"Nearly killed? What did she do to him?" Ransom hissed, throwing his saddle onto his runnerbeast and fumbling with the buckles. It took all his effort to keep his voice low so as not to spook the beast.
"That is not your concern!"
"There's an innocent, thirteen-turned girl out there with Cad—your wife! I think knowing what she's capable of doing is very much my concern."
Thale inhaled and clenched his hands into fists. "Cadya nearly strangled him," he said bleakly. "She thought he was already dead."
Ransom paused in the middle of strapping their instruments and saddlebags into place. "I'm sorry," he said. "But your son is alive?"
Thale nodded. "I don't think she'd hurt the girl," he replied, sounding less than convinced.
"Let's hope you're right." Ransom tightened the last strap and swung up into the saddle. "I'll ride ahead and try to catch them. If I find them, I'll double back."
Thale stopped him with a hand on the reins. "Let me ride with you. You may need my help." Behind him, his companions were getting the hound to latch onto the first runnerbeast's scent.
"The two of us will be too heavy. We won't catch them that way."
Thale's mouth tightened into an unhappy line. After a moment, he handed over the reins. "Please don't hurt her," he said. "She doesn't know what she's doing."
"I won't," Ransom replied. He kicked his runner forward, leaving the circle of firelight behind.
Ransom looked up past the treetops, finding the bright dots of the Dawn Sisters in the east. He turned the runner south, splashing across a trickle of water. Melory had a good head on her shoulders. The girl would have followed the stream south. The runner found a good path along the stream bank and Ransom gave it its head, bending close to its neck to duck any low tree branches in the dark.
He tried not to imagine what Caden could do to Melory, isolated in the trees. He kicked himself for letting his apprentice go on alone with a strange woman. He had promised to take care of Melory. But how could he have known? He rode faster. They were only a few minutes ahead. He should catch them soon.
He couldn't help wondering what had happened to Caden's son. Was he alive after all? His insides twisted with sadness, remembering her tears. To believe a son dead when he was really alive. Ransom urged his runner on faster. He and Evina had done the opposite.
For hours he had paced outside the room where Evina travailed, hearing only her cries and the midwife's shouts to push and breathe. The moment finally came, when her bellows reached their loudest and gave out, answered by her attendants' triumphal exclamations. But there was no following cry of new life giving voice for the first time. Instead, the shouts of celebration died to low murmurs of alarm.
Ransom held his son only once before he was buried. The child was unmarked and perfect, with a mop of his father's unruly hair, but still as stone. No music of life sang through his lungs or moved his heart to beat like a tiny drum. He was born dead, without explanation as to how or why, his life fading before he even tasted air. Soon after, Evina sickened. Ransom was only just getting her back when he had to leave.
The stream curved sharply east and Ransom slowed his runner to a walk as the path disappeared into rocky terrain rising up through the trees. "Melory!" he called. They were doubly laden, on Melory's slow-blooded runner. He should have caught them by now. "Mel!"
He passed by a leafless bush on the crest of the hill, broken ends of branches shining white in the darkness. He pulled his runner to a stop and dismounted. Half the bush was crumpled, as if it had broken someone's fall. The sap oozing from the splintered wood was still wet.
"Melory!"
"Ransom?" Melory's voice was faint, coming from a distance.
Ransom shot to his feet, his eyes searching the dark trees. "Mel! Where are you?"
"Down the embankment. I'm—I'm stuck."
Ransom scrambled to the edge of the hill and peered down the steep slope. Melory's face was a pale smudge looking up at him against the dark scree displaced by her fall. A dead branch jutting out from the gravel had stopped her downward slide a few feet from another drop off.
"Are you all right?" he called down to her.
"My leg is hurt," she answered. Gravel skittered out from beneath her and she froze, clinging to the branch.
"Where's Caden?"
"I don't know. I thought she fell off too. She took my knife. Ransom, I'm scared." Her voice wavered, pinched and thin.
"Don't worry, I'm coming to get you. You'll be all right!" There had to be a rope in their saddlebags. Ransom turned around as his runner let out a high whinny of alarm. The gray mare kicked her front legs and tossed her head as a thin figure grabbed for her reins.
"Oh, not again," Ransom groaned. "Caden—Cadya!"
At the sound of her real name, Cadya's head snapped towards him. "No!" she screamed. "Get away from me!"
The mare, spooked, took off. Reins wrapped tightly around her hand, Cadya was yanked off her feet, hitting the rocky ground with a dull thud. Ransom swore and ran to her still form. Why were all the women getting hurt under his watch?
"Cadya, are you all right?" He dropped to one knee beside her. She sprang up with a snarl, swiping at him with Melory's knife. He ducked her wild slashes and grabbed her wrist. "Stop it Cadya! I'm trying to help you!"
She scratched at his face, teeth bared in a snarl. "How do you know my name! My husband sent you, didn't he? He sent you to kill me!" She was surprisingly strong and Ransom was having a difficult time holding her. Her wide eyes stared at him, frighteningly lucid in the furious grimace of her face. "He wants me dead because he thinks I killed our son!"
Ransom twisted her hand until she dropped the knife. He kicked it away and pulled her into a headlock. "Cadya, your son's alive."
"You're lying!" she shrieked, writhing wildly against his grip.
"And your husband loves you," Ransom continued. "He would never hurt you."
Cadya suddenly went slack against him. "He'll kill me," she wept. "He should kill me." She lifted to him a face streaked with tears.
Ransom adjusted his arms to hold her upright. "No, Cadya. No one wants you killed."
