Witches in Red

Chapter Nine

Mercedes: Five Years in the Past

The Death

The first time I experienced fear and sorrow in the exact same moment was the day I found myself looking down into the face of my dead mother.

I couldn’t believe it. It happened so fast.

She’d been standing beside me, my father, and Mariah, on the bank of the Vudrask River, just outside the city of Kéonsk. She was smiling and looking forward to all the pleasures of the Autumn Fair. Even in her late forties, my mother was lovely, small and lithe, with black eyes and a mass of black hair. She wore white peasant blouses and brightly colored skirts and silver bangles on her wrists. Everywhere she walked, the heads of men would turn to follow.

That morning, we’d just arrived outside Kéonsk, to set up for the fair, and we’d walked over to see the rushing river. There were barges coming and going, loading and unloading, and it was always enjoyable to watch the activity.

A merchant was trying to get a team of young horses to pull his wagon closer to the bank, and two dogs beside them broke out into a snarling fight. The horses bolted, coming straight at us. My father pushed me and grabbed Mariah, and my mother was struck full force by one of the horses as it tried to stop itself at the top of the bank.

She was knocked into the water, and my father cried out.

Men began to hurry over, but she was in the current facedown and did not appear to be moving. My father jumped into the river. Mariah and I ran along the embankment, calling to her, but it was a good distance until Father was able to reach her and pull her out.

She was dead, her face white, her hair soaked, her eyes closed.

Standing beside me, Mariah stared down, and in my shock and sorrow, I was hit by a sense of fear. My mother’s name had been Moira, and she was the leader of our small group of Móndyalítko. We depended on her for many things.

And in a blink, she was gone.

Kneeling on the ground, my father, who was called Jude, let out a shameless sob. Mariah continued staring down in silence.

I asked, “Father . . . what are we going to do now?”

He didn’t appear to understand my question, as I do not think he fully understood that it was my mother who had managed everything . . . everything for our family community for my entire life. His tears were all shed for the loss of a beloved wife, but I saw the larger scheme of things.

And I was afraid.

The Family

Our traveling group consisted of four wagons—one for each family—eight horses, one good-natured milk cow, and a varying number of chickens.

My mother was from the line of Marentõr.

And as an eldest surviving daughter, she was the undisputed leader of our small branch. Since my father, Jude, had married into our kin and joined with us, he took her family name, as was the custom. For some reason no one could remember, her grandmother had believed all children born into the line should be given first names starting with the letter M.

Mother believed in following such traditions.

Although our immediate family consisted of only four people, we had the largest wagon, and we always led the way.

The second wagon housed my mother’s younger sister, Miriam, her husband, Landrien (who had also married in), and their two sons, Mikolai and Marcus.

The third wagon belonged to my mother’s elderly uncle Marten and his wife, Leticia, along with their son, Micah, and his wife, Katlyn, and their three young children, meaning seven people were packed into one wagon, but they seemed to manage.

The fourth and last wagon had once belonged to a second cousin of my mother’s, who, for reasons never revealed to me, had been shunned by her closer kin and joined up with our group before I was born. Her husband’s name was Shawn, and between them, they’d brought five sons into the world, and she’d died giving birth to the last one. My mother, of course, could not turn Shawn and the boys away, so they’d remained with us. However, this family did not follow the traditions of naming children with the letter M, and the two oldest boys, Payton and Orlando, had proven to be a great trial to their father—and thereby my mother—as they neared manhood. Both young men had a tendency to be light-fingered. This, coupled with their mutual lack of wits, had been occasionally troublesome in our travels.

My own father was not above theft in a pinch, but he never got caught.

At the time of my mother’s death, I was nineteen and Mariah was eleven. Without Mother, our group numbered twenty people.

Everyone stood in shocked silence when my father told them what had happened on the riverbank . . . that my mother was gone. But I was the only one who truly appeared to grasp the full implications of her sudden absence.

My mother was known as “the Great Moira.”

She was not Mist-Torn and possessed no inborn abilities. In our family community, Marcus had been the only one born with a Móndyalítko gift. He was a shifter, and a fine hunter as a result. We were proud of him, but his gift was a secret, known only to us and other Móndyalítko. He could not be used to earn money or gain fame. But even without a Mist-Torn among us, we managed quite well.

Mother was a palm reader, the best I’d ever seen.

She knew how to make someone else feel like the only person in the world. She knew how to shine her light and give someone else hope and joy and peace. She knew how to make other people feel good about themselves and to do it in a way that was natural and believable.

This might not seem like such an unusual gift—but it was.

Every autumn, large numbers of farmers, merchants, and Móndyalítko converged upon the city of Kéonsk for the fair, far too many to be allowed inside the already crowded city.

