Otherbound (9 page)

Shimmery air—as if from heat—trailed behind him, coiling around too-tall weeds and dipping with every dried-out ditch he crossed. Slowly, the tail end of the trail sank and faded as it settled into blades of grass and thick-leaved autumn flowers.

It shouldn't fade
, Amara thought.
I'm a mage. I should still be able to see a simple boundary spell.

Amara concentrated, squinted, willed with all her might: nothing.

Frustrated, she glanced back at Maart, who was muttering from inside the granary. He'd been rinsing their kommer leaves in a bowl of cold water, but right now, the water frothed and bubbled.

Backlash. Harmless backlash, maybe, but it added up. That was exactly why she sat in this crouch whenever Jorn cast his detection wards. With her legs getting stiffer by the second, she'd draw a crude temple in the cold-as-water dirt before her, place her hand in its center, and ask the spirits to forgive Jorn for demanding so much of them.

This time, instead of a temple, she drew three lines. Three blackouts. They had one thing in common. She'd been in danger each time. She might've called on the spirits without realizing it, like a defense mechanism, instinct.

But why? Danger was exactly when she couldn't afford to black out.

Movement. Jorn was pulling away from his spell. Quickly,
Amara rubbed out the lines in the dirt and backed into the storehouse, but Jorn wasn't coming their way. He crossed the field toward the forest's edge. He'd already completed the part of the spell that extended into the forest, though, and he never left without telling them.

Right before he disappeared behind an abandoned shed, Amara saw a piece of glass flicker in his hand, and her eyes widened. Mages used enchanted glass or mirrors to communicate. She knew Jorn and Cilla had people working alongside them. That was how they'd recruited Maart when the servant before him died; that was how Jorn kept their funds up. Amara had never found out who, and she'd stopped asking long ago. If those people included mages, though … mages on
their
side, without Jorn's temper, who she might be able to ask about the blackouts …

Following Jorn was stupid under normal circumstances. Jorn's mood lately made it even stupider.

Amara did it, anyway.

“I'll get firewood,” she signed to Maart, and ran lightly across the field. A heron stood watch on the shed's roof, overseeing a ditch below. She slowed the closer she came. She heard Jorn's voice but couldn't make out the words. She heard another voice, too. Male.

She pressed herself against the shed and sneaked around one corner, then peeked past the next. Jorn looked as if he was praying, head bowed, one hand to the ground. His fingers rested
on the edges of the glass, which flickered in the watery morning light.

A breeze carried his voice with it. “… I can track Cilla if she runs. No, I'm worried about Amara. I can handle her, but these blackouts …”

The wind brushed stray nettles past Amara's hand, and she flinched at the sting but stayed dead silent. Her heart crept upward and beat in her throat. Jorn knew about the blackouts? She needed to hear every word of this.

“Blackouts? Plural?” The other man swore.

“According to Cilla, yes. She told me out of concern. But it's not just that the blackouts might put Cilla in danger—”

“Yeah. It's about what happens if they get worse.” Amara knew the voice but couldn't place it. She inched back around the corner. Nettles rustled by her ankles. “Whoever's causing this will catch on and try again. Keep an eye on Amara. If it continues, bring her to Drudo palace. In the meantime, I'll send one of us to help. I'd go myself, but I don't know how much Amara remembers. Bracha's new, though. Those kids won't recognize her. Maessen is a ghost town, anyway—they don't need her there.”

Maessen—a Dit-founded mainland city, Amara knew, on the north side of the Dunelands. The servant before Maart had died near there. Jorn then took Maart from the Maessen palace, told him his duty was to the crown, not the ministers, and proceeded to forget all about the servant who'd come before.

Up until a minute ago, that was all Amara had known of Maessen.

Now, she remembered another detail: the name of Maessen's new minister, Bracha.

One of us
, the man had said, and
I don't know how much Amara remembers
, and
Drudo palace
, and—acutely—Amara realized why she knew his voice.

Jorn hesitated. “Let's wait. I'll handle it for now.”

“But if—”

“Better than recognizing Bracha.” Jorn's sudden rise in volume startled a nearby hare. It bolted to safety, diving into the thicket at the edge of the field. “I need to go. How's Ammelore?”

“She's a big city—she's doing fine without you,” the man said. “Hey, I'll contact the harbor and tell them you need more silver. Keep me informed—and in the names of the dead, stay away from the pubs. We don't need to clean up more of your messes.”

Amara turned, sidestepping nettles and twigs that might give her away. Behind her, she heard the crack of glass.

She walked faster, disappearing into the trees, far away, farther, as far as she could without crossing Jorn's detection ward, kneeling to pick up dried branches here and there for firewood. Thorns tore open her skin.

Jorn would know she'd listened in on him. He knew about the blackouts and he probably knew a million more things she
didn't and never would, and
that voice
, and—and she needed to calm down. Work on collecting firewood. When she returned, Jorn had to believe she'd collected firewood and nothing else.

He couldn't find out Amara had listened in.

He couldn't find out Amara had recognized that man's voice.

He couldn't find out Amara knew where she recognized it from.

