Ash & Bramble (29 page)

But me—I feel certain that I can't use the thimble on myself. I may never discover who I really am.

T
HE
G
ODMOTHER'S FORTRESS IS HALF A DAY AWAY, AND WE
are ready. We set off at midday with packs of supplies on our backs, plenty of rope, and weapons. Templeton gives me a warm coat to wear, and a woolly scarf; I'm glad for the fur-lined boots that Shoe made for me. I carry my staff. The trackers go ahead and come back to show us the best paths to take to avoid any of the Godmother's men who are lurking about. We go single file, silently. Cor is ahead of me and Shoe a step behind, wearing an overlarge coat that the Huntsman lent him. I've never fought in a battle before—at least, not that I remember—and I feel a fizz of excitement mixed with nerves.

And I am confused about what is happening between me and Shoe.
Owen
, I remind myself. Like his smile, our kiss lasted for only a fleeting moment, but it hit me—like a knife,
without warning. It made me feel off-balance. Pulled in two directions at once. It makes me acutely aware of him, as if there's a current running between us. It's different from the attraction I feel to Cor.

As we walk, Cor and Owen are arguing in low voices about the best way to get into the fortress. Owen thinks he should go over the wall first, alone, as a scout. “That way,” he explains, “we can be sure most of the guards are away. I can get to her slaves, too, and tell them to be ready to fight for us when the time comes, and then I'll come back and report.”

“I don't like this plan,” Cor says firmly. He turns and stares past me, challenging Owen. “If you should be caught, we'll have to stage a rescue as well as everything else.”

“I'll try not to get caught,” Owen says, as if it's that simple.

“I'll go with you, Sh—Owen,” I add.

Cor stops in his tracks. In the snowy late afternoon, his eyes look very blue. “Pen, no.”

“It makes sense for me to go,” I say. “I've got this.” I heft my staff. “And I've got the thimble. It'll help us get in, and get away safely.”

Owen steps up next to me. His face is grim again. “She's right, Cor,” he says. “The last time we wouldn't have gotten out—Pin and I wouldn't, I mean—without the thimble.”

We continue on, catching up to the rest of the rebels. I can see by the stiffness in Cor's back and in his meticulous politeness that he's not happy with me and my decision to go with Owen.

As twilight falls, staining the snow-covered forest with pink, and then gray, we reach the fortress walls. One moment we are among thick pine trees, the next we are facing a gray stone wall about the height of two men.

The Huntsman has been leading us; he's brought us to a place where a hook of some kind is stuck to the top of the wall; a lumpy rope hangs down from it.

Owen steps up beside me. “It's where Pin and I escaped before,” he tells me.

I notice how careful he is to call me Pen. “You don't think it's a trap?”

He shakes his head. “I think it wouldn't occur to the Godmother or her guards that anyone would use it to get back into the fortress.”

The Huntsman steps up to us. His brown skin is ruddy with cold. “We'll pull back into the trees to wait until nightfall,” he says in a low voice. “All right?”

“All right,” I say, and we tramp through the snow until we can't see the wall anymore. The others are brushing aside snow, making a clear place on the pine-needly ground to sit while waiting for Owen and me to return. They won't have a fire—it's too risky—but they pull cheese and bread from one of the packs and share it around. Templeton and Zel sharpen their blades and look competent; the rest seem ready and determined. Owen and I stand apart, eating our dinners and waiting for full night.

“I keep wanting to call you Shoe,” I tell him, taking a
last bite of cheese sandwich.

“I keep thinking of you as Pin.” He shakes his head. “But you're right to insist on Pen. Names matter.”

I shove my bare hands into my coat pockets, gripping the thimble. I should have worn mittens. “I suppose they do.”

He nods, and moves closer to me, as if for warmth. “A shoe is a thing, like a pin is a thing. It's a slave name.” He looks in the direction of the fortress wall, though we can't see it through the fir trees and the gathering dusk. “I'm not a slave anymore.”

“No,” I say, leaning my shoulder companionably against his.

“But I can't pretend it never happened, either.” He's quiet for a few moments, thinking. “I'll use both names. Owen Shoemaker.”

“It's a good name,” I tell him. I think, now, that it doesn't matter what name Owen uses for me, Pin or Pen. It's clear that he loves me either way. I wonder why he won't speak of it. I'm not sure if I want him to, or not.