Wagons, tents, and market stalls were set up outside, overseen by a city administrator called Master Deandre. He was lord of the fair, and like everyone else, he adored my mother. Not only that, but he was a shrewd businessman also, and he was well aware just how many people would line up outside our wagon to be read by the Great Moira.

Because of her, our small group from the line of Marentõr was considered important and quite a draw for the fair, as some people came just to see her and then would spend money at the merchant stalls. Master Deandre always kept a prime spot for our four wagons, just outside the west entrance of the city. Nobody could miss us there.

Of course other members of our group had skills and talents, and we put on shows as well. Aunt Miriam and I could sing. Even at eleven, Mariah could dance beautifully. Something about the way she moved was mesmerizing. Mikolai and Micah could both play the violin, sometimes staging dueling duets, and my father was astonishing at card and magic tricks—which he mainly used as entertainment as opposed to fleecing people out of their money. We’d put out hats and people would toss in coins.

But my mother was the one people came to see, and she earned the lion’s share of our income.

In addition, she was wise and careful with money, and she kept the family accounts. We would all work the fair for the last month of autumn, and then she’d take the earnings and find good bargains on supplies: food, bolts of cloth, thread, paint for the wagons, herbal medicines, grain for the horses, new tools . . . anything we might need. Even after, she always ended up with a surplus of coins.

Once the fair was over, and we were well supplied, we’d head east to our winter destination: Belfleur Keep.

When I was just a girl, a lord named Camden had fallen under my mother’s spell, and he’d invited us to spend the winter in the courtyard of his keep. He was unmarried, but he loved to entertain friends and family in the winter months, so he often had numerous guests.

We went to serve as entertainment, and this became a tradition.

Every winter, we’d roll into the courtyard, and Lord Camden would welcome my mother like a lost jewel, kissing her hands with moisture in his eyes. He stabled our horses and let us all eat from his kitchens. We lived in our wagons, but if the weather grew too cold, we were allowed to come into the keep and sleep in the great hall by the fire.

As payment, my mother would spend many evenings doing readings for his guests after dinner. Her mere presence always meant he had people coming and going, and he was never lonely in those long, cold months. The rest of us worked, too, singing and dancing and playing music and performing magic. Mariah had never known what it was like to be cold or hungry in the winter, and I had only a few vague memories from childhood.

But again, I’d always understood that our welcome and our comfortable, safe winters at Belfleur Keep were all due to my mother. It never occurred to me that this realization had not dawned on my father or Aunt Miriam.

Not until after my mother was already dead.

The Descent

The first sign of trouble came swiftly. Aunt Miriam went to speak with Master Deandre, to tell him of our tragedy and to gain permission to begin setting up in our usual spot outside the west gate.

He expressed sorrow over the death of my mother, and he offered Aunt Miriam sincere condolences, which she accepted. But then . . . he told her that we could not set up just yet, as there had been a few delays with preparations for the fair.

He came to us that night and related, with deep regret, that he’d already allotted our spot to another group of Móndyalítko from the line of Renéive, who were traveling with a Mist-Torn seer. He said the city had already made this decision before our arrival in order to alternate the entertainment nearest the front gate—to keep it fresh.

I knew he was lying.

Father and Aunt Miriam were dumbfounded when we were shown our new location at the outskirts of the fair among the wagons of shabbier Móndyalítko and farmers selling old apples to those who could not afford better.

“What are we going to do?” I asked my father again.

He shook his head in confusion. “Do? We’ll do what we do every year. We’ll stage shows and put our hats out for coins.”

I wanted to clench my fists. He still didn’t understand.

Aunt Miriam took over as head of the family—as was her place—but she was not my mother. The elders in our group had long since grown complacent without realizing it. In fairness, my father, Aunt Miriam, and Uncle Landrien did attempt to organize some shows for us to perform, but on the outskirts of the fair, almost no one saw us, and no one had any money to toss into our hats.

Then . . . Aunt Miriam announced that we would walk farther inside the fair and perform where there were more people.

So we did.

Unfortunately, the arrangement of the Móndyalítko families and wagons had been carefully orchestrated, and after receiving a few complaints, Master Deandre visited to politely ask us to perform only in the area where we’d been placed.

Several of Shawn’s boys were put in charge of the horses and our cow. When we ran out of grain, they began leading the animals out anywhere grass might be found. Eight horses and a cow required a good deal of grass.

By midmonth, we were spending the few coins we earned on food for immediate use, and I had a terrible feeling that very little was being saved. By the end of the month, we were living on boiled oats for breakfast, nothing for lunch, and eggs from our own chickens for dinner . . . and we had little to feed the chickens. Our cow did provide us with some milk, but she was growing older.

