bridle the pony.
‘I’m not leaving,’ I insisted.
Roshi shared a look with Sepp. I didn’t wait to find out its meaning. Readiness sharpened my muscles as I mentally measured the spaces in the stable aisle, then I turned, already running. As I clawed and shoved past Sepp, my soiled foot slipped on the dry rushes, losing me precious moments as I righted myself.
Roshi must have whipped around, for the next thing I knew she’d snagged my forearm. The stall slats stopped her from gaining a good grip, but it was enough to slow me. Not that Sepp needed any help: he too was fast, hooking my leg out from under me. I landed on my back with all the grace of an upended turtle, slamming into the rammed earth hard enough to wind myself. Blackness shrouded my vision. When it cleared, Roshi had jumped the stall to crouch over me. Hands on my shoulders, she peered into my face. Behind her, Sepp bent to the provisions, working swiftly.
‘I won’t lose him too,’ I said, breathless and dazed. ‘He’s all I have left.’
‘He’s the one thing you don’t have,’ she replied. ‘But until you’re clear-headed enough to see it, and to see him without forgetting it, it isn’t wise for you to be around him.’
I squirmed in the sodden rushes, but Roshi’s legs gripped me too tight.
‘It’s time we freed you,’ said Roshi with a hesitant smile. ‘Your way, this time.’
‘I won’t!’
‘I’ll bind you if I must.’
I spat, but my aim was dreadful, the gobbet brushing a few stray strands of her hair.
‘Fine,’ Roshi said. ‘Sepp, the rope, please.’
Sepp passed the coil of rope over my head. As Roshi lifted a hand from my shoulder to take it, I shoved her off me and into Sepp’s legs. They both dropped in a tangle and I scrambled to my feet, lifted my skirts and ran. A bang and a startled whicker sounded behind me, but I didn’t look back. Ahead, a light flickered to life – one of the thralls had been woken by the clamour. Hope rose in me as the light strengthened.
Roshi took me down in a tackle that splayed me face-first into more horse manure. ‘Willing or not, cousin, you’re leaving,’ she murmured. ‘Now.’
Hauling my hands behind my back, she snaked the coarse rope around my wrists, tying it so tight it burned, no matter how little I struggled. After she’d bound my wrists, keeping one knee planted in the middle of my back, pinning me, she stood. It all happened so swiftly that the light had not yet moved forward. There came a single moment of freedom from Roshi’s pressing weight, then I was being hauled to my feet. I turned my head to find it was Sepp helping me to stand.
Between them, he and Roshi hustled me forward, towards the sturdy pony standing ready in the aisle, laden with the provisions.
I summoned one last shred of resistance, digging in my heels and pulling against their guidance. I only needed a few more moments, and we would be discovered. ‘You’ll have to knock me out to take me,’ I said.
‘Very well,’ Roshi said, then swung her fist at my temple, the crack of the impact turning the world black.
TWENTY-SEVEN
WHEN I CAME to, the throbbing in my head was an instant reminder of what had happened.
I lay still, focusing on the sounds around me as I tried to work out where I was. The smell of leaf-mould and forest litter filled the air. Fern fronds, gathered beneath a length of canvas, served for my bed. Everything was damp, including the bracken of my bedding.
A blanket covered me, at least, a thin but sturdy arrangement of layers of wool and goose-down sandwiched between an outer shell of canvas. Pity my skin wasn’t as weatherproof as the blanket.
Branches formed a false sky, alive with shivers and the darting movement of birds. The time was hard to gauge beneath the dense canopy, but night appeared to have passed.
I rolled onto my side, careful to retain the ruse of sleep, surveying the makeshift camp through slitted eyes.
A cast iron cauldron balanced on a rickety spit above a small fire nearby. Steam dragons twined above the cauldron, but the slight breeze was against me and brought no scent of what was brewing.
The pony stood tethered on the fire’s far side, its eyes half closed and its tail twitching at occasional midges and mosquitos. Sepp lay nearby, head down, eyes closed, mouth open and faintly snoring.