Gwinny and I continued on our own toward Shakerton and, as much as I would like to say we managed it with bravery and dignity, within half an hour of parting from Bansaerin, something appeared in the woods, following us. The shadows pressed nearer. Branches snapped behind us.
I screamed in the same moment Gwinny neighed, both of us overcome with terror at whatever pursued us. I whipped the reins and Gwinny took off, flying down the path through the forest as quickly as she could go.
When the normal level of gloom returned to the forest around us and the shadows no longer slithered about my clothes and snatched at Gwinny’s ankles, I slowed her from a canter to a trot. She sighed beneath me, breathing heavily. An hour later, our confidence had returned, and the town of Shakerton came into view.
Unlike our wood and stone structures with roofs made of thatch and bark, Shakerton consisted of mostly dark wooden buildings, patched with oil to keep out the winds and the snows. We’d built the Second Circle Clan as a series of winding paths, concentric circles that had been pushed slightly to one side from the center and wound over and around one another from there. Shakerton’s layout was more like their structures. Where our huts were curved and made of stacked stone, their boxed and rectangular dwellings lined straight streets with dark, narrow alleys between the buildings. At the center of town, they had a square before the church, rather like our gathering place but, even from here, it seemed less welcoming, less festive than I was accustomed to.
They’d cut back the forests around the town, making room for their herds of sheep and goats and giving them a clear sightline toward the entrance to the forest path. Gwinny fit easily beneath the stone archway that marked the trail—the forest was dense enough that, with the winter snows, the path was easily lost.
I fixed my hood over my ears as we slipped free of the forest and Gwinny trotted toward the town. Anyone with eyes would know me as Lifkin by my clothing alone—layers of woven shawls and an assortment of necklaces atop leggings and a waist-skirt were not common clothing of the Hume of Shakerton, particularly not among the female Hume, but the hood was an assurance of distant anonymity for me, in which I took some comfort.
Patches of sweat clung to Gwinny from our race through the forest, but I would see her set to rights at the stable before I ventured further into town.
The stableboy was pleased to welcome such a pretty horse into his stable and didn’t seem to mind at all that Gwinny considers herself above all company save my own and any two-legged creature willing to present her with apples. I’d brought a few extra for precisely such a purpose and gave the boy the three copper Bansaerin had said were customary in exchange for a day’s lodging for a horse.
Gwinny seen to, I set off into town in hopes of finding my cousin and her Hume partner, Parrith, before attending to my other errands for the day. The glowing light of the town’s tavern shone out amid the dirt and dinge of the main thoroughfare. There were only a few Hume hurrying about their errands on the town streets. The few who glanced in my direction quickly looked away again.
On the far side of the square, one of the priests swept the stone steps. Small clouds of dust puffed out from beneath his broom and billowed out to fall upon the scraggly bushes that grew beside the stair.
“Excuse me,” I called, unsure of how near to the church I could go without the priests screeching at me, “I’m looking for Parrith’s house.”
The priest grumbled, kicking the dust from his broom in my direction though I was too far away to be soiled by such an action. “That way,” he gestured over his shoulder, pointing to the more cramped, ramshackle homes of Shakerton a few blocks behind the church, the very neighborhood Bansaerin had encouraged me to stay away from.
He scowled at me after giving me directions, and I hurried away. Surely the impoverished district couldn’t be much less welcoming than the priest had been.
The streets on the back side of town were more narrow—two horse-drawn carts would have struggled to pass one another. There were large divots in the road, places where the winter snows had settled, making the terrain uneven. One of every three houses had been abandoned, far worse than the more affluent side of the town by the gates.
About a year before, a pack of mournlings had burst out of the forest and slaughtered several herds. The shepherds who survived the attacks had no means of making an income. They packed the few belongings they had and left for Dust, the baron’s city a few days’ ride southeast of Shakerton. It seemed many other laborers had followed.
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I hugged close to one side of the buildings rather than marching down the center of the street. If a danger did appear before me, I could more easily escape it unless someone burst out of a doorway and seized me outright.
The strategy brought me a measure of comfort, one that quickly fell apart as a woman’s scream pierced the quiet of the destitute neighborhood.
I ran toward the sound, and the gruff hum of men’s voices joined her cries for help.