Poor Mariah was so confused and lost. She’d never suffered hardship, and she missed our mother so much. I tried to give her what comfort I could.

There was no one to give me comfort.

As the fair ended, it was finally time to head east for the winter, to Belfleur Keep. Mariah was so happy, she clung to me.

“I can’t wait to eat warm bread and sausages in the keep’s kitchen again,” she said. “And to sit by the fire in the hall and to play with Lord Camden’s dogs.”

I smiled and nodded and held her close. My beautiful little sister. I did not want to voice my fears and spoil her happiness. Though I had a bad feeling about what was coming, I convinced myself that I could be wrong.

We left Kéonsk with few supplies and no grain for the horses.

The journey east took us just over a week. Out on the road, it was safe to send Marcus hunting at night, and he kept us supplied with rabbits and pheasants, but feeding twenty people was no easy task for him, and we all grew accustomed to small portions.

When we finally rolled up to Belfleur Keep, I could see the stark relief in both my father and Aunt Miriam. I knew they were both shaken by our change in circumstances at the Autumn Fair, and they were desperate for Lord Camden’s hospitality.

Aunt Miriam now drove in the lead of our group, and she led the way to the south side of the courtyard, where we had wintered for the past thirteen years. We all climbed down to stretch our legs and begin setting up. Shawn’s boys had not even begun unharnessing the horses when Lord Camden emerged from the keep, coming out to greet us. A collection of small spaniels ran around his feet, and Mariah’s face broke into a smile at the sight of them, but I held her back.

“Wait,” I said. “Aunt Miriam needs to speak to him first.”

My aunt glanced at me, and then she headed across the courtyard to intercept Lord Camden. I could see his face from where I stood, and he frowned slightly at the sight of her coming toward him. He began casting his gaze around, and I knew whom he sought: my mother.

Aunt Miriam went to him and began speaking softly. I could see only her back, but she was using her hands as she spoke. Lord Camden’s face froze, and he staggered backward. I thought he might fall. Aunt Miriam reached out for him, speaking faster. I couldn’t hear her exact words, but I could hear her rushed voice.

Lord Camden looked ill and appeared to be trying to get control of himself. He breathed deeply a few times. Then he shook his head and said something that made her entire body stiffen. Aunt Miriam’s voice rose, and I knew that was a mistake. My mother would never have raised her voice. She would have charmed him. I did not inherit her ability to charm, but I had seen it in action many times.

“What’s wrong?” Mariah asked.

I didn’t answer.

Lord Camden shook his head again and said something else. For a moment, his eyes moved toward us, stopping on Mariah, who was a small replica of my mother. Then he turned and walked back to the main doors of the keep. His shoulders were shaking.

Slowly, Aunt Miriam turned and walked back to us.

My father’s face was stricken. “He has refused us?”

Aunt Miriam seemed beyond speech at first, and finally she said, “I told him that we would be able to entertain his guests all winter. I promised we would put on as many shows as he wished. But he says his pain at Moira’s loss is too great. He says that seeing us would be a daily reminder of his sorrow. He wants us to leave today.”

“Leave?” my father repeated. “And go where?”

Everyone in the family appeared stunned except for Marcus and my great-uncle, Marten.

With his pipe clenched between his teeth, Great-Uncle Marten made a sound of disgust. “What did you expect? Moira spent years making sure you needed her, depended on her, and you followed her like children. Performers like the rest of us can be found traveling down any road. She was the one Camden wanted here. We’re all just baggage. She made sure of that, and you let her.”

So I wasn’t alone in my realizations or fears—although I didn’t care for some of the implications he was making about my mother.

“What’s wrong?” Mariah asked again, gripping my hand.

Everyone fell silent, but we had no choice other than to climb back into the wagons and roll out of the courtyard. Mariah wept quietly, and the sound broke my heart.

Throughout that winter, I thought that life for us could not possibly become worse.

We couldn’t survive in unpopulated areas, as we were performers and we required people to entertain. I had no idea of the low opinion that many fief lords and town magistrates had of vagabond travelers. Often, we’d barely set up camp outside a town or large village when soldiers or a local constabulary would come to chase us off.

Mariah heard many words she’d never heard before. These men called us filthy gypsies and tzigän—meaning “vagabond thieves.” The term “Móndyalítko” meant “the world’s little children,” and this was all Mariah had ever known, to be adored and protected as the small image of my mother. I watched her change that winter from a joyful little dancer into a frightened child, hiding inside herself.

