PART 2: SEVEN YEARS LATER
“Up,” Ipsu said.
Abbee lay on her stomach, clutching at clumps of grass. Felt granules of dirt sticking to her lips. Her toes pushed at air. Slowly writhing distracted Abbee from her wheezing. She wished getting the wind knocked out of her didn’t hurt so much.
“Up,” Ipsu repeated.
Up was one of his favorite words. Abbee knew Ipsu had a large vocabulary, heard his frequent catechisms during the evening fire, but he seemed to fixate on a few words or phrases for weeks at a time. His first favorite phrase had nearly driven her insane. Still did. Seven years after leaving Akken, Ipsu still asked his signature question whenever she least expected it. Ipsu had spoiled meeting new people for Abbee for the rest of her life. She couldn’t hear anyone ask “Who are you?” without twitching.
“Up.”
Abbee didn’t like up. It usually meant she was on the ground after standing—and after Ipsu had forced a sudden change in orientation.
“Up.”
Today was a “chase day.” Ipsu chased her all day, through woods thick with underbrush that whipped at her legs, down swift rivers with dangerous rocks, and across fields filled with nettles. If he caught her, they fought. Abbee always ended up on the ground. Ipsu only had one arm, and still Abbee lost. Always.
“Up.”
“I heard you,” Abbee said.
She’d come close to getting him earlier that morning, but the sun was low in the afternoon sky, and Abbee was tired. Slower. They both carried knives, but their sparring on chase days was hand to hand only. Abbee wished she could use her knives—Ipsu moved like a snake. Her scalp stung. She knew she’d have to cut her hair again tonight. It was long enough for Ipsu to grab and use as leverage. Abbee wondered if she’d ever be able to have long brown hair like her mother’s. If only she could see her little mouse now. Abbee felt a pang of dull sadness and pushed it away.
“Up.” A hint of irritation.
Abbee smiled at his display of emotion. “I’m enjoying this nice dirt.”
She felt the air shift. She rolled away from Ipsu and up to her feet to face him. Ipsu wore a light deerskin coat over a plain linen shirt. Leather trousers and good boots. His clothes always seemed too thin for the cold, but Ipsu ignored the weather. A satchel was slung across his back, with a buckle in front to close it. Ipsu’s satchel was smaller than Abbee’s backpack, and he still managed to carry everything he owned in it.
Ipsu watched her without expression. She knew he’d moved to kick her and was now just standing there as if nothing had happened. Lounging around on the ground too long always earned her a kick to the ribs.
“Run,” Ipsu commanded.
Abbee turned and ran.
***
The sun was low in the sky when Abbee paused at the top of a ravine to rest. Another couple of hours of daylight. Chase days ended when the sun went down. The late-autumn air was crisp, and she steamed in the cold. A stiff breeze washed over the top of the ravine, and Abbee saw dark clouds to the northwest.
She spotted Ipsu half a kilometer behind her, coming up the north side of the hill. She’d led him up through thick underbrush to slow him down. In a few minutes, he’d encounter a big stone ledge, tall enough to require climbing. Ipsu managed a great deal with his one arm, but it would be a while before he caught up to her.
The forest stretched away from the ravine. Abbee was high enough to see across the tops of the trees, and she saw what she’d been looking for about a kilometer to the north. A cut in the trees. It looked like a river passing through. Abbee knew there wasn’t a river near here wide enough for that. No, that was a continental road. Ipsu usually avoided them, but Abbee covered a lot of ground on chase days, and she’d been looking for one. The cut in the trees stretched further north, to a wide-open space. Abbee saw several columns of gray smoke rising from chimneys. She was fairly sure that was Lencoe, a train town.
A strong gust of cold air snatched the warmth from Abbee, and she shivered. She shouldered off her pack, untied her fur coat from the bottom, and pulled it on. A memory of rolling around in the dark flickered through her head. Flashing claws and sharp teeth. Abbee felt a satisfied smile as she donned the coat. The wolf hadn’t expected to end up this way. She pulled her pack back on and tightened the straps. It was light. She was low on food, and she knew Ipsu didn’t have much left either. She wasn’t stopping to resupply on her run. She was staying in that town tonight.
