Norrine waited at the table for another five minutes. She leaned back in her chair, swinging her feet, and smiled at the waiter when he returned.
“She’ll be right back,” she said.
When he had turned his back, she let the smile drop and turned to watching the street.
A flash of color caught her eyes. Green on tan uniforms moved through the street, the crowd parting before them. Norrine leapt to her feet and hurried inside the cafe. She paused by the door, wringing her hands together, and pressed herself into the corner where she could see out the window but-hopefully-remain unseen herself.
The Kez soldiers seemed to be coming straight for her. There were three of them, swords at their sides with no muskets in sight. A fourth man was leading them. He had light blonde hair, a slight build, and wore a black suit with runed gloves on his hands. Norrine tried not to tremble at the sight. A Privileged sorcerer.
The group passed the cafe and continued on down the street. Norrine watched them go.
“Have you seen a Privileged before?”
The voice made her jump, but it was just the waiter standing behind her. Norrine shook her head. “I haven’t.”
“We get a few through here, being a port town and all,” the waiter said. “You know how it is. They’re not as special when you see ‘em in person.” He paused, then added, “Not that I’d want to make one mad or anything.”
Norrine let out a soft sigh when she saw Santiole coming down the street a few minutes later. Santiole was alone, and she approached the cafe hesitantly. She came inside with one hand on her pistol.
“Nikslaus is here,” she said, taking Norrine back outside.
“A Privileged walked by with some soldiers not long ago,” Norrine said. “It must have been him.”
“Good that you kept out of sight.” Santiole gave a curt, approving nod. “It took me longer than expected to speak to Lady Erika without being spotted. They’ve closed the port and they have men watching all the city gates. My lady wants us to take the high pass over to Budwiel to smuggle you into Adro by land.”
“How will we escape the city?” Norrine asked.
“We’ll go during the night. I’ve arranged to have horses waiting just outside the walls.” Santiole moved the hem of her jacket to reveal a coil of rope hanging from her belt. “How do you feel about heights?”
Erika and her entourage ascended back into the mountains the next day, their team of four horses pulling them higher and higher into the pass between Norport and the wheat fields of Kez known as the Amber Expanse. They were forced to travel southwest in order to head back across the mountains and reach Budwiel, an Adran city that sat on the southernmost border between Kez and Adro.
She was accompanied by Dominik, her grandfather’s elderly carriage driver, and Tirel, a man-at-arms who had been with the family for decades.
Santiole and Norrine met them two days outside of Norport as they crossed the first of several high passes on their journey. Erika was relieved to see them safe and glad for the company in the cold carriage.
On the third day it began to snow, and by the fourth they were forced to slow their pace lest the carriage slide off the mountainside. On the fifth day, Erika sat brooding, watching the snow fall lightly outside the carriage window. Dominik claimed he could keep driving as long as the road didn’t freeze but that the snow would slow them a little. If Nikslaus had set a trap, surely they would have sprung it by now. If he was chasing her, his men on horseback could travel faster than a carriage on slick roads. Or her guess had been wrong. Perhaps Nikslaus hadn’t suspected her in the least and had simply let her go.
Erika didn’t dare to hope.
She would drive herself mad trying to anticipate Nikslaus. Best not to think about it. “Are you warm enough?” she asked Norrine.
The girl nodded. They were both smothered soundly in furs and blankets. Erika felt the worst for poor Dominik out with the horses, though the old man protested that he was plenty warm in his seal-skin cloak. Dominik was a cripple, his left leg injured from a fall from horseback in his youth, but if anyone could get the carriage through the passes in the snow it would be him.
Erika looked at the healing scrapes on Norrine’s cheeks and wondered how she’d gotten them. Perhaps one of the guards had attacked her. Or maybe during her escape from the Longdogs. Erika imagined Norrine frightened, hungry, and cold as she pressed herself amongst the roots of an old tree beneath the road, scraping against rocks and hard soil as she hid from her pursuers. It must have been terrifying in a way Erika couldn’t conceive, yet the girl stayed strong and silent, ready to brave the mountain passes on foot to earn her freedom.
By Kresimir, if Erika could find in herself even a fraction of that bravery she would be a duchess to be reckoned with.
“How did you find out you were a powder mage?” Erika asked.
Norrine watched her for several moments, her eyes melancholy, before she answered. “Da was showing me how to shoot a musket.” She paused and shivered, but not, it seemed, from the cold. “It was over a year ago now. Last summer. He saw that I fired the musket without pulling the trigger. I tried to tell him it was an accident.”
“And he turned you in?”
“He wasn’t going to. He kept it a secret through last winter and spring. Summer came, and then Phille got sick and Da didn’t have any money for the doctor. Phille’s my older brother. And Da said if Phille died, Ma would go mad with grief.”
So they turned in their daughter for a handsome reward. Erika had heard similar stories. Peasants had little choice, after all. If they turned in their children or friends or relatives they were given land, money, cattle. If the Longdogs found out you were hiding a mage, however, your whole family could go to the headsman.
She tried to imagine the pain of having to turn in her own daughter, but felt only disgust for Norrine’s father.
“Do you hate him?”
Norrine seemed surprised. “No. Why would I?”
“Because he….” she trailed off. The girl knew she would be turned over the minute she realized she was a powder mage. Of course. That’s how the peasants were raised.
“Phille’s dead now anyway,” Norrine said.
“He didn’t get better?”
The girl sniffed. “He did. As soon as he was well he helped me escape. One of the Longdogs-the fat one you killed on the road-ran him through with his sword. I guess Ma will go mad with grief after all.”
“I’m sorry.”
Norrine shrugged in response and rubbed the sleeve of her coat across her eyes. “How did you find out?”
Erika glanced out the window. The snow seemed to have let up a little. “It was my twelfth birthday-just about your age-and the dowsers came around to see if I had the talent to be a Privileged. They gave me their tests and I failed. But then they brought out a powder mage.” She remembered seeing the mage, branded at the neck like Norrine and bound with iron manacles. He had been reduced to nothing more than a beast, barely clothed and smelling worse than a dog.
“Privileged can’t sniff out a powder mage,” Erika went on. “Only other powder mages can. He took one look at me and he told his masters I was a powder mage.” They’d given him a dinner of slop as a reward, and Erika remembered hating that man more than anyone in the world. She had cried for weeks, though her mother assured her she wouldn’t be taken off to be executed. “I had to go before the king and swear to him and Kresimir that I would never touch black powder. And then they branded me.”
It had hurt worse than anything else in her life. She still remembered the pain of hot iron against her skin.
She fingered the snuff box in her pocket, trying to remember when she had first broken that promise. A few years ago, now. No one had ever checked, really. After all, what self-respecting Kez noblewoman would sacrifice her future for forbidden powers?