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I can’t see the moon rising, but I know it’s there because the gloom has a texture to it. A moonless night is flat black and you have to use the stars to tell the time—which is hard to do when you only get glimpses of the sky through the treetops. We enter a clearing and I catch a faint silver shine glancing low off the glossy side of the leaves. From the angle I know that the moon is about two fists high in the sky. The night is young yet. A half past eight, give or take. Reading the darkness relaxes me.
Where are we going? Tristan asks in mindspeak.
Caleb, I reply.
I reach out to our other stone kin, feeling my way toward him. Caleb’s one of Alaric’s elite guards and always knows where he is. I get a faint reply from him—not enough to actually discern words, but enough to know which way to go. I alter our course slightly in his direction.
I count my heartbeats to keep track of time. I don’t need to, I suppose, but it gives my mind something to do other than obsess about Lillian. After ten thousand beats—about an hour and twenty-three minutes and six and a half miles—I find Caleb’s trail. Our tribe doesn’t leave much of a mark on the forest, but the passing of so many feet and so many horse hooves is impossible to hide. Even Tristan can see the churned earth, and I feel an unloosening inside him as he does. He’s relaxing too soon. Two hundred yards ahead, I spot Woven sign. Lots of it. They’re tracking our people.
I
don’t tell Tristan. A little bit of fear sharpens the wits—a lot steals them.
When we start to get closer to Alaric, I can hear Caleb more clearly and I send him a warning.
Tristan and I have kidnapped Lillian. We’re bringing her to Alaric for justice.
I feel a swell of emotion from Caleb.
I’ll hang back for you and bring you to Alaric myself, he replies in mindspeak.
Careful. Woven are right behind your group.
Tell me something I don’t know.
Tristan sees me smiling. “You reach Caleb?” he guesses. His range for mindspeak isn’t as far as mine. I nod and Tristan relaxes even more knowing we’ll have our stone kin with us soon. As his anxiety thins, mine thickens. I’m bringing Lillian to justice for what she’s done, and if Alaric is fair, he’ll give her the same sentence that she’s passed on to so many of our people. He’ll hang her. My feet slow.
Trouble? Tristan asks.
I shake my head and pick up the pace.
It isn’t long before Caleb finds us—silently appearing between the dark trees in a way that defies logic for such a giant. He’s on foot and carrying a lacquered wicker cage. We use that kind of cage to trap large animals, but that’s not why Caleb brought it. The cage is for Lillian. He wants her contained, probably so she can’t run away.
After we greet each other, and the initial shock of seeing Lillian in the flesh passes for Caleb, we put her in the cage. For a while we just stand over her, looking. None of us can believe we captured the queen.
“What is she wearing?” Caleb asks. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen thick cotton breeches like that before.”
“I’ve never seen Lillian wear breeches, period,” Tristan adds. He turns to me. “You?”
“No, she hates them. They make her too hot,” I say. We all go back to staring at her.
“Are you sure that’s Lillian?” Caleb asks.
I give him a look.
“I don’t know,” Tristan muses.
“What don’t you know?” I say.
Tristan sighs. “It doesn’t feel like her,” he says, gearing up for a fight.
I open my mouth to argue, but I can’t. I know that the girl in the cage is Lillian, but Tristan’s right. It doesn’t feel like her.
“We should bring her to the sachem,” Caleb says. “Let him decide.”
I’m just realizing now that from the moment I laid eyes on her outside the café I’ve reeled from one snap decision to the next. I haven’t once stopped to think things through. What if getting to the sachem is what she wanted?
“I don’t trust her,” I reply.