Abbee picked her way down the ravine and headed north. She went as fast as she could over the rough terrain. She knew Ipsu would try harder to catch up to her. He didn’t like going into towns. In the beginning, it had been to avoid the chaos and upheaval following the fall of Akken. What had actually happened that night in the central continental city depended on who you asked, but everyone agreed on two things: the Tower was destroyed, and the golems turned on the city. Everyone called it Towerfall.
It had been seven years since, and the world seemed a bit more stable now, but Ipsu kept to old habits. They’d spent months coming down the western seaboard and skipped every settlement with more than ten people in it. No visit to Morat nor Joor. Abbee had been sure Ipsu would stop in Joor, but he’d veered southeast days before they’d reached the coastal basin where the city lay.
She reached the bottom of the ravine and beelined for the continental road. Ipsu would give her an earful for going into a town, but Abbee was feeling mutinous. She wanted hot water and soap.
Fifteen minutes later, she emerged from the trees and stepped out onto the continental road. Thirty-five meters wide and constructed from stone slabs, the continental road was like a ribbon of rock draped across the land. Several such roads connected all the major cities, and north–south travel still required passage through Akken’s escarpment tunnels.
Unencumbered by trees, rocks, and roots, Abbee turned toward Lencoe and settled into a sprint. A smile spread across her face. Ipsu wasn’t catching her across open ground. Abbee was grateful for her strength and speed, because it hadn’t always been this way. When she’d first met Ipsu, he’d towered over her and run far faster. Training with him had been difficult and frustrating, but Abbee had wanted to learn. She never wanted to end up in a pit again, never wanted another man to take advantage of her like her father had. Ipsu was a ready teacher. He’d taught her to survive in the wild. Taught her to hunt. To fight, dodge, and run. And when she could no longer do those, to use an opponent’s weight against them. To use weapons of opportunity and go for weak spots. Ipsu wasn’t her father and didn’t try to kill her, but he didn’t pull his punches. Not even with twelve-year-old girls. In the first couple of years, Abbee had relied on her gift a lot.
At first she’d tried to hide it, but Ipsu wasn’t dumb. He’d known she was talented from the beginning, though Abbee was fairly sure he hadn’t known with what at first. He’d shown about as much surprise as Ipsu ever did the first day they had been together, when he’d handed Abbee a knife and she’d promptly cut herself with it. He’d seized her hand to dress the wound and instead watched with her as it had closed on its own. She’d only bled for a few seconds.
Abbee had wanted to test the boundaries of her gift herself in private, but Ipsu had made it his hobby. In their time together, Ipsu had pushed her out of plenty of trees, into rapid rivers, and down steep ravines. She’d lost count of how many times she’d broken her arms and legs. Ipsu told her to keep her gift to herself. No one would understand, because healers couldn’t heal themselves, and now was not the time to be suspected of being a wizard.
Many monumental things had happened during Towerfall, one of which was wizardry disappearing overnight. The last wizard Abbee had ever seen was that woman with the weird staff at the top of the mover pit. Engineered by Veronna’s shadowy network of spies, coordinated assassinations had wiped out wizards all over the continent. Nobody figured out how the network had known all their locations. To this day, the network hunted both secrets and wizards with equal enthusiasm. Presenting as a talented still guaranteed steady work for life. But presenting as a wizard meant living on the run until the wizard hunters caught up with you and snuffed you out.
At first Abbee had wondered if Ipsu was a wizard on the run. He wasn’t. Ipsu was a refractor. A Class Three. He couldn’t choose the effect and was immune to all magic. Abbee actually liked that arrangement, because it meant she didn’t have to feel guilty about her gift being backward. Abbee’s gift only affected her. Try as she might, she couldn’t ever use it on anyone else. In the early days with Ipsu, Abbee had indeed relied on her gift to heal her from sparring damage, but she’d also relied on Ipsu. Before meeting him, Abbee had never spent a night outside Akken. The reversal was astonishing. Seven years since that chaotic night in Akken, and Abbee could count the number of nights she’d slept inside a building on two hands. It was as if Ipsu had an aversion to level floors.
