The Seer: Chapter Nine

    “I like this, Diri. I want to stay,” Amarta said softly to Dirina as they lay together on blankets by the fire, Pas between them.

    Warm. Fed. The smell of woodsmoke. Spices in the air from the stew, surely the best stew she had ever eaten.

    “We’ll have to prove we’re worth it,” Dirina whispered back.

    Amarta rolled onto her back and stared at the rafters overhead and wondered what made a person valuable enough to feed and shelter them.

    Not her visions, certainly. As she looked at her sister and nephew, she realized that this morning on the raft, but for a few inches of luck, they would have had arrows through them. Because of her.

    In memory she saw the hunter’s eyes watching her, bow raised.

    There was no reason for anyone to come after Dirina and Pas, except for her.

    With that, she made a decision: she would do no more foreseeing. Her visions were why they had been forced to leave every place they ever might have called home. It was what made people hate and fear them. Here they had a chance, with Enana and her sons, whom Amarta already liked enough that the thought of staying was a fullness of hope, filling her chest the way the stew filled her belly.

    They would prove themselves. They would work hard. And Amarta would not speak of her visions. Not to anyone.

    Another look at her sister, who had drifted off to sleep in exhaustion, and Pas, with his mouth open, his beautiful face sweet in the peace of sleep.

    This was what she wanted for her family: food, warmth, and a safe place to sleep.

    Better, she thought, would be to not have the visions at all, ever again.

    So, she resolved, she would bury them. Deep in the ground, like some bit of rotten meat, where they would not be able to hurt anyone.

 

---

 

    In the months that followed they threw themselves into the work, doing everything possible to help the family. Washing, mending, cooking. Planting seeds. Weeding.

    Dirina made sure Pas was never a burden, always keeping him close by, warning him not to bother anyone, until it became clear that he had already charmed Enana and her sons, who were happy to supply him a lap or a hug and tell him stories at night.

    When they left the farmhouse with Enana to go to the market, Amarta wore clothes as loose and baggy as possible, hair cut short and ragged the way the boys did here. She talked little, kept her head down, pitched her voice as deep as she could, and called herself by another name.

    But mostly she kept to the farm. There was a lot of work, but it seemed easy, and she realized that it was the company that made it so; she had never before met people so willing to laugh, to make light of any difficulty, and to give each other a gentle brush or squeeze as they went through the day.

    Spring became summer, longer days letting them do more in the fields, collect wild herbs, stack wood for winter. Harvest promised a good yield, if the rains came when they should.

    But no — she pushed that thought firmly away. The rains would come when they did. She did not know any more about the rains than anyone else.

    Bit by bit, Enana trusted them, giving them work to do without her, meals to prepare, even sending one or the other of them to market with a few coins for the grains and fruits and nuts they did not grow themselves.

    Best of all, the whispers of the future grew fainter and fainter until Amarta could barely hear them at all. She had nearly forgotten how much a part of her life they had once been.

    One dawn morning as the soft light of the sun promised another warm day that she felt eager to begin, it finally occurred to Amarta that she was happy.

    She worked even harder.

 

---

 

    Amarta adjusted the pack on her back as she hiked the forest road. She’d found everything Enana wanted except pickled nut paste. Next week, the vendor promised, repeating how sorry he was, despite Amarta’s assurances. By way of apology he had given her a bread roll shot through with thick berry jam.

    She was speechless at this generosity. Perhaps this was what people did when they weren’t busy hating you for knowing too much about them.

    It wasn’t that she was hungry — she ate better now than she could remember — but the roll was special. A sweet gift, something that was hers and only hers. She had forced herself to wait to eat it, wait until she was out of the village market, past the houses, over the brook, and near the halfway point back to the farmhouse, by a hollowed-out cedar. There she paused a moment, took it from her pocket, unwrapped the cloth, and took a bite.

    The buttery bread and tart jam was delicious. Before she knew it, she’d eaten half. Save some for Dirina and Pas, she told herself sternly. She wrapped the rest, put it in a pocket.

    Birdsong and squirrel complaints accompanied a distant hum of flies and bees contentedly going about their summer business. Her bare feet fell comfortably against the packed dirt of the road, calloused from months of barefoot walking made more attractive by her turnshoes having grown tight this last year as she got older.

    A glance up to where pine and oak and maple met thickly overhead told her it was nearly noon, which meant plenty of day left to work the fields or help wherever Enana needed. And to share the rest of the bread roll.

