The Glass Arrow(82)

*

DAPHNE AGREES TO KEEP watch while I sleep through the early morning, and when I wake, she’s braiding strands of tall grass beside me. Rubbing my eyes, I squint over at her work and a grin spreads across my face.

“What?” she says, lowering her hands.

“That’s it!” I count out the days in my head since the last auction. Trader’s Day is only four nights away; all those who made enough in the farmer’s markets in the outliers will be there. If the girls have been captured, they won’t be sold until the auction in two weeks. I’ll be able to find them by then.

I hope.

I’m going to make jewelry, like the kind I used to trade with Lorcan. I don’t have the booth fees to get past the city-gate guard, but if I can make enough pieces to sell, maybe one of the other merchants will let me go with them if I promise them all the profits. If not, I’ll have to steal the credits—and right now, I don’t care if it’s honest or not, I’ll do it. I look enough like a Driver; I’ve got a horse. If I muddy up my face enough, they won’t be able to tell I’m a girl.

I’ll get them out the same way Daphne left. We’ll make them all look like they’ve got the plague.

For the rest of the day I teach Daphne how to make simple snares from whittled branches. When the first catches a rabbit, I show her how to clean the kill and scour the pelt of flesh and hair, and then soften the skin with the animal’s brains.

She vomits twice and then tells me to do it on my own. So much for being helpful.

By sundown we’re cooking rabbit stew in Lorcan’s pot, and I’m cutting the hide into long strips that can be braided into a necklace. I tell Daphne we’ll need to gather precious stones tomorrow, and she only snorts and says, “We’ll see.”

It helps to have a purpose, but my thoughts keep pulling back to my family. I don’t know how long they’ve been in the city or what’s happened to them. I don’t know if they’re still together or if they’ve been pulled apart. Nina could be at one of the dorms preparing to come to the Garden. Tam could have already started treatments to become a Pip. Thoughts of Salma working the Black Lanes make me ill.

I think of Kiran, too, much as I wish I could shut him out.

Just after nightfall, Brax rises abruptly and sprints south. His instincts are just as good to me as the security fence at the Garden. There is no doubt in my mind that someone’s broken our perimeter.

Daphne and I are on our feet in an instant, stamping out the fire and preparing to escape. As soon as she’s mounted, I’m kicking through our tracks and cursing the Drivers that took back the bow. I only have twin knives from Lorcan’s pack.

I keep my ears trained after Brax, but hear nothing. It starts to worry me; he would’ve given me a signal if Trackers were coming—a growl or a bark. He knows the difference between what’s dangerous and what’s not, and his silence worries me. Daphne mounts the horse, reaching for my hand to pull me up, but I keep staring in the direction Brax ran off.

“What are you doing?” Daphne whispers. “Let’s go!”

“I’m going to go check it out,” I say. “It might be an animal.”

“A bear?” Her green eyes are as round as saucers.

I doubt it, but I’m not sure. I don’t tell her this though; the last thing I need if we have to move fast is a panicked Daphne.

“Be ready,” I tell her, and with a knife in one hand and a palm-sized rock in the other, I creep around the boulders guarding our southern side.

I can make out the outline of a horse by the water. If it’s a Tracker, he’s come alone or his friends are somewhere nearby. Silently, I move on, keeping low and moving fast.

It doesn’t take me long to find our intruder. The night shadows leave only a silhouette; a figure crouched low over an animal lying still in the space between two trees. From here I can hear Brax panting. My blood runs cold—whoever it is has hurt my wolf.

Without another thought I launch the stone with full force.

A hand snaps up. Even in the fading light he catches it.

There’s only one person who can do that.

“Kir … Varick?” A moment later I remind myself that we’re not friends or anything else and steel myself for a fight.

He’s marching through the mounds of rotting leaves towards me, a bow in one hand, the arrows slung over his shoulder. I’m still not used to seeing his face so clean. Brax the traitor trots behind him, tongue lolling out of his mouth.

“Don’t call me that,” Kiran says, flexing his hand. I wonder if he’s hurt himself with that catch. I hope so. It was one of my better throws.

“It’s your name,” I say.

“Not to you, it’s not.”

I groan, tired of these games I can’t figure out, even as my stomach fills with the flutters.

“You’re better, I see.” I move back as he comes close. I don’t trust myself around him. He makes me lower every guard so that I’m defenseless when he casts me aside.

“Getting there,” he says. “Thanks to you.”

My heart squeezes. “What do you want?”

I hear the slow clip-clop of hooves, and in the growing dark my senses are baffled—has he brought his whole gang with him? Or worse, have Trackers found us? In a flash, I’ve stripped him of the bow and a handful of arrows from the quiver over his shoulder. He winces, letting me know that the ribs I just grazed haven’t been completely healed by the medicine.