The girl pulled the fire back. First she stared at her own hands but then she fixed her eyes on the bracelet. Glenn saw her chance. She whipped around to the dark boatman and raised the locket over her head.
“Take her away!”
The creature didn’t make a sound as it leapt from the boat and into the air. It seemed to elongate as it came, its arms stretching into tattered, batlike wings with sharpened tree limbs for claws. Its hood split to reveal a misshapen beak. The girl stood her ground. Fire shot from her hands and tore through the creature, but its body was amorphous, shifting as it flew so that it would part and then re-form, unharmed. The girl tried to run but the creature was too fast. It overcame her and together they crashed into the forest. Her screams were high and awful … until they were strangled away to nothing.
Glenn forced herself up the path to the house at a run. She made it through the door just as Kevin and Opal appeared from the hallway.
“Glenn!” Kevin shouted, rushing toward her.
“I’m fine,” Glenn said, backing away from him. “What happened?
Who was that?”
“Abbe Daniel,” Opal said. “The Magistra’s handmaiden. She
isn’t alone, either. Soldiers are approaching now. I can have my woods slow them down but you have to leave. Take the boat.” Opal turned to Kevin. “I have supplies gathered in the back. Aamon will help you.”
Kevin ran back into the hallway. When Glenn went to follow, Opal took her by the wrist.
“There’s still time,” Opal whispered. “Your mother is powerful but slow to rouse. She’ll leave things to servants like Abbe and Garen Tom as long as she can, but if she wakes, it will be too late. Don’t destroy the bracelet. Use it.”
Opal drew Glenn closer. The red glow of the bracelet spread across the lines of her face.
“You can’t trust Aamon Marta,” she said in a hush. “When tens of thousands struggled for their freedom from the Magisterium, he led the armies that cut them down. Men, women, and children were slaughtered like animals. And when it looked like they might prevail, Aamon brought the blight of your mother upon us. If you think that sort of evil is something that can be walked away from, then you’re a fool.
He is an instrument of the Magistra and always has been.”
“Glenn.”
She turned with a start. Aamon filled the hallway behind them, his massive body looming in the dark.
It was him, Glenn thought. That thing in the woods the night my mother left. Why hadn’t he said anything? Why did he keep it from me?
Glenn remembered being warm and safe, lying in that dark water with her mother at her side and the great sky above them. But that was balanced with the sting of ten abandoned years. It was balanced by madness and death. It was too much. Her world had tumbled again and again and she was just now righting herself. Whatever Aamon had done, whatever he had kept from her, he was the only one offering a way home.
Glenn yanked her wrist out of Opal’s grasp. “I told you,” she said.
“This isn’t my world.”
She ran to join Aamon and Kevin by the front door. Aamon knelt in front of them, drawing them aside with his big hands.
“You’re apprentice smiths,” Aamon said. “You’ve been
indentured to Kalle Bromden in Bethany. You’re on your way there now.”
“What about you?” Kevin asked.
“We happened to be heading in the same direction, that’s all. You do not know anything about me. Not even my name. We’ll take Opal’s boat through the night, then get out and follow the path to a town called Armstrong — it’s the first town along the river. We’ll take a wagon east from there. If anything happens to me along the way, if we get separated, just keep going. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Get to Bethany and ask for Kalle Bromden. I’ll find you. Do you understand?”
Glenn and Kevin both said they did.
“Good. It’s time, then. Come.”
Aamon took a pack from beside him and ducked out the door
with Glenn on his heels. When Glenn came down the hill Aamon was already leaning over the boat, loading in the pack and waving her forward. Glenn suddenly realized that Kevin wasn’t behind her. She held up her hand to Aamon and went back up the path to the house.
She found him standing with Opal at the front door, her body mostly hidden by his. They were whispering to each other in a way that seemed heated, as if they were arguing.
“I don’t know,” Kevin said, his voice rising. “She’s …”
Glenn crept closer, partially concealed by the trees. Opal leaned into Kevin and spoke too quietly for Glenn to hear. Kevin nodded, calmer now, and Opal handed him something that Glenn couldn’t see.
Kevin stared at it a moment, then tucked it into his coat.
“Yes,” Kevin said, his voice grave as he backed away from her.
“I will. I promise.”
Kevin left her and started down the lane, buttoning his coat to his neck. He stopped short when he saw Glenn standing there.
“What were you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Kevin said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”
Kevin disappeared down the path. Opal stood eerily still in the light of the half-closed door. A slant of moonlight cut across her face, making her wrinkled features stark and hard, like cracked marble.
Glenn turned and ran down to the river. By the time she got there, Aamon had stowed everything in the boat, and Kevin was sitting in its narrow bow.
“Quickly,” Aamon said as he waved her forward. Then he looked over her shoulder and shouted, “Glenn!”
Two of Garen Tom’s soldiers burst out of the trees beside the house. One was racing toward her with a sword drawn while the other dropped to his knee, pulling a bowstring taut. Glenn ran. An arrow cut through the air inches from her shoulder.
“Get down!” Aamon commanded as he pushed Glenn into the boat. “Both of you!”
Aamon charged up the hill as more of them poured out of the forest. A fat man swung an enormous ax, but Aamon dodged it at the last second and drove his immense fist into the man’s stomach. He doubled over, gasping, and Aamon brought both his hands together and smashed them into the back of the man’s head, dropping him to the ground.
An arrow sliced into the meat of Aamon’s arm, but it barely slowed him down. He tore the bow out of the terrified archer’s hand and snapped it like a twig. Another soldier managed a slash across Aamon’s back with his sword, before Aamon swept the blade out of his hand and then threw him to the ground. The man recoiled as Aamon fell on him, teeth bared and claws ready to tear at his throat, but for some reason Aamon didn’t strike.
Two others set on him while he paused. Both had heavy clubs and one of them managed a perfect swing to Aamon’s back that toppled him over onto his side. As soon as he was down, the others swarmed over him like a horde of ants.
Glenn dug her fingers underneath the bracelet and started to strip it off, her eyes on the soldiers. Opal said she could control it. Use it.
Glenn held her breath. It was a chance she had to take. It was either that or she, Kevin, and Aamon would all be dead.
There was a splash behind her. Glenn turned. Another soldier, a ratty-looking man with shaggy hair and pockmarked cheeks, was knee-deep in the water, racing toward them, a dagger in his hand.
Glenn pulled at the bracelet, but the soldier grabbed the side of the boat and yanked it toward him, knocking her to her knees. His blade gleamed. Kevin rushed to Glenn’s side, pulling her back just as something burst out of the water and the man disappeared, dragged under the surface. Glenn leapt forward and caught flashes of Aamon’s thick fur and the man’s leather armor in the churning water.