Abbee felt the train before she heard it, and heard it before she saw it. The ground beneath her feet vibrated. A rumble reached her ears. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the train crest the hill behind her. Abbee got off the road. She chafed at the loss of speed, but she wasn’t getting run over by a continental train.
The train was a big one. At least fifteen carts. Each continental train cart had huge steel wheels at its corners and two leather-clad drovers sitting on top. Movers. Had to be, using their telekinetic gifts to both turn each cart’s big drive cranks and keep the giant wheels from oscillating at speed. The ground shook as the train thundered past Abbee with a deafening roar, shooting past as if she weren’t even moving. She knew the train would never leave the road on purpose and that she was perfectly safe, but it was like a building rolling by only three meters away. Abbee whooped at the surge of adrenaline.
As soon as the train went past, she hopped back onto the road and ran at a dead sprint. She saw Lencoe five minutes later. The road forked before the town. A thinner ribbon of stone hooked to the right around Lencoe, to a wide-open space with three trains parked in it. The town was built on a hilltop with a big metal-reinforced stone bulwark facing the train road. Continentals sometimes lost wheels at speed, and the train towns had learned early that a steel wheel weighing several tons rolled a long way.
Lencoe had one street, with a bunch of houses and shops on it. Five inns—four more than was needed for a town of this size. The town only existed to provide roadside services to the continentals. Abbee paused on the edge of town and looked back. The road was clear. No Ipsu. She guessed he’d stay in the woods tonight, but Abbee wished he’d come into town. She wasn’t the only person who needed a bath.
Drovers crowded the street, clumping into small groups to exchange news and gossip. Abbee got a lot of strange looks. She knew it was her clothing. She wore an odd mix of fine leathers and crude furs. Ipsu avoided civilization for the amenities, but he never skimped on gear. Poor or damaged equipment meant death or disease in the wilderness, and while Abbee was impervious to food poisoning and infection, Ipsu wasn’t. Abbee wasn’t sure where Ipsu got his money, but he always had enough to buy the best boots, bandages, knives, and clothing. She hadn’t washed anything since she and Ipsu had been caught in the middle of a field during a cloudburst last week. Abbee had been running all day, and she was filthy.
Abbee picked the last inn on the street. A sign out front with a horn and some apples on it. She walked up the front steps of the Gray Horn and pushed the door open.
“Whoa,” a deep voice rumbled from within. “It’s great to see you, Abbee, but no. Go round back and get that dirt off you first.”
Abbee smiled at the big man standing inside. It had been a year since she’d seen Gerro, and he looked about the same. Maybe a little grayer. “You got room for me tonight?”
“Just you?” Gerro asked.
“I doubt Ipsu will come into town,” Abbee said, “and if he does, he can get his own room.”
Gerro’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah? Who’s paying, then?”
Abbee thumbed some coins out of her pocket. Her hands were still too clumsy for pickpocketing, but she’d long since learned to keep the change anytime Ipsu sent her into a town to buy supplies. “I’ve got money if you’ve got hot water—”
Gerro glowered at her. “It was one time.”
“Twice,” Abbee reminded him. “Almost a habit at this point.”
“Coincidence,” Gerro snapped. “Gonna charge you double if you keep spreading vile falsehoods about my humble inn.”
Ipsu’s spare change wouldn’t cover double. “If the water’s hot tonight, I promise that you’ll never hear about it again.” She handed over her money.
“It’s hot,” Gerro said. “I got rid of that furnace and hired a torch.”
With the wizards gone and no one left to repair magical furnaces, every torch had found themselves flush with employment opportunities. Even a Class One could heat a big water tank if they stayed at it long enough.
“Go get clean,” Gerro added. “I’ll have your room ready for you when you’re done. Oh, watch out for the drovers. They’re feisty tonight.”
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“Great,” Abbee said.
Like intelligence and brawn, talented had a pecking order. Movers and elementals were at the top, for obvious reasons. Irritating a telepath was an invitation to have your dearest secrets aired publicly. Lightbenders might make you look foolish with a comical illusion. Empaths might make you feel foolish—or worse. Nobody messed with the healers out of self-preservation.
