Torn: Bound Trilogy Book Two (40 page)

U
lric and Cassia
grabbed the oars, though they seemed unnecessary. The river’s current pushed harder than I remembered from when we swam it farther upstream, and we seemed to fly over the surface. Cassia used her oar to paddle while Ulric used his as a rudder, steering us to the middle of the river. I looked back, but couldn’t see anything past the buildings that now crowded the banks.

“We can’t just leave her,” Aren said. He sat on a white canvas tarp in the bottom of the boat with Kel, leaning against his friend’s back, feet resting on a fisherman’s wooden tackle box. “There had to be twenty of them back there. She’s not ready for that.”

“She’s more ready than you think.” Ulric scrambled to hold on to his oar as a sudden surge of water pushed us on again. A dozen more boats had broken their moorings, and drifted toward us. Cassia used her oar to push them away when they got too close. “If we go back now,” Ulric said, “she’s dead, and so are we. Let her do this.”

Aren slumped lower, and I moved cautiously closer to him. The boat heaved, and I dropped on to the seat nearest him.

“What happened back there?” I asked, and he pulled down the collar of his shirt. A knife wound penetrated the back of his shoulder, clean but deep. I poked at the skin around it, and he winced. “I can take care of that when we get back to our supplies.” Barberry root would stop the blood flow, but I still didn’t have anything to stitch it with. We had to get him back to magic, and hope he recovered.

Aren just grunted and let me poke some more. He leaned his head back and rested it against Kel’s shoulder.

“Here,” Cassia said, and tossed me her bag. “The bandages will be soaked, but there might be something you can use.”

“You did amazing things back there,” I said softly, not wanting Ulric to hear me offering reassurances. Aren didn’t need our father judging him as any weaker than he already was.

“Not much good now,” he responded, and closed his eyes.

I unrolled a long strip of cloth and squeezed out as much dampness as I could before I pressed it hard against the wound. Unsanitary. He’d need something to fight infection later.

I rested a hand on his brow, which felt warmer than before. I’d never seen a sickness take hold so quickly.

Ulric caught my concerned look. “Can you patch him up?”

“I’m not a physician or a healer,” I said without looking up. “But I’ll do what I can.”

He grunted.
Disapproval. How unexpected.

“She is a healer,” Aren said, and placed a blood-spattered hand over mine, just for a moment. “A fine Potioner, even with limited supplies. I have complete faith in her ability to keep me alive until my magic returns.”

My heart swelled. I knew it was foolish, but hearing those words from him, who such a short time ago had thought my talents worthless, meant a great deal to me. I squeezed his fingers and put Ulric out of my mind. “What about your leg? That could be the source of the sickness, if you’ve got a cut there.”

The boat pitched. If I’d had anything in my stomach, it would have gone overboard.

“I stepped on something sharp,” Aren muttered. “It’s nothing.”

“Look alive,” Ulric said. “Wall’s approaching. Pass me that.” He motioned toward the canvas sheet that Aren and Kel sat on.

I looked ahead to the wall. It spanned the river, but with a great deal of clearance beneath. A few tiny figures dotted the top—guards, but not many. It seemed they hadn’t received word of our aquatic escape. Perhaps Rowan was doing her job back there.

“Lie down,” Ulric ordered, and opened the tarp over us, careful not to let it flap around and draw attention. “The river will have to carry us through. No one move.”

The boat was small, but we made ourselves fit. Ulric took the space behind the boat’s rear seat, leaving the rest of us in the center section. Kel lay on his back, Aren beside him. Cassia pulled her oar in and fitted herself between them, and I lay on top of Kel. He wrapped his arms around me, and we all helped hold the tarp down. It stank of rotten fish, a fact which didn’t help my motion sickness.

The heavy fabric shifted in the breeze, and something heavy knocked into the side of our vessel. I bit my lip to keep back a loud gasp.
Just another boat.

“Do you think they spotted us?” I whispered.

Cassia shifted to make herself more comfortable, and the boat rocked. “I guess if they start shooting, we’ll know they did.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Don’t say things like that.”

She winked. “I thought you weren’t superstitious.”

“I’m also not stupid.”

“Hush,” Aren whispered.