    Around her the underbrush was thick with ferns and flowers. Having learned their names and what they were good for, she was tempted to stay awhile and pick red and white bleeding hearts or blue sour tangle. Even stinging nettles, now that she knew how to harvest them without getting stung. More likely, Enana would appreciate getting the bag of groceries sooner.

    What a change, this life of such pleasurable choices. Living with Enana and her family, she nearly felt she had a home. Indeed, she was now willing to admit, in the privacy of her own heart, Enana reminded her a little of her own mother, so many years gone.

    And all this gladness because she had silenced her visions. It had taken work, but in a way it was also easy: if she didn’t ask herself any questions — not even half-questions or sort-of questions — the visions would not try to answer her.

    Which meant her life was her own. Foreseeing a possible future seemed to draw her onto that path, making her a part of it, no matter what she wanted or intended.

    Two squirrels furiously and noisily chased each other up a tree, over a branch, and leapt across to another trunk. There, she thought; just so: knowing which branch they would take would make no difference. It did not make her bag of groceries lighter. It did not make Enana’s stew taste better.

    The only thing her years of foreseeing had done was cause her and those she loved pain, put their lives in danger. That part of her life was over. Now she was like everyone else. Now she saw only what was in front of her.

    For a brief moment, memory of a dark figure on a horse at the edge of a river.

    No, that was the past. She pushed it away.

    It brushed her, then, the barest chill of vision, like a sharp winter breeze stabbing through this thick, hot summer day. Images tried to form in her mind.

    “No,” she said fiercely, waving her hands as if to brush away flies.

    A deep breath. She inhaled the smells of grass and earth around her, felt the light breeze that brushed her skin.

    She thought of Pas. He would smile when she got back home, dash over to her, reached up to be lifted. She imagined his small fingers. Imagined, not foresaw.

    No visions.

    A nagging feeling came over her. The road before her curved around a blind rise.

    Vision was trying to tell her something. She pushed it away.

    After supper she would play games with Pas. She would teach him new words. Maybe Enana would tell them a story.

    Her steps slowed.

    He couldn’t have tracked them here, not after so long. Could he?

 

---

 

    She stopped, holding her breath. The future was struggling to unfold itself, like a map. She could not stop it from its motion any more than she could stop the moments from coming toward her. But she could decide not to look.

    Resolutely she walked forward. Whatever it was, she would be surprised. Like anyone else.

    Rounding the rise, heart speeding, she expected a dark figure. He would jump out. He would have a bow. An arrow in her chest.

    Instead, shafts of sunlight cut through tall trees, patches of light finding their way to fallen piles of leaves. Bird calls echoed through branches. A high breeze made the treetops sigh.

    There was no one there.

    In the distance she could make out the strand of trees past which was the road that would take her to the farmhouse. She exhaled relief, laughed a little to find that she was not anything more than a girl returning home from market. She shifted the bag to her other shoulder and hurried forward.

    A squirrel poked its head around a tree trunk and stared at her, body and head frozen. Then it twisted, scampered up the tree, and was gone.

    Behind her came the sounds of footsteps.

 

---

 

    Vision came upon her like a huge stove fire: close, heavy, hot. Too strong to press away.

    It shouted at her to drop, and she obeyed, bending her knees as instructed, barely missing the arm that swept over her head.

    Again, vision barked direction and she thrust the bag that had come off her shoulders in the last motion behind, pushing hard. The bag pressed into leather-clad legs, slowed them only slightly. She struggled to her feet, turned.

    For a moment she took him in: dark hair, hands open, empty, a pack and a bow slung across his shoulder.

    He stepped lightly over the spilled bag at his feet and toward her. She turned and ran.

    “Amarta,” he called.

    With part of her mind she realized that it was the first time she had heard his voice. She half remembered hearing it before. Vision or dream?

    The tone was friendly, somewhere between a greeting and bemusement that she was running away. At this she herself might have been confused enough to pause, but vision was not. It told her to run, so she did, and his steps were hard on the dirt behind her.

    The arm came across her face again, and she bit it, or tried to; it was covered in hard leather and pulled her tight against him, wrapping tightly around her head.

    Strange, really, that she had time to think about the taste of leather, that it must be awfully hot to wear that much leather over your arms and legs, here in late summer. Serious, quite serious. About what he was doing. Which was —

    She screamed, howled her rage and resistance. His wrap tightened, burying her face in the leather arm, muffling the cry. Not that it would matter — there was no one nearby to hear.

