She put her hand over her eyes and forced herself to breathe normally. She couldn’t sit at that bloody loom for another minute, much less another seven years. But the consequences of running away were so terribly dire.
And not just for her.
The Guildmistress had told her very plainly, on that first day when she’d been granted a bit of freedom, that if she didn’t return, not only would they hunt her down and force her to pay the ultimate price, they would slay the Mistress of Weaving as well. Muinear, the woman who had taken her on that first horrible, endless day, fed her, soothed her, then put her to bed and told her a heroic tale of daring battles and romance. The old woman who had, in all the years since, taken an especial interest in her, loaning her an endless number of books, telling her an endless number of obscure tales from less obscure kingdoms, finding an ironclad excuse for an extra hour or two each fortnight for Aisling to come and read to her once her eyes had begun to fail her. It was not exaggerating to say that the weaving mistress had saved her life.
And to repay her with harm…
Aisling leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. What she wouldn’t have given for a timely rescue. Unfortunately, there was no handsome lad waiting to carry her off to his impossibly lovely castle and there keep her safe, no fierce swordsman to stand between her and those who would harm her, no prince wearing a circlet of silver on his head and carrying untold power in his hands to wield his sword and drive away those who wanted her for nothing more than her ability to endure countless hours of backbreaking labor.
Nay, it was just her, sitting in a darkened pub, wearing worn slippers and a threadbare cloak, hoping beyond hope that she would see a doorway open up before her where there had been no doorway before.
“You have no concept of what’s at stake here, or the things I’m willing to do to assure success.”
Aisling opened her eyes and looked at Quinn giving Euan an icy stare.
“And just so you know,” Quinn continued, “a body might get across the border if they knew how to flee.”
“Flee?” Euan repeated with a snort. “How?”
“Traders cross the border all the time,” Quinn said.
“Traders who are not of Bruadair,” Euan clarified, “else they would be dead within the hour. And,” he added, cutting Quinn off in mid-protest, “even if we could find a man fool enough to test the veracity of that, you haven’t solved the very real problem of attempting to cross the border without a specific scrap of paper.”
Quinn pulled something from under his cloak and laid it on the table.
It was a trader’s license.
Euan’s mouth fell open. “Where did you get that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Quinn said. “My solution is to walk across the border in plain sight, then trot off to find aid.”
“Against Sglaimir’s army?” Euan said, rolling his eyes. “Impossible.”
Impossible was better used to describe her situation. Aisling wondered if the two sitting at the table might have an opinion on what she should do. She cleared her throat.
“I need help—” she began.
“Oh, be quiet,” Quinn said, obviously annoyed. “We’ve no time for your womanly cares.”
Aisling was tempted to tell him her cares were slightly more serious than what hat to wear with which pair of shoes, but she supposed if they were talking about the fate of the realm, they wouldn’t care—
Guards burst in the front door. Before she could do so much as decide how best to hide under the table, Euan had snatched up the trader’s license, taken her by the hand, and was dragging her out the back of the public room. She couldn’t believe those guards had come for her, but she wasn’t about to take the chance of being wrong.
“Come on,” Euan whispered fiercely. “Hurry.”
She didn’t need to be told that twice. She ran with Euan through the kitchens and out the back door. She continued to run down the street with him, because it seemed like the most sensible thing to do.
Until she realized Euan had run them into an entire clutch of city guards.
Euan shoved something into her hands. She looked down at it and realized, to her surprise, that it was the trader’s license. She looked up and watched as Euan was swallowed up in the crowd of black-garbed men brandishing swords. Before she could say anything at all, she had been taken by the arm and pulled away.
By a Guild guard.
“Nay,” she gasped, trying to jerk her arm away from him, “I’ve done nothing!”
He drew a knife. “If you want me to use this, keep struggling.”
She stopped only because it occurred to her suddenly that she might stand a better chance of getting away from him if she feigned acquiescence. After all, that was what she did best.
The guard looked over his shoulder, cursed succinctly, then resheathed his knife in his belt and dragged her off the main street down a side street she’d never seen before. Then again, the pub wasn’t in the nicest part of town, so there were several streets she hadn’t dared explore.
She ran with him, because she supposed that she might manage to dart away from him if she were moving instead of digging in her heels. That might have been a more appealing proposition if she’d been able to recognize her surroundings, but she couldn’t. Perhaps the man knew something she didn’t about trouble in places she hadn’t considered.
Or perhaps he was merely hurrying to meet someone else who might want to hurry her back to the Guild.
She considered her escape until she found herself suddenly handed off to none other than the finely dressed gentleman who had blocked her view of her parents. The guard melted into what she realized with alarm had become deep shadows. Her hour had come and gone—and she was so far out of any part of town she recognized, it would likely take her hours to find her way back to the Guild.
“Come along now, lass,” the man said pleasantly. “No making a fuss. Wouldn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves, now, would we?”
