Frostblood (Frostblood Saga #1)(17)
So the coast was only two days away. Perhaps I could follow in their wake, stealing food at night and using their path to find my way safely down the mountain.
One by one, the fires were extinguished, and everyone shuffled off to the wagons. Unfortunately for my hopes of pilfering food, a tall, bearded man remained as sentry, leaning his back against a wagon as he took a swig from a flask.
After a while, another man joined the first. He wore a patch of dark fabric over one eye.
“Anything?” he asked, pulling his rumpled cloak more tightly around himself.
“Unlikely,” the bearded man answered. “The soldiers moved on. The Fireblood is halfway across the sea, if she has any sense. If not, they’ll run her to ground between here and the coast.”
I sucked in a breath as my heart took up an irregular beat. I wasn’t sure how many other Firebloods were out there, but I had to assume they were talking about me.
The man with the eye patch hacked and spit on the ground. “That’s what I think of that stinking Fireblood. She escapes from prison and we all suffer for it.”
I clamped my hand over my mouth.
“They say Firebloods are the dangerous ones. But I don’t see none of them burning down my house.”
“We’ll go back in the summer,” said the bearded man. “Though I wonder what’s the point of rebuilding when they can take it all away again. Only the injured and ill left to defend our homes.”
The other man scoffed. “No doubt they’ll soon decide we’re fit enough. Never mind this”—he pointed to his eye patch—“or your tree branch of a leg. Fat lot of good we were when they raided us.”
The bearded man sighed. “I still don’t sleep nights, thinking about a Fireblood wandering free with fire in her fingertips.”
I’m not a threat! I wanted to scream it so loudly that they would somehow believe that it was true. The Frostblood soldiers were the threat. That captain who killed my mother, cutting her down like she was nothing.
“The reward, though. Five thousand coin. Think of it.” The bearded man gestured with his flask, pointing to the right. “I could hire a ship bound east, buy some land on some empty island, build a house. Find a cure for Kaitryn.”
The man with the eye patch put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “The healer in Tevros will fix her up right enough. You’ll see.”
The bearded man handed over his flask. “Take the watch,” he said, limping stiffly to one of the wagons.
Five thousand… I moved deeper into the trees, struggling to muffle my gasping breaths. I would never be safe. The soldiers were so close, raiding the countryside in search of—it could only be me. If I followed the villagers to the coast and we hit a stretch of open ground, I’d be easily spotted. Then again, with the twisting, tree-lined mountain paths, there was usually somewhere to hide.
A chorus of coughing pierced my fog of indecision. It was a child’s cough and it came from the clearing. I moved closer until I could see. The bearded man with the limp carried a small form while a woman followed closely behind.
“Magra!” said the man, pounding on the side of one of the wagons. “Please, help us. Kaitryn is having another spell.”
The storyteller came out, shivering in the cool air. “I don’t know what else we can do. All the herbs perished in the fire. And even if I had my cures, I’ve tried everything.”
“But it’s so much worse now.” The woman who must be Kaitryn’s mother twisted her hands together. “She breathed in the smoke… and it was already bad enough. It’s been such a wet winter.” She took a shuddering breath. “You must be able to do something.”
“The only thing we can do is keep her as warm as possible,” Magra replied gently.
The girl was coughing so hard she could barely draw breath. Her mother started crying in stifled sobs, trying to block them with a fist.
I tried to think of what Mother would do. It was a wet cough, not a dry one. That ruled out steam infused with the essence of needleflower or nightbrace. I’d have to feel her skin to know if she had a fever, and I couldn’t do that without revealing myself. But I could judge by the sound. I ran through all of Mother’s patients in my mind until I remembered one whose cough had sounded similar. It had been a boy a few years older than I, with wracking coughs so severe he had started bringing up blood. She had used some kind of tincture on his chest. I closed my eyes and tried to remember. Eggswort. No, that was red and the tincture had been yellow. I could almost picture her hands as she crushed the herbs. Suddenly, it came to me.
“Essence of wintergreen and spiny meadowvale,” I whispered.
I crept back to the saddlebag, patting Butter as she gave a soft whicker, and rummaged through until I found the bottles I’d snatched from Brother Gamut’s apothecary. It took several minutes of unstopping each and sniffing carefully, but I found the two I needed. Clutching them tightly, I hovered near the edge of the trees.
Someone had fed and stoked the campfire. The man with the limp sat with Kaitryn close to his chest, a blanket wrapped around her small frame. He patted her back gently while the girl’s mother stroked her toffee-blond hair.
It made my chest ache. My mother would have done the same thing, hovered over me, done anything she could for me.… She had done that. Her whole life had been about protecting me. And to see this spirited little girl who had vowed to sail the oceans struggling even to draw breath—I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave things be. I had to help.