"Like this?"
"Better, but you're still rolling your ankles."
Cassie had woken confused, cramped, and dingy. And with too-bright sunshine streaming into the tiny bedroom, and Skylar telling her it was time to start learning how to stay alive. Somewhere a robin was singing to greet the new day, and Silvana was rolling out of the other pallet and loping out of the tiny bedroom, ready to hunt down that day's challenges. Where Skylar had slept the night before, Cassie had no idea.
There were more birds making noise in the sunlight, but Cassie was struck anew by how quiet it was. No tutors demanding she begin her lessons, no servants pulling clothes out for her, no bustle of breakfast and cheery songs of morning. Just Cassie, and Skylar, and Silvana. And the wind.
Cassie had never known such calm.
"Is it always like this?" she had asked Skylar.
In answer, he had thrown some old clothes at her and told her to change. That done, she had ventured outside to find him waiting, staring at the trees surrounding the house.
"You steal these from a beggar?" she had asked, plucking at her outfit. There were almost more holes than fabric, and the once-complex embroidery had come unraveled in most places. The famous Trenorish stitchwork was still visible, broadcasting a false nationality for Cassie better than any disguise could have.
Skylar turned his head enough to smile at the question. "They were mine a long time ago."
Cassie had looked down at the pants, which just reached her feet, and then back up at Skylar, who was at least a head taller, the unspoken question loud between them.
"A very long time ago," he had acknowledged. "Ready?"
With that, he had simply melted into the forest.
Cassie had done her best to follow, but it wasn't more than a minute before he had turned back and begun telling her exactly how loud she was being. She needed to learn how to step silently if she could ever hope to survive in the forest, apparently. So for what felt like hours, Cassie practiced stepping. On leaves, off of them, between trees, over them.
It was not so different from a lesson with her tutors after all.
"When do I learn to hunt?" she asked excitedly.
"When you've learned to be quiet enough that you won't instantly scare off all the prey."
Cassie scowled but kept practicing. Learning to fight had been the same, full of the tedious repetition of minutiae in the beginning, until it all became second nature enough for her to handle actual swordplay.
But in the meantime, she was so very bored. Especially when he began lecturing her on the patterns of the forest, the locations of the closest water sources, the best ways to dig up food other than the meat Silvana contributed. And how careful she had to be to...
"Oh, there's Silvana!" Cassie said brightly, just able to make out someone's figure through the trees. Had she caught something already, then? She drew breath to call out to the banisè when she felt an iron grip yanking her down by the arm. Cassie went down with a startled yelp, only to have Skylar clap a hand over her mouth.
"You really are too stupid to survive here on your own, aren't you?" Skylar hissed, fingers digging into her cheeks.
Cassie glared at him, a trickle of fear dampening her anger. "Longheirce?" she asked, the word muffled.
Skylar mercifully shook his head. "Another banisè, I think." When she relaxed in relief and tried to pull away, his eyes narrowed at her. "The less anyone knows about you, the better."
Cassie turned her head, and Skylar let his hand drop. "They won't hurt me, though," she argued, but kept her voice at a whisper.
"Just because they won't cut your throat like Longheirce does not make them safe," Skylar retorted. "The banisè are like anyone else. We're just trying to make a living as best we can. Sometimes that means taking it at the expense of someone else."
"Fine," Cassie muttered, tugging the scarf covering her hair back into place. "I'll stay quiet. Happy?"
Skylar glared but let her stand without comment. All was still, no sign of the other banisè. When Skylar began walking again, it was to lecture Cassie on ways to listen for others nearby. Ways to distinguish a human step from an animal one, or how to tell how tall the other person might be based on the height of the broken twigs, or the heaviness of the tread.
Much sooner than she would have expected, they were back at the cabin. Surely they had gone deeper in the forest than that? It had only been a few minutes away at all times.
Back to the wall of the house, Silvana sat in the shade, a rudimentary basket between her knees. She took them in, eyes lingering on the smeared mud that now decorated Cassie's trousers.
"Better?" she asked her brother.
Skylar grimaced. "Not really. Not yet. She's just starting to learn."
"Hair?" she said next, staring at Cassie's head.
