the redwood trees. They crowd in, seeming to peer down at me, perhaps knowing I killed one of their brethren for no good reason. For less than no good reason. I killed one of their brethren and it only brought more pain, and more death.

  We’re quiet, the three of us—me on my back, Iano and Soe standing over me, Iano’s hands still clenching and unclenching.

  “Do you think they found our horses?” Soe asks, when it’s clear neither of us is going to speak.

  “It’s likely,” Iano says curtly, still looking daggers at me. We’d left our horses a few hundred yards down the small track leading from Soe’s house to the main road, in a copse of sugar pines. “Which leaves us stranded with absolutely no food, money, or gear.”

  That sounds familiar. I’ve done that before. These conifer forests aren’t nearly as harsh as the water scrape. But I had Lark in the water scrape. I hadn’t gotten her captured in the water scrape.

  I hadn’t ruined everything in the water scrape.

  “We’re not stranded yet,” Soe says, obviously aggravated at the two of us. “Why don’t we head in that direction—it’s the way home, anyway. If the horses aren’t there, at least we’re a little closer. Come on, Veran, get up. Are you hurt?”

  “No,” I say. Not at all. If I were, it might have given me a reason to have run, to have panicked and dropped the bow and left Lark and the others at the mercy of the guards. But I’m unhurt. The guard I ran from at the rock didn’t even have a ranged weapon—only his sword. I managed to slip him using the age-old habit of simply being quiet, but he never would have given up his pursuit so quickly if the other guards hadn’t needed help subduing Lark down at the coach.

  Soe helps me up, and we start out, weaving in silence through the thick trunks. We have to stay within sight of the road, or risk getting hopelessly lost.

  My ma wouldn’t get lost. She’d have her compass. And if she didn’t have her compass, she’d have thought to memorize the position of Soe’s house in relation to her direction of travel. She’d be able to navigate the forest without running the risk of being seen.

  But she wouldn’t need to, because my ma would have kept her head up on that hillside.

  She’d have given the right warning.

  And she’d never have run.

  I trudge after the others. We find the stand of sugar pines after a half hour. The horses aren’t there.

  “Kuas,” Iano says darkly.

  “Maybe we could go down into the valley and try to find Lark’s,” Soe suggests. She and Tamsin had both ridden hers downhill of the road, so they wouldn’t have to cross to get to their hiding place. Rat was told emphatically to stay, bribed with a generous ham hock Lark tied to a rock.

  “A great help one horse will be to the three of us,” Iano says.

  “I don’t deny it, my prince,” Soe snaps. “But I’m trying to think of options, instead of just glowering about the things we can’t change. I’m worried about Tamsin and Lark, too.”

  Iano opens his mouth, perhaps for a royal reprimand, but falls silent as a new sound reaches our ears. From the junction with the main road comes the quick thudding of hooves and jingling of tack. We immediately retreat into the undergrowth, burrowing down among the ferns. I wedge myself into a brushy hollow and wince at a flash of prickly pain. I look down to find I’ve backed into a mat of greenbrier. The little barbs sink neatly into my skin.

  At this point it just feels like mockery.

  I don’t have time to free myself, however. All three of us go still, peering through the barest gaps in the foliage, as a party of horses and riders appear, trotting smartly down the road.

  “It’s the guards,” Soe whispers, but Iano peers closer.

  “They’re different guards,” he says.

  Soe frowns as they come closer. “Wait . . . that one in the front . . . that’s Osti—the blacksmith from town. He sold me Lark’s sword, and the saw.”

  “Who’s that behind him?” Iano says suddenly. “Is that—?”

  “Who?” Soe says, alarmed.

  “That woman who was following us at the market
.”

  “I don’t know, is it? I never saw her.”

  “I’m almost certain it is. Yes, look there’s the scar on her eye.”

  They don’t ask me to verify. I don’t blame them. The long-familiar feeling of being a burden settles thick around me, only now I don’t have the excuse of seizing at some inopportune or embarrassing moment.

  I pick my head a few inches out of the clutch of the greenbrier. Sure enough, riding behind the blacksmith, dressed in the black livery of Tolukum, is the woman with the twisted eyelid. She trots smartly at the head of five soldiers, her face grim.

  “What else is down this track?” Iano whispers to Soe after the party has passed.

  Soe grimaces. “Besides my house? Not much. A few other farmsteads, the charcoaler, and the old caved-in lead mine.”

  “Not much reason to go that way.”

  She shakes her head. “No. I think we have to assume they’re here for us. That woman must have gone back to Tolukum for reinforcements and then asked around Giantess. People know me—asking for a sword and timbering equipment would have stood out a mile.”

  “So we can’t go back,” Iano says.

  “Not unless you trust that those people aren’t out to do you harm.”

  They go silent. I lay my head back against the greenbrier. Barbs prickle my neck. The world swirls around me, like the swollen South Burr the morning after I tailed Lark back to Three Lines. Words and choices and failures tumble by like the debris in the flood. Shame coats me inside and out like thick, cloudy silt. I struggle for breath, drowning in misery.

  An ant—or something else, I’m probably buried in mites and chiggers at this point—bites me through my trousers, right on the soft spot beneath my knee. I shake my leg, earning myself long scrapes from the greenbrier. I rest my boot on a pile of bracken, trying to get my leg out of the brush. The fringe droops, muddy and limp. These used to be my best boots, back when they’d only ever seen the shiny interior of palaces and houses of state. Now the embroidery is stained and ragged. The one remaining medallion rests cockeyed, the threads loosened.