    Then the arm was gone. Before she could blink, a wad of cloth was stuffed in her mouth, soaked in something sticky and bitter. She began to inhale then realized vision was saying spit. She did, but even so the stink of it burned her lungs and made her eyes water. Her next cry came out as a croak. It hurt to breathe.

    Now he had her arms and was pulling her off the path into the brush. She struggled, kicking backwards, but fruitlessly. He twisted one arm behind her back, another around her neck. Pain shot up her shoulder as he yanked her backwards, stumbling across the uneven underbrush. She was slammed to the ground on her back, he on top, pinning her arms with his legs, a hand on her neck.

    Above her, dark hair and face was framed by a thick green and golden canopy of leaves. In the air between them she could smell leather and the sticky stuff that still made her eyes water.

    While she gasped for breath, they looked at each other.

    Light brown eyes. Her hunter had light brown eyes.

    She struggled, and he held her without any seeming effort, expression nearly blank. With his free hand he reached into his sleeve and pulled out a knife, put the tip at her face. A pinpoint of pain on the underside of her eye stopped her moving.

    “You are Amarta al Botaros,” he said. “The seer.” There was no hint of question now, no pretense of friendliness.

    How could he have found them, after all this time? They had hidden, changed their names, pretended to be other than they were. She hadn’t foreseen for anyone, not since they had left Botaros. Not once.

    “Answer,” he said.

    Vision had warned her, despite that she had pushed it away for so long; it had come when she needed it. If only she had listened sooner… But no, she had thought to be like everyone else.

    Fear washed over her, pushed away reason.

    “Please,” she heard herself croak. “Please don’t hurt me…” Once started, she could not seem to stop. “I’ll do anything. Please don’t hurt me.”

    “You’ve no cause to fear,” he said gently, pulling the knife back a bit. “I know who you are. I just want to hear you say it.”

    If she lied and gave him the false name she had been using — if she said it as though she meant it — would he believe it? Would he let her go?

    An answer tried to form within. From determined practice these last months she pushed it away, then struggled to reverse and pull it back. Sluggishly, like an atrophied muscle, it began to unfold.

    Slowly. Too slowly.

    With a quick, fluid flip of the blade, his knife went blunt-side along his forearm and he leaned forward, the sharp edge now up under her chin. The move was so fast that it spoke of skill far beyond anything she had ever seen.

    Vision gave her an answer: he would know a lie, but the truth would not serve better; the future promised capture, pain, blood, and darkness.

    The blade would cut her throat. She would struggle. He would keep her pinned, gaze locked on hers as she lost consciousness.

    It was near, that future, very near.

    And would that be so bad? If she were gone, if he sent her to the Beyond, Dirina and Pas might finally be safe from the hunter and the ill-fortune that seemed to follow her.

    Sounds and flashes, nothing certain. The future shifted like spray from a spun waterbag. She could not follow the drops, nor tell one from the next.

    He tightened his grip on her throat, shook her a little. Her head swam.

    “I only want to ask you some questions.” His tone was soft, reluctant, as if to say that he hated to be this hard on her, that if she answered him he would certainly let her go. The grip on her neck loosened a little. The pounding in her head eased. “Who have you spoken to about your visions since you left Botaros?”

    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. “Anything.”

    He laid the bow on the ground behind him, knelt just out of her reach.

    Don’t give 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 loosely, the knife falling 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, the top of the 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,” she 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 anyway. “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 lays.”

    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 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.

    “What are you saying?”

    Amarta and Dirina exchanged looks. Amarta licked her lips.

    “The future sometimes…” how to explain? “It whispers to me.”

    Enana shook her head, disbelief on her face. “No one knows when the rains come.”

    “Amarta does,” Dirina said simply.

    Amarta spoke again, feeling a sudden urgency. “He will come tonight, Enana, as the moon comes over the rise.” In her mind’s eye she saw it clearly, the knock on the door, Enana backlit by stovelight. “If he comes when I say he will, will you remember my words? Don’t fight. Treat him…” She swallowed, hating to say it, but knowing she must. “Treat him well. Tell him everything. It will go better for us if you do.”

    Enana stared at Amarta for a long, thoughtful moment.

    “Get packed.”

