Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf #1)(85)

There were shouts in the distance behind us—?guards raiding the camps. From over my shoulder, I watched as one of them accosted a girl not far from my own age, forcing her to her knees and cuffing her when she cried. They ripped off her cloak and then spat on her when it was discerned that she was not the girl they were looking for. Me.

We hurried forward, but the awful smell intensified, and I looked up to see the spirit of Thackery’s old friend Gilroy still sitting glumly in his gibbet. Aha. I knew where we were, and I tugged Conrad with me toward Thackery’s old encampment, which was now occupied by a man with patchy whiskers and ruddy cheeks.

This time Darwyn didn’t see me coming. I had my knife pressed into his back before he could scramble up from the fire. “Take what you want, sir,” he mumbled, hurriedly emptying his pockets. A few copper coins, a half-eaten apple, a misshapen brass ring, and a hardened hunk of cheese scattered across the dirt as I forced him to his feet.

“I don’t want your scraps,” I said icily.

At the sound of my voice, he exclaimed, “Wait! I ain’t gonna be robbed by no girl—?”

“Quiet,” I snarled, moving the knife to his neck. He stiffened, hands up. “Listen carefully. My brother and I are going to hide in Thackery’s stable. If men come looking for us, you will do everything in your power to steer them away.”

“Or what?” he asked, a bit too surly for a man with a knife to his neck.

Whip-fast, I nicked a finger and let the blood drop fall in front of his eyes. “Uro,” I said. Burn. And the blood turned into a streak of fire that burst into three-foot flames the instant it hit the ground. I closed my hand and the fire went out.

Darwyn was trembling. “There was two men what came through here a couple weeks ago, chattering about some blood witch . . . Their faces . . . cracked . . . scarred . . . unrecognizable.”

“Do as I command,” I said, moving the knife away from his neck now that I’d made my point clear. “Or it won’t be your face that I burn into something unrecognizable.”

“But what would be worse than—?” Then it dawned on him. “Oh.”

The guards were only a few camps away now. Darwyn ushered us into the stable. “Ray has a little hidey-hole in there,” he said. “He didn’t think no one knew about it, but I did. After Ray was gone, Empyrea keep ’im, I moved all my good stuff into it. Just in time, too. When my ol’ lady Erdie left me, she took everything she could get ’er filthy scheming hands on. But I was one step ahead.” He grinned, pleased with himself, until he saw my flat expression and his smile disappeared. He moved aside a big pile of hay in the empty first stall, revealing a plank in the ground. He lifted it and motioned us over. “In here.”

Darwyn’s hidden “good stuff” was liquor in a surprising quantity; the hole was several feet deep and ran the length of the stable, but it was full to capacity with bottles of spirits. I climbed in the hole first, settling in between a jug of ale and some bottles of rum, then brought Conrad down to sit on my lap. The whole space left for us wasn’t more than four feet by four feet; it was a tight fit.

Conrad was trying to peer through the cracks to see what might be happening above, but I pulled him back, pressing a finger to my lips.

It was just a matter of moments before we heard the voices outside our hiding place. The words were muffled through the straw and the wood plank, but we could still make out the string of uncouth exclamations Darwyn was letting loose on the soldiers as they started throwing things around the camp. Then they opened the stall door.

Darwyn said, “There’s nothing in there but straw. See for yourself if you like.”

We jumped as the man began stabbing his sword into the hay, shaking dirt down into our eyes with each jab.

“See?” Darwyn said. “Nothin’. And I don’t suppose the lot of ye are planning to pay for all the damage you’ve done?”

A guard’s voice answered gruffly, “Out of our way, old man. Men! Next camp!”

We stayed down in that hole most of the night, long after it might have been safe to emerge.

When we finally swung the trapdoor open, the movement dislodged a bundle of documents that had been tucked between one of the boards: Thackery’s invitations for crossing the wall, written in Zan’s own hand. I gathered them up and stowed them inside my mostly empty satchel, next to the bloodcloth. From the corner of my eye, however, I saw something glint in the space behind where the invitations had been stashed. I pushed my fingers between the boards and came back with something incredible: the topaz gryphon I’d given to Thackery that first night in Achleva. I clutched it, thanking Thackery and the Empyrea for returning it to me.

Darwyn was pounding on the stable door. “Best be coming out now, girl. Someone’s here for you.”

I put Conrad behind me and readied my knife. If I couldn’t get close enough for a good shot at whoever it was waiting outside the stable, I’d use magic. I’d get us out of here, one way or another. I’d burn and pillage and destroy anything or anybody that stood in my way.

I kicked open the door. Then, stunned, I said, “Nathaniel?”

“Emilie, it is you! I heard the guards looking . . . I thought it might be, but I had to be sure . . .”

Darwyn’s hands were up; Nathaniel had his neck in the crook of his arm, poised to give it a quick twist if the man put up a fight. Grumpily, Darwyn said, “Of course you two would know each other.”