Straying From the Path (7 page)

Footsteps sounded behind him. She looked over his shoulder and saw a doctor flanked by a couple of orderlies enter the corridor.

“Hey! Stop there!” The doctor pointed and started running.

“All these bloody doors lock on the outside,” Ned muttered. “Here, open that one.”

She stared. The door had no handle, no visible hinges or latches. Ned hissed a breath of frustration and bumped a red light panel on the wall with his elbow. The door popped in with a little gasp of hydraulics.

He pushed through into what turned out to be a supply closet, about ten foot square, filled with shelves and boxes, and barely enough room to turn around. He set her on the floor and began pushing plastic tubs at the door. He soon had enough of a blockade to stop their pursuers from shoving through right away. He kept piling, though, while the people outside pounded on the door and shouted.

Madeline cowered on the floor, her legs stuck out awkwardly. “You can’t dance for both of us, and I’m too big for you to carry me through.”

“Yes.”

“You shouldn’t have come. Now you’re caught too.”

“But I’m with you,” he said, turning to her with the brightest, most sincere smile she had ever seen. “It makes all the difference.” He went back to throwing boxes on the stack.

She caught her breath and wondered what she’d have to do to see that smile again.

“Help me stand.” She hooked her fingers on a shelving post as far above her as she could reach and pulled. Grunting, she shifted her weight to try and get her feet under her.

“Madeline, good god what are you doing?”

“Standing. Help me.”

He went to her and pulled her arm over his shoulders, reaching his own arm around her waist. Slowly, he raised her. She straightened her legs, and her feet stayed where she put them.

There. She was standing. She clenched her jaw. Her calves were exploding with pain.

“Do you think there’s a door in here?” she said, her voice tight.

“There’re doors everywhere. But you can’t—”

“We have to.”

“But—”

“I can. Help me.”

He sighed, adjusting his grip so he supported her more firmly. “Right. What should we dance?”

She took a breath, cleared her mind so she could think of a song. She couldn’t even tap her toe to keep a beat. She began humming. The song sounded out of tune and hopeless in her ears.

“Ravel. ‘Pavane for a Dead Princess,’” Ned said. “Come on, dear, you’re not done yet. One and two and—”

She held her breath and moved her right leg. It did move, the foot dragging, and she leaned heavily on Ned because she didn’t dare put any weight on it. Then the left foot. She whimpered a little. Ned was right behind her, stepping with her.

The pavane had the simplest steps she could think of. At its most basic, it was little more than walking very slowly—perfect for a crippled dancer. It was also one of the most graceful, stately, elegant dances ever invented. Not this time. She couldn’t trust her legs. She dragged them forward and hoped they went where they needed to be. Ned wasn’t so much dancing with her as lurching, ensuring she stayed upright.

There was a kind of power, even in this: bodies moving in desperation.

She tried to keep humming, but her voice jerked, pain-filled, at every step. They hummed together, his voice steadying her as his body did.

Then came a turn. She attempted it—a dance was a dance, after all. Put the left foot a little to the side, step out—

Her leg collapsed. She cried out, cutting the sound off mid-breath. Ned caught her around the waist and leaned her against the shelving. This gave her something to sit on, a little support.

Without missing a beat, he took her hand and stepped a half-circle around her. He held her hand lightly, elevated somewhat, and tucked his other hand behind his back. Perfect form.

“This just doesn’t feel right if I’m not wearing a ruff,” he said, donning a pompous, aristocratic accent.

Hiccupping around stifled tears, she giggled. “But I like being able to see your neck. It’s a handsome neck.”

“Right, onto the age of disco then.”

The banging on the door was loud, insistent, like they’d started using a battering ram, and provided something of a beat. The barricade began to tumble.

“And so we finish.” He bowed deeply.

She started to dip into a curtsey—just the tiniest of curtsies—but Ned caught her and lifted her.

“I think we’re ready.”

She narrowed her eyes and looked a little bit sideways.

Space and time made patterns, the architecture of the universe, and the lines crossed everywhere, cutting through the very air. Sometimes, someone had a talent that let them see the lines and use them.

“There,” Ned said. “That one. A couple of disheveled Edwardians won’t look so out of place there. Do you see it?”

“Yes,” she said, relieved. A glowing line cut before them, and if they stepped a little bit sideways—

She put out her hand and opened the door so they could step through together.

* * *

Lady Petulant’s diamond paid for reconstructive surgery at the best unregistered clinic in Tokyo 2028. Madeline walked out the door and into the alley, where Ned was waiting for her. Laughing, she jumped at him and swung him around in a couple of steps of a haphazard polka.

