The Seer - eARC (15 page)

She thought the tone a lie. She searched her visions, frustrated at the fog-filled traces that led out of this moment. She should never have stopped practicing. A bit late for that understanding.

For all the half-seen flashes and muttering voices the future revealed now that she had opened the door again, as she peered along the dim paths that led forward, she saw only darkness.

There must be a way, a thread that led through the next handful of heartbeats, that would take her past the approaching wall.

She struggled harder. A cacophony of sounds grew, each crowing about what might yet be, a tumbling and turning, a thousand voices muttering, talking, screaming. Then a pinpoint of light. She hurled herself forward toward it, fear propelling her. She overshot her destination, went far distant.

A familiar scent of breath. A smile on a face that didn’t smile.

She opened her eyes. He stared down at her.

“You are foreseeing,” he said, watching her.

“Yes.”

“Tell me what.”

Relief flooded her, pouring over the many layers of vision, the myriad of noisy futures.

This—his curiosity—was the thread she had been searching for. She held tight to it while she opened herself to the dictates of foresight. Under his grip and weight she went limp, not fighting, letting herself sink into this moment and the very next.

The way he watched her, somehow he could tell her plans.

No plans. No thought.

On the ground beside her, fallen leaves brushed her the skin of her pinned arms. The breeze filled the air with the scent of pine and bark, of grasses and rotting leaves.

It was quiet now. No wind, no bird calls. No squirrels.

“Amarta. Tell me what you foresaw.”

Before the reason and terror made her reconsider, obedient to vision, she lifted and turned her head, pressing her neck into the edge of the knife he held at her throat. His eyes flickered, and he pulled the knife away, a little, shifting his balance. Not much, but enough.

Twist hard
, vision said, and she did, all at once rolling to follow his slight movement, hard and fast.

The weight change took both of them into a half roll onto the dirt where he came off her. She kept twisting as vision demanded, hands now under her, pushing against the ground to keep herself rolling.

Now he was on his feet, knife in hand, stepping toward her where she sat on the ground looking up at him. She groped for the next move, pushing away panic, surrendering to the guiding whispers.

Move thus
, they said, so she did. She tensed, twisted, and kicked from where she lay prone, at what was empty air, just as he stepped onto the spot. Not hard enough to hurt him, of course, but enough to force him to step to the side instead of forward, giving her another heartbeat of time. In that heartbeat she leapt to her feet and started to run.

He was right behind her. Vision gave her a particular feel as a hand reached for her hair. She shook her head sharply. The hand missed. When it came again she ducked and it grabbed empty air.

Deep in a flickering foresight, she saw him move, right before he did. She sidestepped. He lunged. She stopped suddenly, and turned in place. He stumbled past.

He froze where he stood, looking at her. He understood now, she could see from his expression. As he was considering what to do next, vision told her to go, and she did, turning to run, glancing back as she stumbled ahead on the road.

He took the bow off his back. A moment later she felt a pressure, a craving to stop, to step to the right, to brush a particular tree trunk as she passed, so she did. An arrow hissed by her ear, sinking into the ground beyond.

She launched away from the tree, a sprint forward, dodging bushes, running as fast as she could.

An arrow through the air, a finger width from her neck.

Suddenly she felt light-headed, giddy. The future knew where he would aim better than he did, and the future was hers. She sprinted past trees, bushes, mind jumping between now and a heartbeat ahead.

He was following, but he had to slow to put an arrow to his bow, take aim, and shoot, and he fell behind as she ran.

The pressure again. She stepped to the left, heard the arrow sink into a nearby tree.

Then something shifted. The next moment narrowed to a pinpoint, and the dark wall returned. Two options unfolded: an arrow through her ribs, or a fall to the ground.

She let herself fall, realizing as she went down that she had misstepped, ankle twisting painfully under her as she went down. Something bit through her shoulder, and she landed heavily on the dirt and leaves, pain shooting through her leg.

The pain broke her concentration. Fear came flooding back. Vision became blurry, indecipherable. She rolled over onto her back, reached for her aching shoulder, momentarily confused by the red wetness on her fingers. His last arrow had sliced through her shirt and skin like a knife.

