Ash & Bramble (31 page)

The Spinster nods, as if understanding, and hoists her spinning wheel. “Come on, you lot!” she shouts. “To trouble!”

With a clatter and a rush, the Candlemakers and Spinsters run to join the fight.

I pull myself out of Owen's grip. “We have to go with them,” I protest.

“Not yet. There's one more, Pen.” He hurries down the hallway.

“Fighters?” I ask, falling into step beside him.

He shakes his head. “I don't know. But you need to see them.” He leads us to a door that opens onto a staircase that winds up into one of the fortress's blunt towers. Up we climb,
round and round until I get dizzy, my breath tearing at my lungs. Can't stop to rest—have to rally these last slaves and get back to the battle.

At last we reach the top of the stairs. With his shoulder Owen shoves open the door, which opens onto a room that takes up the entire floor of the tower. The room is made all of stone and holds no furniture. It is crowded with people, maybe twenty-five in all.

They are naked. They stand with their arms hanging, not trying to cover themselves. Some are old, some are young. Their hair has been cut short, and they are very clean. All of them stare at us with blank, hopeless eyes.

I catch my breath. “Hello.”

None of them reacts; it's as if they don't even hear me.

Oh. With a shiver, I realize what these are. They've been brought here recently. The Godmother has taken their Befores; she's storing these people here like . . . like cogs and gears and pistons, parts for a machine she has no use for yet, and she will soon return to assign the best craftsmen and women to their work in the fortress. If they don't have a special skill she can use here, they'll be sent to the city to serve Story's will.

I was once one of them. I stood in this very room, slack-mouthed and blank-eyed like a puppet with its strings cut. No. Not
me
, just my body. With no
me
in it at all? Just . . . Nothing?

Beside me, Owen takes my hand, offering his steady
strength. I turn to him and rest my head on his shoulder, hiding my eyes so I don't have to see. He was one of them too, once; it's just as hard for him. This is the dark truth of our Befores: we both come from this room, this beginning. And all that we have become denies this place. We truly are ourselves. Owen's arm comes around me, and I know that the Nothing has no power over either of us anymore.

“Can we—can we help them?” I ask, my voice muffled. I could give back their Befores. . . .

“No time,” he says briefly.

And yes, he's right—I can feel the urgency of the battle calling to me. I'm needed there, even more than here. I take a deep breath and straighten, then hold up my thimble to get their attention. They cringe away.

“I'm not the Godmother,” I reassure them. “My thimble won't hurt you. My friends and I are fighting for your freedom, and we need your help.” I gaze around at them. Nothing. “All right,” I finish, and back away. “We'll leave the door open. Come fight with us if you can.”

With that, Owen and I turn and race down the stairs again.

T
HE BATTLE HAS
moved from the courtyard into the fortress, to a huge, torchlit room that looks like some kind of dining hall. In its center, among a jumble of rough tables and benches, the fight surges. The rebels fight with swords and knives; I catch a glimpse of the Huntsman swinging his ax. More have joined us; I see slaves wielding cutting scissors
and hammers and bags of flour; the burly Spinster sweeps her spinning wheel around herself, screaming wildly.

But it still isn't enough. Led by a tall, goat-horned brute, more guards—these without uniforms; just their fur, or scales, and carrying no weapons but their claws and fangs—pour into the room through another doorway. They shriek and howl, breaking through the line of storybreakers and slaves. A snarling mass of guards surges toward me.

There's no time to be frightened. I take up a fighting stance, spin my staff to clear a space around me, and let them come. A faltering moment, and then, I find the rhythm of block and thrust that my body knows so well; and then the Huntsman is beside me, swinging his ax, and Templeton, grinning and wild-eyed, and Zel with her flickering sword, and even the oldest Seamstress, with her own blood dripping down her arm, darting in to stab with her needle.

In the surge of the battle, Owen is separated from me. Missing his steadiness at my side, I glance wildly around the room, catching a glimpse of him and Cor near one of the doorways, fighting back to back against the goat-horned guard and six of the most savage of the other guards.

I start to fight my way toward him, when a guard with tusks and wildly rolling eyes springs at me, slashing with his clawed hands. I barely get my staff up to block him.