Self-conscious, Cassie's hands went to the cloth. "I like keeping it covered." Maybe it looked too odd, but it was better than suffering the stares she had always endured. In a land of so many fair heads, it was more than unusual to have dark hair. It was unclean. The way her father always looked when Cassie forgot to replace her cap...
Silvana shrugged without comment. "Knife?" was her next critique.
As soon as she had gotten dressed that morning, Cassie had belted her knife back on her waist. Its familiar weight was a comfort to her, and she was likely to need it again. "I'm keeping it," she said, a touch of defensiveness creeping into her fierce reply. So what if it stood out? By what Skylar had said, they did not intend for anyone else to see her.
Silvan rolled her eyes but let it drop. Her perusal continued, ending at Cassie's feet, where her boots were caked in mud and fallen leaves. Cassie was thankful she had pulled on her walking boots before she'd run yesterday, but she had a feeling Silvana could see more than the sturdiness of the soles.
"Hurt?" the banisè asked, confirming Cassie's suspicions.
She had tried to hard to walk normally, to not act like the weak lady they thought she was. "I'm fine," she said through gritted teeth.
Skylar looked at her in surprise. "You're hurt?" A shade of guilt crept into his eyes. "Did I injure—?"
"No," Cassie said, brushing it off. "I just have a few blisters from walking all day yesterday. I'll heal." She had dealt with blisters enough times. They grew, they burst, and they healed. If she was lucky, tougher than before. "Find anything?" she now challenged Silvana, tired of being the one under attack.
Unfazed, Silvana nodded at the basket. "Breakfast."
The promised meal turned out to be nuts, berries, and a bit of cold venison. It was more filling than Cassie would have expected, but she still could have used a few more bites. Or meals.
Nevertheless, when the food was gone, Skylar led her back into the forest, this time to work on endurance. By the time they finally returned, it was well past midday and Cassie was beyond walking. She collapsed next to the entrance to the cottage, right in the dirt.
"Half of that is not humanly possible," she said with a groan.
"Training you?" Skylar said, not sparing her a glance. "You might be right."
He was not pleased with how she had done, but Cassie couldn't find the energy to care. Trying to walk in a crouch as the siblings did, moving through the leaves noiselessly, had turned out to be less than easy. Her legs had begun aching after only a few moments and she had soon resorted to crawling. After the second time her legs collapsed, Skylar hadn't tried to force her into a crouch and had instead gone back to the stealth lessons.
In all of the old adventure stories Cassie had devoured as a young woman, not a single one of them had mentioned how impossible it was to move quietly in the middle of a forest. Everything made noise.
And he expected her to be able to climb trees, and do it quickly. Of course she had scrambled up a few trunks when she was younger, but that was only during the hunts, and she had always had some kind of assistance. Her palms were scraped raw from the bark of the three different trees she had tried to clamber up, each to varied degrees of failure. Skylar had shimmied his way up a pine tree in mere seconds, trying to give her pointers, but the branches were all too high, she was too short, and her muscles much too weak.
Skylar promised she would learn, given time and practice, trying to keep the disappointment from his voice. He failed.
She was certain she would never be able to mimic the stealth with which he moved. His feet left no trace on the soft ground, his body left no displaced branches in its wake, and his movements were no more than a murmur in the singing wind. Each step that Cassie took sounded like a different herd of elephants.
"I've figured it out, you know," she said, gingerly massaging her mass of trembling, useless muscles. "Why you don't make any noise, even when you step on a stick. You're part fae, both of you."
Skylar closed his eyes, seeming to gather his patience. "I don't make any noise because I distribute my weight, like I've been telling you to do," he said with a hint of annoyance. "And you're thinking of Citak."
"What?"
"The fae. That's Citak."
"Oh." Cassie had never paid enough attention to the history of their neighboring kingdoms. She supposed she should have, but why bother? Elisabet was the one who would actually need to know those things.
"Trenoriah is where the dragons came from," Skylar said, still watching the tree line.
"Still got those half-dragon hybrids they sing about?" The tavern songs were so crude Cassie shouldn't even know they exist, much less have them memorized, but she could not resist the goad.