Normals were at the bottom. That was the new term for it. Used to be “untalented” when Abbee was little, but after Towerfall the untalented among the population came to call themselves “normal” or “regular people.” Abbee appeared normal. If she used her talent in public, people would think her a wizard. She’d seen what happened to people suspected of being a wizard.
In the old days, off-duty constables out of Akken rode the trains and kept the peace along the continental roads. Train towns usually hired one or two marshals to keep the peace on their streets, and the ever-present threat of a wizard showing up added to the pressure to reduce mischief. Talented crime carried stiff penalties, and a violent talented crime was typically a capital offense.
Those days were gone. In the cities, talented constables and enforcers kept the peace with superior numbers, but out on the continental roads and in the countryside, the talented had the upper hand, and they knew it. Banditry was on the rise. That had never been done while the Tower had stood. It turned out the wizards had held quite a bit together. In the past few years, normal-on-talented violence, and vice versa, had been on the rise. Last spring, the big story on everyone’s lips had been of a mob lynching a mover in a small town outside Morat. Everyone was on edge.
Abbee went around back to the bathhouse. It was a long building that had probably served as a stable at some point, back when the continent’s commerce traveled by animal power instead of movers. Abbee doubted they’d needed a big water tank mounted to the roof back then. The bathhouse was full of drovers, hanging out of rooms in various stages of undress. Abbee could tell by the banter that they all knew each other. Their conversation lulled when Abbee came in, and turned to whispers when she passed. Whispers and giggles. Abbee felt eyes on her back and didn’t like it. She’d spent the last seven years in and out of the woods, and while she’d been in plenty of settlements and around other people, she still felt a little anxious in closed spaces with so many people.
Abbee found an empty stall in the back, away from the crowd. She shouldered open the door and found a big bathtub full of steaming water, a chair in the corner, and a couple of rough towels. Abbee sighed happily. She shouldered off her pack and dropped it next to the chair. Her fur coat came next. Abbee was about to peel off the rest of her clothes when she heard light footsteps outside the door. She tensed. So intent on the bath, she’d forgotten to lock the door behind her.
The door creaked inward. A young woman not much older than Abbee poked her face in. One of the drovers from down the hall. Abbee relaxed. She was lucky it was a nosy drover and not Ipsu—the sun hadn’t gone down yet, and it would be just like him to consider this part of the chase day.
The drover came inside and shut the door behind her. Abbee looked her up and down, searching for weapons, then reminded herself that the drover didn’t need any. She was a mover. No way to tell how strong she was, but it took at least a Class Three to drive a continental. That meant this lithe woman could lift twice her bodyweight, and that meant Abbee. Part of Ipsu’s training involved hypotheticals about fighting talented people. Most of his answers for movers involved “surprise them first.” Abbee kept her hands off her knives.
“What are you doing?” Abbee demanded.
The drover gestured. “Keep going.”
“What?”
“Yes, well, my mates bet that you’re part wolf, and I said no way, so I’m here to prove them wrong. I need to see your back for that first, though.” She eyed Abbee’s legs. “And your backside, while you’re at it.”
Abbee flushed. “I’m not taking a bath with you in here. I don’t even know you.”
“I’m Bala,” the woman said. “There, you know me. And you are?”
“Annoyed,” Abbee warned.
“Don’t be like that,” Bala said. “Show me your fur, wolf girl.”
Abbee pointed at the door. “Out.”
When Bala didn’t move, Abbee pointed again. “I’m not asking. Out.”
“Sorry,” Bala said. “Gotta know.”
“I’m not part wolf,” Abbee said.
“Well, you could say that, but you could be lying, and I wouldn’t know. Who knows what escaped the Tower when it fell down? For all I know, you could have a bunch of wolf babies back in your den.”
“I don’t have any babies,” Abbee said. “Wolf or otherwise. Leave, or I’ll find the town marshal.”
Bala huffed. “Fine. Be that way.” She opened the door and stepped out into the hall. As she drew the door closed behind her, Bala called to her friends. “Not a wolf, but she is a bitch.”
Laughter from up the hall.
