xxiv.

"Alyss? What?"

"Where is Alyss supposed to be doing her assignment?" She yelled, frustration getting her out of her senses.

"I believe in the northwestern regions." Halt answered.

"Wait, what?"

"They are all young women, Will. Were they all blond and fair skinned?"

"I…" There was no need for him to confirm it. His eyes grew wide with panic as he slowly realized what was happening.

"They aren't just hunting farmers for the fun of it, Will, they are killing anyone that could be me. They are hoping I'm still going around the countryside and that they can finish me off before I can get to you. Alyss is obviously taller than I am, but at a distance it's a little harder to distinguish actual height; you should know better than anyone."

"But they can't…"

"They've done it before and will do it now until they find me." She replied.

Halt just had time to reach out his arm and stop Will from running out of the room. "Let's not take hurried decisions. We need to think this thoroughly before doing anything. You know, the council is actually getting somewhere—amazing how time shortage makes everyone agree, at least on the broader scale—and we need all of you here. As a matter of fact, you could say all we need is for Gilan to be back."

"When will that be?" Horace asked. In her mind, Maiah thanked the knight for asking the question she knew she couldn't ask.

"He started east about a week ago," Halt replied glad to be able to review it out loud to make more sense of it. "He should have arrived there the day before yesterday or yesterday and let's say he takes four to five days poking around and hopefully finding nothing out of place, that'd bring him back towards the end of next week. Well, perhaps we don't even have time to wait for him. Maiah?"

"That they are around hunting may give us some more time, actually." She said, trying to push away any other thoughts. "It means their forces have been delayed—either because they need it or because they can't do anything about it—and are trying to buy time by sending scouts ahead."

She didn't add the fact that it also meant they were preparing to take a more diplomatic approach—which didn't go with Alia—and terrorize Araluen before asking for her head as their trade for peace. It wasn't that she was afraid, although she was slightly dreading facing Alia when the time came, but rather that she didn't want to scare them without having to. Gilan already knew and that was enough for the moment although she felt it would be smart for her to tell Halt as well.

"Is it sure then?" Horace asked obviously asking what the council needed. Even if he wasn't in it at this point, he knew it would be important for future connections. "Can we be certain we have more time?"

"Nothing is a hundred percent certain when you are dealing with human beings." Maiah said and felt a little better when Halt looked her way with a faint smile in his lips. The other three had a more surprised expression. "But I can say more than three fourths of the probability is on our side. We do have time, at least until the raids in the countryside are over for some time."

"We can't really keep the people out there getting killed and use them as our time keepers!" Cassandra said, jumping to her feet and staring the others down under her glare. "They are human beings! Keep them out there like our cattle for those men—or women, whatever—to hunt them until they are finished with every single woman and girl they can find and then what? Oh, we are out of time. We can start planning our move now."

"You know it won't happen that way," Horace countered. He knew Araluen wasn't that brutal. As a matter of fact, they were probably already doing something to fix things with the farmers; he wasn't an idealist, thinking they would pay them every single penny for their loses, but knew King Duncan wouldn't let his people die. On the other hand, however, he also had to think of the rest of the country; not everyone was a female farmer in the west of the island and if a few lives could save an entire kingdom they had to take the chance.

"Then how else?" Cassandra turned harshly on Horace, making the knight flinch back.

"We can't decide everything here." Halt said. "I will take it to the council first thing tomorrow for us to reach a conclusion. As much as you try, your majesty, just one of us can't really make a difference."

Cassandra pouted and crossed her arms over her chest but she knew there was no sense in arguing with Halt's reasonable path of action. It still didn't stop her from shooting daggers in Will's and Horace's way when they smirked at the mention of her official addressing.

"What about Alyss?" Will asked, obviously more concerned about the courier than anything else.

"Now we can get to that." Halt said making it sound like he was joking though when Maiah looked up at him she only saw his serious face. "The only ones who can assign you anywhere are the King and Crowley and although I am sure the latter will understand, I am not so sure the King, and the council, will want to spare you so soon after you've come back."

"Then just say he's going back to check on the farmers." Cassandra put it. She feared their foolish system would later make them regret not taking special measures.

"That could work, couldn't it?" Horace said, unable to bear the desperation he saw in his friend's eyes. "I mean…right, Halt?"

"Yes, of course it would. I should tell Crowley about it—though at this point I think the King has taken control of everything as the head of the council." Of course he didn't tell them there was a probability they decided to send someone else to check on the farmers in which case their plan would fail its main purpose.

As she lay in bed that night, Maiah wondered if she should have pushed herself further and stop being a coward. She could have told them what the true solution for it would be: to turn her in. But she had preferred to stay safe behind their armies and watch these people she had initially wanted to save, die because she was too scared to turn herself in. It is not for sure that they will stop their advance, she told herself. It was true, with Alia's ever-changing mind it was impossible to foresee her next move except for accepting it would be something rash and possibly not successful. Nevertheless, it would surely stop their hunting innocent farmers.

She could have told Halt about it just like she had told Gilan. However, she couldn't picture herself doing so. Had she only told Gilan because she needed reassurance they wouldn't hand her over? Had she really told him because she wanted to save Araluen the bloodshed, or because she had wanted his pity and the strange yet pleasing flutter she felt when he held her in his arms?