“Pen!” Templeton screams.

I whirl; two paces away, Templeton stands over Zel, who has blood spurting from a gash on her arm; she's dropped her
sword and tries to cover the wound with her hand.

“Help me get her clear,” Templeton pants, sheathing her sword and stooping to help Zel to her feet.

With my staff, I hold off the attacking guards. “There,” I point, and we make our way to the wall, where a turned-over table makes a safe corner.

“Is it deep?” Templeton is asking, trying to push aside Zel's hand to see the wound.

Biting her lip, Zel nods. Then she looks desperately back at the fight.

“I know,” Templeton says. “Just let me get this bandaged.” With her teeth, she rips the bottom of Zel's shirt and tears off a strip of cloth, using it to bind up the gash. While they're doing this, I stand guard, my staff at the ready.

“All right?” Templeton asks, and I turn to see her brace Zel's shoulder, and then bring her forehead to Zel's, a snatched moment of intimacy. Zel nods. Templeton hands her the sword she'd dropped.

“Let's go,” I say, suddenly worried about Owen, about being separated from him for too long.

“Wait,” Templeton says, and grips my arm. Zel reaches out, and with bloody fingers, touches the tip of my finger, where it's gripping the staff.

“Yes,” Templeton says, with a quick glance at the fight. “The thimble. It's our only hope.”

Quickly I dig the thimble out of my pocket and put it on my finger. It burns fiercely.

The fortress guards are a wave that is about to crest and overwhelm us. Snarling clots of them surround our fighters. Owen and Cor are gone; their fight has spilled out of the room and into the hallway beyond; I hear shouts and the crash of weapons. I know Owen is quick with his knife, but I am desperate to get to him.

As one, Templeton, Zel, and I leap back into the fight.

This time, when I strike, a bolt of light and heat erupts from my staff and slams into my opponents; none of them get up after I have passed. Quickly I clear a space around me, and lead an advance. It is enough to turn the battle. Like a thunderstorm, I blow through the room, striking, rallying our fighters, driving the last of the guards to the walls. Some of them turn tail and flee; the ones too injured to run throw down their weapons and fall onto their knees. The rebels and slaves break into ragged cheers. As I stand among my friends, panting for breath, my hands trembling on the smooth wood of my staff, I cheer, too.

As if in answer, a deep boom echoes through the fortress, shaking the stones under our feet. It's followed by a rush of wind like air escaping from a bottle that's long been sealed. A thrill runs through me—I didn't
really
think we could do it. The fortress has fallen, I realize; the Godmother's circle of power is broken. From here, with the slaves helping us, we just might have a chance against the Godmother and her footmen in the city.

My eyes rove the room, looking for Owen. In the chaos of
injuries and fallen tables and benches, and the rebels collecting weapons from the surrendered guards, I don't see him. Or Cor. They must be out in the hallway, not far.

Templeton strides up to me, panic in her voice. “A big group of guards charged through a gap in the wall,” she announces. “I think it opened when the spell on the fortress was broken. We need to go after them.” Zel is at her shoulder; the makeshift bandage on her arm is stained with blood.

“No,” I decide. The guards will run for the city, but we have enough to do here before we attack. We'll need supplies, plenty of food, and warm clothes. “Check all the guard rooms,” I tell the burly Spinster, who is still carrying her spinning wheel over her shoulder. “Collect any weapons we can use when we go after the Godmother. We have to act quickly.”

The Huntsman has some skill as a healer, and we brought medical supplies, so he is busy tending to the slaves and rebels who were injured in the fight. I comfort the three seamstresses who were wounded; they blink up at me from their blankets like owls with bloody feathers. I keep an eye out for Cor and Owen, but they don't come.

“I have to find Owen and Cor,” I tell the Huntsman, feeling a sudden urgency. They should have reported in by now.

The Huntsman gives the Glover a reassuring pat and gets to his feet. “I'll come with you.” He slings his bag of medicines over his shoulder.

I lead him out of the big room into the hallway, stepping
over a few wounded or dead guards, nodding to the rebels who are helping with the cleanup. He's not here.

