what do you know? It appears there’s also a boy with her that can’t find his way unless she leads him about by the arm.”
Prunes blinked the sleep out of his eyes. The moon was not large, but it was big enough to see shapes. The door to the house stood wide open, light spilling out into the yard. Someone exited the old sod house and walked toward the wagon in the yard, holding a lamp in front. That had to be the older sister. She made her way around the buildings and entered the house. That’s when two figures stepped from behind the barn, walking as boldly as you please.
One was a girl. And the other, the smaller one, she led him by the hand. Even from here he could see the boy was blind.
Prunes was wide awake now.
“Busy as bees,” said Gid. “And preparing, in haste it seems, to depart.”
Their duty was to watch, but if they left now, it was likely they’d lead a hunt back to a deserted farmstead.
“I say we don’t take any chances,” said Gid. He held up his knife. “We take them one by one.”
“This isn’t an extermination. The lords will want someone to question.”
“We’ll do our best,” said Gid. “But if things begin to sour, I’m not going to hesitate. Besides, all we need to do is kill one of them as an example and the rest will comply.”
“And who will that be?”
“Who else? The blind one.”
Gid was perhaps too eager, but he made sense. These youth might look like babes; however, a callow youth, given the right opportunity, could kill a man just as easily as a veteran of many battles. They might need to kill more than the little one. But that didn’t matter. They only needed to keep one alive for the questioners.
Prunes nodded agreement.
“You and I, friend,” said Gid, “are going to be rich.”
“Not if we don’t get you downwind,” said Prunes. He motioned for Gid to lead, and the two began to pick their way quietly downhill.
A BROKEN WING
H
unger stood at the edge of the wood. The scent of the burning boy lay in the hollows and ravines here as thick as fog. He looked over a bend in a river. Beyond it lay a farmstead. That’s where the boy would be, waiting like a fat chicken in his coop.
He began to descend the bank to the water when a woman came out of the house carrying a lamp. He only saw her face for a moment in the light, but that and the gait of her walk, the angle of her shoulders, it all pulled a memory into his mind.
He knew her. He was sure of it. . . .
Moments passed.
She went to the well, drew water, then returned to the house. Hunger stood in the shadows as still as a heron stalking frogs.
Then the name came as softly as dew: River.
Yes, that was her name. And with that name a number of strong memories rose in his mind. He followed them, and every one of them ended with this: she’d held his hand once and he had been unable to speak. Not because she was his lover, although she was lovely. No, it was not his desire for her that had stolen his words; it was gratitude. He remembered: one spring evening in a bower, blindfolded, waiting for River who had worked so hard to make the match, waiting in the moonlight with the lilacs in bloom, their fine scent perfuming the night. Waiting to hear the feet on the path, the rustling of skirts, and then River taking his hand and putting Rosemary’s warm, strong hand in it. River removing the blindfold so he could see Rosemary standing there before him, holding the flowered crown that meant she’d accepted his offer of marriage, looking at him with those laughing, moon-sparkled eyes.
Rosemary, the carpenter’s daughter, the face of the woman he’d remembered after eating the man who had been humming as he washed himself. The man who was called Larther. And now Hunger had a name to hang that sorrow upon.
The water ran below him; three deer came to drink and left.
River was the one he needed. Her brother, the burning son, was nothing. He wasn’t even part of the Order yet. But River, she was skilled at all sorts of weavings. She would know the workings of the collar. She would fix it. And he would bind the Mother. Bind her and destroy her.