11th of Eylestre, Continued

"Take-ee, leave-ee, makes nowt difference my end. Plenty souls wantin' clear o' this mess." The hostler spat a thick rust-red gob of liphys chew in the dirt, narrowly missing my shoes.

I ground my teeth and glared at him, but Arramy nodded and dug his wallet out of his back pocket. "Fine. We'll take the bay."

Surprised, I watched him shell out several notes – much more than the horse in question was worth, and nearly half the money we had.

The hostler took the notes and thumbed through them, then turned and ambled off toward the filthy shed he called a barn, aiming a gruff, "Leave 'im Old Tarrister's Pub," over his shoulder.

Arramy glanced at me, got one look at my expression and shook his head, his lips lifting in a terse curl as he began untying the reins of the half-draft gelding he had just rented. The horse was more suited to pulling a wagon, but it was the larger, sturdier of the two animals the hostler had tied to the line. "What was I supposed to do? We don't have time to find anything else."

He reached out, plucked my valise from my hands, and buckled one of the straps through the saddle bag loop. Then he swung himself up into the saddle, reined the gelding around, leaned down, and held out his hand. "Right. Up you come."

I gave the gelding a dubious once-over. The saddle was a continental style with a high pommel. There was no way I would fit in front of him, and riding pillion on that beast would be like sitting astride a dinner table. Not to mention the fact that I would have to hold onto Arramy's very lean, very masculine middle the entire time, which was a great deal closer to him than I had been in quite a while.

My only other option would be to walk the remaining eight miles to Dovan's Leap in boots that were already chafing after the trek to the hostler's.

Pinching my lips into an unamused pucker, I took his hand, trying not to gasp out loud when he hauled me bodily off the ground, pulling me up to sit behind him.

I had been right. The half-draft gelding was as broad as the average table, and about twice as tall. I muttered some unkind things under my breath as my skirts bunched up at my knees, and I had to wriggle in a very unladylike manner until everything was adjusted so I could fit between my valise and the cantle. Then it was time. There was nothing else for it. Ever so gingerly, I slid my arms around Arramy's waist.

Arramy craned to look back at me. "Good?"

I gave a haphazard nod and a mumbled "mmmphhh" against the back of his coat, infinitely glad he couldn't see my face. Heat was radiating from my cheeks in waves. His coat was open. It was impossible not to feel the firm lines of muscle beneath his shirt no matter where I put my hands, and I bit my lower lip as he kneed the gelding forward, his spine flexing loose and easy with the movement of the horse as we headed out of the hostler's muddy stable yard and onto the road.

Closing my eyes, I tried not to let my imagination wander where it shouldn't, memories of what those muscles looked like proving entirely too easy to summon. It was only Arramy. Grumpy, silent, steel-eyed Arramy... who had kissed me once in a faraway lobby... and lost his mother and his brother because he wouldn't give me to the Coventry.

As if to illustrate some sort of unconscious point my heart was making, he chose that moment to place his free hand over my wrists, holding my hands more securely against him.

It wasn't a romantic gesture, more practical than anything, but that new, fragile spot in my armor melted a little bit more.

This was going to be a very long ride. 

~~~

Dovan's Leap was a village of about a hundred small white-walled buildings clustered around a bridge that spanned the Pannevys at the far end of First Pearl Lake.

Once, after the war, there had been a copper casting factory there, with a bustling town center around it. Now the factory sat silent and empty, and the bridge and the locks beneath it seemed to be the town's sole means of supporting itself. Everyone on land had to pass through Dovan's Leap to get to the other side of the bridge, and everyone in the water had to go through the Port Authority checkpoint before passing the locks. Either way, there were people, and people had to eat and sleep at some point. Thus, the town center had shifted somewhat, and now the short street that led from the river road to the bridge was lined on either side by several pubs, two inns, a bakery, a tea house, and three taverns, and the familiar blend of roasting meat, baked goods, and old frying oil hung over all of it.

I unbuckled my valise while Arramy handed over the gelding to one of the tavern boys outside Tarrister's Pub. Then we started down the main street, heading for the waterfront.

It wasn't very far. Only a block or two, close enough to have a clear view of the docks. I frowned, scanning the berths. There were about fifty boats and barges moored there, waiting for their turn to go through the locks, but none of the barges were red. "Do you see them?"

Arramy's face was tense. Slowly, he shook his head.

The hair rose on the back of my neck. It had taken us two and a half hours to reach Dovan's Leap by the lake road. It would have taken them half that. "They should be here by now," I whispered. "Would they have been able to get through the checkpoint that fast?"

"Nai, not with so many here," he said, eyeing the locks. There were three boats lined up at the P. A. Office, in the process of being verified by the Port Authority agents. None of those boats was a low, red, cargo barge either.

I slowed, a hundred chilling possibilities already slithering through the back of my mind.

Then Arramy put a hand on my shoulder and gave a little nod toward the tea house nearby. "C'mon. We can eat while we wait, at least."

Biting my lip, I gave a reluctant nod, casting a backwards glance at the wharves as I followed him into the tea shop.

