"Now," Silas yelled.

  She let go of her arrow, and watched it sail past one of the soldiers, barely grazing his

  shoulder. Even so, it gave him enough pause that his horse lost a step, and his own shot went way over their heads. The rest of the soldiers didn't fare much better, their aim altered by the surprise attack.

  Their passing was a ring of steel, and a blur, but Eryn heard the grunt, and when she

  looked back she saw one of the soldiers fall from his horse.

  "Again," Silas said, bringing the horse around in a tight turn. The soldiers had to maneuver around each other to get in position, and it left them at a disadvantage.

  Silas killed two more on the second pass, the shining sword he held striking like the

  mouth of a snake, and taking deep bites through the soldiers' armor, their lone horse making for a difficult and agile target as he maneuvered it with his heels like he had ridden all of this life.

  He slowed on the third pass, putting them in the middle of the scrum, creating a barrier

  that forced the soldiers to switch to their swords if they didn't want to risk hitting one another.

  Eryn didn't need to be so careful, and of the remaining six arrows she had, two of them found flesh.

  Silas was an expert with the blade, using it first in his left hand, and then tossing it with precision to his right to attack from the other side, all while their own charger continued to wheel and prance through the melee. The make of the weapon also proved a tremendous asset, tearing through the shirts of metal chain the soldiers wore as if it were no more than simple cloth.

  Silas had dispatched all but two of his solders when they turned and fled, headed south down the road. He stayed the horse and watched them go until they vanished over the horizon.

  Then he dismounted.

  "What are you doing?" Eryn asked, jumping off the horse behind him.

  "Trying to find someone my size," he replied. He looked back at her. "Someone your size too, if I can. We could also use some more arrows."

  He didn't need to ask. She ran to each of the bodies on the ground, taking the arrows she

  found, as well as their coin purses. She also discarded her homemade bow for one of theirs. A part of her was saddened to let go of one of the few pieces of her family she still possessed, but she knew they would want her to be practical, and the soldiers' bows were superior in every way.

  By the time she was done, she had sixteen arrows in her quiver, a new bow, a larger purse

  of coin, and little else. Silas had come away empty-handed. They were both too slight of build to make use of the more burly mens' armor.

  Finished scavenging, they stood at the edge of the road together, with Silas holding the

  reins of the warhorse.

  "Eryn, I..." he started to speak, but then paused, like he didn't know what to say. A few minutes ago he had been the most efficient and confident killer Eryn could imagine. Now he

  looked uncomfortable and ashamed.

  "Silas, where are you headed?" she asked.

  He looked at her, then towards the north. "I need to get to Elling," he said at last. "There are answers there, about who I am. But the main road isn't safe. Not before, and especially not after this. I'm going to head west, past the villages to the foothills of the Rushes. Then I'm going to go north to the sea. There are ships that sail inland to Elling Lake from there. I can probably trade this sword to be smuggled into the city by boat."

  "I need to get to Elling too," she said. "I need to learn. About him, about his empire. I need to learn how to fight. I need to learn about my Curse if I can, and practice controlling it.

  You saw what the blue stone could do, but my hand hurts every time I touch something to it."

  She turned her palm over, showing him the burn. "The Mediators, they're Cursed, and they know how to use it to do powerful things without passing out. That means it can be done. I need to learn other things too, simple things, like how much coins are worth. Life in Watertown was so different, and easy."

  She felt angry to have lost that life. She'd had her fill of crying though. She was going to survive.

  "I won't make it on my own," she said. "I could use your help."

  Silas didn't say anything. He just looked at her, as though weighing his options.

  "You know who I am," he said.

  She shook her head. "No. I know as much about who you were as you do. What I've seen

  of who you are? I've seen a man who is willing to die for a girl he never even met, and knew nothing about. You were at the camp, before I was. You were going to try to free those prisoners, whether I showed up or not. You protected me, and got me away when I was unconscious. You

  saved Robar and Sena back there, when you couldn't have known we would make it out alive."

  "I knew we wouldn't make it out alive if I didn't do anything."

  "You could have let the soldiers kill them, and waited for a better opportunity to escape.

  Silas, we are both headed to Elling. We should go there together."

  He looked at the ground, as if inspecting it for something while he considered her

  suggestion. Then his eyes rose to meet hers. "If you travel with me, you will need to learn to use a sword. You will need to learn to hunt. You will need to learn everything I can teach you to help you stay alive. You will do what I say, when I say it, not because you are my slave, but because I am trying to teach you. The path I am taking to Elling will take nearly the rest of the season, and it will not be an easy path. The soldiers will come for us. Outside of the Mediators, what you've seen so far have mostly been guards and road patrol. There are more accomplished members of his army, and they will be coming to try to do what their lesser brothers could not."

  He let go of the horse, and walked over to her, crouching down so they were at eye level.

  "There is a very real chance that one or both of us will not survive the next few weeks."

  "I understand," she said. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you for taking me."

  She didn't know what kind of thoughts her kiss triggered in him, but Silas' eyes changed.

