Annalkylie dropped to the other side of the low wall, and snuck through the stand of trees. Only once she could no longer see the yard for the trees did she start running. The sense of adventure thrilled through her. The unknown, the dangerous, the things forbidden.
If she were a boy, she would be able to do those things. If only she had been born a boy…
But she saw no reason that that should ever stop her. She continued on anyway, praying for a miracle. She prayed that someone would find her, take her on some fantastic journey and she could do all the things she had only read about.
Her parents scolded her for skipping her lessons, but she didn't want to learn to be a "proper lady". She wanted adventure and discovery, and more than she could put into words.
She had argued and tried to convince them to let her do the things that Agasius did, and they would not listen. Her uncle seemed more lenient than they, and had been sympathetic to her plight when she had complained to him, and asked him to intervene on her behalf, but her parents had the final ruling, and their word was law to Kylie.
So she was running away, and she would find her adventure—she was certain of it.
The door to the study burst open suddenly, one of the doors rebounding against the wall. The magister looked up. Iden marched through the doorway, distress marking his features. "Kylie is missing," he announced without preamble.
Danarius frowned. "Missing?" he inquired.
Iden raked his fingers through his disheveled blonde hair. "Gone. The servants have looked everywhere."
"Did you check the barn?" That was where she had been last time—and come back smelling strongly of horse with hay stuck in her flaxen hair.
He nodded, and began to pace restlessly. "She's just… disappeared."
The mage's frown deepened. "She couldn't just disappear."
"It's been hours," Iden insisted. "She's gone."
The magister straightened. Sunset was only two hours away, but the estate was a very big place, and the child could simply be either moving, or very well hidden—both were completely possible, and the two brothers would know; they had grown up here. "Very well. Have the guards search the estate—it's a big place. If she hasn't turned up by nightfall, I'll send the guard out to look for her."
But little Annalkylie was not back by nightfall, or even by the next morning with the entire estate scourged, and the guards returned from the wood fruitless, though they were no woodsmen.
Iden and his wife had been wracked with grief. Danarius was not so ruffled, but not because he was unconcerned; he had a way of finding her, even if the means was inconvenient enough that he had not resorted to it the night before.
After the last incident, he had made something for her—a jade bracelet with a jet stone in it. It was pretty—and he made a gift of it to her. More importantly, it was new, and she had liked it, so she would be wearing it, he hoped.
Hadriana had bespelled it to his instructions before he had made a present of the bracelet to Kylie—a spell to find the item again. It was similar to a phylactery, but it tracked the item instead of the person. The apprentice had to spend half the night waiting on the spell. Magic did not always work instantly, and they had to fine tune the compass to the bracelet, and give it a few tests to make absolutely certain that it was working as it should. They had not expected to need it so soon!
Unfortunately for Hadriana, it meant that she was the one who had to track it down. Danarius had smiled, as if bemused, while he told her that she had to go trekking through the woods after the lost child.
"And bring Fenris," he had added, almost as an afterthought. "He can help protect you, and Annalkylie likes him anyway."
So here she was. Tromping through the forest, again. They brought horses at least. She would have liked to bring a few more guards, but it was generally agreed to that that was unnecessary. There were but two more, and an extra palfry.
They followed Hadriana, who followed the pull of magic, her blue eyes fixed to the spelled compass in her hands, its needle pointing in a direction that was distinctly not northward.
Kylie was lost. What had seemed a grand adventure the day before, in the warm daylight, had turned to a nightmare when the sun went down and she couldn't see. The wolves howled, and terrified her. Fenris had told her not to be scared of them, and she tried not to be, but they were scary.
The family crest is a howling wolf, she reminded herself. That hardly mattered to her, but sometimes it made her feel better, sort of.
But the night had been long. She had listened to the night, cold and frightened under the boughs of a tree as the wolves howled and the owls screeched. The other nighttime creatures worried her too, and the creepy-crawly bugs skittered over her, and made her shiver and wish she hadn't come. If this was adventure, she was quickly losing her taste for it.
It was not until an hour or more after dawn and it grew warmer that she even noticed that she had lost the pretty bracelet her uncle had given to her. She had tried to search for it, but it was just as useless as trying to find home. She mourned losing such a gift.
