parents do.”
She had no response to that.
“Right,” he said. “So what’s been done to my father? Or is some threat being hung over us?”
“Nothing has been done,” she said. “There are no threats.”
He was agitated. Angry. Scared. She could read it all in his face. And she would have the same reaction in his situation, was having the same reaction to what her mother had done.
“How do I know River and Ke aren’t already under the spell of some foul master?” he asked. “How do I know they’ll even return?”
He raised his bow to the verge of drawing it. “Nettle said to wait. But I can’t see how that will help.”
He was serious: he did want to slay her. He truly believed she was Sleth, and prevarication would only confirm that assessment. She and Legs would not survive the afternoon with him in this state. That much was clear. “I will not lie to you,” she said. “My mother did things that—”
She didn’t want to say it. Legs sat as motionless as a heron at the table, his wild hair sticking up. She didn’t want for him to hear it this way. But that wasn’t the reason she’d stopped. She didn’t want to name Mother aloud. There were other explanations for what she’d seen. Maybe what she saw her mother do had been distorted by her fears. Maybe Cotton had indeed been stolen and magicked by woodikin. Maybe a dark soul rode in the body of the stork they’d found. There were a dozen maybes.
But the easiest explanation would not go away. She had to face the truth. There was no salvation in lies. “I saw my mother charge an army. I saw her cleave a man’s head in two. I saw her move with a dark grace that horrified me. And I saw the Sleth signs on the dead body of my little brother.”
The words dropped from her lips like heavy stones.
“I know you have no reason to believe me,” she said. “But I found out about this only a day before you.”
He had not raised his bow, but he hadn’t lowered it either.
“I am not associated with any murder of Sleth. I have nothing to do with any art, unless my mother has done something to me like she did to my brother. But I don’t know what that would be. I’m as confused as you are, Talen.
“Think on this as well,” she added. “If we were so wicked, wouldn’t we have risen from the cellar early this morning and worked our mischief on you when you were all asleep?”
“I didn’t sleep,” he said.
“Even so,” she said. “If that’s what we were, it would have been the perfect time, would it not?”
He said nothing, but she could see the wheels of his mind turning, see him weighing her, weighing the situation.
At last, he said, “That’s the line,” and pointed at the edge of the table where Legs sat. “Come across, and my arrows fly.”
She exhaled and realized she’d been holding her breath. But his decision didn’t mean they were safe. She needed to have another plan to neutralize that bow. He might be quick with it. But a bow was a hard weapon to wield in close spaces. A knife was much better in this situation.
She turned so the knife sheathed at her waist was hidden from his view. She ran one hand through her hair and with the other she removed the loop that held the knife in the sheath. She and Legs were going to get out of here. Her mother had told her to take Legs and ride. She should have disobeyed her mother before and fought. But now she’d make up for that. She’d take Legs and stow him in a safe place. And then what? How could she, of all people, rescue Mother?
But that wasn’t important right now. Right now she had to figure out how to deal with this boy. And what if hunters came? It would not do to have them find him sitting there guarding her and Legs. That was not how you treated a visitor. She began to clean up the breakfast dishes. Began to tidy and let her mind work. The first thing she noticed was that he’d placed himself in the wrong part of the house.
“You cannot look out of the windows from where you’re sitting.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “You can’t watch for hunters from that side of the room.”
“You look out the windows