Sixteen
On The Run
Percy awoke under a hedge. It was freezing. He was wet and clammy, his muddy clothes stuck to him, and brambles scratched him when he moved. For a long while he laid there, eyes glued to the impenetrable matrix of tangled thorns and dry leaves that began two inches from his face. He frowned to himself, trying to remember what had happened and why he was lying under a hedge, and why he smelled like smoke, and why he felt as though he had been stabbed in the stomach.
He could not. The events that he assumed led up to this curious conglomeration of inexplicable sensations were shrouded in a dark mist. He did remember, however, feeling extremely ill in the recent past, lying in bed in his pants and staring at shadows. Perhaps he was sick? It would explain the chill, and this strange setting could be feverish hallucinations.
He blinked lazily and reached for the bell cord that hung by his bed to summon Simmons. His groping hand caught on a bramble, then flopped out of the hedge and into the open air, immediately submerged in a current of wind and cold rain.
“Gah . . .” he gasped, then gasped again as small cold fingers curled around his hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.
The briar veil that separated him from the outside was drawn away with a moist, slithering sound and a fall of speckled leaves to reveal a pale face like a moon and long, tangled silvery hair.
“Are you all right?” the girl whispered, crouched so that her head and shoulders were under the hedge with Percy. “How do you feel?”
Percy wagged his mouth mutely several times, choking on bile. The sight of the young woman had brought back the memories of last night. His house, Simmons, the darkspell.
“Do not talk,” the girl murmured, still squeezing his limp hand. “You must stay warm. I would give you a blanket but we have none.”
“P-please,” he sputtered, and was ashamed when unswallowed spittle speckled his chin. “Please t-tell me wh . . . . where I am.”
The girl frowned, and even through the fog of disorientation Percy knew that she was searching for a way to tell him what he would not like hearing. “You are . . . safe,” she said finally. “You are healing.”
“But where am I?”
She paused, a small, tired smile gracing her white lips. “All will be explained soon. The wards are in place for tonight. We start again tomorrow morning.”
“Start what?” Percy demanded weakly.
“Soon,” promised the girl. “Would you like me to hold your hand for a while?”
Percy, at any other time, would have blushed at the impropriety of this suggestion. His hand was not gloved, and his palms often grew hot and sweaty. But the prospect of being left alone under the hedge with the cold and the terrible memories was out of the question. He closed his eyes and gave her slim fingers a small squeeze of thanks. It was all he could manage.
~~~
Elaby sat beside an unconscious Grig, a guilty expression on his narrow, flat face. He looked miserable, his naked shoulders raked by rivulets of rain, his hairy haunches muddy and matted. The small vest that he owned was spread over the dwarf’s hunched little body as a frail protection against the elements.
“All my fault. Stupid plan. Shouldn’t have. Didn’t think,” he muttered over and over, cracking his knuckles. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“Beating yourself up, Elaby?” Taran asked, coming over with Sprog frolicking beside him. The djinn seemed to be the only one who was enjoying this newfound freedom. He leaped into the air, lolling out his long black tongue, catching raindrops as gleefully as a child during a first snowfall.
Elaby rolled moist black eyes up to the boy. “You know very well that this was all my idea. If I hadn’t insisted on that mad escape plan – Grig knew it was mad – we’d be . . .”
“Back in the performers’ wagon?” Taran finished for him. “Tied to the detention post? Bloody and starved?”
With a half-hearted grunt, Elaby acknowledged the truth of this statement. “We’re still bloody and starved. And Grig is out for the count, poor friend.”
“Magic depletion is not fun, I suppose,” Taran guessed.
“I only hope my feeble wards will be enough to stop Maurus from tracking us.”
Taran yanked on Sprog’s chain as the djinn threatened to tow his human companion after him as he darted toward a rabbit. The djinn whined and scratched at Taran’s dead hand. “No,” Taran said firmly. “You are not dragging me all over the wilds after a stupid animal you will not even eat.” He turned to Elaby, who was now sniffing and picking blades of grass from the fur on his knees. “Look, this has worked out better than any of us could have hoped. With Maurus and Master Thom being held in the Brúlette precinct for arson, we have a head start we could not have hoped for. Already we have put many miles between us and them. Things could not be better.”
