The Forgotten Sisters (16 page)

“By ship?” Miri asked. Stora had invaded Eris by land, and the small country was brimming with Storan infantry just over Danland's west border. “I would have expected a land invasion.”

“So was all of Danland. No one was looking for Stora to come by sea, and no one was expecting to lose Asland.”

“But the cannons?” asked Miri. A fort at the mouth of Asland Harbor held many cannons, and in the past it had easily defended the harbor from sea attacks.

“Somehow Stora took the fort or else sabotaged the cannons before attacking,” said Peder. “Asland depended too heavily on that protection. The Storan ships just floated into the harbor, unloaded an army on the docks, and marched into the city. The fighting was over in a few days. Storan soldiers have set up a camp in Commoner Park and a second camp on The Green.”

“So they have the palace surrounded,” said Miri. “The Danlandian army—”

“Is mostly in Hunter province,” said Peder. “They were stationed on the border in case of a land invasion. The army's surely heard by now that Stora captured Asland, but it takes a long time for a large army to march. And in the meantime, Stora is laying siege to the palace. When I left, the king, queen, Steffan, and Britta were still trapped inside.”

Miri pressed her hand to her heart.

“No,” said Peder, guessing what she would say next. “I'm here to get you four to safety—
away
from Storan occupation. Leave Britta's rescue to the Danlandian army. Right now, your safety is my duty.”

“So, we're leaving?” Astrid asked.

Silence answered. Miri looked at the little house, as empty as a seashell and white as the moon. About six months ago she'd barged her way inside only to faint on the floor. Now it felt like a tiny home, her own actions soaking into the stone, joining a hundred or more years of memories.

Felissa was gazing at Miri, and Miri wondered how much of her thoughts Felissa was able to untangle from her echoed emotions.

“I'm sorry,” Miri said.

Felissa's smile was brave. She reached out to take Miri's hand. With her other she held Sus's hand, who in turn took Astrid's. They all squeezed hands at the same time, making them laugh.

Astrid looked up. “Creator god, keep Mama's bones, and the bones of our house. Keep our memories. Keep us together.”

“Keep us,” Felissa and Sus repeated.

For a moment, that little crooked stone house, its plain door open and warped on its hinges, seemed like the finest chapel. Miri's heart felt large and full.

“Keep us,” Miri and Peder said.

He took her hand.

The girls gathered the few things they would take with them. Astrid set their extra traps and caiman poles outside the house so villagers would feel free to claim them.

“Oh,” said Felissa when she saw them, and Miri guessed she only then realized they were leaving for good.

Astrid was the last to step out of the house. She laid her hand on the smooth white wall and whispered, “ 'Bye, Ma.”

The moment Miri stepped out of the house, any illusion of safety crumpled. With no moon in the sky, the entire world was in shadow. Even swamp-born girls did
not venture water-side at night. Things hunted at night, things with wide eyes that could strike true by starlight. Miri trudged through water sometimes rising as high as her chest. The brushing of water plants against her legs felt like the cold, smooth bodies of snakes.

In the direction of the sea, the tides were always changing the land. There was no path to memorize, no sure way. But that was where Peder had hidden the small boat he had rowed from the merchant ship.

On the village islands, fires glowed from lanterns. Voices murmured, buzzing low over the water like dragonflies. Since the Storan soldiers had come, playful night music no longer called out from the village.

But tonight someone sang—deep and sad, a ballad of endings.
“I'm not ready to say farewell, this day has been too fine. So wait around, sundown, and give me a bit more time.”

“That's the truth,” Astrid whispered.

Fat Hofer was likely still sitting with his back to the chapel, looking dull and uninterested so that the Storans would not bother about him, and yet always paying attention. Maybe he noticed the hearth fire extinguished in the linder house and guessed what they were doing. Maybe he was, in his way, saying good-bye.

“Good-bye, Hofer,” Miri whispered.

She felt a sting of guilt, but she was no help to him
trapped in Lesser Alva.
Fix this
, Dogface had said. She had to leave to try. Last in line, she dragged herself a little faster through the thick water, trying to catch up with the others.

