“Take the saddlebags,” Grant instructed.He helped Benedict dismount and lean against a tree.“Ben, give me your shirt.”
“Pardon me?”Benedict squinted at him, the question disorienting him.
Mary and I dismounted, and I pulled off the saddle bags.
“For the dogs.Give it to me.”Grant drew his pistol and primed it, sparing my brother half a glance.“Mary, get into the river and sing up the thickest snow you can.Start walking, that way.”
He pointed downstream.
Shivering, Ben pulled his shirt over his head and passed it to Grant.The top half of his pale stomach fluttered above his breeches and belt.He wore layers of bruises, better seen in the daylight.
Mary held out her hands to me.“Give me some of those.”
I laid the lighter saddlebags over her shoulder and watched as she picked her way across the ice.It cracked beneath her feet, but she kept upright and, gasping at the cold, grinned stiffly back at me.
“Brisk,” she commented and began to slosh downstream.She hummed as she went, picking up notes of a simple tune.
Dogs continued to bay, jarring with her song.Closer now.The wind picked up, ghosting across my cheeks, thick with the scent of snow and frozen forest.
A whirl of fresh snow swept Mary up in a ripple of clothes and hair, then she vanished from sight.
I squinted through snow-laden lashes at Ben.“Ready to move?”
My brother finished buttoning his coat over his bare chest and held out an impatient arm.“Help me.”
I put an arm under his shoulder.We descended into the creek with a splash and a round of muffled curses, only half of which came from Ben.The water was shockingly cold, and my bones hurt from my toes to my clenched jaw.
“Say goodbye,” Grant called.That was all the warning we got before he slapped the flank of my anxious mare.Both horses cantered away up the road, tack jingling and hooves thundering.I glimpsed Ben’s soiled shirt fluttering from one saddle, then they too disappeared into the snow.
“How many times have you done this?”I asked Grant as he joined us in the water, wincing and muttering.We started off after Mary, I supporting Ben while Grant watched our backs.
The former highwayman shrugged.“Four or five.Though I’ve never had a Stormsinger to cover my tracks, and I prefer to weigh the horses down with something.Hopefully the snow will disguise the trail enough.They’ll likely scout the creek after us regardless, but the hounds will go after the horses.”
“If I remember correctly,” Benedict said through gritted teeth.“You met Mary in prison?”
“I was only caught once,” Grant scoffed.“And I escaped.”
“Thanks to Mary.”Despite the situation—or maybe because of it—the flash of resentment I felt at Grant’s casual mention of the incident caught me by surprise.“Whereupon you sold her.”
Grant fell silent, cowed.In that quiet Mary’s voice came to us in eerie gusts and snatches.
“Desperation makes fools of us all,” the highwayman muttered.
A plodding, wind-harried silence overtook us.Our pursuers drew ever closer, my Sooth’s senses prickling, teasing the hair on the back of my neck.I looked back, edging into the Dark Water, and noted magelights off in the forest.
I caught Grant’s eye.“They are still closing.One Sooth, one Magni.”
“That we can see,” Ben interjected.“There may be more with talismans.”
Grant surveyed our surroundings.We had entered a thick stand of cedars, dark leaves and fraying trunks girded with white.“We should make a stand.This is as good a place as any.”
We made for the bank.
“Can you shoot?”I asked Ben as he slouched into the shelter of a thick, divided trunk.
He unshouldered his musket and set to priming it, despite a perceptible shiver in his fingers.He drove the ramrod down in two sharp passes.“I can, but I would prefer not to waste that shot Mary stole.I would prefer they killed one another.”
He spoke with the practicality of a butcher at his bench.
