I wandered around the area from which I’d seen himemerge, but didn’t see any blue cloth hanging anywhere. The sun was lower in the sky now, stretching long shadows, and dappling through the copse with long, golden streamers. Birds chattered overhead, with flies buzzing around in an intensity that warned I was close to the boundary of the sheep farmer. Five more minutes passed and I was just about to call it quits and go back to Barry when out of the corner of my eye I saw a blue flutter. I headed toward it, pulling out an arrow to set onto the bow, frowning at the devious way Barry had hidden the target. The cloth was barely recognizable as such through a clump of broad-leaved shrubs, with fleeting glimpses of it visible as the branches moved gently in the breeze. I took aim, held my breath, and was just about to release the arrow when something struck me as odd.
A faint noise sounded to the left of me, followed almost immediately by a startled yell.
“What the hell?” I jumped forward, aware of the noise of someone moving through the trees to the left, and Barry calling out to ask if I was all right.
I pushed through the shrubs, tangling my hair and dress on them in the process, which is why it took me longer than normal to emerge from the other side. When I did, I stopped in horror. Before me, Alden stood, one hand braced against a tree trunk as he yanked an arrow from it.
“Holy crap, Alden!” I hurried forward at the same time Barry crashed his way through the shrubs. “Are you OK? Are you hurt? Who shot at you?”
“I’m not hurt,” he said, glaring at the arrow before looking up at me. His frown deepened as his eyes went to the bow I held, and the quiver slung over my back.“As to who shot me, I believe you could answer that better than me. What the hell do you think you’re doing shooting out here? There are any number of people who come through this copse—it’s part of the right of way that leads to the coast. That was an extremely dangerous thing to do, Mercy.”
“I didn’t shoot you!” I said quickly, showing him the arrow in my hand. “I was going to, thinking you were Barry’s target, but something didn’t feel right, so I stopped. But I did hear someone else shooting.” I spun around to pin Barry back with a mean look.
“It wasn’t me,” he said quickly, glancing around. “I was over there, to the south. I heard Mercy cry out and came to see what was the matter.”
“Well, someone shot at me,” Alden said irritably. “And I don’t see anyone else out here with a bow.”
I felt his accusation was pointed at me, and got a bit irritated, myself. “I may not be a master archer, but I do know the difference between shooting a person and a piece of torn cloth,” I said brusquely.
“And that’s not my type of arrow,” Barry said, holding out his quiver. His were all fletched with bright orange feathers. “That’s red, that is.”
“Red...” I swallowed hard, suddenly feeling my palms sweat. I looked down at the arrow in my hand. It bore red feathers. “I... this isn’t Fenice’s quiver. This is what we use for the intermediate students.”
I looked up to Alden, unable to say more. I knew I hadn’t shot an arrow, but would he believe me?
He took the arrow from my hand, and held it up to compare with the one he’d extracted from the tree. They were identical.
“Well,” Barry said with a soft whistle. “I believe mymissus is expecting me home, so I’ll be saying good-bye, and thank you for the lesson.”
“Bye,” I said absently, shaking my head at the two arrows. “I didn’t shoot at you, Alden.”
“I know you wouldn’t intentionally shoot me,” he said, watching as Barry plowed his way through the shrubs. “But perhaps it was a mistake. What are you doing out here?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing. Barry wanted some practice shooting in the real world, as he called it. We were having a little contest.” Briefly, I explained about the lesson, finishing with, “But I didn’t let go of the arrow, Alden. I would know if I did. Someone else did this.”
“Barry?” he asked. “He had orange arrows.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t have a red one,” I said quickly.
“You said he’s been shooting the last hour—did he have any red arrows earlier?”
“No,” I admitted, knowing full well I would have noticed if he’d been using arrows of a different color. “They were all orange.”
“Ah.”
That was all he said, but it was the way he said it that made me both frightened and annoyed. “It’s nice to know you trust me so much,” I said, taking my arrow from his hand and stuffing it back into the quiver. “Nice to know you have my back when the going gets rough.”
“You’re not the one who was almost gulleted by an arrow!” he pointed out.
“And speaking of that, just what areyoudoing out here lurking around the bushes?” I asked, my hands on my hips.
“I told you I was meeting with the ex-CID man. We were out here trying out the powder where we wouldn’t be seen.” Alden collected a small squat jar with a black lid, and stuffed it into a backpack. “He just left, and I was seeing if I could lift my fingerprints from a rock, in case we happen to get the opportunity to take everyone’s prints and compare them to the lanterns.”
“You picked a hell of a place to be covert,” I said, stung at the fact that he didn’t seem to believe me. “Also, Alden!”
“What?”
I slapped my thighs with my hands. “How can you believe I’d shoot at you!”