 

---

 

    It was slow going along the forest road with Amarta limping. The walking stick Enana had given them was a help, but each step was full of pain that she resolved to hide. Dirina slowed so as not to outpace her.

    The nals chits Enana had given them sat heavily in Amarta’s pocket, weighted with her guilt at the knowledge of how little the family had to spare. From the jabbing pain in her ankle to her shoulder, never mind the other places her encounter in the forest had left her bruised and scraped, Amarta ached.

    “Do you think we have until nightfall before he comes after us?” Dirina asked.

    “I hope so.”

    “You hope? Ama, you said –”

    A flash of hot resentment went through her, hand in hand with a sickening remorse. “I know what I said. Seeing is not the same thing as knowing. And now I don’t see anything at all. Diri, everything –” hurts, she didn’t finish — “is confusing.”

    Her sister said nothing.

    “Up now,” Pas said after they had let him walk a little way. Dirina hefted him and put him on her shoulders, holding his feet, wrapped with tiny turnshoes Cafir had made for him.

    One more thing the family had given them, which they repaid so wretchedly. The gnawing ache inside threatened to eat through her. It was as if along with the seedlings she’d planted in the fields she had also put some of her self into the ground, and now she was being torn out by the roots. “Diri, where do we go?”

    Dirina squinted at the sky and the sun. “The river. We’ll get the barge. It comes five hands past noon, so we should…” She inhaled. “We should hurry.”

    “Down now,” Pas said.

    “You ride, sweet,” Dirina said. “We have to go faster than you can go.”

    “I go fast.”

    “Then you’ll have to carry me, too,” Amarta said, giving him a smile. He looked at her, considered, and fell silent.

    “He will come after us, Diri,” Amarta said. “That’s not –” she said, seeing her sister’s wide-eyed look, “what I’m seeing, it’s what I’m thinking.”

    She could have prevented it. Picked up the bow. Notched an arrow. Tried again if she missed. Or used his knife on him. It had been right there on the ground.

    To have ended it right then, to be able to stay with Enana — but she had not. She prayed to the guardian of travelers and orphans that Enana would do as she had told her. As vision had told her.

    “Ama?”

    She realized that she had made a short, pained sound. “If he hurts them –”

    “He doesn’t want them. He wants us.”

    No, he wanted Amarta. “But how will we make money? How will we eat?”

    “We’ll clean, we’ll mend, as we’ve done all along.”

    That wasn’t what they had done. Dirina still thought Amarta might believe it, though, so she kept on saying it.

 

---

 

    “I will do what you do to earn money,” Amarta said.

    “No,” Dirina said, shocked. “You will not.”

    “Why not?”

    “You’re a child.”

    “Come spring, Diri, I’m of age.”

    “Years are not enough. Your first time should not be — like that. It should be someone you like. Someone who likes you.”

    “What do you mean, first time?”

    An exhale. Then, softly, “You do not need to know.”

    “How long until I bleed with the moon, Diri? That, if not my springs, certainly means –”

    “It doesn’t. It means nothing.”

    “I’m not a child.”

    “You certainly are. This would not be safe for you.”

    “It’s safe for you?” Amarta swallowed her frustration. “I’d know if it was safe. I’d be able to see before it happened.”

    “Would you, now? Really? Then why are we on the run again? You see danger when it’s right on top of you, Ama. With a man, that’s far too late.”

    Amarta wanted to say that it was more complicated than that, to explain that the hunter after them, whose eyes she had finally seen, was more dangerous than a single man ought to be. Then she looked at her sister’s thin mask of confidence, saw worry and terror churning beneath, and decided not to. “All right,” she agreed. “But I won’t let us go hungry again.”

    “We won’t,” Dirina said. Another empty promise, but she would not gainsay it. Her sister was doing all she could to get them from one moment to the next.

    Despite that vision had told her he would sleep for hours yet, she looked around furtively at the dark forest.

    She would not, she resolved, push vision away again. Thinking of the forest and her hunter, she realized that she hadn’t, really. The visions were inescapable. Like so many things in her life. Like having to leave places that might have been home.

    A sudden scratching sound made her jerk around, setting her heart to speeding, but it was only a squirrel, leaping from one tree to the next, now gone into the upper reaches of the thick canopy.

    She hoped that the inescapable things in life did not include her hunter.

 

---

 

    When they reached the Sennant River they turned along the road, walking past small houses and fenced pastures. Goats and sheep looked curiously at them as they passed.