By morning, she was hungry and miserable, and just wanted to go home. She had tried, but sometime in the night, she had gotten so turned around that she didn't know what way was the estate. She had decided to start by looking for water, and when she drank, that seemed to sharpen her hunger. She had gone in search of food. It was spring, and there were berries in season, but she didn't find too many unfortunately, but she ate what she found. They looked like the sorts she had found in the kitchens or in food, so they should be edible. She hoped they were, or she'd be in even bigger trouble soon.
Oh, why had she done this?
Mother had made her angry. She had wanted to practice with swords and bows, like Agasius, and Mother had said no. Kylie had been so angry… She just wanted to go back home.
Hadriana pushed back the fern leaves, expecting to be confronted with a dirty, hungry little girl. Rather, she saw nothing. Well, at first she saw nothing, then she bent and picked up the jade bracelet with a sigh. All that work, and nothing.
She turned to face the guards looking at her. Fenris was studying the path.
Danarius was testing her, she knew. What was the right thing to do right now? None of them were trackers. They would need someone skilled at tracking to find tracks from here, or they never would. It should have been a simple matter once she had found the bracelet; they should not have needed a woodsman.
"You," she pointed at one of the guards. "You come back with me—we're going to get help and report what we found." She looked at the other two—the guard and the slave. "You." She looked at the guard. "Stay here with the slave."
The guard nodded, and glanced at Fenris, then paused. "What are you looking at?"
Hadriana had already disregarded the two as she remounted her horse. Fenris pointed. "I think those are a child's footprints in the mud," he commented.
The mage stopped, and turned her head in the direction the elf was pointing. She frowned, and swung off of the horse again. The mare stayed steady as she walked away from her. She studied the prints, noticing that they seemed to go off in one direction. But that didn't mean the prints would continue, or that the signs would be consistent, and this had to have been hours ago at least. Fact of the matter, they still needed a good tracker, and she knew that she would be useless for this. And she would be happy to give the report and send someone else in her stead.
She frowned to herself as she tried to make another decision. "Fine then. Slave, you follow the tracks, and come back here when they stop—see if you can find any sign of her. And don't get lost."
Fenris turned the horse around, and slogged off along the path. Hadriana swung back into the saddle, and she and the guard hurried back toward the manor, the three leaving the second guard alone with the palfry.
The prints actually didn't last very long—he followed them for half an hour at most, guessing parts of the trail because she had seemed to have been on a deer trail for a fair distance. The girl had scrambled over some rocks, and animals had marred the path. Fenris was no tracker; he wasn't particularly good at reading trail signs, but the girl had carved a path a blind man could follow for a while at least. It stopped at a large pine tree, and he saw a single print leading away from it, but she had been stepping on the stones or something, and he hadn't seen any other tracks. Hadriana had been explicit; follow the tracks, see what there was to see, and come back.
Well…
He looked at that single print, and thought about it.
Kylie was just a child, and every moment that she was alone out here was another moment she could be sick, or eat something poisonous, or be "eaten by wolves".
It wasn't exactly disobeying, when he thought about it.
The branches, though, were too low for the horse. He hobbled the mare, and went further on foot. He disliked tromping about in the forest like this completely. He had to carefully walk over deer pellets, could smell fox piss at one point, and imagined that he was walking through feces and urine with every step. Not to mention the insects—they were the worst bit of the entire ordeal. Shoes, he reflected, weren't such a bad idea.
He came across a shallow brook, just a little too wide to step across. He looked up and down its bank for tracks as well as a better way across it. There—in the mud on the opposite bank, a partial child's footprint; he was certain of it.
"Annalkylie!" he called. The forest gave no answer.
Kylie paused, and looked around herself. Had she heard something…? No, she was certain that it was nothing. Sometimes the wind played tricks, and sounded like a voice when it wasn't.
She and the twins had played with echoes once—in the great dining hall when it was empty. They had shouted, and tried to see what the walls would echo back to them. She had learned that echoes were strange things, and even though they seemed to fill a void, they only defined it.
Kylie slogged onward in the direction she sincerely hoped was the manor. She really wanted to go home though. She was tired of her uncle's manor, and she just wanted her room again.
She was tired of adventure.
As she headed up a particularly steep hill, she missed a step and fell forward, and tried to keep herself from falling by flailing her arms. She cried out in alarm as she lost her balance and fell back. She felt the earth on her back, and she tumbled backward, screaming, rolling. A blackberry bush caught her, her hair becoming trapped in it, her clothes becoming netted. The thorns scratched her, and the more she struggled against the vines, the more they seemed to stick. She wanted to thrash and scream, but something told her to keep calm or she would only make it worse.