"No," Skylar said flatly. "Although—" He stilled. "Someone's coming. Be prepared to hide."
If a bandit came upon them now, she would gladly sit there and accept her fate. At least if a bandit killed her, then her legs wouldn't hurt anymore.
Silvana appeared, nodding a greeting as she stowed her bow. "Got one," she said to Skylar, satisfied with the kill. "Need help dressing it before anyone else finds it."
Cassie wobbled her way up to standing, determined to assist. She might be tired, but the more she forced her body to do, the stronger it would become. Avery had taught her that, and he was right.
Skylar misinterpreted the movement. "Keep your knife ready, and you'll be fine inside, Lady," he said, holding the hide open for her.
As though she was going to sit in the house while they fetched the food that would feed them all. Cassie may have been clumsy in the forest, useless in a fight, and unable to bend her legs, but she wasn't as pathetic as that.
"I can help," she said, shaking her head. She needed to show them she was an asset, not something that would get them killed. Not something that would get used against them.
Skylar paused. "It will be messy."
"I can help." She could do this. They would see.
Her faked bravado must have convinced them, because Silvana jerked her head in the direction from which she had come. Skylar pressed a light, deadly sharp knife into her hand, and off they went.
***
For all the deer Cassie had eaten in her life, she had never seen the inside of one's carcass. She had expected blood, of which there had turned out to be surprisingly little; and slimy, squishy organs, of which there had been in abundance. She had not been prepared for the sound of a knife sawing through bone, or the uncomfortable crack when Skylar forced the two halves of the ribcage apart, which made her skin crawl.
But the lesson in separating the meat and the chance to prove herself had been worth it. Every disgusting thing the banisè asked her to do, she did, even separating the organs they would eat from the ones they would leave for the animals, and carrying the desired offal back to the cabin while Skylar and Silvana handled the rest of the meat between the two of them. Silvana had draped the still-warm hide around her shoulders, partly in challenge, partly because they could use it, and Cassie wore it through the forest like a bloody shawl.
Nothing, not even learning to handle a broadsword, had ever prepared Cassie for such a strenuous day. She had done more physical labor than she had before in her life, and was utterly exhausted by the time they reached the hut with the fresh meat.
More unexpected than her newfound determination, however, was the fact that she was enjoying herself. The strength had drained from her body faster than she would have liked, it was true, and her feet hurt with a dozen visceral, sharp agonies, but more important by far was the small bud of joy that had begun to grow. To think, all this time there had been this kind of life waiting for her, beyond the stone walls of her childhood prison!
She should have run away years ago.
Judging by the glances Skylar and Silvana kept sending her, she was oddly eager to butcher the meat when they got it back inside. For once, Cassie could not find it in herself to be worried over what someone else thought. She was learning something new and undignified, her hands were busy, and her mind was untroubled. Her labor was helping to feed them, was doing some actual, solid good.
She was dirty, sore, and she was free.
The moment they had finished dressing the meat, Silvana was dropping a bucket of water before Cassie.
"You stink," she said by way of encouragement.
It was hardly a surprise. Still-drying blood streaked her skin and clothes from wrist to neck. Rather than be insulted, Cassie was glad of the chance to clean herself off. Skylar had mentioned a brook nearby that they used for bathing, but the thought of another walk through the rough terrain on her miserable feet would have brought her to tears.
"Scrub off outside," Skylar said, holding the deer hide open for her. "Around the back, if you'd like more privacy."
"And don't use all the clean water!" Silvana called after her.
By the time she returned indoors, one of the others had cobbled together a meal that hung over the fire Skylar was beginning to lay, ready to cook. Lacking any further instructions, Cassie sat on the chair she had occupied the night before, gingerly perched on the edge of the seat. She could only hope that the quieter domestic chores indicated the strenuous work of the day was over and she could finally rest. Soon they would eat, and then sleep, and then wake...to do it all over again.
Feet throbbing, Cassie rubbed her forehead with a silent sight. Sopping wet but freshly clean, Silvana slipped inside and took over tending the fire from her brother, who ducked out to wash.