“Glad to see you’re feeling better,” he said. And there was that smile again.

“Polycarbon filament tissue replacement. I have the strongest tendons in the world now.”

They walked out to the street—searching the crowd of pedestrians, always looking over their shoulders.

“Where would you like to go?” he said.

“I don’t know. It’s not so easy to pick, now that we’re fugitives. Those guys could be anywhere.”

“But we have lots of places to hide. We just have to keep moving.”

They walked for a time along a chaotic street, nothing like a ballroom, the noises nothing like music. The Transit Authority people knew they had to dance; if they were really going to hide, it would be in places like this, where dancing was next to impossible.

But they couldn’t do that, could they?

Finally, Ned said, “We could go watch Rome burn. And fiddle.”

“Hm. I’d like to find a door to the Glen Island Casino. 1939.”

“Glenn Miller played there, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“We could find one, I think.”

“If we have to keep moving anyway, we’ll hit on it eventually.”

He took her hand, pulled her close and pressed his other hand against the small of her back. Ignoring the tuneless crowd, he danced with her.

“Lead on, my dear.”

The prophet stood in a marble chamber of the great palace and broke a princess’s heart by telling her what she already knew, but with an authority she couldn’t deny. The prophet, called the Dreamer, wrapped the coat of a spotted horse tight around herself, the head with its gaping eye holes pulled over her face like a hood. Even so long after the mare’s death the skin smelled like a slaughterhouse, bloody and wet. It had belonged to a dear friend, though, so the Dreamer hugged it close. The mare whispered dreams to her, and she became a prophet.

“Two paths lie before you. In one, you marry for political reasons a man you have never seen. The union brings peace to two warring kingdoms. You will be known as the Just, and history will remember you kindly, as it has not remembered many of your ancestors. But you will always carry regret in your heart.”

The Dreamer’s blood rushed hot, her skin flushed, the horse’s coat grew sticky with her sweat. She held its legs twined around her arms, the bulk of it wrapped around her body. Its weight bent her shoulders. She gazed around the chamber with eyes that were not her own.

“In the other, you marry your true love.” She nodded to the man who stood beside the princess, a distant cousin who had wooed her and won her heart. They clung to each other like vines. “War follows. Ambition. Pride. Strife. You sometimes ask yourself, did he marry you for love or for your throne? But your nights together are sweet until the end.”

The man lunged two great strides, breaking from the princess, who tried to hold him back. Anger made his skin red, and he snarled.

“How dare you? How dare you speak so to the Royal House?”

The spell broke, the air turned cool. The Dreamer took a deep breath, smelling leather now instead of death. The prophecy had ended. She bowed deeply to the royals but did not remove the horse skin cloak.

“Her Highness asked the fortune of her marriage told.”

He wanted to hurt her, she could tell by the way his hands clenched and his body trembled. But he did not dare because she was the Dreamer and no one dared touch her. She had faced kings and emperors more powerful than this whelp and had not flinched.

The princess, a charming girl of eighteen with black hair and cream skin, held her face in her hands. Every monarch confronted these paths: the well-being of their people or the gratification of their own desires. Which would she chose? This was no longer a vague, academic question; her father the king was gravely ill. The Dreamer’s vision had forced the choice on her at last.

“Darling, don’t listen to her.” The beloved tried to laugh, a harsh sound in the room’s stillness. “What is prophecy? We will prove her wrong!”

“Be quiet,” the princess said.

The Dreamer bowed again. “I will take my leave now.”

“Thank you, Dreamer.” The princess sat straight, rigid in her velvet throne. Her eyes dry, she nodded graciously at the Dreamer and did not glance at her princely cousin. She looked as though she had made a decision. Her lover’s violent reaction to the prophecy may have made the choice for her. “Will you stay with us this night? There will be a small feast.”

Her small feast could feed a poor village for a year. Roast peacock, puddings, sugary sauces and brandied fruits; a warm night in a feather bed. They always invited her to stay for the feast, no matter how dire her predictions.

“Thank you, Your Highness, but no. The road calls me.”

The Dreamer left the marble chamber, the palace, and found the road leading out of the kingdom. The princess’s grandchildren would hear stories of this day.

Out of sight of the palace, she stopped, folded Falla’s skin, magically tanned and cured, and tucked it deep in her rucksack. Also in the sack: a change of clothes—skirt, shirt, tunic, and stockings; a wool blanket for sleeping; a water skin and some travel fare; and a book of poetry and ballads, a last gift from her father. She loved books.