Abbee set her jaw and imagined bludgeoning Bala with a rock. She wanted a bath, not a fight with a bunch of bored drovers. She went to the door and locked it. Movers had a hard time with things they couldn’t see. Abbee grabbed the chair and jammed it under the doorknob for good measure. She wasn’t letting annoying drovers ruin her bath. She’d been planning this for days, since Ipsu had refused to enter Joor. Abbee was having a hot bath, and nobody was getting in her way.
She waited at the door for a couple of minutes, listening. The banter quieted as more of the drovers exited the building. There wasn’t a window in here, and the door was well secured, but Abbee wouldn’t put it past Bala to try something. The other woman reminded Abbee of Sammy, who’d said plenty of offensive things and had tried to bully her. She hoped the drovers’ hunger won out on their mischief, and they’d all gone into Gerro’s common room to eat.
Abbee peeled off the rest of her clothes and settled into the hot water. It was just right. Whoever Gerro had hired knew just the right temperature for Abbee. Borderline scalding. Her opportunities for hot baths over the past seven years had been so few that Abbee could count them on one hand. This one included. Ipsu always made some comment about washing and not marinating.
***
Abbee returned to Gerro’s common room clean and damp an hour later. She’d washed her clothes in the bathwater and wrung them out as best she could. She didn’t care if she dripped on the floor. She did care that the drovers from the bathhouse were still in the common room. Three of them, clustered around a table.
Bala looked up when Abbee walked in. Wrinkled her nose. “Smells like wet dog in here.”
Her friends laughed.
Abbee kept her face still and walked to the furthest table. She dropped her pack between her feet and sat down facing the door. She’d assumed she’d be able to ignore the other woman, much the same way Abbee had learned to ignore Ipsu at the evening fire. She had been wrong. Bala’s voice was new and grated on Abbee.
Gerro brought Abbee a plate of food. “Sorry about them,” he murmured.
Abbee eyed the drovers as Gerro went back into the kitchen. She doubted they’d stop with verbal barbs. Sammy hadn’t, and Sammy had been the tip of the spear for the other bridgies. He led and others followed. Bala was the same. Movers were an arrogant lot in general. The ability to hit someone from across the room did something to a person.
Abbee ate quickly and stood up. She shouldered her pack and walked toward the door. She’d been looking forward to sleeping in a bed tonight, but it wasn’t worth being an evening’s entertainment for these idiots.
Bala grinned. She got to the door first. Hung her arm across it. “Going somewhere?”
Abbee sighed. “Can you not?”
Someone at the table made “wolfy” comments in a low voice, but loud enough for Abbee to hear.
More snickers.
“Look,” Abbee said. “I’m just trying to get through my day.”
“And we’re having some fun,” Bala said. She looked at her friends. “Right? Just some fun?”
“Just a little fun, Bala,” one of her companions agreed.
“Can you do it without me?” Abbee asked.
Bala shrugged. “Not really.”
Gerro came up behind Bala with two large earthenware mugs. “Coming through.”
Bala moved out of the way.
“Can I have one of those?” Abbee asked, gesturing at the mug in Gerro’s hand.
“Yeah, this one’s yours anyway.” He handed it over. “Spiced cider.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Abbee saw Bala’s grin widen. She didn’t have to guess what the drover was going to do next. Her irritation spiked. At least I got my bath.
Abbee threw her cider into Bala’s face. Movers usually had trouble with liquids. Bala blinked and spluttered, and while she rubbed her eyes, Abbee clocked her in the side of the head with the mug. Hit her as hard as she could. The mug shattered into pieces. Bala dropped.
Abbee pushed past Gerro and dashed from the room. “Sorry!” she shouted over her shoulder.
“Out of the way!” someone cried.
Abbee burst out of the front door. It was dusk. Lencoe’s street was lit by torches and held considerably less foot traffic. She spared a single glance at the street and went right. She hooked around Gerro’s inn and sprinted for the far end. Line of sight. She couldn’t be seen. Any Class Three could lift Abbee clear off the ground. If they lifted her, she was done.
She got to the corner and ducked around it. She found a dozen crates stacked against the back wall of the Gray Horn. Some canvas sacks too. The Gray Horn was in the back corner of town, on the edge of the hill. The continental road was at the bottom and on the other side of the tree line. No moon tonight.