She flung her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder, her tears seeping through his shirt. He patted her head awkwardly, still tensed for the moment she would suddenly begin throttling him. "Cadya," he said, pulling her gently upright. "I need to go. Melory's in trouble."
"You won't give me back to my husband?" she sniffled.
He hid a wince. "Please don't run away," he said instead. "I have to help my apprentice."
"I can't run. You have to help me."
He disentangled her arms from around his neck and stood. "I will. Stay here."
She nodded, looking small and pale on the ground. Ransom went back up to the embankment. Melory was calling his name fitfully, her voice strained and on the verge of tears.
"I'm so sorry, Mel," he called down to her, scanning the slope for a way back up. A thin ridge of rock stuck up above the scree, zigzagging down from the top to the edge of the drop a few steps from Mel's branch. It would have to do. The runner had taken off with the saddlebags. He'd have to forgo the rope and look for the runners later.
"Ransom, I'm scared!" she said.
"Hang on, I'm coming down to get you." Ransom took a steadying breath and stepped gingerly over the edge. The loose gravel shifted beneath his weight, his foot sliding half a foot before it found purchase. "Mel," he said as he climbed slowly down the steep incline, "what's the time signature for the bridge of Moreta?"
"Eight twelve," she answered in a thin but steady voice.
"And the key at the shift to the refrain?" He slipped into their old routine of question and answer to keep her mind off the slippery scree, the drop waiting a few feet from her toes. He could see her shaking when he reached her, her arms quivering from clinging to the withered wood.
"I'm here, Mel," he said reassuringly, anchoring his feet in the gravel beside her.
"How are we getting back up?" she asked, her eyes glistening. Tears left shining trails through the dust coating her face. She sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
"See that bit of rock?" Ransom pointed to the ridge. "I'll climb it to the top. How is your leg? Do you think you could get onto my back and hang on?"
Melory nodded. "I think I just twisted my ankle. It'll be all right."
"Good girl. Get on up. You've spent entirely too long on this branch." Ransom knelt down to let Melory get a grip around his shoulders. He hooked his arms beneath her knees and hoisted her up. Once she was settled, he began the questions again as he made his careful way to the ridge of rock.
"What happened?" he asked her quietly, the top of the embankment growing near.
"Caden attacked me," Melory said. "She went quiet for a while, then stole my knife and tried to throw me off without warning. It scared the runner and we both fell."
"I should never have sent you off alone with her. Forgive me."
"You couldn't have known this would happen," Mel replied. He felt her shudder against his back. "She's crazy. How did you get away from her husband?"
Ransom told Mel about his encounter with Thale and plan to return Cadya to them.
"Next time, let's take the caravan," Melory said into the back of his neck. "I'm fine without a sense of adventure, thank you very much."
"You know Mel," he replied, "I agree with you completely."
Dawn was just a few hours away by the time Ransom tracked down their runnerbeasts and got the three of them back in the saddle. Cadya rode with him this time, anything that remotely resembled a weapon packed on Melory's beast. Ransom guided them back downhill, his head light and his eyes heavy from fatigue. Cadya's head nodded into his shoulder as they rode. He had given her wine dosed with fellis, hoping she slept deeply. She drank so gratefully, so trustfully. He shook off the uneasy feeling that he had betrayed her. It would make handing her over to Thale that much easier.
The weight of Cadya's head on his shoulder sent pangs of regret through his chest. He shouldn't have left Ruatha River Hold so soon. It had been only a few months since the birth. Evina needed him, though she didn't often show it, and he had left. He couldn't go on. He would ride with Mel to Endling, wait with her for a southbound caravan, then ride back to Ruatha River by himself. The plan gave him new conviction and he blinked away the sleep weighing down his eyelids.
They met Thale and his companions where the stream turned east. The three men were nearly dead on their feet, their torches burned out. Cadya was still asleep, and didn't stir as Ransom lifted her off the runner into her husband's arms. Her face was peaceful in sleep, the lightening sky giving a soft glow to her skin. Thale cradled his wife, his body loosening with relief. They parted ways with few words.
Melory swayed in her saddle, her head nodding and jerking back up every few seconds. Ransom helped her down from her runner and they made camp by the stream's bend, asleep as soon as their heads hit the ground. After a few hours, brightening daylight roused them and they staggered back into the saddle to continue south.
Ransom and Melory reached Endling as the sun was toeing the horizon line that day. They were a sorry-looking pair. Melory's clothes were dusty and torn. A bruise colored Ransom's jaw and an egg-shaped lump had sprouted on the back of his head.
"Welcome to Endling," the Hold steward said, signaling stableboys to take their runnerbeasts. "You must be Harper Ransom."
"Yes. I didn't realize you were expecting us," Ransom said in surprise. Behind him, Melory groaned and muttered something about saddle sores.
"A message from Ruatha River Hold was drummed in for you earlier today." He pulled a slip of parchment from a pocket in his tunic and handed it to Ransom. "We've prepared rooms for you to bathe and rest."
"Thank you," Ransom said with a grateful sigh. "Did you hear that, Melory?"
"Do I get a bed?" she asked, hope lifting her dirt-stained face.
"Yes, but no sleeping furs." At Melory's confused expression, the steward broke into a smile. "I'm teasing you. All our beds come with furs. We'll even give you towels."
"Th-thank you?" Melory said, the task of processing a joke overwhelming her tired brain.
The steward patted her arm and gestured across the courtyard. "This way, please."
Ransom let Melory go on ahead, falling in behind her as he unfolded the drum message. Four words were printed on the paper.
Coming early. Please shave.
He grinned and tucked the parchment into his pocket. He'd continue the journey Melory after all. He followed the steward into the Hold, trying to remember if he had packed his razor.