“I don’t care what you didn’t hear,” she snarled. “I’m not going to Golden Fields.”

  “What difference does it make to you, one way or the other?”

  “None of your mind.”

  “Well, the troupe is going to Golden Fields. If you’re basing your decision on wrong information…”

  “I’m not. You are. And you’ve got something planned for Golden Fields. I heard you.”

  Damn it. We’d been so careful. “We’re just looking for people there. Family. Not to buy anyone. And it has nothing to do with you.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Why not?”

  “Told you. None of your mind.”

  Irritating little brat. But she appeared frightened in a way I hadn’t seen in her before. There was something significant going on there.

  “Are you afraid of someone who’s there?” Taro asked.

  She tightened her grip on her bag before she said, “No.”

  She was lying. “Who’s there?” I asked her.

  “No one!”

  “There is something there that you’re afraid of. You can tell me now or you can tell me hours from now after I’ve done nothing but nag you about it.”

  She made a run for it, but I grabbed her arm before she could take so much as a step.

  “Let me go!”

  Taro wrapped his arms around her waist and sat her down. “Be civilized,” he ordered her.

  “Bog off!”

  “Calm down,” I said, and I snatched the bag back from her. I figured she wouldn’t leave us without it.

  “Eh!” she objected.

  “Calm down. Be still. Tell us what is going on. And if I’m satisfied, you get your bag—with everything you own in the world in it—back.”

  She made a grab for it and Taro restrained her.

  “Talk, or you don’t get this back.” I felt like such an awful bully. But I didn’t know what else to do, and the options weren’t good. Trying to drag her to Golden Fields against her will, letting her take off, letting her remain behind and then rejoin us. All would cause ridiculous complications.

  She started swearing, and I didn’t understand half of what she said. And then, finally, she said, “I’m a slave, right!”

  Taro was shocked into letting her go, and she got moving. She didn’t leave, though. She just squeezed into the opposite corner of the tiny room.

  “You are not a slave,” I said.

  “What do you know?” she quite rightfully demanded.

  “There are no slaves!”

  “Like you would know.”

  “So you are saying you are Border’s slave?”

  “Nah. Not really. He didn’t buy me. He stole me.”

  “That’s what he told you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “He says he ‘rescued’ me. I figure he says that so I’ll feel obliged to him my whole life. I figure he stole me, though. That’s why we never go to Golden Fields. He’s dragged me all over this damn island, but we don’t go anywhere near Golden Fields. I figure whoever he stole me from might come after him or something.”

  “Has anyone been after you that you know of?”

  “Nah. But if we go there, it’ll be pushing it.” She made another grab for her bag, no doubt feeling I was relaxing my vigilance. I proved her wrong by yanking it away from her reach.

  “I don’t know what they do down here,” I said, “but up north we don’t have slaves.”

  “Ain’t up north, now, are you?”

  “That doesn’t matter. I didn’t leave my personality back on the boat.”

  “That’s a subject for debate,” Taro muttered.

  I shot him a glance. What was that about?

  “Are you going to give me my bag?”

  “Are you going to take off as soon as we close our eyes?”

  “My right, ain’t it?”

  “Not when we let you join us with the understanding you’d be going north with us and going to school.”

  “What do you care?”

  “We don’t know what it’ll do to you if you keep developing outside of the academic environment. We hear nasty stories about Sources and Shields who don’t go to school.”

  “Like what?” she demanded skeptically.

  “Like going crazy.” That was a gross simplification of what happened, but since I was no expert, that was what I was prepared to go with.

  “Still no mind of yours.”

  “You’re a child. We can’t just let you wander around loose. Especially if you are, as you claim, a slave. Someone else might snatch you up. Someone who’ll work you much harder, and much differently, than we would.”

  She made a rude noise. I wasn’t sure which part of my response she found difficult to believe; that I was concerned about her welfare, or that there may be guardians worse than us out there.

  Perhaps she would be better able to accept a self-serving reason. “I’m not prepared to let you go when you do so well keeping my costumes in order, and when you bring in as much money as you do.”

  Taro shot me a look of amazement, but made no comment. Fortunately, Aryne was looking at me, not him, and didn’t notice.

  She didn’t bring in much. I suspected she was keeping most of the money she made, which was fine with me. I wasn’t about to live off the proceeds of a child. I took what she gave me because I had a feeling Aryne was more comfortable dealing with people with mercenary motives. If I took her on out of the goodness of my heart, she’d no doubt be wasting a lot of time being suspicious and waiting for the other shoe to drop. As long as she believed that all she had to do to keep me happy was throw a few coins my way, she would be easier to manage.

  That was the theory I was working with, anyway.

  I was putting aside all the money she gave me. The intention was to give it back to her once we had deposited her at the Source Academy. Of course, she wouldn’t need it then. But I wasn’t sure what else to do with it.

  “You’ll get a lot more for me if you sell me,” she said.

  “What can I say to convince you we have no intention of selling you?”