Cor tramps through the snow to join us. When he speaks, a puff of steam comes out with his words; the air has gotten colder. “Are you absolutely determined to do this, Pen?”

Right, back to the job at hand. “Absolutely determined,” I say, feeling almost cheerful.

“Then I will come too,” he says. “Someone has to protect you both.”

I glance aside at Owen; he gives me a little shrug. “I can protect myself,” I tell Cor.

“You'll need me with you just in case you're discovered and attacked,” Cor says, all honorable formality.

“If that happens,” I argue, “having one more fighter with us is not going to make a difference.”

Owen nods, agreeing.

“And,” I add, bending to pick up my staff, which I'd set down at my feet, “I do have some training.”

As I stand, Cor rests his hand on my arm. “Can I have a moment alone with you, Pen?” he asks.

“Of course,” I say. “We'll be back soon,” I say to Owen, handing him my staff, and Cor and I head farther into the forest. The branches hang down, heavy under their blankets of snow. The air is cold and crisp; a wind rushes in the tops of the pine trees, making a sound like ocean waves. It is a peaceful scene, but a bubble of excitement is trembling in my chest.

As we walk through the snow, Cor takes my hand, helping me over a fallen log. His hand is big and warm and it feels safe, somehow. When we're far enough away from the makeshift camp, he stops, still holding my hand. I gaze up into his eyes. “This is difficult for me,” he says softly.

“What is difficult, exactly?” I ask.

He draws me closer to him. “Pen, during the past few days I've seen the best of you. You've been brave, and strong, and beautiful. And I have to admit that your legs in those trousers are any man's dream. I grow more and more certain that we are meant to be together. Am I wrong to hope that you have feelings for me too?”

I gaze up into his clear blue eyes. He doesn't bother with his practiced smile anymore. His truest self is shining through—his strength and his patience, and a code of honor that clearly makes things difficult for him sometimes.

“I've been thinking,” he goes on, “about those broken stories in which the girls in the towers are saved from the princes. But Pen, I've been wondering. Doesn't the prince ever get to be loved?”

Oh, such a question. “Yes,” I answer. I remember my stepsisters' keen interest in the prince, and the many people, mostly young women, who crowded around him at the ball. “Surely you've had lots of girls eager to fall in love with you.”

He nods. “Yes. But none of them were like you. They were ladies.”

I can't help but laugh. “And I'm not?”

A reluctant smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “That's not what I meant. I could never be sure if they liked
me
, or the rest of it.”

“The prince,” I say. “But not the man.”

“Yes.” He brings my hand to his lips and kisses it, then holds it in both of his. “Could you love me, Pen?”

I
could
love a man like him. Except . . . “Cor,” I start. “I—”

“Don't speak now,” he interrupts. “It's not the right time. And—and I have seen the way you look at Shoe.”

I blink. “How do I look at him?”

He glances aside and gives me only half an answer. “I
have not seen you look at me that way.”

Unsure of what he means, I shake my head. “He's Owen now, remember? Not Shoe.”

“Ah,” Cor says. “Yes. Pen, when this ends, you will have to choose between us. All I want to say to you now is that I hope you will choose me.”

“I don't
have
to choose anyone, Cor,” I interrupt.

“Of course you don't,” he says hurriedly. “Yet I still believe that we belong together.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “May I kiss you?” he asks.

He kissed me once before, on the terrace at the ball, but I hardly knew him then. I am curious to see if his kiss tastes different to me now, if it can measure up. “You may,” I say, a little breathless.

He bends closer and places a kiss carefully at the corner of my mouth, then pulls me tightly to his chest and gives me as finely shaped and worthy and well considered a kiss as any girl could ever want.

A
T NIGHTFALL IT
is the Huntsman and Templeton who make Cor's decision for him. “It'd be stupid for three to go,” Templeton says. Her dislike of Cor is palpable. “You'll just be clumping around in the dark getting the other two caught.”

“At any rate,” the Huntsman puts in, “we could better use your help here, readying the assault.”

Cor capitulates, and that leaves me and Owen standing in
the darkness at the base of the wall around the Godmother's fortress. The sky is a deep blue-black, the night lit by a three-quarter moon that hangs low over the fortress. It gives plenty of light, reflecting off the snow.

It gives plenty of light for guards to spot us, too.

