Grace blinked. Soaked, her long hair dripping about her, even her shoes squelched as she took a step in surprise. But, she could feel it. She could feel the arms of the Silverwing about her. Her mouth opened.
“And I’ve half a bucket left!” Nutmeg finished in triumph, hooking her arm through Grace’s. “So come with me and no dillydallying.”
Tolby met them at the front door. He looked from one to the other, then shook his head, no time for questions. He beckoned. “Garner?”
Both shook their heads in answer.
Tolby shifted unhappily, running his calloused hand over his thin hair. “There’s no way around it. He’ll make it back or hole up on his own. I have to trust that I did not raise stupid children. Get on with you now, your mother’s worried and needs your help.” With a cluck, he herded them into the kitchen and down the trapdoor into the main cellar, and then from the cramped passageway into the even deeper second cellar, where he dropped the heavy door into place overhead, and barred it.
Grace closed her eyes a moment, standing with her back and shoulders bent, and tried not to think of it. Nutmeg dropped her half a bucket of water as she went to her mother’s side by Hosmer’s still, pale figure. Lily reached out and stroked her daughter’s hair. “I’ve done all I can. The bleeding is stopped. I’ve never seen such a tear as that, but he should mend all right if there’s no infection.”
Nutmeg tucked covers in around Hosmer, her motions an unconscious echo of her mother’s own fussing. “He lit the beacon,” she said.
“That he did.” Tolby pulled out a small item from his vest pocket. “And brought this back for the Barrel family. Two sons died up there, the whole patrol ambushed. If they hadn’t gone to light it out without him, we’d have lost him, too.” His gaze went over Hosmer’s silent form, and his lips closed tightly.
Unsaid but thought,
and we still might.
Grace crossed her arms in front of her as if to shield herself from the thought.
Nutmeg sat down next to her, putting an arm about her shoulders, yet another echo of Lily Farbranch. “What do they want?”
Tolby sat down and pulled out his cold pipe, and put the stem in his mouth anyway, as if it would help to chew on it. “No knowing, yet. Let’s hope we won’t be knowing too much later either.” He gazed up, at the dirt roof, broken only by the heavy drop door he’d barred into place, his eyes going dark with thought.
“I heard hounds,” Grace offered.
“We used vinegar,” Nutmeg added. “No blood trail down to the cellars.”
“Good thinking,” Lily said briskly. “Now, all we can do is wait.” She began to attend to all the candles but the one near Hosmer, its light reflecting from its hood, pallid but seeming all the stronger as the others got pinched out one by one. Tolby drew her by him. Keldan sat at his brother’s feet, leaned his head against the corner of the cot, and drifted off into sleep almost immediately.
Grace shut her eyes and felt the river’s cold touch on her, through her clothes, soothing her skin. With her eyes closed, she could almost forget the closeness of the tiny cellar, the warmth of the forms crowded around her, the smell of the blood on Hosmer, and the heavy burlap bags of onions and garlic to the fore of the cave. High water or the slow stream of late summer, the Silverwing had always moved her. Now it seemed to envelop her in its care, as Nutmeg had said it would, sighing along her skin as it evaporated slowly, keeping her chill and still.
She did not dream, but felt her inner self drift away in a kind of haze, to murmured voices only slightly louder than the river itself, though it was no one she knew talking, nor words she could quite make out, all hushed, all muffled as if the weight of the earth itself was upon them. She felt small and insignificant beneath the words, as if she had never been meant to understand them nor could she do anything to stop their falling, any more than she could stop the rain, yet she thought that they might sweep her away, if only she could understand them. After long moments, their sounds became dull and pounding, thundering down on her. Puffs of dirt rained down from the dirt ceiling overhead in fits and spurts, and they fought to keep from coughing. Nutmeg’s arm on her shoulder tightened.
“They’re here.” Her voice muffled, her fear all too clear.
Rivergrace closed her eyes again to fight her own fear that pushed her to get up and run, to bolt from their shelter into even greater danger. She balled her hand into a fist, her nails digging sharply into her palm until her fingers went numb. Thumps and bumps grew louder but not at the hidden trapdoor. Tolby clamped down harder on his pipe stem, the noise of his teeth clicking sharp in the quiet.