Between the ministers' coup and being plucked away to protect Cilla, Amara had spent months at the Bedam palace learning its new name and serving its new owner. She'd been a kid with all her early teeth still, used to getting ordered around. The person behind those orders didn't matter. She'd been more concerned about her friends who'd died in the takeover and the way her elbow had healed after she'd cut it on a rusted nail in the barn.

Still, she'd seen her new boss around. Ruudde was a short man, thickset and draped in Dit gemstones. His voice had been kind but direct and had sounded almost—not quite, but almost—the same coming through a broken pane of glass.

Jorn was working with the ministers.

olan had been fading in and out during his history test, worried about Amara, squirming at all the names of dead people listed on the quiz, and—
Whoever's causing this will catch on and try again.

Nolan sat near the back of the classroom, by the window, and stared uncomprehendingly at the road stretching away from the school. A breeze swept sand across the blazing asphalt.

Jorn knew about the blackouts. Was working with the ministers. And—

Whoever's causing this will catch on and try again.

They were talking about Nolan. Had to be. He'd thought he was dependent on Amara's blackouts to take control, but did Ruudde's words mean it was the other way around? What if the blackouts were his doing—Nolan piggybacking on whatever connection Amara's faulty magic had established and
using
it instead of letting it use
him
? She'd suspected her panic had activated the blackouts, but Nolan had panicked just as much as she had.

All around him, pencils scratched on paper. Chairs scraped against the floor. Nolan looked at the classroom, dazed, then at the near-blank quiz on his desk.

“I have to—go,” he blurted. Before Ms. Suarez could answer, he was on his feet, weaving between desks.

You Ok?
Luisa mouthed as he passed. They'd done a project together that winter. She either liked him or felt sorry for him—Nolan couldn't tell which—but they hadn't talked in weeks, so it wasn't as if he could find out. He didn't answer, his mind stuck on Ruudde's words. If he could control Amara, he could talk to Maart and leave a message. She'd finally know he existed.

“Nolan,” Ms. Suarez said sharply. “I thought your doctor's appointment wasn't until later. This is not how—”

“I'm sorry. I'll be right outside. I just need to …” He stumbled into the hallway and shut the door behind him, muffling Ms. Suarez's voice. She wouldn't follow him. She'd tell the principal, who'd contact his parents, who'd say he had a seizure, and that was that. He walked straight to the lockers across the hall, then lowered himself to the ground, the movement flaking off rusty metal behind him—

—Amara was still gathering firewood. Her thoughts raced as much as his, repeating the conversation she'd heard over and over. She didn't understand half of it. She honed in on what she did understand: that Jorn knew about her blackouts, and that if they continued, he'd bring her back to Bedam. They were close by. It'd only take hours.

And what would happen there?

For all Amara's thoughts, at least her world was quiet, and her only pain came from splinters and bark scrapes that
healed straightaway. That made it easier for Nolan to concentrate.

Move
, he thought, staring at her hands searching the forest ground.
I need to do this. I did before. If you'll just
—
move
—

—over one of the classroom doors hung a clock, and Nolan couldn't help measuring time. Ten minutes. Twenty. He hadn't moved Amara even an inch. He brushed off a passing teacher's concern, ignored two juniors staring at his exposed prosthesis.

It wasn't working.

The door to Ms. Suarez's classroom opened, and Sarah Schneider stepped out. Her eyes flitted to the bathrooms down the hall, then to him. “You all right? You were in kind of a hurry.”

“Sick.” Nolan
had
been in a hurry. He hadn't even stopped to think of an excuse.

“Sick as in,
bwaagh, meet my lunch
? Or sick as in …” Sarah gestured vaguely. “Seizure?”

“I'm always having seizures,” Nolan said, suddenly tight-voiced. Too tight. Sarah didn't deserve that. By now, it'd been thirty minutes of nothing but sitting and pushing his way into the Dunelands. Nothing was happening. Slowly, he let his lungs deflate. “Sorry. I'm fine. Thank you.”

“Huh.” Sarah shuffled her feet, as if she wanted to leave but wasn't sure how. “Those small ones … Luisa said they happen every time you blink?”

“Not every blink,” Nolan lied. “But often.”

“Freaky.”

“People can have hundreds of seizures a day. It's on Wikipedia.” Nolan couldn't have people disbelieving him. If anyone realized he didn't have epilepsy, they'd want to put him through testing that Dad's insurance didn't cover, and his parents would pay for it, anyway, no matter how far in debt they already were after all the prostheses and custom shoes and those damn pills.

“And Wikipedia never lies, right?” Sarah looked slightly more at ease.

“Never.” Nolan smiled wanly, his mind still on Amara—
who was headed back to the granary as thunderclouds met overhead. Magic backlash, she was sure of it
—and tried to pay attention to Sarah, instead. He wasn't used to this. Whenever people made rare, awkward attempts at small talk, they avoided mentioning the seizures or his leg. Sarah didn't seem bothered. She didn't even seem
curious
, like some of the freshmen who sometimes walked up and gaped; she seemed
interested
. Nolan went on despite himself. “The small seizures happen most of the time. The big ones come every few weeks or months.” Whenever Cilla hurt herself. Whenever Jorn got angry.

“Wow. Sucks.”

“I can't complain. I'm safe as long as I'm careful.” He hesitated. “Other people have it much worse.”