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The third day dragged on towards evening with Rue constantly glancing over her shoulder despite her resolve not to. The Cruelty’s presence throbbed like a wound now, promising that each straight section of the Wentwash would reveal him to their rear. Aside from continued flight Rue had no plan to deal with her sibling. Any fresh encounter promised a repeat of their first disastrous meeting.

And Lip-Scar would not abandon the hunt. It might have been his job to chase down Kindnesses once the order had been overthrown, but seeking her out would, she suspected, be a vocation all of its own. Not so much because of the single scar she’d left on him after years of keeping him safe—or safer than he would have been without her. But because there is in some of us, those like Lip-Scar, a need to tear down any who have had power over them. Only in this manner can they imagine their pride being repaired. He would have killed Father too if he’d thought it could be done with certainty.

Fear should have chased away any appetite, but Rue’s stomach groaned and demanded food. Country firesides were often host to horrific stories about what the half-dead might eat, but it was fresh bread and ripe cheese that Rue’s mouth watered for. If she could let go the blasted pole that had so blistered her hands, and instead fill them with a crusty loaf warm from the oven, she would at this point keel over dead when her brother walked in, without complaint and with a full belly.

Another minor town came and went, small boys and girls chasing along the riverbank on the far side to throw stones at the “water witch.” Their impressive stamina failed after a field or two.

“If we end up in the ocean…I swear—”

“If we do, I’m flying off and leaving you to it.” The bird glanced back along the river. “Is he closer? How long now?”

“Very close.” Rue shuddered. She would take on the great ocean if it meant escaping the Cruelty. Surely he wouldn’t find her amid the infinity of wave and storm.

“The ocean don’t sound too bad, then, eh? Maybe you’ll cross the Great Divide and find the old world. If you can’t die you might make it.”

Rue raised a brow. “What do you know about the Great Divide, Senna Weaver? Ain’t you Church of Truth? Humbrold put down two jewels to float alone in the world ocean?”

Senna squawked derisively. “Stands to reason if there’s two islands there’s more.” She turned her head towards the right bank. “There! That place!”

Rue stood, cursing that every action she took these days needed a grunt or a groan or an exclamation, as if without a suitable announcement her body wouldn’t bother answering the call. She steered them to the bank and grounded the skiff on a muddy beach. “That mansion?”

“That place.”

A chill ran the length of Rue’s spine. She had marched into palaces in her time. Into hovels. Once into the barracks of the Harren king’s elite personal guard, the erroneously named Immortals. But this mansion reminded her of the building that had imprisoned her from small child to the day she had escaped many years later, filthy, bloody, and terrified. She had seen it from the outside for the first time that day, and the cant of its roof, the spacing and number of the pillars to the front, the way it crouched low to the ground, all were disturbingly similar to the structure standing before her in the dying light.

With a grunt of resignation Rue started up the slope. Surely they weren’t breeding new Cruelties here. She’d feel it, wouldn’t she? She’d know if Mother were closeted inside like some great spider weaving the fates of children into shrouds for them to wear? She shook off her stupidity. Light was leaking through the shutters on the second floor, and on the ground floor some of the windows stood open. Whatever the place was, it wasn’t a prison.

Coming closer, she noted the well-kept gardens, carving order out of the wildness of the surrounding woods. Gravel paths crisscrossed the formal geometry favoured by those with money in the west.

Two elderly women sat in the shadow of the house, both in long shawls as if feeling winter’s bite even though spring had decorated the gardens with the first bold strokes of green. They looked somehow abandoned, as if waiting for someone to bring them in for the night. Both watched as Rue crossed the gardens, aiming for the doorway over which Senna had perched herself.

As she reached the heavy oak door, digging in her pockets for a lockpick that wasn’t there, a voice called her from behind. “Hey! You!”

She turned to see a burly man packed into some kind of servant’s uniform and approaching at speed. Clearly whatever this place might be it wasn’t one that took kindly to muddy peasants dropping by.

Rue took two paces towards the man closing on her at a jog now, his arms already extended to take charge of her. As he tried to grapple her, she made that deceptive sway she’d been taught a lifetime ago, effortlessly removing her torso from his path while leaving a leg behind.

The man went sprawling, though the impact would have broken the hip of most old women. His forehead hit the oak panels behind Rue with a resounding thud. And as he collapsed bonelessly to the ground, the door creaked open.

“What do you know? It wasn’t locked.”

The presence of the Cruelty shivered through her, so close now that her wounds began to weep, the pain, absent for so long, starting to bleed from them. A spear might give her a fighting chance, and a bow of some sort could certainly bring him down before he got near enough to do her harm. Neither seemed likely to be found in the structure before her, but the odds were better than in the surrounding fields.

Without looking back, Rue pushed through and into a hall replete with upholstered chairs, delicate vases in niches to either side, plaster mouldings on the ceiling. A door to the left, a door to the right, double doors at the end, an unconscious man bleeding at her heels, and a sense of impending doom so heavy that her knees almost buckled beneath its weight.

Left! She shouldered her way into a tired-looking ballroom that would have been echoingly empty but for one old lady with a bandaged hand, twirling gently to absent music. The dying rays of the sun lanced in through the leaded glass of unshuttered windows, painting the floor in light and shadow.

“Wrong door, sorry.” Rue turned to go.

Something, some hook in her chest, deeper than the Cruelty’s fear, made her glance back at the woman. Tall, painfully thin, long hair making a silver-white river between her shoulder blades. Her dress elegant, but faded like the room.

“Do I…?” Rue turned, stepped in, took another step, all the while ignored by the woman, who danced on, captured by her own slow grace.

“No?” Rue’s mouth dried. “Sharp?”

The old woman stopped and peered at Rue, pale skin wrapped around high cheekbones, crossed by a thousand tiny wrinkles like a wizened fruit. “I was dancing.”

“It’s me.” Rue’s eyes prickled. Sharp had sworn to kill her if they met again, but that was neither here nor there. “Sharp. It’s me, Mollandra.”