    Nesmar Port was little more than a sloping bank of stony shore and a wooden dock. People, horses and wagons were clustered thickly, some leaning on barrels, voices loud and gestures wide over piles of sacks and stacked crates. Two well-dressed women stood together, consulting a board of parchment notes as a donkey laden with overstuffed saddle bags was futilely attempting to back up from between a stack of crates topped with cages of chickens. Someone began to laugh, someone else to call loudly to children who were staring and pointing at a pair of small, oddly striped brown, black, and tan-colored horses.

    Amarta breathed relief. They had not missed the barge after all. At a large flat rock she sat gratefully, dropping her stick to the stones underfoot. She crossed her ankle over her other knee, rubbing it to try to ease the pain.

    “Ama,” Dirina hissed.

    Her sister’s gaze was intent, face tight. Amarta followed her look across the assembled crowd, not seeing the cause of her alarm. “What?”

    A single carthorse was pulling a wagon of hay bundles slowly up and away from the water toward the road. Elsewhere a man hefted a pack over his back. Two small, dusky-skinned men from some eastern tribe were securing a wagon cover.

    Amarta felt her stomach drop. “Oh no,” she breathed.

    The man with the large bundle across his shoulders, his three children pulling a handcart behind him, gave her a sympathetic look as he passed. “Sad it is, but you just now missed it.”

    “No! Are you sure?” Dirina asked.

    He pointed downriver. In the distance was a slowly receding barge, laden with wagons, boxes, animals, people.

    The man’s children looked at the two of them as they dragged the handcart behind him. Amarta saw how their gaze took them in. They would be remembered.

    “Up now,” Pas insisted, arms on his mother’s leg, looking at her intently. She sighed heavily, pulled him into her lap.

    The weight of the day, of this latest failure, settled heavily on Amarta.

    Open and covered wagons were hitched to horses, packs slung over backs and into handcarts. The donkey escaped his temporary trap and was now making his way up to the road.

    Leaving. They were all leaving.

    “What do we do?” Dirina asked, her hopeless tone tearing at Amarta.

    Would the hunter come here directly from the farm? Surely there was the rest of the countryside to search. He might go another way.

    No, the barge was obvious. She could too clearly imagine him walking through the riverside village, asking questions.

    “A woman and child and a limping girl dressed as a boy? Oh, yes, I saw them. They missed the afternoon barge. They went that way.”

    “Do you think,” Dirina asked, almost timidly, “we could — go back?”

    To the farm, she meant. The only place Amarta was sure they could not go. “No,” she said soberly.

    “Then…?”

    She wanted to sleep it all away, like a bad dream. Wake to Enana calling her to the fields.

    The final crates and barrels were loaded onto wagons, bolts of cloth and cages of rabbits rearranged on top. The sky was darkening. Everyone wanted to get where they were going before nightfall.

    Nightfall. When he would wake.

    Another moment she put off looking to vision, then another. That part of her was sore as well. At last she forced herself to look and listen to what could be.

    Nothing but the chattering of people, the crunching of small stones under foot, hoof, and wheel. The smell and hush of river. High clouds caught the first hint of sunset.

    Focus, she told herself sternly, closing her eyes.

    When she found it, it was buried and crusted over, like some rusted-shut metal door that screamed to open even a crack. She fought back, pushed the question into this sorest part of herself.

    Could they wait for the next day’s barge? Find somewhere to hide for the night? Was it possible?

    The smallest flash came to her. Barely a breath.

    Darkness. Rough motion. The smell of horse strong under her, head pounding. Pas and Dirina gone.

    “No,” she breathed, pushing it away, not wanting to know more.

    “Then where?” Dirina asked. Almost a plea. “Ama, we have to –”

    “I don’t know!” she said loudly.

    An elderly woman gave her a reproachful look as she and her adult son, judging by his similar looks, slowly walked by. The man was breathing hard, carrying a pack as well as holding his mother’s arm to steady her as they ascended the bank.

    A slight depression in the ground, near a flowering plantain at the edge of a road. A leather-clad knee dropped down by it, fingers lightly brushing the dirt.

    “Grandmother,” Amarta said quickly, rewarded by another glare from the woman. Amarta struggled painfully to her feet, picked up the stick at her feet. “Please take this for your travels.” She held it out. The two of them paused, the woman’s expression softening.

