Some semblance of organization had been formed in the circus before the day was out, though there was still not a lot of rhyme or reason to it. A few frustrated people with loud voices had just started yelling and telling people what to do and everyone, desperate for some kind of order, had just obeyed. La had been too focused on trying to find Crow again and figure out what was going on that she didn't much care who yelled what at whom and did whatever she was told.

"Have you seen Crow?" She would ask anyone who would pause their work for half a second or looked like the sort of person that might know him, but they shrugged and turned away. One or two of them even spat at her. It wasn't until evening when the rain was putting a stop to most work that she found someone who was both able and willing to tell her something. An old woman that the circus had taken on a few years ago and who had always been kind to La, compared to most, and when La approached and asked her if she knew anything about Crow the old lady shot her a toothless smile.

"Aye, lass! I overheard everything." She stopped there and La waited for a moment, but the woman seemed to be reveling in her information and was in no hurry to give it all away. La bit back an impatient retort and instead sat down nearby, forcing a smile.

"What happened? Please, Olga, tell me. I can't find him anywhere."

Olga was practically wriggling in her seat with excitement. "Ah, tis a sad tale! I'm afraid I heard not everything, but I have heard enough, child, yes yes indeed." Again she paused, but only long enough to take a drink. Half of it spilled down her chin and she smacked her lips together afterward before continuing. "He was working, your friend, and I was nearby. The Master came -- with men, mind you, some of his guards -- and said some very strange things. About snow, though bless me I don't know why they'd be so powerful upset about the weather."

La didn't interject. If Olga's failing memory made her forget who Snow was then all the better since she didn't think it would be good for anyone if word got out that Snow had died. Least of all, good for Snow himself.

"He also told your friend he failed the circus. Mighty risky thing to do, angering the Master, but I suppose Crow managed it somehow, aye. He said Crow had a few minutes to say goodbye and then he'd have to leave."

"Leave? What do you mean, leave?" There was a sinking feeling in her stomach -- she had a feeling she was not going to like wherever this was going.

Olga grinned. "After the Wyvern, of course. Master isn't going to let something go so easily, oh ho, no! He will have his revenge against the beast for what it did, mm."

"Who did he go with?"

"Oh, he's going alone, child."

Alone? La stood up and slowly walked away, ignoring Olga's mad laughter behind her as she left, and she walked through the circus without even paying much attention to where she was going. Her mind was on the brothers. Crow had approved what they did to Snow, to bring him back from the dead, and that was surely too dangerous of information to keep him around. No one here would approve of necromancy and it would bode ill for the Master if his workers found out about it, so the Master had to get rid of Crow. There was no other reason she could think of to do something like that. Not when the brothers were so valuable to have together; manipulating one off of the other.

'I'll see you later, Crow, hang in there.'

Bitterness twisted her gut. Were those to be her last words to him? Snow had been granted a goodbye, if he really was alive now, but she had not been allowed even that. She was a simple slave, a caravaner, and her life meant nothing to the Master.

It hit her then and she stopped short in the middle of the path, rain streaming down her face. Four people knew of the necromancy: The Master who had ordered it, Ebeneezer who had done it, Crow who had approved it and had been sent to his death for it, and...

Her.

How long before the Master remembered that and came to kill her, too? Suddenly she was glad she was a nobody after all and easily forgettable or she would have been dead already. Even so, even though she counted herself lucky to be breathing at that moment, La knew it was only a matter of time before he remembered her. She glanced to her left, barely moving her head. Was that man standing by the fallen tent, huffing and puffing to lift one of the poles even though he was sliding in mud; would he be one of the men sent to kill her? Or would it be the woman there to the right, the wiry one with the daggers thrust in her belt? Would one of those daggers slip its way between her ribs before the sun even rose the next morning, killing her even as she slept?

Exhausted or not, La decided then and there that the best thing she could do for herself until she found a way out was to simply not sleep. There was plenty of work to be done, after all. Slowly people were giving up on moving rubble due to the weather but there was still the wounded to be tended to, food to be made and distributed, belongings of the deceased to be organized, and so on. There was enough to keep her up for the next week without sleep if she desired it. Still, she'd have to be on guard -- there was no guarantee someone wouldn't kill her just because she was awake and moving about.

'They'll throw your body in with the rest of the dead,' her mind whispered to her, 'and no one will ever notice you're gone.'

La tried to shake that thought away but it was too true to leave her mind very easily.

After that horrid realization, La threw herself into her work twice as hard as she had before. All the while she was making plans, mulling them over and over again in her head until she thought her head would burst from the effort of it. It wasn't easy to smile calmly at someone and feed them broth when the threat of someone coming up behind you and ending your life with no remorse or mercy was in the back of your mind all the time.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

'They wouldn't do it in front of so many people -- too obvious, and the Master is the subtle kind. They'll wait until you're alone and it's dark and then...'

Ah yes, dying alone. Very comforting thought.

And when she wasn't thinking about what to do for her own situation, she was thinking about Crow and where he was headed and Snow, too, provided he was alive. Dangerous as it was, La didn't want to leave until she knew for sure because if he was alive, he would be hurting so much to have Crow leave him and it would crush him even more if she disappeared, too. So when night fell and someone said they needed to bring hot drinks to the guards in front of the Master's tent, she immediately volunteered. Only when she was standing at the edge of their tent, and behind her was the smell of hot food and quiet talk and before her was darkness and heavy falling rain did she hesitate, wondering if she was walking straight into a trap. It would be foolish to have been so careful thus far only to walk directly into the path of danger -- and yet it was not for herself that she did this, but for Snow. And by extent, for Crow who would have wanted her to look out for his little brother. Right now this was the only way she knew to get close to the Master's tent without suspicion and she was running out of time.