Both my father and Aunt Miriam proved almost useless. They seemed lost and adrift without my mother. I came to depend on Marcus, who was a quiet sort, but he kept us alive by hunting all night. I made sure he was left alone to sleep during the day. Some of the other men did try to hunt as well, but it was not their trade, and they weren’t shifters like Marcus, so they brought back very little.

Deer were scarce that winter, and even Marcus could hunt down only so many rabbits and pheasants—again, not enough to support twenty people. We had a difficult time finding grass for the horses, especially when we were never allowed to remain in one place for very long.

Near midwinter, the chickens stopped laying, and so we began to eat them.

Firewood proved a problem as well. For thirteen years, our men had not had to seek firewood in the winter. Much of what they managed to bring back was too wet and too green to burn, so we began piling it in the wagons where we could to try to dry it.

It didn’t snow much in eastern Droevinka, but it did freeze, and we faced many cold nights huddled beneath blankets in the wagons. I think these nights were hardest on Great-Uncle Marten and his aging wife, Leticia.

One of my own bleakest moments occurred when Mariah came to me and whispered, “What about my birthday?”

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. Mariah had been born in midwinter. Back at Belfleur Keep, Mother had always watched the moon and picked a day to celebrate Mariah’s birth. Lord Camden would order something special to be made for dinner, and he always gave Mariah a new gown as a gift, and she would dance for everyone—and be adored.

But now . . . what could I do for her?

With a smile, I hugged her thin shoulders. “I’ve not forgotten.” Even though I had.

The next day, we camped near a dried-up cornfield. I slipped away and gathered up some husks. While I was there, I rejoiced at finding a small patch of onions that someone had neglected to dig up in the autumn harvest. I dug up every onion I could find. Then I went back to the wagon, found some scraps of cloth, made Mariah a corn-husk doll wearing a dress, and hid it.

To my eternal gratitude, Marcus brought down a deer that night.

So, for the following evening, I was able to produce a large pot of venison and onion stew for the family. I somehow turned this into a celebration for Mariah’s birthday, and I gave her the doll. A full stomach of meat and onions did everyone good, and Mikolai played his violin while Mariah danced for us around the fire.

She went to bed happy that night and kissed me twice.

A week later, our cow died, and although this meant there would be no more milk, the men butchered her and we lived on the meat.

As spring came and the trees burst forth with green leaves, I welcomed the warmer air and marveled that we had somehow all managed to survive. The world looked brighter to us again, as it was now time to head southeast toward our late-spring and summer destination.

And we all knew that no one would turn us away.

The prince of the House of Yegor owned vast lands of apple orchards and berry fields, so many that he could not employ enough peasants to handle the harvest—and the strawberries began arriving in late spring. Years ago, he had let it be known that if any of the Móndyalítko were willing to work the harvest, they were welcome to camp in a large meadow about half a league from his castle.

At least fourteen Móndyalítko caravans came every year, my own family among them.

It was a pleasure for us to live among our own for the damp spring and warm southeast summers. We harvested strawberries first, then raspberries, then blueberries, and then apples in the early fall. We were asked to pay nothing in rent for our stay, and we were allowed to keep a portion of the berries and apples we picked—and also to fish in any of the area’s numerous streams and to set snares for rabbits.

This entire yearly cycle had become a rhythm so comfortable to us that we’d forgotten anything else: late spring and summer in the southeast meadow of Yegor, the Autumn Fair in Kéonsk, and winter and early spring inside the safe walls of Belfleur Keep.

Though now some of this rhythm had been lost to us, we could all at least look forward to our journey to Castle Yegor.

However, as we arrived and rolled into the meadow, already filled with other wagons, I could feel a change in how we were observed. The line of Marentõr in general was not viewed as prosperous, but previously, my own family had commanded respect and even envy. My mother had seen to it that our horses were well fed and groomed and that our wagons were always in good repair, with freshly painted shutters. Our group was always well dressed, with enough supplies to help other families in need. In addition, we had Marcus, and there were other groups who longed for a shifter of their own.

As we set up camp in our usual place that summer, I felt the first tinge of shame. Our horses were thin and unkempt. The harsh winter in the forests and fields had left our wagons dull and in need of repair, and we had no money for paint. We ourselves were thin and shabby, and we did not have enough to feed ourselves, much less to share.

Some of the families who had envied us in the past now snubbed us and pretended we didn’t exist. But others were kind—especially those to whom we had once been kind—and they brought us oats and honey and eggs. Mariah seemed to become more herself again at the prospect of being among a larger number of our people, and I got a campfire going and made her some scrambled eggs.

Things improved from there. Our men caught trout in the streams, and soon the strawberry harvest began. We worked hard, but in my spare time, I washed and mended clothes; my father, Mikolai, and Marcus did what they could to repair the wagons; and Shawn and his boys cared for the horses.

