Roses (11 page)

“We’ll stop at an inn soon. Yur look fit to drop.”

Beauty jumped at the sound of Owaine’s voice and her eyes snapped open. She had not noticed him fall in step beside her
and she looked around, realizing that they were no longer passing alleyways and huts.

“We’re in the Sago suburbs now. Made good time, Beauty. I’m a proud of yur.”

She smiled weakly at him.

“But we can’t stop for long. No one knows what will be happening here.”

They rode on for another hour before Owaine finally halted at an inn. Comrade snorted loudly, stretching his neck, and Beauty stumbled to the ground, her legs buckling as she fell from his saddle.

“Steady, Beauty, steady ’em,” muttered Owaine, going to help her.

She waited in a haze of exhaustion as he booked a room and stalls and tended to the horses. Despite it being so late, other travelers passed on the roads, some stopping at the inn and some continuing on. They had a haunted look about their faces, as if they, too, were fleeing.

“Come on now, Beauty.”

Owaine led her toward the inn door. It was smoky inside, but he guided her swiftly past a raucous group of men and up a set of rickety stairs to a dark room. She fell on the bed and was immediately asleep.

She was awoken at dawn.

“We must go on.”

Owaine’s cot had already been folded away and Beauty blinked at the dim, muggy room. Her limbs ached from the long ride and she groaned softly. She was still dressed in her cloak and gloves and she felt stiff and sore.

“We can’t stop, Beauty. It’s dangerous.”

She forced herself up and climbed out of bed, wincing. The room looked different in the harsh light seeping through the window. The walls were patched with dew, the floor riddled with lice, and the bed sheets yellow. She suddenly wished to leave.

In a matter of moments they were riding on the roads once more, Beauty flinching at every jolt in the saddle and Comrade tossing his head in frustration. They stopped for omelets at a market at mid-morning and then pressed on, heading away from Sago and the Magic Cleansing.

And it continued like that for the next moon-cycle. Beauty’s days became an endless rotation of waking at dawn and riding till night. They stopped briefly at inns and taverns along the way and she ached every waking hour. When her saddle sores became too much to bear, Owaine tried to buy ointment, but every herb dealer and healer had disappeared with the threat of the Magic Cleansing and he could find nothing more than a balm that helped little.

Comrade suffered too. He was a fine riding horse, not a sturdy animal. Had Beauty not been so attached to him, Owaine would have sold him already. Instead, he did everything in his power to ease the old stallion.

“What are you doing?” Beauty asked one evening in the stables of a saloon.

Owaine was rubbing Comrade’s legs in circular motions while the stallion sighed.

“I’m worried he’s gonna go lame.”

Beauty hugged the horse’s face to her chest and kissed his forelock.

“I knows lots of stuff like this that I never showed yur,” said Owaine, trying to distract her. “In Sago, there were always ointments and the like that could do the same, so I never bothered with my Hilland skills. They calls us Hill folk horse whispers, did yur know that?”

Beauty shook her head.

“That’s where horses come from—the Hillands. Some still make sticks rustling the wild ones. I used to do a bit of that in me young days. I got my place at Rose Herm for being a Hillander—Ma always wanted the best.”

At the thought of Ma Dane, Beauty shuddered.

Beyond the suburbs of Sago lay the Strap Cities, which were smaller, paler imitations of the capital. Traveling through them, Owaine bared left so as to remain as far from the Border Cities as possible, as he was concerned with how deeply the rebels had leaked into Pervorocco after the Magic Cleansing.

They received little national news on their journey, preferring to remain anonymous and speak to no one, but occasionally they would hear snippets of conversation.

“ . . . the torturing of Magic Bloods last week in Sago.”

“ . . . they were hunting them all night.”

“ . . . said that they could hear the screams from the boulevards to the shantytowns.”

Beauty glanced at Owaine as they led their horses through a busy part of one Strap City, but his head was turned firmly the other way.

After they had been on the road for three moon-cycles, the cities began to thin and turn to towns and villages. The temperature cooled although it was still summer, and the paved, wide roads became graveled paths. They were entering the fringes of the Forest Villages and stretches of green rolled before them.

“Have you seen the like of that before?” Owaine asked gleefully, pointing at fields of sloping jade.

The lawns at Rose Herm were watered three times a day to keep them from drying out and yet Beauty did not think that they were half as moist.

“The Hillands are greener still,” said Owaine. “Ain’t never seen their match.”

Beauty pulled her cloak closer around her. She wore it always, at first to hide her appearance, but as they moved farther north, it provided much needed warmth. At times she still drew stares if passersby caught sight of her bright violet eyes beneath the hood, but so far they had not been stopped. Neither the Magic Cleansing nor the rebels had reached this far, or so they thought.

