The captain’s eyes had moved slightly. I saw that they dipped down to my mouth, watching me speak. But they still held that sharpness.
Flustered by his opaque stare, I blurted out, “Does Tintar have ranunculi?”
The two lines between his brows deepened. “What?”
“The flower? The ranunculus flower?”
“I have no idea, madam.” His eyes were now back on mine. Just when I was certain he nearly never blinked, he did and asked, “How far up does it go?”
“How far does what go?”
There was the tiniest movement at the corner of his proud mouth. I guessed this Alric did not smile and did not laugh. As far as I knew, this could be his idea of grinning. “Your tattoo,” he finally said. “How far up does it go? I see there is more there than just your ranunculus. Are those fern leaves?”
Under the robe, I had pushed up the sleeves of my scribe dress. We were all sweating under the sun and the arm of the robe had fallen into the crook of my elbow. The ferns wrapped around my left arm were on display. I took in the state of me. I had taken my chestnut brown waves down from their braid crown to relieve the soreness in my scalp but my hair was starting to stick to my neck with sweat. My white robe was now covered in dirt.
I looked from myself back to him and saw a challenge in his eyes.
“Also,” he continued, “I am not a well-read man, but I am a traveled one. I always understood Saint Agnes to be a saint of common sense. Not one of… symbols.”
That is when I knew he did not believe we were priestesses. If he had, time away from the scene of battle had given him room to think and he suspected we were not clerics. Should I offer a meaning Agnes had for ferns? I had thought my inventive explanation of the inky aprons was good, but he was one step ahead of me.
“As I said in the chapel,” he was saying, “Ecclestonians are a godless people.”
I wanted to answer irritably but politely I asked, “Did you want me to answer?”
“How far it goes? Yes. If you wish to tell me.”
My mouth opened to speak and I again saw his eyes return to it.
I was not a raving beauty but I was no wallflower. And there had been, in my life, men that found me irresistible. Every remotely good-looking woman with a dash of self-awareness understands that about herself. There are men that want you madly, but the next man you meet may walk right past you without so much as a look. At my age, I knew when I had met a man of that first kind. Yes, he had heat in his eyes. As guarded a mind as his, as placid as his face, he was still a man.
I closed my mouth. Then slowly, I smiled. “It goes up far. Very far, you could say.”
The most minuscule of changes crept over his features.
I turned away from him and faced my fellow prisoners.
Helena was awake, the only one. She had witnessed the conversation between me and our captor in command. “What are you plotting, Edie?”
For some reason, my reply was breathless. “I don’t know yet. But something.”
“If you play with fire, do not burn us.”
Hurt, I looked at her questioningly.
“You are my bravest friend,” she said. “But take care, whatever you are about.”
7. Nyossa
Three days passed. Nothing changed except we were given some jerky and a canteen to share once a day. At night, they let us out, one by one, and shackled our right hands, one by one, to a long chain. Four of them guided the nine of us, shackled, behind whatever scrubs of trees they could find, allowing us to relieve ourselves. The shame of squatting, pissing under our robes, only lasted for the first night. This was mining country. The land was harsh and dusty. Its wealth was underground. Little flourished that was green here. If my geography was accurate, we would not hit a forest or river for some days. And thus, our privacy was slim.
We were made to lie down on the ground, still shackled, the ends of the chain looped between two stakes. The smallest shift in a body caused the entire chain to squeak. There was no escape. I looked up to a starless sky that first night away from Eccleston and wept without any sound. My happy life that I had scrapped together with nothing in the beginning, my one room lodging above the apothecary, the books on a shelf and the secondhand furniture, the bed, the pottery, the copper rings I liked to wear on my forefingers and the cup of coins under my bed of my life savings was all gone. I had not felt this insecure in winters.
Everyone was asleep save for the silver-haired man called Fletch and the youngest boy who was Maureen’s admirer. They had taken the first watch. All of the soldiers had unrolled kits from their saddles and snored softly around us. My fellow captives, after a night and day of heat and standing more than sitting, were all fast asleep. And so I let myself weep, making no noise. Or I had thought not, but when I brought my left hand, the unchained hand, up to my eyes to rid myself of my tears, I felt it, the unnameable sense that another was awake. Someone was listening to me and it was not Fletch and the boy. My heart raced at this but if I craned my neck to look around I would draw attention to myself. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore that uncanny presence.
Midmorning on the fourth day, we reached the forest.
“This has to be Nyossa,” said Quinn, as the trees along the road became closer and closer together. “Am I correct?” she asked. “Are we headed east? I did not see from which gate we left the city.”
