If they find him here with me, they will kill him, Aislinn thought, and grabbed his arm.
“When you get to the ground,” she murmured, “crawl after me, out toward your wheat patch.”
“Where will you go?” he asked.
I don’t know, Aislinn meant to reply, and then Lady Andrews’s face popped suddenly into her mind: high cheekbones, cold eyes, cruel mouth.
Something undone.
“Nowhere,” she replied. “I’m staying right here.”
“You’ll need water. Food.”
“I have both. Help me up.”
He pushed her up and out, and Aislinn wriggled through the window, dropping as soundlessly as she could to the ground. The bailiffs were coming for the front door; now Aislinn could hear them, muttered voices and the low clinking of metal. Lady Andrews had claimed to already have her in the manse, Aislinn remembered. They would have to keep this little party quiet. Liam boosted himself out the window, and she caught his hands, helping him to the ground. But as they turned, a dark figure emerged around the corner of house.
Aislinn pressed herself back against the wall, pulling Liam with her. The stone of the cottage was dark enough that the bailiff might not spot them. He ambled along, some five feet from the wall, not hurrying, and Aislinn decided that they had told him to watch the back. She should be afraid, she realized, and yet strangely, she was not. The sight of her family in the cottage had done that much for her, shown her the worst that could happen. She pulled Fallon’s knife from its place in her sleeve and remained as still as stone, trying not to breathe.
When the man came past, Aislinn reached out and clapped her hand to his mouth. He uttered a muffled sound of astonishment—“Hawp!”—but that was all, for Liam was there as well, clapping his larger hand atop Aislinn’s, adding his leverage to hers as she bore the bailiff to the ground. He struggled, but he was nowhere near Liam’s size, and Liam held him down as Aislinn shoved her knife into his belly. A dim, distant part of her was astonished at this turn of events, all of it—that she should do these things, that Liam should help her—but the astonishment did not penetrate into her muscles, which performed the actions of killing and silencing as though they were the most natural things in the world. The bailiff’s shudders ceased, and Aislinn jerked her knife from him, leaving him to bleed in the grass.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Into the wheat.”
They went on their bellies. Dry grass and rocks scratched Aislinn through her thin shirt. Light flared behind her just as she and Liam slipped into the last uncut patch of winter wheat. Belatedly, it occurred to Aislinn that the men in the cottage were almost certainly the ones who had come for her family, who had raped her mother and sisters. She considered going back, but a cold voice spoke up in her mind.
Today you can only get yourself killed.
She and Liam huddled in the cover of the wheat, watching the silhouettes of men move back and forth against the windows of the cottage. They had torches, and the light shone out brightly, illuminating the strawberry patch and the cornfield beyond. Voices rose; they were arguing with each other. One shadow exited the building, then another, and they finally congregated at the back of the cottage, staring down at the dead body of their companion.
“The Blue Horizon came again while you were gone,” Liam murmured. “Talking of the True Queen.”
Aislinn rolled her eyes.
“They said that the True Queen will end such things, give justice to all of us, to your family, to Willie Pearce. They brought a little food, and blankets for winter. They were kind. But they don’t understand how it is out here. They can’t.”
Aislinn turned to him, surprised, but his eyes were fixed not on her but on the cottage. Liam’s mother was dead, Aislinn knew; she had died bringing him into the world. He was his father’s only son.
He has little to lose, Aislinn realized, and the thought was not sympathetic but calculating. He has little . . . and now I have nothing.
Without thinking, she turned toward the eastern horizon, where the bulky outline of Lady Andrews’s castle reared over the fields, blocking the starlight.
“Are you brave, Liam?” she asked.
“Brave? How would I know?” he replied frankly.
“By finding out. Follow me.”
Chapter 10
BLAMING THE DEALER
Strange, how often a turn in the wrong direction eventually leads us right.