Shawn’s two oldest sons, Orlando and Payton, soon became my main concern. They were eighteen and nineteen, and I had observed them more than once looking into other wagons at food and silver trinkets. I spoke to Aunt Miriam and asked her to give them a stern warning about the dangers of stealing from our own people. We could be banned from the meadow for life. Thankfully, the young men only looked and did not touch, and in the end, they caused us no trouble.

The summer weather was warm, and the harvest was plentiful, and by autumn, Mariah was running and laughing with the other girls and no longer hiding inside herself so much. I was glad to see this, for I remembered that at her age, I’d fostered great curiosity about the other families, especially the line of Fawe, who came every year. They were among the most prosperous of the Móndyalítko, as they tended to give birth to an unusual number of Mist-Torn seers. Some of their people had wheat gold hair, and their seers were always born with lavender eyes.

I was sorry when the harvest ended.

But for the last month of autumn, we headed back to Kéonsk.

By this time, my father and Aunt Miriam had no illusions regarding how far we’d fallen, and they didn’t argue or complain with Master Deandre when he placed us way at the back of the fair again.

We earned what money we could, and fool that I was, I assumed that now that my father and Aunt Miriam and the other elders had finally grasped our situation, they would be busy making a plan for winter.

We certainly couldn’t wander from place to place as we had last year.

But that’s exactly what we did, and the winter became a blur of cold and hunger. Although none of our people died, we arrived in the meadow of Yegor the following spring looking every inch the “filthy gypsies” we were so often called. Mariah had completely retreated inside herself and did not come out. She didn’t run or play with the other girls. Only one family took pity on us and brought us a few oats and eggs.

The strawberry harvest began, and we all did our best to work, but we were in a weakened state. Marcus and Mikolai both fished and set out snares instead of picking berries, and I thought that as with last summer, a bit of sunshine and decent food would put us all to rights soon.

Then one night, just as the raspberry harvest began, Orlando and Payton were caught red-handed stealing from the wagon of a Mist-Torn seer from the line of Renéive.

My father and Aunt Miriam begged, but the rules of the families were clear and no exceptions could be made. We were told to leave and not to come back.

I was numb. We had lost our last place of true safety.

Worse, I experienced a moment of irrational fear that Marcus might leave us. Any of the groups would have taken him. But of course he didn’t, and I don’t know where that fear came from.

We wandered again until the last month of autumn and then headed back to Kéonsk. At end of that year’s fair, my father and Aunt Miriam announced that something drastic must change and that they had come to a decision. I felt a single moment of hope that they’d found us someplace safe to spend the winter. Then, when I heard their decision, I bit the inside of my mouth. Their plan was . . . uncertain at best.

“We’ve heard that the House of Äntes is more accepting of our people,” Aunt Miriam announced, “so we will travel north and west, to Enêmûsk. We can find a place inside the city to set up and put on our shows. We should at least be able to earn enough to feed ourselves and the horses.”

While this sounded far better than the hardships of last winter, I wondered where they’d heard of this tolerance of the Äntes. I’d never heard such a thing. Also, the winters in the northwest provinces were much colder than those in the east, and should this plan fail, I feared we would be wintering in ice and snow.

Marcus caught my eye, and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

But neither he nor I had a voice in these decisions, and so we headed west first and then north, arriving at Enêmûsk just as the weather began to turn.

To this day, I don’t know who had given my aunt and father such foolish advice, but the Äntes soldiers guarding the front entrance to Enêmûsk looked at us with such disgust that I put my hands over Mariah’s ears to stop her from hearing whatever was about to come from their mouths.

It was vile.

In the midst of their insults, they made it understood that we would not even be allowed to roll our wagons inside the city. They informed us that the Äntes did not suffer any vagabonds or beggars and that we’d best be on our way if we knew what was good for us.

I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face. Some of the life went out of him that day, but I was beyond pity, and for the first time I felt anger toward my mother. Had Great-Uncle Marten been right? Had she intentionally made the rest of us dependent upon her? Had she enjoyed feeling so necessary? Why had she never tried to teach Aunt Miriam or me how to read palms? I had no answers.

That winter almost cannot be described.

We were driven away from every place we tried to make camp, and Marcus found it difficult to hunt in the snow. By midwinter, four of the horses had died. The men managed to butcher a bit of stringy meat from one of them, but we were driven off in the morning by a group of soldiers, forced to leave the other three lying in the snow. This was hard on Shawn’s younger sons, as they loved our horses.

Mariah did not mention her birthday. She was too cold and hungry to remember it.

