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  Rin hunched over, imagining the huge gray worm of her nightmares curled inside her. All her life, believing she was bad, she clenched up, acted with caution, never sure what she was hiding from. Could she give it a name now? People-speaking.

  Isi had said it was the most dangerous of all the speaking gifts, the one sure to corrupt the speaker. Would she turn into another Selia? She feared she’d already begun—with Wilem, she’d begun.

  Razo was lying back on a branch. Tusken was asleep on his chest, his face nestled into Razo’s neck. Looking at them fanned away some of the smoke of her panic. She did not matter, not now. But she’d walk across the ocean to keep Razo and Tusken safe.

  Rin peered through the leaves. She could see the dark shape of Castle Daire. “Is it still the same night?”

  “What? Of course it is, though near dawn. I think I dozed there for a bit, and I haven’t heard anyone since I woke up. They must be running in all directions, trying to find us before Selia notices we’re missing and gets so angry her face swells up like a frog’s.” This thought seemed to please Razo, and he closed his eyes for a moment, smiling. “All the same, they’re bound to come back for the cage, empty or not, so I think now would be a good time to flee.”

  Rin climbed down first, hating the moment her body left the cover of leaves. Her foot crunched on acorns, and she winced in anticipation of crossbow bolts. Razo lowered himself to a branch farther down until he could hand her the sleeping boy. She carried Tusken as they walked, pressing his body as close to her chest as she had strength in her arms.

  He’s all right, she told herself. He’s out of that cage. That woman didn’t hurt him. We’ll get him back to his ma again. After a cramped, short night resting in a tree, her arms gave out much sooner than she would have liked, and she reluctantly handed Tusken back to Razo. Razo groaned with the boy’s weight.

  “You think he’s all right?” he whispered. “The way he sleeps . . .”

  “He always sleeps like the dead.”

  “Good boy. Shows real intelligence, I say.” Razo rubbed his chin softly against the boy’s head. “He wore himself out yesterday, fussing and crying, poor little man. It hasn’t been a feast-day banquet, I guess I can tell you. But we did all right, Tusken and I. We’re pals.”

  She had not recovered from the oak sleep yet—her head felt heavy on her shoulders as if filled with sap, her eyes unused to looking around. “Razo, the girls . . .”

  “I know.” His voice was tight.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Rescue them, of course. Don’t worry, I’m plotting. But first I need to be sure you and Tusken are safe.”

  Razo had changed these past couple of years, no question, and not just his height. He reeked with confidence. Rin watched him as she might watch a squirrel if she was lost in the deep Forest, with a hope it would lead her to its cache of nuts.

  “Finn left us in Hendric to ride for Geric, to warn him we were going to Kel. Maybe we should get Tusken to safety and wait for Geric to come—”

  “Come siege Castle Daire? Start a war with Kel? And in the meantime, leaving Dasha, Enna, and Isi at the mercy of Selia? Not on your life. I’m going in there tonight and I’m going to get those girls out.”

  Rin’s stomach did flip-flops like a fish on the riverbank. How could Razo sneak into a defended fortress and rescue three girls without meeting a sword point? But she did not dare argue. The idea of people-speaking throbbed and stung, making her conscious of her every word.

  They did not talk, careful in their footsteps to keep quiet. Razo’s face became strained and red, and he seemed scarcely able to hold Tusken. They reached a copse of trees that wore their leaves low, creating an enclosure nearly as solid as a wattle-and-daub house. Razo collapsed inside, muttering that he needed to rest for a few moments. Rin guessed he had not had much sleep or food those past days.

  Razo lay Tusken gently on a patch of grass and rested his own head on a tree root, stretching his legs and arms and groaning as if in pain.

  “We need to lay low until night offers us some cover. It won’t do our girls any good if I go barging at the castle in full sun and get shot down before I can even scale a wall.”

  “If you take a nap,” Rin said, cautious with each word, “I can watch.”

  “I think I’d better . . .” Razo’s eyes closed, and instantly came the low, grumbling snores she knew well. Tusken must have been used to the noise too, because he rolled in his sleep and nestled closer to Razo.