  It seemed to Eryn as if he was looking at somebody else.

  "If we ride hard, we can be at Sumbury by nightfall," Silas said. "The soldiers will know that too, so we'll have to keep going through the night. If we can reach the Rushes ahead of them, it will be easier for us to disappear."

  "What are the Rushes?" she asked.

  "You'll see when we get there." Silas climbed onto the horse, and then helped her up. "It's just as well the armor wouldn't fit. The horse will be able to go further without tiring if it isn't carrying all of the extra weight."

  They rode west.

  ***

  It was well into the night when they paused for the first time, having passed the village of

  Sumbury and left it far behind. They had both been upset to find it had been razed, and all of the inhabitants were either fled, taken to the mines, or killed. Silas had wrestled with the idea of resting there, in one of the buildings hollowed out by fire. In the end he had decided the soldiers might expect them to do that, making it unsafe.

  "Consider this your first lesson," Silas had said to her. "The best way to survive is to be unpredictable. That's why we defeated the soldiers back at the river. The last thing they expected was for us to charge. You had an excellent idea."

  She had been embarrassed by his praise. Especially since she didn't deserve it. She had

  only pointed out the obvious. "Is going to the Rushes unpredictable?" she asked.

  He had smiled. "Very."

  They had taken some vegetables from one of Sumbury's farms, and had eaten them while

  they rode. Now they were sitting in a field of tall, green reeds. It was a plant Eryn had never seen before, but the horse had taken an immediate liking to. She could tell Silas hadn't really wanted to stop moving, but their ride needed food and water too, and at least it provided good cover.

  "Silas, can I ask you something?" She was still a little nervous about speaking to him. He looked so intense most of the time, like he was just waiting for something to jump out at them.

  "You can ask me anything, Eryn."

  "When we were riding away from the minstrels. I had my arms wrapped around you. I

  felt... something rough? A scar?"

  Silas shifted onto his knees and lifted the front of his shirt, showing her the vicious

  wound. "I don't know where it came from," he said. "I don't even know how I could have survived it."

  Eryn couldn't believe the scar. It ran across his entire body, and was so jagged and rough

  it was as though he had been cut in half and sewn back together. "You really don't remember anything?"

  "Only what I told you. The only other thing I have is this." He took the note from Iolis out of his pocket and gave it to her. "It is a message that the Overlord sent to a Mediator named Roque. For some reason, the Overlord is afraid of me. He's afraid of what I'll recall. That's why I know I need to get to Elling. I'm hoping that if I can see him, I'll remember." He lowered his shirt, and sat back down with his legs crossed.

  Eryn read the note. "I don't know the word 'inebriation'," she said.

  "Drunk," Silas replied. "I spent the last ten years of my life drunk, all of the time. It was my way of forgetting about what I had done. To others, to my wife, to my son." He fell silent for a minute before continuing. "I would still be drunk, but the Constable of Root locked me up. I was going to turn in a Cursed, for the coin." He looked up at her. She knew he was waiting on her judgement.

  "But you didn't."

  "No. I tried to save him. That's what got me in trouble in the first place. I don't regret it.

  There are some things I don't understand though."

  "Like what?"

  "The Curse. The power of it. I saw what you did. Why didn't the prisoners try to use it to free themselves? And if it is so powerful, does he take the Cursed, or kill them, because he is afraid you would be powerful enough to overthrow him?"

  Eryn thought about Malik, and his journal. It had suggested that the Curse turned him

  into a monster. What if he had been wrong? Maybe the two things were unrelated?

  "Everyone in Watertown was terrified that they would be Cursed, or someone they knew

  would be Cursed," she said. "When I discovered I was one of them... for months I was terrified.

  After a while I was curious. I couldn't get rid of it, so I thought I should stop wishing it hadn't happened to me, and make the best of it. I didn't understand how it could be a bad thing to have the power to do things other people couldn't. Like opening a lock. Even so, it took a long time for me to be able to open myself up to the power. It still isn't easy, and other than doing small things I have no control. I just concentrate on what I want, and it sort of takes over. Having the Curse... Losing my family is the Curse. Being hunted is the Curse. Not what I can do with it."

  "It makes me wonder," Silas said. "What if he is Cursed?"

  Eryn thought about that. "Silas?"

  "Yes?"

  "The message. If he is Cursed... maybe he used his power on you. Maybe he made you drink. Maybe he made you forget? If not him... maybe it was the Overlord? How else would he have known you were drunk, and why else would he be afraid you'd remember?"

  Silas didn't say anything after that, but she could tell by his face that he was beginning to wonder if she might be right. If the Overlord had been responsible, the question was, why?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Silas

  It took four days for them to reach the outskirts of the Rushes. Silas had allowed them

  only a minimum of sleep, and had stopped for food only when he became desperate. He was

  impressed with Eryn, for she never complained. Not of the walking, or the hunger, or the thirst that he knew she must be sharing in. She even approached his lessons in foraging and hunting with enthusiasm, as though when he was teaching all of their other cares and needs fell away.