Grace could feel Nutmeg shivering next to her. She leaned hard against her sister to comfort her, but nothing stopped the attack overhead. Little bits of pebble and dust fell down periodically, then stopped. After what seemed forever and a day, the stomping grew fainter.
She opened her eyes, with a soft sigh, the knots unwinding from her neck and shoulder, but Tolby sitting in the dim candlelight across from her took the unlit pipe from his mouth. He seemed to be listening intently, his head cocked, then he said, softly, “Smoke.”
Keldan stirred. “It would be stronger if they’d found the cellar chimney.”
“Maybe.” Tolby looked downward, and they all fell into silence again, while the smell of burning filtered in and around them. Greenwood smoke was different from dry wood smoke because of its very nature. Grace blinked as it began to fill the area, stinging her eyes and making them water. The urge to run pushed up in her throat, filling every pulsing thought. She’d be safe at the river, safe in the water. She had to get out.
Nutmeg gave her a little shake, as if hearing her labored breathing. Grace tried to take a deep, still breath and her whole body fought her as the reek of the smoke swirled about them. Not just wood burning. Their life. The stench of burning fruit and flesh began to rise in the cellar, and Grace and Nutmeg both hunched over, shoulder to shoulder, fists pressed to their mouths. Everything they knew from their first memories they could now taste in char in their mouths, in the stink of every breath. It was a burning she knew she could never forget.
Hosmer groaned. Lily put a hand out and rested it on her husband’s knee. “They’re going to smoke us out.”
He shook his head. “Not intentionally, but . . . maybe. Hold on, long as you can. If the candle goes out, we’ll have to go, ready or not.”
Lily took her scissors from her apron and began to rend it into shreds. “Wrap your faces,” she ordered each of them as she handed out long strips. Rivergrace hesitated as she took hers, then dipped it into the half bucket of water near her. She pulled the sash into place across her mouth and nose. The others followed suit. Lily laid the final sash gently across Hosmer’s face and he became silent again, as if eased. Then they lapsed into quiet, gazing upward for signs of prowlers through the wreckage, for signs of anything.
She must have slept, smoke or no smoke, fear or no fear. She lost sense of time and shifted wearily in her corner of the cellar, careful not to jostle Nutmeg, aware only that the sash across her mouth and nose had dried. A small stump of candle still burned across the way. Lily rested her head on Tolby’s shoulder. The smell of burning still hung strongly in the air. Heat wavered about them, a hot, heavy heat, and she thought of a chicken baking in one of Lily’s clay pots. Panic began to crowd her again, pushing up from the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t stay in there any longer, waiting to be roasted or crushed. She pulled the sash from her face. She gathered her feet under her and stood, her muscles cramped and stiff, moving to the trapdoor. Splinters scored her hand and broke her fingernails as she muscled the bar aside. Putting a shoulder to the trapdoor, Rivergrace strained to stand, and tried to raise it. It did not budge. She put her hands up, searching the bar, making sure she’d cleared it. Then, holding her breath, she pushed up, waiting for the trapdoor to give way, swinging up and outward.
It stayed firmly in its frame.
“Grace,” said Lily softly.
She did not stop to listen. She pounded on it, her fists sore and bruised, her body aching to stand tall in the cramped space, the darkness smothering her, the smoke suffocating her. “I have to get out!”
“I’ve already tried,” her father said tiredly. “It’s blocked. We’ll not be getting through till it’s burned out above.”
“Or we’ll dig our way out through the air pipes,” Keldan added. “When it’s all done.”
She kept pounding. Tolby got to his feet and put his arms around her in a fierce embrace.
“We’ll die down here!”
“No, lass, we won’t, and we’re still alive. That’s something to be said after a Raver raid.”
She shuddered in his hug. “I have to get out!”
“We all do, and we will. Somehow.” Tolby’s eyes took on a fierce glint in the dying light of the candle. “We wait till it’s a bit safer.”
“I can’t!” A scream began to rise in her throat, choked and stifled, fighting its way clear. Tolby held her tighter, muffling her voice against his shoulder.
Then, from above, came thuds and thumps and heavy scuffling. Dirt poured onto them from cracks about the framing. Rivergrace froze, Tolby putting his head back to listen, his own breath caught as his chest went still. Dull thunder reverberated throughout the cellar as the noise buffeted them from one end of the small, cramped cave to the other.
