Mara told Becca and Lori more than she normally shared with strangers, encouraged by their own forthrightness and, if she was honest with herself, by her second glass of wine. She shared her childhood–learning lay magic at her mother’s knee, foraging with her in the city parks. She shared her mother’s long sickness and eventual death, which left her alone with her father.
“He wasn’t unkind to me,” she said. “But he loved my mother to the point of distraction. Her death undid him somewhat.” She swallowed hard, wondering if the same fate awaited her, held at bay only by these strange secret dreams and the hope they offered. “He and my mother had always worked for the rebellion, much like you two do, but as a physik she had more to contribute to the underground than he did. After she died, I think he lost his way. He grew distant, so I just picked up my mother’s work and carried on with it. Until Davy, anyway. My father was close friends with the Swifts. When word got ‘round that Davy was looking for a wife, he offered me up like chattel. Not that I regret it,” she said quickly. “But I was bitter in the beginning. I think he wanted to get me out of the house. I look too much like my mother. That old story.”
“Mm,” Becca said, nodding. “My own parents couldn’t stand the sight of me after my brother died, so I–” She broke off with the sound of a soft thump under the table, glaring at Lori who was glaring right back. Becca’s eyes flicked down to her plate. “I understand,” she said simply. “But this conversation has turned a bit grim, hasn’t it? Tell us about your journey. How did you escape the city?”
Mara glanced at Eli, who shook his head with a grimace. “Better if we don’t share specifics,” he explained to Becca and Lori before turning back to Mara. “Though everything from Loftland on is fair game.”
Thus reassured, Mara launched contentedly into a dramatized retelling of their journey through the enchanted woodland, lingering for the sake of their hosts’ amusement on the truth serum, and then on the fight with the outlaws.
“Why in the world did you put the poor woman up a tree?” Lori asked, interrupting the story to frown at Eli, laughter in her eyes.
He shrugged. “They had an archer. It kept her out of range.”
Mara furrowed her brow at him. “We hadn’t even seen them. How did you know they had an archer?”
“Keep working on your sensing exercises and maybe I’ll show you.”
Mara turned back to Lori and Becca. “Do you see what I’ve been dealing with? The man’s incapable of giving a straight answer.”
“Hmm,” Lori hummed in agreement. “It’s one of his worst qualities.”
“One of,” Eli huffed.
Laughing, Mara carried on with the rest of the story, and before long she and Eli were helping to clear the plates, Becca waving off their offer to help with the cleanup.
“We’ll take care of it after you leave. Go sit down, and I’ll bring drinks. Mara, brandy or tea?”
“Oh, brandy,” Mara said eagerly, not wanting to lose the pleasant warmth that buzzed in her veins and made it easier not to think. “Thank you. Can I please help with the dishes, though?”
“Absolutely not. Eli? Tea or brandy?”
“Tea’s fine.”
“On its way. Go sit. Please.”
Nick and Adeline were already occupied in the corner of the sitting room, the little girl explaining to Nick how best to play with dolls and that they were going to be taking them on an adventure in the mountains. Nick seemed happy enough to play along. Her son was an excellent follower, so long as the one giving commands wasn’t Mara.
Lori came in with a tea tray just after they got settled, Becca on her heels with a couple of snifters and a brown glass bottle. Mara found herself reclining in an armchair by the fire, feet up on a soft footstool, belly full of rich food, limbs loose, mind languid.
“So,” Becca said, turning to Eli as Adi and Nick wandered into the dining room to begin their dolls’ expedition, “What’s next?”
Mara looked to Eli. Eli looked to Mara.
“It’s up to you,” he said, reminding her of the choice he’d offered. The choice she’d been mulling over since Loftland. The choice she’d made, several nights ago, during one of her dark, lonely guard shifts.
She couldn’t run. Not from the only family her son had, his only chance at knowing more of his father than what she could tell him herself. Nor could she run from the fight that had defined her own purpose since she was a girl. The Order had spread its insidious tendrils far enough and terrorized its citizens for far too long. If there was a war to come, she meant to be a part of it.
“We’re headed north,” she said, holding Eli’s gaze with her own. His chin dipped in a nod, and something flickered in his eyes that she couldn’t interpret. Maybe just a reflection of the fire’s dancing flames.
“North to the Enclave,” Eli clarified for their hosts. “To Elise and Rorick.”
“That’s good, I suppose,” Lori said with a soft smile, looking from Mara to Eli. “It’ll be nice to be with family.”
“I hope so,” Mara answered. “Davy spoke so highly of his parents. I’m eager to meet them.” A lie, of course, her real desire being to run away from anything that reminded her of Davy’s absence. But it was one of those lies she was expected to say.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Becca, who sat beside her at the end of a worn loveseat, reached across the divide between them and patted her hand.
“We really are so sorry,” she murmured, her voice too low for the chattering kids to hear. “He was a good man.”
Mara chased the lump down her throat with a sip of brandy and forced a smile. “He was.”
To her relief, the conversation drifted away from her after that, Lori and Becca conversing in low tones with Eli. Their conversation had a practiced rhythm to it, the cadence of routine, the women sharing movements from the coast, the rise and fall of criminal leaders, which trafficked goods were plentiful and which were dwindling. Eli, on the other hand, shared vague assessments of rebel support.
“Clearwater is the holdout,” he was telling them, just as Mara finished her brandy and moved on to tea. “There’s enough money coming through, life is decent enough even under Order control.”