  Try as he might, he found he was becoming attached to the girl. He knew he shouldn't,

  but he couldn't help it. The energy and strength she had exhibited made him feel ten years

  younger, and drove him to work harder to keep them both safe. He and Alyssa had raised only sons, but he knew that Eryn was exactly the kind of daughter he'd want to have.

  Being around her had also helped him squelch the voice in his head, the constant guilt of

  what he had done. She had accepted his past, and forgiven him for it. She was willing to accept that he had changed, and he valued that more than he would ever let on. In the past he had been a murderer, a dark but effective weapon. In the present... he was still a weapon, but he fought for those who could not fend for themselves.

  As far as he could tell, they had been successful in staying ahead of his soldiers. They hadn't seen a single red eye since they had headed west from the Baden, though they had also seen few enough villagers either. Many of the farms and small enclaves they had passed had

  already been burned to the ground, leading Silas to wonder if there was more to the activity than just a growing occurrence of Cursed. That in itself was a cause for curiosity. Why were there suddenly so many more Cursed coming into the world? He knew the Curse revealed itself not

  long after boys and girls became men and women, in body if not in mind. Why had so many

  been born then, around the same time his son had died?

  The Rushes were a series of flat masses piled on top of one another, and covered in a

  layer of moss, grasses, brush, and short trees. In some places, they looked liked steps for giants, leading up into the skies. In others, they were sheer cliffs like the walls of a castle. They rose and sunk as far as they could see, covering the entire horizon from north to south.

  "It doesn't look like anybody lives here," Eryn said, upon seeing them. "I don't know why not, it's beautiful."

  "It is beautiful," Silas said. "The beauty isn't of much use to farmers. The terrain is too uneven to plant large crops on, and it would be too much work to bring livestock to graze there."

  Silas took the saddlebags from the horse, draping them over his shoulder. They weren't

  very heavy, since they were filled with bread and vegetables. He had been hoping for salted meat when they had purchased it in a village called Croughton, but it turned out his soldiers had been through not long before on their way to retrieve a Cursed, and had taken all of the meat the villagers hadn't had time to hide away.

  He smacked the horse on the rump and shouted. It whined, and then headed back the way

  they'd come.

  "It's hard to hide anywhere with a horse," he said to Eryn, in answer to the look she was giving him. She didn't argue.

  They walked until nightfall, reaching the top of the first set of stepped mounds of earth.

  From there they could see back the way they had come, for miles across the plains. If the soldiers came with any kind of light to guide their way, they'd be seen well before they could catch up to them.

  "I'll take the first watch," he said. "This is the best chance for sleep you'll have for some time."

  Eryn laid down on the thick green grass that coated the Rushes. She put her arms behind

  her head to support it, and closed her eyes. Silas watched her for a while, until her breathing was deep and even, and then he went and sat on the graded edge of the step, where he'd be able to see if any soldiers approached. He reached into his pocket and took out the Overlord's message

  again.

  He stared at it, considering what she had said to him days before. It was a thought that he was having trouble accepting, but having even more trouble denying. He had seen some of what the Cursed could do. How could he dismiss that they could have made him forget?

  The answers would come, he was sure of that.

  Four hours passed without incident. Silas kept his eyes down the slopes of the Rushes,

  expecting to see the orange dot of a torch crest the invisible horizon at any moment. He had known they had traveled light and fast, but he still hadn't expected to have more than a day's distance.

  "Unless the soldiers aren't coming," he whispered to himself. "Maybe we aren't so important after all."

  He walked over to where Eryn was sleeping on the grass, and knelt down beside her.

  "Eryn," he whispered.

  Her eyes shot open, and her body tensed.

  "It's okay," he said. "It's just me. You're safe."

  She relaxed and smiled up at him. "Is it my turn?" she asked.

  "Yes. Keep a close eye to the east."

  He helped her up, and then took her place on the ground. He closed his eyes, but sleep

  didn't come easily. This wasn't the first time he had asked her to stand watch, but it was the longest. He needed to trust her. He couldn't afford not to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Eryn

  Eryn looked back at Silas, sleeping on the grass where she had been lying an hour before.

  She felt a contentment in her heart every time she saw him. He was someone to look up to, and be the father that she had lost. A father who could understand her, and who wanted to help her survive.

  "Thank you Amman, for delivering a savior to me," she said.

  Not that he would ever replace her real father. Every time she thought of him she was

  both happy and sad. She wondered how proud they would be, to see her fighting against his wrongs. To see her working hard to learn everything that Silas had to teach.

  She returned her gaze to the distant east, watching and waiting for the first sign of

  soldiers. While she kept the watch, she tried to practice calling on her Curse. She focused on her breath, and her concentration, and on staying calm. She didn't ask the power to do anything, but just to come to her, and thrum below the surface of her skin until she let it go. She practiced building it within her, gathering it slowly. She needed to be able to use it and not pass out.