About a moon later, poor old Leticia died, and I think Great-Uncle Marten was too hungry to mourn her. Within a few days, Micah and Katlyn’s youngest child died.

Mariah had become a shadow, and I feared she was next.

Then one night, we managed to make camp outside a village, and my father and Uncle Landrien went in to see what the prospects might be for us putting on a show. I found this rather a stretch, since few of us were capable of performing, and we looked like the walking dead. I wondered if the men simply planned to find a tavern and perhaps beg a mug of ale.

But when they came back, they gathered us together and delivered unexpected news.

“We were just told of an encampment called Ryazan, to the north, up above Enêmûsk,” my father said. “A prince of the House of Pählen owns a collection of silver mines, and there is a shortage of workers. The soldiers overseeing the mines have a large a provisions tent, and they are willing to sell food to anyone who mines for them. We could offer to work and buy food and at least have a place to spend the remainder of the winter.”

A chance at work and food sat well with the rest of us, and so we headed farther north and then slightly west. The going was slow, as only one horse now pulled each wagon. We rolled into the Ryazan encampment on the last dregs of our strength and spirit.

From the top of our wagon, I took my first look at what struck me as a sea of tents and men in brown tabards.

The Camp

At the time of our arrival in Ryazan, Aunt Miriam no longer even pretended to be our leader. She was barely able to rise from her bunk.

So it was my father, Uncle Landrien, and Mikolai who first spoke with Captain Garrett of the House of Pählen. He came out to meet us, and I stood in the doorway of our wagon, peering out and listening.

Captain Garrett was a wide-shouldered man, with silver hair and a proud bearing. But he was in need of workers, and he spoke to our men with respect. Unfortunately, the bargain he offered was a disappointment.

“Our miners sign a one-year contract,” he said, “and they get paid at the end when the contract is fulfilled. We just had a new round of contracts signed in the autumn, but I can sign you on at a slightly reduced wage, and you can work out the rest of the year.” He went on to explain that through the year, while working out their contracts, the men could take out vouchers to be exchanged for food from the provisions tent. These vouchers would later be counted against their wages. I could see this for what it was—a way to reduce monetary wages by preying on the miners’ need to feed their families. But at the time, I didn’t care. It sounded as if our men would be able to get food for us right away.

“However,” Captain Garrett continued, “no one is allowed to trade vouchers for provisions until they’ve worked in the mines for at least a month. We’ve had a few workers load up on food, work one day, and then disappear.”

My father’s face fell. We needed food now. We could not last a month.

The captain seemed to understand this—although I’d been watching him count the number of men in our group, along with the boys old enough to work. I knew he wanted us to stay. He looked at our horses, which were all thin and weakened like us, but these last four were otherwise sound.

“I’ll buy your horses from you, and you can use the money to purchase provisions to feed your people.” He pointed north. “The miners’ camp is through those trees. You can get your wagons settled and then bring the horses to me.”

For traveling Móndyalítko, the idea of selling our horses was almost unthinkable. They were our lifeblood, our method of moving from one place to the next in the rhythm of the year. But we had lost our yearly rhythm, and the desperate state of the men drove them to agree with the captain’s offer. Later, I learned that none of the other miners had ever been told they had to work a month before taking advantage of the vouchers. Although Captain Garrett was a fair man in most ways, I thought he might have put us in a position of having to sell our horses so that we could not leave.

At the time, however, I didn’t know this.

By that afternoon, we’d settled our wagons in the miners’ camp. Our horses had been sold, and we’d been given a good price. Our larders were filled with supplies from the soldiers’ provision tent, including oats, lentils, dried tomatoes, onions, tea, wheels of cheese, and a few pails of milk with cream floating on the surface. How cheaply we’d been bought.

Then all the men except Marcus signed contracts to work for Captain Garrett. Marcus didn’t wish to sign, and he was excused because we would still need our hunter. I am ashamed at how relieved we all felt simply to have food and a place to camp and the promise of work, even if the men would not be paid in actual coin for nearly a year.

We lit a campfire, and Katlyn and I got to work making a large pot of lentil stew with onions and dried tomatoes. That night, Mariah sat by the fire with a blanket around her shoulders, and I brought her a warm bowl of lentils. She was too hungry to even wolf it down, so she took small bites.

“We can stay here?” she whispered. “We won’t have to leave tomorrow?”

I don’t think she understood that our horses were gone.

“No,” I whispered back, sitting beside her. “We don’t have to leave, and I’ll make you soft oats with cream for breakfast.”

She leaned into me and pressed her face in my shoulder. Maybe we were not bought so cheaply after all.