She walked with the sack over her shoulder and a straw hat on her head, and became a common traveler, a scholar on the road between libraries. The librarian’s daughter.

Years ago, when she still lived with her father, a librarian to the King of a now distant realm, Elsa used to sneak into the royal stables after supper to feed carrots to the horses. She went in the evenings, when the place was quiet, after the animals had been fed and the grooms were away eating their own suppers. The grooms didn’t like her disturbing the royals steeds.

Her favorite was the spotted mare, the familiar of the King’s Wizard. She looked like a court jester, brown spots of all shapes and sizes splashed over her white coat. After the first time Elsa gave her a carrot, Falla always waited for her, head leaned as far out over the door to her stall as she could manage. After such a greeting, how could Elsa stay away? Falla let Elsa scratch her neck, her ears, the spot between her ears, where she couldn’t scratch herself. The mare sighed and let her lips quiver with pleasure. When Elsa looked into the mare’s large dark eyes, to try and learn what the animal was thinking, Falla rested her muzzle on Elsa’s shoulder and breathed warm air on her neck. And Elsa, tears in her eyes, thought: How wonderful to have this large, warm creature trust me.

For ten years now, since she was fifteen, Elsa traveled where the roads led her and did not mind the way. She appeared at the front gates of castles, palaces, cathedrals and guild halls when she was needed, as if she’d been called. Sometimes, messengers on winded horses found her, begged her to come with them even as they panted for breath. Life or death might depend on the dreams she had when she wore Falla’s skin.

Sometimes, though, she lived for herself. She went to Brewersville for its festival because she wanted a mug of fresh cider.

Anonymously, she bought her mug from a vendor set up with a dozen other tents and stalls in the large field outside the town. Musicians played, local folk who brought out their instruments perhaps twice a year, but made twice as merry because of that. In the center of the ring of wood and canvas merchant stalls, a crowd danced the ground to dust. She took her cider to a quiet spot, a tree with a view of the crowd but outside the paths of travel, outside notice. She sat with her back to its trunk, her pack at her feet, and rested.

She had begun to find it difficult to talk to people.

She would go the whole day without speaking to another soul, except to say thanks to the folk who sold her food and drink. She’d leave the town before nightfall, sleep on the open road, far from people. The music drew her, but she couldn’t bring herself to join the dance. She wasn’t sure she could open her mouth without prophesying, even to laugh with the crowd.

“A pretty girl like you should be smiling on a festival day.”

The figure spoke as he moved to block her view of the field. He might have stepped out of a ballad in the book, he looked so much the part of a rogue. Young, he had just a shadow of a beard and short, dark hair, a firm jaw and cocky half-grin. Worn leather boots contrasted with fine leather breeches dyed gray, and a leather jerkin opened over a loose linen shirt. He wore a knife at his belt, a pouch over his shoulder, and stood with his arms crossed, considering her.

Dumbly, she stared. She stood apart, a seeress, a legend, and she had long since stopped thinking of herself as anything like pretty.

“Tell me, what is the matter?”

She had to remember words and took a deep breath before speaking. “Thinking dark thoughts, I suppose.”

“May I join you?”

“In thinking dark thoughts? How could I stop you?”

He sat beside her in the grass.

“I am Conrad. You are?”

Being flirted at, and the novelty of it startled her. “Elsa.”

“Elsa. Very good to meet you.”

She didn’t have a clue what to say next. She’d spent her childhood in libraries and her young adulthood wandering at the whim of a haunted horse skin.

He rescued her from a confused silence. “Will you dance with me?”

She grinned at him like he’d sprouted mule’s ears. “Do young men always come right up to women and ask them to dance?”

“Yes, they do. You must be from a strange kingdom, if you’ve never before been asked to dance.”

The kingdom Elsa came from was not much different than this one, which was part of the reason she’d stopped here to rest. But the road between this one and that was a long one, and she frowned thinking of it.

Sensing the change in her mood, Conrad urged more gently. “Come, dance. Just a round or two. It will distract you from your troubles, whatever they are.”

He stood with a noble flourish, bowing as he offered his hand. His eyes were alight. His smile seemed honest. Elsa took his hand, and suddenly could not remember the last time she’d touched another living creature. She’d missed the warmth, the blood.

