I lie on the gnarled forest floor, gazing at tiny ribbons of blue sky visible between high branches. My body shakes uncontrollably. I want to rise, check on the Prince. Check on Tug and Brin. But shock immobilizes me.
All three of my captors are alive. This knowledge is a peculiar comfort to my shredded nerves.
My mind replays images of the attack. Scaly faces bear down with cat-like speed and dexterity. Strange guttural words echo in my head. In my mind, I hear the bellow of the war-horn, and the screaming chorus of velaraptors.
Men flock around the Prince. Others peer over me, asking questions, repeating my name. But it's as though I'm caught between the past and the present, unable to respond.
Fror barks an order. Bush and vines crunch and rustle as men scramble to comply. In the mind-world I sense the velaraptor move beyond my range of perception and I'm suddenly released from the overwhelming inertia.
I refuse the offered water. The Duke hears and rushes to my side, asking if I am able to sit up. I allow him to help me upright. The pain in my chest intensifies with movement. A rib must be cracked, but I bite down a yelp. If the Duke discovers my injury he will not allow me to ride, nor allow me to continue on to the Red City. The Prince could not reasonably argue with his uncle against the wisdom of leaving me behind. Especially, as the Duke will suspect I was the objective of the velaraptor men.
Duke Roarhil has found my tattered cloak and wraps it around my shoulders. He says something about it all being over, about the miracle of Prince Jakut and I surviving. He supports me as I stagger to the Prince, battering aside the thick vegetation with his sword.
Tug lumbers towards us from the opposite direction. Blood flows down the side of his face. He brushes off the men who hurry after him with offerings to staunch the wound.
I see the moment he spots me through the trees. The relief in his body is palpable. I could pretend it is because my safety means the Duchess's safety, but as our eyes take each other in, I understand it is more than that. I believe he regrets taking Kel and me from Blackfoot Forest, after all.
I watch him swat away soldiers, his beast-face a bruised and gory mess, and a pressure in me lightens.
The Prince groans, semiconscious. I kneel down beside him. His belt has been loosened and the top buttons of his shirt undone. A soldier dribbles water from a wet cloth into his mouth. Without a word, I make it clear I wish to tend to the Prince. I take the cloth and dab his puffed up jaw. His eyelashes flutter.
Nearby, I can hear the Duke and Commander Fror discussing the situation, options, reasons for the bird-men, as they call the men who attacked us, so far south. I glance up and see Tug headed to where Brin lies.
"How badly injured is my landsman, Brin?" I ask the nearest soldier.
"It is grave, My Lady. Duke Roarhil has already sent two scouts to fetch a healer from the nearest town." The trembling in my hands grows worse. I lower the cloth and touch Jakut's hot cheek.
In my mind, Brin's voice rings through the snow and the wind and the northern pines. "Let's tie her to a tree and leave her to the forest." And later: "She's going to get us killed."
If Brin dies, it will be my fault.
"And what of the other men?" I ask.
"Taylor's neck was broken when a lasso yanked him from his horse as he tried to protect the Prince who broke the line to help you. No one else was hurt."
As though hearing his name, Jakut groans again. I knew the soldier Taylor only by sight. It makes no difference to the way his loss twists my insides. A life there and then gone. It is hard to fathom. Hard to make sense of. For the first time I understand Pa's reluctance to fight back.
I sit on my haunches, shoulders shaking, which doesn't help the pain in my ribs.
"Mirra." Jakut's eyes are open. Seeing the Prince has regained his faculties, Duke Roarhil comes to us, crouches down level with his nephew.
"You were lucky, Your Royal Highness. This time," he adds, looking at me. "Lucky and brave. Two qualities befitting a future King."
"How many men did we lose?" Jakut asks. He flinches as his fingers prod an egg-sized bruise on his forehead.
"One for sure. The future of Mirra's landsman is as yet uncertain."
"Tug?" Jakut asks. The alarm in his voice surprises me. And yet it doesn't. Our journey this far, the mistrust and necessity to trust, the disagreements and tentative deals, have bound us all in some inexplicable way.
"It is Brin," I say.
"We have sent for healers," the Duke continues. "You should rest until we are sure nothing is broken."
"Make sure no expense on the healers is spared," Jakut answers. "But I have no need for one. I am fine to ride." He hauls himself up to prove the point. "It will be safer if the unit moves on." He glances at me. I lower my head in silent reply. The velaraptors have gone, their riders with them. Except for those who fell in battle and the one killed by his own chief for raising a knife to slit Jakut's throat.
"If the bird-men are regathering for a second assault," the Duke says, "whether we move now, or rest for an hour, won't change anything. They could cover the distance to the Red City and back ten times before we arrive at the palace."
"Your arm is bleeding," I tell the Prince.
He glances down at the slit in his tunic. He hadn't noticed the wound before.
"I will ask the cook to make a salve," the Duke says.
"We need boiled cloth," I add, "and boiled water to clean it first." The Duke nods and strides back to Commander Fror who is inspecting one of the dead bird-men. Fror sends out an order, and a soldier trots away towards where the rest of the unit is now gathered.
I try to help Jakut remove his tunic, but lifting my arm hurts. He notices me wince.
"You're injured?"
"Give me your knife," I say. He passes it without question. I cut the sleeve where the blood has stuck his skin to the cloth. The wound is long and shallow.
"Someone must look at your injury, Mirra."
"It is internal," I say. "I think a rib is cracked. Nothing can be done." I rip some cloth from my underskirt and use the strip to staunch Jakut's blood.