“The courtyard, maybe?” the Huntsman suggests.

“He must be there,” I mutter.

We go down the hallway and out into the courtyard. It is empty, the snow churned and spotted here and there with blood.

The thrill of winning the fight drains out of me. “He's not here.”

“Pen,” the Huntsman says from behind me.

When I turn, he holds up a sword. Cor's sword, I realize, its blade crusted with blood along one edge. “Templeton said a group of guards got out the break in the wall,” he says, ashen.

A bolt of icy terror slams into me and I freeze. When I speak, my lips feel stiff. “They took him.”

“Both of them,” the Huntsman says grimly.

“Oh no. No.” The Huntsman says something else, but I can't hear him through the fright that whirls through my head. The guards have him, and they'll take him straight to the city. To the Godmother. “She'll kill him,” I whisper.

She will kill him
.

E
VEN BEFORE HE COMES FULLY AWAKE,
O
WEN CAN FEEL
the shooting pain from the wound in his shoulder. It aches in his bones, all the way down his arm and into his neck. The pain has a pattern, he realizes dimly. It's sharp, pulsing in time with the jolting bumps. No, not bumps, steps. He's being carried by somebody who is running; he is hanging head-down over a broad shoulder. He can't move his arms, and his mouth feels as if it's full of ashes. Carefully he cracks open his gritty eyes. It is daytime. That's not right—it was night when they attacked the fortress. Squinting, he focuses on the back of the man who is carrying him.

Light blue. A light-blue uniform. And it comes back to him. He and Cor, fighting in the crowded hallways, a knife held by a hairy fist punching into his shoulder, wrenching
out again, the sick, dizzy realization that the guard had put poison on the blade . . . then darkness.

He feels the sinking weight of despair. Their invasion of the fortress must have failed. Pen was captured too, or—or—

Somebody shouts an unintelligible order and he's tipped off the guard's shoulder onto the ground.

It's enough to put him out again.

T
HE NEXT TIME
he awakens, the pain from his wound has receded, but it's been replaced with other pain. It's dark again.

“Gerrup,” snuffles a slurred voice.

A sharp pain—a kick in the ribs. Owen pries open his eyes. He's lying on his side on the snowy ground. His arms are bound behind him with chains that are bitterly cold.

“Gerrup,” the voice repeats. “You 'wake, gerrup.”

Gritting his teeth, Owen struggles to his knees in the snow. Furry paws jerk him to his feet; he stands, swaying. A guard with furred ears and a mouth too full of teeth grips his arm.

Blinking, Owen looks around, trying to see if Pen is here, hoping she is not. The light of a single torch shows him a mass of shadows and glaring eyes and panting mouths—the Godmother's guards in a tight circle around him. One of them shifts, and he sees Cor. The prince's hands are bound in front of him. He has a purple bruise across his temple, but he looks steady enough.

“Cor—” Owen starts.
Where is Pen
, he wants to ask.

The guard holding him jabs him in the shoulder, right where the poisoned knife struck him, and he goes down onto his knees, head whirling.

“Gerrup,” the guard orders. When Owen moves too slowly, the guard snarls sharply, “Gerrup!” and pulls his arms until pain lances into his shoulders. There are barks and howls of harsh laughter as Owen struggles to his feet. One of the guards shoves him, and he staggers, but doesn't fall.

“Let him alone,” Cor shouts.

A guard backhands Owen across the face and he goes down again.

A goat-horned guard stalks up to Cor. “You talk,” he says, jabbing a finger into Cor's chest, “he gets it.” He points at Owen.

Owen spits bloody snow out of his mouth. “It's all right, Cor,” he pants.

It earns him another kick in the ribs. “
You
talk and you get it,” the guard snarls, jerking Owen to his feet.

“You 'scaped,” another guard taunts. The rest of the guards press closer, and Owen can smell their rank sweat, their rancid breath, and he can feel the heat of their bodies. “You 'scaped, Seamstress 'scaped,” the guard growls. “You got 'way from fortress,
we
punished, now you caught, now
you
punished.”