Above her leaves flickered in the breeze like small blades. A crow called.

He stood over her now, bow in hand, arrow notched and pointed at her chest. She groped inwardly, searching for the map that had guided her thus far, but her mind was clear of anything but pain and terror. She gasped a sob, forced herself to stare up at him through her watering eyes.

“Where are your visions now, Amarta?”

Not a mocking tone. He was truly curious.

“Gone,” she whispered, feeling all at once weak. “All gone. Before you kill me, tell me why. Please.”

He was silent. Could he be undecided? He lowered the bow the smallest bit. “If I let you live, will you promise me you won’t try to escape?”

Amarta tried to think, swallowed. Somehow he could discern a lie. But she would say anything to live. “Yes,” she said.

He laid the bow on the ground behind him, knelt just out of her reach. “Don’t give me reason to reconsider.”

“I won’t,” she said, meaning the words as she said them.

He pulled away the loose cloth of her shirt, and she tensed against the pain, whimpered. He took out a strip of cloth from his pack and pressed where she’d been sliced.

“It will heal. This will stop the bleeding.”

“Then you won’t kill me?”

“I still have the option, Seer.”

“Why are you chasing me?”

He reached into another sleeve, drew out a small leather case and from that a thin piece of metal. “There’s tincture on this dart,” he said. “Enough to make you sleep, not to harm you. I think this may stop your visions for a time. What do you think?”

What should she say? She nodded.

“We’ll see,” he said. “You understand me, girl? You’ll cooperate?”

“Yes.”

He put one hand on her leg to hold it steady. His other hand, the one with the dart, was already moving toward her leg when vision came upon her again, strong and urgent.

She moved suddenly, a sharp twitch. Instead of going into her leg, the dart went deep into his hand.

Then she twisted in the other direction, escaping his hold, and scrabbled back and away on the ground. He pulled the dart out of his hand, tossed it away, and put his hand to his mouth, sucking and spitting onto the ground.

What had she done? She cringed, backing farther away.

From his sleeve he snapped out his knife and stood. A step toward her, and he swayed slightly. His hand opened, the knife fell to the dirt.

He dropped to his knees and hands, hands flat on the ground, still watching her.

“Your visions come back?” His voice was slow, slurred.

She nodded uncertainly. Was he really this drugged, this fast? Could it be a trick?

She sought guidance from her visions, but they were again silent.

“Why are you after me?” she asked.

He lowered himself to the ground, still watching her.

“Why?”

He blinked twice, then his eyes closed.

Ignoring the agonizing pain in her ankle and the ache in her shoulder, she struggled to her feet. She looked back at him where he lay now motionless on the ground. Then she turned and limped home to the farmhouse.

She and Dirina stuffed what they could into their bags. Amarta looked around their small room, trying to keep the weight off her throbbing foot. What more could they carry?

“What do we tell Enana?” she asked.

“Nothing. Just go.”

“Where we go?” Pas asked, grabbing a shirt at random and offering it to Amarta.

“Without even saying good-bye?”

Dirina hesitated in her packing, not looking up, tone edged. “Do you have another plan, Amarta?”

“No.”

“The less she knows, the safer she is.”

Dirina was right. But it felt wretched, after all the family had done for them.

“We can’t take food from them, and we have no money. Where are we going? What will we do?”

“That’s what I was wondering,” came Enana’s voice from the doorway.

At that, Pas ran to Enana, and she lifted him into her arms. The tall woman walked into their room, balancing the boy on her hip. Pas turned to look at his mother and Amarta, thumb in his mouth.

“Is this the same man after you?”

“Yes,” Amarta said softly.

Enana had been so good to them, taking them in at midwinter, feeding them, letting them stay. What a wretched way to repay her, leaving now, before harvest, when they were needed most.

Amarta saw the hunter again in memory, lying there, his bow and knife a few feet away on the ground.

Why hadn’t she taken them? She felt a fool now, thinking of it. It would have been so easy to just pick up his weapons and take them away.

Or, she realized with a chill, she could have taken an arrow from his pack, aimed for his heart, and let it loose. Standing right over him, surely she could not miss.

