Lee’s trials

With friends

*Thalia*

The signal cabin is closer than it looks and farther than my legs can manage.

Silver light flashes through the mist ahead of us, bright enough to turn the wet railway tracks into two pale blades. Lee runs beside me, one hand clamped around mine, his breath coming hard and fast. Behind us, another blue spell cracks against the embankment.

Gravel sprays across my boots.

"Faster," he says.

"I am going as fast as my wet human-shaped tree body allows."

"You are not human-shaped."

"Now is an odd time to question my anatomy."

He makes a breathless sound that might be a laugh.

Then the ground vanishes under my right foot.

I slide down the far side of the embankment, gravel tearing loose beneath me. My shoulder slams against stone. Pain flares white behind my eyes.

Lee catches my wrist before I reach the ditch at the bottom.

For a second I hang there, boots scraping at loose earth, his arm shaking with the effort of holding me.

"Thalia."

"I'm here."

"That was a terrible route choice."

I almost giggle, "You picked the route."

"I followed you."

"Exactly. Poor leadership."

He hauls me up with both hands.

The signal cabin sits twenty yards ahead, half-hidden by brambles and a broken line of old telegraph posts. It is a squat wooden building with a rusted chimney and a roof bowed under years of rain. Light spills from its single front window.

Not moonlight.

Firelight.

Lee stops.

I nearly run into him.

"What?" I whisper.

He does not answer right away. His gaze fixes on the cabin door.

A shape moves behind the glass.

Too tall to be Ari. Too broad to be Kieran, perhaps, though distance makes a liar of everything.

"Could be them," I say.

"Could be guards."

"They know this place?"

He shrugs, "Kieran knows this place. Which means a lot of people probably knows it."

"That is comforting."

Another whistle sounds behind us, closer now.

Lee pulls the compass from inside his coat. The cracked glass catches the cabin light. The needle trembles toward the west, then swings wildly in a circle.

"What is it doing?" I ask.

"I don't know."

"That has become a theme."

The cabin door opens.

A man steps out.

He is broad through the shoulders, dark-haired, and wearing a leather coat with one sleeve half-buttoned. He has a knife in one hand and an expression that suggests the entire world has been inconveniencing him personally.

Kieran Wildheart looks at us.

Then he looks at the blue spell burning weakly in the gravel behind us.

"Easy," he says. "You look terrible."

Lee lets out a laugh that is mostly relief.

Kieran crosses the clearing in three long strides and grabs Lee by the shoulders.

"Drainage tunnel?" he demands.

"Hello to you too."

"You told us drainage tunnel."

Lee gives a weird half shrug as Kieran is still holding on to his shoulders, "I did say it was a long story."

"You escaped a royal city through a drain."

"It was a flood channel."

"That is a drain with better marketing."

Ari appears in the doorway behind him, wrapped in her midnight-blue cloak, moon-pale braids loose over one shoulder. She sees me and goes pale.

"Thalia."

Then she is running toward us.

She throws her arms around me hard enough to make my shoulder throb.

I make a noise into her hair.

She jerks back. "Oh no. I hurt you."

"Only a little."

"Your shoulder?"

"It has had an unpleasant evening."

Ari's eyes flick over my wet clothes, mud-streaked face, and the black residue still staining two fingers.

Her gaze sharpens.

"What happened?"

"Too much."

"That is usually the answer when Lee is involved," Kieran says.

Lee looks offended. "I did not poison the palace roots."

Kieran's expression changes.

"You what?"

"Inside," I say quickly. "Before the people trying to arrest us decide they would like to listen."

Ari glances toward the trees. Her smile vanishes.

"Inside," she agrees.

The cabin smells of damp wood, cold ashes, and the lemony oil somebody has rubbed into the old floorboards. It has one room downstairs, a battered iron stove, a narrow table, and a ladder leading to a sleeping loft. Maps have been pinned to the walls, most of them yellowed and curling at the corners.

A small silver basin sits on the table.

Moonlight pools inside it.

Ari shuts the door behind us and pushes a heavy wooden bar into place.

Kieran moves to the window. He pulls aside the curtain by a finger-width, scans the trees, then lets it fall.

"No one on the line yet," he says.

"Yet?" Lee asks.

"Try to sound less surprised that people are chasing you."

Ari takes my hands before I can hide them.

Her fingers are cool, her gold rings pressing into my skin. She turns my palms upward, studying the faint grey stain across my fingertips.

"That is rootwell residue," she says.

"You know what it is?"

"I know it looks wrong." She raises her eyes. "Did you touch it?"

"Briefly."

"Thalia."

"I had to know."

"Was it cursed?"

"It hurt."

"Everything hurts you people," Kieran says from the window.

Ari turns on him. "You say that as if you do not take pride in getting stabbed."

"I do not take pride in it."

"You have a scar you call your favorite."

He shrugs, "It has a good story."

"That is exactly my point."

Lee has gone to the stove. He stands with both hands braced against its rusted edge, staring down at the floor. Water drips from the hem of his coat. His face has that empty, distant look again.

Ari sees it too.

The room quiets.

She walks to him carefully. "Show me."

He glances at her.

"The compass," she says.

Lee hesitates, then takes it from his pocket.

Ari cups it between both hands. Her eyes close.

The moonlight in the basin trembles.

Kieran leaves the window and comes nearer, though he stays close enough to the door that I know he is still listening for pursuit.

Ari's brows pull together.

"What?" Lee asks.

"Something has been trying to pull it away from its path."

"Fileas?"

"I don't know." Her voice is strained. "There is magic on it. Old magic, layered over your father's spell. A warding charm, perhaps. It has been sleeping."

"Can you remove it?"

Her eyes open.

"No."

Lee goes still.

Ari sees what that does to him and quickly adds, "I do not mean never. I mean not safely while we are standing in a cabin with four walls and a possible patrol arriving."

"That is reassuring."

"I am not trying to reassure you. I am trying to keep the compass from exploding."

Kieran folds his arms. "It can explode?"

Ari looks at him.

"Fine," he says. "Stupid question… I guess."

She places the compass on the table beside the basin. The needle spins beneath the cracked glass.

Then it stops.

It points east.

Back toward Eirawen.

Lee stares at it.

"No," he says.

The word is quiet. More frightened than angry.

I move beside him. His sleeve is cold and wet against my arm.

"Maybe it is reacting to the ward," I say.

"Maybe," Ari says. "Or it is trying to lead you somewhere else."

"Where?" Lee asks.

She does not answer.

Outside, a horse whinnies.

Kieran's head lifts.

Everyone in the room freezes.

Ari blows out the lantern with a flick of her fingers. The cabin drops into shadow, lit only by the silver basin on the table.

Kieran motions toward the ladder.

"Up," he breathes.

Lee shakes his head. "The floorboards will creak."

"Then crawl quietly."

"I can cover the cabin," I whisper.

Ari looks at me. "You are exhausted."

"I know."

"You nearly drowned."

"Also aware."

"Thalia."

The horse sounds again, closer.

I step away from Lee and place both palms against the wall.