"There's an old hat in the trunk," Silvana said without turning around from the fire, now snapping briskly. "If you want to change that cloth."
Cassie hesitantly pulled off her hair covering to find that it was indeed crusted with the deer's blood as well, no doubt from the skin Silvana had thrown over her shoulders. Cringing from the sight, Cassie pulled open the trunk that sat beneath Silvana's orderly rows of weapon hooks. She had to push aside fletching materials and what looked like small bottles of ointment before she reached a layer of old clothing, most embroidered in the same style of her current outfit. The hat turned out to be an outmoded riding cap, the faded puce never one she would have selected—but it fit over her braids, and that was enough.
Skylar had returned silently and was giving the pot over the fire a stir. "Sit," he said without looking around. "I've got some things for your feet. How bad is it?"
"They're...uh...they hurt," Cassie offered, sitting down. She eased her boots off, expecting a bloody mess where her feet had been. After tramping through the forest two straight days in a row, it was difficult to pinpoint any spot that did not hurt.
Underneath her socks, she found three ruptured blisters on her right foot, two on her left, and an enormous one waiting to pop on the bottom of her left big toe. Not quite the carnage she had been picturing.
Skylar looked her feet over without comment, then efficiently rummaged through the same trunk Cassie had found the hat in and returned with a roll of linen and a couple of little bottles. "You'll want to put this one on first," he said, passing her one of the unlabeled jars. "It speeds healing, then this on top helps keep the pain down."
Cassie put some of the first ointment on her hand, then hesitated as she hovered over her foot, reluctant to touch the wounds.
"It won't do any good unless you put it on," Skylar said, sitting down to watch.
"You mean actually touch the...?" At his nod, she balked. "But won't it hurt?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't it hurt now?"
He had a point. It couldn't hurt much worse than it already did. With a shrug, she dabbed the oily salve on the first blister—then froze, a shocked hiss slipping from between her teeth.
As it turned out, it could hurt—a lot more—than it had before.
"Keep going," Skylar said.
She glared at him, gingerly putting more on, bracing herself for the additional stab of agony with each one.
"After you get the second cream on, wrap your feet up with clean linen," Skylar said, showing her the roll of fabric. "Change them out for fresh ones in the morning, at midday, and before you go to sleep. Until it's healed."
"How long does that take?" Cassie asked, desperately reaching for the salve that promised some relief from the pain.
He shrugged. "A week or so."
"You had to learn all this because you can't afford healers out here?" Cassie guessed, some of the ointment dripping onto the floor. She had probably added too much, but it was already taking effect, her feet's agony muting slightly.
"No, I...when I was young, I wanted to be a doctor," Skylar said, staring at the linen in his loosely clasped hands.
"A doctor...they heal without magic?" Cassie might have heard the term before, but she had never met one. They had enough witches and descendants with diluted magic in their veins in Esre that there was little need for the profession.
"A very respected position in Trenoriah," Skylar said with a small nod. "I always liked learning, studying."
Cassie enjoyed learning as well, but she had always found more worthwhile information in the evening meal ballads than in stuffy old books.
"And when we were exiled, we—"
Silvana silenced him with a vulgar motion.
"Well." Skylar cleared his throat. "Suffice to say, the little I'd managed to learn was a help."
It was not a surprise they did not want to divulge what had happened to get them exiled, but Cassie could not deny she was disappointed. She could have done with a good story. "I'm grateful for your knowledge, then," she said rather than pry, holding out a hand for the strip of cloth. She wound it around her feet under Skylar's watchful gaze.
"Comes in handy out here."
Cassie stretched her feet out with a sigh. The throbbing was greatly lessened and she could almost think of something other than the pain. She passed Skylar the leftover cloths, watching him return them to the trunk. Silvana was attending to the food, so Skylar turned, long fingers already reaching for a book.
Night was swiftly falling and once again the silence crept in from the forest, pressing in on Cassie. Silvana was at her usual post at the table, examining a thin, wickedly sharp knife. Skylar flicked open the same volume he had been reading last night, looking for where he left off. Cassie stared into the dancing flames of the fire, trying not to think about the songs being sung at her father's table right now. Had he bothered sending anyone to look for her? Would Elisabet?