Rounding the corner, there were two men accosting a woman in an alleyway. One hovered at the mouth of the alley, holding a club. The second had backed the woman against a fence, trapping her in an empty animal pen.
The second man was so large as to block my view of the woman save the strands of her long, dark blue hair that caught in the breeze—a shade uncommon even among Lifkin but that was prevalent in my family. She had red feathers braided into the locks.
“Eletria!” I cried, rushing forward.
“A second one come to join in on the fun,” the man with the club grunted as I rushed him.
He swiped at me, but I ducked beneath his swing, rolling across the earth and springing up on his other side, knife from my boot in hand.
“Leave her alone,” I shouted in Breolish, my accent only slightly less apparent than it had been when I spoke to the priest. He spun to face me, releasing his hold of my cousin as he took in my narrowed eyes and the blade clutched against my chest.
“Or what?”
I aimed a kick between the man’s legs, but he caught my foot between his ample thighs.
“How did ye know I like it rough?” the man growled. His upper lip curled as he looked me over. “Harvey, with two of ‘em—”
I lashed out, pulling the rest of my body toward my foot as I struck at his throat which the roll of fat beneath his neck was not yet thick enough to protect.
The man gasped, clutching his throat and wheezing around his injured windpipe. He released my foot and stumbled forward, trying to seize me by the back of my shawl. I sent a second blow with my elbow across the back of his head.
“Eletria, run!” I shouted, trying to place myself between her and the two Hume.
She shook her head—they’d trapped us in the alley, and the only way out was past them.
The larger man with now-bulbous eyes rounded back toward me. I could stab him or attack with a spell.
I’d only used a spell against a mournling before. My clan was afraid of my magic, so the little time I had for practice was in secret.
I squinted my eyes shut and thrust my hands forward. A cloud of thick, noxious shadows burst out of my fingers and swirled around the man’s face, slithering up his nostrils and streaming out as thick, black tears from his eyes.
He stumbled to the ground and lay still.
With my own eyes fully open now, I couldn’t slow my breath. I’d attacked someone. With my magic. And now he was flat upon the ground.
I gasped in one slower breath as his chest rose and fell. I didn’t want him to wake up, and I really didn’t want him to hurt Eletria. But I couldn’t be a killer like my parents.
Not after I’d felt each day the blood they’d shed upon my hands.
“Draeza!” my cousin shouted, pointing behind me. I’d forgotten about the second Hume.
“Lifkin bitch!” he shouted, sprinting toward me with a jagged blade suddenly in hand.
I dove in front of Eletria, all thought of the man on the ground having fallen away.
The man rushed toward me, screaming as he wielded his knife. I raised mine to block his attack but the momentum was on his side.
I screamed as his blade tore across my side, ripping past my shawl and slicing beneath my ribs toward my hip. The blade’s jagged teeth snared on my skin, tearing side to side as he tugged the blade free of me. “Ah!” I cried, clutching my hand to my waist.
I tried the choking shadows spell just as I had done with his friend a few moments before. A puff of smoke burst out of my palms, and the man’s eyes widened, but it wasn’t enough to hurt him.
It was enough to frighten him though.
The man shouted in alarm and lurched away from me. In his haste to get out of range, he stepped on his friend’s arm who was lying on the ground, wobbled his short arms for balance, and fell back hard onto his rear on the other side of his friend.
With a garbled cry, he began to crawl away from us, digging for something at his side. He sneered at me. My breath caught as he produced a hand crossbow against which I had no means of defending myself.
“Yah!” A horse and rider appeared at the entrance to the alleyway and with a solid thwap, the rider struck the attacker in the head with his staff.
A surprised-looking older Hume on a horse glowered down at the man he’d just struck and who had subsequently fallen unconscious upon the ground, one foot still balanced on the back of his companion. The crossbow he’d been prepared to shoot me with lay broken to his side.
The Hume swung down. “Are you alright?” He held out his hand toward us.
“Alfonse,” I sighed, relaxing as I perceived his face from beneath the shadows of his hat. Before I could assure him we were well, the wound along my side twinged again.
“Draeza came to save me,” Eletria added quickly. “They cut her.”
“Come with me.” Alfonse guided us back the way we’d come, leaving the two men unconscious in the street behind us.