  Dawn dripped through the leaves onto Rin’s hands. She watched the two boys in their rest, her ears attuned to the sounds of the wood. Selia’s searchers were out there. They would find them, kill Rin and probably Razo too, since he proved to be too much trouble, and take Tusken away. And beneath that worry, the slow, dark, greasy snake kept moving under her skin, that awareness of something wrong. After an hour or more, the anxiety became painful. Her heart beat so hard, it radiated sharp jabs through her chest.

  I’ve got to keep watch, she told herself. I need to stay calm. I need to protect them.

  But it was becoming unbearable. The anxiety of their situation beat at her, and she could not shut off the questions. Am I a people-speaker? Have I always been? Am I going to turn into a Selia?

  The night before she had battled past the grimness that had blocked her from the trees’ thoughts, and she had met the memory of what she’d done to Wilem and come out again. Perhaps she just needed more understanding and another encounter with trees to be at peace. She brushed her hand down the bark, alert to the silent hum of the tree. The crackle of bark and awareness of sunlight. A thrum that promised cool silence deep in the core.

  She closed her eyes, succumbing to the question until she was inside the tree’s thoughts, spinning again inside her own memories.

  It’s the morning after Wilem, and she feels as if she were tied in a knot only to pull loose by sunup. The events of last night are oddly hazy. She does not recall exactly what happened, and a tang of fear makes her fight against trying to recall. But there is a loose ache moving inside her, and she has an idea that if she just allows herself to speak freely, the ache will melt into relief—delight even. Some mysterious elation is still delicious on her tongue, making her insides rumble with hunger.

  But there’s Ma, humming while she works, smiling at her daughter. Guilt sinks inside Rin, and she’s sure that she said something unforgivable, something that would make Ma not love her. So Rin stays quiet, helps prepare breakfast and clean up, and every moment that ticks by, she feels stretched farther away from that wild and brilliant Rin. Each time Ma touches her, speaks to her, Rin feels certain that she doesn’t belong in this warm, happy house beside her good mother.

  this warm, happy house beside her As soon as she can, she runs.

  She runs away from the homestead and their neighbors, toward deepness. She falls into a fir tree, insisting herself into its thoughts, demanding its comfort. She expects the woody thoughts of trees to still her, but instead she is surrounded by what she’s done. I lied to Wilem, I shattered his confidence, I filled him with sadness, and I did not even care. And I want to be that powerful again. The memory catches her in its teeth.

  She’s on her hands and knees, breathless. Scrambling back to her feet, she stumbles into an aspen grove, the round leaves chiming, the sunlight filtered to soft warmth. She tumbles against knotty white bark.

  Take it away, she begs. Change me, undo me, make it not real. Make me someone else.

  The tree does not hear her and obey, not as Wilem had. The tree simply reflects back to her what she is, what she’s done. She is a girl with a desire to speak out and control, to raise herself above the rest. And knowing it was wrong, she still claimed that power and used it against Wilem. But she’s never heard of people-speaking, doesn’t comprehend what’s happening, knows only that she feels wrong. That confusion and wrongness are a black loathing that suffocates her. She clings to the tree, and the sensation intensifies, burns spit
ting hot and smoky like grease in the fire.

  She doesn’t want to remember, she wants oblivion, and all the trees offer is the truth—who she is, what she’s done. Feeling twisted and yanked and dumped on the ground, she rips apart her own memory so she won’t have to look at it anymore. But hiding from what she did can’t ease her wrongness.

  I’m bad. Ma won’t love me if she knows. I’m—She pulls away from the tree, crouches over her knees, and cries for as long as the tears will come.

  Chapter 18

  Rin’s thoughts heaved inside her. She pushed away from the tree and hunched over, her belly and throat cramping. She pressed her hands against her eyes, against her chest, breathing until she could get herself under control, trying to keep quiet so as not to wake Razo and Tusken.