One evening, they were booking a room at a lodge house when the landlord pushed a parchment toward them.

Owaine glanced at its contents, the blood draining from his head.

“The State is on the lookout for Magics,” said the landlord, glaring at Beauty. “And the rebels are sending out hunters.”

Beauty instinctively slid her hand beneath her cloak and touched her golden amulet. She kept it hidden always for fear of attracting more unwanted attention, and at this moment the heavy hexagonal disk was scratching her skin.

“I thank yur for this news,” said Owaine in a husky voice. “But this means nothing to us.”

The landlord did not stop looking at Beauty.

“We must go on,” she said, scratching her chest harder. The itch was stinging and it would not abate.

Owaine was taken aback. Just a moment earlier, he had helped Beauty stumble into the lodge house as she was so tired from the day’s hard travel.

“We must go on,” she said.

The landlord nodded and turned away.

“We must go from here,” Beauty whispered, and Owaine did not ask further questions.

They saddled up the disgruntled horses and rode into the night. When they were well away from the town, they stopped in a bare shepherd’s hut in a valley. It was the first time that Beauty did not have a bed to lie on and she did not sleep well.

“At least it’s summer,” said Owaine.

But Beauty had only ever known the humid Sago nights and could not adjust to the cool change in temperature. She did not find the greenness beautiful as Owaine did, or the cows and sheep comforting. It was all faintly unsettling to her.

“We would have to have started sleeping rough soon anyways,” said Owaine. “Once we get past the towns of the Forest Villages then there'll be nothing but hamlets and then the hills.”

Beauty could not fathom these great undulations of which Owaine always spoke.

“Good job we got these here bedrolls,” he muttered before rolling over and falling asleep.

Beauty did not find them as comfortable as her companion. Her body ached from the days of travel and she could feel every lump and rock beneath her. But at last, as she heard the gentle snorting of Comrade outside, she slipped into slumber.

That night she dreamt of State officials in gray uniforms, prowling the roads and paths for Magics. One came to a lodge house and drew his sword asking for information, and the landlord tried to explain that he had seen something, but he could not remember what it was.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

The Hillands

F
rom then on they slept in shepherds’ huts, under rocks, and often, if they could not find a suitable spot, under the stars. As the days passed it grew colder, the paths turned to overgrown tracks, and the ground bogged with damp. There were more fields and fewer people. Then came more stretches of green scrubland and fewer fields.

Summer turned into autumn and the trees yellowed. In Sago, the rainy season would just be beginning and Beauty found its absence distressing. Instead, the leaves about her dried to red, orange, and amber, becoming crisp before falling and crunching beneath Comrade’s hooves. Fogs billowed in the mornings and gusts of cold wind blew, chilling Beauty. They entered dark forests that smelled spicy and made her sneeze, and they passed gushing streams, then rivers, then lakes.

Owaine’s smile widened the farther north they traveled. He had spent too long wallowing in the hot stickiness of Sago and now he longed for his hills with a passion. In the evenings, as he made
a fire to cook the little meat they brought on their journey from passing villages and hamlets, he would speak of nothing else but his Hill folk.

“They has been in the realm the longest, so it has always been said. The first race made by the gods when Magic weren’t contained.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s written in our scripture.”

They had been on the road so long that Beauty could not remember when her life had not begun at dawn, with hours of hard riding ahead, and ended on a bedroll with the darkness all around her, dreaming of strange things like colors in the sky and a man with a scar over one eye. In fear of the Magic Cleansing, they did not speak to anyone except when buying food, and even then it was Owaine who dealt with such matters. But both were craving the company of others.

“This be the last town,” said Owaine one cold morning.

“We are almost there?”

The town was typical of the places they had recently passed, with its wide, cobbled square lined with stores and a maze of houses spreading in opposite directions.

“No,” laughed Owaine. “It’s two days ride till we reach the edge of the Hillands and then farther to the Hill villages.”

Beauty’s shoulders sagged.

“Hill folk come here to trade horses in the summer.”

Beauty was beginning to grow tired of hearing about the Hillanders and she had not even met them yet.

“How much farther do you think we can go before nightfall?”

“We should be close enough to see the hills properly tomorrow. But while we’re here, I’ll send word to my family. I’d like them to ready a house for us.” He paused and grinned. “They’ll be so surprised to hear I’m back. We left Sago in such a rush that I weren’t able to warn them I were returning.”

Beauty minded the horses in the square while Owaine went to the local messengers, and for the first time she thought of the new land that she would call home. She realized she did not like the idea of Owaine having a family—she did not want to be forgotten again.