pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to calm down. My brain spits out thoughts so fast I can’t cling to them; could I drug her into sleep to make the journey? Journey where? You have nowhere to go, nothing, no one. Could I keep up the pretence that she’s ill, something contagious? We’re at war; we’re really at war. How much longer could we stay here? We can’t; he’s less than fifty miles away. We have nowhere to go. We have to leave; we can’t leave. How will Lief find us? We can’t leave him behind.
Four hundred souls were killed in Haga, added to the three hundred in Monkham. We don’t even know how many died in Lortune, or in the smaller hamlets and towns across Lormere. When Lief left for Lormere it felt as though he’d travelled half a world away, but now it’s no distance, the East Woods a flimsy barrier that an army of golems could trample with ease.
I imagine the heads of people I know mounted on spikes along the outskirts of the West Woods. Unwin. Fussy Old Samm, sour-faced Pegwin with her mutterings and dark looks.
Silas.
My hands lower to cover my mouth, and then I see him, as if thinking about him summoned him into being. Loitering in the shadows at the side of my hut, out of sight of the soldiers, shrouded in his customary black cloak. Silas Kolby. As always, his face is hidden by the hood that hangs so low it leaves only his mouth visible. It’s a mark of how strange life in Almwyk is that my single friend is a boy whose face I’ve never actually seen, and that that seems completely normal to me now.
It’s his height that allows me to recognize him; he’s a good eight inches taller than I am, and I’m tall enough for a girl. His feet are crossed at the ankle as he leans against the wall with an air of studied nonchalance that I can see straight through. He raises his head at the sound of my footsteps and my mouth suddenly dries.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he says in his low, ragged voice. All of him is ragged: his patched cloak; his shabby gloves, the fingertips thin and worn; his scuffed boots. His words always seem to catch on my insides, like a goose grass burr, or a torn fingernail dragged across silk. His voice sticks. “How was the meeting?”
My voice is thankfully steady when I reply, though my heart still beats like the wings of a bird against a cage. “If you’d come, then you’d know.”
“Alas, I had other plans. Skulking. Creeping. Avoiding discovery and possible arrest. The usual.”
“How did you even know there was a meeting?”
“Skulking. Creeping. I just said that, pay attention.” When I raise my eyebrows at him, my lips pursed, he smiles and continues. “I overheard a pair of soldiers moaning about having to police it. Were there many of them there?”
I try not to return his smile, and fail, as some of my anxiety recedes. “We practically had one each.”
“Was it that bad?”
“It was that bad,” I say, my smile fading, the knot inside my heart returning and tightening. “Golems marched on Haga last night and destroyed the temples there. Four hundred people were killed.”
His mouth opens, but he says nothing, waiting for me to continue.
“The Council think he’ll move for Chargate next. It’s not that far from here, fifty miles at most. We’re at war, officially.” I take a deep breath. “They’ve closed the border.”
Silas nods, chewing his lips thoughtfully before he speaks. “It was bound to happen, sooner or later.”
“Sooner, it seems.”
His mouth becomes a line and he speaks hesitantly. “What about Lief?”
I shake my head, glancing at the forest involuntarily. I don’t believe Lief is dead. I know he isn’t. But it’s not something I want to talk to Silas about. He knows Lief was in Lormere, and that he hasn’t come back. The way he speaks about him, gently, distantly, tells me he’s less optimistic than I am. I don’t think we need to talk about it.
I look around before I reach into my cloak and pull out the vial of hemlock draught hidden there. “Here. I brought it to your hut on my way to the meeting. You weren’t there,” I tell him.
“It’s not my hut any more. I had to move again,” he says. “I’m in the one by the old pigsty now. Gods know for