“Except for the ones who don’t fit the mold,” Lori said bitterly.
“Except those,” Eli said with a nod. “But they’re outnumbered in Clearwater, and it’s a cush assignment for Order officers. Few there are ripe to turn. Your river pirate, Westland? He might look to expanding his operation toward the peninsula, put some pressure on the luxury merchants.”
Becca wrinkled her nose, but nodded. “He’s hardly ours. The man is odious. But understood. What about Bedford?”
Eli shook his head. “The fighting network is ready, especially after our last trip. But their only supply route runs directly through the Capital. We haven’t invested nearly the time and manpower we need into the Prosco and the High Desert.”
“You don’t think we could flip the Wanderers?” Lori prodded. “The Order’s never been kind to them.”
Eli shook his head. “We could, but they’re peaceful people. In all of written history, they’ve never taken up arms, so they’re not considered a priority.”
Mara struggled to keep up, struggled even harder to keep her mind on the conversation and not on how wretchedly ignorant she was. How were these women permitted to know so much when she had been told so little?
On and on the conversation went, with Mara capturing the overall gist if not all the specifics–the rebellion, thanks to the efforts of Davy and shadow-casters like him, had managed to amass a significant network of quiet supporters, fighters whose minds were shielded from Order persuasion and who now sat waiting, itching for the call to rise up. More were needed in a few key cities, Clearwater being one, but the sense of impending change loomed. For decades, nearly a century, the rebellion had been an underground operation. Now, it was poised to break out into the light of day.
Or it ought to be. Eli seemed to think otherwise, though he never said so outright. Mara might not have noticed, had she not spent the last several weeks becoming intimate with the little quirks of his nonverbal cues. The tap of his thumb against the side of his cup when he talked about supply lines, the tightening of his jaw when the discussion turned to Bedford. He hid something. Mara just didn’t quite know what.
She itched to retire to bed, to slip into her dreams and interrogate her erstwhile dead husband about all this. It probably wouldn’t work, what with the dreamworld’s aversion to substantive conversation, but perhaps she could sneak it in, at least get a sense of his opinions before they were forced to easier subjects or she was forcibly ejected from the dream.
Eli, ever sensitive to her shifting moods, begged off another round of drinks and said they ought to head to bed. While he helped carry their glasses and tea tray to the kitchen, Mara pried Nick away from his new friend. Their hostesses saw them to the door, waving off Mara’s profuse gratitude for their hospitality.
“It’s the least we can do,” Lori said, casting Eli a teasing, grumpy look. “Literally, the least we can do.”
He rolled his eyes and waved a hand, promising to return for supper again tomorrow, and took Nick from Mara for the long climb up the stairs.
Nick was already dozing on Eli’s shoulder by the time they reached their rooms, one hand tangled loosely in his shirt, the other dangling.
Mara unlocked the door and hurried to pull down the covers so Eli could deposit his burden on the bed.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she set about removing her son’s boots and tucking him in.
“No trouble. I’ll come get you in the morning for breakfast.”
Before she could answer, he’d let himself out through the door between their rooms. Probably eager to get a little time to himself, Mara thought. Still loose-limbed and boozy, she saw to her own cleanup, and then slipped out of her pants and climbed into the bed beside Nick.
The pillow and mattress had a life of their own as they cradled her body, the plain cotton sheets satin smooth against her skin after so many days of scratchy wool. Though she’d spent every night in that four-poster bed with Davy, the sensations of this real one were somehow richer, textured by the little body aches that never followed her into the dreams.
Amidst such luxury, Mara expected to plummet into sleep, but it evaded her. When the sounds of her own movement died down, there was nothing to replace them. The room was too big, the patter of the rain too distant. Nick snored softly beside her, cuddled close, and the room was plenty warm. So why did she feel cold? Isolated?
Biting her lip, she slipped from under the covers and reached for her pants, pulling them on before padding to do the door connecting her room to Eli’s. She hesitated before knocking and probably wouldn’t have knocked at all if not for the wine and brandy still coursing through her veins.
Raising her hand, she tapped one knuckle against the wooden door. In seconds, she heard the fall of footsteps on creaky floorboards, and Eli’s low voice sounded through the door.
“Mara?”
She swallowed and leaned her forehead against the cool wood, fingers curled around the handle. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“Can I….” She stopped and cleared her throat. “Can I open the door?”
The handle slipped out of her grip as he opened it for her, and she saw that the room behind him, like hers, was dark.
“Did I wake you?”
He reached up and scrubbed a hand through tousled hair. “No.”
She’d learned to read his face in the darkness over the past weeks, well enough at least to know he was lying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just wondering….” She pulled in a deep breath, grateful that the darkness hid the heat of her face. After all he’d done for her, she should be used to needing his help, but this was somehow worse. Something about asking gave her need a bitter aftertaste. “I was wondering if I could leave the door cracked open? I think I’ve gotten used to… I don’t know…” She didn’t know. Had she gotten used to him? What an absurd thought. She’d never gotten so used to Davy that she couldn’t sleep without him when he left. Then again, she’d never been on the run for her life with Davy. It was a dependency thing, probably. Something to do with the danger.
Oblivious to her mental meandering, Eli merely nodded. “Sure.”
“Okay.” She backed away from the open door. “Thank you. Sleep well.”
“You too, Mara.”
With the door open, she did.