Owen has taken off his borrowed coat and wears just his dark clothes and sweater, which is starting to look a bit ragged. He has a long knife sheathed at his belt. Templeton has lent me a woolen sweater too, and I roll up the sleeves while contemplating our climb. The rope we'll use looks lumpy and black against the gray of the wall.

“Up we go,” I whisper, gripping my staff. A puff of steam comes out with my words.

“If we wait a few minutes, the moon will set,” Owen whispers back. In the moonlight his face is pale and crossed with shadows. “Pen, there are brambles on the other side of the wall. Be careful of them. They might try to stab you with thorns.”

He told me this once before, at the castle ball as the clock struck midnight—that I got the scar on my wrist from climbing up this very wall. It feels strange to think that my body was in this place before, that it did this thing that I can't remember doing.

“All right,” I whisper. “I'll be careful.”

“It could be icy at the top, too.” His voice is tense. His hands are in his pockets and his shoulders are hunched.

He is wound very tightly, I realize. Shivering, and not just with the cold. Going back over the wall and into the fortress where he was once a slave must be difficult for him. “Lots of bad memories in there?” I ask, with a nod toward the wall.

He jerks out a nod.

I try to make a joke. “I expect you wouldn't mind if the Godmother took them all away.”

He looks up, suddenly intense. “Yes. I would mind very much.”

Oh. “Because of Pin. You wouldn't want to forget her.”

“No, I wouldn't.”

“I know you loved her,” I say.

“Yes,” he says briefly, sadly.

“Did she . . .” I lean my staff against the wall and step closer to him. We are much of a height, and I can feel the warmth of his breath on my cold cheek. “Did she love you back?”

As if he can't help himself, he lifts his hand and with his fingers traces the line of my jaw. My skin tingles at his touch. “I don't know. I think so.”

“She never said?”

“Pen, don't—” he starts.

But I am relentless. “Did you ever kiss her?”

His lips are on mine. “Yes,” he breathes, and his arms come around me and the kiss we share is warm and deep and desperate. I know I shouldn't be doing this, but I can't help it. It is nothing at all like kissing Cor.

A shadow falls over us. We break the kiss. I can't tell if I am shaking or he is. The moon has gone down behind the fortress. The night is dark enough. I catch my breath. “Time to go,” I whisper.

I can barely make out his face in the darkness, but I feel him nod back at me.

T
HEY GET OVER THE WALL AND PAST THE BRAMBLES WITHOUT
any trouble. The courtyard, covered with a pristine blanket of snow, stretches before them, interrupted only by the stark line of the post in the middle. Beyond it, the fortress is a huge, dark, humped shape with lights burning in many of its windows. The slaves to Story work day and night with little rest. Owen can feel the weight of the place settle over his shoulders.

But it's heavy in a way that is different from when he was a slave. Then, he was ruled by his fear, and he had nothing to fight for. Now he knows about his Before.

He thinks of his mother, tiny and brisk, wrapped in an apron too large for her, always the center of their loud, rambunctious family. He remembers that when he was eight
years old he'd been apprenticed to a shoemaker on the other side of Westhaven, and he'd crept away from the noise and bustle to worry about it. It was baking day, and the house was filled to bursting with the whole family, plus his third-oldest sister, Jenny, and her husband and new baby, and his oldest brother Charlie's two kids, but his mother had sought him out in a corner of the dark smithy. He remembers wrapping his arms around his knees and sniffing away tears.
What if I'm not any good at it, Mum? I don't want to go. What if I miss you too much?

Ah now,
his mum had said, settling beside him in the sooty corner and putting an arm around his narrow shoulders.
I know it's hard. But you're not going to hide here in the dark for the rest of your life, are you? Some things have to be faced up to. It will be all right. You'll see.

She'd smelled of fresh bread and lavender soap, and she'd used a corner of her flour-dusted apron to dry his tears. Then she'd found the smithy cat for him to cuddle.
Come back into the house when you're ready, my dearest
, she'd said.

He'd loved her so much; he'd loved them all. He couldn't imagine a world without them in it. But he'd lived in that world for seven years.

What if his mother or his dad were taken by the Godmother? What about one of his brothers or sisters or one of their many children? All the blank-eyed people in the city, or the slaves in the fortress—they had all been somebody's son or daughter or mother or dearest love.

If he and Pen and the others fail, the Godmother will steal even more people away from their real lives. Story will turn again, and grow even stronger.