Something sploshed behind her. Miri's heart startled like a frog. Her feet, already cold from the water, felt hard as ice.

“Are we near your boat?” she whispered to Peder.

“I think so,” he whispered back. “I wasn't sure if the Storans had set guards by your house, so I didn't dare drag the boat too close. I tied it to some reeds. I can't see it …”

He poked one of the sharpened sticks they had brought from the house into the reed beds, hoping to hit the hardness of the hidden boat. Sus, Felissa, and Astrid had sticks as well. They fanned out from Peder, sweeping the surface of the black water.

Miri stayed put. Till they found the boat, there was no use moving more than needed and risking falling into a pit. Or rustling in the water and attracting predators. Everywhere she looked, the glimmer of starlight on water resembled eyes. After a few moments she could hear Peder sweeping for the boat but no longer see his shape.

Again the sploshing. It sounded more definite, rhythmic. Had someone followed them out? A troop of soldiers would make more noise.

Another definite splash.

“Did you hear that?” Miri whispered.

But the girls were no longer near enough to hear her.

Miri stared into the dark, willing the vague shapes into forms that would make sense. A shadow sliding toward her. A boat, someone punting. Starlight touched his eyes. Jeffers.

Their noise had attracted a predator indeed.

Miri's scream caught in her throat, afraid of Jeffers, afraid of alerting the soldiers, too afraid to move.

“My town,” Jeffers snarled. “My territory! You're the thief. I've got meat here!”

He lifted his pole and the barbed, forked end glinted. A fishing spear. The water felt like stone around her legs, the mud beneath sucking at her feet. She held no stick. She could not run.

There was nothing between her and his spear except a sharp, crackling sound and a brief burn of light.

Jeffers hunched over, a gurgle crawling out of his throat. He dropped the spear. His eyes looked beyond Miri, and then he fell facedown in the water.

Miri shoved both hands against her mouth to stifle the scream finally rising. She backed away and into Peder. He was holding a pistol.

“It worked it worked it worked,” Peder was mumbling.
“It's so wet out here I didn't know if the gunpowder was ruined I didn't know I'm sorry I'm sorry.”

Peder dropped the pistol into the water. He did not take his eyes away from Jeffers. Miri hugged him tight, wanting him to feel her warmth. She put her hands on his face and looked at him till he pulled his gaze from Jeffers.

“He would have killed me,” she said.

Peder exhaled very slowly. “I'd do it again, Miri. Of course I would. And it was the right thing to do. I know.”

“But … ,” she said.

“But I don't want to. You … you're a warrior, I think. In a way, you are. But I'm not. I don't want to be that kind of a person.”

She nodded.

Astrid moved toward them, pulling the low, flat boat. It was painted black and made of wooden planks, not reeds—clearly not of Lesser Alva.

“We should go,” she said, her voice tight. Surely the noise from the pistol would attract the soldiers.

Miri climbed into the boat after Sus, her muscles trembling with the slight effort, already spent with fear. There had been warning in Astrid's tone, and Miri realized she was worried about more than soldiers. Jeffers's blood would attract caimans.

They used their sticks to push against the ground through the waters. It was unbearably slow. The clawing tips of plants tugged at them, and unexpected rises in land would make the boat come to a stop, and they would all have to get out and drag it back into water.

Boats with lanterns were already sliding around the area where Peder had shot Jeffers.

As soon as they entered water deeper than the sticks, Peder took the one oar and rowed them out to open water. He sat at the bow, his arms and shoulders working stroke after powerful stroke.

“I can take a turn,” Miri whispered.

Peder shook his head and kept rowing. Miri thought he needed something to do with his arms just then, some way to use his strength that was not destructive.

He moved them around the last of the fingers of marshland and toward the open channel of the sea. The water finally became smooth under the starlight—no more reeds or water plants. The smell of it changed too—briny, sharp, cold, less alive. Miri faced backward, keeping an eye on the pricks of light that might be soldier-held lanterns. Then the night swallowed those too, and Miri could see nothing of Lesser Alva. All she could hear was the splash of the oars and Peder's breathing, hard and dry.