Had Avery reached the front yet?
Cassie fidgeted helplessly, picking at a loose thread in her shirt. She had made the decision to run away, and while she couldn't yet regret it, she was now left with too many unknowns. It was a special kind of torture, separate from the kind she had feared from her father, this not knowing.
It made the evening, broken only by the meal and some stilted conversation, pass in agonizing minutes that felt as long as hours. As soon as she felt able to do so, Cassie took herself to bed, hoping to flee the uncertainty in sleep. As exhausted as her body was, it worked surprisingly well.
And the next day, when Skylar dragged her out for another lesson in forest living and insisted she help scrounge up some food, she forced herself to wholly concentrate on what she was doing, lest her thoughts stray yet again to questions with no answers. At least the questions she asked Skylar had simple enough answers: No, that kind is poisonous, and You either duck or you pray, and Not if you want to stay alive. It was refreshing, the honesty.
The work was not enjoyable, but there was something...gratifying in it. Something of pride, when Cassie presented the full basket of berries to Silvana upon their return to the cabin and the banisè nodded shortly at her. She had done something right, had helped them.
It did not make the under-seasoned venison taste any better, but there was enough food for them all and Skylar promised to begin teaching her how to cook once she got better at moving through the trees like a proper banisè. Master one skill at a time.
Not that any of it kept the same questions as the night before from crowding her mind the moment she sat down beside the fire after their evening meal. They swirled around like a swarm of bees, one occasionally detaching itself from the cloud to sting her, its venom making her ache.
"What do you do around here?" The question burst from her, a desperation to avoid her invasive thoughts. "You know, when you're not killing and cutting up animals and picking berries and getting into swordfights with bandits."
Skylar slowly lifted his eyes from his page, eyebrows raised. "...This?"
"Right, but...for fun," Cassie prodded. She understood they did not have easy lives out here, but surely they still found ways to make their lives enjoyable. To make their exiles worth living.
Now Skylar lifted his book an inch or two, as though she were dense. "This."
"For fun?" She was wrong. They took no pleasure in life. What a cursed existence this was.
"It's not for everyone," he acknowledged. "Silvana—"
Oh, she understood what Silvana did for fun. "Tending to your weapons is still work more than—"
"—usually checks on our allies or visits the neighbors, when she wants the company."
Studiously ignoring them, Silvana put her booted feet up on the table as she whittled an arrow shaft down. Cassie swung around to stare at her briefly in astonishment, but quickly redirected her gaze. Silvana did not like being stared at, and the woman was holding a weapon.
Even so, she struggled to picture the laconic Silvana making social calls. "She likes talking to people?" Was it some fault in Cassie's presence that reduced her to surly, monosyllabic conversation?
Skylar smiled minutely. "She likes being talked at," he said, understanding Cassie's shock. "She enjoys having gossip and secrets stored up."
Without looking up, Silvana said, "Katen and Lisand are feuding again."
"Didn't take long," Skylar said, looking annoyed. "What was it this time?"
Silvana almost smirked. "The goat head."
Shaking his head, Skylar returned to the conversation with Cassie. "In our world, information is power. And the information she collects, some is useful, some is not." He turned a page with a shrug. "Some could get four separate people killed. Like if it ever got out what happened to the prize goat of the Earl of the Blue Hills..."
Cassie gaped anew at Silvana. If she ever figured out Cassie's identity, if she sent word to her father...there was no telling what would happen. Who else would be punished.
Silvana did not look too concerned as she swept wood shavings into her hand, clearing her workspace. Either she was trying to lull Cassie into complacency so she let something slip, or the archer truly didn't care.
"What do you think we should focus on tomorrow?" Skylar asked her, pulling Cassie from her fretting.
Couldn't he just tell her? He was the expert.
"Tracking?" she guessed.
"We can try a little," Skylar agreed with a small nod, although his expression was doubtful. "And we can continue to refine your movements on the way to the brook."
Her movements were plenty refined, Cassie resentfully thought the next morning, hands buried almost to her wrists in the rich mud of the small river's bank. She and her sister had endured years of posture training for her father to be satisfied that their movements were small, delicate, and perfectly elegant.
