Otherbound

16

In a way, Amara supposed Cilla should be grateful for the curse. It must’ve taken many mages to cast. With that much power, they could’ve killed Cilla straightaway. It would’ve been quicker. More effective, too. They’d had one chance to get rid of the princess, and they’d screwed it up.

It would’ve been easier for everyone if they hadn’t.

They couldn’t wait for Jorn. Amara kept her hand around Cilla’s wrist, ignoring the looks around them as they stormed away, diving between stalls to avoid the crowd. The commotion from the mixed magic served as a good distraction. If they drew too much attention, Jorn would—

Didn’t matter. The curse came first.

The cobblestones shifted. Would that be it this time? The stones? Would they twist and groan and batter into her? Would they spread apart and choke her in the earth?

“The cut’s small,” Cilla said, her voice muffled through her hand. Blocking the blood wouldn’t stop the curse, but it might slow it down. “It’ll heal fast. At least—at least there’s that.”

They ran for the market center. One half stood solidly on the dunes while the other half towered over the beach on high posts; they might find a safe spot underneath. The salt scent of the water was stronger here, mingling with rot and dirt and cold. The market seemed far off and long gone.

The sand shifted as they ran. The dune grass swayed as if carried by a ripple of wind.

The moment they plunged into the chilly shade under the market center, Amara grabbed her knife. She pulled Cilla’s hand away to expose her lip. The longer this went on, the more blood Amara would need to make the decoy work.

How could Amara have been stupid enough to think she could trust the mage?

“Do it,” Cilla said.

Cilla’s cut bled slowly, one drop at a time. Amara would never be able to distract the curse with so little blood. She raised her knife and pressed its point to Cilla’s lip. At least the skin there was soft, with no risk of hitting bone or tendons. Amara pressed. Puncture wounds bled less than slashes. They were small, too, which made it easier to block the blood from the air. Cilla held in a grunt.

At the market, the dunes had shielded them from the worst of the wind; they lacked that protection here. A gust blew sand into Amara’s eyes and nose. The dune grass rustled by their feet and bent as though touched by an unseen storm, pointing in the wrong direction. So it hadn’t been the cobblestones that moved back at the market, Amara realized, but the dune-grass roots underneath, the moss in between. The grass pricked at the legs of Cilla’s winterwear, whipping past but not yet through.

Moving away was pointless. The curse would just shift its weapon to the sea or sand.

Amara ran her hand over Cilla’s lip, smearing the blood onto her own skin. She pressed it to her hands, to her arms, her exposed throat. Already, the grass was shifting. It tickled at her legs. Amara backed away from Cilla. Her heel hit a half-buried log, and she fell. The ground felt like ice. The sun hadn’t touched this sand in years. In her peripheral vision, a sand spider the size of her palm scuttled to safety.

The first blade of grass cut Amara’s arm.

Cilla knotted up a corner of her topscarf and pressed it to her face. Once the blood clotted, they could carefully peel away the scarf, making sure they didn’t tear open the wound again. Curses followed curses.

All around Amara, the dune grass rustled. She bit back a scream as a blade tore through her wear by her knee. Dune grass was tough and tall, and right now, animated by the spell, the blades felt like just that—blades. Like knives so sharp she almost didn’t notice at first when they cut her.

Amara clenched her teeth until it felt like they’d crack. Sticky blood dripped from a dozen cuts. She only needed to wait this out. Cuts were good. Cuts were clean. They healed quickly—no messy bone shards to mend, no skin to regrow over burned flesh—and bled freely, so it never took long to overpower Cilla’s blood and leave the curse aimless and dying.

The dune grass was everywhere. It cut deeper, harder. Amara wasn’t hiding her face well enough. The points of the grass slashed at the thin skin of her lips, the arch of her throat. She scrunched her eyes shut tightly, so tightly, as blades jabbed her eyelids. Another prick. Amara screamed, but the sound stayed inside her mouth, muffled.

“Amara,” Cilla whimpered distantly. “Amara, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry …”

Amara had to choose which parts of herself to shield. Maybe if she pressed her arms to her eyes …

Her arms. Why was that first gash still bleeding? Shallow cuts usually healed fast.

She rolled onto her side, her hands pressed to her stomach. Another slash. The edges of the cut stood apart the width of a fingernail. Bright blood sputtered up and dripped over the edges, like water spilling from a sluice. Her mangled legs thrashed, sending stained sand up in clouds. Grass blades dug into her, but more slowly now. Enough of her own blood had spilled to confuse the curse.

But her cuts weren’t healing. None of them. The cuts from her lips sent copper spilling into her mouth, sticking to her teeth and the stump of her tongue and the back of her throat.

“What’s—what’s happening, what’s—” Cilla’s words crashed into each other.

Amara’s arms wrapped around her stomach. Apply pressure. Just as Cilla always did. Apply pressure. But she didn’t have enough arms for that. Her stomach bled and her legs bled and her breasts bled and her face bled.

Another voice joined Cilla’s. Jorn’s. He was running toward them across the dunes, swearing. That was never good, never, ever good.

“Curse ended?” Two words only. Amara tried to answer, but the question was probably meant for Cilla. She should turn her head and make sure, but—

“What’s happening? Why—why isn’t she—” Cilla said.