Searching. The raiders had to be searching. They would be plucked from their hiding hole like a roasted animal from its cooking pit. Rivergrace craned her neck, waiting for the breakthrough. Long moments passed in which she was certain her heart barely beat, her breath shallowly escaped, and then, Tolby inhaled and exhaled deeply. He let Rivergrace go with a little shake.
“We wait,” he said.
She stumbled back to sit next to Nutmeg, and they held each other’s hands. This time she did not sleep. She dared not, afraid it could be the death of her.
Hunting finished, Lariel urged her horse into an easy lope, ahead of Jeredon and Sevryn, the set of her posture revealing her tension to the two who followed. As the boundaries of the hold came into sight, she threw up her hand and they rode to a halt beside her.
“Sevryn, I am sending you to the healer today. No arguments, I want those wounds and scars of yours attended to.”
Sevryn’s mouth moved imperceptibly as he rested his rein hand lightly on his horse’s neck, but he made no sound of disagreement. His very un-Vaelinarran eyes watched her.
She added, “Then, I am sending you back to Tressandre.” It was Jeredon who made a noise. Her gaze rested on him. “It serves no purpose,” he said.
“It serves my purpose, for now. The Andredia is not recovering.” She made a gesture through the air, a wave of frustration. “The river is dying, and with it, Larandaril, our pact, and many lives.”
“You blame ild Fallyn?”
“I have no one to blame—yet. But if they look east, then I have to look east as well, and if we fail here, then ild Fallyn will rush to strike the deathblow, you know that. If they knew what I’ve been facing, they would already be harrying our gates. They covet this land, polluted and dying or not, and I don’t want to hand it to them. I’ve combed the library, I’ve read the scries, I’ve done all that I can think to do.”
“Every warrior has a power they must bow to, sooner or later,” Sevryn remarked gently.
“I won’t bow to this one.” Lariel’s chin went up and her horse stomped under her, feeling the fight in her. “Tressandre has sent me a challenge.”
“What? She dares to?”
Lariel shrugged.
“Outside the Accords? You won’t do it, Lariel.” Jeredon’s mouth set firmly.
“Of course not. She has to be answered.”
“Let her stew. Answer her at the Conference.”
“I haven’t refused to go,” he countered Jeredon mildly.
“You’re a fool, then. The ild Fallyns bow to Larandaril very reluctantly.”
“I serve where I can.”
Jeredon muttered, and reined his horse half around.
“Don’t leave, brother. You have to know this. I will offer her an alliance in her eyes on the east.”
“And tip your hand?”
“Yes. She has to know that we know, it’s the only way to garner her respect. I want you to search out Daravan.”
“He keeps his own counsel, and tight at that.”
“We came alone to a strange land and stayed alive by staying together, more or less. Except for him.”
“As you wish.” Jeredon inclined his head. “He trails trouble or perhaps it trails him.”
“I know. I cannot leave a stone unturned, even if I unearth a viper.” She put her heels to her mount then, hard, and the tashya horse threw its head up with a trumpet of challenge, bolting off. The two men traded looks, then leaned low in their saddles and went after her, all three charging to the holding in an all-out horse race, which Jeredon’s mount won by the merest nose in a hail of stable yard dirt and a storm of shouts from the riders.
The smell of smoke grew a little fainter or perhaps it was that they had all gotten used to it, but the heat felt more and more stifling and sweat rippled down their bodies, turning their shirts and blouses black in the faint light of the cellar. Rivergrace plucked her blouse away from her body uncomfortably and moved to stretch her long legs out in front of her, accidentally jostling Keldan as she did so. He grunted as she breathed an apology.
“I feel like I’m bent in half,” he whispered.
She nodded miserably. Before she could whisper back, a deep rumbling noise ripped through the cellar. Dirt erupted, splattering all of them. They jumped to their feet. Nutmeg let out a hoarse shriek and threw herself over Hosmer’s still form to protect him. Wood, stone, and clay groaned and cracked as they were torn asunder. Tolby shoved Lily behind him and pulled out the short sword he’d girded at his waist. A sudden gust of air blew into the cellar, blowing the candle out. For a moment, they stood in inky blackness, the rending of their sanctuary filling their ears.