Aisling felt as if she were dreaming. She would have pinched herself, but her arm was already throbbing from where the guard had been holding on to her. She trotted along with the fop, because whilst he was speaking kindly, he was as insistent in his own way as both Euan and the guardsman had been in theirs.
She hurried with him along streets, past pubs and music halls, until she realized that her escort had come to a gentle but inexorable halt.
And she was looking at none other than the weaving mistress herself.
Aisling blinked. “Mistress Muinear, what are you—”
The old woman looked behind Aisling’s shoulder, then swore. “She’s cannier than I gave her credit for being, damn her.” She looked at Aisling. “You’ll have to run.”
Aisling looked over her shoulder as well to see what she would have to be running from. To her horror—as if things weren’t bad enough as they were—there strode the Guildmistress herself, bearing down on her, her expression hard and her stride full of fury.
Aisling almost went down to her knees then because she knew she was doomed. Another seven years of her life spent in a grey, soulless, freezing hall listening to the endless clack of looms—
“I’ll see to them,” the weaving mistress said. She shoved something into Aisling’s hand. “You go through the border.”
Aisling looked at her and blinked. “What?”
Mistress Muinear took her by the arms with surprising strength and shook her. “I do not matter,” she said, her normally watery blue eyes bright and fierce. “Get yourself across the border, gel, then go do what must be done.”
“But—”
The old woman embraced her briefly, then turned her around and pushed her. “Go, whilst there is still time.”
Aisling stumbled forward, then found herself swept up in a press of men who seemed to be in a great deal of haste. She looked over her shoulder and could see through the crowd that Guild guards had surrounded the weaving mistress—
“You’
re Quinn?” asked a voice in front of her flatly.
Aisling looked at the border guard who had taken her license. His expression of absolute boredom was visible thanks to the excessive and unpleasant amount of torchlight. She supposed that light allowed the guards to identify miscreants more easily, but to her it seemed garish and harsh.
“Quinn’s wife,” Aisling lied, her mouth very dry. “On his business.”
“Do you have anything to prove that?” He shoved the license back at her and waited.
Aisling looked down at her hands and realized that what she was clutching in one of them were coins Mistress Muinear had given her. She slipped a pair of gold sovereigns into the crease of the trader’s license, and handed it back to the guard. Her hands were trembling so badly he had to snatch it before she dropped it. He slid the gold—she could see it glinting warmly in the torchlight—into his sleeve, then back down into his glove with the practiced ease of a man who had done the like a time or two before. He handed her the license.
“Go on.”
She went, because the men crowding in behind her didn’t give her any choice. It was only as she stepped across the border and looked back to see a very thin, red line behind her heels, that she realized just what she’d done.
She had just sentenced herself to death—and not just from the Guild’s bright swords.
It was, as Quinn had said, common knowledge that to cross the border without leave meant death by any one of several means, ranging from a long, slow, lingering illness to a sudden collapse. It was also said that those of noble enough blood could come and go as they pleased, but she had never met anyone noble to ask them. And given that she was nothing more than a common young woman of a score-and-seven, her blood would not save her.
“Well, get on with ye, girl,” said a rough voice from behind her. “Or at least get out of the way!”
She found herself pushed aside by a burly trader who apparently was in a hurry to be about his business. She looked to her left. A wagon was receiving its passengers, having already been loaded with whatever cargo it was carrying.
“Where is that wagon going?” she managed, looking at another man who was moving past her.
“Gairn.”
Aisling heard shouts behind her, shouts that made her blood run cold because she recognized the Guildmistress’s voice. She turned, because it was what she was accustomed to doing, though she could hardly bring herself to look and see what the woman would do.
The Guildmistress was holding aloft a sword, stained with blood. She looked at Aisling, her gaze making the distance between them seem much less than perhaps it was. It was a look that left Aisling feeling as if she had lost control of her form. She took a step toward the border, but before her foot touched the ground, she found herself jerked backward.
“Oh, nay, you’re not going there,” a voice said firmly.
Before she could do so much as squeak, she was pulled out of the torchlight, away from that thin bloodred line that meant the difference between life and death.
The thought was halfway across her mind that Euan had caught her and was helping her to safety when she looked up at the man who was pulling her quickly into the shadows. To her surprise, she found it was the peddler she occasionally borrowed books from. Actually, she had once purchased a book from him, a book she had residing in a pocket she had made in her skirts, a book she had paid dearly for and never allowed to leave her person. But why he should find himself where he was at the current moment was one of the more baffling things in an evening that had been full of things she hadn’t expected.
“But the weaving mistress—” she protested.
“Dead, most likely,” he said briskly. “Count yourself lucky you aren’t as well.”
He shoved a bundle into her arms, then took hold of her long braid. She started to ask him what he was doing when she saw a knife flash in the darkness and felt a tug on her skull.
She gaped at him. “You cut off my hair!”
“And if they catch you, they’ll cut your throat,” he said harshly. “Those are lad’s clothes. Go put them on.”