It had been the same when she and Avery had begun their lessons. Her now-ingrained ways of moving had been too incompatible with the steps, the risks, she needed to be able to take to stay alive in a fight. It had been a frustrating few weeks for both of them—and then Avery had had the idea for her to treat it like another dance to learn, with a little more necessary improvisation in the steps. A dance lesson, but with a weapon. It had worked, and they had been the most enjoyable dance lessons Cassie had ever taken.
Perhaps if she applied the same idea out here...wending her way through a forest, a dance with innumerable partners she was to remain aware of but never touch.
It was worth trying, she thought as she tugged a reluctant tuber free with aching fingers. Skylar had told her how to identify the vegetables that liked to grow along running water, and shown her how to dig them up before disappearing in hunt of some herbs. Close enough to call for, should anything happen, he had promised her. Not that the assurance made her feel any safer about being on her own in the woods. The last time that had happened, bandits had nearly killed her.
She did her best to remain aware of her surroundings as she dug for tubers and rinsed them clean in the brook, but she still had only a breath of warning, the snap of a twig under a stealthy foot, before the man appeared on the other side of the little river.
Cassie rose from her crouch, peals of warning going off in her head. The man was dressed in clothes as worn and well-used as Silvana's, and his long hair was tied back in a practical plait. His approach had been nearly as silent as Skylar could be, and his ease among the trees was apparent. Another banisè, or a bandit this time? At least he was across the water from her. If he came for her, she would have a head start.
He looked her over, bright eyes careful, before he at last spoke. "I don't know you," he said, voice more pleasant than she had expected.
Unsure what to say, Cassie remained silent. At what point should she call for Skylar? They had said they wanted to keep her presence from being common knowledge. Silvana would be more angry than usual if Cassie managed to spoil that one request within a matter of days.
"I'm Jakob," he said, sheathing the long dagger he had drawn upon spotting her. "May I have your name?"
"I'm—just passing through," Cassie managed to say. It was the most plausible explanation.
"You might want to pass through elsewhere," Jakob warned her. "You're standing on Gemmaro land right now."
In all her studies on the noble families of Esre, Cassie had never heard of one called Gemmaro. "Who?"
"This pair of banisè siblings," Jakob said. "They've been here longer than most of us, and control most of this sector. They don't take kindly to trespassers in their hunting grounds."
Most of us—so he was a banisè too, then. And trying to warn her about Skylar and Silvana.
"You'd have better luck on this side," he said, gesturing for her to cross. "We're not as bloodthirsty with our beautiful trespassers."
Rather bold statement from someone who had never seen her before; also untrue, with the grime coating her from several days living and traipsing through the forest.
"I think I'll take my chances," she said, not moving from her position on the bank.
Jakob cocked his head at her like a puppy, eager to understand. "Beautiful and brave," he said. "Hope you make it." With a wave, he made to step back into the trees.
"Wait," Cassie called, unwilling to let him go yet. Not when she could learn something from him. "You know them? The Gemmaros?"
He paused and turned back. "I'm not sure anyone knows Silvana," he said with a playful grimace. "You're just briefly her hostage before she releases you."
Cassie chuckled uncertainly along with him. It did not seem like such a joke; it was, indeed, how she frequently felt when Silvana's attention fell on her.
"And Skylar..." Jakob rubbed his dark brown beard, squinting to think. "He's more reasonable, but also more cold. Silvana's like a guard dog, trained to attack. Skylar is the one who gives the order, after thinking through every angle. So when there's a body, who's really at fault?"
It was a point she had not considered much: that Skylar also held her life in his hands, and if at any point he decided she was too much of a danger for him or his sister, he would ensure the danger was removed.
"You're a long way from Trenoriah," Jakob said, studying her embroidered clothes again. "Take my advice: find a road and follow it up to the mountains. The banisè up there are less territorial."
Cassie nodded slowly. "Thanks for the advice," she said, returning Jakob's wave as he disappeared the way he had come.
When Skylar returned a short time later, Cassie had only had time to dig up one more tuber, but he merely nodded at the small collection she had in the basket and jerked his head for her to follow back to the cabin.
