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There was no way to deal with the conversation that needed to happen except to jump right into it.
“Do we have all the climbing equipment we need?” I asked as a roundabout way of getting into the conversation.
“I think we actually might,” Appius said, looking excited.
I hated bursting his bubble. I truly hated it. But I nodded firmly and said, “Then we need to gather up whatever food might be left in the house and head into the woods to find a way onto the mountain pass right away. Before noon, if possible.”
Appius blinked at me, then his expression dropped. “We don’t have time to look for them, do we,” he said.
I shook my head. “We don’t. The king will probably send soldiers after us, since we have Mara with us, and if we don’t get beyond their reach as quickly as possible, they’ll find us and kill us.”
We were all silent for a moment. Appius met and held my eyes for a long time. I could see him thinking, see him weighing his options.
“They might be dead,” he said, though I could tell he was just speaking his thoughts aloud. “I might never find them again, even if I do search. But if I leave with you, I’ll never know. For the rest of my life, I’ll never know what happened to them.”
My heart squeezed hard in my chest. The not knowing would kill me. I hadn’t known what was going on with Dushka or my friends for nine months now, and there had been times where it had kept me up at night.
I made a decision and crossed to Appius, resting my hands on his shoulders. “I promise you, Appius, that if you come with me, I will never forsake you. I won’t push you aside when I get home, I’ll make a home for you with me somehow. With me and Dushka.”
Appius swallowed hard and gazed up at me. “This is not what I imagined happening when I spent fifteen minutes in a closet with you at Solstice.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Mostly just to release the tension that pressed down on me. I did more than that. I pulled Appius into my arms and kissed him hard. It wasn’t meant to convince him to throw his lot in with me, it was just something I had to do. I liked Appius. I liked him so much.
“Take a few minutes to think about it,” I told him. “In the meantime, the rest of us will pack up these things and organize our supplies so we can carry them.”
I let Appius go, then moved to where Leander, Darius, and Lucius were sorting rope and axes and the like.
“Tell me honestly,” I started, crouching so I could speak without Appius hearing. “Do we have the supplies we need to do this? Do we have enough food?”
Leander and Darius exchanged looks as if the whole thing had suddenly turned very real to them. They were worried now too, which wasn’t what we needed.
“I think we do,” Lucius said with a firm nod. “I’m a city man, not a country one, but I’m pretty sure we can find food in the mountains. There have to be berries or roots, or animals we can kill and roast, right?”
I’d been living in a forest long enough myself that I could decisively answer, “Yes, but it’s rougher to do that than you might think.” I glanced to Leander and Darius as well and said, “We can survive off things we find up in the mountains, but don’t go into it expecting to eat food for enjoyment.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to enjoy anything until we’re on the other side of this whole thing,” Darius said.
I wasn’t certain if he meant over the mountains or over the bridge that divided life from death.
“I just want it all to be over as soon as possible,” I said, also not sure which I meant.
“Let’s figure out the best way to carry all these supplies,” Lucius said.
The immensity of what we were doing suddenly overwhelmed me. Even though I’d spent months reading about mountain-climbing, Appius was actually the expert. He’d been up in the mountains before. It turned out there was a specific way to carry climbing rope so that it didn’t throw you off-balance. We found a few forgotten jars of food in the house that went into our satchels and the packs that had been found in the barn, and in the end, I felt weighed down with supplies and with cares.
“We won’t be able to run with all of this hanging off us,” Leander commented with a frown as the six of us gathered in the yard of Appius’s house, adjusting our packs and ropes. “If there are soldiers coming after us, we won’t be able to outrun them.”
“We’ll have to rely on concealment, then,” I said. “You can leave that to me. I have a lot of experience with staying hidden in a forest.”
“I can drive you as close to the woods as I can to make it easier to slip away,” Horacio offered once we were ready.
“Are you certain?” I asked. “And for that matter, are you certain that someone hasn’t notice you’re missing or that they won’t come after you?”
If our escape brought harm down on Horacio, I would never forgive myself.
Then again, like Appius and his family, if we succeeded in our flight, I would never know what happened to my friend. And I definitely counted Horacio as a friend now.
“You leave it to me to worry about that,” Horacio said, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “I’m cleverer than I look.”