There was no more time to think. La gritted her teeth and plunged into the darkness.

She ran the whole way there. Luckily the drinks had lids or they would have sloshed out the sides before she even got close to her destination. As it was, she got lost a few times in the dark.

"Hold it!" A voice came at her from her right, startling her and she stopped abruptly. She didn't look up at the speaker. "Where ya goin' with that?"

"Taking it to some guards." Don't sound frightened, don't sound frightened...

"Eh, is that so? I'm a guard, must be for me." A hand reached out to snatch what she was holding but La swiftly pulled it away, looking over at the speaker then without thinking about what she was doing until it was too late.

It was the shifty woman with the daggers. And right now the woman wasn't looking too pleased at being denied. 'If looks could kill,' La thought.

She tried to sound confident when she spoke. "They're for the Master's guards, I wouldn't get in the way. There's more in the tent back there, though, and you could get out of the rain for a while!"

The woman seemed to waver for a moment, torn between wanting something hot now and risking angering the Master. The fear of the latter seemed to win over when she grunted and waved La onward, then headed back in the direction of the tent, presumably to get out of the rain just as La had suggested. It wasn't until the woman was completely out of sight and hearing range that she allowed herself to breathe again and broke back into a run, and by the time she arrived at the tent she was completely out of breath.

"Here," she said, wheezing. This time she was more careful not to raise her head -- and not to speak too loudly, either. It was the middle of the night and she didn't want to wake the Master up. "Drinks. For you."

They took them without even a thank you. "'Bout time," grumbled one.

"Been freezing half to death out here," agreed the other, and La took the opportunity of their distraction to dance backwards out of the way of anything sharp and shiny they might have and retreated into a row of bushes. She could still see the tent clearly enough and they could see her, likely, only they weren't paying any attention.

Well, she'd gotten here without raising any suspicion from the guards. Now what? Walk back up to them and say 'excuse me sirs, I'd quite like entrance to see my formerly dead friend, if you don't mind' ? Yeah, that would go over well.

But it seemed then that fate was, at last, kind to her. Though she could see very little, the guardsmen's dim light from their lantern and the frequent lightning strikes granted her sight enough to see something very odd at one side of the tent as two feet emerged out of it, as if the tent had suddenly decided to grow limbs and walk away. But the feet were shortly after followed by a body and, while La couldn't well see the face attached to the body, she knew there was only one person it could be. Fear was quickly replaced by excitement and a growing sense of anticipation.

Could it be Snow had finally decided to defy orders? She could scarcely believe it and yet there was the proof right in front of her, running away on slender legs. La slipped behind the bushes, staying as far away from the guards as she could without losing sight of Snow, and followed. She so badly wanted to run up to him. Hug him. Comfort him. But she didn't want to risk exposing him and if someone were to grab and kill her now, she most definitely didn't want him with her. Yet she didn't want to let him go completely alone, either. He knew nothing of the world and he wouldn't get very far, not without her, and since she was already planning to get out...

Well, it was the perfect time to kill two men with one arrow, as the old saying went.

There were a few times she nearly lost him. Clearly he had no idea where he was going since he went in a few circles and twists and turns -- anyone else might have thought it to be evasive maneuvering but she knew better. He was just lost. He had the right idea, though, and kept going on until all the tents had thinned out and the trees were growing thicker around them. And when they had completely exited the tent area he just... stopped. She tried to approach quietly so she wouldn't startle him but standing out in the rain getting drenched had finally gotten to her and she sneezed before she could stop it from coming. Loudly, even loud enough to be heard through the storm. He whirled around but must not have seen her face because he started to run away.

"Snow!" She screamed his name over the storm, breaking into a run to follow him. "Wait, it's me, come back!"

Either he didn't believe her or he didn't hear her because he didn't stop or even slow down, so she gritted her teeth and picked up the pace. Running ankle deep in mud was not the easiest thing in the world to do. Luckily, it wasn't easy for him either and she was able to catch up to him after he slipped and faceplanted into the mud. La grabbed him by the collar before he was able to get up again and shoved him over onto his back, holding him down as he wiggled until he finally had the good sense to look at her face.

"La!" he yelled, louder than was necessary. She released him from her iron grip and he struggled to a sitting position. For a moment they both just sat there staring at one another and covered in mud until Snow let out a loud whoop of glee and hugged her so hard she nearly fell back into the mud herself. She managed to avoid it, though she wouldn't have much cared even if she had fallen backward -- Snow was alive, really alive, and that was all that mattered right now.

"Come on," she said, and struggled to her feet, offering him a hand to get up. He took it. "We need to get as far away from here as possible."

'And to some shelter. The sun will be as dangerous for him as the Master and his men.' But there was no point in making him worry about that for the time being. All she wanted him to worry about was putting one foot in front of the other in the opposite direction of the circus and she would manage the rest of it. Of course, that meant she needed a plan... and fast. Finding Crow would be a good one, if she had had any idea where he was or how long it would take to find him.

Lightning struck a nearby tree and she started, pulling Snow closer to her by instinct. But it wasn't close enough to fall on them, though the tree was split in half by the bolt and they were still near enough to see it fall. Being under the trees was dangerous in a storm.

Snow spoke into her ear, half-yelling. "What just happened?"

"Never mind!" she said. 'I'll tell you later. Let's just keep moving."