DRIED LEAVES from the previous autumn skittered across the packed and pockmarked dirt road, driven by the same strong wind gradually dissolving the clouds from the dark, night sky, the pale light of the setting twin moons growing dimmer with each footstep.
Sao-Tauna swayed in Lee-Nin's arms as she and the big man walked the narrow road. The big man had carried them both at first, for span after span until he sat them down on the road. He said it would help fool the dogs. Fooling dogs sounded good to Sao-Tauna, but Lee-Nin complained about not being a sack of radishes.
They walked the road for an unknown time. Sao-Tauna dozed often. Tired from the running. And everything else. More tired than the day she spent running through the palace halls trying to catch Ja-Na. The cat liked to eat mice, but he didn't like to be petted. She understood that. She did not enjoy being held either. But she did enjoy petting kitties. She found the purring of a cat helped make the world quiet. The world could get too noisy even when no one spoke. The cat gave her a scratch on her nose as punishment for petting him. Her father had laughed when her mother told him the story of the cat chase that day.
Her father.
She did not understand what had angered her father. She knew she did things others did not do. Or could not do. And she had sensed the need to tell no one — to do those things only when alone. And she thought she had been alone. But the wrinkly man must have seen her. She heard him tell Father.
She had not known it to be a deep wrongness. If she had realized, she would have ceased. Father could have asked her to stop. Instead, he had come with a knife...
Sao-Tauna frowned and squished that thought like an ugly, black bug beneath her heel.
Her mother had not even tried to...
Squish, squish, squish.
And the wrinkly man had held her...
Stomp, stomp, stomp!
Sao-Tauna bit her lip. Hard. Her eyes watered with the pain, but the dark thoughts receded — a sneaky cat darting into the shadows of the palace gardens.
Through her bleary eyes, she saw they were approaching a spot where another road crossed the one they traveled.
"Look." Lee-Nin spoke next to Sao-Tauna's ear, raising an arm to point upward.
Sao-Tauna followed the aim of Lee-Nin's finger to watch as a cloud drifted apart in the sky opposite the steadily glowing sunrise. A reddish star shone brighter than any star she had ever seen. So bright, she wondered if it might not be a star, but rather the light of a giant glow-fly, hovering in the night air.
Then she remembered the dreams.
"I've seen that star." Lee-Nin came to a stop.
"No one has seen that star before." The big man looked upward. "It should not be there."
"The dreams," Lee-Nin said. "It's the star from the dreams."
The big man looked at Lee-Nin and then back to the star, but said nothing.
"Do you have the dreams?" Lee-Nin asked the big man.
The big man watched the star so long, Sao-Tauna assumed he would not answer.
"I do not often sleep." The big man lowered his eyes but did not return them to Lee-Nin and Sao-Tauna.
Sao-Tauna briefly considered that odd, but then she realized it made sense. The big man appeared to be merely a big man, but she knew otherwise. She could sense it. Like she sensed ... things.
She would not think such thoughts. Thinking them had led to the doing of things that resulted in Father's knife and the wrinkly man's screams and Lee-Nin helping her flee from the palace and the running and the dogs and the cold and the hunger and the wardens on the floor bent like broken sticks.
Squish, squish, squish.
"Why did you come with us?" Lee-Nin's voice brought Sao-Tauna's attention back from within her mind. Her guardian turned to face the big man. "I want to know now, before we go any farther."
The big man looked down at Lee-Nin in silence. She stared back as she switched her hold of Sao-Tauna, using her other arm. The big man frowned.
"You are not the only one being hunted," the big man finally said.
Sao-Tauna sensed Lee-Nin step back half a pace.
"Who is hunting you?" Lee-Nin asked.
"A lone woman hunts me," the big man said.
"Why?"
"I have done things."
Lee-Nin stared hard at the big man. Sao-Tauna felt glad Lee-Nin did not ask what things he had done.
"I don't even know your name," Lee-Nin said.
"Sha-Kutan," the big man replied.
"I am Lee-Nin, and this is Sao-Tauna."
"Why do the soldiers hunt you?"
"I have told you."
"You do not have a dead husband."
"No."
Lee-Nin's grip on Sao-Tauna tightened.
"Then why do they hunt you?" The big man continued to stare at Lee-Nin.
"They wish to kill Sao-Tauna."
Sao-Tauna squirmed under the increased pressure of Lee-Nin's arms, but her protector did not notice.
"Why?"
"I do not know."
Sha-Kutan stood silent for a moment. "That is the truth."
Lee-Nin eased her hold on Sao-Tauna as she turned back to the road and began walking once more.
"Which way should we go?" Lee-Nin asked, pointing to the crossing of roads ahead of them.
"Straight," Sha-Kutan said. "Past the town. There is a forest where we can hide."
"No."
Lee-Nin stopped. Sha-Kutan halted as well. Both of them looked at Sao-Tauna.
"That way." Sao-Tauna spoke for the first time since that afternoon on the balcony. The words felt strange on her tongue — a tart fruit stinging her mouth. She pointed along the road leading toward the west and the bright new star in the cloud-crossed night sky and forced herself to speak again. "Like the dreams."