"Except rest."
"Which is why I hid it from the Duke."
"I can do it," he says, holding the cloth in place so I do not have to strain myself. He stares at me for a long moment. "I release you."
"Release me?"
"You should not ride. You will stay somewhere with Brin to recover. I will pay Tug and Brin what I owe them, and once you are fit and well enough, you will vanish from my cursed entourage."
He wants to let me go? After all he has been through to get me this far? We are less than a half-day's ride from the Red City! I can think of nothing to say which will not make me sound as bewildered as I feel.
He takes my silence for hesitation. "If it is Tug you're worried about..."
"Tug?"
"I will make him an offer to accompany me to the palace that he cannot refuse. My payment will release you from us both."
Jakut is offering to cut all strings and return my freedom. A bittersweet mix of emotion fills me. Happiness I'm no longer considered an object for trade, confusion he doesn't despise me, shame for the way I have treated him, and regret because I cannot accept.
If I don't find out what happened to his escort and whether it was part of a plot to dethrone the King and eliminate those next in line, Duchess Elise won't allow Tug to return Kel to Blackfoot Forest. But then again, the Duke and half his army are here. It would not be difficult to ambush my brother's guards and get him away from Deadran. Would Tug let me?
If Jakut is not a threat, my brother's safety is assured. For now. But can I come this far without discovering the truth? Without unravelling the riddle of the Prince. Who is Jakut truly?
If he is the man he claims he is, if I could help him remain that man, no matter what atrocities lie entombed in his past, perhaps I can change the destiny of the Uru Ana. King Alixter may be dead. Even alive, he cannot rule from an Etean jail. Jakut is the rightful heir.
A soldier arrives with sterilised cloth and boiled water. He promises to return with the salve once it is ready. Jakut winces as I begin to clean his wound.
"You have said before that something binds me to Tug," I begin. "You are right. But what you do not realize is something binds me to you too. If it is your destiny to be crowned ruler of Caruca, you will have the power to change the course of my people. To stop us from living like hunted beasts in the outland forests. To stop mercenaries and bounty hunters ripping infants from their families. What went on in the Pit was only a window, a glimpse of the horrors men commit against the Uru Ana every day."
The hurt and gravity in the Prince's expression as he listens, mirrors something deep within. Until I'd spoken the words aloud, I hadn't realized how firmly rooted my desire is to help rewrite the history of my dying people.
I pour more water onto the cloth. Jakut's fingers graze my hand and catch it in his palm so I am forced to reckon with him. "Go back to your home. You have my word I will do everything I can for the Uru Ana. Nothing good can come from the Ruby Court."
"Except perhaps you."
He smiles ruefully. "I thought I was an assassin?"
"Whatever you were is not as important as what you are now. Or what you will choose to be when we reach the Ruby Palace."
"This is your destination, Mirra. I will go on from here alone. You warned me Lord Strik would see you as a threat to his granddaughter and today you almost died. You were the target of this attack. I know what I saw. Only those who tried to assist your escape were injured. Lord Strik must have sent them. And if he has power over men whom most of Caruca believe are a northern myth, then we can only imagine the power he will hold in the Ruby Court."
I withdraw my hand from his. He really means to let me go. This is not some ploy to gain my trust.
The Prince's desire for me to leave him seals my determination.
"I was four," I say, "when mercenaries followed my family and another whom we had banded together with for survival and friendship. They had a daughter my age. She was like a sister to me. Until the night men snatched her from our bed. Our fathers searched until they found their trail. While the mercenaries slept, their throats were slit and my friend saved. But Asmine wasn't the same afterwards." Neither was my father, I think.
"Our families separated," I continue, meeting Jakut's attentive gaze, "and my father moved us to Blackfoot Forest. But I made a promise to myself after we left. One day I would return to the Sea of Trees and hunt the hunters until they were all gone. Now I can do something far better. I can help a Prince rise to the throne and end the reign of terror over the Uru Ana."
The Prince's brows crease together, perhaps with the sting of his split flesh, and maybe a little with the sting of my revelation. He remains silent as I wrap the clean cloth around his arm. When I am done he reaches into his breast pocket, takes out the leather binding with his sketches. One sketch is folded over, creased and more finger-worn than the others. He hands it to me. I open it, watching him.
A young boy in hunting clothes, bow drawn back, hair tied in a tangled knot steps out of the page. Except, the boy has my turned up nose, my high wide cheeks and narrow chin. It reminds me of the day Tug pretended to teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow.
I hold the paper, not understanding.
"I also believe we are bound by something we cannot entirely fathom," he says. "It was the will of the Gods I find you."
"I do not believe in the Gods," I answer, though my dismissive words cannot conceal the confusion and wariness pouring through me at this change in conversation.
"I know you believe in some higher power," he says. Before I can argue that in that case, he must know me better than I know myself, he continues. "You are Uru Ana. You see the passage of time and the paths of men. You see minds that have no physical existence in this world. Memories which can't be measured or weighed. Which appear and vanish at the will of their keeper. We could search Ederiss for a thousand years and never find where all the world's memories are hidden."
A nervous tightening loops through my chest. "I am not sure what you are trying to tell me."
"I woke from the long-sleep with nothing from my past but these rings," he says, raising the ruby signet ring on his middle finger and the hawk-headed ring dangling on his neck thread, "an old tutor to tell me who I was, and this." He taps the leather binder.
"So?"
"This sketch of you was already in it, along with the others."
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