I jolt at Scythe’s frank assessment.
“She’s not?” Jac asks, brows arching. “I thought…”
“I found her there. But look at her clothes. The fabric—it’s thin. Made for warmer climes.”
Jac’s eyes scan me head to toe. Aware of my disheveled, dirty state, it is all I can do to keep my shoulders from caving inward in diffidence.
“You’re right,” he agrees, nodding. “She’s not wearing that gods-awful high-necked fashion they’ve adopted in recent years down there.”
“Who are you, girl?” Scythe asks bluntly, ignoring his friend. He phrases it like a question, but his unyielding tone informs me I have no choice but to answer.
My chin jerks higher. “I told you already. I’m nobody. You made a mistake in bringing me here.”
“Where are you from?”
“The Midlands.”
“The Midlands are vast,” he notes, eyes glittering. “Specify.”
I grind my teeth together. I do not want to tell him a godsdamned thing. Certainly not about where I come from. Whom I come from. Eli may have returned to the skies, but I will not betray his memory by divulging a single detail about him to an unknown enemy. I will not put Seahaven—whatever remains of it, after the invasion—into the sights of any more hunters.
“My patience is dwindling,” Scythe informs me.
“Westlake,” I lie, picking the sprawling forested kingdom to the south of Seahaven, neighbor to King Eld’s territory. I’ve never been there, have only ever seen it on maps. I rack my brain for a random town name, trying to recall the words stamped across fading parchment in my memory. With time running short I blurt, “A village near Narbeth.”
Scythe stares at me, then echoes, “Narbeth.”
“Yes. It’s a trade-post town on the border of Westlake and Eastwood.” At least, I think it is.
“And how does a girl from Narbeth end up in the hands of someone like Burrows?”
My mind rushes to conjure details that will flesh out my skeletal fabrications. I am not a good liar. I decide to weave in threads from a story I already know—one I heard firsthand from a refugee girl Eli and I treated last spring. Her family had arrived in Seahaven sick and starving, like so many others who fled the Midlands, desperately seeking a reprieve from war and blight and famine.
We’d tried our best…but there is only so much damage even the best medicines can reverse. A few days after her arrival, the girl died in my arms, her frail lungs full of fluid. Her parents quickly followed suit, one after the other. We burned all threetogether in a driftwood pyre on the beach, then scattered their ashes in the sea.
Wherever the girl is now, I hope she does not mind my borrowing fragments of her story.
“My father is a farmer. My mother makes soaps and balms to sell in the market once a month—half a day’s journey from the farm in our cart.” I swallow hard, trying to sound like I’m not lying through my teeth. “My mother fell ill a fortnight past, so I went to market without her to sell our wares. We needed the money, and it’s always been safe in the past. I thought it worth the risk. Even people who don’t strictly approve of halflings trading are at least tolerant, assuming we stay mostly out of their way and keep our heads down. But this time…things were different.”
Scythe waits, impassive.
I stitch fear into my voice. “There were soldiers there, Eldian ones, posted throughout the market. And culling priests, preaching on the dangers of blood mixing, warning of repercussions for anyone caught harboring halflings. They must’ve spotted me. Or maybe someone reported me. I don’t know. All I do know is, when I tried to get away, the guards chased me. My cart overturned. My horse bolted. I ran for three days, trying to get home. But I didn’t make it. I was captured by Burrows and his men.” I pause. “You…well, you know the rest.”
There is a long silence.
I hope my lies are enough to convince him. I keep my face clear and my eyes wide, trying for an innocent, trustworthy expression.
“A farm girl,” Scythe says eventually, eyes scanning me up and down. “From Narbeth.”
I swallow again. “That’s right.”
He takes a sudden step forward, closing some of the distance between us, and I feel my heart trip over itself. He is dangerousenough at five paces; at four, he is lethal. I press back against Onyx’s flank, wishing I had more room to retreat—somewhere far, far away from those burning-ember eyes fixed so intently on my face.
“Firstly,” he murmurs, voice soft as a blade sliding between two ribs. “Farm girls do not use phrases likegrossly mistakenorcold-blooded calculationorevidently. They certainly do not lecture on the merits of morality after witnessing a massacre. Not when they spend their days routinely butchering animals.”
My temper flares. “I suppose you’ve met many farm girls?”
“Enough to know you aren’t one. Next time you pretend to spend your days churning soap from tallow and lye, make sure you’ve got the calluses to back it up. You’ve the hands of a healer, not those of a washerwoman.”