Abbee half sprinted, half fell down the hill. She hit the bottom and dashed across the road. Her boots made a lot of noise crossing the stone slabs. A shout atop the hill behind her. Something wrapped around Abbee’s waist. Something unseen. The drovers. They were trying to grab her. Abbee dove at the ground, trying to shift their target. She rolled and popped back up into a run. The unseen bands fell away. More batted her around the legs and arms. They felt light, as if a child were hitting her with a broom. The drovers were at the edge of their range, making it hard to see in the low-light conditions. Abbee hit the dirt on the other side of the road.
Something impacted the ground in front of her. Something heavy. Wood splintered and shattered. Another one behind her. The crates. They were throwing Gerro’s crates at her. A canvas sack thudded into the ground a few meters away. The sack exploded and threw a big plume of flour everywhere. Abbee ran through it. She was still damp from her bath, and the flour stuck to her.
Something big and heavy and hard hit her in the back. Abbee both heard and felt her right shoulder fracture under the impact. She stumbled and went down. Put her hands out to break her fall. Her right arm didn’t work right, and she hit the ground with a curse. Pain exploded up through her elbow and rippled through her injured shoulder. Abbee kicked off the ground, trying to flip over, away from the broken bone.
A dark shadow filled her vision and smashed into her face, and she knew no more.
***
Abbee woke up to a slap upside her face. Ruddy torchlight illuminated the grass and two pairs of boots. Their legs were going the wrong way. Oh, I’m upside down. Her head pounded. Something wet dripped into her eyes, and bright agony sang through her injured shoulder. Her whole face hurt. She twisted around in the air. Something unseen held her from one ankle. The ground was just out of reach.
Dark laughter somewhere to the left. “She looks funny flopping around.”
Abbee twisted and tried to see her captors.
“Oh, look,” one of the drovers said. “Her arm’s broken.”
“That was my crate,” another said. “I’m the one who got her. You completely missed her with every throw.” Abbee felt a rough hand on her broken arm. “Ha! It flaps around completely the wrong way.”
White-hot agony lanced through Abbee. She screamed in pain. “Stop, stop, stop!”
“Did you get her?” Bala stepped into the torchlight. An angry bruise was forming on her temple, with red scrapes where the mug had shattered on her head. “You got her. Good.”
Abbee scrabbled for one of her belt knives with her intact hand. She knew it wouldn’t help, not against movers, but she couldn’t just hang there and do nothing.
Bala slapped her hand away and pulled out both of Abbee’s belt knives. “Ah, ah, ah, none of that.”
Abbee hated that Bala had her knives. She tried to pull herself up far enough to grab at the blades sticking out of her boots. The flash of agony from her broken shoulder almost made her throw up. She whimpered and hung there, defeated.
Bala dropped one of the knives and grabbed Abbee’s scruff. Twisted. Abbee hissed in pain.
Bala got in close. “You’re gonna howl for me, wolfy girl.” She looked up at her friends. “We gotta be fast. That stupid innkeeper went to fetch the marshal.”
“What for?” a drover demanded. “She’s the one who started it.”
“Yeah, and when the marshal sees her like this, it’ll be us in the jail cart. We’re talented and she’s not. Probably not.” Bala gestured around. “Besides, you gonna pay for these broken supply crates?”
“Let’s get her out of sight, then.”
Abbee felt something tug on her ankle. She slid through the air toward the trees.
“Just stop,” Bala snapped. “This won’t take long. Besides, they’ll find us in the woods. You’re carrying a torch, you idiot.”
“What do you want to do with her?” The drover with the torch wiggled Abbee’s injured shoulder.
Abbee sobbed with pain. She felt a tickle on her wrists. Felt the healing start with a fresh wave of pain as bone shards reassembled. She hissed as snapped tendons and torn muscles reattached. She had dozens of tiny fractures across her skull from the flying crate, and they all healed at once. Abbee got a metallic taste in her mouth as her blood vessels healed.
It occurred to Abbee that Gerro had called the marshal on her. For hitting a bully with a mug. In hindsight, she’d only meant to throw cider in Bala’s face. She didn’t know why she’d broken the mug on the woman’s head, but she’d felt good doing it. She felt betrayed that Gerro would report her. Violence in the train towns was strictly forbidden, but movers had ways of making bad things happen to people without being implicated. It wasn’t fair. It definitely wouldn’t be fair if these fools saw her heal. They’d think her a wizard.