They were out of the light but still within earshot of a great deal of shouting. Aisling wished she had even some idea what the peddler’s name was, because she would have used it repeatedly whilst cursing him, but unfortunately all she could do was splutter at his nameless self. She flinched at the increase in the shrieking coming from the border, then decided that whatever else she chose to do, doing that thing as a lad would be much safer than as a woman. She ran behind an enormous boulder, then threw on the clothes the peddler had given her. She didn’t care about their condition.
She retrieved her precious book from her pocket, then shoved it into the waistband of her trousers. She pulled her tunic down, then drew a cloak around her shoulders. She came out from behind the boulder on legs that were so unsteady beneath her, she felt as if she were floating. She stopped and looked at the peddler, who was watching the border closely. He turned his head to look at her, then reached down and picked up a pack. He took her clothes from her, then pushed the pack into her arms. It was so heavy, she almost dropped it.
“What’s this?” she managed.
“Your new life,” he said, taking her by the arm and pulling her along with him. “There’s a carriage half a mile down the road, waiting.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Why?”
“Because I paid them to,” he said impatiently.
“A carriage—”
“Get in it and don’t get out until it stops.”
She blinked. “But—”
“There’s gold in that pack. Find an assassin. Save Bruadair.”
She shook her head, but that didn’t clear away the persistent sensation she had of having wandered into a terrible dream. Less than an hour ago—perhaps it was longer, she honestly couldn’t tell—she had been looking in the window of a shop and admiring a cloak that whilst grey had at least been cut handsomely. Now she stood outside the border of her country, dressed as a lad, knowing that her flight had meant death for the one person in the world she cared about—and knowing that continuing her flight would spell her own end.
“Save Bruadair?” she repeated, finding herself completely unable to understand how she was to go from merely wanting to save herself to needing to save her country.
He swore at her. “You’re dead right now, don’t you know? You crossed the border.”
She knew it, of course, but she hadn’t wanted to face it. “I didn’t have any choice—”
“Of course you did,” he said briskly. “You could have chosen to crawl back to that miserable guild and spend the rest of your days trapped in a life of endless drudgery. But you chose freedom.”
She looked at the ground, because it was safer that way. “What does that matter if I’ve sentenced myself to death?”
He put his hand under her chin, lifted her face up, and looked at her with absolutely no expression on his face. “You haven’t. There is a way to save yourself.”
She pulled away from his hand, sure she’d heard him awrong. “How?”
“It won’t be easy, or pleasant,” he warned. “The usurper who currently sits the throne must be overthrown before he destroys every last bit of—well, his plans aren’t important. What is important is that the rightful king takes his place. This is not a task for an army, for Sglaimir will see them and slay them before they can touch him. A mage will not manage it either, for his magic will be sensed before he reaches the palace walls—”
“Mages?” she interrupted, trying to laugh. She thought it had sounded more like a gasp of terror than anything else, but she wasn’t perhaps the best one to judge. “I don’t believe in mages.”
He blew out his breath in frustration. “Seek out an assassin, then, one who will dethrone the king for the glory of it—or as much gold as we’ve been able to muster.” He looked at her seriously. “You have three se’nnights. The bargain must be struck before midnight of the last day
or your life will be the forfeit.”
She couldn’t keep from blinking. “How do you know—”
“Because I know,” he said curtly. “Bloody hell, wench, have you no idea—nay, of course you don’t.” He shook his head sharply. “The details aren’t important. You have been granted the gift of a fortnight and a half. Complete your quest and your life will then be yours.”
“But quests should be left to Heroes.” She might have been a common weaver, but she was very well read in subjects ranging from the movements of stars to the movements of men. It took a certain set of skills to embark on any sort of serious heroic business.
“You were all that was available at the time. And you know where to go.”
She felt her mouth go dry. “Do I?”
“Did I sell you that book for naught?”
“Which book?”
“The only book you own!” He glared at her. “The Strictures of Scrymgeour Weger, written by Ochadius of Riamh, and gathered, from what I’ve heard, only at incredible peril to the man. That book.”
She put her hand over her belly before she thought better of it. There, residing under the waistband of her trousers, was a book for which she had given half of all the meager coins she’d managed to accumulate over the years doing odd things about the Guild. The Strictures of Scrymgeour Weger was indeed the title. Just looking at the cover had fair burned her eyes. She couldn’t quite bring herself to think about the things she had read inside.
The peddler put his hand suddenly on her shoulder and turned her away from the border. “Run. The carriage is waiting, but it won’t wait forever. Find a solution to what you’ve left behind here while you’re still alive.”
Her mouth was very dry. “But I know nothing about wars or rulers or—”
“Then every book you ever were given by the mistress of the loom during all the years she had you at her elbow was completely wasted.”
“But I am nobody,” she protested. “I am no one of consequence, without friend or family or any gifts—”
“Then no one will miss you when you’re gone,” he said shortly. He put a heavy hand on her shoulder. “There is no one else, Aisling, no one but you. I suggest you go south.”