I watched as they packed my belongings back into my pack, shoving things in without thought or care.
They gave me back my pack. Not my weapons, those stayed, which was expected. Not my coin, which I noted and didn't comment on. But the pack, and the cloak, and the lodestone, they’d apparently decided those things were not a threat.
I was escorted through the garrison into the Bloomreach morning. I walked with the soldier and his companion to a small wagon, which was enclosed except for two high windows on either side, each with three bars running across it.
I thought about what I carried within me.
The column and the size of what it had shown me. Thiece's pale eyes and her knowing look. The sound of birds in the Florlunia trees, which had never stopped singing. The almost blue sky at the border, promising something. Promising what?
The warmth of his hands against my face. The particular way a kiss could be a goodbye, a calculation, and something else entirely, all at once.
“In you go.”
Like it was an invitation into a carriage and not a prison wagon.
I stepped up and got in, and the door closed firmly behind me.
I looked out through the high bars. The street behind me was ordinary. Morning light, people moving, the warmth of a Florlunia day that was almost — not yet, but almost — the warmth the column had shown me.
Nobody there who shouldn't be there. No shadow in a doorway that was too still.
I looked for a long time.
Then I turned away and sat down against the wooden side. Some things you carried better when you didn't look back. I'd told myself that before. I was less sure of it now.
No rescue came. I’d heard horses as we moved out of the town, and hope had soared within me, thinking it was them.
It wasn’t.
When I looked out, it was merely more horses with more soldiers, all wearing deep green cloaks.
I lay down, put my head on my pack, and closed my eyes. I was going to hang for the killing of those men and the murder of the merchant.
I needed to get free. I knew Icouldget free, but I wasn’t happy about the number of soldiers or using that amount of magic.
I lay there, rocking back and forth slightly as the wagon rolled.
What the fuck was I going to do? Escape. I needed to escape. I’d wait until nightfall. I’d need to take the risk and use my magic.
I didn’t know how much time passed, but the wagon rolled to a gentle stop. I heard voices, but not ones I knew. I heard a lot of scrambling, and then the door swung open.
She was older than I was, with dark hair, scraped back into a tight bun. It made her look older than her years. Light-blue eyes, a nose slightly too big for her face, and small, pinched lips.
She was slight of frame, and her skirts were heavy, embroidered blue velvet.
She watched me assess her in one glance, and her eyebrow lifted as I met the stare of the Verei Kahn.
My magic pulsed inside me. My hand moved toward my sternum. I stopped it.
She watched my hand stop, and something in her expression settled into certainty.
I looked at her. At her dark clothing, her trained attention, her quiet confidence. At the institution she represented and everything it meant. Declaration, classification,ownership.
Everything I'd been running from since before I understood what I was running from.
"We've been looking for someone," she said. "For some time." A pause. "Someone with considerable undeclared power who has been in the north. Near Iskaeld."
We watched each other.