She had come to realize she missed that uncertainty he gave her even though at first she had been glad it was gone. More often than not, she found herself wishing she had said something else when they had been together. Yet, what would that have been? All she could have hoped for was a proper goodbye. Was it that the wave hadn't been proper? They had only spent a few weeks together on a business mission; she couldn't expect him to pour out his heart like if they were good friends since childhood. Or like if she was a special cook, owner of a small restaurant back in Redmont fief. Even if she didn't want to let herself lean in that direction, she couldn't feel a sharp stab of bitterness towards Jenny. It wasn't so much that he thought day and night about her or that he got a glassy eyed looked after seeing her, but rather the fact that she could find no consolation in Jenny's response; the girl knew she had everything she could wish for and corresponded him just like she was expected to. Could she blame her then? At least this way she knew it would be fine when she was gone.

But she had wanted to. In a way, she guessed at least she had gotten part of the experience and for someone like her that should be enough. They had not brought her up with—even hinted at—the idea. She was, after all, a soldier of the ruler—whichever one she chose—who had no business in what did not fit her role. Even if it wasn't like that in Araluen, she had a duty and thus no private life whatsoever; nothing that would take away from her work or endanger her country because of it. And that included anyone who could make her doubt a decision if it came to saving her country or an individual.

Knowing if she said anything else on the subject she would end up weeping, and she had done enough of that lately, she turned in her bed away from the window and pulled her knees to her chest like she had done so many times back when Prowessa had kicked her around. Like back then, she also felt the prickling pain in her stomach and chest that came after a long beating and curling up it eased away at least a little. This time, however, she wondered if it would simply fade into a bruise when she awoke the next morning.

She dusted her hand on her shirt and stood upright, perusing the jungle below them in the twilight. To her side, her mentor looked around with the same sneering expression she always wore, though the nose wasn't as scrunched and her brow wasn't as low telling Maiah she was in her good mood. Still, something warned her to keep things as they were and not push it.

They went down along the small creek, Maiah close behind her mentor though still farther than arm's length since that gave her more time to run if, for any reason, Prowessa turned back to swat her. It was a complicated path and more often than not she had had to rethink her hand holds when she recognized a poisonous fungus growing on the place where her hand would have gone otherwise; Prowessa had obviously known about them and took care of herself, but it would need more than good mood for her mentor to remember the thing that followed her around at her request was actually alive and could, by default, die of poisoning.

"Up you go, monkey." Prowessa's deep voice said, startling her. Maiah looked up the tree trunk before them, the lowest branches were at least eight meters above the ground, and asked herself how in the world she expected her to do it. She had learned, however, in moments like this one it was best to take a long time "preparing" and meanwhile watch what her mentor did so that she would follow. Even if it didn't completely save her from a scolding, at least it wasn't as severe and humiliating as if she asked what she was supposed to do.

Thus, she busied herself looking through her sack and arranging her bow to get it out of the way and allow her to climb. From the corner of her eye she saw Prowessa roll her eyes and lift her hand in the air, finishing her motion by slapping Maiah on the back of the head before pulling out three little steel rods from the gaps between the first four knives on her belt. Reaching up as far as she could, Prowessa buried one of the rods into the tree about a third of the way in. The second she put about knee-length as a foot hold to push herself up to dig the third one. After that, she forgot of the lowest one and simply continued to pull herself up by digging the top two.

Upon closer inspection of her own tools, Maiah saw the rods had a sharp end which cut smoothly through the bark yet gripped strong enough to allow her to climb up to the first branches, from where she could make her way to the middle branches without tools. Once there, she settled for the night following Prowessa's example and making sure she tied the rope around her tightly so she wouldn't fall while she slept. In just a few minutes, exhaustion had conquered them.

There was a strange feeling on her chest. It seemed to crush her, suffocating her as it threatened to break her ribcage and deflate her lungs. At the same time, it brought a welcomed warmth that made her feel slightly safer once she recalled she was meters from the ground. She would have gone back to sleep had she not felt the hot breath on her face making her eyes fly open in fear only to find the bared fangs centimeters from her nose. Had she been able to, her breathing would have accelerated and she would have screamed; instead, all she could do was stare straight into the yellow eyes of the jaguar as they bore through her hungrily.

Like every time the jaguar came to her dreams, when she was finally able to open her eyes and untangle the sheets from her body she realized the scream had stuck to her throat and she hadn't made a sound. She wondered if it was because of how scared she was or if it had something to do with the fact that the first three times she had screamed in her sleep Prowessa had whipped her and left her out all night. Whatever the case, she was glad she hadn't attracted any attention this time around.

Although she knew it had been a dream, it always reassured her to feel the scar of the four claws going down her chest; if it was still slick and dry it meant it hadn't really come at all. Nevertheless, the rest of the memory came as she wiped away the cold sweat and laid back down. Despite all the beatings and hurtful words Prowessa had given her throughout her life, she still was grateful for that night. The jaguar had turned her shirt into a bloody mess and left her shaking and feeling like she was about to die, but if her mentor hadn't been there to shoot the pair of arrows that sent the animal down the tree and later to carry her down and to the healer a mile away, she would have died for sure. It had let her know there was—way deep inside and never able to resurface again—a human being in Prowessa.