"Annalkylie!"
She paused, listening. Had that been a voice? Someone was looking for her? Her heart soared. "Here! I'm here!" she answered as loudly as she could manage, and struggling in vain against the vines, but she was well and thoroughly stuck.
"Miss Annalkylie?" a voice inquired, and sounded closer this time.
She frowned. That sounded like… "Here!" she insisted.
Someone knelt before the bush, and the elf quirked an eyebrow. "It's not the season for blackberries," Fenris pointed out helpfully.
If he were just a bit closer, and if her legs were free, she would have kicked him in the face for that remark. Sometimes, he had terrible manners for a slave. "Help me!" she said piteously instead.
"I don't have a knife to cut you free," he pointed out, and observed the tangled mess she was in. Was it hopeless? Would she be trapped in here until he could go get more help? Her hopes sank. And she had thought she was rescued…
"Are you alone?" she asked suddenly, and started pulling at the vines again, but that just seemed to make it worse.
"They're stuck—here," he reached his hands in—delicately—and gently pried the vines from her sleeves. She held on to his forearms, and he gently helped ease her out of the brambles. She cried out in pain often when the thorns scratched her bare flesh, or caught. She was past the point of caring about her clothes, but it hurt when it pulled her hair, and she was bleeding and scratched in several places when he finally pulled her free. She stared up at him, and her eyes started to well with tears.
"I'm lost," she whined, and fell to her knees, exhausted, hungry, and so relieved to have been found that she didn't know what else to do. She sobbed, and wiped at her eyes furiously, frustrated that she was crying. She was a big girl—they don't cry! But she was so relieved that all she could do was cry. She was found, not lost, and soon she would be warm, dry, clean, and fed.
"Are you hurt?" Fenris asked her, kneeling beside her.
She wanted to say that she was, but she got the idea that that he didn't mean cuts and bruises. Kylie looked at her scratched hands. "I'm scratched up. And bleeding. And I hurt everywhere." She looked at him with wide, mournful eyes.
"Can you walk?"
"Yeah," she said glumly, and he led the way back, the way she had come. She trailed behind him, and he had to stop frequently for her to catch up. She hinted that he should carry her, but the slave seemed oblivious of her hints, and she felt weird just demanding he do so. Besides, she could walk. That was what her feet were for.
He stopped at the stream, and helped her wash the cuts. "I look like a ragamuffin, don't I?" she said, distressed at the thought of Agasius seeing her. He would tease her endlessly for this.
"You look like you spent the night lost in the woods alone," he said diplomatically.
She pouted. "A vagabond," she said dramatically.
He lifted her to keep her feet out of the water, and set her down gently at the opposite bank. She watched him for a while, quiet this time, too tired to keep talking. Kylie watched him step on a centipede, and couldn't help but giggle at the way he sort of hopped away from it, and seemed to cringe.
"If you don't like dirt, why don't you just wear shoes?" she asked him, her eyes still shining with laughter and lips curved into an amused grin.
"Why don't you bring a compass with you next time you run off into the woods?" he suggested, voice amiable.
She briefly debated on kicking him in the back of the leg… but that was a most unladylike behaviour. Her mother would have a fit for her even thinking about it, even if he was a slave. "I've heard that when dirt gets under your toenails, it can get infected," said Kylie cheerfully.
When she looked up, she saw him make a face, and she smiled, satisfied to herself. But rather, he countered, "With a compass, one could tell which direction they needed to go to avoid getting lost."
She paused, unable to think of a good comeback. "For a slave, you do a lot of talking back," she informed him. He made no reply, as if solely to spite her. She scowled at him.
Troubles temporarily forgotten, she darted ahead of him, but stayed well within sight. She hopped up onto a fallen log, and walked along beside him, arms out for balance. It was moss-covered, and big enough to be easy to tread upon.
She came to the end of it, and looked at the small drop to the forest floor, and at the small gap to the next log—this one cutting over the path. She watched Fenris step over it. She backed up a bit, and ran, and jumped…
She landed, and gave a cry of alarm when one of her feet sank through the rotted log. She scrambled out of it, and dropped to the ground. Fenris was watching her, bemused. Her face reddened. "What are you looking at?" she demanded.
He shook his head, and continued forward. She doggedly trailed after him, until she heard the angry buzzing.
Something stung her, and she looked about herself, and shrieked in mortal terror. "Eeeek!" she cried, and ran, screaming, through the woods, the angry hornets chasing after her, stinging and buzzing madly.