"You've been practicing," Skylar said approvingly as they stepped into the tiny clearing that marked their home. "That was progress."
Cassie warmed at the praise. Her theory had worked well, the dance moves helping her navigate branches and leaves, but she had almost stepped on a snake when she got so caught up in how she was placing her feet that she forgot to watch where she was putting them. The leap she had done to avoid the serpent had been neither graceful nor quiet, but Skylar had been too busy silently laughing at her to chastise her for it. She'd nearly pulled her knife and threatened to gut him for laughing, but decided against it, her hands still shaking too much to be of any use.
Silvana, sitting outside stripping branches, nodded in greeting. "Trouble?" she asked her brother.
Cassie braced herself for him to regale Silvana with the snake incident, but he said, "Jakob found her."
Silvana's brows lowered—not angry, but not happy, either. "She say anything?"
"No," Skylar said, sounding pleasantly surprised. "He might expect us to be hunting her down for trespassing, though."
Silvana shrugged, slicing the bark from a branch in one smooth movement. "Who's to say we didn't?"
"He is another banisè?" Cassie interrupted. "Jakob?"
"More talkative than most," Skylar said, putting the basket of tubers on the ground. "But yes."
"He's young." Although the banisè had a patchy beard that seemed to be grown from sheer determination rather than any natural inclination, he looked younger than Cassie.
"He is."
Cassie sat on the opposite side of the doorway to Silvana, stretching her tired legs. Although she had developed another small blister, the rest were healing better than she could have hoped. "How long has he been here?"
Watching the forest, Skylar answered. "A few years."
So he had been exiled when he was—what, fifteen? A child still. "Do you know why—?"
Skylar exhaled, sharp and short. "His family ran an apothecary shop that carried some unapproved poisons," he said. "Because of his youth, Jakob's sentence was commuted to exile."
So the rest of his family had been imprisoned—or killed. She never would have guessed such dark shadows lurked in Jakob's friendly eyes.
Cassie paused before her next question. She shouldn't ask—she knew better. She knew it was pressing her luck. Yet she could not stop herself.
"Is that what happened to you?"
Without a word, Silvana dropped the stripped branches on the ground and strode into the house. She reappeared moments later, holding her bow and stocked quiver, and stomped into the welcoming embrace of the woods without looking back.
"I understand you're curious," Skylar said, watching the place where his sister had disappeared. "But asking those kinds of questions..."
"I'm sorry," Cassie said miserably, a hot, acidic shame curdling in her stomach. "I know it's not my place." She had not meant—well, she had known they were unlikely to tell her, but for Silvana to react like that...it was clear the subject was a sensitive one.
"It's not a story anyone knows, and we prefer it that way." Although he did not sound angry, Skylar had yet to look at her.
"I just...I know some banisè were spies," Cassie said, rushing to cover her impertinence with a feasible excuse. "I would feel safer knowing that you weren't involved with...the way the war is going—"
"You're asking after a banisè's loyalties?" Skylar said. "Haven't you heard, Lady? We have none." When he at last looked down at her, a touch of bitter amusement was in his eyes. "That's what makes us so dangerous."
His words were hardly easing her fears. The Citakens were soulless elves, unable to think beyond their own greed. If she had fallen in with enemy sympathizers, there was no telling the danger she was in. "You didn't ever help Citak?" If the historical ballads she knew by heart had any truth to them, wars were won and lost far behind the front lines, in small actions that broke morale or mustered true courage in the heart of the common man.
"Well, if it makes you feel any safer..." There was a sardonic contempt in Skylar's eyes as he paused in the doorway, basket of tubers in hand. "Jakob was Citaken. So are plenty of other banisè in the trees. And last I checked, none of them were much involved in the war effort." With that, he ducked inside.
From within, Cassie could hear noises that indicated he was beginning to make supper. Although she knew she should go in and find some way to help, she remained rooted to her spot, eyes glued to the tree line.
Jakob, a Citaken. He had been so friendly, his warning to her suggesting nothing but goodwill. Citaken. His ears had not looked pointed. And yet....They were evil. All of them.
Otherwise, what were they fighting for?