  She thought about it a moment. “You could tell me about these people you’re looking for.”

  Well, that had been predictable, hadn’t it? To anyone whose brains were actually working.

  What to say? It had to be convincing. So it would be good if there were no lies involved. I wasn’t really that good at lying.

  And I really shouldn’t be disappointed about that, even though it made life more difficult at times.

  “We’ve been hired by someone wealthy to find members of her family,” said Taro. Bless him. “She doesn’t like the person who’s due to inherit. So she asked us to find lateral descendants, to see if she thinks they’ll manage her money better.”

  “What does she care, if she’s dead?” Aryne demanded.

  “Things like that are very important to Northerners,” Taro told her. “Some people spend their whole lives scheming to get inheritances, others molding their heirs so that they’ll treat the money properly after the first holder is dead. Wars start over it.”

  And he would know.

  Aryne studied him, her natural inclination to distrust him in conflict with the fact that everything he had said was the absolute truth. Some significant omissions there, but that was the bare bones fact of our task. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “We were told Golden Fields was the last place any of these people lived. We’re going there to ask questions and see if we can find out what happened to them.”

  “Slavers, were they?”

  “Not to my knowledge, no. Not to the knowledge of the woman who hired us, either.”

  “What are you going to do with these people you find?”

  “Take them back north, to meet her. If she likes them, and they like her, she might choose them to carry on after her.”

  Aryne smirked. “Her heir won’t like that, eh?”

  “I don’t imagine,” I said. But that, fortunately, was not our problem. He didn’t even know we were down there, or it would be. “That’s all we’re doing, and the reason we’re here. That’s the only reason for us to go to Golden Fields. You’re just a”—burden that had dropped into our laps—“new duty that popped out of the blue.”

  “Huh?”

  “We have an obligation as members of the Triple S to report anyone we find who may be a Source or a Shield, and to bring them to the Academy if we can.”

  “Huh.”

  “So what’s your decision?” I asked.

  “I still don’t want to go to Golden Fields,” she said, but not with that same mulish air. It was fear at work, not stubbornness.

  “You could be sick the whole time,” I suggested.

  “Eh?”

  “Once we arrive at Golden Fields, you could develop a mysterious illness. No one will expect you to go out of the tent, and no one will want to get near you. You can recover once it’s time to go. No one in Golden Fields will even know you’re with us, never mind that you’re a slave.” Or whatever she was. I was going to have to look into that. “I won’t have you taking off while we’re there, though. You either come with us, or you leave and go your own way, and that’s the end of our arrangement. That’s the deal.”

  She scowled.

  I was either going to watch out for her, or I wasn’t. None of this do and don’t stuff. Because all I would do while she was away from us was worry, and I’d always be wondering whether she was going to pop up again somewhere. I had far too much occupying my brain as it was, without having to add something new and totally useless.

  “All right,” she muttered. “Bag?”

  I gave it back to her. “Bed,” I ordered in response.

  She huffed and snarled and made a big production out of yanking free her blanket and returning to her tiny section of the tent.

  Taro and I exchanged a long look but said nothing. There was no point. Everything would be overheard by the girl, who had apparently overheard too much already.

  I didn’t sleep at all that night. I was listening for noise of her leaving. And there was none. I almost resented her the next morning, finding her there. All that worry for nothing.

  Still, I wanted to make sure I had nothing to worry about. I went to Kahlia’s tent. “Are there slaves on this island?”

  She blinked in surprise. “Slaves?”

  “Aye.”

  “Of course not.” Then she scowled. “So little you think of us. Primitive Southerners, is that it?”

  “That’s not it,” I said quickly, before she could work her way into a rant. “Someone mentioned it as though it were fact, and it surprised me, so I thought I would come ask. So sorry for disturbing you.”

  She grabbed my arm as I prepared to leave. “Are you ready to practice?”

  I had to love her. Insult with one hand and the expectation of compliance with the other.

  But it was time to practice. And with all that we had been asking from Atara lately, it was in our own interest to be as amenable to everyone as possible.

  “Aye, aye, just give me a moment to tie up my hair.”

  So, no slaves in Golden Fields. As I suspected. But I would have sworn that Aryne had been telling the truth. Not that I was any expert at sniffing out lies, but something of her story had struck me as being sincere.

  So, she was telling me a story.

  Or, someone had told her one.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Another village, a tiny one, with a scanty collection of houses and little in the way of money. Not really worth stopping for, Beril was heard to mutter.

  Apparently, Atara agreed with him. We performed our first night and throughout the next day, but the order came through to pack up the morning after that. Which was too bad. I’d been hoping to make it to the market to buy some new sandals.

  Taro and I were in the process of rolling up our tent when we noticed the disturbance. Some shouting.

  Aryne, tying up her bundle, cocked her head, then ran, disappearing into the undergrowth and trees.

  “Aryne!” Taro hissed at her, to no effect.

  “I know she’s here!” I heard, and the voice sounded familiar. I couldn’t place it, though, until I saw the man himself, Panol and Leverett on his heels.