The next day, the men went to the mines to work, all except for Marcus and Great-Uncle Marten, who was too old. Only one of Shawn’s boys had not turned twelve yet, and apparently, any male over twelve was considered old enough to work in the silver mines. So in one fell swoop, Captain Garrett had gained my father, Uncle Landrien, Mikolai, Micah, Shawn, and four of Shawn’s sons.

I let Mariah rest that day, and I set about the task of getting a more permanent camp set up. Then I made supper. Katlyn helped me, and she also minded her two remaining children and Shawn’s youngest.

Aunt Miriam did not rise from her bunk, and I began to worry that she was more than simply weary. I brought her tea and food, but she couldn’t eat.

When the men came back that evening, I had my first inkling that we’d made a horrible mistake.

The Móndyalítko were not born to spend their days underground in the darkness. They need light and air. Though our men had been drawn to the promise of work, they’d not fully considered the type of work for which they were signing on—hard labor in the darkness underground.

I saw fear and desperation in the eyes of my father.

Mariah saw it, too, but her reaction offered no pity. Catching me alone, she asked, “We’re not leaving, are we? Father won’t give up and make us leave?”

“No,” I assured her. “We will not leave.”

I fed the men dinner and did what I could to make their evening pleasant with food and a warm campfire.

The following morning, they went back to the mines.

Two days later, Aunt Miriam died in her sleep. Uncle Landrien, Mikolai, and Marcus mourned her. So did Father and I. Poor Mariah was beyond mourning and barely seemed aware that her aunt was gone. The girl was too driven by fear of being back out on the road again.

As that first year passed, I made friends with the wives of the miners who lived in shacks and huts in our encampment, and a few of them taught me to use the food vouchers wisely. The soldiers placed a high price on luxuries like tea, so if I wished for our men to have more real money coming in at the end of their contracts, I learned to purchase only what was absolutely necessary. Of course, the problem with this was that I often ended up making the same things for supper—such as lentil stew. Marcus supplemented our meals with game and venison when he could. But the men were denied even small pleasures like tea. This troubled me, and yet, when I expressed my worries to my father, he told me to continue with my thrifty methods.

Over that year, I watched the life drain from the eyes of our men, and I saw a determination growing in my father that I’d never seen before. I knew he hated it here. He hated those mines. But what was going to happen when the men earned out their contracts and received the wages owed them? We certainly wouldn’t have enough to buy horses.

At the end of summer, I asked him, “What are we going to do?”

He studied me for a long moment. “I have a plan, but no one knows except Marcus, and you cannot speak of it yet. Do you swear?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve noticed the soldiers don’t guard their horses well, with perhaps one man on the perimeter at night. Once we are paid, after dark, we’ll overcome that one guard. We’ll take six horses and slip away the same night. We’ll leave Uncle Marten’s wagon behind. He can ride in Landrien’s. Micah and Katlyn and their children can ride with us.”

“No.” I shook my head. “Captain Garrett will come after us. You’ll be hanged for stealing their horses.”

“He won’t find us.” His voice lowered further. “I’ve let it be known that we all long to return to Belfleur Keep in the east. He will believe that we have run, and he’ll organize men to chase us east. But Marcus has found us a place to hide only three leagues away. There is freshwater, fish, and good hunting for him. We’ll hide out until the soldiers stop seeking us, and only then will we begin to move.”

This sounded risky, but if Marcus believed the hiding place to be sound, I trusted his judgment.

“Where will we go after that?” I asked.

“Back to Kéonsk. I’m going to speak to Master Deandre about finding us work in the city, even if we end up mucking out stalls for the Väränji soldiers.” His voice broke. “But we have to get away from here, my girl. This is no place for us. Those mines are no place for us.”

“I know, Father.”

I reached out and stroked his arm, truly proud of him for the first time since Mother died.

Autumn came, and I prepared for our dangerous departure. I said nothing to Mariah. I knew she would fight me. She was going on fourteen, and for her, this place meant food and stability.

Finally, the day arrived when our men were paid, and I knew Father and Marcus were going to unveil their plan to the other men. I wasn’t entirely certain why Father had waited so long, but I think he feared that the younger men—Mikolai, Payton, and Orlando—would feel the same as Mariah and would not want to go back on the road. Perhaps he felt that if he sprang it on them when they all had money, they would be more likely to take a chance.

After the hour when their work had ended that day, I waited for them all to come home . . . and I waited. No one came.

Katlyn, Mariah, Marcus, and I grew worried.

Then one of the miners’ wives came to tell us that on payday, once a year, the men were excused at noon, so they could make the walk—several hours—to a large village somewhere between Ryazan and Enêmûsk, where they would use their money to have a mug of ale and buy supplies they could not get here. They would stay the night and come back in the morning, and then they would see Captain Garrett and sign new contracts.