"Stop screaming!" Fenris cried out, but she couldn't seem to help it; she kept screaming, and yelling, crying when they stung her. She crashed into a stream, and splashed water furiously all around her, stopping sometimes to listen, only to start up again. Finally, the hornets receded. She turned and went to climb out of the stream, but slipped and fell in the water, landing on her rear end. She was completely soaked now, and shivering, in pain.
She heard the elf sigh, and picked her up again. He set her down on the stream bank. "Did you get stung?" he asked her.
Her lower lip quivered, eyes watering. She nodded. "Uh-huh," she said, and showed him her arms.
He knelt, and seemed to consider.
Mud, he thought, would help with the swelling and the itching. He wasn't sure why he knew that. Was it… was it something from his past, so clouded in mystery to him? There was no way to know. Perhaps it was just knowledge—the same way he had woken up knowing how to speak but not knowing his name.
Fenris let the matter go, and knelt, getting the soil by the stream wet enough to make mud. She watched him curiously. He took her arms, and dabbed mud onto them.
"Hey—that… That feels better," she said suddenly. He said nothing in reply, and looked at her face, checking for stings. Most of it seemed to be on her arms though. "Why didn't they sting you?" she asked as he dabbed a bit more mud on her arm.
"They did," he answered, inspecting her for any more stings. Finding none, he started on himself. Two stings—both on his arms. She had over half a dozen, and they were swelling and red. She was shaky enough to stumble as she walked beside him, and on the steeper slopes, he picked her up and carried her.
By the time he reached the horse, she had her arms wrapped in a half-strangle hold around his neck, and was crying. From pain, relief, or terror over all of her ordeals, he couldn't say; she was just a child after all.
He pried her off of him, and set her on the horse.
"He's too big for me!" she complained, sitting side-saddle.
Fenris took the bit. "A young lady like you? Nonsense." And that made her fall silent as she felt determined to ride in the saddle. He did not quite make it back to the place he had parted with the others when the dogs found him. They barked excitedly, slobbering. Their handlers came next, on foot, followed by a few guardsmen and even Serrah Iden.
The man pushed his way to the forefront when he spied his youngest daughter. "Kylie!" he said, the relief evident on his face.
"Papa!" she cried, and reached her arms out, but the drop was too far for her to get out of the saddle. No matter; the man went to her and lifted her out of the saddle. She held her father, and cried, and he breathed in relief that she was well.
He looked at Fenris around his daughter's head. "Thank you," he said, and seemed to mean it, which briefly surprised the elf—both that he meant his thanks and that he had bothered to thank him at all. Fenris bowed his head, and waited for the party to move on. He heard the girl and her father talking. "Why are you covered in mud, little one?"
"I stepped in a hornet's nest," she said. "I screamed, and ran, and they chased me! Then I fell in the stream. Fenris put mud on me."
Iden laughed. "The mud helps when you don't have anything else."
"Will Uncle help with the stings?" she asked, a little hesitant.
Iden looked at her sternly. "I've half a mind to leave you with them until they heal naturally—you scared all of us, little girl."
"I'm not a 'little girl'! I'm five!"
"Of course," Iden said, as if just remembering. "A lady grown."
Fenris found himself beginning to wonder… Had he had a family once? Someone who had cared about him, the same way that Iden and Annalkylie cared for one another?
Just as quickly, he dismissed the idea. It was ludicrous. Even if he did have a family, what did it matter? He was here now. All that mattered now was pleasing his master, no matter his shadowed past.
Danarius praised him—if briefly—for the task completed and well. It made him… not happy exactly, but was it pride he felt? He was finally able to do something. Something useful. It was a good feeling. He wanted to be sure not to lose it.
Iden and his family left with the summer, but on somewhat lukewarm terms. Annalkylie wanted to come back the next year, but her mother told her that her uncle would be moving back to the city by then. She was disappointed for all of ten minutes before she said, "I wouldn't mind visiting there—I want to see the ocean," she insisted.
"Perhaps," Iden had said idly.
The brothers discussed it, but left the matter open-ended. Things were still precarious between them after Iden's accusations of blood magic.
That summer was much hotter than others—and the magister was glad he wasn't in Minrathous for it, though that didn't help his paperwork any. Rather, it just seemed to stack.
One of his slaves in a brothel had gone "missing." It had been two days by the time they had bothered to report to him. Either they had found the girl by now, or she was gone for good. It was a wound to his pride—but a small one. She could have just as easily been abducted by some admirer, and they would find her chopped up corpse somewhere, eventually.