He could have been stopped, right then, for good.

“We’re sorry,” Dirina was saying. “So sorry. The wash is half done, and Amarta dropped all the groceries from market in the woods—”

“Down now,” Pas said very soberly. Enana let him to the ground. He ran to his mother, hugged her leg.

Maybe the hunter would not wake at all. Maybe he lied to her about the dart not being deadly, and she had inadvertently killed him. She paused, wondering if this was likely. Reason said no.

And what would he do when he woke?

A dark figure in the night, a crescent moon at the treeline. He knocked on the farmhouse door. Enana’s silhouette against the lamplight from inside. His tone was apologetic, gentle. Charming.

She felt suddenly ill.

“We’ll go upriver,” Amarta said quickly. “Back to Sennant. Or—”

Dirina looked a question at her.

“Home to Botaros,” Amarta continued, making her tone as certain as she knew how, catching Dirina’s gaze. When the shadow hunter came to ask Enana questions, Amarta wanted her to have answers.

“This man,” Enana said. “Where did you say he was now?”

“He attacked Amarta in the forest,” Dirina said, her hand on Pas’s head. Amarta willed her sister not to say the rest, but she did. “Asleep on the ground, from poison on a dart. You said, Amarta.”

“Yes,” Amarta said reluctantly, “But—”

Enana’s expression turned hard. “Tell us where he is. I’ll take the boys out there and we can take care of him where he lies.”

Hope surged inside her. Was this possible? Enana and her two sons. Big men. Surely they could take one unconscious man.

Back at the house, the hunter in the cellar, a makeshift bolt across the door. Enana and her sons sitting at the table, discussing what to do with him, what would be right. What would be just. And then—

They would bring him back to the house, yes, and lock him in the cellar with the apples and the preserves. But sometime before dawn—

Enana in her bed, slumped over, arms twitching, blood trailing down her neck, the blankets soaked in red.

He would break free of the basement. The men would die first, quickly, but Enana slowly, after being asked questions.

And this because Enana and her family would not, could not, take the life of a man who had yet to do them wrong.

“He’ll kill you,” she said flatly.

“One man?” Enana snorted.

“No,” Amarta lied. “He’s not alone this time. He has a whole band of outlaws with him, hiding in the woods.” She licked her lips, looking at Dirina. “Twenty or thirty. All armed with crossbows and swords. They’re killers, Enana. Brutal killers.”

“But they’re only after us,” Dirina added. “You and Cafir and Loham will be safe without us.”

Enana frowned. “But I don’t want you to go. We could hide you. The basement—”

Amarta shook her head. “He’ll find us.”

The tall woman looked between them both, anger sharp across her features. “No one tells me what to do—”

Amarta stepped close and took Enana’s hands. “We must leave, and soon. So much safer for you.”

Enana’s pressed her lips together. Then spoke, her tone low. She was still angry. “I have coins I can give you. I’ll pack you some food.”

Amarta hid her relief as she saw the future’s tangle of threads twist a new way. Enana might live through the hunter’s visit.

What could she do to make it more likely?

“Enana,” Amarta said urgently. “He’ll come here. He’ll ask you questions. He can read a lie. Tell him everything you know about us. Let him in, feed him, give him drink.”

Enana turned around slowly, her expression darkening further. “I won’t feed a killer who forces you from my house. No one comes into my home I don’t let in. Not even the king’s soldiers with their manners of goats and brains of chickens. No one.”

Amarta’s ankle and shoulder were throbbing for attention now, distracting her. Dimly she thought she heard Enana cry out in pain, but it might be her imagination. Everything seemed to suck away her focus. “He’s worse than the king’s soldiers. Please, Enana, don’t fight him.”

“You want me to show him hospitality, this monster? To treat him well?”

“Yes.”

“There is no sense in this.”

“And,” Amarta whispered, struggling with the last of her focus to seek a toehold in the future, not just for tonight, but farther, farther, “it will be dry until a tenday before the new moon. Then the rain will come all at once for three days, then stop.” With that, Enana would know how to best harvest, when to cut the hay. If she believed it.