    The man nodded gratefully, took the stick and handed it to his mother.

    “Thank you, child,” the woman said.

    “Blessings of the season to you,” Amarta replied politely.

    Dirina looked a question at her. Amarta looked toward the river.

    Only a couple of large covered wagons remained. A dusky-skinned woman checked the harnesses of a team of four gray carthorses while the other of the tribespeople loaded up bags into the other wagon.

    Standing apart from them were the striped horses, untethered, unhaltered, not even bridle or reins. Their markings were strange, with brown and orange stripes wrapping their wheat-colored hides, stretching from the tricolor fall of their tails up their backs through their manes to their heads, the fingers of stain reaching across their faces like some sort of midwinter festival mask. It was as if the chestnut-and-ginger-colored lines had been painted on their backs and sides by someone with more enthusiasm than skill.

    “Mama, look: horses!” Pas cried loudly, pointing at them. At this outburst, one of the horses looked at them. Dirina kept a tight hold of Pas’s hand as he tried to pull away to run to them.

    “What are they?” Amarta asked.

    Mutely, Dirina shook her head.

    One of the striped horses turned in their direction and began walking toward the rock on which they sat.

    “Diri…”

 

---

 

    As it came near, Dirina and Amarta quickly stood and stepped back behind the rock. Dirina pushed the excited Pas back behind her as he struggled to break free of her grip. He reached out his other hand around his mother to the horse who had walked around the rock to reach him. Horse lips and small fingers met before Dirina managed to get between them, Amarta hobbling over to help.

    “Stop that!” she told the horse, who swung its head to stare back at her.

    “Ho! What do you do here?” One of the tribesmen strode over. He glared at Dirina and Amarta as if they had somehow caused this problem. A smallish man, his light brown hair nearly the same shade as his skin, he turned on the animal, speaking softly to it with words Amarta did not understand. The horse snorted, tossed its head slightly and turned back to Pas again, snuffling. Pas held his hand out, again blocked by his mother. Pas giggled.

    Now the man made a soft sound, a sort of warbling, interspersed with a clicking. When that didn’t work, he put a hand on the side of the horse and pushed, with no obvious result.

    At last the horse turned, slowly, but in the other direction, to take it closer to Amarta. She reached out a hand, fingers trailing across the neck and soft, warm hair, as it turned the rest of the way around. Somehow the animal conveyed an amused insolence even as it returned to the wagons to rejoin its similarly furred companions. With a snort of frustration, hands in the air, the man followed.

    “‘Bye horse,” Pas said.

    A tiny, wet animal colt trembling in the early dawn, dark brown with pale tan stripes, lips hungrily searching upwards.

    “Oh”, Amarta blurted. “She’s pregnant.”

    Then, despite the pain and everything that had happened that day, she laughed in delight. A future flash of something not painful, threatening, or about to hurt her — she hadn’t realized it was possible.

    The tribesman stopped suddenly, looking between Amarta and the horse. He walked back to Amarta.

    “Why do you say that?” he demanded.

    “Take us with you and I’ll tell you.”

    He shook his head, then went back to his wagons. The larger gray horses were harnessed, and the tribespeople seemed ready to leave. The man and woman mounted their striped horses in a fast, fluid motion.

    “It’s a colt, the foal,” Amarta called out to him, in a final desperate attempt. The man glanced at her, then leaned toward the woman, speaking, head motioning back at Amarta and Dirina.

    In truth, Amarta wasn’t sure about that, but it would be almost a year before the mare birthed, whereas the hunter would track them here in — hours? A day?

    Soon. Too soon.

    The man turned in the saddle to look at her again for a moment. The wagons were leaving, the striped horses following. In minutes they were all gone.

    Amarta turned her head to look at Dirina, wiping her eyes of tears.

    “It was a good try, Ama,” Dirina said, her arm around her shoulders.

    The riverbank and dock, busy and full only a little bit ago were now empty and quiet. The sun was dipping down behind the trees. Dirina pulled Pas onto her lap and held him tight.

    “Ama.” Her sister’s voice was soft.

    Where should they go, Dirina wanted to know. The sky was now awash in red and gold and deepening blue. In another hour, perhaps two, the hunter would wake. Go to the farmhouse.

    The nightmare would begin again.

    She sought vision, but it wasn’t answering, the door shut and barred. She was too tired. Everywhere she looked she saw bitter failure.