I closed my eyes. My mind drifted with the uneven rocking of the boat, anchored by the steady beat of Kel’s heart under my ear. We passed into shadows.
The wall.
Kel’s arms tightened around me, and I held my breath as I waited for arrows to fall, for someone to shout a warning.

Light came again, filtering through the holes in the heavy fabric, and I released my breath.

“Don’t move yet,” Ulric ordered. He said nothing else until several minutes later, when the boat jolted and the bottom grated over rocks, then stopped. He lifted a corner of the tarp and peered out.

“All ashore,” he said, and we hurried out onto the pebbled shore of the river, which had become wide and shallow. Trees lined the edges, shading us again. I took the tackle box and followed the others into the trees.

Behind us, the city was still visible, brightly lit by the sunlight.

“It shouldn’t be far back to the horses,” I said. “Aren, can you walk?”

“Of course.” He limped behind the rest of us, but kept pace. Cassia hung back, but he refused her help.

“Stubborn, isn’t he?” I asked Kel.

“Yep. Seems to run in his family.”

We hurried through the woods toward where we’d left the horses. The four were there, saddled and ready as Florizel had promised, but the flying horse herself was gone.

I turned to Ulric. “I don’t suppose one of your magical skills is communicating with animals? I’d like to ask where our other friend has gone.”

He frowned. “No.”

Perhaps he expected a more respectful tone. He was, after all, my king, and had just showed incredible power in getting us out of the city. Growing up in Cressia, I’d never been taught awe of royalty, but had he come to town, we’d have been expected to show respect. I just couldn’t manage it. Not now. I’d have expected to feel many things when meeting my father—anger, perhaps, over what he’d done to my mother. Fear, maybe. Relief at having found him, which had been my goal since I decided to work with Aren.

All I felt when I looked at him was emptiness.

“We should wait,” Aren said, and sat on a moss-covered rock. “Rowan will never find us if we go too far, and Florizel might be coming back from wherever she went.”

I exchanged a glance with Kel. He shook his head slightly.

“Who’s Florizel?” Ulric asked, and Aren explained.

“If we stay here, near the city and the road,” Ulric said, “the wrong people will find us, and there will be nothing left for Rowan to come back to. If Rowan gets away from the city, she’ll find us somehow. But safety will be her first concern. She’s a clever girl. She won’t lead them straight to us. We need to leave. Now.”

I fixed the tackle box to the back of my horse’s saddle. Much as I wanted to see whether there was anything in there I could use to stitch Aren’s shoulder up, we didn’t have time. Still, I took a moment to dig out the barberry roots I’d picked up in Tyrea. Nightflare would have been better, but I hadn’t found any since I’d used it up on myself.

“Chew this,” I told him.

He didn’t comment on what would have been a horribly bitter taste, or give any reaction except to hand it back to me when he’d finished. “Was that supposed to help with the pain?”

“No.” I pulled his collar open, removed the bandage pad, and pressed the crushed, wet roots into the wound. Aren hissed. “That’s a deep cut. This will constrict any blood vessels that are still open, and promote healing.” I re-bandaged the wound to hold the plant material in place. “Keep that there until I tell you otherwise. Come on.”

He didn’t move.

“Aren,” I said, and stepped toward him. “Get up.”

“Rowan will be fine,” Kel said. “She always is, right?”

Aren looked up. “What if she’s not?”

“Then she’s not,” I said. “Ulric is right. If something happens to her, you staying here and waiting for the Darmish army to come and get you isn’t going to help her. If she dies—”

Aren winced.

“If she dies,” I repeated, “it will be because she decided to risk her life so we could get away, so you and your father could finish what you set out to do. If we get caught, her sacrifice is a waste. And if Florizel left, she had a good reason for it. We should do the same.”

Aren’s hands clenched into fists, and the muscles in his forearms tensed as he glared at me. He was ready to fight. He’d never attacked me, but I’d seen that look on too many faces to mistake it for anything else. I stepped back, ready to use Kel as a shield.

Aren climbed to his feet, then turned to adjust his horse’s bridle and prepare it for riding. “Come on, then.”

I turned back to my own horse, only to see that Ulric had taken it for himself. Kel mounted his horse, then offered me a hand up so I could ride behind him.