Another report was just about repairs after some stupid slave boy tripped, knocked over a lantern, and set an expensive silk rug on fire.
It seemed like a day couldn't pass that nothing interesting happened. He ordained the boy be beaten for the price of the rug, and moved to the yard where he was less likely to burn down expensive things.
This would go much more smoothly once he was back in Minrathous. His steward there would attend the more intimate matters, for the time being, but the final say was always the magister's.
Anyone could do this. It doesn't have to be me, he thought, scanning another report. This one was not from his personal reports—the businesses he owned and the like—but a city report, over the district he ruled. There were judges and guardsmen, and they oversaw much of the goings-on, but some things he had to have a hand in. It just never ended.
A knock on the door prompted him to leave the reports alone for the time being. "Come in," he called, and looked up expectantly. It was Hadriana. She would be pretty when she was older, he imagined. She looked so different than she had when he had met her—flea bitten, lousy, filthy. Now, she looked properly a magister's apprentice.
She bowed her head respectfully. "Serrah," she said, and raised her head to meet his eyes—something no one else in the household had the privilege to do since Iden left with his family. "You summoned me?"
"Yes…" he drawled, and set the report down in its stack, neatly. His fingers laced together, placed on top of his desk. "Fenris fainted yesterday."
She barely blinked. "I see," she said noncommittally. "Sunstroke is not uncommon, serrah."
Danarius' lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. "Seems he hadn't eaten in two days before then—then spent all day in the sun."
She remained resolute. "I see."
Danarius leaned back in the chair. "I don't care if you want to teach him a lesson now and again and keep the lad in his place." He watched her for a moment. "Or any of the slaves or servants for that matter—you are above them, and it is your right." He cocked his head to the side. "What I don't approve of is starving him and sending him out in this heat." He frowned. "He fell off of a horse. He could have broken his neck, and my little wolf was expensive." That was how my father died, more or less.
She looked down. "I… I apologize, Master."
"Let him resume his meals." He considered for a moment. "Rather, from now on, Hadriana—I want to put you in charge of all of my slaves. Make their schedule. Plan what you will have them do each day, including Fenris. Remember that I want him to spend most of his time training, and that his schedule needs to change day to day."
She seemed thoughtful, and nodded. "I will work on this at once, Master. Is there anything more?"
He shook his head. "No—dismissed, Hadriana."
She bowed, and excused herself.
Hadriana was pleased by this, actually. She relished being in charge, now that she was becoming more confident. She liked planning out schedules, and giving orders. She enjoyed it.
She worked on the slaves' schedules immediately. There were certain things that needed to be done, certain works overseen. Other things that were sometimes neglected she intended to get done immediately. When that was finished, she moved on to Fenris.
Why was he so special anyway? She had half a mind to send him to the vineyard along with the rest of the slaves—it was where he belonged.
Her master treated the elf in such high regard. Why? He was an elf. True, there were the markings to consider. It was Danarius' life's work. That wasn't the point though. Danarius treated him like a prized possession. What if that made Fenris cocky and arrogant? She had every intention of seeing any hint of that put down.
She made a rigorous training schedule for him, designed to see him exhausted by the day's end and up at dawn again the next day—each day rotating what was done. She posted a question to her master, and her plan was approved. A week later, she sent Fenris to the vineyard.
Fenris fell into the bed, and a part of him died for the simple act.
He curled into a loose ball, eyes open and uncaring. He had been working in the vineyard for a few hours every day for the past week, after sword practice. It wasn't that he hated the work—he did, but that wasn't the point.
He felt dead inside because of the misery he saw every day. Because of how little they had to eat, because of the sunken looks in their eyes. Because his clothes were clean every day, he had a bath at the end of the day, because he was fed a real meal, and they ate from the same trough as the dogs. He was laying on a bed stuffed with goose down and linen sheets. They slept on a narrow wooden pallet on the beaten earth in a shack.
Fenris knew it was just his master's fancy to have him inside the manor, in such conditions, and that he had no real say in it. But he hated that it was him, when there were so many other people who could use the warmth, the bath, the food, the clothes more.
He knew this was just how it was. He knew there was nothing else, could never be anything else. He knew that. But… A part of him still broke for it. His heart still ached for all of it.
But… no.
This was their existence. Everything was exactly how it had always been. There was nothing wrong with it.
Was there?