He can't hide away from that. He has to face up to it.

“I've got the thimble ready,” Pen whispers.

Owen nods and they start across the courtyard. Anyone looking out the windows will see them, shadows against the snow. Their breaths huff in the icy air, and they hurry past the post to reach the fortress wall. There is no sound of alarm.

“Wait a moment,” Pen pants. Handing him her wooden staff, she crouches in the snow. He sees the glint of her thimble as she touches it to their trail of footprints. The warm wind swirls out and brushes away their tracks, just as it did in the forest. She stands, swiping a lock of hair out of her eyes. “Onward,” she says briskly, taking her staff back.

Her steady bravery makes him want to kiss her again, once more for luck, maybe, but there's no time for that. Now that they're over the wall, they have to move fast. They'll try first for the Jacks, the slaves whose dread of the post might make them most eager to escape. Skirting the fortress wall, Owen finds an open door—the same door he and Pin escaped through before. It is unguarded. He cracks the door open and peers inside.

Pen leans over his shoulder to see. “This is strange,” she says, seeing the empty hallway that stretches before them, lit only by an oil lamp turned low.

Not if all the guards are out in the forest hunting for
them. “Maybe they're counting on the workers to guard themselves,” he whispers. He knows what he'd been like as a slave. He'd sat hunched over his workbench working, working, working, terrified of drawing the Godmother's attention again. The possibility of escape would never have occurred to him without Pin.

“Owen, there must be guards in there somewhere,” Pen whispers.

“You're probably right,” he whispers back. But he's not afraid anymore. Just determined.

“Let's go,” she says.

With a nod he pushes the door open and they pad down the hallway. Pen walks lightly, the staff held across her body, as if she's ready to fight. Owen listens for the sound of footsteps, an alert shout. But all is silent. They turn a corner, go down another hallway until they reach a series of closed doors. “This one,” he remembers. “You can open it with the thimble.”

Pen touches the door's knob with the thimble and he turns it and peers into the Jacks' workshop.

When he'd been here before with Pin, the air had been loud with bangs and clanks, and thick with sawdust, the Jacks hard at work. Now it is silent. He pushes the door open wider and steps inside.

The only light comes from a lantern set on a table; a pile of crumpled blue requisition slips is there too, overflowing onto the floor. The rest of the workshop is filled with
shadows, the machines and workbenches and forge silent.

There is a rustling sound. Owen freezes.

“What . . .” Pen glances alertly around, raising her staff.

“Shh,” he breathes, listening.

A scrabble, and a shadow twitches behind one of the workbenches.

They're in here. “Jacks,” Owen says, and even though he keeps his voice low, it shatters the silence. The shadows quiver with held breaths. “I know you're in here,” he says. “It's me, the Shoemaker.”

Another scuffling sound, and one of the Jacks—the Jack who built them the grappling hook before—edges into the light. He holds himself stiffly; Owen knows that hunch-shouldered look. This Jack has been to the post. He's the one who will have to lead the other Jacks out.

“I remember you,” the Jack says. “And her.” He nods with his chin at Pen. “The Seamstress.”

“You got into trouble because of us,” Owen says.

Another glance over the shoulder. “Yes,” the Jack answers.

“We're very sorry for that,” Owen says, but goes on quickly. “We escaped, and we've come back for you now.”

The Jack blinks.

“We haven't seen any guards or overseers,” Owen adds. “And the outer door is open.” He turns to Pen. “Tell him the signal?”

She nods and holds up the thimble. “A flash of flame.”

“Wait by the outer door,” Owen goes on, sounding more
confident than he actually feels. “When you see the flame you'll know it's time. We've brought people with us to help. We'll fight the rest of the guards and try to take over the fortress.”

“Take over . . . ?” the Jack asks, his voice wavering.

“There are far more slaves here than guards,” Owen says. “You have things here you can use as weapons, don't you?”

That decides it. The Jack gathers himself and says, “Yes,” then glances to Pen and back to Owen. “You got away, you say?”

Owen can't take the time to explain that their escape wasn't really an escape at all. Instead he nods.

“Righty-o then,” the Jack says, and he's standing straighter. “We're with you.” Other Jacks creep from behind the workbenches, their eyes wide. “Wait for the signal, is that it?” he asks.

“Right,” Owen answers. “The signal.”