Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

24.2 Crowds

I collapse into the porch swing beside Amy in the morning sunlight.

"You're up early." She mumbles around a mouthful of toast. I sigh.

"I need your help."

She reads something in my face and swallows hastily.

"Oh no. What did he do this time?"

I raise my eyes to the verandah roof.

"You don't want to know. Can we?" I gesture off the porch, away from Macie and Percival.

Amy winces. "Ahh I'm supposed to be washing sheets this morning."

I wrinkle my nose. "Screw that. Finley's probably looking for me right now!"

She sighs and hops down from the swing, shoving another handful of bread in her mouth. We walk past the marketplace, towards our usual spot in the gardens. I breath in the cool morning air.

"Remind me why you don't just tell him to sod off?" Amy says.

I groan, skipping rocks across the path with my sandals.

She leans in and whispers, "Because he promised to drive?"

I slide my gaze past her to the Huntsmen teaming around the marketplace. They're well out of earshot, I think. But I've never seen so many in one place before. Men, women and children, many wearing thick black gear, despite the heat. Just returned from the mission.

Amy catches my look and growls. "Urgh. I don't know what's worse. That they've been out terrorising the world, or that they're back to terrorise us."

I roll my eyes. "Us. And it'll only get worse. They're all coming back from that mission."

Amy makes a face and darts around a couple strolling along the middle of the path.

"Come on, let's get out of here." She says and dashes down the street. I break into a run and follow her, dancing around scores of meandering Huntsmen. They're like cats, lazily parading around after their kill, congratulating themselves with flattering hair flicks and boisterous laughter.

Luckily the hubbub clears as we reach the gardens. Beyond the first ring of hedges the grass is damp, licking at my toes through my sandals. I smile at the feel of it, relishing the itchy softness of it even as we stretch out on the grass beside a rose garden. Amy rolls over and pokes me in the arm, prompting me to speak.

I swallow a mouthful of uncertainty and whisper, "I have to know."

Amy lifts her torso from the grass, towering over me as I stare past her at the sky scattered with clouds.

"I need to know if breaking Finley's council pledge was a fluke. Maybe the band was just loose, or the pledge was wrong, or maybe a hundred other things could have happened that I don't understand. But I have to know if there was something there."

Magic, some voice in my mind breathes, You think you have magic. What a stupid, human, wormy thing to wish for.

Amy's eyes flash and the rest of her expression turns equally stormy.

"Don't do it." She says, grabbing my arm. Her fingers press into the lights beneath my skin, straining it over the plastic edges, reminding me of the price of choices in this world.

"Please," she whispers, "Leave the Huntsmen out of it for once."

I want to. I should but... I look down at where her fingers dig into the symbol on my arm, pressing it against the fresh grass.

"I can't," I whisper, shaking my head. I try to rise but she pins my shoulder to the ground, keeping my attention.

"We don't need him," she says.

A lie. She knows it too I realise, as I look up at her stormy eyes. But she knows when a lie is needed. When the price of choice is truth. She's giving me permission to back down, to let this go.

"I get the ribbons, the driving, but this?" Amy shakes her head, disbelief colouring the gesture.

I'm not sure if I can explain the complicated web of thoughts clogging up my brain. I just...

Amy sighs and flops back down to the grass beside me. I shake my arm, freed from her grasp and shake my head. My hair rustles against the grass.

"I just. Have to." I say, drinking in the open space above us. Boy I'll miss this if this doesn't work out.

I rise up on one forearm, surveying the empty hedge wall of and a several rows of scraggly rosebushes.

"Fine." Amy concedes. "I know your instincts are good. But I really hope I won't need to mop your brains off the floor."

I whip my gaze around to find her cracking a gritty smile at the sky.

I punch her arm, the corner of my mouth creeping upward. "You? With a mop? Things really have changed."

"What will Macie do to me next?"