The slashing of the dune grass had turned to tickling. That hurt, too. Or maybe everything hurt. Her clothes felt sticky and too warm. Why wasn’t she healing? She should focus. Use her magic like a proper mage. But she didn’t know what to focus on beyond pressing her hands to her stomach.

Maybe the spirits had stopped favoring her.

Jorn worked his arms underneath her, lifting her up with no effort at all. Her head rolled back. She tried to keep her eyes open. Apparently her eyes bled, too. Everything was red. She blinked as if that would make it stop. Everything just turned redder. Of course. She’d been cleaning blood for years and years and forever. That was how it worked. It spread and thinned, and then you got rid of it, though now it wasn’t thinning, so maybe she was doing something wrong.

Jorn would punish her. Or he would let her die. Without her healing, she had no purpose.

“You alive?” he asked, looking down at her. Her legs swung back and forth with every step of Jorn’s. He was moving fast, his arms digging into the cuts on her back. They stepped into the sun, higher up now, and the chatter of the market rushed back over her.

She tried to say something, but her hands needed to stay on her stomach. Maybe she could try her lips. They didn’t feel right, though. They hurt.

“Where are we going? Can’t you heal her?” Cilla sounded distant. Amara couldn’t see her. The world was upside down, anyway, and bobbed weirdly, and it was still red.

Did pain really last this long?

“No magic. Her own healing might come back. Do you want to repeat that lightning show?”

“I only meant—”

“Get her topscarf off,” Jorn instructed. “Press it to her stomach.”

Amara let out a moan. No. Cilla couldn’t do that. Cilla needed her hands to compress her own wound, or they’d have to start all over again.

“But—I—” Cilla’s voice got louder as she caught up to Jorn.

Jorn swore again. “You can’t. Then open the door to that pub. Now!”

Amara could just catch a glimpse of Cilla rushing ahead.

Jorn never let Cilla go ahead alone. Not in places this busy. One bump and she might drop her scarf and then the stones would crush her just like that. That’d happened a couple of months ago, and a year before that, and years before that, and it hurt every time, and Amara’s hands and feet always looked weird afterward. Formless. Battered. Like nothing that should be attached to her body.

Drowning was better. It hurt less.

She smelled metal.

“Towels!” Jorn shouted. “Clean towels—sheets—everything!”

Inside was darker, safe, the way she liked it. Sometimes she liked the outside, too, with the beach sand ugly and gray and filled with bugs and dried jellyfish and dirt, and the water just as ugly and just as gray. The diggers made up for all that. Their funny legs and pointy noses. In the north of the Continent, the Jélis had white beaches and blue water but no diggers. Amara had seen paintings. It looked pretty but fake, as if someone had used too much pigment in their paint.

A table pushed into her back. Her legs dangled from the edge. She moaned without wanting to. She was far gone, farther than she’d ever been. Was this what happened when you got hurt? Really hurt? Maybe she’d run out of healing. Poof. Maybe Nolan had screwed with it. Maybe Nolan had broken it. Maybe Nolan had broken her.

She hated him. She didn’t know him. But the hate stayed.

“That’s runaway palace scum,” a deep-voiced man said.

Palace scum. That meant he saw her tattoo. The way she lay on the table, her hair was probably pooled under her head. Amara would peel her skin to the bone if the tattoo wouldn’t simply return five minutes later.

Sometimes, five ink-free minutes seemed like enough.

“Did she get injured in the magic blow-up?” someone else asked.

“She’s not a runaway. We’re here on … an assignment,” Jorn said. “Help her!”

“Hey—you, I’d help,” the first man said. He must be talking to Cilla. It didn’t matter to Amara, since you wasn’t her, and right now she really needed help. Jorn was pressing on her stomach to keep the deepest wound shut, and she was shivering with cold or pain or something else, and every movement pulled open a different cut. She tried to help Jorn apply pressure to her stomach, but her hands didn’t listen.

“You’re lying, though,” the man went on. “She must’ve run. Her hair’s too long.”

He had to be Alinean. Few others would notice her hair, and none would dare call her palace scum. No one else had the money or connections to get away with it. That was what Maart always said.

Maart would be so upset. He would be so upset when he found out.

“I’ll pay you!” Jorn shouted. “Get some damned towels!”

“Listen—”

“You listen.” Cilla was still here. She’d been so quiet. Amara heard her footsteps on the floor. She stepped into Amara’s view. She was hard to see from this angle, and in the dark, and with everything red. Cilla still kept her scarf pressed to the side of her mouth, and she lifted her head higher, her hair falling away from her face. She was pretty like that. Even upside down. Even when red.

“Don’t!” Jorn snarled, but he couldn’t stop her with his hands pressed to Amara’s stomach.

Cilla couldn’t do this again. Not after that mage had just—didn’t she see the danger?

Cilla’s free hand went to her scarf. Most of the fabric was already wadded up, so she pulled the rest loose easily. The scarf drooped over her arms, exposing bare shoulders, the beginning swell of her breasts, and that single mark right in the center of her chest. The tattoo’s glow pulsed with her heartbeat.

That tattoo was pretty, too. Even when Amara hated it. And she always hated it.

The pub fell silent.

Someone barked an order about getting towels, and the world went away.