  A rotting sensation throbbed in her gut, reminding her of what she’d done. But there was a little comfort too, just to have a glimpse of clarity. The trees of her Forest had not rejected her. It was the other way around—she had flinched away from them. These past months, she thought she’d thrown away the memory of what happened with Wilem and what she discovered about herself. But it had swelled inside her, the hidden thought becoming the loudest in her head. Ever since, when she’d tried to listen to the trees’ calmness, the thought they reflected back to her was that pulsating secret that lurked just below the surface. She’d sought peace, but the memory of her mistake and the glimpse of her wrongness sickened her. Inside a tree’s thoughts, she was surrounded by her own self. And after Wilem, that was a place she did not want to be.

  I didn’t know, she tried to comfort herself. She had not known such a thing as people-speaking existed; she had never met anyone like Selia.

  Any child of Ma’s should know better than to act that way, she thought. I knew it was wrong, even if I didn’t know why, and I did it anyway.

  That gray worm stretched, reminding her that she still wanted to be that wild Rin, still yearned to speak like Selia, to not be afraid of herself, to claim what she could do, and to let everyone see her shine.

  Razo gasped and sat upright, his hands clutching his chest. He looked around deliriously until he saw Tusken beside him. The little boy snorted in his sleep and flopped onto his other side, his mouth open and drooling. Razo breathed out in relief, patting the boy’s head.

  “Thought he was gone. Dreamed she took him.” He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Ugh, that was an ugly dream. I won’t be sleeping any more today. Did you hear anything out there?”

  Rin shook her head, ashamed she had not been paying attention. Razo stole out, tiptoeing around their small glade, pausing to listen. He slipped back in and sighed as he sat, speaking low so his voice would not carry beyond their tree. “Now, you’d better tell me why you’re being so naughty and hiding things from me.”

  Rin’s heart was a startled jackrabbit. “Wh-what?”

  Razo looked at her hard, his brown eyes glittering in the rising sunlight. “Well, I was teasing, going to accuse you of hiding all the food. But since you’re acting guiltier than Incher with his pockets full of bread dough, why don’t you just tell me what you thought I meant?” “Nothing.” She shook her head, shrugged, looked away.

  “I didn’t . . . I mean, nothing . . .”

  Razo’s gaze was bright. “That won’t do it, Rinna-roo. You’re hiding something from me. Come on before I get my feelings hurt and start to cry.” He let his lower lip quiver.

  She smiled with a shrug. “Nothing really. I just . . . I’m realizing that I had—or have—some kind of understanding of trees. Sort of.”

  “Understanding of trees. Interesting. Go on.”

  He was not going to let her get away with shrugging it off. She could tell him this part but not her fears about people-speaking, of course. “Sometimes I can think more clearly when I’m close to a tree, like I’m thinking with it. And I can kind of hear them, be aware of where their roots are growing or their branches, feel the memory of past years and weather inside their trunks, and it makes me . . . makes me calmer to do it.” She was silent a moment, listening for searchers before asking, “Can you do that?”

  Razo blinked. “Am I still asleep? ’Cause you sound like you’re talking in dream weirdness.”

  Rin cleared her throat. “Isi called it tree-speaking.”

  Razo slapped the ground, but even in his passion he was careful to keep his voice low. “Aw, really? Tree-speaking? That’s not fair. Why does everyone—wait, maybe it’s me. Do you think it’s me? I mean, Enna and Isi, and Dasha too, now you. Maybe there’s something about me that sort of sparks something in people, and wherever I go, people just start understanding everything because it . . . because I . . .”

  “I think Isi could talk to horses and birds before she came to Bayern, and Dasha knew water-speaking when she was a little girl in Tira.”

  Razo considered this. “All right, all right. But all the same—” He considered it some more. “But . . . but . . . yes, all right.” He considered again. “Fine. That’s . . . you’re probably right. Fine. But did you know that I’m deadly good with a sling?” He nudged her with his elbow. “Huh? Did you know that? I’ll bet you didn’t know that. Huh? Huh?”

  Rin swatted his arm away, trying not to laugh, or he was sure to get a big head.

  “So, trees, huh? Well, fine, as long as that’s all.”

  Rin let her face go dead serious. “Also, I can talk to bears and wolverines.”