    “We’ll be okay,” she said with as much certainty as she could pretend, though she doubted Dirina was much convinced.

    Perhaps vision would return after she’d rested. Or perhaps only when she was about to be captured, or her life threatened.

    Pas wanted down again. Sighing as if defeated, Dirina let him go. He raced around the rock on which they sat.

    “Here, give me your foot,” Dirina said.

    Amarta lay her foot in her sister’s lap. Dirina turned it gently, and Amarta yelped with pain.

    “Sprained,” Dirina said wearily. “Then you walked another hour. No surprise it is swollen and red.” She rubbed it gently for a time. Then: “We must go somewhere, Ama.”

    Amarta struggled to think of what to say, found nothing. She struggled to her feet, pain lancing through her leg as she put weight on it.

    “Ama, where –”

    “I don’t know, but we can’t stay here.”

    They made their way to the main road, Amarta’s step slow and labored. Dirina insisted and Amarta let her take her pack, put it on top of her own. With Pas in one hand, she offered an arm to Amarta to steady her. Amarta refused, limping forward. Was she not already enough of a burden?

    The main road was in shadow. Through shutters she could see flickers of lamps, stoves. Smoke rose from chimneys.

    Not for her, a home and safety.

    Pushing to walk faster, her foot collapsed under her. She fell painfully to the dirt road, hitting an already bruised knee, curling around the pain.

    For a moment she let herself weep, watched the drops fall into the fine dirt, making small puffs where they landed. If she could be so small, as small as an ant, she could sleep right there in the dirt, hidden from sight. Dirina knelt down next to her, squeezed her shoulder.

    Every moment he was closer. Beyond her not to cry, perhaps, but not quite beyond her to stand. She struggled to her feet.

    Her sister’s encouraging smile was forced and fragile. Leaning on Dirina she limped forward. One step. Then another, putting as little weight on the bad foot as possible.

    They would walk until she dropped again, she supposed. And then she would stay there until he found her.

    The sound of a horse’s hard gallop brought her head up. Dirina gently pulled her to the side of the road to get out of the way.

    The striped horse, the dusky-skinned woman atop, pulled up fast in front of them and stopped, as if showing off. The woman slipped down off the side, strode to Amarta, bringing her sharp nose right up to Amarta’s face.

    She smelled like horse, Amarta noticed, as she stumbled painfully back in surprise.

    “You say pregnant,” the woman said. “You say this. Why?” She glanced sidelong at her horse, who looked back. “Are you a healer?”

    Amarta wondered if she could pretend to that. “No.”

    “You lie, then.”

    “No!”

    “Say then, how you know.”

    “Take us with you,” Amarta countered.

    “You run from something. Someone,” the woman guessed.

    Dirina and Amarta said nothing. Their silence was answer enough.

    “The king’s Rusties?”

    “The what?”

    “Soldiers of the King. In red and black.”

    A knife at her eye. A blade at her throat. But her hunter had worn no red.

    “Yes,” Dirina said at the same moment that Amarta was adamantly shaking her head no.

    The woman hissed wordlessly in response, gave each of them a look. To Amarta she said, “She has been changed this last week. So it may be true, what you say. Did you guess this?”

    “No.”

    “You say a colt. You can predict this for all animals?”

    “Yes,” Dirina answered determinedly. But the woman ignored her, looking the question at Amarta.

    Amarta tried to remember the many times she had foreseen a baby. Goats. A few cows. Human children. She had not always been right about the baby’s sex. People wanted to be sure, but babies themselves weren’t always sure, not until later. Sometimes not even then.

    “Sometimes,” she answered honestly.

    At this Dirina gave Amarta an incredulous look. “No. She sees things truly.”

    The woman gestured at Pas. “Can he be silent, the boy?”

    At this both she and Dirina nodded together. But it was Pas, smiling up at the woman with his beautiful smile who seemed to convince her. She looked down at him, considered for a long moment, petted his head, then nodded. “Come with, then.”

    Seeing Amarta limp forward, she added: “You ride.” With that, she picked Amarta up, surprising her with how strong she was. Before Amarta quite realized what had happened, she had been set atop the small, striped horse. The woman swung up behind. The horse turned an eye to Amarta, then swung her head back and gave a soft neigh that almost sounded like a laugh.

    “They wait for us,” the woman said to Dirina, who now had Pas in her arms, packs on her back. “We must hurry.”