The horned guard shoves his face closer. “Godmother wants you.” He opens his mouth, shows sharp, yellowed teeth. When he speaks, he enunciates the next word carefully.
“Sto-ry-break-er.” He gives a harsh laugh. “Story break you, this time.”

Owen nods, understanding. He is as good as dead. But they don't have Pen. Maybe the invasion hasn't failed after all, and that is enough.

The horned, goat-footed guard slurs out an order, and Owen is pushed into a shuffling run in the midst of the guards; Cor is somewhere ahead of him.

The rest of the night is a misery. When he falls, the guards kick him and drag him to his feet again, and they run on. As a gray dawn breaks, they stop to rest in a clearing surrounded by snow-covered pine trees. The guards slump on the ground, panting, and Cor is allowed to sit. He's given some dried meat and bread to eat, but they make Owen stand in the middle of the clearing. He closes his eyes, concentrating on staying on his feet, shaking with weariness and cold. Even his feet are numb inside the sturdy boots he made while a slave in the fortress.

If only he'd had time to send a message to his mum and dad, telling them he was still alive. It's too late for that now. And Pen. He'd been waiting, letting her find herself again.

I love you, Pen
. He should have said it. Story pushes people together, but it is obedience and fear that oils its gears, not real, true love. If only he'd said it, and if Pen felt it too . . .

But it's too late.

The guards finish their break and drag him into a run again, and it should be more misery, but something has
shifted. He feels distant from himself, as if he's stepped back and is watching this poor, stupid shoemaker caught up in something that is way, way too powerful for him to resist. It's always been too big for him; he was just too dumb to realize it. His ending is rushing toward him with massive inevitability. There's nothing he can do to change any of it, he can only go on for as long as he is able. And so he shuffles on, not hearing the taunts of the guards or feeling their blows. He doesn't even feel the cold anymore.

At last they come down a steep, forested hillside to the river. Some of the guards must be the footmen the Godmother sent after him and Pen and Cor from the city, because they know a boat is waiting on the bank. When they find it, they shove him into the bottom of the boat. The guards jump in, settle Cor with a blanket, then push off from the shore and start paddling upstream.

Slowly Owen comes back to himself, feels the icy bite of the cold again, the ache of his bound arms, the bruises from the guards' blows. Shivering, he lifts his face out of the freezing water that is pooled in the bottom of the boat and rests his aching head against the wooden side. He can hear the river rushing past, just under the keel. From where he's lying he can see two guards perched on a thwart, grunting as they dig their paddles into the water. Sitting against the other side of the boat, not an arm span away, is Cor.

The prince glances aside at the guards, then leans forward. “You all right?” he breathes.

Owen closes his eyes. “Well enough,” he whispers. Things could be worse. He could be dead already.

“After we were captured, the guards took us and fled the fortress,” Cor goes on. “They'd lost the battle; Pen and the others must have won.”

Owen nods. Yes, he's figured that out.

Cor falls silent. Exhausted, Owen feels sleep creeping up on him.

“Listen,” Cor whispers. “I think I can get us out of this.”

Owen opens his eyes. “I doubt it.”

“Why not let Story have its way?” Cor reasons. “It couldn't be worse than this. Once it has the ending it wants, and Pen and I are together, I can convince the Godmother to let you live, too. I am a prince, after all; my demands should mean something to her.”

Owen gives his head a weary shake.

“Why not?” Cor persists. “Pen and I could be happy with each other. I know you don't want to lose her, but at least you'd be alive.”

“No,” Owen says. “Pen wouldn't want that.” He casts a quick look to be sure the guards are still distracted. “She doesn't want that ending—she said so, back at her stepmother's house—you heard her. She doesn't believe that love is destined or meant to be, she wants to choose it for herself.” He meets Cor's gaze, willing him to understand. “Cor, you
know
her.”

Cor raises his bound hands to rub his forehead. “No,” he says soberly, wincing. “I think
you
know her.”

“She knows there's no happily-ever-after for any of us. Now that we've been taken, she'll know exactly what she has to do to break the story she's in.” He knows what that means for him, too, but he still knows it's the right thing for her to do. “Story needs her to come to the city to play the role it assigned her. You'll see,” he assures Cor. “Pen knows she has to stay away. She won't come after us.”