There was a flutter of movement to their left, and Taran and Elaby turned to see Lull rooting around in the hedge they were stationed behind, speaking with the wounded white rabbit they had brought along with them. Watching her small hand curl around the albino’s long one in a gesture of comfort, Taran amended his statement. “Not much better, at any rate. I still do not understand the reason for taking him along.”
“I tell you, we couldn’t leave him,” Elaby defended his decision to have Jimmy rescue the pale man. “We invaded his property, it was his kindness and our recklessness that lost him his house. Besides . . .” He trailed off, hesitant to speak the words.
“Do not say ‘you have a plan’,” coughed Grig, rolling himself into a sitting position. “Please, do not.”
“Grig!” exclaimed Elaby, thrilled to see the dwarf conscious again. “How are you feeling, friend?”
“I was feeling better,” Grig grunted huffily. “But if you are going to speak those four stars-be-damned words, I think I’ll just knock myself out again and save Fate the trouble.”
“You were saying, Elaby?” Taran pushed, intrigued, still wanting to hear the reasons behind their dragging the white-haired ragtag along on their daring escape.
The faun cast a guilty glance at Grig, but continued, leaning forward and lowering his voice, as though the man under the hedge could hear them. “Two reasons: connections and leverage.”
“I do not follow you,” Taran said.
“And I don’t want to,” Grig groaned.
Elaby licked his lips, eyes flicking constantly toward the hedge. “He’s a Sympathizer. He’s bound to have some kind of Sympathizing friends somewhere, someone who could help us. No doubt he knows his way around this world a great deal better than we do, anyway.”
“And what about the leverage?”
“Sympathizer or no, he is human. If we get into trouble with other humans along the way, we can always . . . use him as persuasion. He’s one of them. They would not want him to come to harm, would they?”
Grig gawped. “Are you serious? This man tried to save our skins and this is how you repay him?”
“He’d never actually be in any danger,” Elaby argued. “We wouldn’t hurt him, just threaten to.”
“You are mad,” Grig scratched himself and lay back down, settling into the grass and closing his eyes. “I’m going to sleep while I can. I suggest you three do the same.”
“I’m going to feed Lorelei and Jimmy,” Elaby muttered, getting to his hooves.
“I think you are brilliant, master faun,” Taran clapped Elaby on the shoulder. Then, picking a wriggling Sprog up in the crook of one arm, he strode away to see to Lull and her patient.
She looked up at him with a smile. “Hello, Taran. Sprog.”
“How is our rabbity friend?” Taran asked stiffly, crouching beside her on the balls of his feet.
“Poor man. He needs magic to heal him. Good magic, not demon-cursed darkspells.” Lull spat over her left shoulder in a superstitious rite to leech the power from the broached hexes. “Perhaps Lorelei will help us.” Seeming to make up her mind suddenly, she laid the man’s hand (which she was still holding in her own) on the ground and stood up.
The man did not so much as twitch a finger at her sudden release of his hand. He must be asleep, Taran guessed.
“Lull, he will not like this,” Taran called after the departing form of the white-clad girl. “Fairy venom is healing, yes, but painful.”
“He will bear it,” she told him, turning around so that the fringe of her moon hair and the hem of her tattered shift whispered and fluttered. “He looked after me. I don’t remember anything but his hands. But Grig told me so and I believe our little friend. So we must now help him.”
Taran watched her go, mixed emotions churning in his gut. He loved her so much, he could feel his adoration being pulled from his body as it followed her away, the many-twined, dusky string stretching taut but never breaking. Along with this love came other emotions – jealousy, frustration, suspicion, and anger. Who was this albino whose hands Lull remembered and held tenderly? What caused her to remember his half-hearted and cowardly attempts at healing with such gratitude? Why did she not acknowledge the fact that it had been Taran, and not this imposter, who had carried her from Quindle’s back to the carriage house, that it had been Taran who had laid her beneath the coach and pillowed her head on his arm. All the white rabbit did was open her dress and look at her hot, rose-red blood and touch her soft, lily-white skin. And who was this man – was he enjoying being nursed back to health by a tender virgin? Having his lecherous hand held by a beautiful girl half his age?
The more Taran thought on these things, the more he liked Elaby’s idea of leverage. Perhaps threats were not all that were necessary; actual harm might, after all, make their case that much more convincing.