Abbee felt more pressure on her ankle. “I got her,” Bala said. “You can let go.”
Abbee dropped. Impacted the ground. Popped back up. Bala dropped her and pulled her up again. She bounced her off the ground a couple more times like a rag doll. On the last drop, Abbee’s hands hit something on the ground. Something hard. Her fingers wrapped around it. She came up with a shard of shattered crate. Pointy on one end.
Bala got closer to Abbee. “I’m gonna have a scar where you hit me.” She waggled Abbee’s knife. “Only fair that you get a scar too.”
Abbee wasn’t getting a scar. She didn’t have any scars. Her skin looked as if she spent her days cradled in soft wool.
Bala grabbed Abbee’s scruff. Pulled on it, hard. “Quit wiggling. It’s up to you how big the scar is.”
Abbee gripped the shard of wood. The drovers hadn’t noticed that she’d healed her broken shoulder. They might and at any moment bind her arms. She’d lose her advantage. It was now or never. Splinters dug into Abbee’s palm as Bala’s face came into view. Into range. Abbee twisted with all her might and rammed the shard into Bala’s neck.
Bala stumbled back with a gurgling choke. She dropped the knife and let go of Abbee’s ankle. Abbee fell to the ground. She got her hands out and managed a halfway-decent roll. She snatched up both her knives and swept toward the other two drovers. They’d gotten in close to watch the show. Too close. Abbee slashed the first across the belly. He dropped his torch. With a roar of rage, Abbee slammed into the other drover, who’d toyed with her broken arm. She buried both knives up to their hilts in his stomach. He let out a little “Oh” and grabbed onto her with both hands. Her momentum knocked him down. Abbee rode him to the ground. She twisted the knives in him, and he let go.
“You cut me,” a voice said behind her.
Abbee yanked her knives free and whirled around, ready to strike again.
The other drover sat on the ground, clutching at his stomach. Blood soaked a dark patch on his shirt beneath his hands. He stared at her in confusion. “You had a broken arm,” he said. “And a busted nose. You’re healed.”
“You’re in shock,” Abbee told him. She stood up and looked around. Three movers lay on the ground. The torch hissed in the dirt. Abbee blinked at the knives in her hand. They were slick with blood. Not my blood. Abbee hadn’t meant to hit Bala in the neck with that wooden shard. She’d been aiming at her shoulder. Bala’s feet twitched.
“Hey!” someone shouted from the direction of Lencoe.
Abbee looked up and saw people coming down the hill. A small crowd of shadows. A couple had lamps. Abbee was in a lot of trouble if there was a marshal with them. Violence in a train town wasn’t tolerated. Abbee could make a case that they weren’t actually in a train town, but marshals were prickly about where their jurisdictions ended. She couldn’t even say they’d jumped and beaten her. No one would believe her. Her shoulder had already finished healing. Not a scratch on her now. Lots of blood on her face and clothes. Abbee stood there, apparently uninjured, while three drovers lay on the ground with serious wounds. Their wounds wouldn’t be fatal if the marshal called a healer in time, but if not, nobody would care where the road was. The marshal could hang her before morning, and nobody would complain.
Abbee fled.
***
She found Ipsu’s camp a couple of hours later. The crowd from Lencoe hadn’t followed her into the woods. In case the marshal brought in a sniffer, Abbee had cleaned her knives in a pond near town. The marshal. She spent the trek to Ipsu’s camp fuming about her experience in Lencoe. Fuming about Gerro. He hadn’t had to call the marshal on her. She’d been minding her own business. The drovers had pushed her too far. She knew that nobody would see it that way. They’d see a wild wolf girl who had gone crazy in a train town and attacked their precious drovers.
Ipsu watched Abbee come in from the night and approach his fire. He poked his fire with a stick and took in her bloodied face and dirty clothes. Flour from the burst canvas sack still stuck to her in places. Abbee dropped her pack next to a tree and slid down its trunk to the ground.
“Was it everything you hoped it would be?” Ipsu asked.
“Shut up.”