  “You!” he shouted at Taro, as soon as he saw him. “Where is she?”

  Taro wrinkled his brow in that perfect, “I’m too dim to understand what you’re talking about” expression. “Who?”

  “Who!” Border echoed with disgust, shaking Panol’s hand off his arm. “Aryne. I know she’s with you!”

  Taro held on to his expression of confusion. “You know Aryne?”

  That made him angrier. Of course, it was supposed to. “She’s mine!”

  “Your what?” I asked him in my mildest tone.

  My interjection seemed to make him more aware of himself, what he was saying, and that he had an audience. He took a breath. “My responsibility,” he said in a milder tone. “She went missing in Black Tooth. I’ve been frantic.”

  “My apologies,” Taro lied sweetly. “We were unaware she had any family. We had noticed her in various settlements, and we have hired her occasionally for odd errands. But that was the extent of our connection. We haven’t seen her for the past few stops.”

  Border wasn’t believing a word of it. “I saw her last night. She would never come this way on her own.”

  Because he had convinced her she was a slave, and that Golden Fields was where slaves were bought and sold. Or so she claimed. I couldn’t ask him that, though. That would ruin the lie about not knowing there was a connection between the two of them.

  Taro shrugged. “There’s nothing I can say about that.”

  “I know she’s traveling with you.” He looked about at the audience we’d collected, searching for the truth in the faces of the spectators.

  All he found were blank expressions. No one was saying anything.

  Of course, that was probably confirmation enough, in his eyes.

  We had to get rid of him. We didn’t need yet another complication, in the shape of this creature following us all over the island and giving us a hard time. “What would we want with her?” I asked him. “She is no kin of ours.” I still wasn’t sure why being without family was so much worse for these people than ours, and was surprised to learn that it was one of the few things the islanders didn’t like to talk about. Still, I could use information when I had no clue what it meant, if I had to.

  “Aye, but—” He looked around at our audience once more.

  “She is not here,” Taro said. “We are packing up to leave. If the child were traveling with us, she would be here to pack up, too. She is not. And you will find none of her possessions with us. You can look, if you like.” He waved an elegant hand over the mess that represented our belongings.

  Border scowled, and he spent several moments looking at the jumble. I wondered if he was going to dare going through it with his hands, and then I wondered whether I would let him. On the one hand, it would help convince him Aryne wasn’t with us. On the other, well, it was just too obnoxious for him to think to go pawing through our stuff.

  But, apparently, he was prepared to leave it with a visual inspection. “Next time I see her, I’m taking her back,” he threatened.

  I shrugged as though I couldn’t care less. “It has nothing to do with us.”

  He grumbled under his breath, then called out to everyone. “I’ll be giving a reward—coins—to anyone who can tell me anything about the girl. Aryne is her name. More to anyone who finds her and brings her to me.”

  That sent me a little jolt of panic. I was sure that would be enough to get one of the members of the troupe to talk. None of them had any reason to be loyal to us, or to Aryne.

  None of them said a word. In fact, sensing that the best part of the show was over, they all turned away and returned to their own preparations for leaving.

  Scowling, Border stomped away.

  Taro and I exchanged a look and resumed rolling up the tent.

  Aryne didn’t return to us before the troupe was ready to leave. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t prepared to wait behind for her, or leave the troupe to go looking for her. We needed the troupe, while the girl was only a duty and a burden. And I was annoyed with her for not returning promptly.

  I was also afraid that Border had managed to find her after all.

  But there were only so many duties I could juggle. First on the list, unfortunately, was going to Golden Fields and finding out what happened with the descendants of the Empress. Next, though far inferior in importance, was the duty to the troupe. The girl was even further down the list of priorities, and if she wasn’t prepared to act in her own best interests, there wasn’t really much we could do with her.

  So Taro and I moved on with the troupe. And through the hours we spent trudging in the humid sunlight, I was worrying about Aryne. Wondering if Border had caught her. If she had been bitten by one of those nasty snakes and was now rolling around in agony. If she had fallen into some kind of hole or something, hoping someone was going back to look for her.

  I almost turned around. Several times. Not physically, of course. Physically, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, following the others, keeping my head down to protect my eyes from the sun’s glare. But in my mind, I was telling myself to turn around, and then telling myself not to be ridiculous.

  And I was ranting at her, silently. Stupid girl. Why did she have to pick us? Why did she have to notice us? She could have run away with anyone. And if she had to pick us, why couldn’t she be sensible about it, and stay with us?

  My brain spent the whole day whirling with all these questions and conflicting influences. I was not fit company for anyone. And by the time we had finished walking for the night, and Taro and I had settled down with our little meal by our little fire, I was in a state to take Aryne’s head off when she appeared out of the darkness and joined us.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Taro demanded, bless him. I feared I might have been far less temperate if I had asked the question.

  “Around.” She shrugged, tossing her sack aside and sitting on the ground. “Any food for me?”