She danced until her heart pounded. Arms flung, legs working, bow and turn, circle with another couple, and there Conrad was to take her hand again and lead her back to the start. His gaze never left her, and she only had to see his face again to smile. Bow, cross, turn, bow again, her skirt swept behind her, the musicians quickened the beat, and she kept pace until she thought she’d trip and fall.

In one movement, a couple would touch hands briefly as they crossed to the other side of the line. It was meant to be tantalizing, a moment of flirtation, of seduction. The music lingered at the step, as though to tempt. Once, after Elsa had lost count of the rounds, she and Conrad came to this step. Instead of the touch, he picked her up. Took her by her waist, lifted her, held her close so their bodies pressed together, then he set her in her new place in the dance with a touch to her cheek. This audacity wasn’t unheard of, it had happened before—when a man had a particular fancy for the girl he danced with.

The musicians stopped for rest and drink, and the dancers paused to catch their breaths. Conrad kept Elsa by his side by holding her hand.

This wasn’t meant to happen to her. She walked in gray spaces.

And he—perhaps he really was a rogue from a legend. Perhaps that was why he’d found her, legend to legend.

“You’re a thief,” she said.

He grinned a sly fox grin. “Why do you say that?”

“You’ve got that air about you. You’re famous for it, I imagine.” By this time she had some experience with legends and thought she was right. In the stories about highwaymen and professional scoundrels, when such men weren’t utterly reprehensible, they were handsome and dashing. They swept girls off their feet. Stories were true sometimes, Elsa knew that very well.

She touched his cheek, ran her hand on the stubble. He felt warm, rough, giving.

He took her hands and pressed a coin into them. “We’re both thirsty. Buy us a flask of wine. I’ll be waiting where we left our packs.” He kissed her cheek and smiled.

The head groom warned her that the Wizard would not like her playing with Falla. But Elsa kept on, because it was so clear the mare longed for such attention. For her part, Elsa didn’t like the Wizard. He wore black leather armor, rings in his ears, and he scowled and cursed. When he had to consult with her father, the librarian and great scholar, the Wizard treated him like a common servant. Even the King was a little afraid of him. He was powerful. He had called rain from blue sky, had changed lead to gold. He rode out on his spotted mare to slay dragons and returned with the horns of the beasts slung on his saddle, the mare prancing with pride.

He was kind enough to Falla in his own way, petting her, speaking to her. But he never fed her carrots or scratched her ears. Nonetheless, Falla kept close by him, whenever he was near. Elsa’s father said Falla was his familiar, and his magic was bound to her, or came through her. But Elsa didn’t think the Wizard loved the mare.

Elsa didn’t go to buy the wine. She went away from Conrad, toward the market stalls and out of his sight. Then she slipped between a bread merchant’s stand and a fruit seller’s and went around back, made her quiet way to the copse at the edge of the market, and found a view of the tree, a strong oak that guarded the market square, where they’d left their packs together.

And there he was, crouched by her pack, searching inside it.

She stepped from her hiding place and went to him. “You are a thief. I knew it,” she said, smiling. She wasn’t angry. She had no valuables except the book, and she could see why a well-stuffed bag like hers would attract attention.

He hardly noticed her. He didn’t flinch with surprise or even glance up at her approach. Stricken, he was staring at something he’d found in her pack. He said, “And you’re the Dreamer. The prophet. Here’s the spotted horse’s coat the tales speak of. You’re her.”

She sat with him. When she moved to touch his shoulder, he cringed. He pushed himself away from her and the pack, propping himself against the tree trunk.

“What of it?” she said, a bit sadly. With him, she had almost felt normal, just a girl at a market dance.

“I never expected—I didn’t think to find—” He stared at her pack with the blank, shocked expression of someone to whom she’d just delivered a prophecy. Good or bad, they never knew what to do with her visions.

“You flirted with me just to distract me and steal from me.”

He huffed at her disbelieving tone. “It is a common enough strategy, milady. All the better when the woman’s pretty.”

The musicians were playing again, but their music sounded distant, and Elsa felt as though she heard the laughter of the townsfolk through the haze of sleep. Sun scattered flecks of light through the tree branches; their place here was shaded and separate. A breeze made the leaves rustle.

“You really think I’m pretty?”

He laughed a little and wouldn’t look at her. “You’re not supposed to be here, part of the world with the rest of us.” He made it sound like she’d done something wrong, being here with him and pretty as well.

“And what of you? You’re a famous highwayman, I know it.” He had to be, a dashing thief, a flirting rogue. “Tell me which one. The Raptor? Oslo of Pinnace? Robin of the Greenwood?” All were stories in her father’s book.