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“If you stay a few more days,” Missus Ryma said, dropping off Nic’s lunch at the work table she’d set up in a corner of the common room, “you could make enough coin to have at least a small stake, when you get wherever you’re going.” She nodded at the line of people waiting with various broken or malfunctioning magical conveniences. “Folks inland don’t have much in the way of these toys. How will you earn coin then?”
“I don’t know.” Nic focused on coaxing the water elemental in the purifying pitcher out of its sulk. They were less temperamental than the fire elementals, but also harder to please. The healer, Inytta, who owned the pitcher, looked on anxiously, eager to have her source of reliably clean water again. So far as Nic had been able to tell, House Refoel hadn’t sent any wizards to Wartson, so the local healers relied on traditional remedies. The purified water had the additional benefit of cleansing infection when used to wash wounds—making it a prized commodity.
“I’ll figure something out, I guess. There,” she said to Inytta, who took the pitcher reverently. “It’s happier now, but don’t store the pitcher too near the fire or any mage lanterns. The water elementals hate the fire ones. And take it to visit some of its kin from time to time, any natural freshwater source will do.”
Inytta thanked her profusely, tipping her generously on top of the agreed-upon price. That met the price of passage, plus extra. Everything else went to her stake now. The next person in line stepped up, and Missus Ryma pointed at him. “You, wait. You, eat,” she said, transferring the order to Nic. “You could stay here,” she continued, once Nic took a bite of the excellent seafood pie. “I’ll give you free room and board for maintaining my magic tools. And you can be in charge of purchasing new ones that come in. I bet you can tell the good ones from the cheap knockoffs some try to sell us.”
It was tempting. The inn was comfortable, and Nic had begun to make some friends in town. People valued her contribution and had no preconceived ideas about her. Lady Veronica Elal didn’t exist to them, which Nic found surprisingly restful. She could raise her child here, and Inytta could be her midwife. Of course, she’d greatly prefer to have a House Refoel wizard who specialized in childbirth assist, but failing that—as anywhere not in the Convocation would also lack the same—she’d take what she could. These women managed to birth healthy babes, after all.
She ate several bites of her pie, finding herself surprisingly hungry, and used eating to stall giving an answer. Finally she shook her head. “I wish I could,” she told Missus Ryma sincerely, “but I just can’t stay.”
Missus Ryma took the empty dish, nodding in resignation. “I understand, but I had to try.” She started to go, then turned back. “I know you’re quality, child. No mistaking that. Someone was to meet you here, yes?”
Nic gazed at her, taken aback. Aside from assessing Nic’s useful skills, Missus Ryma hadn’t asked her any personal questions.
The innkeeper nodded to herself. “Some are on their own, you know. They pay the price of passage and cast themselves like leaves on the water. You don’t strike me as that type. Whoever was to meet you must’ve gotten delayed. Why not give them a few more days to get here?”
Because a few more days would give any pursuers time to get to Port Anatole, too. “I better not,” Nic said, as much for herself as Missus Ryma. She might have lingered too long already.
“All right,” the woman huffed. “I tried.”
In the morning,Nic boarded the coach heading inland—departing well before the day’s barges would arrive from upcoast, a distinct relief. Every day when the shipyard horns blew, announcing a new arrival, she’d tense, casting out her senses for anything unusual.
Who was she kidding? She was checking for the scent of snow and silver moondust.Him.Resolutely, under the cover of the packet of food Missus Ryma had pressed on her—far more generous than what Dary had provided—Nic stung her wrist with the snake’s copper fangs.Don’t think about him. Now more than ever.
The coach was drawn by a team of horses, and thus far they were slower than the elemental-powered sleighs and carriages she’d been used to. But she was in motion, moving away from the harbor city and inland to parts unknown. Where Maman’s agents wouldn’t be able to find her to install her in the promised comfortable life, but also where no one else could locate her.
She watched out the window as the flat coastal plain grew gradually drier, the air warmer away from the sea. This much farther south, spring was already touching the landscape, with birds calling out their morning greetings, and pale green fuzzed the bare limbs of the low trees shaped like parasols.
The other passengers dozed—none of them people she’d met before, which suited her fine. She’d been slow to learn, but gradually she was getting more circumspect, not giving a name if not called to, or making up a new one on the spot if the person persisted. The trick there was remembering which name she’d given them. Not only had she left Lady Veronica Elal behind, she seemed to be forgetting other aspects of who she’d been. A disconcerting kind of loneliness to that.
Never mind. Once she found a place she liked, she’d settle in and establish a final and lasting identity. She had plenty of time before the child was born to think up a history for them. The father would be dead, for sure, to forestall any curious searching. Lost at sea, perhaps. That had a grim ring of truth to it.
It wasn’t until midday, after Nic had eaten her sandwich and dozed in the growing warmth of the inland sun, that she felt the silver tingle of warning.
Gasping—and then choking a little on her own spit—she sat bolt upright, startling the other passengers who’d also been dozing. Had she dreamed it, that sense of Gabriel’s silvery magic, that cool caress of his gaze? She pressed the copper snake’s fangs viciously into her wrist to banish that sense of him.
It didn’t vanish. Instead, it grew stronger.
Panic lighting her nerves, she stuck her head out the coach window, looking back the way they’d come. Where the road crested a distant hillside, a lone rider galloped on a gray horse, dark cloak streaming in the wind of their passage as he lay low over his steed’s stretched-out neck.Gabriel.Nic didn’t have to wonder if that cloak was a deep forest green to know it was him.
How had he found her?That doesn’t matter, she instructed herself.Think.
He’d be able to catch her if she went on foot, but she was trapped in this coach—and he was gaining on them. If she had any chance at all of eluding him, it would be on her own. Then she lost sight of him as he dipped into the valley. She yelled for the coach to stop, standing to pound on the roof of the coach. “Let me out!” She flung open the door, hanging on—fortunately not difficult at their moderate pace.
The driver slowed the horses, casting a look over her shoulder. “Rest stop isn’t for another hour, ma’am.”
“I don’t care, I need to get off.”
Giving her a dubious frown, the driver reined the team to a stop. Nic jumped off immediately. “I can’t wait long,” the driver said. “Are you ill? I have a schedule to keep.”
“Don’t wait,” she called back as she waded into the tall grasses. “I changed my mind,” she added on sudden inspiration. “I’m going back.” When Gabriel caught up with them, that might not throw him off her trail long, but every bit helped.
“But, ma’am, your bag!”
“Keep it!” It was mostly clothes Missus Ryma had given her. And her winter weather garb, which she didn’t need. She had her store of coin, food, and water in her pockets—she was getting smarter—and that was all that mattered.
She made it to the nearby tree line, breathing a bit easier to be out of sight—and that the coach finally moved on. The parasol-shaped trees didn’t provide a lot of cover, but the thick ferns growing beneath them did, if she crouched. They also made for poor footing and slowed her progress with their dense tangles. Nic focused on going forward at an angle from the road.Just keep moving, and he won’t know which way you went.