  “You’re joking now. You’re teasing me now. I can tell.” He stared at his sister as if he could see through her eyes to her thoughts beyond. Rin did not flinch. “You’re not teasing, are you?”

  She could not help the smile that teased the corners of her mouth. He sighed and leaned back.

  “You are joking. Good. Or not. It would’ve come in handy about now, commanding an army of bears to go attack the castle.”

  “And wolverines.”

  “Right. And wolverines. But well enough. What good’s bear-speaking anyway? I tell you, I’m honestly relieved not to have such a burden. Couldn’t stand to have to talk to bears all the time. It’s I love berries and fish, day and night. And their breath stinks.”

  “Not like anyone else I know.”

  “So you say.” His look was suspicious. “You’re still being dodgy. Are you hiding something else?”

  “Only this . . .” She pulled a handful of grass from the ground behind her back and tossed it at his face. He answered with a clod of dirt to the chest; then they were scrambling for any ammunition, flinging sticks and grass and leaves and pebbles, then wrestling each other as if they were children again. Razo only grappled with one arm—to give her a fair shot, she thought. She was not sure how the wrestling match changed to an embrace, but moments later her arms were around his neck, and he was rubbing her back, promising her everything would be all right.

  I’m scared, she wanted to say. And I’m wrong inside too, like Selia. And I failed the queen. I can’t trust myself, and I don’t think I can go home again or I might hurt Ma and the little ones. And I don’t want you ever to know.

  “Thanks for that rescue back there, by the way,” he said.

  She nodded her head against his chest, feeling like a little girl. She remembered a time they’d been playing in the trees when she was six or so. He’d dared her to climb higher than she ever had. He’d never dared her to do something she could not do, so she had not questioned it. She had climbed and climbed and climbed, the sound of his cheers pushing her faster and higher, though soon the height was making her head feel swimmy and swoony, and her hands seemed too small to grasp another branch.

  I can’t do it, she had thought as her legs started to shake. I can’t go any higher. And that was when she had fallen, smacking into branches as she went down. He had caught her at the bottom and had not said a thing as he’d held her and let her tremble from the pain and fright of falling.

  The next day when Razo was elsewhere, Rin had climbed the tree again.

  �
�I wish we could go home now,” she said, homesickness so thick it filled her up inside, pressed out against her ribs and up into her neck.

  She felt him nod. His muscles clenched and his jaw clicked, and she could sense how furious he was, how determined. No chance Razo would run when Dasha, Enna, and Isi were prisoners in that castle. But everything would be all right, because her big brother was here. She did not let herself stop to think why, instead of being relieved, she tingled with uncomfortable chill.

  Rin squeezed her brother a little tighter, and he groaned painfully. She let go.

  “Are you all right?”

  He nodded. “Fine. I’m fine.”

  He scooted beside Tusken, resting on his side, and Rin did the same. She placed her hand on Tusken’s back, feeling the slow rise and fall of his sleepy breaths.

  “We should get moving as soon as he wakes,” Razo said, idly rubbing his left side. “North, where the searchers won’t expect us to be. Then you and Tusken hide out to night, like you did last night, and I’ll go to the castle.” She must have looked worried, because Razo added, “Trust me, Rin. I’ve been in stickier spots.”

  That thought was not comforting. Her arguments and fears for his safety rose into her throat, but she swallowed them down, afraid of the damage she could do by speaking. Instead she asked, “Razo, who is Selia?”

  Razo groaned and rolled onto his back, resting his head on his right arm. “Selia the soulless. Selia the treacherous snake. Selia the unkillable, apparently. She was Isi’s lady-in-waiting back in Kildenree. When Isi was traveling to Bayern to marry Geric, Selia and half of Isi’s guards rebelled and tried to kill everyone else. Isi escaped, but Selia had gone on into Bayern and pretended she was the Kildenrean princess. Geric hadn’t met Isi yet, you see. And . . . well, it’s a long story, but in the end, I myself was an indispensable part of how Isi convinced Geric and his father that she was the real princess. Ask Isi yourself. She’ll tell you.”