“Those littles don’t deserve your bad mood.”
“But they deserve to face death in their trials, do they?”
Once we were out of earshot, Brigid hissed, “Who told Posey about Sablemire, for gods’ sake? When I find out who blabbed, I’ll wring their neck.”
“I don’t see why everyone shouldn’t know. The Warden didn’t issue a black order.”
We passed through the stone colonnade that led from the stable yards to the training yards. In the shadows, Brigid stopped me and made me face her.
“Talk to me,” she said, looking right at me with those patient pale blue eyes of hers. “What’s happened?”
“Yesterday was a mistake,” I replied. I stared past her at the empty training yard and the practice swords leaning against the far wall. “Posey was right. Those Oldens wanted a safe place to hide from the war. And we slaughtered them without cause.”
“We don’t know that.”
“The Warden told me as we flew home. The village council had submitted a request for asylum on the Oldens’ behalf.”
Silence. Then Brigid said, “Maybe that isn’t the full story. She could have learned something else that superseded their request.”
“I suppose.”
“And anyway, once the Warden attacked, we had no choice. We had to be on the defensive after that. If we’d just stood there, they’d have killedus.”
Even these few seconds of conversation were too much time spent standing still. I itched to grab one of the weapons awaiting us in the training yard. It was too immense, this dark space yawning open insideme, this deafening silence flooding my limbs. If I didn’t move soon, it would kill me.
“Then she shouldn’t have attacked,” I said.
“Maybe not,” Brigid conceded. “But the harsh truth is that we don’t know what the Oldens intended. They could have been planning to turn on the village that very night, for all we know. Or other hostiles might have tracked them there and attacked, leaving the village in ruins andeveryonedead.”
I couldn’t look at her. I was so desperate for solace that I would have seen her familiar face and believed her, and I didn’t want the comfort that would bring. I didn’t deserve to feel comfortable.
“You’re right,” I said flatly. “Staff or sword?”
Brigid put her hands on my shoulders. “Now, wait a moment. This is me you’re talking to, all right? You can’t put on that serene Mara mask and pretend I can’t see past it. Let’s go on a walk and talk this through.”
I roughly shrugged her off. “Staff or sword?”
Brigid stepped back, frowning. “Fine. Staff. But we’re talking about this later, once I’ve beaten this foul mood out of you.”
She strode across the yard, grabbed one of the sparring staffs, and tossed the other one to me. It was like dangling a piece of fresh meat in front of a starving wolf. All the scattered, brittle pieces of my mind snapped back together. I caught the staff and lunged at her. She was ready, of course. Our staffs crashed together with a sharp crack, and then I pushed off of her to spin around and strike again.
And again.
And again.
It was bliss to fight someone who actually challenged me, and soon enough I couldn’t remember who I was,whereI was, or who I was fighting. All I knew was the weight of the staff in my hands and the strength of my muscles. I was fast, faster than my father, faster thananyone. And when I used my staff to strike, it was like bringing down an ax large enough to split mountains.
Dimly, I heard someone shouting my name, but I pushed on, ignoring the sound, because with the sound of my name came thoughts I didn’t want to think, memories I didn’t want to recall. And every lunge, every spin, every quick jab of my staff beat them back harder, faster, until all I could hear was my roaring blood and my panting breaths and thecrack,crack,crackof my weapon finding its mark.
“Mara!” someone screamed right beside my ear.
I whirled around, my staff raised, but Cira ducked before I could hit her, and this—the sight of her cowering beneath me, shielding Brigid with her much smaller body—was what snapped me out of the gorgeous dark place into which I had fallen.
I stood there, in the training yard, in the pale, Mist-silvered light, sweating and panting and staring down at my friends in horror. Brigid was alive, but her nose was broken, and there was a gash across her cheek. Blood stained her collar, and her staff lay on the ground beside her, useless, broken in half.
I dropped my own staff and slowly stepped back from her, realizing only then that we weren’t alone. At least a dozen figures stared at me from the perimeter of the yard—littles, servants, Roses my own age. I didn’t look harder than that. I couldn’t bear to see who else might have been watching.
“I’m all right,” Brigid said, reassuring Cira. She pushed herself up. “Mara, wait—”