After a time, Miri turned around and spotted a new
point of light directly ahead. Her heart rattled in her ribs. Had the Storans chased them from the other side? But Peder pulled in the oar, letting the boat drift, and made three soft, throaty calls.

Over the water rode the answer, as exact as an echo.

Peder rowed on. When they reached the single light, Miri saw it belonged to a lantern dangling over the side of a ship. A crew of faces stood at the railing.

Someone extinguished the lantern, and hooked ropes tumbled down. Peder attached them to the rowboat, and the ship's crew pulled the girls up. Hands took Miri's arms and waist and helped her out of the rowboat and onto the deck.

A ship full of men, none in uniform, most with pistols, all with sabers. No country flag flying. Miri choked on an inhale. Peder had brought her aboard a pirate ship.

Have you ever seen a girl in red?

Yes, I've seen a girl in red

With long black curls upon her head?

High lo, there she goes now

Have you ever seen so swift a sail?

Yes, I've seen so swift a sail

With a mermaid carved upon her bow?

High lo, there she goes now

Miri gasped too loudly and several voices hushed her. They'd left the reed islands far behind but were nowhere near safety. Not with Storan ships patrolling the coast. Not with war churning.

A man Miri assumed was the captain made some signal with his hand, and his crew secured the rowboat and pulled up the anchor. The sails opened, the ship lurched forward, and the sisters grabbed for the railing to keep from falling.

A ship operating under no country's flag. Against the rule of law. In wartime. For gain.

“Peder,” Miri said softly. “These are …” She did not say
pirates
, but Peder nodded, hearing the word anyway. His smile was extremely pleased.

The captain approached them, adjusting his three-cornered hat. His beard was black and ragged, and his clothes cut from some light fabric as if he did not feel the chill ocean breeze that burrowed right through Miri's still-damp dress. Peder introduced him as Captain Bodel.

“So this is the treasure,” he said, looking Miri over with narrowed eyes. “Are you worth all this trouble?”

Miri shook her head.

Felissa and Sus both yawned at the same time.

“We'd better get the
ladies
settled,” said the captain, as if the word was a joke. “They will take my cabin.”

“That's very kind,” said Miri.

“I suppose it's very kind of my employer, as it was his order,” said Captain Bodel.

The girls followed Peder down the ladder into the hold. The captain's cabin was almost as short as it was narrow. His small bed was secured to the floor. Two hammocks hanging from hooks on the ceiling took up the rest of the space. Felissa climbed into a swinging hammock, Sus curled up in the bed, and both fell asleep. Miri put down her pack but was too anxious to rest. Peder could never afford to hire a boat and crew to rescue her.
Surely the king could, but the captain had assumed that Miri herself was the “treasure,” not the royal cousins.

When she left the cabin, Astrid was washing her face using water from a barrel.

Miri climbed back up the ladder. The ship was a small cargo vessel, a merchant's ship used for ferrying goods up and down the coast. But the sails were large, the ship moving at a speed that took her breath away. She joined Peder at the bow.

“Who is the captain's employer?” she whispered.

“Um,” said Peder.

“Who,” said Miri.

“I, uh …”

“You're clearly trying to think of a way to distract me from the question, but you're a terrible liar, so just give up.”

Peder frowned. “Timon.”

Miri gasped again. Timon had been a friend to her once—or she'd thought so at the time. But he'd lied and manipulated her for his own purposes. She may have forgiven him, but she certainly did not trust him.

“I didn't want to go to him either,” said Peder, “but I'd run out of options. He's wealthy, he had access to his father's ships, and he was willing.”

A tightness around Peder's mouth indicated there was something he was holding back.

“What?” Miri asked. “What else?”

“Timon said his father and other merchants had been in talks with the chief delegate about buying Mount Eskel and taking over the quarry.”

The ship hit a large wave, and the bow thrust into the air, falling till it slammed onto water. Salty spray shot across Miri's face. Her breath seemed to have fallen out again, left tumbling into the ocean.