“That was harsh,” Kel said quietly as we rode into the woods, following Ulric and Cassia, with Aren trailing behind.

“It was honest. You know as well as I do that what she did helped us, but it was incredibly dangerous. I want her to find us, but I’m not going to give Aren false hope if it will get us killed.” I glanced back. Aren rode with his shoulders slumped, but with his eyes fixed firmly ahead. His skin was far too pallid, his eyes too pained.

“We need to get Aren somewhere he can rest,” I added. “He’s going to collapse soon, and I want to be as far from the city as possible when he does.”

I was wrong about that. Aren kept his jaw set and his eyes forward as he rode on through the morning. We came to a wide stream at mid-day and stopped to water the horses. They seemed nervous without Florizel’s presence.

My stomach grumbled. We’d dropped the bags of food we’d taken from the tavern, which left only the little bit of dried food we had in our bags, at least until I had time to search the forest for something fresher.

“Too bad there won’t be any fish here,” Cassia said.

I agreed. Still, I went to the tackle box. No needles, but the fishing line would do for stitching, if I snapped the barbed end off of a hook to pull it through. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would work.

“Aren, let me see your shoulder.”

He pulled his hair aside, and I peeled back the bandage. The bleeding had stopped. “Lucky you,” I said. “I’m not going to stitch at this point. How are you feeling?”

“Like something that came out of the back end of a large dragon,” he admitted.

It had to be bad if his answer wasn’t
it will be fine
. “We’ll get you something to bring the fever down as soon as we stop for the night. Is the magic any better?”

He shook his head.

I was about to order him to take his boot off when Ulric told us to move on.

We left a false trail leading into the forest on the opposite side of the stream before returning to it and leading the horses upstream. Water splashed over our boots and wet the hair on the horses’ legs. The day was growing warm, and the cool water was welcome. Kel was still barefoot, and Cassia took off her boots as well.

Ulric breathed deeply, presumably enjoying the first fresh air he’d had in years, and he seemed to grow stronger with every step—nearly as quickly as Aren was faltering. My brother hid it well. If I hadn’t known better I’d have said he was only tired and preoccupied with thoughts of Rowan. He still had that glassy look to his eyes, though, and he walked with a pronounced limp, leaning on his horse. He struggled to re-mount when we left the river and turned east, but refused help.

By the time Ulric decided it was safer to stop and make camp than it would be to continue into the evening, Aren was shaking, barely able to hold himself up.

We set up camp in a shallow indentation next to a low escarpment that wound through the trees. It wasn’t perfect shelter, but it cut what little wind there was and gave us a feeling of security. We built a good fire, lit this time by Ulric, and I prepared a stew with the supplies we had left. We shared out our bedding as best we could. There wasn’t nearly enough. Aren wouldn’t be transforming that night, and we had an extra body.

Darkness settled over the forest as we finished setting up camp. Aren sat and talked to Ulric for a while, trying to agree on where we’d go next. They must have decided that they needed rest more than a decision, because Ulric went and lay down near the fire, and Aren settled down on his bedroll and pulled his boots off. I crouched beside him.

“Show me that leg now,” I said. “No arguments.”

He looked annoyed—still thinking about what I’d said earlier, I supposed. His expression softened. “Thank you. I don’t think it’s much. It wasn’t bleeding too badly even when it first happened.”

“Give,” I said, and he extended his leg toward me. The light wasn’t good, but I could see well enough. The skin around the deep puncture wound had become swollen and red, and felt hot when I touched it. I pulled back on the skin, and Aren groaned. There didn’t appear to be any debris in there, but the puncture was deep.

“Stupid Sorcerers,” I muttered. “You really haven’t ever had to worry about infection, have you?”

“What?”

I shook my head. “When an average person gets a wound like this, he ends up with an infection like the one you’ve got brewing here. It’s poisoning your blood, and far worse than it would in a person who didn’t usually rely on magic. We should have treated this hours ago, escape plans be damned. Judging by the fever you’re running, you’re lucky to be conscious. You have no magic protecting you, and your body has no idea how to function without it. For all we know, you’ve also picked up whatever sickness that gate guard was telling us to avoid.”