Otherbound (22 page)

Ok, leaves me where??

As long as I take the pills, I can stay out of her mind. So I only need to stick around until she's safe w/parents. Then ??? I take pills the rest of my life & hope I don't focus on Amara too much b/c I'll go by accident? What if she needs to heal? Do I keep checking?

He drained the last drops of his pseudo-Coke can but didn't get up yet to find another. He should've just brought up a full six-pack.
And what happens with Cilla?
he wrote.

What happens with Amara?

he airtrain was nearly empty. It only operated at this hour to take fishers and market workers to the harbor, and many of those had either already left or didn't need to work until sunrise. Cilla and Amara climbed on right as the train was about to leave.

Every second they rode took them farther from Jorn. Amara stared at the passing landscape: the forest where lightning had struck the other airtrain, dunes and farms and heathered hills, gray fields stretching far with nothing but cows, and, near the treelines, a handful of deer. The unnervingly steady drone of the dawnflies' whistling followed the train on its trip.

“Nolan. I'd like to talk to you,” Amara signed. She sat at the window, where no one but Cilla could see her hands.

No answer came. Nothing but the train's pneumatic hiss and the dawnflies outside.

“You can take control, can't you? Here's your permission.”

She watched her hands intently, spreading them out, turning them. Maybe having someone take over would be a blessing.

Her muscles went rigid, then disappeared from her reach. “Yes,” Nolan said. “Sorry. I think I fell asleep. The longer I keep my eyes shut, the more I … become you. Yes, we can talk.”

Her hands returned to her, as did the rest of her body. She tested her toes and lips and lungs to make sure. “Good,” she said. “What do you mean, you
become
me? Explain. Explain everything.”

Nolan's movements came more fluidly as time passed. He talked about losing his foot, about never concentrating, about falling into a type of long sleep that he couldn't find the word for in either signs or spelled Dit.

The more Nolan talked, the more Amara knew he meant well. He paused between sentences, allowing for questions and interjections, but never at the right time. She still had to wait for him to allow her to speak. “Enough,” she said finally. She amended: “I think I know enough.”

She couldn't bring herself to thank him.

Outside, branches scraped the airtrain windows like too-long fingernails. Amara let her hands drop into her lap. They'd slipped so easily from direct signs to rushed ones, from hard words to tentative gestures, that she didn't know what to do with them now. They didn't feel like hers. If Nolan wanted to say something else, he could. She supposed she should be grateful he didn't, but she only felt like washing her hands and all the rest of her, like stripping and wading into the sea to rinse herself clean of him.

Maybe she did care about having control.

“That was a little weird,” Cilla breathed. She'd been quiet for most of the conversation, interrupting Nolan only when
she needed clarification. “The way you two—all alternating and—” She hunted for the right word. “
Weird
.”

“Yes,” Amara said. “It was.”

A laugh escaped—hard and joyless—and the sound felt so foreign that for a fraction of a second she thought Nolan had taken over again. He'd made her laugh before. But, no, this was her alone. She hadn't laughed in days, not since Maart … and he'd lain beside her and …

She needed to keep that memory. All her memories.

Nolan was recalling them alongside her, wasn't he? The laugh faltered, but she didn't want it to die. She looked at dead leaves blowing dizzily past the windows.

“New rule,” she said. She felt as if she ought to subdue her movements, to apologize and shuffle out of the way. It wasn't her place to make demands. She squashed that reluctance. “New rule. I can't have you in my head. I can't. Just … stay away. Check back in every now and then in case I need your healing, but don't stay.” She paused. “Tell me you understand.”

Nolan slipped in a moment later. “I understand. But when I'm asleep, I can't go back and forth. Then it will need to be all or nothing. I'm sorry.”

He returned her hands.

Have him in her head for hours on hours or risk his being out of her reach when she needed him. Invade her mind or break her body.

“When you're sleeping, stay.” Telling someone what to do
didn't feel natural. However terrible her options, though, they were
hers
, and she would take what she could. “Warn me first. Tell me when you go to sleep and wake up, so I'll know, at least.”

Before long, the high masts of ships came into sight. The harbor. “We're here.” She stood. Her thigh and elbow felt cool all of a sudden. They'd been pressed against Cilla's in the seat in a way Amara suddenly missed. As long as they sat here, laughter or no laughter, Nolan or no Nolan, she could pretend nothing was wrong. They were simply on a supply trip or moving to another town.

But now they stepped into the briny air, just the two of them without Jorn to clear their path or Maart by her side, and Amara wanted to run back inside the train for the return trip. Jorn might still be asleep at the granary. If they went back now, he'd never need to know they'd left. He'd never need to come after them.

The determination she'd felt on leaving seeped rapidly away. She clung to it, thinking,
Maart
. She could do this.

She
would
do this.