I didn’t believe my father would do this, and that if he had gone with our men, it was only to explain his plan.

But the next day, just past noon, he walked slowly up to our wagon, and I could see the defeat in his face. Marcus ran up to him, and I had never seen Marcus desperate before. He hated this place, and he’d believed we were leaving.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“They wouldn’t agree,” my father answered hoarsely, “not even your father. They said stealing horses from the soldiers was madness, and we would be caught and hanged. They spent their money, and they all signed a new contract.”

Marcus stumbled backward. “And you?”

“I . . . signed as well. I cannot leave the family.”

Marcus’s features twisted in bitter disappointment. Turning, he ran into the forest. But by now, I knew he’d be back. He wouldn’t leave the family either.

And so we began our second year in Ryazan.

Somewhere along the way, I began to stop caring about many things. Like a number of the older miners, Uncle Landrien began having problems with his joints, until he could barely close his hands without pain. I knew I should have pitied him, but I was beginning to have trouble just making it through the days with my washing and mending and cooking, each day blending into the next.

I never thought I would miss traveling, miss the road, but I did. In my entire life, I had never been in one place for so long. Our men stopped laughing. They stopped singing and playing their violins.

Captain Garrett was replaced by another man named Captain Asher, along with a new crop of soldiers who served under him. Asher didn’t have much to do with us so long as the silver in the mines kept flowing—and it did.

In that second year, a small part of me began to worry more about Mariah. She rarely spoke, and she seemed to spend much of her time off by herself. She resented helping me with the washing or the cooking, and it was easier for me to do it myself than to try to force her. She was growing up wild, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to care.

I watched my father fading before my eyes.

The following autumn, most of our men signed their third contract, but Uncle Landrien could not. His joints had grown so painful from the cold and the damp and the relentless work in the mines that he could barely walk.

Orlando and Payton both married girls from the miners’ camp, thus grounding themselves forever.

Marcus continued to hunt for us, but he seemed to speak less and less.

The following winter, Mariah turned sixteen. She was hauntingly beautiful.

Not long after, my father caught a fever, and he died.

All of these things began to feel as if they were happening in someone else’s life, that I was just an observer. One day blended into the next.

Then, in the spring of our third year in Ryazan, Captain Asher died, and his replacement was not long in arriving. His name was Captain Keegan, and I felt a wave of fear the first time he visited the miners’ encampment. He looked at my family and me as if we were filth. I could see the disgust in his eyes, but his eyes stopped for much too long on Mariah, moving up and down her slight body and exquisite face.

He didn’t say a word. He just turned and walked away.

He had a handsome lieutenant named Sullian serving with him, along with a corporal named Quinn, who both struck me as fair men, and I hoped perhaps we would end up dealing with them more than with their captain.

But a week later, Keegan came back . . . to see me.

“I’ve done some checking,” he said, “and you and your sister have no man working in the mines. The rules are clear, and they were written for good reason. Women who have no men working in the mines need to clear out and make space.”

“We’re not taking up any space,” I argued. “This wagon belongs to us. And we do have men working in the mines, my cousin Mikolai and my second cousin Micah.”

“Those men aren’t part of your household, and your father’s dead. You’ll need to clear out. Take your wagon if you can buy a horse somewhere.”

He walked away. I couldn’t believe it. He was ordering Mariah and me to leave.

When I told Mikolai and Marcus, of course they came to our defense, and Mikolai went to speak with the captain, to tell him that Mariah and I were part of his family. He came back grim faced and said that the captain had told him that since he was not a husband or father to us, he didn’t count, and we would have to leave.

We had no horses, and we could not take our wagon. With the possible exception of Marcus, I didn’t think any of our men would go with us—and even he might not leave his father. What would become of us?

I spent the next two days in fear, thinking that soldiers might come at any moment to drive Mariah and me out of camp, but they didn’t.

Instead, Mariah came in late, opening the door to the wagon and slipping inside long after dark.

“We don’t have to leave,” she said.

“What?” I asked in confusion. “I don’t think that captain will change his mind.”

“I’m not going anywhere!” she spat at me, and then I could see that she was upset, her small hands trembling. “I’ve made a bargain with the captain. You and I can stay, and in exchange, Marcus will give him wild game for his table, and I will give him . . .” She trailed off.

I went cold. “You’ll give him what?”

She turned away, and reality hit me. This was what he’d been after all along. This was why he’d threatened to banish us: to place her under his power.

I should have been outraged. I should have taken a knife and gone after him. But I didn’t.

“We can stay?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I wasn’t even relieved. I didn’t feel anything.

That day blended into the next.