Sorrow and Song: Part 3 | Starlight Under Clouds

Chapter XII

Still she hated the thought of him in there, alone, exposed. Shuddered from the thought of one close look betraying him into chains and prison and death. Hated herself for not knowing enough to spare him the danger. Derek had wanted to come instead, but they knew he would have been scarcely safer than Douglas. No, it should have been her in there.

Aílean leaned her head back against the wall with a wince. She was going to have to learn more about weaponry than a few wards and thrusts with a poniard.

Footsteps jerked her upright again, and she spun around the corner of the building to come up hard against Douglas as he walked with head down against the rain.

They both laughed at the collision, the breathy sound of relief whistling over it. "You're soaked," said Douglas, steering them both into the alleyway.

Aílean huffed it off. "Just my head and shoulders, mostly." She spared a glance for the cord-and-leather bundle strapped under his cloak. "You got it, then."

"Aye," said Douglas. He was tense, tenser than her.

"Did anything happen?"

"No; nothing that I could tell. I – I just want to get out of here."

"Then let's get," said Aílean, stepping up their pace briskly as they cut through the back streets the way they had come, out to the dripping woods and Derek and Finath waiting in their shadow with the horses.

Derek unfolded his legs and stood up, crossing over to Douglas and gripping him by the shoulders. "No mishaps?"

Douglas shook his head. "Best head out now, though."

Derek nodded, reaching for Thunder's bridle. "Aílean, you're riding with me."

"You checked Lyrí's foot?"

"She'll be all right. She had a stone in the shoe – a little one and I got it out, but she's better not bearing weight for a few days." Derek swept her up and settled her in the saddle before she could move for the stirrups.

A gust slapped rain coldly into her face as Derek mounted behind her and gathered the reins, twitching them on Thunder's neck. They were all wet through by now.

"If it would only snow," Aílean said, dragging her sodden cloak closer about her shoulders. "At least that would stay on top of things and not go in."

"There were drifts as high as Lyrí's withers in November two years ago," said Derek. "They must be having a warmer season this winter."

Two years ago. She'd been fifteen, comfortably unaware of Rodron and any connection of the Kenhelms to it. Douglas, in prison, had been sixteen. Ceristen had been whole and safe, and Caí had been–

She shuddered.

Derek's free arm came down around her, steady and secure. He did not say anything. Maybe he knew it was a time for nothing to be said.

The horses' hoofbeats rumbled and splashed in her ears, urgency and fatigue all at once. The dark swishing pine trees slid past them, formed a peaked arch against the rain clouds, and then vanished for broad open hills and a fiercer, cutting wind. Aílean shivered against it, but against her back, through their damp layers, Derek was warm. She realized, dimly, that she was slipping into sleep.

~

They stopped to pitch camp in a thicket of spruce and hazel. Derek flung aside Thunder's reins and leaned out of the shadow of one spiny-leafed tree, listening.

"What is it?" Douglas came up beside him. The storm had petered off, though the trees murmured with morose splatting sounds. The sky was dark with the indigo haze of twilight and the heavy grey of lingering clouds.