~~~

The large front windows of the tea shop offered an excellent angle on the riverfront.

I stopped looking, lowering my gaze to the savory pie sitting in the middle of my plate. It was getting cold.

"You need to eat," Arramy said, voice gruff. "There may not be much chance after this."

I nodded, sneered slightly, and picked at the corner of the pastry.

There were no decent mirrors in the bunker. I had gone months without knowing what I really looked like, or caring to, even, but the tea shop window was giving me a very thorough, very honest up-close reflection. I had always had a bit of an unfashionably boyish figure, but Before the Fire Me had been able to accentuate what I did have with the cut of my clothes. Now, with all the physical training and an often-missing appetite, I had apparently turned into a wiry wraith of a broomstick that not even Navarre's exquisite things could quite disguise.

That wasn't enough to make the food look appealing, but it was enough to make me lift my spoon and stab it through the crust. I scooped a chunk of something into my mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. Stabbed. Scooped. Chewed. Swallowed. It probably tasted good, but I couldn't tell. A dull, simmering sort of anger was turning everything to ash on my tongue.

An hour, that was all. We had only been sitting there for an hour, but it had been an hour with no way of knowing what had happened to anyone, and no way of doing anything about it; an hour spent waiting for any sign of a boat that should pull into the docks at any moment, but that hadn't, and with every passing second that it didn't, the odds that it would were whittling down to nothing.

I glared back out the window, the pie already sour in my stomach.

I stopped chewing and went still, staring, my attention caught on a pair of Port Authority agents walking down the length of the docks, their blue and white roundtop hats dipping and bobbing as they looked at the boats tied there.

Arramy had spotted them too. His mug of sailor's tea thunked on the tabletop.

Ice prickled my nape. I blinked slowly, turning my head to the right toward the incoming river traffic, my breath frozen in my throat.

A low red barge was coming around the bend in the river.

There were too many people on the upper deck. They were sitting in neat rows, their hands behind their heads.

One of them was Cog. I would recognize those angular shoulders and that floppy brown hair anywhere.

A moment later the back end of the boat came into view, revealing the four men standing in the aft section.

My fork fell from my hand, clattering to the floor, but I didn't bother picking it up. There was no more fork. There was only the boat and the men standing in it, long guns at their shoulders, their mouths opening and closing, inaudible beyond the glass of the window, and the refugees getting to their feet as the barge was brought into a berth and the mooring ropes were secured.

One by one, all of the refugees stepped up onto the dock, hands still behind their heads.

A strangled sound tore out of me as the girl with the red hair – the girl I had nodded at in the warehouse – lost her footing and fell to her knees in the prow of the boat, and one of the men struck her on the back with the butt of his rifle.

There has to be a way to stop this. You have to stop this! Think!

But that was not what Orrelian had trained me for. His voice echoed through my head, drilling one lesson into me over and over: If ya haven't been caught yet, don't get caught. So I simply leaned forward to rest my elbows on the table, clasped my hands in front of my mouth, and pressed my lips to my knuckles. Hard. Hard enough to stop the tremors running through me as Cog and Orrelian came up out of the barge at the end of the line.

Hard enough to muffle the harsh breaths leaving my lungs when Licha Stongfal tried to muscle his way free as the men with the guns herded the refugees forward onto the walkway of the boat slip. He managed to plow down two of them and make it nearly to the street before one of the others brought his rifle up. There was a sharp crack audible even inside the tea shop, a burst of scarlet sprayed from the side of Licha Stongfal's head, and he pitched forward, sprawling facedown in the dirt.

A military lorry stood to one side of the boat slip. It had been idling there for quite a while, and I hadn't paid it much attention until Cog, Orrelian, and all of the others were made to walk to it and climb up into the back.

It took three men to pick up Licha Stongfal's body, but they loaded it into the lorry bed. Then they got in, closed the tailgate, and the lorry started up the street.

I watched, unmoving, unblinking, as the lorry rumbled toward the tea shop, and then they were lumbering past. Orrelian was sitting closest to the guards and the tailgate, and for a split-second his eyes met mine, hard and dark as coal before his gaze slid past me to Arramy. Orrelian dipped his head.

And then they were gone.

I took a breath.

I was shaking.

Around us, the other tea shop patrons were talking, craning to see what was going on, but their voices blended together, becoming a dull buzz, like a distant hive of bees.

I didn't want to be there anymore. I didn't know where I wanted to be, but I needed to be gone. I pushed back my chair and stood, gathered up my valise with wooden fingers, turned and walked out the door, barely aware of Arramy coming after me.

My thoughts were filtering through thick, scummy batting, and I shook my head, trying to make them line up and behave. I wouldn't be any use if I couldn't think straight. Instead, the only thing that popped up was the desperation on Licha's face before he hit the ground, and my stomach knotted savagely around that savory pie, nausea nearly bending me double right there in the entry way.

That would have drawn too much attention. Attention was bad. And Arramy was there, his hand on my back. Swallowing the tang of bile, I stepped forward, falling mindlessly in beside him. Neither of us said anything. Everything had fallen apart. All that was left was to run away like rats.