Lamps lit the harbor streets, bathing the cobblestones in pools of warm yellow that made Amara feel too visible. She stepped around the lights, looking for rowdy market boys who weren't paying attention, or holes in the pavement that Cilla might twist an ankle in. The lamps themselves caught her eye, instead: red-and-gold crowns sat atop them, so alien she had to stop and stare. She'd seen etchings of lamps and bridges
decorated with crowns before, but the ministers had ordered the crowns snapped off long ago. Some bridges still showed the damage. Amara hadn't known any had survived intact.

Cilla's family got crowns and etchings. Maart got—Maart got drowned in forest earth and she'd never have a chance to choose him—

“Look,” Cilla whispered. She put a hand on Amara's side-sling. “Were they here before?”

Amara took a second to calm herself. A slow, hot breath later, she examined the harbor. They'd walked across this same street from the airtrain to the market the other day, but in the dark of predawn, everything looked different. The sea lay beyond the dunes, black as coal, and the harbor mill towered high over the other buildings, determined to catch every breath of wind. Workers walked lightly, trying to wake themselves up. They were mostly Alinean, readying their fishing boats or tugging along carts with covered goods.

But those weren't the people Cilla meant.

Marshals patrolled the docks in padded winterwear and helmets painted leaf-green, the color only visible under gaslight. They'd speak to ship captains, then return to land, talking in low voices and pointing at another group of marshals coming in by horseback.

“Jorn warned them,” Amara said. Their way out—gone. Could they run another way?

Stay
, she told Nolan. She hadn't wanted to need him so quickly.

“Even if Jorn's awake,” Cilla said, “he couldn't have called up so many marshals at such short notice. This is because of what I did at the pub. They're looking for me.”

Amara nodded, though fear still pinned her feet down. If Jorn hadn't discovered their absence yet, returning to the granary was still an option. She tried to shove it from her mind. This was a trip like any other. Protect Cilla, avoid recognition, keep away from the marshals.

They stayed huddled at the edge of the harbor, outside the reach of the lights, so that people wouldn't spot Amara's signs.

“The rumors can't have spread far. We might be safe once we leave Teschel,” Cilla said.

“There's still Jorn. And whoever the ministers might send after us. And the mages …” Mages like the knifewielder wanted Cilla dead. No question. But if the ministers wanted her alive—and they had to, based on what Amara had overheard—then who did the knifewielder and other mages work for? The question made Amara's head hurt.

“You're not an optimist, are you?” Cilla let out a low, nervous chuckle.

“We'll need to sneak aboard a ship. They're warning the captains about you.” Amara wanted to say more, but someone was headed their way—fast. She reached for her knife. The
man might alert the marshals once he saw Cilla. She'd match the description the pub-goers had given, and while there were plenty of Alinean girls in the harbor, few wore topscarves, particularly ones so nice—scarves and winterwears were Dit clothing, unwieldy on boats. Alinean fishers wore sleeved tops and half-skirts over loose trousers.

Amara pressed her knife flat to her ribs, under her topscarf. If she needed to, she'd slash and run. Without looking, she pushed her thumb against the blade. Her skin broke. Seconds later, the cut healed. Good.

The man stopped footlengths away. The light of the nearest lamp caught his face. Though light red in skin, he had the distinct pinched nose bridge and rounded lips of an Alinean, and when he opened his mouth, Amara recognized him straightaway. “I was sure you would've left by now,” he said.

The bartender.

Cilla knew him, too. “You helped us!” She seemed not to know what to do with herself. A flicker of a smile crossed her lips before she stood firm again. “Will you do so another time?”

“Without question.”

Amara stayed quiet. If not for Cilla, the bartender would have let her die. He didn't even acknowledge her now.

Cilla had the same thought. “If you're loyal to my family, why didn't you help in the first place? Wouldn't you want to aid anyone escaping a minister, servant or not?”

The man swallowed. The knob in his throat rose sharply. “If I'd known—”

“That's not what I asked,” Cilla said. A fisher approached, holding a small, furred Elig horse by its reins. It dragged along an empty cart smelling of day-old fish. The bartender waited anxiously to speak until the fisher passed.

“I respect servants for their duty and escaped ones for their common sense, but publicly helping one would be dangerous. If the ministers found out, they'd ruin my business.”

“Helping the princess seems even more dangerous.”

“The alternative was disobeying my princess's orders.”

Cilla nodded. Being demanding came so easily to her. When she spoke, people listened. When she asked, people answered.

“If you'll permit me to help you a second time,” the bartender said, “I'm here to see off a friend of mine. She captains a ship that's sailing for the mainland in an hour. She won't betray you, though I can't vouch for passengers and crew.”

“We'll have to risk it,” Cilla said.

“Are you coming back?” the bartender asked. His eyes gleamed in the gaslight. “Not to the island. To the throne.”

Cilla smiled uneasily. “Eventually. The question remains
how
.”

“You have a lot of people behind you.”

Cilla straightened her back and raised her chin. Amara had
seen Cilla look genuinely regal; this was not it. She faked it well, though. “Show us your friend's ship.”